A Scots Quair

  Judgment or not on Will, it was hardly a week before his own rage struck down John Guthrie. He’d been setting up ricks in the cornyard when Chris heard a frightened squawk break out from the hens. She thought maybe some strange dog was among them and caught up a spurtle and ran out to the close and there saw father lying still in his blood, black blood it looked on his face where he’d fallen and mischieved himself against a stone. She cried out to him in fright and then cooled herself down, and ran for water from the spring and dipped her hanky in it and bathed his face. He opened his eyes then, dazed-like he seemed, and he said All right, Jean lass, and tried to rise, and couldn’t. And rage came on him again, he put out his hand and gave Chris a push that near threw her down, he tried and tried to rise up, it was sickening to see. He chaved on the ground as though something tied him there, all one of his sides and legs, and the blood veins stood out blue on his face; and he cursed and said Get into the house, you white-faced bitch! he wouldn’t have her looking at him. So she watched from behind the door, near sick she felt, it was as though a great frog were squattering there in the stour, and the hens gathered and squawked about him.

  And at last he stood up and staggered to a stone, and Chris didn’t look more, going on with her work as well as she could with hands that quivered and quivered. But when he came in for supper he looked much as ever, and grumbled at this and that, and ate his egg as though it would do him ill, syne got his gun and went off to the hill as fleet as ever. He was long up there, Chris went to the window and watched for him, seeing the August late night close in, Cuddiestoun’s sheep were baaing high up in the Cuddiestoun moor and a sprig of the honeysuckle that made the Blawearie hedges so bonny through the summer tapped and touched against the window-pane, it was like a slow hand tapping there; and the evening was quiet in the blow of the night-wind, and no sign of father till Chris grew alarmed and nearly went out to look for him. But then she heard his step in the porch, in he came and put down his gun and saw her stand there and cried out Damn’t to hell, is that all you’ve to do, stand about like a lady? So you could hardly believe there was much wrong with him then, except ill-nature, he’d plenty of that, you’d no foreseeing that next morning he’d try to get out of bed and lie paralysed.

  She wouldn’t in a hurry forget the sight of him then, nor the run she had down Blawearie brae till the new Knapp came in sight, brave with its biggings and house. But there at last was Chae Strachan, he was busied letting a strainer into the ground, smoking, the blue smoke of his pipe rose into the air, blue, like a pencil-stroke, a cock was crowing across the Denburn and he didn’t hear her cry for a while. But then he did and was quick enough, he ran up to meet her, What’s wrong, Chriss lass? and she told him and he turned and ran down—Go back to your father and I’ll get to the doctor myself and send the wife up to Blawearie.

  And up she came, the fat, fusionless creature, all she could do was to stand and gowk at father, Mighty me, Mr Guthrie, this is a sore, sore sight, whatever will you do now, eh? And father mouthed and mowed at her from the bed as though the first thing he’d be keen on doing was braining her, paralysis or not he’d still plenty of rage. For when the doctor came up at last from Bervie and bustled into the room, peering and poking with the sharp, quick face of him, and his bald head shining, and snapped in his curt-like way, What’s this? what’s wrong with you now, Blawearie? father managed to speak out then right enough—That’s for you to find out, what the hell do you think you’re paid for?

  So the doctor grinned behind his hand, One of you women must help me strip him. And he looked from Kirsty to Chris and said You, Chris lass, and that she did while Mrs Strachan went down to the kitchen to make him tea and trail around like a clucking hen, God! what mightn’t be happening in Peesie’s Knapp without her? Chris lost her temper at last, she lost it seldom enough, this time it went with a bang−I don’t know either what’s happening in Peesie’s Knapp but if you’re in such tune about it you’d better go home and find out. Mrs Strachan reddened up at that, bubbling like a hubbley- jock, that wasn’t the way for a quean to speak to a woman that might well be her mother, she might think shame to curse and swear with her father lying at death’s door there. And Chris said she hadn’t sworn, but she was over-weary to argue about it, and knew right well that whatever she said now Mistress Strachan would spread a fine story about her.

  And sure as death so she did, it was soon all over the Howe that that coarse quean at Blawearie had started to swear at Mistress Strachan while her father was lying near dead in the room above their heads. Only Chae himself didn’t believe it, and when he came up to Blawearie next day he whispered to Chris, Is’t true you gave Kirsty a bit of a damning yesterday? and when she said she hadn’t he said it was a pity, it was time that somebody did.

  SO THERE FATHER LAY and had lain ever since, all those five weeks he’d lain there half-paralysed, with a whistle beside his bed when he wanted attention, and God! that was often enough. Creeping to her bed half-dead at night Chris would find herself thinking a thing that wouldn’t bear a rethinking out here in the sun, with the hum of the heather- bees, heather-smell in her face, Lord! could she only lie here a day how she’d sleep and sleep! Fold over her soul and her heart and put them away with their hours of vexing and caring, the ploughing was done, she was set to her drilling, and faith! it was weary work!

  She started and sighed and took her hands down from her face and listened again. Far down in Blawearie there rose the blast of an angry-blown whistle.

  THREE

  Seed-time

  SHE’D THOUGHT, running, stumbling up through the moor, with that livid flush on her cheek, up through the green of the April day with the bushes misted with cobwebs, I’ll never go back, I’ll never go back, I’ll drown myself in the loch! Then she stopped, her heart it seemed near to bursting and terribly below it moved something, heavy and slow it had been when she ran out from Blawearie but now it seemed to move and uncoil. Slow, dreadfully, it moved and changed, like a snake she had once seen up on this hill, and the sweat broke out on her forehead. Had anything happened with it? Oh God, there couldn’t be anything! If only she hadn’t run so, had kept herself quiet, not struck as she’d done, deaved and angry and mad she had been!

  Sobbing, she fell to a slow walk then, her hand at her side, and through the gate into the moorland went with slow steps, the livid flush burning still on her cheek, she felt it was branded there. Tears had come in her eyes at last, but she wouldn’t have them, shook them off, wouldn’t think; and a pheasant flew up beneath her feet, whirroo! as she came to the mere of the loch. She bent over there through the rushes, raising her hands to her hair that had come all undone, and parted it from her face and looked down at her face in the water. It rippled a moment, it was brown with detritus, at first she could see nothing of herself but a tremulous amorphousness in the shadow of the rushes; and then the water cleared, she saw the flush below her cheek-bone, her own face, strange to her this last month and stranger now. Below in Kinraddie the carts were rattling up every farm- road, driving out dung to the turnip-planting, somewhere there was a driller on the go, maybe it was Upperhill’s, the clank was a deafening thing. Nine o’clock in the morning and here up on the hill she was, she didn’t know where to go or where to turn.

  There were the Standing Stones, so seldom she’d seen them this last nine months. Cobwebbed and waiting they stood, she went and leant her cheek against the meikle one, the monster that stood and seemed to peer over the water and blue distances that went up to the Grampians. She leant against it, the bruised cheek she leaned and it was strange and comforting—stranger still when you thought that this old stone circle, more and more as the years went on at Kinraddie, was the only place where ever she could come and stand back a little from the clamour of the days. It seemed to her now that she’d had feint the minute at all to stand and think since that last September day she’d spent up here, caught and clamped and turning she’d been in the wheel and grind of the days since father die
d.

  BUT AT THE TIME a thing fine and shining it had been, she hadn’t cared if folk deemed her heartless and godless—fine she thought it, a prayer prayed and answered, him dead at last with his glooming and glaring, his whistlings and whisperings. Chris, do this, and Chris, do that it went on from morn till night till but hardly she could drag herself to the foot of the stairs to heed him.

  But a worse thing came as that slow September dragged to its end, a thing she would never tell to a soul, festering away in a closet of her mind the memory lay, it would die sometime, everything died, love and hate; fainter and fainter it had grown this year till but half she believed it a fancy, those evening fancies when father lay with the red in his face and his eye on her, whispering and whispering at her, the harvest in his blood, whispering her to come to him, they’d done it in Old Testament times, whispering You’re my flesh and blood, I can do with you what I will, come to me, Chris, do you hear?

  And she would hear him and stare at him, whispering also, I won’t, they never spoke but in whispers those evenings. And then she’d slip down from his room, frightened and frightened, quivering below-stairs while her fancies raced, starting at every creak that went through the harvest stillness of Blawearie house, seeing father somehow struggling from his bed, like a great frog struggling, squattering across the floor, thump, thump on the stairs, coming down on her while she slept, that madness and tenderness there in his eyes.

  She took to locking her door because of that wild fear. The morning of the day she woke to find him dead she leaned out from her bedroom window and heard Long Rob of the Mill, far ayont the parks of Peesie’s Knapp, out even so early, hard at work with his chaving and singing, singing Ladies of Spain with a throat as young and clear as a boy’s. She had slept but little that night, because of the fear upon her and the tiredness, but that singing was sweet to hear, sweet and heart-breaking, as though the world outside Blawearie were singing to her, telling her this thing in the dark, still house could never go on, no more than a chance and an accident it was in the wind-loved world of men.

  She got into her clothes then, clearer-headed, and slipped down to the kitchen and put on the kettle and milked the kye and then made breakfast. Below the windows the parks stood cut and stooked and trim, Ellison and Chae and Long Rob had done that, good neighbours John Guthrie had, had he never aught else. There came no movement from father’s room, he was sleeping long, and setting the tray with porridge and milk she hoped he’d have nothing to say, just glower and eat, she’d slip away then.

  So she went up the stair and into his room without knocking, he hated knocking and all such gentry-like notions, she put down the tray and saw he was dead. For a moment she looked and then turned to the curtains and drew them, and took the tray in her hand again, no sense in leaving it there, and went down and ate a good breakfast, slowly and enjoyingly she ate and felt quiet and happy, even though she fell fast asleep in her chair and awoke to find it gone nine. She lay and looked at her outspread arms a while, dimpled and brown, soft-skinned with the play of muscles below them. Sleep? She could sleep as she chose now, often and long.

  Then she tidied the kitchen and found a spare sheet and went out to the hedge above the road and spread the sheet there, the sign she’d arranged with Chae should she need him. In an hour or so, out in his parks he saw it and came hurrying up to Blawearie, crying to her half-way Chris, lass, what’s wrong? Then only she realised she hadn’t yet spoken that day to a soul, wondered if her voice would shake and break, it didn’t, was ringing and clear as a bell crying down to Chae, My father’s dead.

  IT WAS FAIR a speak in Kinraddie, her coolness, she knew that well but she didn’t care, she was free at last. And when Mistress Munro, her that came to wash down the corpse, poked out her futret face and said, A body would hardly think to look at you that your father was new dead, Chris looked at the dark, coarse creature and saw her so clearly as she’d never done before, she’d never had time to look at a soul through her own eyes before, Chris-come-here and Chris-go-there. Not a pringle of anger she felt, just smiled and said Wouldn’t you, now, Mistress Munro? and watched her at work and watched her go, not caring a fig what she thought and did. Then she roused herself for a while, free yet she could hardly be for a day or so, and got ready the big room for Auntie Janet and her man to sleep in, medals and all, when they came down to the funeral.

  Down the next day they came, the two of them, Auntie as cheery as ever, Uncle as fat, he’d another bit medal stuck on his chain; and when they saw she wasn’t sniftering or weeping they put off the long decent faces they’d set for her sight, and told her the news, Dod and Alec did fine and had sent their love. And Auntie said they must sell up the things at Blawearie and Chris come and bide with them in the North, some brave bit farmer would soon marry her there.

  And Chris said neither yea nor nay, but smiled at them, biding her time, waiting till she found if a will had been left by father. Chae Strachan and old Sinclair of Netherhill saw to the funeral, old Sinclair moving so slow up the road, you’d half think he’d stop and take root, clean agony it was to watch him, and his face so pitted and old, father had been young by the like of him. And Mr Gibbon came over to see her, he’d been drinking a fell lot of late, folk said, maybe that accounted for the fact that as he crossed the twilit brae he was singing out loud to himself, Auntie heard the singing and ran up and out and hid in the lithe of a stack to try and make out what he sang. But he left off then and left her fair vexed, she said later she could have sworn it was a song they sang in the bothies about the bedding of a lad and a lass.

  But Chris didn’t care, keeping that secret resolve she’d made warm and clean and unsoiled in her heart, taking it out only alone to look at it, that old-time dream of hers. She’d never looked at herself so often or so long as now she did, the secret shining deep in her eyes, she saw her face thinner and finer than of yore, no yokel face it seemed. So she cared nothing for Mr Gibbon and his singing, the great curly brute and his breath that smelt so bad, he went up with her to father’s room where father lay in his coffin, in a fine white shirt and a tie, his beard combed out and decent and jutting up, you’d say in a minute he’d raise those dead eyelids and whisper at you. Down on his knees the minister went, the great curly bull, and began to pray, Chris hesitated a minute and looked at the floor, and then, canny-like, when he wasn’t seeing her, dusted a patch and herself knelt down. But she didn’t heed a word he was saying, honeysuckle smell was drifting in on the air from the night, up on the hills the dog of some ploughman out poaching was barking and barking itself to a fair hysteria following the white blink of some rabbit’s tail, in the closing dark she could see across the brae’s shoulder the red light of Kinraddie House shine like a quiet star. So the curly bull prayed and boomed beside her, it was what he was paid for, she neither listened nor cared.

  And that brought the funeral, it was raining early in the dawn when they woke, a fine drizzle that seeped and seeped from the sky, so soft and fine you’d think it snow without whiteness; there was no sun at all at first but it came up at last, a red ball, and hung there so till ten o’clock brought up the first of the funeral folk, and that was Chae, and his father- in-law, syne Ellison and Maitland in a gig they loosed in the cornyard, setting the sholtie to graze. And Ellison cried out, but low and decent, I’ll leave him here, me dear, sure he’ll be all right, won’t he? and Chris smiled and said Fine, Mr Ellison, and he goggled his eyes, Irish as ever, you could never change Erbert Ellison, not even for the worse, folk said. Next there came a whole drove of folk, the factor, the minister, Cuddiestoun with his ill-marled face like a potato-park dug in coarse weather, but a fine white front, new-starched, to cover his working sark, and cuffs that fair chafed his meikle red hands, right decent, and he’d on fine yellow boots on his meikle feet. Rob of the Mill and Alec Mutch came next, you could hear their tongues from the foot of Blawearie brae, folk were affronted and went out and cried Wheest-wheest! down to them, and Rob called back What is??
?t? and faith! it would have been better if they’d been left alone, what with the wheesting and whispering that rose.

  But they were real good, Rob bringing a bottle of whisky, Glenlivet it was, and Alec a half-bottle, they whisked them over to Uncle Tam when nobody looked; or anyway not a body but looked the other way and spoke, canny-like, of the weather. The kitchen was fair crowded, so was the room, like a threshing-day, folk sat and each had a dram, Mr Gibbon said Spirits? Yes, thank you, I’ll have a drop, there’d have been barely enough to go round but for Rob and Alec. Then they heard another gig come up the hill, it was Gordon’s from Upperhill, him and his foreman. Uncle Tam winked at the whisky, You’ll have a dram, Upperhill, you and your man? but Mr Gordon said, sniffy-like, I hardly think it shows respect and Ewan’s tee-tee as well.

  Long Rob of the Mill sat next the door, he winked at Chris and then at Ewan Tavendale, Εwan turned fair red and said nothing. So he hadn’t a dram, he’d have liked one fine, Chris guessed, and felt mean and pleased and shy, and then gave herself a shake inside, what did it matter to her? Then the minister looked at his watch and the undertaker came in about, and then last of all, they hadn’t expected the poor old stock, there was Pooty on the doorstep, he’d on a clean collar and shirt and an old hat, green but well-brushed; and when Uncle whispered if he’d have a dram he said Och, ay, it’s the custom, isn’t it? and had two.