A Scots Quair

  He’d start awake quietly, at once, like a cat, and look at you with those deep, cool eyes, neither grey nor green, grey granite eyes. All right. Thanks. No, I don’t want tea. I’ll get an apple for myself, mother. MOTHER! I said I’d get it for myself! And he’d be out of bed and have reached the dish and caught an apple afore you got near. You’ve enough to do without waiting on me.

  —But I like waiting on you. Wouldn’t you wait on me?

  —I suppose so, if you were sick or insane. What’s the time? And lean out half-naked from the window ledge to peer over Duncairn to Thomson Tower. Splendid. I’ve time for a dip in the Forthie.

  He’d be out of the house as you gained the kitchen, an uproar by then of banging pans, Ma Cleghorn cooking porridge and bacon and sausages and coffee and cocoa and tea, and swearing out loud at the young maid, Meg, who slept at her home away down in the Cowgate and was supposed to come up each morning at seven. Call that seven?—Then you’re blind as well’s sweir. Stack up the range and be nippy about it. Mrs Colquohoun, will you lay the table?

  You were aye Mrs Colquohoun when Meg was about, Ma Cleghorn treating you distant, polite, for the sake of discipline, so she said. You’d gathered the way of setting the table in the big ben room so quick your eyes hardly followed your fingers, porridge plates for Sim Leslie (who’d come from Segget where they’d called him Feet) and Mr George Piddle, the Runner reporter, thin and he-he’ing, minus his hair so that he could go bald-headed for news. Bacon for Miss Murgatroyd and Mr Neil Quaritch: Mr Quaritch worked on the Runner as well, a sub-editor creature, aye reading books and sloshing them to death in the Runner next day. But you rather liked the wee ferret man, red eyes and red hair and a red nose as well, and a straggle of beard on an unhappy chin, Ewan said he’d gone sozzled with reading rot rather than with knocking back gills of Glenlivet…. Mixed grill for Miss Ena Lyon, the typist, powdered and lipsticked, and awful up-to-date, baggy a bittie below the eyes and a voice like a harried peahen, poor lass. Porridge for young Mr Clearmont, nice loon who went to the University and was awful keen on music and jokes, you could never make head nor tail of either as he always guffawed out, young and hearty, right at the point—if there was a point. Ma Cleghorn didn’t think much of him, she said if ever he’d a thought in his head it’d be easy to tell it, you’d hear the damn thing rattling about like a stone in a tin. But she was jealous a bit, you thought, of the lad’s university and books and book- learning…. Bacon for young John Cushnie, all red, the clerk in Raggie Robertson’s Drapery Depot, half-sulky, half-shy and would spend half an hour roping up his neck in a speckled tie, he shared Archie Clearmont’s room but nought else…. Eight o’clock and you hit the gong, breakfast all ready set on the table.

  And down they’d all pour and sit in about, Miss Murgatroyd sitting neat as a pin, Such Fine, and eating her grape-fruit up like a sparrow pecking at a bit of dung (you laughed: but you sometimes wished that Ma wouldn’t say those things about folk so often: the picture stuck, true or untrue, and you never saw them in real likeness again); Sergeant Sim Leslie supping his porridge and goggling at you over his collar; Ewan eating quick, clean and indifferent, lost in his thoughts or else in a book, all squiggly lines and figures and drawings; Miss Ena Lyon, complete with complexion, eating her bacon and talking to Clearmont, he’d been to a concert the night before and Miss Lyon was saying she liked music as well—just loved a talkie with a Catchy Choon. Poor Mr Piddle with his long thin neck and his long thin head, as bald as a neep and something the shape, would snap up his meat in a haste to be gone in search of news for the Daily Runner, a fine big paper, the pride of Duncairn, and awful useful for lining your shelves; Cushnie, red-eared and trying to speak English, would call out above the folds of his tie Will ye pass the cruet? I’m in a gey hurry. Me and Mr Robertson have the Spring Sale on; and Mr Neil Quaritch would push down his cup, May I have another, Mrs Colquohoun? he’d left his breakfast untasted as usual.

  And Ma Cleghorn would sit at the top of the table, her big red face set square on its neck, sonsy and sturdy, you’d liked her from the first, she you, you supposed you’d neither of you frills, you’d seen over much of this queer thing Life to try hide from its face by covering your own with a ready-made complexion out of a jar, or ready-made morals from the Unionist Club, or ready-made fear and excitement and thrill out of the pages of the Daily Runner…. And you’d sit and stare at your own porridge plate till Ma would call out: Will you fill up the cups?

  By ten the lot would have clattered away, on trams and buses, on foot and a-run, tripping along like a sparrow, Miss Murgatroyd, Mr Piddle whirring away on his bike like a snake going pelting back to the Zoo, Miss Ena Lyon with her heels so high that her shoulders drooped and her bottom stuck out, quite up-to-date, Εwan in dungarees, no hat, books under his arm, black hair almost blue, shinning down the Steps of Windmill Brae two at a time, hands in his pouches…. And they left the real work of the house to begin.

  You and Ma Cleghorn couldn’t run to more help than Meg for the washing-up in the kitchen, Ma took the first floor with the dining-room and sitting-room and swept them and dusted them and tore up the rugs and went out to the back and hung them on the line and thrashed them to death in a shower of stour. You had the bedrooms, Ma’d asked if you’d mind—Some of them stink like a polecats den. You’d said you didn’t care, we all stank sometimes. And Ma had nodded, Fegs, and that’s true. But fancy you being willing to let on—you that was wed to a minister body!

  You’d mind that speak as you redded the rooms, gathered the mats and pulled wide the curtains, opened the windows and made the beds, swept out and polished each of the rooms, emptied slops and carried down washing, and cleared the bathroom of razor blades and bits of paper stuck with shaving-soap hair, other things that Miss Murgatroyd would half-hide, so would Miss Lyon in a different way…. Wife to a minister—wife to Robert: it faded away in the stour of the days though only last Spring you had been in Segget, had slept beside him in those chill hours that had come trailing down a blanket of dark to cut you off one from the other, Robert sleeping sound while you woke and heard the wail of sleet from the Grampian haughs. All ended, put by, Robert himself no more than a name, you’d loved him so deep that the day he died something had broken in you, not in your heart, it didn’t break there, something in your belly went numb, still, and stayed so … but the queerness of things! You could hardly mind now the shape of his face—his eyes, were they grey or blue?—Oh God! … And you’d sometimes stop and feel sick to think how quickly even your memories went, as though you stood naked in an endless storm shrilling about you, wisp by wisp your garments went till at last you’d stand to all uncovered—love, pity, desire, hope, hate put by under the sail of the endless clouds over Cloud Howe, the Howe of the World—

  Then you’d shake yourself to sense, get down with pail of water and a scrubbing-brush, scrub and scrub till your finger-nails, so smooth and round-shaped in your years at Segget, come jagged again, hacks in your fingers that caught the blankets as you turned in unease of a night and sent a shrill stream of pain up your hands. Queer to work again in such fashion, use all your body till you ached dead tired, by the time you’d finished the upper floor your hips were filled with a stinging and shooting, like a bees’ byke with bees, bad as having a baby, sweat in runnels either side your nose—you felt like a greasy dish-clout, just, ready to be wrung and hung out to dry. And when you got down to the kitchen at last Ma Cleghorn would skeugh at you over her specs, Fegs, lass, you take well with a slammock of work. Like a cup of tea?—Here, gi’me the basses, I’ll take them out while you sit down a minute. You’d say I’ll shake them myself, I’m fine, and she’d look at you grim, It’s your funeral, then. But die where it’s easy to spread out the corp.

  A blessed minute that when you’d gotten back, though, sat down to drink the strong tea Ma made, hot, steaming and thick, Ma drinking another cup the other side of the table, Meg pleitering still at the kitchen sink. You felt all revived, throat, belly a
nd—better not further. (Miss Murgatroyd you were sure never went further, Ma Cleghorn on the contrary seldom went higher.) You’d see yourself as you sat and drank, your head and hair and face and breast in the kitchen mirror over the range, flushed face, not pretty, it was never that, sulky eyes and the mouth men had liked well enough in your time—long ago, afore you grew old and took to scrubbing! … And you’d finish your tea and loup to your feet and be gone to finish the rest of the ploy, and be back in the kitchen to lend Ma a hand to plan out the dinner for those that came home—Mr Clearmont from the University, Ewan seldom, Mr Piddle sometimes, Mr Quaritch and Miss Ena Lyon never, John Cushnie when Raggie’s rag Sales would allow, Sergeant Sim Leslie sure as the clock.

  Ma had a great cookery-book of her own, made up of recipes cut out of the papers, daft ones and good ones and plain damn silly ones, Ma’d say What stomachs some folk must have to eat the dirt that the papers say! But she cooked well enough, passable yourself, Jock the cat would sit and purr under the red-hot glow of the range, half-roasted the brute had been since his birth, and liked it: Ma said he’d enjoy hell. And she’d lift him aside with a meikle great foot, impatient- like, and he’d purr all the time, while the foot was under him, while he sailed through the air, while he landed with a thump out under the sink. And Meg would give a bit scraich of fear, and maybe drop a plate, inviting death.

  In the first few days you’d been sorry for the lass, Ma Cleghorn treated her worse than dirt, bullying her, sneering at her, upbraiding Almighty God for making such a trauchle to pest decent folk. Syne you saw that Meg, thin, schlimpèd and pert, wasn’t feared a wee bit, sleekèd and sly with a sideways glint in her eyes at Ma, taking her in and her measure unfeared. And Ma that could skin a body alive with her tongue and hang out the hide in the sun to dry wouldn’t send Meg out on a message if it rained, heaped her plate with great helpings at dinner, and when she saw the bit maid over-trauchled with a job would swear at her and go tearing to help…. So you didn’t interfere but got on with your own work, plenty of that—how you’d ached at first afore dinner-time, hungry as you’d never been in a manse: genteel appetite going with all else, walking now with a quick and a hasting step not the long lope that had once been yours, face altering as well from the drowsy mask that had come on you under the yew-trees of Segget—waiting, half-asleep, sitting deep in a chair, for Maidie to bring tea out on the lawn, the peesies flying over Segget blue in smoke, smoke in sun smother, long ago, long ago; and Robert coming striding across the lawn, whistling—and you looked, and he hadn’t a face—

  And once Ma came on you as you stood and wept, tearless, sobbing dry-eyed, and stared and knew, shook you and hugged you tight, it hurt: Don’t greet, nothing’s worth it, not a damn thing, no man that ever yet was, Chris! You’d stopped from that daft carry-on at once, shamed of yourself, bothering Ma, weeping like a fool over something as common as kale, losh, weren’t there thousands of widows in the world worse off than you and not snivelling like bairns? And you’d shaken Ma off, gentle as you could: I know. I’m just giving myself a pet. My father would have said it was salts I needed.

  Dinner and the feeding of all the faces, funny to think a face was mainly for that; and then out shopping for the morn’s meat. You went down Windmill Steps in the blue Spring air, the grey granite walls rising about you, if the day was clear you’d see below Duncairn spread as a map for show, far off, north-east, the sheen of the Beach beyond the rolling green of the Links, Footforthie a smother of smoke ayont the Docks, the Fish Market and the trawlers’ rig, the Forthie gleaming grey under its brigs. Cleaving the jumble of warrens and wynds went Royal Mile like a south-driven sword, to the left the new biggings of Ecclesgriegs, Town Hall and courts and Thomson Tower, the Tangleha’ trees that hid the University, the gentry’s quarters, genteel Craigneuks—to the right in jumbles around Grand Central the Cowgate and Gallowgate, Paldy Parish, and far off in the west beyond Footforthie the fishers’ wee toun, called Kir- riebem.

  You waited a tram by the Windmill Steps, it came showding and banging up from the Station, green like a garden slug, in you got, and sat down and closed your eyes and thought hard, the things you’d to order, where you’d best get them. Fish, beef, eggs, butter, go swear at the grocer, the laundry hadn’t sent back those sheets, Ma Cleghorn wanted the chimney-sweep, you needed a new frock and must bear with the need…. Out into Royal Mile you stepped,—there on his stance, unmoving, King Edward, bald as a turkey and with much the same face, ready to gobble from a ton of grey granite. In the seats round the plinth the unemployed, aye plenty of them, yawning and wearied, with their flat-soled boots and their half-shaved faces, they’d cry their bit bars as they stared at the stir, or chirp a bit filth to a passing quean, sometimes though seldom they did it to you. You didn’t much mind, were you wearied yourself and half-fed, you thought, with nothing to do, you’d do worse than chirp.

  Only once had that worse ever happened to you, you’d run down the steps from the Mile to the lane that led to the Gallowgate’s guff one evening, to a dairy there that sold good eggs. Day above, but already half-dark in that place, no body about as you hurried along, or so you thought till you sighted the man. He’d been leaning in the doorway of an empty warehouse, heard you coming and looked up and down: and as you came near he got in your way. I’m starving, wifie. Gi’me a tanner.

  His face was thin and dirty and brown, he’d no shirt, his jacket pinned over his breast, smelt awful, great knuckled hands, should you scream? And then you’d known that that would be daft, you’d said All right, though I haven’t one to spare. And you’d opened your bag, heart thumping as you did it, what if he grabbed and made off with the lot? But he didn’t, stood waiting, face red with shame. You’d found him the sixpence, handed it over, he’d nodded, no thanks, and looked away. And you’d hurried on down the lane to the dairy, suddenly trembling and your lips grown wet.

  You’d get back to tea with the netbag full, have a first cup ere the others came, Archie Clearmont first, banging up the stairs, he’d meet you and smile, ’Lo, Mrs Colquohoun. That’s a nice frock. You’d tease him and say There’s a nice woman in it, and he’d blush, boy-clear, I know that as well. If only Ewan were as simple as he! … Mr Piddle tearing in from his office, all in a fash to be off to the Station and catch the 6.30 bound for Dunedin. Not that he’d catch the train himself, he’d send off the latest news of Duncairn and make a bit extra salary, he-he! from the linage the Tory Pictman would print…. Miss Ena Lyon trailing in half-dead from the work in her office, half the rouge gone, the other half sprinkled about like a rash, she’d drawl on the Awful Rush in the firm, and the Boss no more than a Vulgar Keelie…. Ewan at last, black-streaked, black-haired, as cool and composed from Gowans and Gloag’s as he’d been when haunting the hills of the Howe seeking the flints of the ancient men.

  More clearing away, more tidying-up, getting ready supper, eating it, clearing it—you might almost have hated the sight of food with the number of times you messed the stuff. But you didn’t: instead, you were hungry all day, ate a large supper at nine o’clock, found work nearly done and yawned a bit, and sat listening to Ma’s radio in the sitting-room, a deserted place most nights but for you. And you’d listen to talks on ethics and cocktails and how to go hiking on the Côte d’Azur, minding the baby, copulation in catkins, and the views of Jacob P. Hackenschmidt on Scotland and Her Ancient Nationhood; and you’d switch the thing off, losh, that was better, worth paying a licence to keep the thing quiet, drowse instead and think of the countryside, corn coming green in clay parks this night as often you’d seen it when you were a quean, wedded to Εwan in Kinraddie long syne—you that waited the feet of another Ewan now.

  In Paldy Parish as the June came in there came a wave of heat with the month, it lifted the guffs from the half-choked drains and flung them in under the broken doors down through the courts to simmer and stew, a body could hardly bear the touch of his sark as he lay in bed by his wife of a night, the weans would whimper and move and
scratch on the shake-down over under the window—stewing in the front of a half-open furnace. And a man would get up in a Paldy tenement and go along the passage to the wc, blasted thing crowded, served a score of folk, not decent, by God what a country to live in. On the Broo since the War and five kids to keep, eating off your head—och, why did you live?—never a minute of quiet to yourself, nothing but the girnings of the wife for more silver, the kids half-barefoot, half-fed, oh hell.

  And the wife would turn as she heard him come back, lie wakeful and think on the morn’s morning—what to give the weans, what to give the man, fed he must be ere he took the streets to look for that weary job he’d not find—he’d never find one you had come to ken. Hardly believe it was him you had wed, that had been a gey bit spark in his time, hearty and bonny, liked you well: and had hit you last night, the bloody brute coming drunk from the pub—a woman couldn’t go and hide in booze, forget all the soss and pleiter, oh no, she’d to go on till she dropped, weans scraiching, getting thin and like tinks, and the awful words they picked up every place, the eldest loon a street-corner keelie, the quean—oh God, it made a body sick.

  And the quean would turn by the side of her sisters, see the faint glow of the dawn, smell the reek of the Paldy heat—Christ, would she never get out of it, get a job, get away, have clothes, some fun? If they couldn’t afford to bring up their weans decent why did father and mother have them? and syne nag and nag at you day on day, on this and that, the way that you walked, the way you behaved (take care that the loons don’t touch your legs), the way that you spoke—nothing pleased the old fools, and what you brought home they thought should be theirs, every meek that you made, nothing for yourself, stew in the reek of the Cowgate’s drains till you died and were buried and stank to match. My God, if a lassie couldn’t do anything else she could take a bit walk out to Doughty Park, fine there, though the place was littered with Reds, fair daft, the Communionists the worst of the lot, aye holding their meetings and scraiching and bawling that the workers all join up with their unions and fight for their rights and down with the gents.