A Scots Quair

  So he got in the way of coming to the kitchen and sitting drinking his tea every morning, Ma Cleghorn heard and said to Chris that she’d better look out, for they weren’t to be trusted, childes with curling mousers like yon. And then sighed: Though, God, there’s no need to warn you, I keep forgetting you’re gentry yourself, a minister’s widow, not for common folk. Chris asked what Ma wanted her to do with him—or thought he was likely to do with her? And Ma said that if Chris couldn’t guess about that there were other folk than the Virgin Mary had had their immaculate conceptions, faith.

  Chris laughed and paid her but little heed, Ake as far (she knew) from such thoughts as herself, funny in a way to have him about, it wiped out the years, all the gentry in her, she was back in a farm kitchen again and the man sitting douce and drinking his tea and she getting ready the meat for him…. And Ake would give his bit mouser a curl and tell the latest tale of the Provost.

  Chris asked how he’d gotten the job and Ake said by the skin of the teeth and the will of the Lord, he’d been at school with the laddie Speight a thirty-five years or so back, they were both of them of Laurencekirk stock. Well, he’d been a gey dreich and ill-favoured loon, and Ake had ta’en him a punch now and then to kittle him up and mind him his manners. The result was he’d fair ta’en a liking to Ake and would follow him about like a cat a fish-cadger, right through their schooldays and a wee whilie after, when they’d gotten long trousers and cuddled their bit queans. Syne they’d tint one another, Ake had gone drifting south as a joiner, to the feuching stink of the Glasgow yards, to that windy sods’ burrow, the capital, Edinburgh, syne drifted up to the Howe again, he’d never felt much at home, as you’d say, outside the cloud-reek and claik of the Howe. And that was how he had come to Segget, not near so dead in those times as now, the joiner’s business with still enough fettle to brink a man a bit meal and drink.

  So he’d settled down there, as Mrs Colquohoun knew, till the place was fairly all to hell, with unemployment and all the lave; and after her good man died and so on Ake fair got sick of sitting about in his shed and looking for custom to come, scribbling a wee bit of poetry the while, and glowering up at the Trusta heuchs and wishing to Christ that something would happen.—And Chris said Oh yes, I mind your poetry. You still write it, do you? and Ake said Ay. Bits. It would hardly interest you. Well, as I was saying—and went on to say that one day he was having a bit look through the paper and what did he see there but that young Jimmy Speight, him that he’d gone to school with long syne, had been made the Lord Provost of Duncairn toun. At first Ake could hardly believe his own eyes, he’d thought that talent must be fairly damn scarce to make Wabbling Jimmy a Lord Provost, like. He’d heard about him afore that, of course, how he’d been ta’en into his uncle’s business and heired when the old uncle wore away a fine sawmill and a schlorich of silver. But he’d never much bothered about the creature till he read this notice of him being Provost.

  Well, damn’t, that fairly moved Ake a bit, if Wabbling Jimmy was all that well off he’d surely scrounge up a job for a body. So Ake locked up his place and put on his best suit and got on the morning train for Duncairn, and took a tram to the Provost’s house, out in Craigneuks, a gey brave-looking place with fal-lal ornaments forward and back and a couple of towers stuck on for luck like warts on the nose of Oliver Cromwell. A servant lass came tripping and held the door open, What name shall I say to the Provost, please? And Ake said My name’s Ake Ogilvie, tell him, and ask if he minds the time in Lourenkirk when I gey near drowned him in a stone horse-trough. Well, the lass went red and gave a bit giggle, as a young quean will, and went off with the message, and into the room in a minute came Jimmy, gey grand, but dreeping at the nose as ever. And damn’t, he’d come in fair cocky-like but syne a funny thing happened to him, it just showed you what happened when you were a bairn—if you got a rattle in the lantern then you might build a battleship in later life and explore the North Pole and sleep with a Duchess, but you’d never forget the lad that had cloured you, you’d meet him and feel a bit sick in the wame though it was a good half-century later.

  Well, something like that came on Wabbling Jimmy, he dropped his politeness and his hee-haw airs, and Ake took his hand and cried out loud: Ay, Jimmy lad, you’re fair landed here, with all these queans to see to your needs, at door and table and no doubt in your bed. And the Lord Provost went as yellow’s a neep: Wheesht, Ake, wheesht, the wife’s on the prowl. And Ake said he didn’t know that he’d married— d’you mind what happened to Kate Duthie long syne? …

  Now, that had been just a kind of blackmail, as Ake knew right well but didn’t much care, in a minute poor Wabbling Jimmy was ready to offer him half his worldly possessions if only Ake would keep quiet on the subject of Kate. Ake said that he was on the look for a job, what about this sawmill that Jimmy owned? and Jimmy said he seldom interfered, he’d a manager, and Ake said he hardly wanted his job, though he’d tackle a foreman’s he’d manage that fine. So Jimmy in a stew howked out his car and in they got and drove to the Kirrie, a fine sawmill, and they weren’t there long afore the manager came over to ask if Jimmy had yet ta’en on a new foreman in place of a childe that had gotten the sack. And at that what could poor Jimmy do but go a bit blue about the neb and say Ay, I have; and this is him.

  So that’s how he’d collared the Duncairn job, not that he was over-keen on the thing, D’you ken now, mistress, what I’ve aye wanted?—Losh, a job on a ship at sea, the fine smell and the pelt of the water below you, there’s fine carpentering work to be done on ships. And Chris, with the teacups cold on the tray, said she thought it a shame he’d never got it, maybe he’d get a job like that yet. Ake nodded, fegs, and he might, not likely, better to hang on the Provost’s tail, old Wabbling Jimmy that was feared at his past. Not that poor Jimmy’s an exception in that: We’re all on leading strings out of the past.

  For days you couldn’t forget that scream, tingling, terrified, the lost keelie’s scream as that swine Sim Leslie smashed him down. Again and again you’d start awake, sweating, remembering that from a dream, Duncairn sleeping down Windmill Steps, all the house in sleep, quiet next door, that kid Ellen Johns not dreaming at all. Luck for her and her blah about history and Socialism: she hadn’t a glimpse of what either meant….

  Oh, sick of the whole damn idiot mess, drifting about nowadays like a fool, couldn’t settle to anything, couldn’t read a book, caught in the net of this idiot rubbish. Your head had softened like a swede in the rain ever to be taken in with the rot—rot about leading new life to the workers, moulding them into History’s new tool, apprehending a force more sure and certain than the God poor Robert had preached in Segget…. In the workers?—Rats, what was there in them that wasn’t in the people of any class? Some louts, some decent, the most of them brainless, what certain tool to be found in crude dirt? You’d dug deep enough to make sure of that, playing the game as a keelie yourself, fraternizing with the fauna down at the Works—hell, how they stank, the unscrubbed lot, with their idiot ape-maunderings and idiot hopes, their idiot boasts, poor dirty devils. They took you for one of themselves nowadays, so you’d almost become as half-witted as they.

  Finished with it all quite definitely now. What have the keelies to do with you—except to make you feel sick? They don’t like the same things, haven’t the same interests, don’t care a hang for the books you read (mislaid those text-books this last week somewhere). And you pretending an interest in horses—dog-racing—football—all the silly kid-games that excite the keelies—find History’s beat in their drivelling blah!

  … That ghastly house that Bob took you to—father unemployed for over five years, mother all running to a pale grey fat like a thing you found when you turned up a stone, one of the brothers a cretin, rickets—sat giggling and slavering in a half-dark corner, they couldn’t afford to have the gas on, a dead smell of dirt left unstirred and unscrubbed, disharmonic heads and moron brains; and outside the house as you came away: streets on streets,
the fug of the Cowgate, keelies on the lounge in the gutter, in the dirt, their ghastly voices and their ghastly faces—

  They DON’T concern you. BREAK with it all.

  So when Alick and Norman that Saturday asked if you were coming to the Beach Pavilion, Snellie Guff the Scotch Comedian was On, you said No, sorry, I’ve reading to do, and saw their faces fall, damn them, they’d just have to learn as you had to learn. But when you got home and had finished dinner and been caught by that ghastly old bore Ake Ogilvie who thought himself God’s regent on earth because Christ had been of the same trade as himself, and heard his lout swagger on this and that, you felt too restless to rout out the books. Damn nuisance, August blazing outside, birds high up in the Howe today, a bus would take you to Segget in an hour…. If only it could take you back over a year!

  And you thought of the times when you’d haunted the Howe, as a schoolboy, seeking the old-time flints, Neolithic stuff, passable collection: you’d forgotten it since you’d come to Duncairn. Where could it be?

  And in chase of that you went down to the kitchen and knocked and looked in, Chris and Ma Cleghorn and Meg the maid, they all looked up and you said I’m sorry. Chris, d’you mind where my flints went to?

  Chris said she thought you had finished with them, they were up in the box-room under the eaves. Ma called as you turned away Ewan man, why aren’t you out at a game this weather? Or out with a lass?—that’d be more your age than bothering about with a rickle of stones. Your mother showed me them and I thought ‘What dirt!’

  You said Oh, really? funny old hag, another keelie trying to keep you in the gutter—games and street-crawling and their blasted girls. Her face fell a bit when you spoke like that, the old fool should heed to her own damned business. Chris looked at you with her nice, cool eyes, a long time since you’d kissed her, she had a nice kiss. Then you went up the stairs to your flints.

  They were thick with dust, lying higgledy-piggledy in the press, tortoise-cores and a scraper or so, you took them out and turned them about, and saw the wavery lines of the knapping done long ago in the hills of the Howe, some day three thousand years before. Some careful craftsman had squatted to knapp, with careful knee and finger and eye, looking up now and then from his work on the flakes to see the grey glister of the Howe below, the long lake that covered the Low Mearns then, with sailing shapes of islands upon it, smoke of fires rising slow in the air from the squatting-places of the Simple Men, deer belling far on the hills as the sun swung over to the hazes of the afternoon, things plain and clear to anyone then—you supposed: was that no more than supposing?

  But at least they had made the things they desired, finely and surely and lovely as these, long long ago. Still, things no lovelier than the shining giants that whirred and spun in Gowans and Gloag’s, power-dreams fulfilled of the flint- knapping men…. And at that the little warmth they had brought you quite went, you were staring down at a dusty stone, chipped by someone no shape at all, a dim shadow on dust, meaning nothing, saying nothing: and down there in the heat of this August day the festering wynds of Paldy Parish—

  You closed the press and went down the stairs, out of the house, down Windmill Brae, idiot-angry to escape your soft self. Turning up to Royal Mile you went slower, wondering what you could do at this hour. A thin little gallop of Autumn rain came pelting down the street as you wondered, and you looked up and saw the Library near and beside it the Museum Galleries.

  Inside there, breathing from running from the rain you debated a minute to stay or go out, the place as usual dingy and desolate, old chap in uniform yawning at a table. Then you went past him into the hall and stood and looked at the statues around, poor stuff the most of it, you’d seen it before.

  Plaster-cast stuff of the Greek antiques, Discobolus, blowsily mammalian Venus, Pallas Athene—rather a dirty lot they had been, the Greeks, though so many clean things survived. Why did they never immortalize in stone a scene from the Athenian justice-courts—a slave being ritually, unnecessarily tortured before he could legally act as a witness? Or a baby exposed to die in a jar?—hundreds every year in the streets of Athens, it went on all day, the little kids wailing and crying and crying as the hot sun rose and they scorched in the jars; and then their mouths dried up, they just weeked and whimpered, they generally died by dark….

  There was a cast of Trajan, good head; Cæsar—the Cæsar they said wasn’t Cæsar. Why not a head of Spartacus? Or a plaque of the dripping line of crosses that manned the Appian Way with slaves—dripping and falling to bits through long months, they took days to die, torn by wild beasts. Or a statuary group of a Roman slave being fed to fishes, alive, in a pool….

  You turned and went up the deserted stairs to the picture galleries, dusty and dim, drowsily undisturbed but for one room you passed where a keelie was cuddling a girl on the sly, sitting on a bench, they giggled a bit, dried up as you looked and stared and stared. You looked away and about the room, flat seascapes and landscapes, the deadest stuff, why did people make a fuss of pictures? Or music? You’d never seen anything in either. You went and sat down in the Italian room, on the bench in the middle, and stared at a picture, couldn’t be bothered to find out the painter, group of Renaissance people somewhere: soldiers, a cardinal, an angel or so, and a throng of keelies cheering like hell about nothing at all—in the background, as usual. Why not a more typical Italian scene!—a man being broken on the wheel with a club, mashed and smashed till his chest caved in, till his bones were a blood-clottered powdery mess?—

  Passed in a minute, that flaring savage sickness, and you got to your feet and went on again: but the same everywhere, as though suddenly unblinded, picture on picture limned in dried blood, never painted or hung in any gallery—pictures of the poor folk since history began, bedevilled and murdered, trodden underfoot, trodden down in the bree, a human slime, hungered, unfed, with their darkened brains, their silly revenges, their infantile hopes—the men who built Münster’s City of God and were hanged and burned in scores by the Church, the Spartacists, the blacks of Toussaint L’Ouverture, Parker’s sailors who were hanged at the Nore, the Broo men manhandled in Royal Mile. Pictures unceasing of the men of your kin, peasants and slaves and common folk and their ghastly lives through six thousand years—oh hell, what had it to do with you?

  And you bit your lip to keep something back, something that rose and slew coolness and judgment—steady, white- edged, a rising flame, anger bright as a clear bright flame, as though ’twas yourself that history had tortured, trodden on, spat on, clubbed down in you, as though you were every scream and each wound, flesh of your flesh, blood of your blood…. And you gave a queer sob that startled yourself: Something was happening to you: God—what?

  *

  Ma said, coming down to Chris in the kitchen after collecting the lodgers’ fees, she went round each room of a Sabbath morning before the breakfast time or the kirk: The Murgatroyd creature’s fair in a stew, her dividends are all going down she says and she hardly knows how she’ll Pay her Way. She’s a bittie of a shareholder in Gowans and Gloag’s and there’s not a cent from the firm this year. Aren’t they brutes to mistreat a respectable woman?

  Chris asked if that meant that she’d have to leave, and Ma shook her head, Oh no, not her, she’d a bit of a pension as well as an income, a three hundred pounds a year from a trust. Chris stared: Then what’s coming over her? and Ma sighed that Chris didn’t understand and hadn’t a proper sympathy, like, with financial straits of wealthy folk—like herself and their wee Miss Murgatroyd. What the old bitch really wanted of course was her runkled old bottom kicked a bit and turned out into the streets for a night hawking herself at a tanner a time….

  And Ma sat down and paiched a bit, smoothing out the pounds and the ten bob notes, and said that Mr Piddle was short again, him that banked nearly every meek that he got. Ma’d told him she’d need the balance on Monday—and not to he-he! at her like a goat. Four, five, two halves, a one and ten silver, that’s our little bit
English pussy-cat. Sitting up there and reading a book—can you guess what the book is about now, lass?

  Chris looked in the range and over at the clock, and shook her head, only half-heeding Ma’s claik.—Well, then, it’s a Manual of Birth Control. What think you of that and our Ellen Johns, with her little mouser and her neat long legs?

  Chris was over-surprised a minute to say anything, then asked if Miss Johns tried to hide the book? Ma said she hadn’t; neither showing off nor hiding: Ay, a gey keek our Ellen, with all her quiet ways. And it’s all to the good of the trade, anyhow. Chris asked How? and Ma said Why, she’ll be able to sin as she likes and go free, with no need to marry the gallus childe. So we’ll be able to keep her our lodger…. Twelve, thirteen, ten, Ake Ogilvie’s—ay, faith he’s made of the old-time stuff. If I’d been a ten years younger or so I’d be chumming up to him, a bonny man, well-shouldered and canty, it’s a pity you’re gentry.