A Scots Quair Read online

  So she went down to the shore, the tide was out, thundering among the rocks, not a soul on the beach but herself, gulls flying and crying, the sun strong and warm. She sat on a seat in the glow of it and shut her eyes and was happy. Below her feet the ground drummed and trembled with reverberations from that far-off siege of the rocks that the sea was making out there by the point of the bay, it was strange to feel it and be of it, maybe folk there were who felt for the sea as last night she had felt in the rain-drenched fields of Kinraddie. But to her it seemed restless, awaiting and abiding nowhith- er, not fine like the glens that nestled and listened high up the coarse country, or the parks sun-heavy with clover that waited your feet at evening.

  She fell asleep then, she slept there two hours in the sun and woke feeling fresher than she’d done since father’s funeral. So hungry also she felt she couldn’t wait the ending of the business she’d come on but went into a tea-house up in the square, two women kept it, old bodies they were that moved backward and forward the room, slow and rheumatic. One looked like the cats she’d seen in the square that morning, sleeked and stroked, the other was thin as a lathe, their tea-room looked scrubbed and clean and their tea had a taste to match. They were sharp and stroked and genteel, Chris thought for the first time then in her life how awful it would be to grow old like them, old maids without men, without ever having lain with a man, or had him kiss you and hold you, and be with you, and have children of his, or the arm of a man when you needed it, kind and steadfast and strong. If she’d lived her plan to train as a teacher she’d have grown like them.

  She might grow so still! she thought, and daft-like suddenly felt quite feared, she paid for her tea in a hurry and went out to the square again, thinking of herself as an old maid, it wouldn’t bear thinking about. So she hurried to the office of Simple Simon and a little clerk asked her business, perky-like, and she looked at him coolly and said her business was Mr Semple’s. And then she minded the old maids, was she herself one by nature? And in a cold fear she smiled at the clerk, desperately, with her lips and eyes, it was fine, the boy smiled also and blushed and thawed, and said Sit down, this is fine and comfortable; and pulled out a padded chair for her; and down she sat, light-hearted again. Then the clerk came back and led her through a passage to Semple’s room, he looked busy enough, with a telephone beside him and heaps of papers, and rows of little black boxes round the shelves. Then he rose and shook hands, Well, well, it’s Miss Guthrie come up; you’ve been thinking of the will, no doubt?

  She told him, Yes, just that; and she was going to live on at Blawearie a while, not roup the gear out at once, could he see to that with the factor?

  He stared at her with his mouth fallen open, But you can’t live there alone!

  She told him she’d no such intention, couldn’t he get her some woman come live with her, some old bit body who’d be glad of a home?

  He said Oh God, there are plenty of them! and began to chew at his mouser.

  She told him it mightn’t be for more than a month or so, till she’d made up her mind, just.

  He said absent-like, Just? Hell, a woman’s mind just! and then pulled himself up right sudden as she looked at him hardly and cool. Then he argued a bit, but Chris hardly listened, father’s will had said she could do what she liked.

  And presently, seeing she cared not a fig for him, Semple gave in and said he’d settle up with the factor, and he knew an old widow body, Melon, he’d send down to Blawearie the morn.

  So Chris said Thank you, good-bye, and went out from the office, cool as she’d come, the sun was a fell blaze then and the streets chock-a-block with sheep, great droves of them, driven in to the weekly mart. Collies were running hither and yon, silent and cocked of ear, clean and quick as you’d wish, paying heed to none but shepherd and sheep. Drovers and beasts, they took a good look at Chris both, as she stood in her black clothes watching them; and just as she wondered what she’d do next, walk down to the sea and sit on a bench till it neared to dinner-time in the hotels, or go up to the station and take the 11.0, a gig going by slowed down of a sudden, a man jumped down and cried back to the driver.

  The man that had jumped was the foreman at Upperhill, Ewan Tavendale, the driver old Gordon himself, he looked in a rage about something. And he cried Mind the time then! and gave Chris a sore glower and drove spanking away.

  And then Ewan had crossed the pavement and was standing in front of her, he lifted his cap and said, shy-like, Hello! Chris said, Hello, and they looked at each other, he was blushing, she minded the last time, she didn’t like him half as she’d done at the funeral. He said Are you in for the day? and she mocked him, not knowing why she did that, it wasn’t decent and father new dead, Och ay, just that. He blushed some more, she felt cool and queerly giddy in a breath, looking at the fool of a lad, folk were glowering at them both they were later to learn, not Gordon only but Ellison: and back the two of them went to Kinraddie and told every soul it was a sore shame there wasn’t somebody about to heed to the Guthrie girl from the hands of that coarse tink brute, Ewan Tavendale.

  But they hadn’t known that and mightn’t have cared, suddenly Chris felt herself hungry again, happy as well, not caring about Ewan himself but not wanting either he should leave her and go on to the mart. She said I’m going up to the Inn for dinner, and he looked at her, still shy, but with a kind of smoulder in the shyness, his eyes like the smoulder of a burning whin–Maybe we can eat together? And she said, as he turned by her side, Oh, maybe. But what will Mr Gordon do? And Ewan said he could dance a jig on the head of the mart with sheer rage, for all he cared.

  So in they went to old Mother White’s, not that they saw the old body herself; and there was a fine room to eat in, with white cloths set, and a canary that sang above them, the windows fast closed to the dust and dirt. And they’d broth, it was good, and the oat-cakes better; and then boiled beef and potatoes and turnip; and then rice pudding with prunes; and then some tea, Ewan found his tongue as they drank the tea and said to-day was his holiday, for he’s worked all the last Sunday on a job libbing lambs. And Chris said, it was out of her mouth before she thought, So you’re in no hurry to be back? and Ewan leaned across the table, the smoulder near kindled to a fire, Not unless you should be! What train are you taking up to Kinraddie?

  AND THEN HOW IT all came about, their planning to spend the day together and their walk to Dunnottar, Chris never knew, maybe neither did Ewan. But half an hour later, Stonehaven a blinding white glimmer behind, Dunnottar in front, they were climbing down the path that lead to the island. The air was blind with the splash of the incoming tide, above you the rock rose sheer at the path wound downwards sheer; and high up, crowning the rock were the ruins of the castle walls, splashed with sunlight and the droppings of sea-birds. Gulls there were everywhere, Chris was deafened in the clamour of the brutes, but quiet enough in the castle it proved, not a soul seemed visiting there but themselves.

  They paid their shillings and the old man came with them from room to room, a scunner to Ewan, Chris guessed, for his eyes kept wandering, wearied, to her from this ruin and that. In walls little slits rose up, through these it was that in olden times the garrisons had shot their arrows at besiegers; and down below, in the dungeons, were the mouldering clefts where a prisoner’s hands were nailed while they put him to torment. There the Covenanting folk had screamed and died while the gentry dined and danced in their lithe, warm halls, Chris stared at the places, sick and angry and sad for those folk she could never help now, that hatred of rulers and gentry a flame in her heart, John Guthrie’s hate. Her folk and his they had been, those whose names stand graved in tragedy:

  HERE : LYES : IOHN : STOT : IAMES : ATCHI SON : IAMES : RUSSELL : & WILLIAM : BRO UN : AND : ONE : WHOSE : NAME : WEE : HAVE : NOT : GOTTEN : AND : TWO : WOMEN : WHOSE : NAMES : ALSO : WEE : KNOW : NOT : AND : TWO : WHO : PERISHED. : COMEING : DOUNE : THE : ROCK ONE : WHOSE : NAME : WAS : IAMES : WATSON THE : OTHER : NOT : KNOWN : WHO : ALL : DIED : PRISONERS :
IN : DUNNOTTAR : CASTLE ANNO : 1685 : FOR : THEIR : ADHERENCE : TO : THE : WORD : OF : GOD : AND : SCOTLANDS COVENANTED : WORK : OF : REFORMA TION : REV : XI CH 12 VERSE

  But Ewan whispered, Oh, let’s get out of this, though it was he himself that had planned they come to Dunnottar. So out in the sun, at the shelving entrance, they stood awhile in the cry of the gulls; and then Ewan said Come down to the sea: I know a nook.

  And they climbed down and then up again, along the cliff-edge, it made you dizzy to look over and down at the incoming wash of froth, and sometimes, far under their feet, there rose a loud boom! like a gun going off. Ewan said that the rocks were sometimes hollow and the water ran far below the fields, so that ploughmen ploughed above the sea and in stormy weather they’d sometimes see their furrows quiver from that storm that raged under their feet. So they came to a crumbling path, it seemed to fall sheer away, a seagull sailed up to meet them, and Ewan with his feet already out of sight turned back and asked, You’ll be dizzy? And Chris shook her head and followed him, it seemed to her between sea and sky, down and down, and then Ewan was gripping her ankle, she swung almost loose for a moment, looking down in his face, it was white and strained, then her foot and hand caught again, Ewan called that it wasn’t much further; and they got to the bottom and sat and looked at each other on a ledge of sand.

  The sun poured in there, the tide whispered and splashed and threw out its hands at them on the sand, but it didn’t come further up. And Chris saw that the place was closed in, you couldn’t see a thing of the coast but the rocks overhanging, and only a segment of the sea itself, a mile or so out a boat had tacked, it flashed its wings like a wheeling gull; and Εwan was sitting beside her, peeling an orange.

  They ate it together and Chris took off her hat, she felt hot and uncouth in her sad black clothes. And suddenly, for no reason, she thought of a time, years before, when she’d been trampling blankets for mother a fine summer day in May, and had taken off her skirts and her mother had come out and laughed at her, You’d make a fine lad! It was as though she heard mother speak, she looked up and around, daftly, dazed-like a moment, but there was not a soul near but Ewan Tavendale lying on an elbow, looking at the sea, the sun in his face, young and smooth with its smouldering eyes. And she found she didn’t mislike him any longer, she felt queer and strange to him, not feared, but as though he was to say something in a moment that she knew she couldn’t answer. And then he said it, blushing, but his smouldering eyes didn’t waver, Chris, do you like me a bit?

  Can’t thole you at all, that’s why we’re out lazing in this place together.

  But a nervousness came on her, not that she feared him, she’d known all along she was safe with Ewan as Mollie with Will in those long-gone days of the court at Drumlithie. Only, it was as though her blood ran so clear and with such a fine, sweet song in her veins she must hold her breath and heark to it; and for the first time she knew the strange thing her hand was, held there dripping sand, it seemed as though all her body sat a little apart from herself, and she looked at it, wondering. So it was that she knew she liked him, loved him as they said in the soppy English books, you were shamed and a fool to say that in Scotland. Ewan Tavendale—that it should be him! And then she minded something, it didn’t matter at all, but she wanted to know for all that, Ewan, was it true that story they told about you and old Sarah Sinclair?

  It was as though she had belted him in the face. He went white then, funnily white leaving brown the red tan in the little creases of his face that the coarse field weather had made; and he sat up, angrily, and glowered at her, the great black cat, so sleekéd and quick to anger. And the feeling she’d had for him, that dizziness that made earth and sea and her heart so light, quite went from her. She said Oh, I don’t want to know, and began to hum to herself; and then Ewan reached out his hand and gripped her arm, it hurt, he said Damn well listen now that you’ve asked me. And it was awful, awful and terrible, she didn’t want to listen to him, covering her face with her hands, he went on and on and then stopped at last—Now you’re frightened, frightened that a woman should feel like that, maybe some day you’ll feel it yourself

  She jumped to her feet then, angry as him, forgetting to feel shamed. Maybe I will, but when I do I’ll get a better man than you to serve me! And before he could answer that she had caught up her hat and was up the cliff path so quick she didn’t know how she did it, her fingers and feet were nimble and sure, she heard Ewan cry below her and paid no heed. He was barely half-way up when she reached the top and looked down, and then the rage quite went from her, she leaned over the edge instead, holding down her hand, and he caught it and smiled, and they stood and panted and smiled one at the other, fools again as they’d been in the market-square of Stonehaven.

  But suddenly Ewan whipped out his watch, God, it must be getting fell late, and as he said it the sunshine went. Chris raised her head and saw why, they’d been sitting down there in the last of it, the gloaming was down on the countryside and the noise of the gulls rising up through the mirk. Ewan caught her hand and they ran by the cliff-edge of the gloaming-stilled parks, there were great dappled kye that stopped their grazing to look; and up in front, dark and uncanny, they saw Dunnottar rise on its rock. And then they reached the main road and slowed down, but she still left her hand in Ewan’s.

  And in Stonehaven they caught by the skin of the teeth the six o’clock train, the mart was long over and folk gone home. In the carriage were only themselves all the way to Kinraddie, Ewan sat on the opposite seat, she liked him sit there, liked him not wanting to hold her hand, she’d have hated him touch her now. And they didn’t say a word till they neared Kinraddie, and then he said Chrissie! Tired? and she said Losh, no, and my name’s Chris, Ewan. Then she saw him blush again in the flicker of the gaslight; and a strange, sweet surge of pity came on her, she leant over and patted his knee, he was only a boy in spite of his Sarah Sinclair.

  BUT SHE THOUGHT of Sarah all the same that night, lying listening in bed to the coming of the rain again, a wet winter it promised the Howe. So women were like that when they didn’t have the men they wanted?–many of them maybe like that, hiding it away even from themselves till a summer of heat drove one here and there to such acts as affronted Kinraddie. But she didn’t feel affronted, it was maybe because she was over young, had read over many of the books, had been the English Chris as well as this one that lay thinking of Ewan; and the old ways of sinning and winning, having your own pleasure and standing affronted at other folk having theirs, seemed often daft to her. Sarah Sinclair might well have obliged her and met with some other lad than Ewan that August night; but then she wasn’t to know Chris Guthrie would ever lie and think of him in her bed, hearing the batter of the rain against her window and the swish of the great Blawearie trees.

  It was then, in a lull of the swishing, she heard the great crack of thunder that opened the worst storm that had struck the Howe in years. It was far up, she thought, and yet so close Blawearie’s stones seemed falling about her ears, she half-scrambled erect. Outside the night flashed, flashed and flashed, she saw Kinraddie lighted up and fearful, then it was dark again, but not quiet. In the sky outside a great beast moved and purred and scrabbled, and then suddenly it opened its mouth again and again there was the roar and the flash of its claws, tearing at the earth, it seemed neither house nor hall could escape. The rain had died away, it was listening—quiet in the next lull, and then Chris heard her Auntie crying to her Are you all right, Chrissie? and cried back she was fine. Funny Uncle Tam had cried never a word, maybe he was still in the sulks he’d plumped head-first in when he’d heard of the old woman that Semple was sending to help keep house in Blawearie. They were off to Auchterless the morn, and oh! she’d be glad to see them go, she’d enough to do and to think without fighting relations.

  The thunder clamoured again, and then she suddenly sat shivering, remembering something—Clyde and old Bob and Bess, all three of them were out in the ley field there, they weren�
�t taken in till late in the year. Round the ley field was barbed wire, almost new, that father had put up in the Spring, folk said it was awful for drawing the lightning, maybe it had drawn it already.

  She was out of bed in the next flash, it was a ground flash, it hung and it seemed to wait, sizzling, outside the window as she pulled on stockings and vest and knickers and ran to the door and cried up Uncle Tam, Uncle Tam, we must take in the horses! He didn’t hear, she waited, the house shook and dirled in another great flash, then Auntie was crying something, Chris stood as if she couldn’t believe her own ears. Uncle Tam was feared at the lightning, he wouldn’t go out, she herself had best go back to her bed and wait for the morning.

  She didn’t wait to hear more than that, but ran to the kitchen and groped about for the box of matches and lighted the little lamp, it with the glass bowl, and then found the littlest lantern and lighted that, though her fingers shook and she almost dropped the funnel. Then she found old shoes and a raincoat, it had been father’s and came near to her ankles, and she caught up the lamp and opened the kitchen door and closed it quick behind her just as the sky banged again and a flare of sheet lightning came flowing down the hill-side, frothing like the incoming tide at Dunnottar. It dried up, leaving her blinded, her eyes ached and she almost dropped the lantern again.

  In the byre the kye were lowing fit to raise the roof, even the stirks were up and stamping about in their stalls. But they were safe enough unless the biggings were struck, it was the horses she’d to think of.

  Right athwart her vision the haystacks shone up like great pointed pyramids a blinding moment, vanished, darkness complete and heavy flowed back on her again, the lantern- light seeking to pierce it like the bore of a drill. Still the rain held off as she stumbled and cried down the sodden fields. Then she saw that the barbed wire was alive, the lightning ran and glowed along it, a living thing, a tremulous, vibrant serpent that spat and glowed and hid its head and quivered again to sight. If the horses stood anywhere near to that they were finished, she cried to them again and stopped and listened, it was deathly still in the night between the bursts of the thunder, so still that she heard the grass she had pressed underfoot crawl and quiver erect again a step behind her. Then, as the thunder moved away—it seemed to break and roar down the rightward hill, above the Manse and Kinraddie Mains,–something tripped her, she fell and the lantern-flame flared up and seemed almost to vanish; but she righted it, almost sick though she was because of the wet, warm thing that her body and face lay upon.