A Scots Quair Read online

  RIGHT OPPOSITE Peesie’s Knapp, across the turnpike, the land climbed red and clay and a rough stone road went wandering up to the biggings of Blawearie. Out of the World and into Blawearie they said in Kinraddie, and faith! it was coarse land and lonely up there on the brae, fifty-sixty acres of it, forbye the moor that went on with the brae high above Blawearie, up to a great flat hill-top where lay a bit loch that nested snipe by the hundred; and some said there was no bottom to it, the loch, and Long Rob of the Mill said that made it like the depths of a parson’s depravity. That was an ill thing to say about any minister, though Rob said it was an ill thing to say about any loch, but there the spleiter of water was, a woesome dark stretch fringed rank with rushes and knife-grass; and the screeching of the snipe fair deafened you if you stood there of an evening. And few enough did that for nearby the bit loch was a circle of stones from olden times, some were upright and some were flat and some leaned this way and that, and right in the middle three big ones clambered up out of the earth and stood askew with flat, sonsy faces, they seemed to listen and wait. They were Druid stones and folk told that the Druids had been coarse devils of men in the times long syne, they’d climb up there and sing their foul heathen songs around the stones; and if they met a bit Christian missionary they’d gut him as soon as look at him. And Long Rob of the Mill would say what Scotland wanted was a return of the Druids, but that was just a speak of his, for they must have been awful ignorant folk, not canny.

  Blawearie hadn’t had a tenant for nearly a year, but now there was one on the way, they said, a creature John Guthrie from up in the North. The biggings of it stood fine and compact one side of the close, the midden was back of them, and across the close was the house, a fell brave house for a little place, it had three storeys and a good kitchen and a fair stretch of garden between it and Blawearie road. There were beech trees there, three of them, one was close over against the house, and the garden hedges grew as bonny with honeysuckle of a summer as ever you saw; and if you could have lived on the smell of honey suckle you might have farmed the bit place with profit.

  WELL PEESIE’S KNAPP and Blawearie were the steadings that lay Stonehaven way. But if you turned east that winter along the Auchinblae road first on your right was Cuddiestoun, a small bit holding the size of Peesie’s Knapp, and old as it, a croft from the far-off times. It lay a quarter-mile or so from the main road and its own road was fair clamjamfried with glaur from late in the harvest till the coming of Spring. Some said maybe that accounted for Munro’s neck, he could never get the glaur washed out of it. But others said he never tried. He was on a thirteen years’ lease there, Munro, a creature from down south, Dundee way, and he was a good six feet in height but awful coarse among the legs, like a lamb with water on the brain, and he had meikle feet that aye seemed in his way. He was maybe forty years or so in age, and bald already, and his skin was red and creased in cheeks and chin and God! you never saw an uglier brute, poor stock. For there were worse folk than Munro, though maybe they were all in the jail, and though he could blow and bombast till he fair scunnered you. He farmed his bit land in a then and now way, and it was land good enough, the most of it, with the same black streak of loam that went through the Peesie parks, but ill-drained, the old stone drains were still down and devil the move would the factor at Meikle House make to have them replaced, or mend the roof of the byre that leaked like a sieve on the head of Mistress Munro when she milked the kye on a stormy night.

  But if anybody, chief-like, were to say, God, that’s an awful byre you have, mistress, she would flare up in a minute It’s fine, and good enough for the like of us. And if that body, not knowing better, poor billy, were to agree that the place was well enough for poor folk, she’d up again Who’s poor? Let me tell you we’ve never needed anybody come to our help, though we don’t boast and blow about it all over the countryside, like some I could mention. So the body would think there was no pleasing of the creature, and she was right well laughed at in all Kinraddie, though not to her face. And that was a thin one and she had black hair and snapping black eyes like a futret, and a voice that fair set your hackles on edge when she girned. But she was the best midwife for miles around, right often in the middle of the night some poor distracted billy would come chapping at her window Mistress Munro, Mistress Munro, will you get up and come to the wife? And out she’d get, and into her clothes before you could whistle, and out into the cold of Kinraddie night and go whipping through it like a futret, and soon be snapping her orders round the kitchen of the house she’d been summoned to, telling the woman in childbed she might easily be worse, and being right brisk and sharp and clever. And the funny thing about the creature was that she believed none spoke ill of her, for if she heard a bit hint of such, dropped sly-like, she’d redden up like a stalk of rhubarb in a dung patch and look as though she might start to cry, and the body would feel real sorry for her till next minute she’d be screeching at Andy or Tony, and fleering them out of the little wits they had, poor devils.

  Now, Andy and Tony were two dafties that Mistress Munro had had boarded out on her from an Asylum in Dundee, they weren’t supposed to be dangerous. Andy was a meikle slummock of a creature, and his mouth was aye open, and he dribbled like a teething foal, and his nose wabbled all over his face and when he tried to speak it was just a fair jumble of foolishness. He was the daftest one, but fell sly, he’d sometimes run away to the hills and stand there with his finger at his nose, making faces at Mistress Munro, and she’d scraich at him and he’d yammer back at her and then over the moor he’d get to the bothy at Upperhill where the ploughmen would give him cigarettes and then torment him till he fair raged; and once tried to kill one with an axe he caught up from a hackstock. And at night he’d creep back to Cuddiestoun, outside he’d make a noise like a dog that had been kicked, and he’d snuffle round the door till the few remaining hairs on the bald pow of Munro would fair rise on end. But Mistress Munro would up and be at the door and in she’d yank Andy by the lug, and some said she’d take down his breeks and skelp him, but maybe that was a lie. She wasn’t feared at him and he wasn’t feared at her, so they were a gey well-matched pair.

  And that was the stir at Cuddiestoun, all except Tony, for the Munros had never a bairn of their own. And Tony, though he wasn’t the daftest, he was the queer one, too, right enough. He was small-bulked and had a little red beard and sad eyes, and he walked with his head down and you would feel right sorry for him for sometimes some whimsy would come on the creature, right in the middle of the turnpike it might be or half-way down a rig of swedes, and there he would stand staring like a gowk for minutes on end till somebody would shake him back to his senses. He had fine soft hands, for he was no working body; folk said he had once been a scholar and written books and learned and learned till his brain fair softened and right off his head he’d gone and into the poor house asylum. Now Mistress Munro she’d send Tony errands to the wee shop out beyond the Bridge End, and tell him what she wanted, plain and simple-like, and maybe giving him a bit clout in the lug now and then, as you would a bairn or a daftie. And he’d listen to her and make out he minded the messages and off to the shop he’d go, and come back without a single mistake. But one day, after she’d told him the things she wanted, Mistress Munro saw the wee creature writing on a bit of paper with a pencil he’d picked up somewhere. And she took the paper from him and looked at it and turned it this way and that, but feint the thing could she make of it. So she gave him a bit clout in the lug and asked him what the writing was. But he just shook his head, real gowkéd-like, and reached out his hand for the bit of paper, but Mistress Munro would have none of that and when it was time for the Strachan bairns to pass the end of the Cuddiestoun road on their way to school down there she was waiting and gave the paper to the eldest, the quean Marget, and told her to show it to the Dominie and ask him what it might mean. And at night she was waiting for the Strachan bairns to come back and they had an envelope for her from the Dominie; and she opened it
and found a note saying the writing was shorthand and that this was what it read when put in the ordinary way of writing: Two pounds of sugar The People’s Journal half an ounce of mustard a tin of rat poison a pound of candles and I don’t suppose I can swindle her out of tuppence change for the sake of a smoke, she’s certainly the meanest bitch unhung this side of Tweed. So maybe Tony wasn’t so daft, but he got no supper that night; and she never asked to see his notes again.

  NOW, FOLLOWING the Kinraddie road still east, you passed by Netherhill on your left, five places had held its parks in the crofter days before Lord Kenneth. But now it was a fair bit farm on its own, old Sinclair and his wife, a body that was wearing none so well—soured up the creature was that her eldest daughter Sarah still bided all unwed—lived in the farmhouse, and in the bothy was foreman and second man and third man and orra lad. The Denburn lay back of the Netherhill, drifting low and slow and placid in its hollow, feint the fish had ever been seen in it and folk said that was just as well, things were fishy enough at Netherhill without the Denburn adding to them. Through the rank schlorich of moor that lay between the place and Peesie’s Knapp were the tracks of an old-time road, some said it was old as Calgacus, him that chased the Romans all to hell at the battle of Mons Graupius, others said it was a Druid work, laid by them that set the stones above Blawearie loch. And God! there must have been an unco few idle masons among the creatures, they’d tried their hands at another stone circle in the Netherhill moor, right midway the old-time road. But there were no more than two-three stones above the ground in this later day, Netherhill’s ploughmen swore the rest must have been torn up and broadcast over the arable land, the parks were as tough and stony as the heart of the old wife herself.

  But it was no bad place for turnips and oats, the Netherhill, sometimes the hay was fair to middling but the most of the ground was red clay and over coarse and wet for barley, if it hadn’t been for the droves of pigs old Mistress Sinclair fed and sold in Laurencekirk maybe her man would never have sat where he did. She came of Gourdon stock, the old wife, and everybody knows what they are, the Gourdon fishers, they’d wring silver out of a corpse’s wame and call stinking haddocks perfume fishes and sell them at a shilling a pair. She’d been a fishing quean before she took up with old Sinclair, and when they settled down in Netherhill on borrowed money it was she that would drive to Gourdon twice a week in the little pony lorry and come back with it stinking out the countryside for miles around with its load of rotten fish to manure the land. And right well it manured it and they’d fine crops the first six years or so and then the land was fair bled white and they’d to stop the fish-manure. But by then the pig-breeding was fine and paying, their debts were gone, they were coining silver of their own. He was a harmless stock, old Sinclair, and had began to doiter and Mistress Sinclair would push him into his chair at night and take off his boots and put slippers on him there in front of the kitchen fire and say to him You’ve tired yourself out again, my lad. And he’d put his hand below her chin and say Och, I’m fine, don’t vex yourself … Aye your lad still, am I, lass? And they’d look at each other, daft-like, two wrinkled old fools, and their daughter Sarah that was so genteel would be real affronted if there were visitors about. But Sinclair and his old wife would just shake their heads at her and in their bed at night, hiddling their old bones close for warmth, give a bit sigh that no brave billy had ever shown inclination to take Sarah to his bed. She’d hoped and peeked and preened long years, and once there had seemed some hope with Long Rob of the Mill, but Rob wasn’t the marrying sort. God! if Cuddiestoun’s dafties were real dafties what would you say of a man with plenty of silver that bided all by his lone and made his own bed and did his own baking when he might have had a wife to make him douce and brave?

  BUT ROB OF the Mill had never a thought of what Kinraddie said of him. Further along the Kinraddie road it stood, the Mill, on the corner of the side-road that led up to Upperhill, and for ten years now had Rob bided there alone, managing the Mill and reading the books of a coarse creature Ingersoll that made watches and didn’t believe in God. He’d aye two-three fine pigs about the Mill had Rob, and fine might well they be for what did he feed them on but bits of corn and barley he’d nicked out of the sacks folk brought him to the Mill to grind? Nor could a body deny but that Long Rob’s boar was one of the best in the Mearns; and they’d bring their sows from as far afield as Laurencekirk to have them set by that boar of his, a meikle, pretty brute of a beast. Forbye the Mill and his swine and hens Rob had a Clydesdale and a sholtie beast he ploughed his twenty acres with, and a cow or so that never calved, for he’d never time to send them to the bull though well might he have taken the time instead of sweating and chaving like a daft one to tear up the coarse moorland behind the Mill and turn it into a park. He’d started that three years before and wasn’t half through with it yet, it was filled with great holes and ponds and choked with meikle broom-roots thick as the arm of a man, you never saw a dafter ploy. They’d hear Rob out in that coarse ground hard at work when they went to bed, the rest of Kinraddie, whistling away to himself as though it were nine o’clock in the forenoon and the sun shining bravely. He’d whistle Ladies of Spain and There was a young maiden and The lass that made the bed to me, but devil the lass he’d ever taken to his bed, and maybe that was as well for the lass; she’d have seen feint the much of him in it beside her.

  For after a night of it like that he’d be out again at the keek of day, and sometimes he’d have the Clydesdale or the sholtie out there with him and they’d be fine friends, the three of them, till the beasts would move off when he didn’t want them or wouldn’t move when he did; and then he’d fair go mad with them and call them all the coarsest names he could lay tongue to till you’d think he’d be heard over half the Mearns; and he’d leather the horses till folk spoke of sending for the Cruelty, though he’d a way with the beasts too, and would be friends with them again in a minute and when he’d been away at the smithy in Drumlithie or the joiner’s in Arbuthnott they’d come running from the other end of the parks at sight of him and he’d get off his bicycle and feed them with lumps of sugar he bought and carried about with him. He thought himself a gey man with horses, did Rob, and God! he’d tell you stories about horses till you’d fair be grey in the head, but he never wearied of them himself, the long, rangy childe. Long he was, with small bones maybe, but gey broad for all that, with a small head on him and a thin nose and eyes smoky blue as an iron coulter on a winter morning, aye glinting, and a long mouser the colour of ripe corn it was, hanging down the sides of his mouth so that the old minister had told him he looked like a Viking and he’d said Ah well, minister, as long as I don’t look like a parson I’ll wrestle through the world right content, and the minister said he was a fool and godless, and his laughter like the thorns crackling under a pot. And Rob said he’d rather be a thorn than a sucker any day, for he didn’t believe in ministers or kirks, he’d learned that from the books of Ingersoll though God knows if the creature’s logic was as poor as his watches he was but a sorry prop to lean on. But Rob said he was fine, and if Christ came down to Kinraddie he’d be welcome enough to a bit meal or milk at the Mill, but damn the thing he’d get at the Manse. So that was Long Rob and the stir at the Mill, some said he wasn’t all there but others said Ay, that he was, and a bit over.

  NOW UPPERHILL rose above the Mill, with its larch woods crowning it, and folk told that a hundred years before five of the crofter places had crowded there till Lord Kenneth threw their biggings down and drove them from the parish and built the fine farm of Upperhill. And twenty years later a son of one of the crofters had come back and rented the place, Gordon was the name of him, they called him Upprums for short and he didn’t like that, being near to gentry with his meikle farm and forgetting his father the crofter that had cried like a bairn all the way from Kinraddie that night the Lord Kenneth drove them out. He was a small bit man with a white face on him, and he’d long, thin hair and a nose that wasn�
�t straight but peeked away to one side of his face and no moustache and wee feet and hands; and he liked to wear leggings and breeks and carry a bit stick and look as proud as a cock on a midden. Mistress Gordon was a Stonehaven woman, her father had been a bit post-office creature there, but God! to hear her speak you’d think he’d invented the post office himself and taken out a patent for it. She was a meikle sow of a woman, but aye well-dressed, and with eyes like the eyes of a fish, fair cod-like they were, and she tried to speak English and to make her two bit daughters, Nellie and Maggie Jean, them that went to Stonehaven Academy, speak English as well. And God! they made a right muck of it, and if you met the bit things on the road and said Well, Nellie, and how are your mother’s hens laying? the quean would more than likely answer you Not very meikle the day and look so proud it was all you could do to stop yourself catching the futret across your knee and giving her a bit skelp.

  Though she’d only a dove’s flitting of a family herself you’d think to hear Mistress Gordon speak that she’d been clecking bairns a litter a month since the day she married. It was Now, how I brought up Nellie —or And the specialist in Aberdeen, said about Maggie Jean —till folk were so scunnered they’d never mention a bairn within a mile of Upperhill. But Rob of the Mill, the coarse brute, he fair mocked her to her face and he’d tell a story. Now, when I took my boar to the specialist in Edinburgh, he up and said ‘Mister Rob, this is a gey unusual boar, awful delicate, but so intelligent, and you should send him to the Academy and some day he’ll be a real credit to you.’ And Mistress Gordon when she heard that story she turned as red as a fire and forget her English and said Rob was an orra tink brute.