Men in Kilts

by Katie MacAlister

  By the middle of December, I had been with Iain for almost two months, and I was feeling pretty secure in our relationship. I knew I was there to stay, I knew he loved me, life definitely had a rosy tint to it. There was only that one tiny issue remaining to be taken care of, and I was determined to resolve it before Christmas.

  I spent long hours making lists of arguments guaranteed to be so persuasive, Iain would be helpless against my logic and overcome to the point where he married me on the spot. Late at night, I’d he awake and mentally write the perfect proposal scene.

  Me [at breakfast]: Iain, would you pass the marmalade?

  Iain [clutching the marmalade to his breast as he falls to his knees before me]: Marry me, Kathie! Make an honest man out of me! I’m beggin‘ you! You are the light of my life, the apple of my eye, the heart in my haggis.

  Me [fluttering my eyelashes shyly]: Oh, my! How unexpected! I shall have to think upon this honor you do me. Do you need an answer right away?

  I wallowed in the warm glow such a scene presented until the other side of my imagination, the dark side, the bane of my existence, kicked in.

  Me [shoeless, in rags, holding out a newborn babe]: Mr. MacLaren, sir, I beg of you, this is our fifth child! Please, oh please, if you would just marry me and legitimize them…

  Iain [not looking up from his newspaper]: I’ve told you before, woman, I’m not the marrying sort of man. Women are here for only one purpose. Now get upstairs to that desk, and I’ll demonstrate that purpose.

  Me [falling to the floor in a swoon]: Oh, if only I had listened to my mother!

  While I knew full well Iain wasn’t the dastardly villain my unchecked imagination panted him (and for some reason he always had a mustache and a black cape in those scenes), I still felt that it was a logical progression of our relationship to move into the discussing marriage stage.

  I began to plan.

  The first step in storming Iain’s castle was to take a long look at his past history. As I saw it, there was one major problem. I had gotten the impression from the few times Iain discussed his marriage to his ex-wife Mary, and his disgust with how Bridget had repeatedly tried to pressure him into marrying her, that he entertained no little loathing for the married state. I certainly felt that we should be married sometime in the near future, but I wanted him to feel likewise. I knew if I mentioned it, he would agree to marry me just because it was the honorable thing to do, and because he knew I wanted it.

  And then there was that subject of Bridget and her many proposals. My pride—oh, surely the most foolish of all human traits—got all up in arms whenever I thought of begging Iain to marry me. I didn’t want him classing me with Bridget, just another female who wanted him only for what his protection would bring. I wanted him to want to marry me. Getting him to that point…

  well, that was the tricky part.

  “Exactly how long have Joanna and David been married?” I asked one morning at breakfast, canny as could be. I had spent some time perfecting my battle plan, and all that remained was to put it into action. I marshaled my troops.

  Iain tched at something in a farm journal he was reading. “Since the summer.”

  “Ah. And how long had they known each other before they were married?” Clever as a cat, I was. I gave my troops the signal to move forward. With luck, Iain would never know what hit him until he was my prisoner.

  He looked up. “Oh, it must be three years, now. Why is it you’re wanting to know?”

  I widened my eyes in innocence. There’s no sense letting the enemy get an accurate count of your men. “No reason in particular. Just idle curiosity.”

  “Ah.” He went back to his article on sheep dip.

  I buttered another piece of toast, smirking to myself. This was going to be like taking candy from a baby. I gave the order to charge. “Three years is an awfully long time to have known each other before you’re wed, don’t you think?” He looked up again and frowned slightly. “No, it doesn’t seem overly long to me. David was only nineteen when they met.”

  It was a telling blow, but I didn’t think I had lost too many of my troops. I ordered the archers to return fire. “Oh, well, if they were young , that’s different.”

  Iain nodded and turned his eyes back to the journal.

  I sipped my coffee, and prepared to order the troops up the ladders. “It’s not as if they were older. Say, for instance, in their thirties or forties.” I offered him my profile as I gazed out of the window in apparent contemplation of everyone I knew who might possibly be in their thirties or forties and in a position to consider marriage.

  No comment was forthcoming. I peeked back at Iain. He hadn’t noted my contemplative profile. Perhaps, being a man, he needed it spelled out a little more. I ordered the troops to load up the catapults. “Young people of that age, after all, often make foolish mistakes. Unlike their mature counterparts.”

  “Mmm,” he agreed, turning the page. Blast him, his defenses were stronger than I had allowed for!

  I tapped my spoon on the table. He looked up. I looked down at the spoon in mock astonishment. A spoon! Whatever was it doing there in my hand?

  “Nineteen is definitely too young to be married.”

  “Aye, it is.”

  I commanded some of the troops to search for a bolt hole. We would storm Iain’s castle from the inside! “Er… how old were you when you married Mary?”

  “Nineteen,” he answered without looking up. Great. I stuck the spoon on the end of my nose (one of my many talents) and ordered the troops back to me.

  Swiftly I brought up the left flank for a direct attack.

  “My point exactly. You were both far too young for the responsibilities of marriage.”

  He looked up just as I whisked the spoon off my nose. “Aye, it was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made. Except for the boys, of course.”

  “Of course.” Drat. Marriage as a horrendous nightmare was not what I wanted him to focus on. I waved up the right flank. “Children can make up for a lot.

  But I wouldn’t think they are vital to a successful marriage. If, for instance, you had married Mary later in life—say at your age now—” He scowled as he helped himself to the last bit of ham. “It would still be the worst mistake of my life, and there’s naught you could say to convince me otherwise. The boys were the only good bit to come out of it.” My troops lay dying on the field of battle, their lifeblood seeping into the ground. I wandered amongst their corpses and tried to rally the remainder of my army for one last siege. “But you’re older now, and thus much better suited to marriage—”

  He slaughtered the rest of my troops with one disgusted snort. “There’s some things that will never change, love,” he said as he turned the page in his journal.

  I looked about me. My troops were dead. My siege machinery was destroyed.

  All that remained was one shiny, stainless steel catapult.

  I fingered my spoon and toyed with the thought of loading it up with jam and firing it at Iain’s forehead.

  “The trouble with Iain,” I later told Biorsadh, the elderly Border Collie whom Iain had forcibly retired shortly after I settled in, “is that I can never quite tell if he is pulling my leg or not. He’s a master at deadpan. This morning, for instance, when I was discussing marriage with him… was he simply being obtuse, or was he having me on?”

  Biorsadh yawned and decided a little personal maintenance was in order for the day. I tapped my pencil on my laptop as I considered the question, decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, and proceeded to initiate my next plan: to scatter big hints hither and yon.

  Wednesday afternoon, hint number one:

  “Oh, my, look at this fascinating article about traditional Island weddings,” I said nonchalantly as I dropped the newspaper in his lap. “Fascinating customs you fascinating Scots have.”

  “Mmmm.” Iain glanced at it briefly, and then returned to sharpening a knife.

  “Fascinating.”

 
Thursday morning, hint number two:

  I poured water into my coffee filter, humming a song. “Blast! I can’t get that song out of my head. Mrs. Harris was singing it the other day. I can’t remember the name of it— do you know what it is?”

  Iain swallowed a mouth of tea. “What song?”

  I hummed it for him.

  His brow wrinkled in thought. “Sorry, love, it’s not familiar.” I struck a pose, my finger tapping my lips. “It’s Highland something.” I hummed a little more. He shrugged and poured himself a bowl of cereal.

  “Ah! Highland Wedding, that’s it! I knew it would come to me.” I smiled and batted my eyelashes at him. He smiled back at me. “Would you fetch me the milk, love?”

  Friday evening, hint number three:

  While Iain was out of me room using the bathroom, I whipped out a book Joanna had given me earlier and pretended to be reading it when he returned.

  We settled back into our reading positions. I waited five minutes.

  “Um, Iain, what is uirsgeul ?”

  “Hmm? Uirsgeul ? It means a fable.”

  I kissed his chin and thanked him, then went back to my book. He gave me a strange look, then returned to his own book. Two minutes passed.

  “I hate to interrupt you again, sweetie, but could you tell me what luaidh means?”

  His brows rose. “What is it you’re reading?”

  I showed him the book. “It’s a poem. Duan na Bainnse. The Wedding Poem .” At least I hoped that’s what it meant; the notes I had taken of Joanna’s Gaelic-speaking co-worker were a bit muddled.

  “The Wedding Rhyme, love.” He pinned me back with his gaze. “I wasn’t aware you read Gaelic.”

  I trotted out my innocent smile. “I don’t, not really, but it looks so very fascinating. I thought I would give this a whirl. The Wedding Rhyme , you say.

  How very interesting. And it’s about a wedding. Yes. So enthralling.”

  “Mmmm.” He watched me for a minute while I pretended to read words I couldn’t for the life of me understand, then went back to his book.

  Monday midday, hint number four:

  As Iain walked into the house, I hung up the phone while shaking my head and laughing softly to myself.

  He peeled off his wellies and mac. “You’re in a good mood.” I agreed and waited for him to ask why. He tossed the mail on the table and sat down to sort through it. I decided to take pity on his dormant curiosity.

  “Is it true what Joanna was telling me—that she made David carry rocks around the town?”

  He cocked a brow at me. “What?”

  “She said it was a tradition in the Highlands for a bridegroom’s friends to make him carry a basket on his back filled with stones until his fiancée kissed him. Creeling , I think it’s called.”

  “Oh, aye, she did.” He smiled as he went back to sorting the mail into stacks.

  “She made him carry that creel all the way down Main Street before she took pity on him.”

  “Such a very quaint wedding custom,” I said without the least shred of subtlety.

  “It is,” Iain agreed, then swore when he opened a bill. His tirade against the phone company had all the earmarks of going on for some time, so I took the letter he had slid my way and sat down to see what my mother had to say.

  Dear Kathie, Thank you, dear, for the lovely box of stationery. I think your idea of a pleated skirt would be perfect for your sister Mo for Christmas. Are you planning on marrying that Scot, or are you going to take years off my life by continuing this cohabitation?

  Some days you just can’t win.

  Chapter Ten

  Iain had three crofters who rented land from him. Mark was one of them, although technically he had his cottage and land rent-free; Ben and Joan, a nice older English couple, had the second croft where they raised a small herd of red deer for market; the third croft was rented by some new arrivals from Canada: Phillippa, Miracle, and Bob. Miracle was ten going on thirty, Phillippa and Bob were in their early to mid-thirties, and a few minutes after meeting them, I felt like I was a hundred years old. With a headache.

  Shortly after the death of Clara I went with Iain to meet his new crofters. I spent the morning talking with them, or rather, trying to talk with them, but really I was being talked to, hence the headache. All three of them talked at once, which made for a confusing time, especially since they didn’t all discuss the same thing. The headache lightened a bit once Bob took Iain out to see his new ram. At least then the conversational stream was limited to Phil discussing home schooling and weaving, while Miracle yammered on about how babies were born. It seems she’d just come into possession of the pertinent facts, and was eager to share them with me.

  “You’re married to Mr. MacLaren, aren’t you?” she asked shortly after the men had gone off to do manly things with the ram.

  “Uh, no, as a matter of fact, I’m not married to him,” I smiled my best aren‘t you precocious, don’t you have something else to do ? smile and tried to follow her mother’s stream of consciousness conversation which threatened to crank my headache up to an intolerable level.

  “I can’t tell you how wonderful we think Scotland is, Miss Williams, although you should be the very last person I have to tell, having moved here yourself for just that reason, and look where it got you! Now let me put the kettle on to boil—don’t you just love saying that? It’s so English! Put the kettle on to boil.

  Have a booger and mash. Help me boob . I just love it here! It’s so foreign! Do you know what help me boob means, by the way? It’s not an obscenity, is it?

  Anyway, as I was saying, Bob is quite convinced that we will be able to stay for at least three years, which works into my plans just perfectly because I plan on starting my own shop, you see, and I will count on you to spread the word to all of your Scottish friends here about the shop. If I can make it pay, we can stay longer than just three years, and that would be grand, wouldn’t it?” She tipped her pert little pageboy to the side and gave me a rather intense, almost scary, smile. She was clearly waiting for me to answer her. I had a hard time deciding where to start, then decided that her rapid-fire method of conversation was probably the best. I doubted if I’d have many chances of responding to any conversational gambits she tossed out. I took a deep breath.

  “Thank you, I don’t drink tea. Please call me Kathie. Yes, I adore Scotland, although I moved here only after I met Iain, just a little bit over a month ago.

  It’s actually banger and mash , and help m’boab , although you can say the me part of help m’boab if you like, and no, it’s not an obscenity, it’s kind of a gentle form of bloody hell which, I guess is an obscenity if you don’t like saying the word hell, or even bloody, but since I don’t mind either, I just usually say bloody hell and leave the help m ‘boabs to those who can say it properly, and yes, it would be so very lovely if you could get your shop off the ground and stay here forever and ever and ever.”

  I was rather proud of my little speech. Phil, unfortunately, appeared to be one of those people who lacked a sense of humor. Which, in hindsight, was good, since my sarcasm tended to be the wallop you upside the head kind, rather than the subtle kind.

  “Yes, I’d like that. It’s so much nicer here than Windsor [the city in Canada they emigrated from]. Now don’t fuss over the tea, I’m going to make you some of my special tea. You’ll like this, it’s herbal. I make it myself from rose hips and blackberry leaves and all sorts of other good things.” Phil began an explanation about how she made her herbal tea, cutting right across my polite refusal for any of this delicacy, her voice trailing after her as she went off to the kitchen to put the kettle on. I seriously doubt if she stopped talking the whole time she was out there.

  Miracle, who reminded me nothing so much as a small Hillary Clinton, complete with Phil-matching pageboy and headband, watched me silently for a moment, then set down her Pokemon toys and marched over to me.

  “I know where babies come from.”

&
nbsp; I stared at her, worried by the determined set of her little jaw. Clearly I was not going to be allowed to escape without allowing her to unburden herself. “How very nice for you. And what do you intend to do with this fabulous knowledge?”

  She shrugged, “My mom says I can watch the baby lambs being born. She says it’s a wonder of nature and will be very educational for me. I know how babies are made, too. They’re made with sex. My mom told me. She says I can watch that, too, although my daddy says I’ll have to wait until next year. Do you have sex with Mr. MacLaren?”

  My jaw hit the floor. What sort of horrible demon child was this? And worse yet, what were her parents doing promising she could watch them make babies next year? And what the hell was I going to say that wouldn’t come out a babbled shriek of indignation?

  I looked at the blond Satan’s imp standing so innocently in front of me, my mind still reeling from the blows it had taken, and stammered out, “I… uh…

  they’re going to let you watch ?”

  The imp nodded solemnly. “Daddy says I can’t watch this year because the sheep are already going to have babies, but I can watch next year.” I fervently hoped she was talking about the rams and the ewes, and not something else.

  “Uh…”

  “Mom showed me a book with pictures on how babies are made. She said it’s the same with the sheep except they don’t lay on their backs. They stand up.”

  “Uh…”

  She leaned up against side of the armchair I was sitting in and tipped her head to the side in an eerie imitation of her mother. “Men have penishes . Girls don’t have penishes , they have uteruses where the baby grows. You’re a girl, so you have a uterus . Have you ever seen your uterus‘ ! Mom says you can’t see it unless you go to a special doctor, cause it’s way up inside you. Penishes are on the outside. My daddy has one,” she added proudly.

  I stared at her. I couldn’t help it, the conversation was so horribly gruesome, it was fascinating. “I’m so very pleased for your father,” I said, trying to be polite.

  “You don’t happen to know someone named Bridget, do you?” She shook her head. “No, but I know a Brian. He was in my class. He had a penish too. I saw it. He showed it to me before we left home.” A thoughtful look stole over her little devil’s spawn face. “I thought it looked gross. Do you think penishes look gross?”