‘But don’t mislead the Captain, Vashti,’ said Lorna, sounding mild but determined. ‘You make Luckenlaw sound like an endless whirl. We don’t actually have parties all that often.’ Vashti, who had been looking almost transported, now slumped down again.
‘True,’ she said. ‘Money is such a bore. Still, we do our best, don’t we, Niccy?’
‘We always have and we always will,’ said Nicolette, making it sound like a motto, her valiant tone quite at odds with the long cigarette holder and the clattering bangles.
‘You must excuse me, Captain Watson,’ I said, although I was loath to drag myself away. ‘As Lorna said, I am busy with my research, and I have a full complement of interviews to conduct this afternoon.’
‘On what particular topic?’ said Alec.
‘Managing the household budget,’ I replied. I looked around the cottage living room at the fully stocked drinks tray and the meagre packet of bread and pot of jam on the table. Alec followed my eyes and smiled.
‘I should serve better as a recipient of your advice than a provider of handy hints,’ he said, and I could see, out of the corner of my eye, Lorna regarding him with determined pity, and dreaming I am sure of just how many home comforts she could bring his way. ‘As long as I have my art,’ he went on, ‘I am happy. And something tells me that my art is going to flourish here at Luckenlaw. I’d like to speak to some of the farmers. Starting with that tenant of yours, Mrs Howie. Something about the clash of the two worlds, you know. The rolling empty fields and the closed prison cell. If I could capture that, I’d have something worth having. Do you think he would let me sketch him? Do you think I might sketch all the farmers? Such faces they have – etched with toil, landscapes in themselves, don’t you see?’
Vashti and Nicolette just managed to keep their countenances at this sudden outburst of artistic nonsense while Lorna, predictably, looked transfixed. I could only marvel and envy; how much easier and more fun to stride about with a sketchpad and spout gibberish that no one had to be convinced by than to drone on about budgets and have to make sense while one did so.
13
The trim grey cottage had smoke curling prettily out of its chimney and beads of moisture in its lighted kitchen window, hinting that someone was already busy inside ‘getting the tea’. I knocked diffidently and prepared my little speech once more.
Mrs Gow could easily have written the talk, pamphlet, article or indexed volumes for me, that much was clear from the outset; her kitchen was sparkling, her larder pantry – which she took care to let me see as she went to fetch potatoes to peel – was stocked as though for a siege and the pastry she was rolling out was flat, smooth-edged and perfectly oval. I imagined that only tremendous prudence and skill could produce such snug plenty on a cattleman’s pay packet.
‘I manage my budget jist fine,’ she said, confirming this impression. ‘Mind you, there’s many a lass tryin’ tae run a hoose wi’ no more sense than a day-old chookie, and doubtless they’d be in sore need o’ some help, madam.’
‘I rather wonder that you don’t come along to the meetings,’ I said. ‘You could pass on your wisdom there, for I believe that some quite young girls have joined, looking, as you say, for a bit of advice from their elders.’
‘Aye well,’ said Mrs Gow, turning a potato round and round under her scraper as a coil of peel grew and fell onto the paper. ‘It micht o’ been guidance they were looking for, madam, but that’s no’ what they got. Those poor lasses, and then everybody up and sayin’ they didna believe them.’ She tossed the potato into a pot, wiped her hands on her apron front and selected another one.
‘You believe them, at least,’ I said.
‘I do that,’ she told me. ‘For I saw him mysel’.’
‘No!’ I said, thankful that I had managed not to say yippee. ‘Did you tell anyone? If one of the girls had had you backing her up . . .’
‘It wisna then,’ she said. I knew what she would say next. ‘It was the nicht o’ the meetin’ in July I saw him. I stopped goin’ after that.’
‘You stopped going right then?’ I said. I was sure it was August.
‘Well, I went once more. I felt sorry for that nice schoolteacher, if I’m honest. I was feart that after what happened in July she’d be there all on her own the next time and so I went back just the once, to be polite like. Gowie dropped me doon there in the cart and came back at the end to pick me up again.’
‘But the August meeting was as busy as ever,’ I said.
‘It was,’ said Mrs Gow shaking her head and sucking her teeth. ‘And so I said to myself they could carry on without me.’
‘Do you mind if I ask . . . ?’ I said, then forced myself away from the tantalising question of the Wisconsin preacher’s wife. ‘Did the stranger actually get you, Mrs Gow?’
‘No fear. He didna even see me, madam. I had come straicht roond the back to my wee patch here, thinkin’ to catch some of they blessed snails that were eatin’ up my lettuces as quick as I could get a row in. It was that bricht with the moon that nicht, you know. And I seen him, jist ripplin’ across thon field as if the devil was after him. Well, there’s only one farm up there and so I kent exactly what he was up to. I’d left Mary – young Mrs Torrance – no’ a minute afore to carry on to the farm, and so I come in the back door and took doon a pot and ladle, then back out I went and skelped that pot bottom like it was a cheeky bairn. I reckoned that would fricht him.’
‘It would certainly fright me, if I wasn’t expecting it. I take it he didn’t catch Mrs Torrance then?’
‘Your guess is as guid as mine,’ she said. ‘Gowie and me – Mr Gow that is, my husband – took aff along the lane and here but did we no’ meet Mary comin’ back, askin’ what all the noise was.’
‘Well, bravo,’ I said. ‘You seem to have sent the fellow packing with your pot and spoon brainwave. Well done you, Mrs Gow.’
‘I’m no’ so sure,’ she said. ‘Mary’s hair was all hingin’ doon and there was a streak o’ dirt across her face, but she said she’d never seen a thing, nor heard nothin’ either, exceptin’ my racket.’
Just like Mrs Hemingborough, I thought to myself. Almost exactly the same.
‘I canna get used to it, I suppose,’ said Mrs Gow. ‘I’ve kent Mary a’ her life, for Gowie worked to her faither since we were first wed, and I still think of her as a bairn – I never had my own, madam – so when it comes to bein’ stared doon like that and as good as told you’re haverin’, not to mention bein’ warned to keep your mooth shut aboot it! To think o’ her standin’ there, sayin’ how she’d hate to have to make changes aboot the place, when there had been enough loss and leavin’ already, since the happy days of childhood. Oh, she has a silver tongue on her, like all o’ them, richt enough.’
‘I’m not sure I follow you,’ I said. ‘Mrs Torrance said all this? About the halcyon days of yore and all that. Do you mean that the farm belonged to Mary’s family?’
‘Aye, Drew Torrance is from over Ladybank way. A cousin o’ some kind, come to work to his uncle since he had four brothers at home and there was only Mary here. And it’s just as well he did come too. You’ll no’ have heard about the fire, will you?’
‘Someone did say something about a bad fire,’ I said, vaguely remembering. ‘I can’t remember if I knew it was Wester Luck.’
‘The house went up like a lum,’ said Mrs Gow, ‘and it spread to the byres too. Beasts screamin’ like bairns, the horses breakin’ their legs in their stalls, and jist us wi’ a poor few buckets tryin’ to stop it. What a nicht that was. Like hell on earth, madam, if you’ll excuse me puttin’ it that way. Just like hell on earth. Mary’s mother was ill wi’ it after, the smoke and all, for her chest was ayeways bad in the winter at the best o’ times. She went richt doonhill and old Gil – Mary’s faither – was no time ahint her. So thank the Dear for Drew Torrance, is all I can say, even if he is turnin’ oot to be a sicht harder to keep in check than Mary bargained for.’
Here, perhaps, was a trace of what Alec was set to sniff out. I went after it like a bloodhound.
‘Hard to manage?’ I said. ‘Does he go out drinking and gambling then?’
‘Och, no,’ said Mrs Gow. ‘Nothin’ like that and to give Mary her dues, she’s no’ one of they soor-plooms who’d have us all damned for a game o’ whist. No’ like some I could mention.’ At the thought of – I guessed – the Blacks and Frasers, Mrs Gow seemed to regret even saying what she had. ‘No, Mary’s had a hard time of it and Drew was a godsend.’
‘Hear, hear,’ I said. ‘And if you’ve helped them through all you have, I can see why your palm might itch if you thought Mary was telling fibs to you and making you appear foolish in front of your husband. But, Mrs Gow, perhaps she didn’t see the stranger. Why would she lie about it, after all?’
‘Och, she was ayeways her mither’s daughter,’ said Mrs Gow. ‘Gil was a fine man but Mary’s mother – she was Mary too – was a gey queer buddy. Ask anyone and they’d say the same, madam; it’s no’ just me.’
‘So you fell out and stopped going to the Rural together?’ I guessed, smarting on Mrs Gow’s behalf, for why should it be the elder who withdrew from the field if their quarrel meant they could not rub along together?
‘No, no, nothin’ like that,’ said Mrs Gow. ‘I jist got scared, plain and simple. I had thocht this stranger fellow – if he was real – was goin’ after girls wi’ nobody to look out for them – Annie, and Elspeth and thon funny one up at Luck Hoose; they’re a’ girls alone, but if he was startin’ in on the likes o’ Mary Torrance wi’ her man there beside her, I wasna for takin’ a chance that he micht come after me.’
I must have failed, as is quite usual, to keep a poker face and I fear Mrs Gow saw the quick look of incredulity I could not hide.
‘Oh, I ken what you’re thinkin’,’ she said. ‘Why would anyone come oot on a dark nicht and run across fields tae pinch me where he shouldna?’ I grinned at her. ‘Aye, well,’ she said, but she refused to expand any further.
Her meaning became clear however when I drew level with a young woman who turned out to be Mrs Torrance while I was trudging home. She was bound for Hinter Luck, she said, taking a fat duck to Mrs Hemingborough in exchange for some bacon. I remembered her vaguely from the meeting and, although she had merged into the crowd somewhat that night, as I subjected her now to a brief spell of close study out of the side of my eye, I am sorry to say that I thought the dark stranger must have had some compelling reason of his own for setting his sights on this good lady on a night when so many other females were tramping home across the countryside besides her. I had already wondered at his taste in regard to the Mistresses Hemingborough and Fraser but Mary Torrance was the biggest mystery of all and I agreed with Mrs Gow that if she was tempting then no woman alive was safe from him.
She was, I should guess, in her thirties, thick and sturdy, with a face far from hinting at faded beauty like the faces of most farmwomen I have seen – a country girlhood being as conducive to pretty looks as a country life is certain to wear them out in the end. Mary Torrance’s countenance, in contrast, must have seen her through a plain babyhood, childhood and girlhood and must, if anything, be less of a burden now when, husband secured, all thoughts of fascination were past her. Her hair grew low on her brow which itself jutted out like an overhanging cliff above dark eyes and was balanced although not by any means softened by a boulder of a chin supporting a short, no-nonsense mouth whose lower lip covered its upper, lending her whole face an expression of pugnacity which, although I am sure it was quite accidental, would have seen off most ravagers from a field away.
‘I’ve been visiting your Mrs Gow,’ I said, when greetings had been exchanged.
‘Auntie Dot, I’ve ayeways called her,’ said Mary Torrance. ‘She was like another mammy to me when I was growing up.’
‘And what a comfort to you now,’ I said. ‘I heard about the dreadful fire and about your parents, Mrs Torrance. How awful for you.’
‘Aye, I’ve no’ had my troubles to seek,’ she said stoically. ‘But I keep my mouth shut and my head up.’ She suited the action to the word, clamping her lips tightly and hoisting her chin skyward.
‘Indeed,’ I said, feeling quite unequal to this stout rebuff, for it was impossible to view it in any other light. ‘Well, I hope happier times are on their way.’
‘They’re here,’ said Mary. ‘I tell Drew that till I’m sick of telling him. We’re doing just grand now and he’s no need to worry.’
‘It’s in the nature of farmers to worry,’ I said. ‘I mean, a fire must have been the final straw, but the last few years have been wretched everywhere.’
‘Don’t I know it,’ said Mary Torrance, almost at a bellow. ‘Drew reads those blessed market lists out every day, as if he was saying his prayers, and I could tell you the beef prices at Kirkcaldy market in my sleep. I keep telling him, a fire would have swallowed up a milk herd the same as it did the beasts.’
I was beginning to see what Mrs Gow might have meant by Drew Torrance being a handful, for it seemed that Mary felt she had inherited the say-so along with the acres and was affronted to find that her husband disagreed.
‘And forby,’ she went on, after tramping along in silence for a while, ‘the way I look at it is: a fire comes and then it goes. What about the Palmers over there, with their well drying up on them time and again? You cannot farm without water, can you? Or the McAdams at Over Luck, fluke in their meadows and clubroot right through their turnip fields, as if the very earth was turning against them. And as for what’s happened at Luckenheart . . .’ She stopped and a shiver ran through her. ‘I’m not complaining, Mrs Gilver.’ I knew what she was about to say before she said it. ‘The fire was terrible, but what’s for you won’t go by you, no point in hoping it will.’
‘Oh, quite, quite,’ I said.
At times in my short detecting past I have felt that there were hidden patterns tantalising me but I had no such ticklish sense of answers just out of reach now; my poor head was a maelstrom of Torrances, Gows and Martineaus, lovers and husbands, farms and houses, fires and deaths, witches and spirits, demons and strangers and clanging saucepans to boot and I wished that I had the nerve to affect a headache and ask for eggs on a tray. The spare bedroom was icy, but cool, clear air was exactly what I needed because if I gathered even another day’s worth of names and interviews without tidying what I had so far, I was likely to do as our cook used to when I was a child, whenever unexpected guests, kitchen maids’ afternoons out and the cooling off, inexplicable and unstoppable, of the temperamental kitchen range all fell together, which was to shriek, throw her apron over her head and rush out to hide in the stables, sobbing.
Guessing that Lorna and Mr Tait would fuss, however, I endured breaded cutlets in the dining room and sat afterwards listening to the fire crackle and watching Lorna at her embroidery for as little time as I thought I could politely get away with, then retired with cocoa, a hot bottle and a fierce determination to get on top of things while I still had a chance of it.
March, April, May, I wrote on a fresh sheet of paper. Elspeth, Annie, Molly. Eggs, flowers, whisky.
June, July, August, were next. Mrs Muirhead, Mrs Torrance, Mrs Fraser. Smoke, ???, yeast.
September and October. ??? and Mrs Hemingborough. ??? and ??? as far as smells were concerned.
And then what? What chance that Mrs Hemingborough’s tussle in the Hinter Luck lane was the end of it? Also, this possibility just occurring to me, had there been attacks before the one on Elspeth McConechie? Were there more who, like the mistresses Muirhead, Torrance and Hemingborough (and ??? in September too), had kept it quiet? If this band of four had been silent, why not?
Except, when I really thought about it, or rather when I forced myself not to think about it but just to let the feel of the thing take charge for a moment, the four I had just clumped together did not make . . . not sense, for sense was not what was at issue here, I should say
it did not make . . . I knew not what word to use for it.
As a girl, when I swung on the estate carpenter’s door and watched him planing and sawing, my unfocused mind was most receptive and I remember a good bit of what I heard – him talking perhaps to me, perhaps to himself, in that slow, easy way of his, or perhaps to the wood itself, praising it and cajoling it, making it meet him halfway, offer up the prettiest grain and split obligingly in crisp sharp angles when his chisel commanded it. One particular thing he often said, which has stayed with me ever since, was that unlike making a piece of cabinetry which was to stand on its own legs, when one was constructing a cupboard to hang in a room, or putting a window into a wall, or even just nailing up a shelf in an outhouse, one could measure as much as one liked, with rules and tapes and plumb lines; one could take a spirit level and work from the floor, the ceiling, or the distant horizon, and it would make no odds if the thing was not ‘eye-sweet’. ‘That’s what you mun remember, Miss Dandelion,’ he would say. ‘Never mind your straight edge and your square angle, you leave them in the schoolroom. Never mind your plumb or your level: it mun be eye-sweet and when it is you’ll look upon it and you’ll know it, same as you know anything.’
And right now, all these years later, it just was not eye-sweet to say that terrified Mrs Muirhead and the two farmers’ wives, the cold Torrance and the tough Hemingborough, made a set, even though they had all kept quiet about the attacks upon them. Far sweeter, it seemed to me, to say that Mrs Muirhead kept quiet out of a sense of shame, her ear full of poison from her ghastly neighbour but Mrs Hemingborough on the other hand, and Mrs Torrance too from what Mrs Gow had just told me, felt no shame much less any terror and kept quiet from a sense of . . . once again I could not complete this train of thought. I could not imagine what might make a woman accept such beastliness without even a hint of umbrage. When it was Mrs Hemingborough alone I imagined she knew who it was and was protecting him, but who could it be for whom both she and young Mrs Torrance would seal their lips? And if I could stretch some loyalty across both of them, I could not easily account for September’s victim. Would she be another stoic or would she be a second terrified girl? No, I thought, she couldn’t be; it wouldn’t be eye-sweet.
Bury Her Deep Page 20
