Glitter of Mica

by Jessie Kesson

  Hugh Riddel tried to keep his eyes averted from the wooded outline of Ambroggan House, for when time and tide stood still, place itself could petrify you within it, allowing you to escape into the future, and always less than you were. But even had he foreseen that, Hugh Riddel realised, he could not—nor would not—have averted it. Strange how a man, a man like Hugh Riddel, could have compelled himself forward so far and fast, till at last he had lost his bearings, and could only grope his way back through a bleak known-ness.

  This surely was the bleakest landscape in Scotland. Morayshire now. Ah! But there was a mellow country for you. Hot to the sun and comforted by trees. A lass of a land and comely. Hugh Riddel’s memories of Morayshire were brief, but safe and warm in recollection. Then his people had moved south to work on a farm near Stonehaven. Bleak land there too, with the sea biting always at hand. Still, it was on that farm near Stonehaven that he had grown old enough to realise that all the comings and goings to work on different farms were not for his parents the fine adventures they had been for himself.

  A farm-worker was fee’d to work on a farm for a year only. At the end of the year the farmer would either ‘seek’ him to ‘bide on for another year’, or remain ominously silent on the subject. If his silence remained unbroken when lambing-time came round, the farm-worker knew that his services were no longer required. The sack without words. Hugh Riddel could marvel over the simplicity of it still. And the re-engaging of a farm-worker was equally simple. No written contract; just the passing of ‘Arles’—a sum ranging from half a crown to ten shillings—by the farmer to his prospective worker, to seal and ‘wet the bargain’. Hugh Riddel could marvel over the simplicity of that too.

  His father had seldom been asked to ‘bide on’ at any farm when his year was up. It was always his mother who took this so much to heart. He could see her now, shrunken by memory, a small body forever wringing her hands, so that she fluttered tiny and distressed in his mind. He could see himself too, a small boy speeding perpetually through spring mirks, always the apprehensive—but excited—bearer of the bad tidings.

  ‘The First Horseman’s just been asked to bide on. I heard the farmer seeking him in the stable!’

  His father banging his fist on the table and shaking the silence in the kitchen.

  ‘What of it, then? Good God, it’s but early yet. We’re only into Februar’. The farmer’s got till March to seek me to bide on.’

  ‘But you are the Cattleman, Father.’ He heard his ten-year-old self insist. ‘You are the Cattleman. And the Cattleman is always asked to bide on before the First Horseman.’

  Hugh Riddel knew now exactly what his wife Isa meant, when she accused him of not only ‘Baking the cake’ but ‘Icing it as well. And putting on all the decorations, so that there is nothing left for anybody else to do at all, except to admire it and eat it.’

  Even at the age of ten he had allowed no loopholes, and could remember how his father had always struggled to find one.

  ‘What of it, then? There are other farms in Scotland. And I have never yet been feared of bending my back. There are other farms I tell you!’

  ‘Aye. And we’ve tried a gey few of them,’ had always been his mother’s brief and bitter response.

  ‘What of it?’ His father had demanded again. ‘We haven’t been happy here. Not a one of us. It’s too near the sea for one thing. And we are inland folk for another thing. Not seafarers. God Almighty, woman. Even Robbie Burns’ father couldna thole this part of the country. That’s why he upped it and made for away down the South, yonder!’

  The smile broke into Hugh Riddel’s thoughts. His father had always tried to translate his failings into strengths, through comparison with Burns. A comparison which never moved his mother, for Burns, as she often said, ‘just never won round her at all’. Come to think of it, though, for all Burns’ reputed success with ‘The Lasses’ of his day, it was the women of the countryside who now remained more immune to his ‘Memory’. ‘The men’, as his mother so often remarked, ‘just uses Burns as an excuse for theirselves!’ And that had been another of the times when the excuse hadn’t worked with his mother.

  ‘I don’t give a tinker’s curse for what Robbie Burns’ father thought of this part of the country,’ she had protested. ‘He’s no concern of mine at all. All I’m concerned with is that you have lost this job too. Just as you’ve lost every job you’ve ever had. I’m sick and tired of it all. And of you and your light fingers! We are no better off than the tinkers. We are always on the top of the road.’

  ‘Do you imagine, woman,’ his father had flared, ‘Do you imagine for one minute that I am the only man on this farm that helps myself to a pucklie oats for my hens? It’s just that I always happen to get found out.’

  * * *

  Oh, and then the spring would grope forward towards the Term, and into the month of May with its small Feeing Market Days. It was then you could see the farm-workers who hadn’t been asked to bide on mount their bicycles and go slanting down the roads that led to the little Market towns, whistling with all the defiance in the world, syne standing clustered round the Market Cross, trying to look as likely lads as possible, while waiting for the farmers to size them up and approach them with the offer of another year’s Fee.

  ‘Just like a curran Clydesdale horse taking round the ring,’ as God Knows had once recalled it. Except that the brute beasts had their natural dignity. For they never kenned that they were being sized up. And they wouldn’t have cared a docken if they had kent.

  It was then, too, that you could see the farm-workers who had been asked to bide on, planting out their ‘yards’—never ‘gardens’—with the bare essentials, curly kale and first early potatoes. There was never enough security to plant anything as frivolous but enduring as a lilac bush. Hugh Riddel’s mother had always had an awful hankering after a lilac bush, yet never enough faith to plant one. ‘Not for other folk to get the good of,’ as she often explained. For that was another deeply ingrained aversion. The fear of other folk getting the good of anything outwith their own efforts. It wasn’t until they had come to Darklands, here, that his mother began to take any interest in the yard, and started to call it by the name of garden.

  * * *

  Hugh Riddel could remember as clear as anything the night on which his father had come home from the market, fee’d to Darklands. 1939. The year the war broke out.

  ‘Well now! Who was it said I would never get another fee to another farm?’ his father had demanded, jocularly, but with fierce undercurrents of pride. ‘Who was it, then? For you can just swallow your words, and take a right good look at this for a start-off!’

  ‘This’ was a ten-shilling note that his father had wagged under their noses. And his mother and himself had taken a good look. For money—paper money, that was—was something they only set eyes on twice a year, on Term Days.

  ‘Well may you both stand there gooking,’ his father had said, pleased with the wordless spell the ten-shilling note had cast over them. ‘And that’s only the Arles that Darklands gave me to wet the bargain. Truth tells twice, you see!’ he had added with the wonderful simplicity of one who had just found that out.

  ‘It’s a wonder to me you didn’t go and drink the lot,’ his mother said, when she recovered herself. But there had been no barb in her voice, and they both knew by the way she fussed around getting the supper that she was pleased too.

  ‘But I had a drink,’ his father expanded, conscious of the geniality in the air. ‘For I had something to drink to. You’ll both grant that, when you hear what else I’ve got to tell you. This is my Fee now.’ . . .Even his mother, who so seldom stood still, stopped fiddling about with supper to listen, while his father counted everything off on his fingers.

  ‘Meal. Six bolls of it. Tatties. Ten bags. Not counting two bags of First Earlies. Coal. A ton. And another half-ton extra for calving times. Now, Mother, just you consider that extra half-ton itself! There’s not many farmers take into account th
e coal we burn up night after night sitting up waiting for the cows to calve. So that’s not to be sneezed at. Syne there’s two quarts of milk a day. All the skimmed milk you care to carry home. And of course the first milk after calving is mine, so we’ll have plenty of calfie’s cheese. And you’re both gey fond of calfie’s cheese. That, then, that’s our perquisites for the year. Now for my Fee. Oh, but you’ll never guess my Fee, Hugh, son. Never in a month of Sundays. So I may just as well tell you what it is. Seventy-six pounds a year. Seventy-six pounds. The biggest Fee I’ve ever been offered. What do you think of it, then? Well? Have the pair of you gone and lost the use of your tongues?’

  Hugh Riddel couldn’t remember his own Fee exactly. It had gone up by leaps and bounds. Somewhere in the region of seven hundred it would be. Strange that it was his father’s Fee of twenty years ago which lit his memory with golden numerals. Six feet high. Seventy-six pounds a year.

  What a perfect night that had been while it lasted. For nothing lasted long, least of all—perfection.

  ‘And there’s another thing!’ His father had remembered. ‘And it will please you as well. I’ll never again lay unlawful hands on an ear of corn. Darklands herd is T.T. Tested, so we’re not allowed to keep hens.’

  ‘What? No hens?’ His mother had protested dismayed. ‘But I’ve always had my two three hens. Always.’

  ‘I can make neither head nor tail of you, woman,’ his father had puzzled. ‘You were always complaining that your hens died in debt. Look see! I’ll tell you what. We’ll sell the lot. Bantams and all. And we’ll buy a bit of new linoleum with the price of them. For you’ve been making a sore enough cry for new linoleum. How’s that, my quean? Come on, now. Come in about to me till I tell you something else!’

  ‘Get away with you, man. You’re drunk!’ had been his mother’s invariable reply to such overtures from his father; and her reaction to scurry away out into the scullery, beyond reach of husband or plea of son.

  ‘I’m far from drunk, woman,’ his father would protest to her disappearing figure, turning to confide in the small boy he had been. ‘What would you make of that, Hugh, son? Your mother says I’m drunk. I come home to her with a bonnie Fee to a bonnie farm, and your mother shows no pleasure. Though she would be the first to make fine lament if I’d come home without a Fee at all. I try to say a bonnie wordie to her, and she turns and tells me that I’m drunk.’

  ‘The only time your father ever does say a bonnie wordie to me,’ his mother’s voice came from the scullery in defence, ‘is when he is drunk.’

  It was true, too, Hugh Riddel remembered, but only as a kind of truth. For his father’s words of endearment had always been spare and difficult, needing high moments for utterance, and his reaction to rejection, blustering but helpless.

  ‘Now, now, my quean. That’s just enough of that. Come here now. Come on in about to me. God, but there’s just a handful of you. And I could lift you clean above my head with one hand, if I’d a mind to.’

  He could, too. Hugh Riddel remembered that as well, although he had seldom seen it happen. He remembered it because it had feared him. His father spanning his mother’s waist with his two hands and lifting her clean over his shoulder in a whirl of petticoats and skirling. It had feared him as much as if they had been in anger with each other, but it had strangely excited him, too.

  ‘My God,’ he had thought. ‘When I am big!’ With no other words to expand the thought, or define and clarify it. Only small wordless images and sensations, like his memories of Morayshire; the coarse comforting smell of sharn, the bare fire-scorched legs of the farmhouse servant girls, their laughter, and the dark skirls of them coming from the hay lofts. Himself high up on the turnip-sowing machine, the turnip seeds running between his fingers. He had always felt very safe, seated on the sowing machine, playing in the darkness with the turnip seeds, yet always apprehensive, as though he were on the brink of something still unknown, but which he would one day discover, and feel as much at one with as he felt with the tiny dark seeds that trickled through his fingers.

  He was always greatly relieved—and just as greatly surprised—that at such times his parents hadn’t simply lifted the lid clean off all his private thoughts, and stood staring at them, shocked and angry. They never did, of course. He was so often simply a means of communication between them; particularly with his mother. He could hear her yet.

  ‘Ah well, Hugh. Darklands, or no Darklands, Fine Fee or no Fee at all, we are for the top of the road again, as usual. That will mean some other new school for you again. My! But you should be a clever man yet, with all the different schools you’ve attended in your time.’

  ‘But I like new schools fine,’ he had mumbled. Partly out of complete truth, and partly from a desire to side with his father. ‘And maybe, maybe, Father, there will be tractors at Darklands farm.’

  ‘Maybe there will be at that, then.’ His father had grasped the lifeline. ‘That wouldn’t surprise me one bit. Mind you, Hugh, tractors are fine enough for clay soil and rough going, but for a bit of company in a long day, give me a pair of horse. God, Hugh. Did ever I get round to telling you about a Horseman I once kent? He always insisted on sleeping out in the stable with his pair. I wight he did that! For he always vowed that he preferred the brutes’ company to that of the chield he was bothied with. A terrible man it appeared for snoring and wetting his bed. Though, come to think of it now, I believe I’d prefer the company of a pair of horse to a man like that, myself!’

  And, as always, it was his mother who disrupted such moments with the flick of her tongue:

  ‘Good grief, man. Have you nothing better to do but sit there and stuff Hugh’s head with a lot of dirt!’

  But nothing quite diminished the glow that their minds had cast over Darklands, the new farm that they were going to work on. Even now Hugh Riddel recollected their anticipation, as through some bright upstanding springtime. Darklands, they had gathered from the farm-workers’ grapevine, was a Farm of Farms.

  ‘Not a single pair of horse on yon place,’ the Second Cattleman had informed them. ‘It’s all tractor work there now. And Darklands himself is a gentleman farmer at that. Oh, but you’ll have a good enough sit down with him, Riddel. For there’s no side to yon man at all. And devil the chance of him ever trying to catch you out, by creeping up behind you on a mirky morning, looking like one of ourselves.’

  If Hugh Riddel had ever been asked to define comfort, he would have described it as standing young in that spring, under the cover of old men’s voices, his face towards the sea, and half his mind on the mysterious life of the trawlers, drifting westwards to the Bay of Nigg. His remembrance on the strange turns of their speech, and lingering on the high whine of the fisherwives’ voices.

  . . . I cast my net in Largo Bay. And fishes I caught nine. . .

  And drawing his cold face into the warm stable again, lending his ears to accents that were familiar, and to arguments that never varied in context.

  ‘They say that Darklands doesn’t hold with the Farm-workers’ Union, though.’

  ‘Name me the farmer who does, Duggie.’

  ‘I’ll go one better than that. I’ll say again as I’ve said before, if every farm-worker upped and joined his Union, we’d have one of the strongest Unions in Scotland.’

  ‘All right, Duggie. All right. We know all about that, so don’t you get going on Unions again, or we’ll be here for the rest of the night! All I’m trying to do is to put old Riddel here wise to the bee in Darkland’s bonnet. And that’s not the Union, though I’ve heard tell he’s not too struck on it. It’s the cream off the top of his milk. That’s what you’ve got to guard against, Riddel! For he’ll come down on you like the hammers of hell if he catches you interfering with his cream. They tell me he never grudges a bit of firewood lifted from the steading on a dark night. And whiles, they say, he’ll even turn a blind eye to the paraffin dwindling in the drum. But if you’re ever found helping yourself to the cream off the top of his
dairy cans, it’s just God help you, and down the road with you. No explanations given. And none sought—if you’re wise. For, you see, Darklands reasons that the customers who buy his milk are entitled to all the cream that rises on top of it.’

  ‘And sound enough reasoning at that! It’s coming as I am aye trying to tell you all. It’s coming on both sides. And it would all come a damned sight sooner if you just had the horse sense to join your Union.’

  ‘You and your Union again, Duggie. Bloody fine do you ken that it isn’t so easy for a Union man to get a Fee.’

  ‘Fine do I ken that, Charlie. So for God’s sake keep your hair on! The two three you’ve got left. All I’m trying to say is this, if we were all Union men the farmers would have to Fee us. They’d have no option. For I’ll grant you that they could put the army in to lift the tatties, aye, or to hoe the turnips at a stretch, but could you imagine Colonel McCombie yonder calving a cow?’

  ‘Whiles, Duggie, whiles you do make me wonder. For you speak an awful lot of dirt! We’re tied hand and foot. We always will be as long as our houses are part of our wage. Lose your job and you lose your house.’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe so. But it’s coming. That I’m sure of. You and me may not live to see that day, Riddel. And Charlie there will certainly never see it, for if the drink doesn’t kill him, the women will! But our sons might just see it. Your Hugh there, maybe he’ll live long enough to see it, and benefit from it, when it comes.’

  * * *

  And Hugh Riddel had seen it come. It came with the war. A revolution as complete as the Industrial Revolution, but quieter—and bloodless. If Hugh Riddel’s father had still been alive he would not have recognised the farm of Darklands now. For, though it had been a farm of farms in his day, it was now a Model farm, bathrooms and electricity in all the cottar houses. A day off a week, a weekend off a month. Farm-workers running their own cars. And Superannuation. Not even the rabid Duggie of childhood memory could ever have visualised such a benefit as a farm-worker with the security of a pension.