Glitter of Mica

by Jessie Kesson

  The same thing when they sent for her to help out with the spring cleaning.

  ‘I never found anybody could get the grain of that wood as white as you can scrub it, Sue,’ Kingorth’s wife had confessed to her just the other week. And coming from Kingorth’s wife that was praise, for she was a tight woman, and had she been a ghost, would have grudged giving you a fright.

  Such praise was sweet to Sue, for she cared. At least, one of the many parts of her cared. So often Sue Tatt felt the conflicting burden of all her various potentialities bearing down on her. For Oh, but it was a terrible thing to have within you the power to be a plain woman or a beauty, a slut or house-proud, a respectacle body or a light of love. All of which Sue had been at some time, and could be at another, for she always grasped the immediate potential.

  ‘From now on,’ she had vowed, under the impetus of Kingorth’s wife’s praise, ‘from now on, I’m always going to clean my own little house as thoroughly as I clean other folks’ big houses.’ And she did—for nearly a week. A week in which she almost drove her family mad; confiding sadly to Fiona, when the cleaning mood had deserted her:

  ‘Do you know something, Fiona? I could be one of the most house-proud women in all Caldwell, if I just wasn’t Me!’

  It was true too. And Fiona, although she was only fourteen, understood the truth of it. Fiona was the only one of her children that Sue Tatt really liked; and then simply as one human being likes another. She had named her daughter, even before she was born, after the heroine of the serial she had been perusing—a favourite occupation of Sue in her carrying times.

  ‘Fiona’—for that dark, willowy girl who strode the heathery hills of Scottish ‘Family Fiction’. Tweed clad and windswept. Her head flung back. Her eyes always ‘set wide apart and grey’—scanning the far horizons of loch and hill, against whose background stood the ancient but fast-decaying House of the noble but impoverished laird, loved by and at last won by Fiona, despite all the intrigues of that wealthy London blonde, who never really cared about each stick and stone of the Ancient House. Not as Fiona did, her eyes set wide apart and grey.

  It was some flaw in Sue Tatt’s nature, made her accept Fiona—a flaw she shared with many of her like. Even those in Caldwell who had never known their Scotland so, preferred their image of it thus—a fable-flowering land. But, even so, their need of the ‘Rowan tree’ was such, it could cause the antrin bush to bloom unpruned within their minds. Only an alien, and then perhaps out of a need as urgent as their own, had ever attempted to deprive them of their illusions.

  Even God Knows himself could laugh about that, now. ‘Yon Italian prisoner of war was one I’ll never forget. For Oh, but he had a right ill will to Scotland. “Nothing for look,” was always yon one’s cry. “In Scotland. Nothing for look. Tatties, Turnips. Rain and Wind. And no Divertiment. In Italy now! Plenty for look. Plenty Sun. Plenty Divertiment. Plenty plenty sun.” God Almighty. The way he spoke about that country of his was enough to set you thinking that the sun itself had a hard time of it getting around to get its blink in anywhere else on the face of the earth. According to yon one, it just bided in Italy. Aye, but he had a right sore grudge against Scotland. Still, like the Poles, he apparently found our women much to his liking. For I never saw a man so set on women. He had even gotten the length of teaching Sue Tatt Italian. And whatten a waste yon was. Sue could have understood what he was seeking in any tongue! Still, if his taste in countries was anything like his taste in women, Scotland lost nothing at all through his opinion of it.’

  But there had been those whose tastes had been worth taking all the care in the world for. Sue Tatt remembered that as she stood surveying the result of all her beautifying efforts in the bathroom mirror. It had taken a Second World War to bring Sue one tithe of the admiration which she had always felt was her due.

  The curious thing about wars was that you were born in the remembrance of your parents’ wars, and grew up within their constant recollections of an age, alluring as myth, ‘Before the War’, so that you got the feeling it were better never to have been born at all than to live in the dull eras ‘After the War’ when ‘Times have changed’, and always ‘For the worst’.

  Sue Tatt had reached her prime during the Second World War. She now knew why the period of one’s life, lived through wartime, never became relegated to the past, and, though foreshadowing the future, stood in the present, like the Celtic Cross in front of Caldwell’s Old Established Church, erected to ‘The Memory of the Men of This Parish’ who had fallen in battles as near in time and far in distance as the Dardanelles and Libya. Despite that, there still was room for the names of men who might fall in future battles, since war was never the countryman’s first urgency nor last loyalty. A glance at the names on the Celtic Cross would have convinced you that, by and large, it was the countryside’s artisans who ‘fell’—its labourers and tradesmen, and sometimes farmers’ only sons, not old enough for their first heritage, side by side with crofters’ younger sons who had none, since the croft ever provided for but one heir.

  Maybe the flatness of ‘After the War’ was but in natural contrast to its years of heightened tempo. Sue Tatt could see it all, as clear as yesterday, without today impinging. The first hot flush of patriotism. ‘All in it Together.’ China and Russia swinging into their orbit. Aid for them both. Knitting Bees, plain and purl; socks and balaclavas; picking up dropped stitches side by side with the Misses Lennox, and Miss McCombie of The Whins, while Colonel McCombie, resurrected from retirement, manoeuvred up on Soutar Hill with a platoon of tractormen and cattlemen who formed Home Guard. The sudden prestige of men in uniform, particularly their own regiment, the Gordon Highlanders. But, though you sang Scots Wha Hae and Highland Laddie, the paradox remained: the soldier, except in times of war, in moments of high sentimental fervour, in retrospect or in song, was regarded as the lowest form of life. ‘Where’s my Mam?’ . . .‘She’s run off with a Sodger!’

  In peacetime, few girls kept company with soldiers. Sue Tatt herself had drawn the line at them, and had hitherto ignored all mating calls from Kilties. This prejudice may have had its roots in ‘old, unhappy far-off things’, when paternity claims could be avoided by the simple expedient of enlisting. Certain it was that a strong prejudice against the soldier prevailed in country places; until wars came, of course. And then the girl not clinging to the arms of a soldier became an oddity, and an object of pity.

  Sue Tatt herself had clung to not a few. The Fusiliers, when the boast on everyone’s tongue was ‘We’re going to hang out our washing on the Siegfried Line’. The Tank Corps, when the prophecy was ‘There’ll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover’. And when the war was in its closing stages, Sue had vowed to the music in the Sergeants’ Mess ‘This is my lovely day, this the day I will remember the day I am dying’.

  When the first high tension of war had passed, Caldwell had settled down again to minding its own business. For its business was a total war effort—or so the Government ruled, by bringing out the Stand Still Order, which forbade all in reserved occupations to leave their jobs. But, since your born farm-worker would never have dreamt of doing so anyhow, the Stand Still Order was not only superfluous, but unsettling! As the Plunger had observed at the time, ‘It just never dawned on me before to leave Darklands. But then I suppose I always knew I could leave, if I so desired. And that’s how it should be! I don’t like the idea of this Stand Still Order. I don’t like it at all.’

  Men who had even less control of themselves, or more within themselves, saw in the Order something against which they could test their initiative, and left their jobs on the land for no other reason than to prove it could be done. But, by and large, Caldwell had settled down again, and subsidies began to roll in—subsidies for bull calves and potatoes. Farm-workers’ wages began to rise, and with them their status. The Two Term Days of the year became a thing of the past. No longer could the townsman, half affectionately, half contemptuously, instantly recognise the �
��Country Geordie’ walking his streets, for the farm-workers’ uniform—navy blue suit and bonnet—began to disappear, too. Nor was such prosperity confined to farmers and their workers. Even the tinkers wandering the countryside began to benefit. For, though they had always sold their all, their all had now increased—clothing coupons, sweet coupons, food ‘Points’—so that Caldwell itself was moved to protest. ‘The World is coming to a pretty fine pass when you can no longer tell whether it’s the farmers or the tinkers that are driving round the countryside in brakes.’

  Sue Tatt had also shared in the rising prosperity, though, strangely enough, not in any material way. It had been sufficient for Sue to feel that she ‘lived’ at last. She began to roll distinguishing abbreviations off her tongue—R.S.M., C.S.M., Q.M.S., Warrant Officer, Sarn’t and simply Lance Jack—with an expertise which impressed before if shocked those in Caldwell whose acquaintance with the military within their gates remained long-distance and objective towards anyone under the rank of Lieutenant. Sue had moved from one intense emotional crisis to another with Lofty, Shorty, Nobby, Bootlace, Snudge, retaining her resilience, recovering from their Postings, and even surviving their Overseas Drafts.

  There had been an element of competition in those war years which had presented a challenge to Sue Tatt, for, having no fellow-like in Caldwell, Sue had lived in a Crusoe kind of loneliness. But when the war came, it had revealed that all the surrounding parishes had, unknowingly, harboured at least one of Sue’s kind; submerged for years, but rising to the surface, and suffering some great sea change at Bugle Call.

  Sue could still remember the excitement of getting ready, and making up, with all her little clique, in this same bathroom, their children skirling in and out amongst their feet, small nightmares interrupting large dreams, and silenced only by a sixpence, or quietened with a curse.

  None of the female friendships Sue had made in those years had lasted, of course. For, although all were of the pack, each had remained a lone wolf. Now and again Sue would run into one such crony from those years, submerged once more into respectability and beyond personal recognition, so that they would have less to say to each other than utter strangers, since some kinds of memories shared ever make for mutual silence.

  Oh, but there had been no holding of them in those years. It was as if all the world had joined hands and were rushing together towards the end of the War, and nothing had mattered in between. The end of the War. The very phrase had conjured up within itself the magic and escape of some Open Sesame to a new and different world. But, anticipation, once so keen, had now dissolved itself, though, for some months after V-Day, Sue had still cast searching, disappointed eyes over Caldwell, seeking some kind of transformation, and finding it only as an exile, after long absence from his country, might find that the mountains of his memory were but hills.

  Caldwell itself, though, had gradually become aware of some change in Sue Tatt. She had become ‘more choosy’ after the War, ‘more particular’—or so they said. And small wonder! For whatever else she had learned from the war years, Sue had learned comparison. While never being unaware of her own needs, nor contemptuous of the needs of men, she had simply discovered that there were ways and means of supplicating for them. It had been better to lie down on the windswept target range up at Balwhine, thinking it was for love, than to stand up against Kingorth’s byre door, knowing it was simply out of good nature. Nothing put Sue so clean off now as Caldwell’s matter-of-fact approach . . .‘Well, Sue. What about it then?’

  There was the exception, though. And, once again, Sue had created it for herself, in her relationship with Hugh Riddel; for once deceiving herself only in small externals, knowing instinctively that any other woman could have served his purpose, though even then the relationship for Sue had to become one of acquisition. ‘Anyone could have him. But it is I, Sue Tatt, who has gotten him.’

  ‘You stink of stuff, Mam,’ was all that young Beel could find to say, when Sue, her elaborate toilette completed, stood once again on the threshold of her kitchen, pausing this time for appreciative acclamation.

  ‘You just stink of stuff.’

  Coarse, that was what young Beel was! Just like the father of him. Unlike mothers in wedlock, Sue Tatt seldom associated herself with her children at all, but had acquired a rare degree of parental objectivity. Coarse. It always came out.

  ‘That lipstick doesn’t look too bad on you, Mam,’ Fiona conceded. ‘Can I have it when you’re done with it?’

  ‘No. You can not.’ Sue advanced into her kitchen, conflicting roles battling within her—Helen of Troy and Widow Woman Bringing up Young Family. ‘What you can do,’ she suggested, looking at Fiona as though seeing her for the first time, ‘is to take that muck off your face, and give that neck of yours a right good scrub. The pores of your skin are going to all clog up for the want of plain soap and water.’

  ‘Skip it, Mam,’ Fiona shrugged, certain in the knowledge that she would fall heir to all the little pots of stuff anyhow, when her mother had got tired of them.

  ‘What do you mean . . .Skip it?’ Sue demanded ominously. There were moments when her comprehensive methods of rearing her family suddenly backfired on herself. And this was blowing up into one of those moments. Sue felt an old inexplicable anger falling down over herself and her daughter, and cloaking them in awful proximity. Her eyes took in each detail of Fiona, with the cruel, confining clarity of temper. ‘Dolling yourself up there in my best shoes! And my new bracelet. Eyebrow pencil too. And eyeshadow. You look’—it was either this, or slap the girl until all rage was eased out of herself—‘just like a little whore. That’s what you look like.’

  It was true too, Sue assured herself, her eyes still fixed on her daughter’s face. But now, the concentrated image was diffusing. Sue turned her attention to the mantelpiece and started rearranging her ornaments. ‘You can keep the bracelet if you like.’ Her offer came rough and jerky, acquiring smoothness only in its enlargement. ‘But those shoes of mine will ruin your feet. I was thinking of taking out another Provident Check. You can have a pair of shoes for yourself off it.’

  ‘What about me?’ Young Beel had sniffed out the favourable drift of his mother’s mood. ‘I’m needing a new pair of trousers.’

  ‘I’ll get a Provident Check big enough for all of us, then,’ Sue promised, suddenly feeling capable of bequeathing the moon in gratitude for the lightness within her.

  ‘Got a fag on you, Mam?’ Beel was taking every ounce out of the advantageous wind.

  ‘Try my cardigan pocket,’ Sue acquiesced, equably enough, but you’ll have to run down to Davy for fags later on. And you can have the price of a packet for yourself.’

  ‘Ta, Mam.’ Beel’s interpretation of the offer equalled his mother’s casual bribery. ‘I’ll nip down for them when Hugh Riddel comes!’

  The kitchen and its occupants now settled down into an intimacy of a kind which was rarely experienced in more orthodox homes.

  ‘I saw Hugh Riddel this morning,’ Fiona said, waving her newly acquired bracelet in front of the fire till it reflected its light.

  ‘Oh, did you now? What time would that have been about?’ Sue asked, as if the answer didn’t concern her.

  ‘I don’t right remember what time it was.’ Fiona felt stubborn. ‘Early though,’ she added for safety’s sake, her eyes still fixed on the changing lights of her bracelet.

  ‘What time’s early?’ Sue demanded, irritation creeping into her voice.

  ‘First Bus.’ Fiona, apprehensive of stretching her mother’s patience too far, was yet reluctant to reveal too much, too soon. ‘He had driven Isa Riddel down to catch it.’

  ‘She must have been for the Town the day, then?’

  ‘Must have,’ Fiona agreed absently.

  ‘Was she, or was she not?’ Sue demanded im­patiently. ‘Surely you know what bus she got on to?’

  ‘The Town bus, of course!’

  ‘Well then! Couldn’t you have said that in the fi
rst place? How did she look? Was she all dressed up for the Town?’

  ‘No. The same old usual,’ Fiona admitted at last.

  ‘An awful-looking frump of a wifie yon,’ young Beel said, getting the mood of the thing at last.

  ‘Did Hugh Riddel himself seem in good bone?’ Sue’s interest almost defied discernment.

  ‘Never him! He’s a right dour dook yon. But he’s coming here the night,’ Fiona remembered. Her bracelet, reflected by the firelight, glowed like the jewels of story-book memory. ‘He’s definitely coming here the night.’ Fiona handed her ace to her mother at last. ‘I’m sure of that. I heard him telling Wylie the Blacksmith that he’d call in by for the bottling lever tonight, because he’d be passing this way anyhow.’

  ‘That will just depend on the weather,’ Sue said irrelevantly and, rising, made her way out to the gate to have a look at the weather.

  * * *

  ‘It’s as bright as day, and as quiet’s the grave.’

  ‘Aye. It’s going to be a right fine night. Mam,’ Fiona assured her mother, finding her hand and squeezing it, the only demonstration of affection they ever allowed, or needed between them. ‘It’s going to be a fine night, Mam,’ Fiona insisted, as they stood looking out on a night that their wish had willed.

  You would never have thought that a moon on the wane like this would give such light. But with it was ground frost, and in your mind the promise of the lengthening nights. The quietness over it might well be known to the dead, where every sound was in itself an interruption, and lights snapped up like noise upon the landscape.

  ‘I’d know the Plunger’s wife’s skirl anywhere.’ Sue broke their own silence.

  ‘It’s all the Darklands’ cottar wives making for the Rural,’ Fiona said.

  ‘So it is,’ Sue remembered. ‘God help us. They’ll all be singing And Did Those Feet and Land Of Our Birth the night, then.’