He was gone and Ian breathed a little easier. He was rarely relaxed around his father, unaware that his nervousness communicated itself to the man and made the situation worse. Mairi felt no lightening of the atmosphere. She was a sunny child; she adored her brother and she worshipped her father. She missed her mother who had died three years earlier but time made the pain bearable and because she had been so young when her mother had died, she did not know that she missed certain attentions. If the deficits in her upbringing had been pointed out to her she would have denied their existence vociferously. She had everything she wanted and needed. There were twice-yearly visits from interfering, although well-meaning, relatives but there was, more importantly, Ian and the dogs and occasionally a lamb, and she had, as she knew fine well, big Colin McGloughlin to fight all her battles for her.
Mairi cleared the table, washed the dishes, made up pieces for herself, her brother, and an extra one for daft Billy Soutar who, as usual, would have none, and only then did she pick up her books and leave the house. She did not lock the door. No one apart from their father would enter the house until she and Ian came back from school.
*
‘Robin Morrison, get your head out of that book and fetch some coal. Jack the Carter shovelled it into the shed for me. Your father isn’t up to it.’
Lizzie Morrison looked at her son, saw his too-long, too-thin arms sticking out from the ends of his jacket.
‘Neither are you, laddie,’ she thought, but she said nothing. If she did, he would go out and shovel coal until he was exhausted. ‘Just fill the coal scuttle, Robin, and then clear this table so that I can set the tea.’
Robin looked up vaguely at his mother; it took him time to get from 1485 to 1900.
‘Coal,’ she said again firmly. ‘Fill the scuttle and clear the table.’
Robin began to pile the books.
‘Coal,’ she said again. ‘Now. If I don’t get coal, you don’t get your tea.’
The boy stopped. ‘Sorry, Mother, I wasn’t really paying attention. Well, I mean, I wasn’t not paying attention but my mind . . .’ He looked at the set of his mother’s jaw. ‘I’ll get the coal.’
He looked regretfully at the book. A few more minutes; if she had only given him a few more minutes. He went outside and the beauty of the night stopped him. He reached up his hands towards the stars. He could touch them if he stretched.
‘Maybe that one’s dead, laddie.’
His father was standing near the gate that separated school and schoolhouse.
‘Dead? How can it be dead and shining and twinkling so brightly?’
Robin knew the answer, but he loved allowing his father to show his erudition.
Euan Morrison pointed to a star above the schoolhouse. ‘Perhaps that star has burned itself out but, because it takes the light so long to reach the earth, the only way you can tell if it’s dead is to stand right here and watch till the light goes out.’
The door opened and light spilled out from a fire that was still very much alive. So was the voice that floated along on the light and, like the fire, it was warm and welcoming. ‘If you two don’t stop your star gazing, there’ll be no tea for either one of you. Euan, it’s near the boy’s bedtime and you’ve been sitting in that cold classroom since four o’clock.’
‘Don’t fuss, Lizzie. The fire’s embers are still sending out warmth. Robin has the coal situation in hand, haven’t you, lad, and I’ll help with the table. Is that mince and onions I smell?’ Deftly he steered his wife away from the steps to give his son time to do his chore.
Robin, the heavy scuttle held before him in both hands, walked stiff-legged into the kitchen a few minutes later. He had overfilled the container so that its weight bent him almost double, and it was impossible for him to bend his knees.
‘Laddie, you’ve too much in there.’
Robin lowered the scuttle to the hearth and stretched thankfully. ‘Saves going out again, Dad.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘We should be like the Romans and put in central heating systems.’
Euan was about to discuss the feasibility of the plan together with the probable objections of the educational authorities when his wife interrupted.
‘Robin Morrison, there is far too much nonsense in your head. Wash your hands and finish that table. That’s not a fitting job for your father.’
Euan winked at his son and went on placing forks and spoons. ‘Wee Mairi McGloughlin beat everyone in the big class at spelling today, Lizzie. She’s bright.’
‘She’s a pert wee madam. Her father ruins her.’
‘Och, he’s doing a grand job raising those bairns since his wife passed away.’
‘He’s too hard on Ian.’
‘No harder than I am on Robin. He just has a wee difficulty coping with a better mind than his own. I wish I’d made more of an effort to get to know the mother, a quiet, shy lassie, never very robust. Perhaps the children, Ian in brains at least, favour her. Colin McGloughlin is an intelligent man but he seems to think intelligence is a weakness in a labourer, as if brains and brawn don’t go naturally together.’
‘Ian doesn’t want to be a farmer, Mother. He wants to travel, see the world, write about it. We’re going to go together, to Greece, to Italy . . .’
Euan frowned. ‘Fine dreams, Robin, but where would the likes of us find the money for such travel? You might have a chance if you get a place at the university’ – he looked at his wife and smiled – ‘and not get yourself tied up with a wife and a family before you graduate, but Ian? He has no chance of breaking out of his life pattern. In a way he’s lucky. His father has a lease on a good farm. The McGloughlins have been tenants on Windydyke’s farm for three generations. Ian will take over from his father, the fourth generation. Hard work, but he’ll have a job for life and a house, a warmer, more convenient house than this one.’
‘Mairi hates me.’
‘No, Robin. She’s just protective of her brother. If you were not here, he would be the undisputed top of the class.’
‘He’s cleverer than I am.’
‘You are both intelligent boys. Each of you could go to university but Ian won’t need a university education, even if his father could afford it. Now, Mairi’s brain is wasted on a girl.’ Too late he saw his wife’s quick frown of displeasure. ‘You have to agree, Lizzie. What use on a farm is a girl who can recite Shakespeare and Milton?’
Lizzie Morrison stood up and the anger emanating from her was almost palpable. It was a sore point with her that almost every female member of the farming community, including nine-year-old Mairi McGloughlin, was a better cook than she was. She had married and set her not inconsiderable intelligence to trying to master all the domestic chores she had never learned as a child, but she was still not satisfied with her achievements. ‘So it doesn’t take intelligence to run a house on a pittance, Euan Morrison. Well, we all know how intelligent you and Robin are. Fine, there’s bread dough proving for tomorrow. It should yield – no, why should I tell you, anyone should be able to work that out. And Colin McGloughlin brought another rabbit. You can work out how to skin it, clean it, and cook it for tomorrow’s dinner, and I’ll be locking the bedroom door, so work out how the two of you can get yourselves and your amazing intellects into the same wee bed.’
She left the room, slamming the door behind her and Robin looked nervously at his father. Euan smiled.
‘Quite a woman, your mother. I could have told her that the Bible says that a woman should do as her husband bids her but I can hear her explaining that since she never had the opportunity to finish at the university she is therefore too stupid to read the good book. If you have finished your meal, away to your bed. I’ll crawl in beside you later, when I’ve figured out how to deal with a dead rabbit.’
Robin said nothing. He would have liked more food but the tension in the air was too threatening. He whispered, ‘Goodnight,’ and ran up the stairs. When he was washed and in his night shirt he got into his narrow bed and squeezed h
imself as close to the wall as possible so as to leave room for his father.
But when he woke in the night he was alone in the bed and there was muffled laughter from the bedroom on the other side of the wall. Robin smiled and went back to sleep.
CHAPTER TWO
Jack Black reined in his horse and took in the beauty of the picture in front of him. Sixteen-year-old Mairi McGloughlin was standing on a barrel, her arms stretched above her head towards the kitten that stayed tantalizingly just out of her reach and, every now and again, batted at the outstretched fingers with a soft paw.
Jack stayed looking and appreciating the slim waist, the rounded hips, the swelling breasts against the stuff of her dress. He edged his horse close to the barrel and, reaching up, scooped the kitten from the roof and placed it in her arms. She had been so involved in her battle with her pet that she had not heard him approach and she looked first startled and then pleased.
‘Thank you, Jack. Hello, Bluebell.’ With her free hand Mairi patted the white nose of the old Bay.
‘Let me help you down.’
‘I can manage.’
He moved the horse away so that she had room to jump and she landed on the ground beside him in a flurry of brown skirts and white petticoats.
Colin McGloughlin watched the encounter from the kitchen window and he put down his pipe, stuck his hat on his head and went out. ‘Hello, Jack. You’ll have a message from your father?’
‘No, Colin, for Mairi, and Ian, of course. There’s going to be a dance in the kirk hall next Friday. I thought we could make up a table.’
‘If you can get Ian to go then Mairi can go, but he’s not a lad for the dancing. Prefers to sit under a tree with a book in his hand.’
‘I’ll make him come, Jack,’ said Mairi. ‘Is it just for the young farmers?’
‘Aye. Will you help with the supper? We thought stovies. Edith is in charge but Robin Morrison will be back from the university and so maybe her head won’t be working as well as it normally does.’
Mairi frowned. ‘Is his lordship coming then? You’ll get Ian. He’ll not turn up to dance with your sister but he’ll come to swop poetry with his friend.’
‘Best not tell Edith that. She’s happier thinking the two of them are after her.’
Colin looked at the strong, handsome young man. ‘That’s not a respectful way to talk about your sister, Jack.’
‘Oh, all the lassies like to think they’re driving us wild, Colin. Do you not remember yourself at our age?’
‘I remember myself fine,’ said Colin coldly. ‘Mairi, it’s time there was a meal on the table. Will you join us, Jack?’
‘My mother’s expecting me, and I still have to go to Peesie Acres.’ Jack smiled down at the girl, sure of his looks, his charm, his position as the son of the biggest farmer in the district. ‘You’ll help in the kitchen then, Mairi, and you’ll save the last dance for me.’
‘Oh, I don’t know, Jack Black. I might be up to my elbows in soap suds like I was at the ne’erday dance . . .’
‘Ach, you were only a wee lassie at the New Year . . .’
‘Or I might dance with my brother. Who knows?’
He laughed and turned his horse away. ‘Edith’ll come by to make lists; she’s a grand one for list-making. I’ll see the two of you next Friday.’
Father and daughter watched him ride away.
‘He really fancies himself,’ said Mairi and Colin’s heart lightened. She would not be the only girl in the district to find Jack Black attractive and, although he knew he would have to give her up some day, he was not yet ready. She was too young. He remembered the picture of blossoming womanhood he had seen on the barrel.
‘Don’t let me catch you climbing on barrels again. It’s not ladylike and, also, it’s dangerous.’
‘I couldn’t get the kitten down.’
‘I’m over forty years on a farm, lass. I’ve never yet seen a cat that couldn’t get out of the situation it was in, if it wanted to.’
She tucked her hand into his arm. ‘But I wanted him then, Dad,’ she told him simply. ‘Come on. I’ve got lettuce soup, a trout Ian caught this morning, new potatoes and fresh peas just out of their pods. I hear Mrs Morrison is under the weather. She’s not over the cold she caught in February. That schoolhouse needs money spent on it. It’s damp. Robin’s nose used to run as often as Billy Soutar’s.’
‘Robin Morrison’s nose never ran in its life.’
‘You have an awful respect for education, Dad, if you think that a man is above such things just because he can do the twelve times table faster than anybody else – and, besides, he couldn’t do it faster than me, if I put my mind to it.’
She served the soup and looked at the tureen measuringly. ‘I’ve made an awful lot of this soup. It’ll go off since there’s cream in it. I know,’ she said brightly as if she had just that moment thought of it, ‘I’ll take what Ian won’t eat to Mrs Morrison. That’s the first thing that goes when a woman’s not feeling her best, her wish to cook. They’re probably eating bread and cheese. Who is going to shake off a winter cold eating shop-bought bread?’
If her father thought it strange that she had not expressed concern for their neighbour until she had heard that Mrs Morrison’s son was to be at home, he said nothing.
‘We’re not waiting on your brother then?’
‘He’s shearing. He has some bread and mutton and can get some water from the burn.’
‘Charlie’s with him?’
‘No, he’s taken the extra ewes to the market in Forfar.’
Colin handed her his empty plate for a refill. ‘God help my sheep.’
She looked at him, delicate eyebrows raised. ‘They’re hardly your problem once they’re sold, Dad.’
‘The ones getting clipped by your forgetful brother, I meant.’
Father and daughter laughed for a moment at their memories of some of Ian’s disasters.
‘Dad. You’re not fair to Ian. He’ll do a grand job.’
‘Aye, if he keeps his mind on the cutting and doesn’t wander away thinking on how beautifully the wool grows from the skin or some daftlike nonsense. I don’t want them with funny haircuts.’
Mairi laughed. ‘He didn’t write a poem about sheep sheering, did he?’
Colin watched her deftly bone the trout. ‘Sometimes I think it’s a wee bit of a shame that you’re not a boy, Mairi. I could have let the laddie go to the university. It would have been a big sacrifice but we could have managed and you could have worked the farm.’
‘I can still work the farm, Dad. Charlie promised to teach me to plough since you won’t, and I bet I could clip sheep. I’ve watched you and Charlie often enough.’
‘You’re a wee lassie. You’re not built for hauling sheep around or harnessing yourself to a horse and following a plough. I catch you yoked to a horse and Charlie’ll be at the next hiring fair.’
‘Isn’t this a grand fish,’ she said, ignoring his anger. ‘Ian should have been born to the schoolhouse and Robin Morrison to the farm. He’s better at tattie digging than Ian, and really enjoys getting his hands mucky.’
‘Aye, because he does it once a year to earn a few bob for his schooling. Day and night, summer and winter, mud and snow, is a different thing. You’ll make some farmer a good wife one day.’
‘Jack Black for instance?’
‘You could do worse. His father owns his land and it’s right beside us. You’d be near me and when I’m . . . when Ian is farmer here, you and Jack could keep an eye on him.’
‘What eye I had left from watching Jack,’ said Mairi drily.
Her father looked at her. Jack, like Ian, was the only son of a farmer and so he had been bred up from the time he could walk to work the land. She could not question his ability. What else did she mean? That rumour that had gone around before the New Year that his mother’s kitchen maid had left in tears and disgrace . . .! How would his sheltered Mairi hear such tales? Ian, even if he was
aware of them, would say nothing and Edith would not spread distasteful rumours about her own brother.
‘I was talking about the future, lassie. I’m in no hurry to give you up. Ian would need to marry first.’
‘Is that a fact?’ asked Mairi, laughing. ‘Let me tell you, Father dear, I will marry when I choose and so far I haven’t seen anyone worth the marrying. I’ll away and make you some tea and then I’ll take this soup to poor Mrs Morrison.’
‘What your mother would say if she could hear the cheeky way you have of talking to your father. What a hoyden you would be with a university education.’
‘Mrs Morrison has been to the university.’
‘Aye, and what a waste of good money that was. She didn’t finish and she never worked a day in her life.’
Mairi sighed. ‘That’s the kind of marriage I want, Dad. When you see this man and you know he’s the one for you and nothing else matters. Mind you, she’s helped the Dominie times he’s been ill and no single woman teacher available. That’s been using her education.’
‘Education. The woman can talk to you in Latin and Greek and there’s the Dominie and Robin thin as two rakes because she can’t cook. Do you know what she said to your mother once? “There are more important things in life, Mrs McGloughlin, than recipes for fish.” ’
‘I’ll take some of my scones as well,’ said Mairi.
‘Will I come to meet you, lass?’
‘With it as light as day until two o’clock in the morning? I won’t be long.’
He said nothing when he noticed that she had changed her dress, but instead took the mug she handed him and went to the fireplace and sat down. He did not pick up a book although there were books aplenty in the house. Reading was something Ian did, and, more often than Colin knew, Mairi. He sat and relaxed into his chair. He scarcely looked up when Ian entered.
‘Mairi’s left you some tea, lad. Soup’s in a tin plate keeping warm in the scullery. Clipping done?’
The Crofter's Daughter Page 2
