Читать книгу The Wind that Shakes the Barley - James William Barke - Страница 12

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Robin and Gilbert were sorry that Murdoch was gone: it meant their schooldays were over. It had been a pleasant and often exciting change going down to Alloway, mixing and playing with all their old schoolmates.

But another teacher soon came to see them—Betty Davidson.

She came from beyond Kirkoswald near the coast and tramped up through Maybole and Dalrymple and over the hill track to Mount Oliphant.

Once she had been a fresh bonnie girl, once the sonsy mother of a young family; but her husband had died and her family had married and left her and now she had no home of her own. So she wandered about amongst her family and friends. She was getting old was Betty Davidson, bent and grey haired. But she still had her health and could still cover in a day twenty miles of rough roads on her bare feet.

She came to Mount Oliphant because she knew that Agnes Broun would be good to her as she had always been; kinder to her than any of her good-sons allowed her daughters to be ...

Betty was physically hard as flint, thin as bare bones and string muscles can be thin. In her sharp-featured weather-roughened face flashed pale eyes keen as a hawk’s. But though the world had treated her harshly, Betty remained kindly. Bairns loved her; and bairns love only the kind of heart.

Betty’s culture was a peasant culture. Like Agnes she had no book knowledge—nor had she need for any. Her peasant directness (and cunning) together with her forthright naturalness were all the aids she needed in her journey through life.

So the songs she sang (and she was always singing) were as natural and direct as the love-making of the Scottish peasant. And Agnes for all her Puritan streak found no offence in them since much of her own singing belonged to the same order.

Robin was enchanted with them; and he accepted their sexual bluntness without unease or self-consciousness.

Betty’s mind was stored with all the things Murdoch would have described as superstitious nonsense and William Burns would have dismissed as auld wives’ clash—much the same kind of clash as had so annoyed him when his gable-end had collapsed when Robin was born.

But William was glad to put up with Betty’s blethers. She was a great help to them, not only at the rock and the wheel, carding and spinning, but with much-needed help about the house. William’s humanity would not have turned her away; but he was more than glad she earned her keep.

When their father was busy, the children gathered round the fire and listened to Betty as they had never listened to Murdoch. Her hands deft and nimble with her wheel, she set to her tasks and let her tongue wag at her tales of the supernatural—that rich inexhaustible peasant literature concerning the nature and habits of devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, enchanted towers, dragons and other trumpery. And above all with the fell and unchancy doings of the Devil who, as Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick or Clootie kept up a familiar intercourse with the Scottish peasantry and was not averse on occasion to a visitation upon the gentry themselves.

Robin’s great black eyes danced and glowed with excitement and wild pleasure: sometimes they grew bigger with fear and terror. He didn’t know that Betty was completing the circle of his knowledge, filling in the gaps left by the rationalism of Murdoch. Though Murdoch had not scamped his work Betty built on a much sounder foundation. This foundation was nothing less than the day-to-day life that lay around him—the environmental world whose savour seeped into the very marrow of his bones...

“... oh aye: there were wraiths.”

“Did ye ever see one, auntie?”

“I did that, Robin. I can mind the day as if it were yesterday. My Uncle Patie was drowned off the Kirkoswald shore in a big storm and his body was never found: it must have been washed out to sea. Aye, he was a good man, my Uncle Patie; and his eldest son, my cousin Jock, was gey upset, the puir laddie.”

“Why was he so upset?”

“Because he hadna been able to give his father a decent Christian burial. That’s a gey important thing for a son to see done to his own father... Ah weel, it must have preyed on my Uncle Patie’s mind...

“Some o’ us lassies were coming up from the shore where we had been gathering seaweed for the rigs when I spied my uncle coming over the brae to meet us. Weel, it wasna exactly my Uncle Patie since he was drowned; but you couldna have told the difference...

“Oh, we got a gey fricht. I dropped my creel and ran away into the moss with the other lassies hard on my heels squealing and yelling.

“We didna say anything that nicht: we were that frichtened. But the next nicht the same thing happened at the same time and at the same spot. I tell ye, we never stopped till we were hame and had blurted out the whole story.

“My cousin Jock was sent for and he questioned me back and forward till he got every detail out of me. He said he would come with us on the following nicht and see what happened, for a wraith seldom gives more nor a third appearance.

“And sure enough he came with us the next nicht and sure enough there was his father’s wraith for him to see as plain and as natural as if he had been in the living flesh.

“He bade us go on as if nothing had happened and he would stay behind and talk to him.

“But what they said to each other and what passed atween them is something that will never be kenned.

“But it must have been something terrible, something that he couldna put tongue to.

“My poor cousin Jock went hame to his bed and his hair turned white and by the third day he was dead.”

“Why did he die, auntie?”

“Ah, but that’s what I couldna tell you, Robin: that’s something is buried wi’ him in the grave.”

With this explanation the children had to be content. But Robin’s mind kept on thinking about such things long after Betty had stopped talking.

Not only did he think of the tales Betty told him: he pondered long on the strange words she used—words that seemed older and broader than those used by his mother. The lilt and rhythm of her couthy dialect was music to his ears.

Betty was a born story-teller. She used all the shades and colour of intonation; and across her careworn weather-beaten face every shade of emotion passed in some subtle and expressive way. Robin noticed every feature, watched how the pale eyes flickered and dimmed, sparkled with merriment or softened and dissolved on a salt tear.

And sometimes Betty would sing to them and Gilbert and Nancy would laugh; for she had a quaint croon to her voice and most of her songs were merry ones.

But Robin seldom laughed: his interest was much too deep for outward laughter; but within himself he would bubble with merriment.

And the words and their meaning and the lilt and rhythm that linked them in song embedded themselves in his mind even as they wrought deep emotions in his heart—emotions beyond the plumbing or probing of his intellect.

Sometimes when the children were out working or playing, Betty and Agnes would sit down and have an intimate talk concerning the heart of their problems and difficulties. Betty knew just how much Agnes was devoted to William. He was more than the head of the house; he was more than husband: he was something in the nature of lord and master. Betty was no farmer; but she was peasant enough to see that the Mount would never be a paying proposition—not with William working it himself.

More often they discussed the children. Somehow Betty sensed Robin was not his mother’s favourite. She was surprised at this for to her Robin was by far the most lovable and gifted boy she had ever known. So she was always putting in a word on his behalf.

“Na, na, lass: Gibbie’s a grand laddie and he’ll be a fine son to you. But Robin’s the laddie will surprise you all.”

“Maybe he will, Betty. But if he sticks in and helps his father that will be a’ the surprise any of us want. Don’t think, Betty, that the one means more to me nor the other. They’re both my bairns. But there’s a dour stubborn streak in Robin that’s no’ in Gilbert. Maybe he takes it from his father’s side for he doesna take it from me nor mine.”

“It’s just that the laddie’s deep thinking, Agnes. There’s more in him than in Gilbert; and because it’s deeper in him it’ll maybe take longer to come out. But when it does you’ll see what I mean—or my name’s not Betty Davidson.”

“Weel, I suppose we’ll just need to wait and see, Betty; and them that lives longest will see most.”

“Aye ... but be good to him, Agnes. For if ever a laddie needed kindness that laddie is Robin.

“But for guidsake, Agnes, ye maun get away frae here. I dinna ken what William Burns is thinking on. It’s a dirty bog o’ a hole this: ye’ll never get out o’ the bit.”

“William kens best, Betty; you mauna question that.”

“Oh, he’s a guid man is William: I’ll no’ dispute that. But he’s made a bad choice o’ a farm: couldna hae picked waur.”

“Our luck’ll maybe change yet.”

“Luck’ll never grow crops on thae spritty knowes; an’ there’s mair sap o’ life in my auld paps than there is in thae bog-sodden rigs—and ye ken that as weel as me, Aggie, for ye’re neither blate nor glaikit.”

“Dinna let William hear you talk that way, Betty. Guid kens but his temper’s brittle enough wi’ a’ his cares and worries.”

“Aye: he’s a worrying man William. And an honest upricht man. Aye; but ye can be ower honest, Aggie. And folk that are ower honest never live tae claw an auld pow. Ye ken as weel as I dae how folks live about Kirkoswald... I hae nocht against William Burns; but ye can be ower independent, mind: ye could smuggle a gey pickle o’ stuff awa’ here an’ naebody would ken...”

“Oh, for guidsake dinna talk like that, woman. Gin William heard a breath o’ that he would put you tae the door.”

“Weel maybe; but I’m only saying what ye ken yersel’ ... An’ I dinna like to see that laddie Robin hashin’ out his young guts for nae end or purpose.”