GREY GRANITE (Unabridged) E-Book

Lewis Grassic Gibbon

• Herausgeber: e-artnow
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 393

Beschreibung

This carefully crafted ebook: "GREY GRANITE (Unabridged)" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. Grey Granite belongs to "A Scots Quair Series", one of the greatest works of Scottish literature. This is a story of a young man Ewan and his struggles during the depression era of 1930s. Ewan is forced to become a communist activist due to violence and police brutality. But everything is threatened when the cause becomes bigger than the people around him… "Here the slipper-slide of the pavement took a turn that she knew, leading up to the heights of Windmill Place, and shortly, out of the yellow swath, she saw come shambling the lines of the Steps with their iron hand-rail like a famished snake." (Excerpt) Lewis Grassic Gibbon was the pseudonym of James Leslie Mitchell (1901-1935), a Scottish writer famous for his contribution to the Scottish Renaissance and portrayal of strong female characters.

Leseprobe

Lewis Grassic Gibbon

GREY GRANITE

(Unabridged)

e-artnow, 2016 Contact: [email protected]

ISBN 978-80-268-5327-5

Table of Contents

I. Epidote

II. Sphene

III. Apatite

IV. Zircon

TO

HUGH MACDIARMID

CAUTIONARY NOTE

The 'Duncairn' of this novel was originally 'Dundon.' Unfortunately, several English journals in pre-publication notices of the book described my imaginary city as Dundee, two Scottish sheets identified it with Aberdeen, and at least one American newspaper went considerably astray and stated that it was Edinburgh--faintly disguised.

Instead, it is merely the city which the inhabitants of the Mearns (not foreseeing my requirements in completing my trilogy) have hitherto failed to build.

L. G. G.

I EPIDOTE

Table of Contents

All around her the street walls were dripping in fog as Chris Colquohoun made her way up the Gallowgate, yellow fog that hung tiny veils on her eyelashes, curled wet, and had in her throat the acrid taste of an ancient smoke. Here the slipper-slide of the pavement took a turn that she knew, leading up to the heights of Windmill Place, and shortly, out of the yellow swath, she saw come shambling the lines of the Steps with their iron hand-rail like a famished snake. She put out her hand on that rail, warm, slimy, and paused afore tackling the chave of the climb, breathing deeply, she could hear her heart. The netbagful of groceries on her arm ached--she looked down through wet lashes at the shape of the thing--as though it was the bag that ached, not her arm. . . .

Standing still so breathing that little while she was suddenly aware of the silence below--as though all the shrouded town also stood still, deep-breathing a minute in the curl of the fog--stilling the shamble and grind of the trams, the purr of the buses in the Royal Mile, the clang and swing of the trains in Grand Central, the swish and roll and oily call of the trawlers taking the Forthie's flood--all pausing, folk wiping the fog from their eyes and squinting about them an un-eident minute--

Daft, she said to herself, and began climbing the stairs. Midway their forty steps a lamp came in sight, at last, glistening, it flung a long dirty hand down to help her. Her face came into its touch, it blinked surprised, not expecting that face or head or the glistering bronze coils of hair that crowned them--hair drawn in spiralled pads over each ear, fog-veiled, but shining. Chris halted again here under the lamp, thirty-eight, so she couldn't run up these steps, stiff's an old horse on a Mounth hill-road.

Old at thirty-eight? You'll need a bath-chair at fifty. And at sixty--why, as they'd say in Segget, they'll have carted you off to the creamery!

Panting, she smiled wry under the lamp at the foul tale told of Duncairn crematorium--the foul story that had struck her as funny enough even hearing it after the burning of Robert. . . . Oh, mixed and queer soss that living was, dying, dying slowly a bit of yourself every year, dying long ago with that dim lad, Ewan, dying in the kirk of Segget the time your hand came red from Robert's dead lips--and yet midmost the agonies of those little deaths thinking a foul tale flouting them funny!

Daft as well as decrepit, she told herself, but with a cool kindness, and looked over the Steps at the mirror hung where the stairs swung west, to show small loons the downward perils as they pelted blue hell on a morning to school. She saw a woman who was thirty-eight, looked less, she thought, thirty-five maybe in spite of those little ropes of grey that marred the loops of the coiled bronze hair, the crinkles about the sulky mouth and the eyes that were older than the face. Face thinner and straighter and stranger than once, as though it were shedding mask on mask down to one last reality--the skull, she supposed, that final reality.

Funny she could stand here and face up to that, not feel sick, just faintly surprised! Once it had been dreadful and awful to think of--the horror of forgotten flesh taken from enduring bone, the masks and veils of life away, down to those grim essentials. Now it left her neither sick nor sorry, she found, watching a twinkle in sulky gold eyes above the smooth jut of the wide cheek-bones. Not sad at all, just a silly bit joke of a middle-aged woman with idle thoughts in a pause on the Steps of Windmill Brae.

Below the quiet broke with the scrunch of a tram wheeling down from the lights of Royal Mile to the Saturday quietude of Gallowgate. Chris turned, looked, saw the shiver of sparks through the fog, syne the sailing brute swing topaz in sight, swaying and swearing, with aching feet as it ran for its depot in Alban Street. Its passage seemed to set fire to the fog, a little wind came and blew the mist-ash, and there was Grand Central smoking with trains. And now, through the thinning bouts of the fog, Chris could see the lighted clock of Thomson Tower shine sudden a mile or so away over the tumbled rigs of grey granite.

Nine o'clock.

She lowered the netbag and stretched her arms, saw herself wheel and stretch in the mirror, slim still, long curves, half-nice she half-thought. Her hands came down on the railing and held it, no need to hurry to-night for a change, Ma Cleghorn would have seen to supper for them all--the nine o'clock Gallop to the Guts as she called it. No need to hurry, if only this once in the peace of the ill-tasting fog off the Forthie, in the blessed desertion of the Windmill Steps so few folk used in Duncairn toun. Rest for a minute in the peace of the fog--or nearly a peace, but for its foul smell.

Like the faint, ill odour of that silent place where they'd ta'en Robert's body, six months before--

She'd thought hardly at all what she would do after Robert's funeral that so shocked Segget, she'd carried out all the instructions in the will and gone back with Ewan to the empty Manse, Ewan made her tea and looked after her--cool and efficient, only eighteen, though he acted more like twenty-eight--at odd minutes he acted eighty-two she told him as he brought her the tea in the afternoon stillness of the sitting-room.

He grinned the quick grin that was boy-like enough, and wandered the room a bit, tall and dark, unrestlessly, while she drank the tea. He hated tea himself, with a bairn-like liking for bairny things--milk and oatcakes would have contented Ewan from breakfast to dinner and some more for his supper. Ayont the windows in the waning of the afternoon Chris could see the frozen glister of night on the Grampians, swift and near-moving, Ewan's shoulder and sleekèd dark head against it. . . . Then he turned from the window. Mother, I've got a job.

She'd been sunk in a little drowse of sheer ache, tiredness from the funeral and the day in Duncairn, she woke stupid at his speak and only half-hearing: A job?--who for?

He said Why, for little Ewan Tavendale all by his lone. But you'll have to sign the papers first.

--But it's daft, Ewan, you haven't finished college yet, and then there's the university!

He shook the sleekèd head: Not for me. I'm tired of college and I'm not going to live off you.And thought for a minute and added with calm sense, Especially as you haven't much to live off.

So that was that and he fetched the papers, Chris sat and read the dreich things appalled, papers of apprenticeship for four years to the firm of Gowans and Cloag in Duncairn. Smelters and steel manufacturers--But, Ewan, you'd go daft in a job like that.

He said he'd try not to, awfully hard, especially as it was the best job he could come by--and I can come out in week-ends and see you quite often. Duncairn's only a twenty miles off.

--And where do you think I am going to bide?

He looked at her curiously with cool, remote eyes, black didn't suit him, hair and skin over dark. Eh? Oh, here in Segget, aren't you? You used to like it before Robert died.

Sense the way he would speak of Robert, not heartlessly, just with indifference, as much as to say what did it matter, would a godly snuffling help Robert now? But a queer curiosity moved Chris to ask Does anything ever matter to you at all, Ewan?

Oh, lots. Where you're going to stay, for one thing, when I've gone.

He'd slipped out of that well, Chris thought with a twinkle, sitting in the deep armchair on her heels, her head down bent, he ran his finger along the curve of her neck, coolly, with liking, as she looked up at last:

I'm coming to bide with you in Duncairn.

When they'd sold the furniture and paid off the debts there was barely a hundred and fifty pounds left, Segget took the matter through hand at the Arms, the news got about though both Chris and Ewan had been secret about it and never let on. But Segget would overhear what you said though you whispered the thing at the dead of night ten miles from a living soul in the hills. And it fair enjoyed itself at the news, God man! that was a right dight in the face for that sulky, stuck-up bitch at the Manse, her with her braw clothes and her proud-like ways, never greeting when her man died there in the pulpit, just as cool as though the childe were a load of swedes, not greeting even, or so 'twas said, when they burned the corp in there in Duncairn. And such a like funeral to give a minister, burning the man in a creamery!

And the Segget Provost, Hairy Hogg the sutor, said the thing was a judgment on the coarse brutes both, he never spoke ill of the dead, not him, but what had his forefather, the poet Burns, said?--

Ake Ogilvie the joiner was having a dram and he sneered real coarse: You and your Burns! The gawpus blethered a lot of stite afore they shovelled him into the earth and sent all the worms for a mile around as drunk as tinks at Paddy Fair. But I'm damned if he'd ever a tongue like yours. What ill did Robert Colquohoun ever do you--or his mistress either, I'd like to know, except to treat you as a human being?--B'God, they showed themselves soft enough there!

Alec the Provost's son was in having a nip, he wanted to fight Ake Ogilvie for that, the coarse Bulgar of a joiner to curse that way at a poor old devil like the Provost his father. But the wife of the hotel-keeper was back of the bar, folk called her the Blaster and Blasphemer for short, she was awful against a bit curse now and then: and she nipped Alec short as a new-libbed calf. None of your cursings in here, she cried, I won't have the Lord's name taken in vain. Alec habbered he'd nothing against the Lord, it wasn't Him he'd called a Bulgar, but the other one--and got in a soss, fairly upset at the Blaster's glower. Folk thought her an interfering old runt, ay God! she'd find her custom go.

So the most in the bar took a taik to the door with their drams in their hands and sat on the steps and looked at the sky, evening in Spring, bonny the hills, the seven o'clock dirling down Segget High Brig, peesies out on the long flat field that went mounting up to the bend of the hills. You minded Colquohoun, how he'd haunt those hills, the temples of God the creature would call them, him that died in the pulpit preaching a sermon--fair heathen it was, ay a judgment of God. And now this slip of a wife of his had less than a two hundred pounds to her name, living up there in one room, folk said, all by her lone now that her loon, Ewan (ay, a son by her first bit man) had gone to work in Duncairn toun. It just showed you what happened to proud-like dirt, she'd intended the loon for an education and a braw-like life in a pulpit, maybe, nothing to do but habber and haver and glower over a collar on back to front: and instead he'd be just a common working chap.

Ake Ogilvie had new come out and heard that last speak of wee Peter Peat's. Well, God, YOU'RE common enough, he said, though it's damn little work you ever manage. And then he went swaggering across the Square, past the statue of the War Memorial Angel, a trig-like lassie with a pair of fine hips, and spat at it, coarse-like, fair a tink Ake, aye sticking up for the working men, you were maybe a working man yourself, but were hardly such a fool as stick up for the brutes.

Syne Feet the Policeman came dandering along, he was due to leave for a job in Duncairn, folk cried out Ay, Mr. Leslie, fine night, respectful-like, for he'd fair got on. And he stuck his thumbs in his belt and said Ay, majestic-like, like a steer with the staggers, and squashed out his great feet and looked up at the Angel as though to speir where she'd mislaid her stays.

Syne folk saw that he gotten his sergeant's stripes, he'd come out to give the bit things an air; and he said he was off to Duncairn in a week, he'd been kind of put in charge of the toun, you learned, him and some other skilly childes, or at least in a bit that they called Footforthie where the factories were and a lot of tink workers, low brutes, or they hadn't a meck to their name and lived off the Broo and Ramsay MacDonald, draining the country and Ramsay dry. But did that content them?--No, faith it didn't, they were aye on the riot about something or other, stirred up by those ill-ta'en Bulgars, the Socialists. . . . Feet said that he'd use a firm hand, by God you thought if he used his feet there wouldn't be a Socialist left in Duncairn that didn't look like an accident with a rhubarb tart. God, how the meikle-houghed devil could blow!

Folk ganted a bit and began to taik off, but halted at the hint of a tasty bit news, and cried No, man? and came tearing back. What's that? God is here! and Feet swelled out his chest and started to tell his tale over again.

And the gist of the thing when you got to the bree was that Sergeant Sim Leslie had been in Duncairn, on business, like, that very forenoon--colloguing with the other heads of the Police and learning the work that he'd have to take on. Well, he'd finished the business and looked out for lodgings, awful expensive up in Duncairn you needed a fine salary, same as he had. The second bit place that he keeked intil was a boarding-house on Windmill Brae, fell swell it looked, a braw bit house on the high hill that rises over Duncairn. But the terms were hardly as much as he'd feared, and he clinched for a room with the mistress o't, a meikle bit woman, Cleghorn the name.

Well, they had a bit crack when he'd ta'en the room and she told to Feet, fair newsy-like, she'd had the place all decorated of late at an awful expense she couldn't have afforded but that she had advertised for a partner with a bit of silver to lay down as deposit, and syne help as a maid attending the lodgers. Feet had said Ay? and Well, that's right fine, not caring a damn one way or the other till she mentioned the new bit partner's name.

But when he heard THAT Feet fairly sat up, as every soul did now in front of the Arms: Mrs. Colquohoun? Where might she come from? And the Cleghorn body had said From Segget. Her man was a minister-creature there, though I'm damned if she looks it, a fleet trig woman that could muck a byre more ready any day than snuffle a psalm. At that poor Feet was took sore aback, he never could stick the proud bitch at the Manse; but he'd made a deposit for the lodgings already and couldn't well ask for the silver back. So off he'd come home and got ready to pack--and faith, did you ever hear the like of that?

Afore night was out all Segget had heard, and half of the Mearns afore the next day, postmen ran for miles over parks with the news, old Hogg hammered four soles on the same pair of boots he was in such a fash to give the tale out. And when Mrs. Colquohoun went down to the station, straight and cool, with her trig-like back, her hair coiled over each lug, fair daft, some thought it bonny, you were damned if you did--the half of Segget was keeking from its windows, and wondering about her, how she'd get on, what was she thinking, what was she wearing, had she had a bath on the previous night, did she ever think of a man to sleep with, how much did she measure around the hips, could she greet if she liked, what was her temper, how much of the hundred and fifty was left, was that loon of hers, Ewan, as dour as he looked, would he land in jail or would he get on?

At half-past five the clock would go birr! in the narrow long room you had ta'en for yourself, you'd wake with a start and find yourself sprawled in weariness right across the great bed, dark the guff of the early Spring, no cheep of birds here on Windmill Brae, clatter of the clock as it started again with a hoast and a rasp; and you'd reach for the thing and switch it off and lie still a minute, hands under your neck in the pad of your hair, fingers rough-seamed and scraping your skin. And you'd stretch out under the bedclothes, long, till your muscles all creaked, legs, hips and ribs, blessedly, you'd still a passable figure.

Syne you'd throw off the blankets and get from the bed, the floorcloth cold as a Christian's heart under the naked soles of your feet--off with your nightie and stretch again and look from the window at the coming of dawn, lacing its boots and grabbing its muffler and pelting across the roofs of Duncairn. In a hurry the same you'd wriggle in your vest, stockings and knickers, slip on your dress, getting warm already in spite of the floor and the frozen gleam of grey granite outside. And you'd open the door and go down the stairs, quick, and looping back your hair, to the cold prison walls of the kitchen, smelly, fling open the window, in rushed the air and a smell of cats you could cut with a knife. At first that smell had made you near sick, even Jock the house-cat, a clean beast enough, but you'd no time for such luxuries as sickness now-a-days, lighting the gas, the kitchen range, your hands swift on kettles and frying-pans, eyes on the clock and ears wide open for the first stir if life in the morning's morgue.

At six you were up at Ma Cleghorn's room with a cup of tea and a knock at her door and go in and draw back the window-curtains, let up the blinds, bang! She'd wake up and groan, Is't you, Chris lass? Losh, you spoil me, just, she meant the tea, and you'd say Oh, havers, she spoke Duncairn and you'd got the same gait. And Ma Cleghorn would give another bit groan and drink up the tea and loup from the bed, swack as you like, an old woman only a minute afore but filled now with tea and a fury to work, The Bulgars'll soon be on the howl for their meat. Whatever made me take to the keeping of lodgings?

You'd say A BOARDING-HOUSE, please, Mrs. Cleghorn, one of the jokes that the two of you shared, Ma'd give a great snifter through her meikle nose: Boarding? B'God, it's leathering they want. And I haven't a pair of bloomers to my name that's no darned so a body can hardly sit down. I've a fair bit padding of my own to ease it, you haven't, get out of the damn trade, lass, afore you're like me and take to bloomers instead of them frilly things you wear--God be here, they'll kill you yet dead with cold. Aren't your legs frozen?

You'd say Not them; fine legs, and Ma struggling into her blouse would say You're no blate. Who told you they're fine? And you'd say Oh, men, and she'd nod to that, great red face topped with greying hair like the face of a war-horse out of Isaiah (as you'd once thought, minding back through the months to Robert's reading from the Bible in Segget).--Ay, no doubt, they had, and enjoyed them fine. And would again if you gave them the chance.

Syne you'd to tear to the kitchen again, in time for the ring from Miss Murgatroyd's room, dying for her tea the poor old wretch, solemn you'd carry it up to her room, the best in the house, three guineas a week. She'd quaver out of a lace nightcap: Is that you, Mrs. Colquohoun? And you have my tea? Oh, that's Such Fine, she was awful genteel, poor spinster body with her pensions and potterings, not a soul in the world hers and respectable down to her shrivelled toes, wabbling hands and meek quiet eyes, Episcopalian, serving tea for the whist drives up at the Unionist Club. . . .

And Ma Cleghorn, watching her taik down the street, would ask who in God's name would be an old maid? She'd often used to think when her Jim was alive and would come back from the Fish MARKET stinking so bad that his shirts hung out on a washing day would bring the cats scraiching for miles around--she'd used often to think I wish I were single, trig on my own, not handled, not kenned, with nobody's seed ever laid in me! But losh, when he died she had minded him sore, night on night and would fain have had him again though he smelt like a kipper mislaid in a drain when he'd cuddle you, feuch! They were sosses, were men, but you'd only to look at the Murgatroyd creature to make you mad to go tearing out and grab the first soss that you met in breeks--Half-past six, Chris; will you waken your Ewan?

He slept in one of the TWO ROOMS of the upper floor, the other empty, his window looked down on the glare of Footforthie at night that changed to a sick yellow furnace-glow, unstill, staining the sky on the morning's edge. You'd wanted him to change to another room, and he'd asked you why and you'd told him he'd surely get sick of it--working down there all day and seeing it all night. But he'd shaken his shapely, sleekèd head, no fancies or flim-flams with Ewan at all: It'll neither wake me nor send me to sleep. Only a light in the sky, you know, Chris.--So you'd turn the handle of his door and go in and meet the sting of the sea-wind there, the window wide open, the curtains flowing. Ewan dim in the light of the early dawn, lying so still, so still he slept that near every morning you'd be startled the same, feared that he lay there dead, so quiet, you'd shake his shoulder and see as you bent the blankets he'd thrust away from himself pyjamas open wide to the waist, curling dark down on a boy's breast.

Strange to think that this was your Ewan, once yours, and so close, so tiny, so small and weak, sexless, a baby that had grown a body tall as your own, slimmer, stronger, secret and strange, blossom and fruit from that seed of yours. . . . In a queer pity you'd look and shake him awake:Ewan, time you were up!

He'd start awake quietly, at once, like a cat, and look at you with those deep, cool eyes, neither grey nor green, grey granite eyes. All right. Thanks. No, I don't want tea. I'll get an apple for myself, mother. MOTHER! I said I'd get it for myself! And he'd be out of bed and have reached the dish and caught an apple afore you got near. You've enough to do without waiting on me.

--But I like waiting on you. Wouldn't you wait on me?

--I suppose so, if you were sick or insane. What's the time? And lean out half-naked from the window ledge to peer over Duncairn to Thomson Tower. Splendid. I've time for a dip in the Forthie.

He'd be out of the house as you gained the kitchen, an uproar by then of banging pans, Ma Cleghorn cooking porridge and bacon and sausages and coffee and cocoa and tea, and swearing out loud at the young maid, Meg, who slept at her home away down in the Cowgate and was supposed to come up each morning at seven. Call that seven?--Then you're blind as well's sweir. Stack up the range and be nippy about it. Mrs. Colquohoun, will you lay the table?

You were aye Mrs. Colquohoun when Meg was about, Ma Cleghorn treating you distant, polite, for the sake of discipline, so she said. You'd gathered the way of setting the table in the big ben room so quick your eyes hardly followed your fingers, porridge plates for Sim Leslie (who'd come from Segget where they'd called him Feet) and Mr. George Piddle, the Runner reporter, thin and he-he'ing, minus his hair so that he could go bald-headed for news. Bacon for Miss Murgatroyd and Mr. Neil Quaritch: Mr. Quaritch worked on the Runner as well, a subeditor creature, aye reading books and sloshing them to death in the Runner next day. But you rather liked the wee ferret man, red eyes and red hair and a red nose as well, and a straggle of beard on an unhappy chin, Ewan said he'd gone sozzled with reading rot rather than with knocking back gills of Glenlivet. . . .

Mixed grill for Miss Ena Lyon, the typist, powdered and lip-sticked, and awful up-to-date, baggy a bittie below the eyes and a voice like a harried peahen, poor lass. Porridge for young Mr. Clearmont, nice loon who went to the University and was awful keen on music and jokes, you could never make head nor tail of either as he always guffawed out, young and hearty, right at the point--if there was a point. Ma Cleghorn didn't think much of him, she said if ever he'd a thought in his head it'd be easy to tell it, you'd hear the damn thing rattling about like a stone in a tin. But she was jealous a bit, you thought, of the lad's university and books and book-learning. . . . Bacon for young John Cushnie, all red, the clerk in Raggie Robertson's Drapery Depot, half-sulky, half-shy and would spend half an hour roping up his neck in a speckled tie, he shared Archie Clearmont's room but nought else. . . . Eight o'clock and you hit the gong, breakfast all ready set on the table.

And down they'd all pour and sit in about, Miss Murgatroyd sitting neat as a pin, Such Fine, and eating her grapefruit up like a sparrow pecking at a bit of dung (you laughed: but you sometimes wished that Ma wouldn't say those things about folks so often: the picture stuck, true or untrue, and you never saw them in real likeness again); Sergeant Sim Leslie supping his porridge and goggling at you over his collar; Ewan eating quick, clean and indifferent, lost in his thoughts or else in a book, all squiggly lines and figures and drawings; Miss Ena Lyon, complete with complexion, eating her bacon and talking to Clearmont, he'd been to a concert the night before and Miss Lyon was saying she liked music as well--just loved a talkie with a Catchy Choon.

Poor Mr. Piddle with his long thin neck and his long thin head, as bald as a neep and something the shape, would snap up his meat in a haste to be gone in search of news for the Daily Runner, a fine big paper, the pride of Duncairn, and awful useful for lining your shelves; Cushnie, red-eared and trying to speak English, would call out above the folds of his tie Will ye pass the cruet? I'm in a gey hurry. Me and Mr. Robertson have the Spring Sale on; and Mr. Neil Quaritch would push down his cup, May I have another, Mrs. Colquohoun? he'd left his breakfast untasted as usual.

And Ma Cleghorn would sit at the top of the table, her big red face set square on its neck, sonsy and sturdy, you'd liked her from the first, she you, you supposed you'd neither of you frills, you'd seen over much of this queer thing Life to try hide from its face by covering your own with a ready-made complexion out of a jar, or ready-made morals from the Unionist Club, or ready-made fear and excitement and thrill out of the pages of the Daily Runner. . . . And you'd sit and stare at your own porridge plate till Ma would call out: Will you fill the cups?

By ten the lot would have clattered away, on trams and buses, on foot and a-run, tripping along like a sparrow, Miss Murgatroyd, Mr. Piddle whirring away on his bike like a snake going pelting back to the Zoo, Miss Ena Lyon with her heels so high that her shoulders drooped and her bottom stuck out, quite up-to-date, Ewan in dungarees, no hat, books under his arm, black hair almost blue, shinning down the Steps of Windmill Brae two at a time, hands in his pouches. . . . And they left the real work of the house to begin.

You and Ma Cleghorn couldn't run to more help than Meg for the washing-up in the kitchen, Ma took the first floor with the dining-room and sitting-room and swept them and dusted them and tore up the rugs and went out to the back and hung them on the line and thrashed them to death in a shower of stour. You had the bedrooms, Ma'd asked if you'd mind--Some of them stink like a polecat's den. You'd said you didn't care, we all stank sometimes. And Ma had nodded,Fegs, and that's true. But fancy you being willing to let on--you that was wed to a minister body!

You'd mind that speak as you redded the rooms, gathered the mats and pulled wide the curtains, opened the windows and made the beds, swept out and polished each of the rooms, emptied the slops and carried down washing, and cleared the bathroom of razor blades and bits of paper stuck with shaving-soap hair, other things that Miss Murgatroyd would half-hide, so would Miss Lyon in a different way. . . . Wife to a minister--wife to Robert: it faded away in the stour of the days though only last Spring you had been in Segget, had slept beside him in those chill hours that had come trailing down a blanket of dark to cut you off one from the other, Robert sleeping sound while you woke and heard the wail of sleet from the Grampian haughs.

All ended, put by, Robert himself no more than a name, you'd loved him so deep that the day he died something had broken in you, not in your heart, it didn't break there, something in your belly went numb, still, and stayed so . . . but the queerness of things! You could hardly mind now the shape of his face--his eyes, were they grey or blue?--Oh God! . . . And you'd sometimes stop and feel sick to think how quickly even your memories went, as though you stood naked in an endless storm shrilling about you, wisp by wisp your garments went till at last you'd stand to all uncovered--love, pity, desire, hope, hate put by under the sail of the endless clouds over Cloud Howe, the Howe of the World--

Then you'd shake yourself to sense, get down with pail of water and a scrubbing-brush, scrub and scrub till your fingernails, so smooth and round-shaped in your years at Segget, come jagged again, hacks in your fingers that caught the blankets as you turned in unease of a night and sent a shrill stream of pain up your hands. Queer to work again in such fashion, use all your body till you ached dead tired, by the time you'd finished the upper floor your hips were filled with a stinging and shooting, like a bees' byke with bees, bad as having a baby, sweat in runnels either side your nose--you felt like a greasy dish-clout, just, ready to be wrung and hung out to dry. And when you got down to the kitchen at last Ma Cleghorn would skeugh at you over her specs, Fegs, lass, you take well with a slammock of work. Like a cup of tea?--Here, gi'me the basses, I'll take them out while you sit down a minute. You'd say I'll shake them myself, I'm fine, and she'd look at you grim, It's your funeral, then. But die where it's easy to spread out the corp.

A blessed minute that when you'd gotten back, though, sat down to drink the strong tea Ma made, hot, steaming and thick, Ma drinking another cup the other side of the table, Meg pleitering still at the kitchen sink. You felt all revived, throat, belly and--better not further. (Miss Murgatroyd you were sure never went further, Ma Cleghorn on the contrary seldom went higher.) You'd see yourself as you sat and drank, your head and hair and face and breast in the kitchen mirror over the range, flushed face, not pretty, it was never that, sulky eyes and the mouth men had liked well enough in your time--long ago, afore you grew old and took to scrubbing! . . . And you'd finish your tea and loup to your feet and be gone to finish the rest of the ploy, and be back in the kitchen to lend Ma a hand to plan out the dinner for those that came home--Mr. Clearmont from the University, Ewan seldom, Mr. Piddle sometimes, Mr. Quaritch and Miss Ena Lyon never, John Cushnie when Raggie's rag Sales would allow, Sergeant Sim Leslie sure as the clock.

Ma had a great cookery-book of her own, made up of recipes cut out of the papers, daft ones and good ones and plain damn silly ones, Ma'd say What stomachs some folk must have to eat the dirt that the papers say! But she cooked well enough, passable yourself, Jock the cat would sit and purr under the red-hot glow of the range, half-roasted the brute had been since his birth, and liked it; Ma said he'd enjoy hell. And she'd lift him aside with a meikle great foot, impatient-like, and he'd purr all the time, while the foot was under him, while he sailed through the air, while he landed with a thump out under the sink. And Meg would give a bit scraich of fear, and maybe drop a plate, inviting death.

In the first few days you'd been sorry for the lass, Ma Cleghorn treated her worse than dirt, bullying her, sneering at her, upbraiding God for making such a trauchle to pest decent folk. Syne you saw that Meg, thin, schlimpèd and pert, wasn't feared a wee bit, sleekèd and sly with a sideways glint in her eyes at Ma, taking her in and her measure unfeared. And Ma that could skin a body alive with her tongue and hang out the hide in the sun to dry wouldn't send Meg out on a message if it rained, heaped her plate with great helpings of dinner, and when she saw the bit maid over-trauchled with a job would swear at her and go tearing to help. . . .

So you didn't interfere but got on with your own work, plenty of that--how you'd ached at first afore dinner-time, hungry as you'd never been in the manse: genteel appetite going with all else, walking now with a quick and a hasting step not the long lope that had once been yours, face altering as well from the drowsy mask that had come on you under the yew-trees of Segget--waiting, half-asleep, sitting deep in a chair, for Maidie to bring tea out on the lawn, the peesies flying over Segget blue in smoke, smoke in sun smother, long ago; and Robert coming striding across the lawn, whistling--and you looked, and he hadn't a face--

And once Ma came on you as you stood and wept, tearless, sobbing dry-eyed, and stared and knew, shook you and hugged you tight, it hurt: Don't greet, nothing's worth it, not a damn thing, no man that ever yet was, Chris! You'd stopped from that daft carry-on at once, shamed of yourself, bothering Ma, weeping like a fool over something as common as kale, losh, weren't there thousands of widows in the world worse off than you and not snivelling like bairns? And you'd shaken Ma off, gentle as you could: I know, I'm just giving myself a pet. My father would have said it was salts I needed.

Dinner and the feeding of all the faces, funny to think a face was mainly for that; and then out shopping for the morn's meat. You went down Windmill Steps in the blue Spring air, the grey granite walls rising about you, if the day was clear you'd see below Duncairn spread as a map for show, far off, north-east, the sheen of the Beach beyond the rolling green of the Lings, Footforthie a smother of smoke ayont the Docks, the Fish Market and the trawlers' rig, the Forthie gleaming grey under its brigs. Cleaving the jumble of warrens and wynds went Royal Mile like a south-driven sword, to the left the new biggings of Ecclesgriegs, Town Hall and courts and Thomson Tower, the Tangleha' trees that hid the University, the gentry's quarters, genteel Craigneuks--to the right in jumbles around Grand Central the Cowgate and Gallowgate, Paldy Parish, and far off in the west beyond Footforthie the fishers' wee toun, called Kirriebem.

You waited a tram by the Windmill Steps, it came showding and banging up from the Station, green like a garden slug, in you got, and sat down and closed your eyes and thought hard, the things you'd to order, where you'd best get them. Fish, beef, eggs, butter, go swear at the grocer, the laundry hadn't sent back those sheets, Ma Cleghorn wanted the chimney-sweep, you needed a new frock and must bear with the need. . . . Out into Royal Mile you stepped--there on his stance, unmoving, King Edward, bald as a turkey and with much the same face, ready to gobble from a ton of grey granite. In the seats round the plinth the unemployed, aye plenty of them, yawning and wearied with their flat-soled boots and their half-shaved faces, they'd cry their bit bars as they stared at the stir, or chirp a bit filth to a passing quean, sometimes though seldom they did it to you. You didn't much mind, were you wearied yourself and half-fed, you thought, with nothing to do, you'd do worse than chirp.

Only once had that worse ever happened to you, you'd run down the steps from the Mile to the lane that led to the Gallowgate's guff one evening, to a dairy there that sold good eggs. Day above, but already half-dark in that place, nobody about as you hurried along, or so you thought till you sighted the man. He'd been leaning in the doorway of an empty warehouse, heard you coming and looked up and down: and as you came near he got in your way. I'm starving, wifie. Gi'me a tanner.

His face was thin and dirty and brown, he'd no shirt, his jacket pinned over his breast, smelt awful, great knuckled hands, should you scream? And then you'd known that that would be daft, you'd said All right, though I haven't one to spare. And you'd opened your bag, heart thumping as you did it, what if he grabbed and made off with the lot? But he didn't, stood waiting, face red with shame. You'd found him the sixpence, handed it over, he'd nodded, no thanks, and looked away. And you'd hurried on down the lane to the dairy, suddenly trembling and your lips grown wet.

You'd get back to tea with the netbag full, have a first cup ere the others came, Archie Clearmont first, banging up the stairs, he'd meet you and smile, 'Lo, Mrs. Colquohoun. That's a nice frock. You'd tease him and say There's a nice woman in it, and he'd blush, boy-clear, I know that as well. If only Ewan were as simple as he! . . . Mr. Piddle tearing in from his office, all in a fash to be off to the Station and catch the 6.30 bound for Dunedin. Not that he'd catch the train himself, he'd send off the latest news of Duncairn and make a bit extra salary, he-he! from the linage the Tory Pictman would print. . . . Miss Ena Lyon trailing in half-dead from the work in her office, half the rouge gone, the other half sprinkled about like a rash, she'd drawl on the Awful Rush in the firm, and the Boss no more than a Vulgar Keelie. . . . Ewan at last black-streaked, black-haired, as cool and composed from Gowans and Gloag's as he'd been when haunting the hills of the Howe seeking the flints of the ancient men.

More clearing away, more tidying-up, getting ready supper, eating it, clearing it--you might almost have hated the sight of food with the number of times you messed the stuff. But you didn't: instead, you were hungry all day, ate a large supper at nine o'clock found work nearly done and yawned a bit, and sat listening to Ma's radio in the sitting-room, a deserted place most nights but for you. And you'd listen to talks on ethics and cocktails and how to go hiking on the Côte d'Azur, minding the baby, copulation in catkins, and the views of Jacob P. Hackenschmidt on Scotland and Her Ancient Nationhood; and you'd switch the thing off, lost, that was better, worth paying a licence to keep the thing quiet, drowse instead and think of the countryside, corn coming green in clay parks this night as often you'd seen it when you were a quean, wedded to Ewan in Kinraddie long syne--you that waited the feet of another Ewan now.

In Paldy Parish as the June came in there came a wave of heat with the month, it lifted the guffs from the half-choked drains and flung them in under the broken doors down through the courts to simmer and stew, a body could hardly bear the touch of his sark as he lay in bed by his wife of a night, the weans would whimper and move and scratch on the shakedown over under the window--stewing in the front of a half-open furnace. And a man would get up in a Paldy tenement and go along the passage to the W.C., blasted thing crowded, served a score of folk, not decent, by God what a country to live in. On the Broo since the War and five kids to keep, eating off your head--och, why did you live?--never a minute of quiet to yourself, nothing but the girnings of the wife for more silver, the kids half-barefoot, half-fed, oh hell.

And the wife would turn as she heard him come back, lie wakeful and think on the morn's morning--what to give the weans, what to give the man, fed he must be ere he took the streets to look for that weary job he'd not find--he'd never find one you had come to ken. Hardly believe it was him you had wed, that had been a gey bit spark in his time, hearty and bonny, liked you well: and had hit you last night, the bloody brute coming drunk from the pub--a woman couldn't go and hide in booze, forget all the soss and pleither, oh no, she'd to go on till she dropped, weans scraiching, getting thin and like tinks, and the awful words they picked up every place, the eldest loon a street-corner keelie, the quean--oh God, it made a body sick.

And the quean would turn by the side of her sisters, see the faint glow of the dawn, smell the reek of the Paldy heat--would she never get out of it, get a job, get away, have clothes, some fun? If they couldn't afford to bring up their weans decent why did father and mother have them? and syne nag and nag at you day on day, on this and that, the way that you walked, the way you behaved (take care that the loons don't touch your legs), the way that you spoke--nothing pleased the old fools, and what you brought home they thought should be theirs, every meck that you made, nothing for yourself, stew in the reek of the Cowgate's drains till you died and were buried and stank to match. My God, if a lassie couldn't do anything else she could take a bit walk out to Doughty Park, fine there, though the place was littered with Reds, fair daft, the Communionists the worst of the lot, aye holding their meetings and scraiching and bawling that the workers all join up with their unions and fight for their rights and down with the gents.

But no decent lassies would listen to them, for they knew the Communionists were awful tinks who wanted to break up the home.

Every day as the Cowgate stirred Meg was up at the cheep of dawn, seeing to young Jessie and Geordie for school, getting ready breakfast, snapping back at Mother, Father the old devil lying snoozing in bed, he didn't go down to the Docks till ten. He swore he could hardly get a wink of sleep because of the old trawl-skipper next door, awful religious and fond of a nip, who thrashed his old wife near every night, singing out hymn-tunes like hell the while. If other folk could sleep through the old skipper's roar of Rock of Ages, cleft for me as he cleft his old woman under a bed, why couldn't Father sleep as well?

Alick, Meg's brother, would get into his clothes, grumbling as usual when he'd only porridge. He was barely Meg's age, an apprentice-lad down at Gowans and Gloag's in Footforthie. That might have been fine, the beginnings of a job, but when his apprenticeship was up--well, everybody kenned what happened to apprentices. They were sacked right off when they needed men's wages, and Alick like others would be chucked on the Broo.

Alick said this morning when Meg sneered that, Ay, maybe to me the same as the others, but not to the dirty college lads. And he said that Gowans took college pups now, with a special apprenticeship, easy as winking, they served the first six months at the Furnace, same as the others, but what happened to them then? They squatted their dowps in office jobs, and put on clean collars and gave out their orders, bloody toffs, though no better than you or me. There'd been two of them in the last two years, training as managers, they