up you would hear the hills quake, Robert would raise up his head and laugh, the twinkle-scowl in his deep-set eyes—The feet of the Lord on the hills, Christine!
Ewan would look up, staring and still, Who’s the Lord? and Robert would drop his great book and stare in the fire, That’s a tough one, Ewan. But He’s Something and sure, our Father and Mother, our End and Beginning.
Ewan’s eyes would open wider at that, My mother’s here and my father’s dead. Robert would laugh and upset his chair, A natural sceptic—come out of that chair, there’s over many of your kind already squatting their hams in the thrones of the mighty!
So the two of them would crawl round the floor and would growl, play tigers and beasts of like gurring breeds, Ewan with his coolness and graveness forgot, Robert worse than a bairn, Chris sitting and watching, a book in her hand or darning or knitting, but not often those. Robert got angered when she sat and darned. What, waste your life when you’ll soon be dead? You’re not going to slave for me, my girl! And she’d say But you won’t like holes in your socks? and he’d laugh When they’re holed we’ll buy a new pair. Come out for a tramp, the storm’s gone down.
And out they would tramp, young Ewan in bed, the night black under their feet as cold pitch, about them the whistle and moan of the trees till they cleared the Manse and went up by the Mains, with the smell of the dung from its hot cattle-court, and the smell of the burning wood in its lums. You’d see and hear little about you by then, just the two of you swinging up the hill in the dark, till the blow of the wind would catch in your throats as you gained by the cambered edge of the brae.
Around them, dry, the whistle of the whins, strange shapes that rose and were lost in the dark, Robert would stop and would fuss at her collar, pretending he did it to keep out the cold. But she’d grown to know him, the thing that he’d want, she’d put up her arms round close by his throat, and hug him, half-shy, she was still half-shy. He’d told her that once and Chris had been vexed, lying in his arms, for a sudden moment she had touched him with lips fierce and sudden with a flame that came up out of her heart, up out of the years when she still was unwed: and he’d gasped, and she’d laughed Do you call that shy? Then she’d been half-ashamed and yet glad as well, and fell fast asleep till the morning came, and they both woke up and looked at each other, and he said that she blushed and she hid her face and said that one or the other was a fool.
But best she minded of those night-time walks the first that took them up to the hills, a rousting night in December’s close. They came at last on Blawearie’s brae, and panting, looked down on the windy Mearns, the lights of Bervie a lowe in the east, the Laurencekirk gleams like a scattering of faggots, Segget’s that shone as the blurring of stars, these were the lights of the jute mills there. So they stood a long while and looked down the brae, Kinraddie below them happed in its sleep; and Robert fell into a dreaming muse, as he often did, with his mind far off. Chris said nothing, content though she froze, after one peek at his stillness beside her. Queer with him here on Blawearie brae, that once was hers, if they walked down over that shoulder there they’d come to the loch and the Standing Stones to which she had fled for safety, compassion, so often and oft when she was a quean….
She could smell the winter smell of the land and the sheep they pastured now on Blawearie, in the parks that once came rich with corn that Ewan had sown and they both had reaped, where the horses had pastured, their kye and their stock. And she minded the nights in the years of the War, nights such as this when she’d lain in her bed and thought of the times that would come yet again—Ewan come back and things as before, how they’d work for young Ewan and grow old together, and buy Blawearie and be happy forever. And now she stood by a stranger’s side, she slept in his bed, he loved her, she him, nearer to his mind than ever she had been to that of the body that lay mouldering in France, quiet and unmoving that had moved to her kisses, that had stirred and been glad in her arms, in her sight, that had known the stinging of rain in his face as he ploughed the steep rigs of Blawearie brae, and come striding from his work with that smile on his face, and his clumsy hands and his tongue that was shy of the things that his eyes could whisper so blithe. Dead, still and quiet, not even a body, powder and dust he with whom she had planned her life and her days in the times to be.
In a ten years time what things might have been? She might stand on this hill, she might rot in a grave, it would matter nothing, the world would go on, young Ewan dead as his father was dead, or hither and borne, far from Kinraddie: oh, once she had seen in these parks, she remembered, the truth, and the only truth that there was, that only the sky and the seasons endured, slow in their change, the cry of the rain, the whistle of the whins on a winter night under the sailing edge of the moon—
And suddenly, daft-like, she found herself weep, quiet, she thought that she made no noise, but Robert knew, and his arm came round her.
It was Ewan? Oh, Chris, he won’t grudge you me!
Ewan? It was Time himself she had seen, haunting their tracks with unstaying feet.
BUT THE SPRING was coming. You looked from the Manse at the hills as they moved and changed with each day, the glaur and the winter dark near gone, the green came quick and far on the peaks the blink of the white snow-bonnets grew less, swallows were wheeling about the Manse trees, down in the fields of the Mains you could hear the click and spit of a tractor at work, far up by Upperhill parks rise the baa of the sheep they pastured now on Bridge End. It seemed to Chris when those first days came that she’d weary to death with a house and naught else, not to have fields that awaited her help, help in the seeding, the spreading of dung, the turning out of the kye at dawn, hens chirawking mad for their meat, the bustle and hurry of Blawearie’s close. But now as she looked on the land so strange, with its tractors and sheep, she half-longed to be gone. It had finished with her, that life that had been, and this was hers now: books, and her Robert, young Ewan to teach, and set a smooth cloth on the Manse’s table, hide in the little back room at the top and darn his socks when Robert didn’t see.
He was out and about on the work of the parish, marrying this soul and burying that, christening the hopeful souls new-come to pass in their time to marriage and burial. He’d come back dead tired from a day of his work, Chris would hear him fling his stick in the hall and cry out Else, will you run me a bath? And because of those strange, dark moods she had met, Chris seldom met him now on the stairs, she’d wait till he changed and was Robert again, he’d come searching her out and tell her the news, and snatch the book from young Ewan’s hand as Ewan squatted in the window-seat, reading. A prig, a bookworm! Robert would cry as he flung the book the other side of the room; and Ewan would smile in his slow, dark way, and then give a yell and they’d scuffle a while, while Chris went down and brought up the tea. From that room you could see all Kinraddie by day and the lights of Kinraddie shine as night came, Robert would heave a great sigh as he sat and looked from Chris to Kinraddie below. Wearied? she’d ask, and he’d say, Lord, yes, and frown and then laugh: Looks everywhere that would sour the milk! But my job’s to minister and minister I will though Kinraddie’s kirk grows toom as its head. And would think a while, It’s near that already.
FAITH! SO IT! was, nothing unco in that, there was hardly a kirk in the Mearns that wasn’t, the War had finished your fondness for kirks, you knew as much as any minister. Why the hell should you waste your time in a kirk when you were young, you were young only once, there was the cinema down in Dundon, or a dance or so, or this racket or that; and your quean to meet and hear her complain she’s not been ta’en to the Fordoun ball. You’d chirk to your horses and give a bit smile as you saw the minister swoop by on his bike, with his coat-tails flying and his wee, flat hat; and at night in the bothy some billy or other would mock the way that he spoke and moved. To hell with ministers and toffs of his kind, they were aye the friends of the farmers, you
