second day of the yavil cutting a tink climbed up the Blawearie road from the turnpike and cried to John Guthrie for work, and father said Maybe, maybe. Let’s see the work that you’ve in you first, and the tink said Ay, fine that. And he off with his coat and took the middle of the bout, and was up it in a jiffy, gathering and binding to the manner born, you might say, and giving Chris a bit smile when he met with her. So, coming down the next bout father cried to the tink that he’d take him on for a day or so, if the weather held; and Chris could get up to the house and see to the supper—no idling, quean, mind that. He was a black-like, gypsy childe, the tink, father wouldn’t have him into the kitchen for meat, the creature might be all lice; and he wouldn’t have him sleep in the house.
So Chris made him a shake-down out in the barn, he said he was real content with that. But when she carried him his supper over to the barn the first night she felt shamed for him suddenly, and told him she’d have had him eat in the house if it hadn’t been father. And he said Don’t let that fash you, lass, I’m as little anxious for his company as he is for mine. Forbye, he’s only a Kinraddie clown! Chris felt her face flame at that, it just showed you there was no good doing kindness to tinks, but she made out she hadn’t heard and turned back to go over the close. Then it was the tink put out his arm, round her legs before she could move, almost he pulled her down on the hay beside him. You’ve never lain with a man yet, lass, I can see, and that’s a sore waste of hot blood like yours. So mind I’m here if you want me, I’ve deflowered more queans than I’ve years to my name and sent none of them empty away. He loosed her then, laughing low, she couldn’t do anything but stare and stare at him, sick and not angry, something turned in her stomach and her knees felt weak. The tink put out his hand and patted her leg again, Mind, if you want me I’ll be here, and Chris shook her head, she felt too sick to speak, and slipped out of the barn and crossed the close and washed and washed at her hands and face with hot water till father lowered his paper and asked Have you gone clean daft?
But up in her room that night, the room that was hers and hers only now, Will slept where his brothers had slept, she saw a great moon come over the Grampians as she undressed for bed. She opened the window then, she liked to sleep with it open, and it was as though the night had been waiting for that, a waft of the autumn wind blew in, it was warm and cool and it blew in her face with a smell like the smell of late clover and the smell of dung and the smell of the stubble fields all commingled. She leant there breathing it, watching the moon with the hills below it but higher than Blawearie, Kinraddie slept like a place in a picture-book, drifting long shadows that danced a petronella across the night-stilled parks. And without beginning or reason a strange ache came in her, in her breasts, so that they tingled, and in her throat, and below her heart, and she heard her heart beating, and for a minute the sound of the blood beating through her own head. And she thought of the tink lying there in the barn and how easy it would be to steal down the stairs and across the close, dense black in its shadows, to the barn.
But it was only for a second she thought of that, daftly, then laughed at herself, cool and trim and trig, and closed the window, shutting out the smells of the night, and slowly took off her clothes, looking at herself in the long glass that had once stood in mother’s room. She was growing up limber and sweet, not bonny, perhaps, her cheek-bones were over high and her nose over short for that, but her eyes clear and deep and brown, brown, deep and clear as the Denburn flow, and her hair was red and was brown by turns, spun fine as a spider’s web, wild, wonderful hair. So she saw herself and her teeth clean-cut and even, a white gleam in that grave brown stillness of face John Guthrie’s blood had bequeathed to her. And below face and neck now her clothes were off was the glimmer of shoulders and breast and there her skin was like satin, it tickled her touching herself. Below the tilt of her left breast was a dimple, she saw it and bent to look at it and the moonlight ran down her back, so queer the moonlight she felt the running of that beam along her back. And she straightened as the moonlight grew and looked at the rest of herself, and thought herself sweet and cool and fit for that lover who would some day come and kiss her and hold her, so.
And Chris saw the brown glimmer of her face grow sweet and scared as she thought of that—how they’d lie together, in a room with moonlight, and she’d be kind to him, kind and kind, giving him all and everything, and he’d sleep with his head here on her breast or they’d lie far into the mornings whispering one to the other, they’d have so much to tell! And maybe that third and last Chris would find voice at last for the whimsies that filled her eyes, and tell of rain on the roof at night, the terror and the splendour of it across the long slate roofs; and the years that faded and fell, dissolved as a breath, before those third clear eyes; and mother’s face, lying dead; and the Standing Stones up there night after night and day after day by the loch of Blawearie, how around them there gathered things that wept and laughed and lived again in the hours before the dawn, till far below the cocks began to crow in Kinraddie and day had come again. And all that he’d believe, more than so often she believed herself, not laugh at, holding and kissing her, so. And faith! no more than a corpse he’d hold if she didn’t get into her bed-gown and into her bed, you may dream of a lad till you’re frozen as a stone, but he’ll want you warmer than that.
SO THAT WAS THE harvest madness that came on Chris, mild enough it had been, she fell fast asleep in the middle of it. But it scored her mind as a long drill scores the crumbling sods of a brown, still May, it left neither pleasure nor pain, but she’d know that track all the days of her life, and its dark, long sweep across the long waiting field. Binder and reaper clattered and wheeped through the brittle weather that held the Howe, soon the weather might break and the stooking was far behind in Blawearie. But Will would have nothing to do with night-time work, he laughed in John Guthrie’s face at the mention of it and jumped on his bicycle and rode for Drumlithie evening on evening. Father would wander out by the biggings and stare at the parks and then come glinting into the house and glower at Chris, Get off to your bed when you’ve milked the kye; and she made little protest at that, she was tired enough at the end of a day to nearly sleep in the straw of the byre.
But one night she didn’t dare sleep, for up in the room he’d shared with mother she heard John Guthrie get out of bed and go slow padding about in his stocking soles, like a great cat padding there, a beast that sniffed and planned and smelled at the night. And once he came soft down the cowering creak of the stairs and stopped by her door, and she held her breath, near sick with fright, though what was there to be feared of? And she heard his breath come quick and gasping, and the scuffle of his hand on the sneck of the door; and then that stopped, he must have gone up or down, the house was quiet, but she didn’t dare sleep again till Will came clattering home in the still, small hours.
For the harvest madness was out in Kinraddie if Chris had been quick to master hers. And though a lad and a quean might think their ongoings known to none but themselves, they’d soon be sore mistaken, you might hide with your lass on the top of Ben Nevis and have your bit pleasure there, but ten to one when you got up to go home there’d be Mistress Munro or some claik of her kidney, near sniggering herself daft with delight at your shame. First it was Sarah Sinclair and the foreman at Upperhill, Εwan Tavendale he was, that the speak rose round: they’d been seen coming out of the larch wood above the Upperhill, that wood where the daftie had trapped Maggie Jean, and what had they been doing there on their lone? It was Alec Mutch of Bridge End that met them, him taking a dander over the moor to the smithy with a broken binder-blade for mending. The two hardly saw him at first, Miss Sinclair’s face was an unco sight, raddled with blushing it was like the leg of a tuberculous rabbit when you skinned the beast, Ewan slouched along at her side, hang-dog he looked as though it was his mother he’d bedded with, said Alec, and maybe that’s how it had felt. Alec cried a Good night! to the pair, they near jumped out of their skins, and went on with the story to the smithy beyond the moor. And from there you may well be sure it went through Kinraddie fast enough, the smith could tell lies faster than he could shoe horses; and he was fell champion at that.
Truth or no, Chae Strachan got hold of the story and went over to Upperhill
