JAMIE CAMERON ASKED KIRSTY TO dance at the Aberannoch Castle Sewing Society’s social evening on New Year’s Eve 1914. She accepted even though she was aware that Jamie, like too many of the other young farmers, had been fortifying his courage from a communal whisky bottle. The measures of the ‘Gay Gordons’, which Jamie danced with more exuberance than skill, meant that Kirsty did not spend the whole run of the dance in his arms. She began to regret the eight bars of waltzing into which he whirled her at the end of each run-through of the dance.
‘Jamie,’ she protested finally. ‘You’re holding me far too closely, and frankly, I don’t like the way your breath smells.’
His face reddened and he stumbled over his feet but he did loosen his grip.
‘I apologize, Miss Robertson,’ he said. ‘No doubt French champagne is more what you’re used to smelling.’
‘Don’t be silly. And stop calling me Miss Robertson. You called me Kirsty when you asked me to dance.’
‘I forget myself. I thought you looked like a wee lassie that was at the school wi’ me.’
They had stopped dancing now and were standing glaring at one another while the dance rushed to its exhilarating close around them. Kirsty was embarrassed; she could see her mother and several other ‘sewing ladies’ looking at them. Jamie, for the moment, was beyond embarrassment.
‘Nae dout you have champagne by the bucketful when you dance here with Captain Granville-Baker, except they probably dance in the ballroom and no’ here in the hall. Grand enough oot here for the proletariat.’
Kirsty considered walking away from him but thought he might just shout after her and that she could not bear, not so much for herself but for her mother, so happy in the ‘Dowagers’ Corner’ with the right people.
‘I’ve never had champagne in my entire life, Jamie, and if it’s any of your business, I’ve never been to the castle before, so I don’t know where the Granville-Bakers entertain their guests,’ she said quietly, just as the music ended.
‘I’m sorry, Kirsty. It is none of my business.’ His broad Scots vocabulary had drifted away with his bad temper.
The awkward moment was broken by a deep Scots voice. ‘Are you twa planning on geein’ us a demonstration?’ laughed an old farmer. ‘For if you’re no’, get aff the flair and leave it tae the dancing.’
‘Dance with me again, Kirsty. I’ll behave myself this time. Come on, it’s an Eightsome. I can’t be belligerent in the middle of that.’
‘I can’t,’ said Kirsty and saw him stiffen. ‘Jamie,’ she added pleadingly, ‘I promised to dance the Eightsome with the minister.’
‘Oh, aye. You’d dump him soon enough if Granville-Baker turned up.’
Kirsty looked at him sadly. ‘Colonel Granville-Baker is somewhere in Belgium, the very heart of the conflict, and his son is probably at this very moment leaving Southampton. Excuse me.’ She turned, left a discomfited Jamie standing in the middle of the floor and went to find the elderly minister who had come to take services at Aberannoch, the incumbent minister having been one of the first to answer Kitchener’s pleading cry, ‘Your country needs YOU ’. She went through the dance like a clockwork doll. What had happened to Jamie? Was that what growing up did to a man? The poetic farm boy with the corn-coloured shock of hair – was he gone for ever, or was he merely hidden beneath a veneer of hair brilliantine? She looked around as she and her partner laughingly skipped round in their circle, and saw Jamie standing morosely against the wall.
‘Why hasn’t he danced with someone else?’ she asked herself in exasperation. ‘It’s New Year’s Eve. He should be rejoicing that 1914 is over. The New Year will surely bring an end to this war.’ Kirsty tucked her arm into her partner’s and found herself hurled with surprising agility round and round. She could see the holly and the paper streamers that decorated the rafters blending dizzily into a solid mass of colour, like an infant’s first painting. She laughed happily and when the room and her head had stopped spinning, Jamie was gone.
‘Well, let him be childish,’ she determined, and allowed the elderly man to lead her off to the outer room where the sewing circle ladies were serving lemonade.
‘Have you seen my mother?’ she asked Mrs Lamont of Pitmirmir farm.
‘Aye, Kirsty, she’s away over tae the castle kitchens for a pot of stovies. The men’ll be starving wi’ all that hopping around.’
‘I’ll go and help her with it.’
‘Straight across the courtyard. There’s a wee door even you’ll hiv tae bend doon tae get through.’
Kirsty looked across the hall to the door. The music had stopped and everyone in the large panelled room was searching for the person with whom they wanted to bring in the New Year, the year that would surely bring lasting peace.
‘I’ll run and find her. I don’t want her to miss the stroke of twelve.’
‘Aye, lass, and ask her if she got someone to first-fit us.’
The first foot. The man, preferably with dark hair, who would cross the threshold of the castle on the stroke of midnight to wish everyone ‘A Guid New Year’. He would carry coal to bring warmth to the hearth, wheat to ensure that everyone had enough to eat for the year, and perhaps a little silver to guarantee that all bills would be paid. An ancient custom, and one that the superstitious Jessie would not wish to miss.
The courtyard was lit only by a hesitant moon and already one or two happy couples were plighting their troth against ancient walls that for centuries had witnessed both truth and lies. Kirsty smiled and hurried across to the kitchen as quietly as possible.
A figure loomed up out of the shadows and caught her arm. For a moment it seemed to Kirsty that her heart stopped beating as she looked up into an intense young face.
‘Jamie, what a fright you gave me. What are you doing?’
‘Mrs Robertson asked me to be first foot,’ he said, showing her his large lump of coal. ‘It’s sae big since I’m sae fair. Kirsty, Kirsty, wait.’
She pulled away from him. ‘Please let me go, Jamie. I need to help my mother with the stovies.’
‘Aw, Kirsty lass. I’m daein’ this all wrong, but it’s Hogmanay and sometimes a lassie’ll listen at Hogmanay.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I love you, lass. I always have, and I ken you’re a teacher and far above me, but I’ll no’ always be a farm laddie . . .’
‘Please, Jamie, stop.’ Kirsty had no idea what to say or do. A declaration of love was the last thing she had expected, and she said the first thing that came into her mind: ‘You’re only nineteen years old.’
With a sound, half groan, half moan, he turned from her. He pulled apart a courting couple and thrust the coal into the boy’s hands. ‘Here, Sandy, be first fit. Yer darker nor me,’ and then he ran across the courtyard and disappeared through the great wooden doors that led to the driveway.
Kirsty watched him go. ‘The taste of ashes,’ she said to herself sadly, and it was true. So many clichés were true. Her mouth was full of the taste of ashes and her heart was curiously heavy. ‘Oh, Jamie lad,’ she whispered. ‘I never meant to hurt you. I didn’t know what to say.’
‘Oh, good, Kirsty. Take one end of this, dear. We’ll never get to the hall before midnight.’ It was Jessie, struggling out of the old kitchens with a huge tub of stoved potatoes. The smell enticed Kirsty’s taste buds but could not quite dispel the ashes.
The New Year was brought in on January 1st, 1915 by two dark-haired women carrying not coal nor wheat but hot potatoes. For a moment there was a stunned silence, and then an old farmer came forward to take the heavy pot.
‘Aye, it’s a new order o’ things, and maybe you lassies wi’ yer tatties’ll bring us mair joy than last year’s first fit. Useless bugger you turned oot tae be, Pitmirmir. It was you brought the New Year intae the church hall.’
Then there was laughter and hugs and kisses and slapping of backs and tears, too many tears, for had not everyone a cousin or friend on his way to the Belgian front? The war had not yet really touched the farming community; they fought by trying to provide food. No one even dared to whisper, ‘Over by Christmas, please God,’ for Christmas was a year away.
*
Work, the antidote to pain. After an unhappy, restless night during which Kirsty went over and over all the sensible things she should have said to Jamie – and would have, if he hadn’t taken her so much by surprise – she woke to find that, for once, Jessie was not up before her.
‘Do me good,’ she said to herself as, shivering in the intense cold, she cleaned out the grate and laid a new fire. She had taken a lit fire in the morning for granted all her life, first at the Schoolhouse and then at the Buchanans.
‘Mother must rise in the cold every morning to put on the fire for me, and Mrs Buchanan must have done it too. What a lot I have always taken for granted.’ She revelled in the discomfort, feeling that somehow she was exonerating herself a little. She would make a New Year’s resolution: every morning she would light the fire for Jessie, and today at least she would make her breakfast in bed. At last the fire was lit and two fresh farm eggs were boiling gently on the hob. The events of the night before came flooding back, and now anger took the place of unhappiness. Jamie had had no right to be so silly. He had been drinking and said things he didn’t mean.
‘Oh, heavens,’ said Kirsty, sitting back on her heels as she watched the eggs. ‘What if he did mean them? How could he love me? We’ve only talked to each other in passing for years. Men. They spoil everything.’
‘Spoil what, dear?’ It was Jessie.
‘Go back to bed,’ ordered Kirsty, smiling brightly at her mother and deliberately ignoring the question. ‘I’m bringing you a treat, breakfast in bed.’
‘Sounds lovely, but I’d rather have it with you here before the fire. Oh, how welcoming it is to come in to a nice warm room.’
‘You really spoiled Father and me, Mother.’
‘Nonsense, Kirsty,’ said Jessie as she began to set the plain oak table. ‘It’s a woman’s job to look after her family. You’ll be just the same when you marry.’
‘Oh, no, I won’t. I’m much too lazy, and it’s all your fault.’
‘My, we are gloomy this fine New Year’s morning.’ Jessie paused and ruthlessly chopped the top off her egg. ‘There. What do men spoil, dear?’
Kirsty decapitated her own egg before she spoke, gazing at the round brown shell as if it were a head, the head of some young man? ‘Jamie, he behaved so stupidly.’ There was a long pause while Jessie calmly ate her boiled egg and toast and Kirsty looked strangely at her egg, growing colder in its little cup that bore the legend, ‘A Present from Ayr’. ‘I was really embarrassed, Mother. He held me so tightly when we were waltzing and then he said he loved me.’
‘What a nice gift to bring the New Year in, dear, a young man’s love.’
Kirsty pushed her chair out almost violently and stood up. ‘Mother, he’s a farm boy. He’s nineteen years old, nine months younger than I am. We were good friends, friends – and now he’s spoiled everything.’
‘Sit down, dear, and finish your lovely egg.’ When Kirsty had complied Jessie went on, ‘Jamie Cameron has always loved you, Kirsty. Maybe it’s changed from a laddie’s admiration to a man’s love, I don’t know. Time will tell. But a lassie could do worse than have the love of a lad like Jamie Cameron.’
‘I like Jamie, Mother, I always have. We played together, not just because we were the two eldest in the school but because we were like one another. We liked the same things, we liked books and learning and listening to Father talk, even when he was on his hobby horse and going on about parsing analysis . . . but I don’t love Jamie and he shouldn’t love me. He’s got no right to love me and he doesn’t,’ she finished with a return of her initial fire. ‘He’s too young to love anybody.’
‘What about Captain Granville-Baker?’
‘He’s a man,’ whispered Kirsty and blushed to the roots of her hair. She had not yet worked out her own feelings for Hugh. All she knew was that she thought of him constantly, that even when she knew he was with his regiment she still found herself looking for him as she hurried for the train or walked through the streets of Arbroath to the station. When she did see him or, more wonderfully, when she talked to him, she was in a daze of happiness. She wanted the moment to go on for ever, and when he rushed off – and he invariably seemed to be hurrying somewhere – she felt curiously bereft. When he sat in the little cottage kitchen and laughed and joked with her mother, always teasing – or was it true, that he came only for Jessie’s baking? – she felt that life could offer nothing better. She loved just to listen to his deep, well-modulated voice, to watch his face and the play of emotions across the fine features. It was enough: for now it was enough, but something deep down inside her told her that one day she would want much, much more from Hugh Granville-Baker.
‘Kirsty,’ said Jessie, and there was such sadness in her voice that Kirsty put down her bone egg-spoon to listen attentively, ‘you’re between these two men. Jamie is a nice laddie, and if he’d been able to stay at the school he might have made something of himself, but he’s a farmworker. I know your Uncle Chay is a farmworker, but he’d be the first to say that he wants better for you.’ Jessie looked at her daughter, who seemed to be fascinated by the pattern of congealing egg yolk on the back of her spoon. ‘Hugh is a gentleman, Kirsty, by birth and by nature. Don’t misunderstand his natural good manners. It wouldn’t work, an army officer, public school . . . Kirsty, his mother is a titled lady. Your mother is the daughter of a shop assistant. He lives in a castle. Look around you . . .’
‘Mother, please. I’m not ready for any of this. I haven’t thought of Jamie . . . or Hugh . . . as, well, as men.’ Kirsty stopped talking. Was she being truthful? In the dark of the night, had she not dreamed of a future with Hugh? No, no, or if she had, had she not been aware that it was only a dream, a dream like the dreams that one day she might wake up as a princess with golden hair, or that she might suddenly grow wings and fly, or even just burst into glorious song at the morning service at school? ‘Let’s forget all this. Jamie went off with hurt feelings and Hugh is . . . God knows where, some battlefield in Belgium. When the war is over he’ll be older and he probably won’t think of us any more. There will be too much on his mind.’ A picture of the two lovely girls laughing, their hair blowing in the wind, came into her mind and she ruthlessly thrust it away. Mother was right. Hugh was the son of the laird and she was a tenant of a very small cottage. She must stop thinking of him.
And she did until his letter arrived.
Dear Kirsty,
I don’t know when this letter will arrive but I wish you and Mrs Robertson a Happy New Year. Tell her the food in Belgium is absolutely appalling and I shall need serious feeding up when I get home.
Home. I miss Aberannoch very much and I thought I would miss London. Would you write to me and tell me how everything is? It will be nice to know that there is somewhere not touched by this senseless waste. Why did I join the army, Kirsty? I suppose it never occurred to me not to, but if I’d thought I might have said, ‘I think a soldier’s job is to keep the peace.’ We’re civilized men and we’re doing utterly unbelievable things to one another. It just doesn’t make sense. Anyway, I’m sure it will all be over soon. Right will prevail, or so the politicians keep telling us.
Tell me about your class. What are you teaching them?
Hugh
Kirsty decided to write back and to do exactly as Hugh had asked. She told him about Aberannoch and she told him about the class. There were one or two boys and even a girl or two who tried to undermine her authority:
I wish I was taller and then I could tower over Alec Wattie and frighten him into being good. One day I may have to use the tawse, but I’m more scared of it than Alec is. I know he makes faces behind my back and he’s just civil and no more . . .
Several weeks later the reply came back.
As to young Master Wattie, in the army we have a charge called ‘Dumb Insolence’. Perhaps you should haul him up before the Dominie on the educational equivalent. ‘This pupil has been guilty of dumb insolence, Saaar. Permission to wallop. Saaar?’
Kirsty had had to report the ringleader of her unruly pupils to the headmaster long before Hugh’s tongue-in-cheek advice had been received, and Mr Watson had punished him. So far, he had not returned to school.
‘Don’t let it worry you, Kirsty,’ said Mr Watson. ‘There will be an Alec Wattie in every class you will ever teach, and you will have to bring yourself to stand up to them. Just one good whack with the belt two months ago might have done it.’
‘I can’t bring myself to use it. My father never did, or very rarely, and . . .’
‘Buchanan used it too often.’
‘Not too often, too hard and on the wrong children.’
‘Face it, Kirsty. If you stay in teaching you will inevitably get older, but without some miracle of medical science you are not going to get any taller. When the war ends we can get a man back in your classroom, although academically you do well, and you can get back to the infants where you belong. Until then, discipline your class as soon as problems arise or you’ll have no authority. Now, off to class like a good girl.’
Kirsty stood up and looked at the acting Dominie. A nice man, Mr Watson, a little too old for the job now, but capable . . . and so unbearably patronizing that she felt if she didn’t leave the room now, she would smack the smug self-satisfaction off his face.
‘He very grandly said I was doing quite well academically, Miss Purdy,’ she moaned in the staff room. ‘He, a man whose knowledge stops at Napoleon’s conquest of Russia, tells me condescendingly that I’m doing quite well and then, have you any idea what he had the nerve to say next?’
‘Sit down and drink your tea, lass, before you explode. He told you kindly not to worry too much because as soon as the war is over a nice big strong man will come along either to sweep you off your feet to domestic bliss and seven bairns of your own, or to take your class and let you scuttle back to the baby classes where you belong.’
Kirsty almost finished her cooling tea in one gulp. ‘It’s happened to you then?’
‘It’s the order of things, lassie, and it will never change.’
‘Why can’t it change? The suffragettes say women should be able to vote. If we can vote, we can vote, for equal pay for women, equal career opportunities . . . I could even be a Dominie one day. You can handle the big laddies better than anybody.’
‘It’s old age that gives me authority, lass, but you won’t spend your life in a school, Kirsty. Any boy that survives this war is going to come back looking for peace, and peace means a wife and a home and bairns.’
‘Why can’t we have it all?’
Miss Purdy could not have looked more shocked if Kirsty had blasphemed. ‘Lassie, lassie! Thank heavens for the bell. Away to your class and calm down. Have it all, indeed!’
Kirsty said nothing but as she walked to the playground, newly coated with metal chips to make it more comfortable in wet weather – unless you happened to fall down on it – her mind was saying, ‘Why not, why can’t women have it all? Why ever not? Men do it all the time.’