ONE

The Promise

Nine sorts of weather, one for each parish, had whipped over Ayrshire in the course of that mad March day. Now, towards evening, the wind had backed northerly and great skirts of cloud hid the Carrick grazings and the autocratic hills of Galloway. Hail came hopping over the brow of the Straitons and swiftly engulfed the track that straggled up to Hawkhead farm at the head of the vale. Sheep turned tails to the stinging grains and moved to find shelter among broken dykes or in muddy scrapes under the lip of the hill. But the cattle, all lean and thrawn, roared defiance and stood their ground, refusing to be chased from the burn bank where new growth, mainly weed, gave them bite to supplement the mouldy hay that Clegg had flung out for them that morning.

For Kirsty Barnes there was no shelter. She trudged by the side of a huge Clydesdale horse with nothing but an old potato sack cowled over her head to give her protection. Winter, it seemed, was reluctant to yield to spring and Kirsty was ill-clad for such a changeable season. She had left Hawkhead bare-headed and had been soaked by a rain squall on the trail downhill to Bankhead Mains. Mr Sanderson had found her a towel to dry her hair and the potato sack to serve as a shawl on the long road home. Mrs Sanderson had filled her up with a bowl of mutton broth and hot buttered scones. For Kirsty there was always a kindly welcome at Bankhead; yet the Sandersons’ generosity made her uneasy for usually the purpose of her visit was to scrounge a piece of tackle or the loan of a plough on behalf of her boss, Duncan Clegg.

Not for the first time Mr Sanderson had said, ‘Tell Clegg I’ll expect a hire fee for the beast in future. If his horse is sick it’s his own blessed fault. If he fed the poor brute it’d thrive and do the job for him. Will you tell him what I say, Kirsty?’

‘I will, Mr Sanderson.’

‘By the look o’ you, you could do wi’ some fattenin’ yourself, lassie.’

‘I’m fat enough as it is.’

‘Aye, you’ve a shape t’ you now, right enough.’ Mr Sanderson had grinned. ‘I can understand why you’ve turned young Nicholson’s head.’

‘Who says I have?’

‘The lad told me hisself.’

‘Craig Nicholson’s a daft loon.’

Mr Sanderson had laughed, his warm brown eyes crinkling at the corners. ‘Ach, I’ll spare your blushes, Kirsty. I was young m’self once, though you’d never think it to look at me now. Will I have to brush my lum hat for a weddin’ soon?’

‘Weddin’? Never.’

‘Would Craig Nicholson not be a good catch?’

‘Craig will not be for me.’

Mr Sanderson might have teased her further, but the reason why Craig would never be for her had dawned on the farmer at that moment. Tactfully he changed the subject. It was not that Kirsty would not have had Craig for a husband, but that the Nicholsons would not permit their first-born to court, let alone marry, a girl who had come from the Baird Home, a girl without a shred of pedigree or standing, though the Nicholsons themselves lived in a rented cottage that was only marginally better than Duncan Clegg’s run-down dwelling.

Bankhead Mains was different. At the Mains there was an air of prosperity and endeavour. The chug-chug-chug of new steam-powered machinery from the long shed was the heartbeat of the place. If only she had been given out to the Sandersons and not to the Cleggs, how different her life might have been. But in 1889, when Kirsty, at ten, had been old enough for fostering, the Sandersons had a legion of sons and daughters about the Mains and had no room for a child-hand. Without a family, the Cleggs had room in plenty and, on the surface, a better claim.

At first Kirsty had been pleased to leave the Baird, a bleak, institutional building on the outskirts of Maybole. She had imagined that the Cleggs had picked her because they liked her, and might in time come to care for her as if she was their own. But Duncan and Mavis Clegg had not wanted a surrogate daughter, only a pair of hands to labour about the house and farm. For seven years grindingly hard work had been Kirsty’s lot. Only her schooling, insisted upon by the district truant officer, had given her relief from the isolation of Hawkhead. At Dunnet school she had come into contact with children of her own age, Craig Nicholson among them. The day after her thirteenth birthday, however, as soon as she had earned her Elementary Merit Certificate, the Cleggs had pulled her out of school and Hawkhead’s dismal hills had closed about her like the walls of a prison.

There had been other drastic changes in the course of that year too. Mavis Clegg had fallen ill of a stomach disorder and had been dead before Doctor Pollock could come to a proper decision about treatment. Soon after Mrs Clegg’s funeral there had been an enquiry into Kirsty’s ‘moral welfare’ at Hawkhead. Duncan Clegg had foreseen the authorities’ concern and had lugged Kirsty’s mattress from the cottage loft into the bothy which he had freshened up with a lick of whitewash and a dab of paint. He had even hammered together a box-bed for her and purchased new blankets and sheets to impress the inspectors and had thus managed to convince the delegation from the Baird Home that he thought of Kirsty as his own child and that it would be a cruel stroke to separate her from her ‘home’ so soon after the loss of the only ‘real’ mother she had ever known. Kirsty had not had enough gumption to refute the farmer’s lies. Shyness had been taken for adolescent ingratitude. She had been given a solemn lecture by Mrs Ashton-Clarke on the blessedness of charity and left to slave for old widower Clegg.

Hail riddled down on Kirsty’s shoulders. Even Nero, the muscular Clydesdale, felt the nip through his hairy hide. He halted abruptly in his tracks. Nero was a docile giant, well used to handling. Kirsty had borrowed him so often from Bankhead that she had learned to speak his language. Heavy horses responded best to cajoling though control rested in the short line between bit ring and the handler’s fingers.

Kirsty held the rope with a light grip and stepped forward to show herself in front of Nero’s leather blinkers. ‘G’ay on, lad, g’ay on wi’ ye.’

The Clydesdale shook his head, not petulantly, but to loose the cold sticky little grains that adhered to his muzzle hairs. Grumbling his tongue over the bit, he snuffled in discomfort.

‘Wheesht, y’ great lump,’ said Kirsty gently.

Nero regarded the girl dolefully. He dwarfed her completely and might, if he wished, tug the line from her grasp without effort and slap away down the hill to his clean warm stable. But he had been trained by Hinchcliffe, the Sandersons’ wily old horseman, and was too well placed in Bankhead’s comfort stakes to have rebellious tendencies.

‘A touch o’ hail’ll not melt you,’ Kirsty told him. ‘If you’ll stir those muckle great hoofs we’ll be home in five minutes.’

She tightened the line. Nero gave an enormous nod and started again up the track towards the outline of the farm that showed like a charcoal tracing through thin grey cloud.

Hawkhead was hardly the vision Kirsty had had of a home when she had lain in her iron cot in the dormitory at the Baird. She had imagined carpets and gas-lamps and a plump woman in a pinafore setting a table with china plates; laughter and kisses before sleep. There had been none of that from the Cleggs. Even Mavis had been severe and undemonstrative, more like a twin to her husband than a wife.

The bare wind-swept hill was a stupid place to build a farmhouse, but common sense had never been all that common in the farming community and the farmstead’s high situation had been useful sixty years ago for catching the first and last light, so Mrs Dwyer, Kirsty’s teacher, had told her. But not even Mrs Dwyer could explain why Duncan and Mavis Clegg hated everything about them, as if life was, and always had been, an insupportable burden. It could not be poverty; the Cleggs were not on the crumbling cliff of penury. Though Hawkhead was a small holding and rough, other farms in the district of similar substance managed to provide a decent living for the tenants. Dimly Kirsty realised that Duncan Clegg enjoyed his hardship and was freed by it from responsibility. She felt only a watery pity for the man, and, these past months, a growing distrust.

On reaching the barn Kirsty found Clegg waiting for her at the door of the byre. There was no milking-herd now. After Mavis’s death Duncan had disposed of the cows and based his meagre economy on raising and selling cattle and sheep, an activity which, as he practised it, took very little effort.

He wore a filthy tweed vest under a calico jacket whose best parts were the patches that Kirsty had stitched over the tears. His trousers were greasy and stiff with dirt. A cloth cap was tugged half over his face and his hands, as usual, were stuffed deep in his pockets. Kirsty thought of him as an old man, but he was not much above fifty, fifteen years or so younger than Mr Sanderson. His grey hair was thick and matted and stubble merged with an untrimmed moustache. He was sober – he seldom touched strong drink – and he watched Kirsty with a sly squint as she steered the horse to the stable. This past year Kirsty had had the prickly feeling that Duncan Clegg was spying on her not as a master might spy on a servant to keep the work up to the mark but for reasons more secret and sinister. Slowing the Clydesdale to a walk, she hesitated.

‘Where the hell have you been, missie?’ Clegg demanded, his words measured and accusatory.

‘To Bankhead, Mr Clegg, where I was sent.’

‘Aye, an’ where else?’

‘No place else.’

‘You went to the Nicholsons’, did ye not?’

‘It’s three miles from Bankhead to the Nicholsons’,’ Kirsty protested.

‘Three miles is only a skip for a young lout wi’ nastiness on his mind.’

‘I – I don’t know what you mean, Mr Clegg,’ Kirsty said.

‘Did you not contrive t’ meet him then?’

‘I – I saw Mr Sanderson, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Damned well you know what I mean. I mean yon Nicholson tyke.’

Duncan Clegg had slandered Craig before. How the farmer had found out that Craig and she had been school sweethearts was beyond her. Mr Clegg was seldom in village company, except at market. Certainly she had given him no hint of her feelings for Craig Nicholson. And Craig knew better than to show his face within a mile of Hawkhead. Mr Clegg was afraid that she would one day marry Craig and he would lose his unpaid servant. He would be hard pushed to wheedle another orphan from Baird Home since he was a widower now and single men were not trusted to make good masters.

Kirsty said, ‘Mr Sanderson told me t’ tell you that you canna have the plough horse again unless you pay a hire fee. I think he means it this time.’

‘Damn an’ blast the greedy bastard,’ Clegg said. ‘Is he not rich enough? An’ me wi’ a poor sick beast an’ no ploughin’ done.’

‘It’s cold,’ said Kirsty, who did not like to hear the Sandersons maligned. ‘I’d best dry Nero and give him his feed.’

Nero was not the only creature in the yard who was damp and miserable. Though the hail shower had dwindled away, twilight shimmered with the promise of frost and the dark blue wind was wintry. Kirsty shivered. She turned to draw Nero into the stable to find him a stall and brush him down. She would have to check on poor Mustard who lay weary and wheezing and on Trimmer, a raddled old horse who would be teamed with Nero tomorrow on the heavy plough to break hard ground west of the hill.

Clegg jerked his hands from his pockets.

‘Give it here, the rope. I’ll see him in.’

Startled by the man’s sudden movement Nero shied and it was all Kirsty could do to hold the horse.

She stiffened when Duncan Clegg’s thick fingers touched her neck and squeezed her hair.

He said, ‘Aye, you’re wet too. I’m not wantin’ you keelin’ over on me. You’d better dry off. Down to the skin.’

She had been strapped by him when she was younger, skirts up and drawers down to her ankles, but she had not been forced through the humiliating ritual of punishment since Mavis died. He clouted her with his fist now and then or stabbed a kick at her backside but he had never before laid a fondling hand on her.

She stepped back.

Clegg’s hand remained in mid-air, floating and uncertain.

Thickly, he said, ‘I’ll be needin’ my supper soon, so be bloody quick doin’ what you have t’ do.’

She handed him the rope at once, turned around the butt of the hay barn and entered the bothy that clung to the barn’s gable end. She closed the door and rattled the latch so that Mr Clegg might hear it. The latch was not a lock, of course, but it provided an illusion of privacy and, with the room’s only chair propped against the door, she felt secure enough in the bothy.

At seventeen Kirsty was not ignorant about sexual matters. She had heard precocious gossip in the Infant Girls’ playground at Dunnet school, stories of lassies who had teased ploughmen and had been flung on their backs and had had their skirts knotted over their heads and been given more than they had bargained for; had heard of farmers on outlying steadings who took servant-girls as ‘extra’ wives, and slept three to a bed. On one of her infrequent visits to the mart at Cawl she had encountered a young girl of fourteen, a farm servant like herself, waddling fat with child and had been shocked to see the girl’s master, a respectable man and a kirk elder, smirk and swagger when his brethren congratulated him on his virility and prodded at the poor lass as if she was no better than a dumb brute come into season for the pleasure of the bull. The sight had turned Kirsty cold with fear and anger and she had snapped at Mr Clegg on the road home and had had her ear slapped for her impudence.

At least the girl had known the name of the father of her bairn. Kirsty did not know which of the wild lads of Girvan harbour had spawned her.

It was said that bastards bred bastards and Kirsty Barnes’s lineage seemed to bear out that cynical adage. She was the bastard daughter of a bastard mother who had been, in her day, a ward of the parish too, put out to serve a fish-curer at the age of nine. But Kirsty’s mother, who had had a thrawn red-headed streak in her, had evaded monotonous servitude and drifted into night trade about the pubs and taverns of Carrick until she died in a tinkers’ camp on the low shore south of Girvan when Kirsty was less than a year old. In storybooks virtue inevitably triumphed over circumstances. But in the real world, Kirsty had already learned, victory usually went the other way. All she knew of her mother had been imparted in righteous tones by Mrs Bream, wife of the warden of the Baird Home for Orphans, before Kirsty was of an age to be boarded.

She propped the chair against the door and breathed a little sigh of relief.

The bothy was an improvement on the loft of the cottage, though it could hardly be called comfortable. There was no stove, only a grate inset into the wall. Kindling and coals were doled out on strict ration by Duncan Clegg who expected Kirsty to spend her evenings in the farm kitchen, sharing his hearth, while she did his sewing, mending and ironing. She hated the winter, shut up from dusk to bedtime in Mr Clegg’s company. She went to bed early, even for a country girl, crossing to the bothy about eight or half past, though she would not find sleep until ten or eleven o’clock and would lie in the darkness listening to the rats skiffing and scratching along the hay barn’s rafters or, distantly, old Mustard wheezing in his stall.

The only item of furniture that Kirsty could call her own was a small pinewood chest that the Baird had gifted her on her departure. The chest contained her clothes, such as they were, two lengths of hair-ribbon that Craig had given her last Christmas and ten hand-drawn cards that marked various festivals, including St Valentine’s Day. Clegg did not know about the ribbons and cards which she hid from his prying eyes not in but under the chest, wrapped in a sheet of clean newspaper. Sometimes on dreary winter nights she would take out the ribbons and tie her hair in a fancy style and stare at the cards and think of Craig and how it might have been if she had not been a product of the Baird or if she had been fostered to a decent family like the Sandersons and not stuck with the Cleggs.

She opened the lid of the chest and took out stockings and a pair of flannel drawers. There was only a faint glint of twilight in the bothy’s tiny window now and she fumbled for matches and lit the stump of candle that stood in a dish by a jagged triangle of mirror on the shelf above the hearth. She had found the broken mirror on the Dunnet dump four or five years ago and, with a young girl’s natural vanity, had brought it home and cherished it ever since. She studied her reflection soberly. She was, she supposed, pretty enough, though her nose was too flat for her liking. She had light brown hair tinted with auburn and eyes that Craig said were green, though she did not believe him, and a tiny bridge of permanent freckles across her cheeks. In heavy skirt and bodice, however, she looked as old and dumpy as one of the peasant figures carved into the lintel of the Star of Rabbie Burns, a public house on the Maybole Road.

Bracing herself, Kirsty stripped off her damp garments. She seated herself on the side of the cot and rubbed her bare legs with a rough towel. Standing again, she rubbed her shoulders, stomach and breasts until her skin tingled and glowed. By candlelight she glimpsed herself in the broken mirror. For once her hair seemed almost lustrous. She flung back her head and worked the towel, arched her back and let her loosened hair fly thick about her face then, before the cold could reach for her again, swiftly turned and picked up her stockings.

The sudden movement caught him out. For an instant his features were visible in the window. Kirsty gasped. She clasped the stockings to her body and gaped at the square of glass. But he had ducked out of sight and vanished. She had recognised him, though; Mr Clegg had been spying on her, ogling her nakedness. She shuddered as if a cockroach had crawled upon her, and without hesitation flung herself into her clothes.

She was seething with so much anger that she lost perspective on her position at Hawkhead, and her common sense. She stamped out of the bothy, crossed the yard, flung open the door of the cottage and stalked inside to confront the farmer.

‘How dare you!’ she shouted. ‘D’you take me for a peepshow? How could you be so wicked?’

‘Shut your damned mouth,’ Clegg told her, without a trace of contrition.

‘I will not. God, if you ever try that again I – I’ll tell –’

Kirsty’s threat was smothered, her anger changed to fear.

He stood by the fire, jacket and vest removed, three buttons of his trouser front unfastened. He had not run from her window out of shame, Kirsty realised, but out of necessity.

Duncan Clegg believed that she belonged to him. He believed that he could take her by right and that the age-old excuse would stand up if she ever dared open her mouth and accuse him; he would claim that she had led him on.

He said as much now. ‘Struttin’ before me like a bloody trollop. Night after bloody night, flauntin’ yourself. I’ll say it was you came an’ begged me. My word against yours. Everybody in these parts knows fine what sort o’ stock you come from. A whore’s bastard.’

It would indeed be Kirsty’s word against Clegg’s if she made a public complaint against him. Mr Sanderson might take her side in the matter but most folk would believe the man. Doubt would be cast, dirt would cling. Craig would despise her. Duncan Clegg had her in a vice. Once she had been demeaned, he could treat her as he wished, do anything to her and she would be powerless to prevent it.

Rage at the injustice of it flowed within her. She would not surrender to him, not give him what he wanted no matter what it cost her or what folk thought.

She turned on her heel.

‘I’m goin’,’ she said. ‘Leavin’.’

Clegg was too quick for her. He grabbed her hair and the stuff of her dress and dragged her back.

Screaming, Kirsty struggled against his strength. She had supposed that her boss was feeble, but years of labour had left him with a wiry strength that far exceeded hers. She could not fend him off. She struggled ineffectually, appalled at the sudden attack, knowing that if he wished he might take her here and now, throw her to the floor and enter her as easily as he might drive a stake into soft turf. The man’s casual brutality sickened her. He thrust an arm between her legs. Kirsty screamed again.

‘Shut your damned mouth.’

She continued to scream.

He struck her with his fist, dazing her.

She sagged against the table. Once more he struck her, flat-handed, and pushed her down on to the stone.

Instinctively Kirsty sought to protect her stomach with her forearms but she had been weakened by the blow and could not fend him off.

Clegg dropped to his knees. He snared her wrists, stretched her arms above her head. He nuzzled his face against her throat, dragged his lips to her mouth. She tasted stale sweat and smelled his foul breath. She gagged. Amused by her reactions, Clegg chuckled. His eyes glinted and seemed to have a spark in them as if her helplessness had awakened forgotten emotions. Struggling, Kirsty stared up at him, then went limp.

She let him paw and fondle her breasts, trail his tongue across her lips. She did not even resist when he bundled her skirts over her hips and exposed thighs and belly. She lay still as a leaf on a pond, yielding to his wishes.

Clegg did not recognise danger in her passivity. He sat back on his heels and impatiently fumbled with his trouser buttons. He was stupidly self-assured and, when exposed, glanced down at himself smugly. In that moment of inattention Kirsty saw her chance. She drove her foot like a piston into the pit of his stomach.

The farmer let out a strangled cry. He doubled over. He had no mind for her now, no desire. Everything was wiped away by the waves of pain that radiated from his groin. Kirsty had hit the mark fair and square.

She shouldered him aside, scrambled from under him and ran from the cottage into the yard. She stumbled, rose, shook down her skirts, ran on. She expected pursuit and glanced behind her. To her surprise she saw that Clegg was still as she had left him, doubled over on the stone floor of the kitchen. Kirsty’s control evaporated. She wept. She ran, and wept, turned the corner of the byre and sped down the path that ribboned down the vale under a big cold luminous sky.

She was still weeping when she reached the field gate that gave access to the grazings of Dalnavert and the path to the Nicholsons’ house.

 

Coals cracked in the polished grate. Their flames, reflected in brass and copper ornaments, masked the kitchen with cosy contentment akin to one of the depictions of domestic bliss on the cover of Leisure Hour, a journal to which Mrs Nicholson regularly subscribed and whose general philosophy was her gospel and her ideal. Sometimes, especially on raw spring evenings, Craig shared his mother’s simple faith in warmth and companionship as the bedrock of family life. Seated on the old ‘nursing-chair’, a low straw-bottomed object, sharing the light of fire and oil-lamp with his mother, Craig rotated a little boot on his fist and snipped at the twist of wire by which he had fixed the torn eyelet to the leather. He put the card of wire and pliers to one side and with a gentleness that amounted almost to stealth, surveyed his handiwork from several angles.

Lorna’s feet were growing at an alarming rate. The boots would not last her much longer. Money would have to be found to buy her a new pair. They were ugly things anyway, not right for such a dainty creature. Soon Lorna would rebel against them, would girn for footwear that was grown-up and fashionable. Craig crushed the prickle of wire with the ball of his thumb and dropped a dab of spit on to a scuff mark on the boot’s broad toe. He dabbed polish on to a duster and smoothed it into the worn leather. Behind him the click of the knitting-needles ceased.

Craig heard the mutter of his mother’s voice counting off stitches. He did not turn, but, like Gordon and Lorna at the table, crouched just that wee bit lower over his task in the hope that Mam might respect the quiet hour and choose to prolong it.

At any moment, though, Mam would say, ‘You pair, off to your beds.’

Lorna would whine and Gordon would begin a long harangue about being treated like a bairn, and Dad would say, ‘Ach, Madge, let them bide up a while longer,’ and the nightly contest of wills would begin.

Craig sympathised with his sister and brother. At twenty, he was not too old to remember the impatience that once possessed him, a hunger to be grown up, to be responsible for your own comings and goings. He would not take sides tonight, however, even if the argument developed into a howling match and Mam shouted at him, ‘Take that boy,’ meaning Gordon, ‘out of my sight.’ Gordon would turn defiant and there would be a scuffle and he, Craig, would have to put a headlock on his brother and drag him through the long hall and into the icy bedroom at the back of the cottage while Mam cornered Lorna and marched her to the tub for a cold scrub that would be more like a punishment than an ablution. All the while Bob Nicholson would sit in his chair by the fire smiling through the clean sweet reek of whisky, distanced from petty squabbles not by his position as paterfamilias but by meekness and by drink.

Bob Nicholson was a secret drinker par excellence. Except at funerals, weddings and on Hogmanay, when he would allow himself to be pressed into taking a wee dram, Craig had never seen him lip so much as a mouthful of any alcoholic beverage. It had not occurred to Craig until a couple of years ago that, while he had never seen his father ranting drunk, no more had he ever seen him totally sober. It was Gordon, quick-witted and wise in the ways of the world, who had first interpreted Mam’s endless recriminations, coded to keep the awful truth from the children. Not even Gordon, however, had ever unearthed one of the caches of whisky that Dad had planted about the cottage, and, it was assumed, about the fields from here to Bankhead. If Madge Nicholson knew where her husband kept his stock of bottles, she gave no indication of it. She certainly never asked him out loud within earshot of her offspring.

Mr Sanderson would know of it – Mr Sanderson knew everything – but Bob Nicholson still ploughed as straight a furrow as any day-labourer at Bankhead. Bankhead earnings, as much as the income from the smallholding, kept the Nicholsons afloat, and Bob in whisky. Dalnavert was not, strictly speaking, a ‘small’ holding at all. Indeed, the farm was too large for Bob and his sons to cope with and many of its acres lay virtually untended and understocked. It was Mam’s ambition – Gordon said – that had prompted Dad into taking on Dalnavert in the first place. Mam wanted to be the lady of a Mains the size of Bankhead one day, since she had been a house-servant there when she was a girl and fancied the life.

Dalnavert was demanding, would be even more demanding if Bob had let it take hold upon him. Craig found himself working all hours of the day and night just to shore up his dad’s neglect. Gordon had already announced his intention to shake the dust of Dalnavert from his feet as soon as he turned eighteen, to head for Glasgow or Edinburgh. Even Lorna was not enamoured of farm life and vowed that she would never marry a farmer, not for all the tea in China.

Craig, though, had no plan or notion in his head as to what would become of him or what he would do with himself. When he dreamed he dreamed only of Kirsty Barnes, of holding her in his arms, of being alone with her in a warm bed in a warm room. The fact that he saw little of Kirsty these days only intensified his longing and desire. But when Craig mentioned Kirsty’s name, however casually, his mother would sniff her disapproval and give him a lecture about ‘wasting himself’ – whatever that meant. Any sort of regular courtship was unthinkable at this stage.

The tapping needles were silent. Craig tensed. Bob’s chair creaked as he reached up to the shelf for his tobacco pouch and fumbled his pipe from his waistcoat pocket.

Dark, slender and small, and looking far younger than sixteen, Gordon spread his elbows about the book that lay open on the table before him and pretended to be absolutely engrossed in it. Lifting her shoulders like a gull before flight, Lorna shifted in her chair.

‘You pair, off to your beds.’

Gordon feigned deafness. Lorna, less adept, gave a little moan and settled her bottom stubbornly on the seat of the chair. The knitting-needles clashed like swords as Mam thrust them into the pattern bag by her side. Her shadow cut off the lamplight. Craig swung his legs to allow her to pass.

‘Bed, I say, and bed I mean.’

Aye, there would be a scene again tonight. Such petty crises had become the core of family relationships. Craig hated them. He could see no reason for them and tended to blame his dad’s lack of authority for causing them to occur.

‘Did you hear me?’ Mam shouted.

Nobody answered her question.

Straightening his shoulders Bob Nicholson took his thumb from the bowl of his pipe and the stem from his mouth, cocked his head to one side and, to Craig’s astonishment, said, ‘Hold your tongue a minute, Madge.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Ssshh, Madge,’ Bob told her mildly.

Lorna had heard it too. Timid at the best of times she rushed from her seat and crowded against her father as if she expected a ghost to materialise through the kitchen door or robbers to break it down.

‘What the hell sort o’ noise is that?’ Bob asked.

The faint plaintive sound was utterly unfamiliar.

‘It’s just a damned cat,’ said Madge.

‘No, yon’s no cat,’ said Craig.

‘Burglars?’ Gordon suggested.

The latch of the outside door rattled.

Since his father showed no signs of extricating himself from his chair, Craig took the initiative. ‘I’ll see what it is.’

Swiftly he crossed the room, yanked open the door and vanished into the hallway.

He let out an exclamation, asked a question.

The answer was a sob.

‘Who is it?’ Madge demanded, then raised a hand to her mouth as Craig ushered in the girl, Kirsty Barnes.

‘Well, well, it’s just Clegg’s lassie.’ Bob Nicholson settled back, pipe stuck in his mouth again as if the whole of the mystery had been suddenly and completely solved.

Craig guided the girl to his mother’s chair by the fire and gently pressed her down. She was in a dreadful state, hair plastered against her cheeks, dress and shoes spattered with mud. She was sobbing as if her heart would break.

‘Tell me what happened,’ Craig said.

He was on his knees by the girl’s side, Madge and the family forgotten in his concern for Kirsty. He touched her shivering shoulder with a tenderness that pricked Madge Nicholson’s heart like a pin.

‘What d’you want here?’ Madge snapped.

‘Gi’e the lassie time to catch her breath, Madge,’ Bob said.

‘She’s been up to somethin’,’ Madge declared.

‘Come on, Kirsty, tell me what’s wrong,’ Craig said.

Kirsty laid her forehead against Craig’s chest. He hugged her awkwardly while she whispered to him in a voice so low that not even Gordon could make it out. Madge Nicholson observed the display of intimacy, heard the whispering and began to have an inkling of the girl’s purpose here. When Craig’s gentleness turned to sudden fury she knew that her guess was correct.

‘Damn him, damn the bastard,’ Craig raged.

‘Clegg?’ said Bob, nodding.

‘Damn the filthy swine. He tried, the old bastard.’

‘Tried?’ said Gordon from the corner. ‘Tried what?’

‘Never you mind,’ said Madge.

‘I’ll – I’ll kill him, so I will,’ Craig cried.

Madge put a hand on her son’s shoulder, offering what seemed at that moment like comfort and understanding. She pushed him away from the girl and leaned forward.

‘You led him on, I suppose,’ she said.

‘Mother, for Christ’s sake!’ Craig exploded.

‘He just – just came,’ said Kirsty. ‘I’d been down to Bankhead to borrow the horse. I was soaked so I went into the bothy to change into somethin’ dry. He – he was at the window. Starin’ at me. At the bothy window.’

‘You knew he was there?’

‘No, no, I swear.’

‘Madge, leave her alone, for God’s sake,’ Bob said.

‘Keep out of it, you,’ Madge said, without turning. ‘Did he touch you?’

‘Aye, he threw me – threw me down on the floor.’

‘Where?’

‘In the kitchen, in the cottage.’

‘Jesus, I’ll kill him,’ Craig hissed.

‘Did he do it?’

‘What?’

‘Do not play coy wi’ me. You know fine what I mean.’

‘No,’ said Kirsty. ‘No, he didn’t – didn’t manage.’

‘When you went into the kitchen after he’d ogled you, what were you wearin’?’

‘What’s that got to do—?’ Craig began.

Madge ignored him.

‘This, what I’m wearin’ now,’ Kirsty said.

‘Sunday best,’ said Madge Nicholson, vindicated.

‘I’ve nothin’ else, Mrs Nicholson. It’s all I had dry.’

‘You led him on.’

‘Enough, Madge.’ Bob heaved himself out of his chair.

The unexpected movement provoked Madge to withdraw a little.

‘We’ll see what Mr Clegg has to say in respect of your accusations,’ she declared.

Craig, a little calmer now, scowled. Mr Clegg! He had never before heard his mother refer to their neighbour with such formality. She had always been scathing about the tenant of Hawkhead.

‘Please, please, don’t send me back,’ Kirsty begged.

‘Where else are you to go, may I ask?’ said Madge. ‘Besides, you’re Mr Clegg’s servant.’

‘Aye, but he canna do what he likes wi’ me.’

Bob Nicholson, who had slipped away without anyone in the kitchen noticing, returned at that moment with a glass in his hand. He offered it to Kirsty who, with a questioning glance at Craig, accepted.

‘What’s that you’re givin’ her?’ Madge enquired.

‘Medicine,’ Bob said. ‘Knock it back, lass. It’ll steady your nerves.’

Kirsty closed her eyes, obediently tipped the small quantity of liquor into her mouth and swallowed. She gasped, coughed and handed the empty glass back to Mr Nicholson.

The man said, ‘Is that no’ better?’

‘Aye, Mr Nicholson.’

The effect of the whisky was startling. It seemed to loosen a knot of shame and embarrassment in Kirsty. She put her head into her hands to hide her face and began, once more, to weep.

The sight of the girl’s distress stirred Craig’s temper once more. He strode out into the hallway, whisked his jacket from the cupboard and snatched his boots from the rack and carried them back into the kitchen.

‘Where do you think you’re goin’?’ his mother asked.

‘Up the hill to wring the truth out o’ that dirty bastard.’

‘Easy, son.’ Bob put a hand on his son’s shoulder. ‘No point courting trouble because of the likes o’ Duncan Clegg.’

‘Do you not believe what Kirsty told us?’

‘Och, aye, I believe her. She’s got no reason to lie. But throttlin’ Duncan Clegg’s no’ the answer.’

‘Don’t go there, Craig, please,’ Kirsty sobbed.

Craig hesitated, then dropped his boots to the floor.

‘What can we do, then?’

‘Sleep on it,’ Bob Nicholson advised.

‘What about Kirsty?’

‘She can bide here the night,’ Bob said.

‘No, she cannot,’ Madge said. ‘Let her go back where she belongs.’

Craig said, ‘If Kirsty goes, I go too.’

Madge Nicholson’s eyes were full of suspicion. ‘What’s been goin’ on between you two that I don’t know about?’

It was Kirsty who blurted out, ‘Nothin’ like that, Mrs Nicholson, I swear.’

‘Am I expected to take the word of a Baird Home brat?’

Craig shouted, ‘Believe what you bloody like, Mother. Either Kirsty stays or we both go.’

‘You’re upset, Craig. You don’t know what you’re sayin’.’

‘I know fine what I’m sayin’,’ Craig retorted. ‘I’m sayin’ straight out that I intend to marry Kirsty just as soon as I’m able.’

Madge Nicholson swayed and sat down hard on her husband’s chair. Her heart-shaped face seemed puffed up and her plump cheeks turned a fiery red.

‘God! Oh, God! You can’t marry her!’

Like the Nicholson children Kirsty said nothing. She did not dare intrude upon the crisis which had flared between mother and son, even if she was the cause of it. Even Bob was rendered speechless by his son’s announcement, the empty whisky glass in his fingers like a talisman that had lost its power to protect.

Quietly Craig said, ‘I mean it, Mother. I mean what I say.’

For over a minute Madge Nicholson sat motionless, spine straight, hands in her lap. The lick of coal flames sounded loud and the whirring of the clock, prior to striking the hour, made Kirsty start. At length Madge drew in a breath, clapped her hands to her knees and pushed herself upright. She did not so much as glance at Bob or Craig or at the intruder who had thrust her way into her life.

She said, ‘We’ll discuss it tomorrow in a calmer frame of mind.’

‘What about Kirsty?’ said Craig.

‘Oh, she’d better stay, I suppose. Find her a place in the barn.’

‘Not the barn,’ Craig said. ‘Lorna’s room.’

A strange dry glance passed between mother and son. The woman almost smiled but it was not a sign of amusement or of capitulation.

She said, ‘I’ll fetch blankets,’ and without another word left the kitchen.

Craig sighed. He took off his jacket and draped it on the back of a chair while Bob Nicholson, still with the empty whisky glass in his hand, seated himself in his chair by the fire as if he had weathered the full term of the latest little storm. He scratched his ear-lobe then, without a trace of humour, said, ‘Did it not occur t’ you, Craig, that maybe the lass doesn’t want you for a husband?’

Craig swung round belligerently, challenging Kirsty.

‘Well, do you?’

She answered softly, ‘Aye, I do.’

‘Are ye sure you mean it, lass?’ Bob Nicholson said.

‘With all my heart,’ Kirsty answered.

 

Wrapped in a blanket on boards in the slot by Lorna Nicholson’s bed, Kirsty listened to the soft shallow breathing of the child. Lorna had been eager to chat, to put all manner of questions after the door had been closed and they were left alone. But Kirsty’s mind whirled with too many questions of her own to indulge the young girl and she had pretended that she was very sleepy, too sleepy to talk.

Some time about eleven Mrs Nicholson had entered the tiny back bedroom and had stooped over her daughter to kiss her and tuck her in. Kirsty had kept her eyes closed until the woman had gone off again and then she had come awake once more, shiningly awake, lit by all that had happened that day and, most of all, by Craig’s astonishing promise.

Marriage had never been mentioned between them, not even as a remote possibility. Their courtship had been restrained but not dour. They had been to each other whimsical and teasing by turns in the short hours of meeting, not serious at all. School seemed far back into the past. There they had been chums, as close as a boy and girl could be without incurring the opprobrium of classmates to whom male and female were still natural enemies, like dogs and cats. Kirsty could not bring herself to accept that Craig meant what he said, that the promise he had made was other than a display of anger. She tried to be sensible, to tell herself that she could not hope to escape so easily from Hawkhead and that this night spent under the same roof as her sweetheart would soon be no more than a memory.

She had no idea what time it was when the bedroom door creaked and, out of the darkness, Craig whispered her name.

Blinking, she sat up.

He had brought a lamp with him. He lighted it now and left it by the doorpost where its quivering rays would be too low to disturb his sister.

‘Kirsty, are you asleep?’

‘No.’

‘Are you cold?’

‘No.’

Over his nightshirt Craig had pulled on a threadbare coat. He knelt by the made-up bed on the floor, one arm bridging her legs, his face close to hers. Blanket held to her breasts, Kirsty sat upright. She felt wicked being here with him, wicked but not guilty.

‘Pay no heed to Mam,’ Craig whispered. ‘She’ll come round in due course.’

‘I doubt that, Craig.’

‘It’s her hard luck, then.’

‘Did you mean what you said – about marriage?’

‘Aye, every word. Unless you’d prefer to stay with old man Clegg.’

‘Please don’t make a joke of it.’

‘Kirsty, I’m sorry it had to happen like this.’

Locks of dark hair, soft and curled, bobbed on his brow. It was all Kirsty could do not to stretch out her hand and touch them. There was nothing girlish in the set of his mouth, though, or in the squareness of his jaw and when he clasped her hands in his she could feel the strength in him.

She said, ‘What’ll happen to me, Craig?’

‘I mean it, damn it. I will marry you.’

‘But – when?’

‘You can stay with us for a while. Mr Sanderson’ll find you day work at the Mains, I’m sure. Come autumn, we’ll be wed, I promise.’

Kirsty said nothing. In delay she saw a risk of losing him. She could not play tug-of-war with Craig’s loyalty to his family.

‘If I hadn’t come here tonight,’ Kirsty said, ‘would you have courted me?’

‘I’ve always wanted you, Kirsty. That’s the truth.’

He was trembling. She longed to put her arms about him and draw him down under the blankets with her, to hold his strong muscular body against hers. She drew back a little, pressing her shoulders against the side of the bed.

‘I want you too,’ she whispered.

Craig sat back on his heels, widening the gap between them. He was tense and formal all of a sudden. ‘I’d better go. It’s late and I’ve a hard day’s work ahead of me.’

‘Craig, wait.’

She crossed a forearm over her breasts and leaned forward, upward, offered him her pursed lips.

He hesitated then kissed her on the mouth, swiftly, and then left.

 

Bob Nicholson and his sons were late out of bed, late to the breakfast table and, by a good half hour, late starting along the road that would lead them to the cross gates where their ways would part. From there Craig would head up to the high acres and Gordon and his father would cut across the pasture to Bankhead. Craig would be planting grain seed all that day if the milky frost melted from the ground and if not he would be mending fences. For Gordon and Bob Nicholson it would be byre work since Jim Fry, the cattleman, was sick with a quinsy throat.

Kirsty and Lorna had been dead to the world when Craig peeped in at them. Lorna did not have to be up till a quarter to eight and Mam assured her son that she would not ‘fling Kirsty out’, not until the matter had been properly settled, though neither Craig nor his father had had the temerity to enquire what properly settled might mean. Craig assumed that Duncan Clegg would have to be told of Kirsty’s whereabouts, the Baird Home too. He was unclear about legal obligations now that Kirsty was over the age of sixteen. In the meantime he was delighted that she was to stay on at Dalnavert. With the optimism of youth, he believed that his mother would come around to liking Kirsty, would soften, relent and bless a marriage between them.

It was almost half past seven before the Nicholsons emerged from the door of the cottage. The sky was light with the promise of sunshine and the cloudscape away over the Straiton hills might have been painted with a fox brush, russet tipped with cream.

No sooner had the boys passed out of the yard than Gordon said to his brother, ‘Hoi! Where were you last night, eh?’

‘In bed, of course.’

‘Whose bed?’

‘My own bed.’

‘Aye, for ten minutes, before ye slipped away. I heard you, you dirty sod.’

‘One more word, sonnie, an’ I’ll punch your ear.’

‘You were in the back bedroom, weren’t you?’

‘What of it?’

‘Did ye get what you went for, Craig, eh?’

‘I went to see if Kirsty was warm enough, that’s all.’

‘Warm enough? That’s a good one.’ Gordon skipped away as Craig lunged at him. ‘Was she waarrrm enough for looooove?’

Bob Nicholson walked with an unhurried gait just ahead of his sons. He seemed oblivious to their horseplay. Already he had a pale odour of whisky about him and a glowing spot on each cheek which gave the impression of rude health. The pipe in his mouth sparked like the chimney of a new-lit fire. But Bob was more alert than he appeared to be and when he drew to an abrupt halt at the roadside his sons piled into him like dazed bullocks.

Bob pointed the wet pipe stem. ‘See what I see?’

Craig followed the direction and saw at once the figure of a man waddling down the sheep track from the west.

‘Bloody Clegg!’

‘Wonder what he wants,’ said Gordon.

‘Can you not guess?’ said Craig grimly. ‘Wants his slave back, I expect.’

‘He’s got gall, I’ll say that for him,’ Bob Nicholson remarked and then, to his sons’ surprise, climbed the fence and set off across the grassland to meet the farmer from Hawkhead.

‘Well, I’d love to linger an’ watch the fireworks,’ said Gordon, ‘but we’re damned late as it is. I’ll report to Mr Sanderson while you go up there an’ give Dad moral support.’

‘I’ll kill the wee pig, that’s what I’ll do.’

‘Keep your fists in your pockets, Craig. Let Dad do all the talkin’.’

Gordon slapped his brother fraternally upon the shoulder and went on his way down the road towards the Mains, while Craig, simmering, hopped over the fence and loped across the grazings after his father.

Clegg made no move to avoid the Nicholsons. On the contrary, he changed tack and came to a meeting with them in the middle of the pasture. He wasted no time at all on explanations or apologies.

‘My lass, where is she?’ he snarled.

‘She’s not your lass, Mr Clegg,’ Craig answered, his brother’s advice forgotten at the sight of the man who had dared to lay hands on Kirsty.

‘She is mine. Damned if she’s not.’ From his jacket pocket Clegg dragged out a wad of papers which he waved above his head. ‘I’ve got written proof of it.’

‘Articles!’ said Bob scathingly.

Clegg cried, ‘Mine until she’s eighteen. Months yet. Near a bloody six-month, in fact. Send her back or I’ll have the constabulary on you all.’

‘What exactly do you want wi’ her?’ Bob asked. ‘You’ve hardly enough doin’ at Hawkhead to justify a servant.’

Duncan Clegg did not seem to hear. He shouted, ‘Whatever she told you’s a bloody lie. I never touched her. I never laid a bloody hand on her.’

‘Nobody said you did, Mr Clegg,’ said Bob Nicholson.

‘Did she not—?’

‘I don’t doubt the validity of the documents you’re waggin’ about,’ said Bob Nicholson.

‘Give her back, then.’

‘Can’t give what I don’t have,’ Bob Nicholson said.

Craig bit his lip. His father’s guile, and the lie, took the wind out of Clegg’s sails. He stopped waving his arms and stuck the documents into his jacket again, puffed and huffed for a moment, then said, ‘Where else would she go but your place?’

Craig said, ‘Has she run away, then?’

‘Aye, is that what you’re tryin’ to tell us, Mr Clegg?’

‘She’s a wilful, spiteful, ungrateful bitch.’

‘Perhaps she went back to the Baird Home,’ said Craig.

‘Or if she felt she had a grievance against you, for some daft reason or another, perhaps she went to the constable,’ said Bob Nicholson.

‘The constable?’

‘At Dunnet.’

Clegg cocked his head, scowled. ‘I think you’ve got her hid.’

‘Are you callin’ me a liar, Mr Clegg?’

‘I think – well, she might be hidin’ at your place.’

‘Craig, walk back to Dalnavert wi’ Mr Clegg,’ said Bob. ‘Let him look through the barns an’ the sheds.’

Clegg’s mouth opened, closed.

Craig said, ‘Aye, come on wi’ me, Mr Clegg. You can ask my mam if we’re tellin’ lies.’

‘Your mam?’

‘Search the cottage too, if you feel you must.’

‘Nah, nah. That’ll not be necessary.’

Bob Nicholson nodded. ‘Very well, Mr Clegg. If I were you I’d bide at home for a day or two. If your lass has run off she’ll not get far on her own.’

‘Aye, perhaps you’re right.’

‘Did she steal from you?’ Bob asked.

‘Nah, nah.’

‘Did she take her belongin’s?’

‘Nah.’

‘When did she go missin’?’

‘Last night.’

‘Oh, so you saw her go, did you?’

‘I – I found her gone,’ said Clegg.

‘I see, so you found her bed empty this mornin’, is that it?’

‘It’s none o’ your damned business, Bob Nicholson.’

‘It was yourself made it my business, Mr Clegg.’

Clegg huffed and puffed again, then he capitulated. ‘I’ll wait a day or two, as you suggest, then I’ll consult the folk at the Baird Home.’

‘Wise,’ Bob Nicholson agreed.

Craig said, ‘Perhaps she’s down at Bankhead, Mr Clegg. She’s a favourite wi’ the Sandersons, after all.’

‘Aye, well, I’ll just wait.’ Obviously Duncan Clegg did not want to confront Mr Sanderson and have to explain why it was that Kirsty had run off. ‘I’ll away home now. I’ve got ploughin’ to do.’

‘Lassies can be flighty,’ said Bob Nicholson. ‘She’ll come back when she’s hungry, you’ll see.’

Clegg scowled. His outrage had been replaced by guilt, however, and undermined by Bob Nicholson’s questions. He turned and, without bidding his neighbours farewell, trudged off uphill towards the crown of the ridge.

Craig and his father watched his departure.

‘Nasty wee bugger,’ Bob murmured.

‘Will those papers really allow him to take Kirsty back?’

‘Who can say?’ Bob shrugged. ‘But I’d take no chances if I were you, son.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Bob took the pipe from his mouth and cradled it in his palm. He rubbed the side of his nose with a knuckle. ‘Look, I’d best get down to Bankhead. Mr Sanderson’ll—’

‘Take no chances?’ Craig gripped his father’s arm. ‘What the hell d’you mean?’

‘I mean,’ Bob Nicholson said, ‘you should marry Kirsty Barnes just as soon as you bloody well can.’

 

She felt awkward at breakfast. It might have been different if Craig had been there but she had been so late asleep that she had not wakened at her usual early hour and was obliged to share the table with Lorna and Mrs Nicholson.

There was porridge, bacon and fried bread; bannocks too, fresh butter, even a pot of jam, a symbol of luxury as far as Kirsty was concerned. Whatever fate was in store for her she certainly would not starve while she was a ‘guest’ in Madge Nicholson’s house. She did not eat her fill, however, in case the woman thought her scrounging and greedy. She was quick to help clear the table and carry dishes into the little kitchenette where a stone sink and cold-water tap were and where Madge Nicholson, wrapped in a canvas apron, was busy scrubbing pots.

Mrs Nicholson said not a word and Kirsty returned to the kitchen to chat to Lorna about the happenings at the school she had left four years ago. She found it easier to relate to Craig’s sister than to his mother. She dreaded the moment when Lorna would leave for school and she would be alone with Madge Nicholson.

She felt lost in Dalnavert’s unfamiliar routines. She did not know what would become of her if Duncan Clegg should come rapping at the door and demand her return. She had signed articles which bound her to him for a given period of time. She had not read the crabbed script carefully and could not remember any of the official jargon. She was determined, however, not to return to Hawkhead farm. Intuitively she knew that his desire for her had not been a weak and impulsive thing but a slow smouldering hunger which her resistance had not extinguished.

The thought of Duncan Clegg upon her, touching her, filled her with loathing. If Lorna and Madge Nicholson had not been there she might have wept at memory of the incident, from fear that she would be callously handed back to Clegg and spoiled for other men, for Craig. Kirsty had learned control, however. It kept her stable during the twenty minutes of breakfast-time. While Lorna went off to pack her dinner into her schoolbag, she occupied herself by sweeping the hearth and filling the brass coal-hod from the pile in the shed by the yard door.

It was a fine dry sort of morning and she wondered if Clegg had, perhaps, decided to plough and to let her take her own time in returning to him. Another kind of man, another kind of farmer, would have done so, for dry spring days were precious and Mr Clegg was far behind in his planting, so far behind that he might again miss the feed crop completely.

When she returned to the kitchen, lugging the upright hod, she found to her surprise that Lorna was not the only one dressed for outdoors. Madge Nicholson too had put on her coat and hat. They were not the sort of garments that Kirsty would have imagined for Bob Nicholson’s wife. They were expensive and fashionable, with a hint of practicality in the choice of material. The tailor-made, windproof garment with its tight-fitting back and pouched front made Madge look years younger. The hat sported a bow of brown velvet and two small artificial roses, one of which was spiked through by the long pin that held it fast to Madge’s hair. She was tugging on a pair of brown kidskin gloves, and seemed to have performed a miracle of transformation in no time at all, as if shedding the worn apron had brought her out like a butterfly from its chrysalis.

‘Are – are you going out, Mrs Nicholson?’ Kirsty, rather stupidly, asked.

‘Shoppin’.’

‘Oh!’

‘Aye, shoppin’.’

It was on the tip of Kirsty’s tongue to enquire what sort of shopping required such elegant attire but she said nothing. She put down the coal-hod by the grate and, for something to do, blew gently along the brass bevels to remove the thin layers of dust that had accumulated there.

‘Will you be here when I get back?’ said Madge Nicholson.

‘If – if that’s all right, aye,’ said Kirsty.

‘I take it you’ll not be goin’ back to Hawkhead?’

‘No, Mrs Nicholson.’

‘Well, there are potatoes in the sack below the kitchen board. They’ll need scrubbed and washed. Enough for six. Can you manage that?’

‘Aye. Is there anything else I can do?’

‘I’ll be back in time to see to the rest. Nobody’s home much before six, except Lorna.’

‘Does Craig not come in for his dinner?’

‘No, he does not.’

‘Will I take him out somethin’?’

‘No, you will not.’ Madge Nicholson held out a hand to her daughter who had been waiting by the door. ‘Keep the fire up, though, if you can be bothered.’

‘I will, Mrs Nicholson,’ Kirsty said.

‘Cheerio, Kirsty.’

‘Cheerio, Lorna.’

And they were gone. And she was alone in the Nicholsons’ house with virtually nothing to do and all day to do it, nothing, that is, except worry about Madge Nicholson’s destination and what tricks the woman intended to employ to be rid of her.

Kirsty had not been deceived. Madge Nicholson had not dressed herself to the nines to visit the provision merchant in Dunnet. She had gone, Kirsty suspected, to the Baird Home to report the situation and lay blame for the occurrence where, in Mrs Nicholson’s opinion, it properly belonged, with the servant and not the master. Kirsty went down the corridor, opened the back door and looked out into the yard. It was tidy enough, not like the dirty pen at Hawkhead with its slops and weeds and dung-spatters. Hens clucked and pecked contentedly about the barn and a dog, locked in one of the long sheds, barked at the unfamiliar smell of her.

Why, she wondered, had she sought refuge here? Why had she not gone straight to Bankhead? In all likelihood Mr Sanderson would have taken her part against Duncan Clegg. It was not too late. She could walk to the Mains in half an hour, tell Mr Sanderson what had happened, throw herself on his mercy and thus spike Mrs Nicholson’s guns. But she could not bring herself to quit Dalnavert, even if it was unsafe. She was bound by the fragile hope that had brought her here, the hope that Craig would protect her, would take her in his arms and keep her safe from harm. She saw now, all too clearly, that a marriage between them would be difficult if not impossible, that Madge Nicholson would fight to keep her son.

Uncertainty and self-pity took hold of Kirsty again. Tears welled in her eyes at the realisation that she might lose him. He was, after all, all that she had in life.

 

The breaking up of Dalnavert’s old grassland had been undertaken at Mr Sanderson’s suggestion and with his support.

Craig was not shy when it came to hard field work. He had enjoyed the days stolen from the late autumn season and from the winter months when he had harnessed the two big plough horses from Bankhead and made a high cut that had opened up the matted sward to air and weathering. He was no expert with the plough, but he had been guided by his father’s advice as well as Mr Sanderson’s and had assiduously prepared a fine tilth for the seed-bed. But Craig’s mind was not on grassland husbandry or cereal production that morning, or even on the job of fencing that he had set himself to do until the earth warmed enough to begin sowing.

An old dry-stone wall marked the northern boundary of the field. Over the years cattle had rubbed it down in places and the hedges that had been planted in the gaps had been bruised and battered too. Craig’s task was to stretch new wire to make the boundary secure. He had fetched up posts and wire by cart and dug out the post holes one cold day last week. Now he stood the posts into the holes and with a heavy hammer drove them in deep and firm.

The long swinging blows relaxed him. The shaft vibrated in his fists and his muscles stretched and sweat started down his spine. It was beneficial work for a day like today. Being with Kirsty last night had frustrated him and brought out a strain of discontent that had been in him all this year and most of last. He whanged away with the hammer on the stobs, grunting, releasing his sullen anger at the realisation that Clegg, that evil wee tyke from Hawkhead, might have spoiled Kirsty, his Kirsty, and nobody would have been any the wiser.

She was not, strictly speaking, his Kirsty at all. But when he thought of other girls – May Sanderson from the Mains or Helen Mackenzie from the mill at Dunnet, he found that the visions became unpleasant and did not give him the sort of feelings that thinking of Kirsty Barnes engendered. He did not know why every girl he met, even casually, should be instantly compared with her. Being a man was not easy, Craig had come to realise, and he often wished that he might be a young boy again, untroubled by confusions of the blood. Whanging away on a fence post with an iron-headed hammer was one way to cast out devils and Craig worked rapidly from section to section, setting the posts and leaving the stringing of wire until he ran out of stobs or of energy.

By dinner-time, when the sun had grown almost hot, Craig felt better. He had worked up a thirst for the cold tea in his bottle and hunger for the bread and cheese that Mam had packed into his sack. He had come a long way, though, from his jacket. He had skirted full half the field, lugging and planting and hammering, and he walked slowly back around the perimeter with the hammer over his shoulder, thinking, calmly and pleasantly, how good it would be to go home tonight and find Kirsty there, to have her at the supper-table along with folk he cared about and who cared for him.

It surprised him to discover his father seated against the dry-stone wall, tea-bottle uncorked and pipe smoking like a little lum. Bob Nicholson offered the bottle to his son.

‘You could do with a swig o’ this, I fancy.’

The bottle had been in the shadow of the wall all morning and was cold to the fingers, the weak astringent liquid cold on the tongue.

Craig drank, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. He reached for his jacket and draped it over his shoulders for, now that he had stopped, he realised that the day might be bright but was not warm after all. He studied his father curiously.

‘What might you be doin’ here?’ he asked.

Bob Nicholson shrugged. ‘Visitin’. See how you’re gettin’ on with the fence.’

‘I’m gettin’ on fine with the fence.’

‘Sit yourself down, son.’

Craig did not obey. ‘Have you been at the pub?’

‘Been at the pub? Me!’ Bob said in an injured tone. ‘Hell, I’ve been puttin’ in my hours at Bankhead, tendin’ spring calves.’

Craig seated himself on the grass, unwrapped his bread and cheese and bit into the sandwich. He did not glance at his father but sniffed, trying to catch the whiff of spirits, the old man’s musk. The faint sharpness was there, as usual. Craig sighed and watched a pair of buzzards away above the hill turn slow, soft and heavy on the pale currents of air. Something had brought his father here, something more than companionability or the desire to inspect the fence. Craig munched bread and cheese, sucked tea from the bottle, kept silent.

At length Bob said, ‘I think she’s gone to the Baird.’

Craig said, ‘What would she have gone there for? She’s safer with us, is she not?’

‘Not Kirsty; your mother.’

‘Mam?’

‘Aye. I saw her best coat laid out, an’ her Sunday hat. She’s headed for somewhere special. My guess is she’s catchin’ the train to Maybole to seek “official advice”.’ Bob paused. ‘I’m not inebriated, son.’

‘I never said you were.’

‘I haven’t lost my reason, either.’

‘Just what are you drivin’ at?’

‘She’ll have the lass back with Clegg before the day’s out.’

‘I’ll not allow it.’

‘When her mind’s made up you – not even you – can stop her.’

‘Christ! Do you know what Clegg’ll do if he gets Kirsty back?’

‘I can well imagine,’ said Bob.

‘I’ll throttle the bastard before I’ll see that happen.’

The movement was small. Bob dipped two fingers into his breast pocket and plucked out what appeared to be a spill of paper. He offered it casually to Craig.

‘What’s that?’

‘Money. Four five-pound notes.’

Craig stopped chewing and, hands on knees, leaned forward and peered at the spill suspiciously. ‘What in God’s name are you doin’ with twenty quid?’

‘It’s for you.’

‘What for?’

‘Take the lass an’ get out of here,’ Bob Nicholson said. ‘Go before your mam gets back.’

‘Ach, Dad. I could never—’

‘Heed my advice, Craig. If you love this girl—’

‘I’m not sure I – Look, let’s wait an’ see what happens.’

‘If you wait, son, you’ll be done for – like me.’

‘You haven’t done so bad.’

‘Aye, but I haven’t done so well, have I?’

Craig watched the banknotes wag before him.

Bob Nicholson said, ‘Take them, damn it.’

‘Where did you get such a sum?’

‘From Mr Sanderson.’

‘He loaned you twenty pounds?’

‘It’s the burial fund, if you must know.’

‘You cashed your burial fund! Mam’ll go mad when she finds out.’

Bob Nicholson shrugged again as if his wife’s temper was a bagatelle, her anger of no consequence at all.

Craig drew closer to his father. Squatting on his heels, the bottle and the heel of bread tossed aside, he peered into the man’s watery blue eyes. He could not be sure how seriously he was supposed to take the offer and the advice. He had been given bibulous nonsense in lieu of parental help in the past but this time he felt a deep underlying urgency that the old man’s diffident manner could not quite hide.

‘You mean it, don’t you?’ he said.

‘Sure as death, I mean it.’

‘But why?’

‘To get you out of Dalnavert. To get you away from here,’ Bob Nicholson said. ‘You’ll not have a better chance, a better motive. If you even think you’re in love wi’ that pretty lassie from Hawkhead now’s the time to act on it. If you stay, it’ll be killed.’

‘What’ll be killed?’

‘Happiness. Opportunity. How the hell do I know? Look, take the money, pack a grip, grab the lassie and get on a train.’

‘Mr Sanderson – the plantin’—’

‘Bankhead’s been here for five generations. The field was here ten thousand bloody years ago. It’ll survive without your supervision for ten thousand more.’ Bob Nicholson’s diffidence collapsed into a show of temper. He scrambled to his feet, thrust the banknotes into Craig’s face. ‘Take them, damn you. Take them an’ use them. Go to Glasgow. Make a decent life for yourself.’

Craig stared at his father in disbelief. Never before had he heard his father speak so forcefully. It was a kind of defiance, an authority that Craig associated with his mother and not the man. He was astonished by it, dismayed too. He did not know how to respond.

‘Stand up, son.’

Craig got to his feet.

‘Here,’ Bob Nicholson said.

Craig closed his fist on the spill of paper money. It felt strange, new, refined in his dirty fingers.

‘What can I do in Glasgow? My job’s here.’

‘Do you want to condemn Kirsty Barnes, as well as yourself?’ Bob said.

‘Condemn?’

‘Think, for God’s sake.’

Craig nodded. Without being able to put it into words he understood what his father meant. It was not just Dalnavert’s poor acres or the menial work at Bankhead from which his dad sought to free him, but the woman too, from his mam.

He felt a fierce hollow sadness inside him, a sinking, a fear of his ability to cope without the woman behind him.

‘But Kirsty might not—’

‘We’ll go back to Dalnavert right now and ask her.’

‘Well—’

‘If she’s in agreement, will you go?’

If he’d had leisure to consider the proposal then Craig would have refused. But he churned with need of Kirsty Barnes and wove his desires into belief that he was doing it for her, to save her. He felt noble, like a martyr, and, with the quick responses of youth, switched himself to the new track, accepting the adventure of it. The twenty-pound stake made all the difference. He would not have had the gumption to break away from Dalnavert on his own account or the urge to scrimp and save a travelling fund. In a flash he saw how shrewd his father had been and felt a wary sort of gratitude towards the man.

‘If Kirsty is willin’,’ Craig said, ‘I’ll do it.’

‘Without hesitation, without turnin’ back?’

‘Aye.’

‘Before your mam gets home?’

Craig paused before he answered. ‘I could never face her wi’ that sort of news, Dad.’

Bob Nicholson said, ‘There’s a train from Dunnet station at twenty minutes past three o’clock.’

‘If Kirsty agrees, we’ll be on it.’

‘Good man,’ Bob Nicholson said.

 

Reaction to the events of the previous evening had made her weary, Kirsty decided. She did not feel comfortable in the Nicholsons’ cottage and, after she had done the chores, she seated herself in a chair by the fire and tried to relax. She was certainly tired. She ached as if she had had an influenza and jumped nervously at every small sound outside.

She took the liberty of making herself a pot of tea and ate a slice of bread and butter but denied herself jam, in case Mrs Nicholson thought it ‘an imposition’ upon her hospitality. About one o’clock, or shortly after, sitting upright in the chair, her fingers clenched about the wooden arms, Kirsty fell into a light sleep. When, an hour later, the kitchen door crashed open she almost died of fright. She threw herself out of sleep and out of the chair with a cry.

‘It’s me, only me,’ Craig said, alarmed at the distress his entry had caused her. ‘Did you think it was Clegg?’

‘Yes, yes, I did.’

She felt weepy again but the sight of Craig gave her relief and when he took her hands in his and drew her to him she calmed at once and laid her head against his shoulder to be soothed. It was only then that she noticed Mr Nicholson in the doorway. He did not seem to disapprove of the show of affection, but to be pleased by it.

‘Ask her, son,’ he said quietly.

Craig separated himself from her.

Kirsty felt a peculiar apprehension come over her at his frown and the manner in which he pursed his lips. He did not seem to know what to do with his hands. He did not speak a word until he had finally folded his forearms under his armpits and found a spot on the floor that suited him. He was, she noticed, still dressed for field work, damp with sweat, his jacket draped about his shoulders like a little cloak.

‘Go on, Craig,’ Mr Nicholson urged. ‘Ask her.’

‘Dad’s given me money, enough for us to go to Glasgow,’ Craig said. ‘If you want to leave here. I mean, we’ll be properly married as soon as we can. In the meantime, I mean – Look, I’ll marry you, Kirsty, as soon as we’re settled in the city. I mean, I’m not just—’

‘You’ll be safer in Glasgow, lass,’ Bob Nicholson told her.

Craig stumbled on. ‘We would be goin’ without prospects,’ he said, ‘but it would be safer, Kirsty, than remainin’ here.’

‘But Mr Clegg – I’m articled to him, am I not?’

‘Damn Clegg!’ Craig exploded. ‘It’s me or it’s Clegg. Make up your mind.’

‘Son, son, have you no savvy?’ said Bob Nicholson. ‘Never mind the long story. Ask her nicely. That’ll do it.’

‘Aye, right.’ Craig unfolded his arms, wiped his hands on his thighs and then pressed them together as if he was praying. He did not meet her eye. ‘Eh, Kirsty, will you have me for a husband?’

She heard herself say, ‘Yes.’ Before she could even think of it, she said again, ‘Yes.’

‘See,’ Bob Nicholson said. ‘Now, son, away an’ pack a few belongin’s. Take the big canvas grip from under my bed. I’ll never use it again.’

Craig nodded. It had become perfunctory all of a sudden. Kirsty longed for more, for a kiss, for his arms about her, for a lingering moment alone with him. It was not how she had envisaged it, curt and sharp-toned and hurried.

She said, ‘I’ve nothin’ but what I stand in.’

Bob Nicholson brushed that complaint aside. ‘You can buy a new dress, stockin’s, shoes, whatever you need, in Glasgow. Craig has money enough for that.’

She glanced round and found that Craig had already gone into the bedroom. She could hear him rummaging about, drawers opening and closing, as he packed his belongings.

To Bob Nicholson Kirsty said, ‘Why are you doin’ this, Mr Nicholson? You hardly know me.’

The man answered, ‘Hardly know you? Why, lass, I’ve watched you grow up, though you might not have guessed it. Besides, Craig’s hardly stopped talkin’ about you for the past ten years. Nah, nah, I’m not sendin’ the boy off with a stranger.’ He grinned. ‘Anyway, you’re far too bonnie to do him much harm.’

‘But Mrs Nicholson—’

‘Leave Mrs Nicholson to me.’

Looking down she realised just how ill-clad she was for the trip. Glasgow, she had heard, was a seat of fashion and smartness. She would look like a scarecrow in its streets.

She hesitated. ‘Mr Nicholson, I—’

Bob Nicholson shook his head, amused, perhaps, by her vanity.

She realised with a start that the man had offered all that she had ever wanted without the arduous process of a courtship, with its formal rituals, its frustrations and dangers. All she had wanted for the past five years was to be with Craig.

Hesitantly, Bob Nicholson put an arm around her shoulder. She could smell that antiseptic odour, his whisky aura, though she could not imagine when he had found time to take drink. He seemed perfectly sober and serious as he gave her a brief reassuring pat and, for a moment, drew her to him for a cuddle.

‘Thank you,’ Kirsty whispered.

At that instant Craig entered the kitchen. He lugged a grip of thick brown canvas with a leather binding. It appeared almost new. Kirsty wondered if it belonged to Mr Nicholson, had been purchased in hope, for journeys which had never been made.

‘Got everythin’ you need, son?’

‘Aye. All I can carry.’

‘Get out of here, then,’ Bob Nicholson said.

‘Are you not comin’ to the station?’

‘Nah, nah. I think I’ll put my feet up for half an hour.’

‘I’ll write you letters, Dad.’

An expression of alarm crossed Mr Nicholson’s face. He held up his hand. ‘Don’t write,’ he said. ‘Not till you’re settled.’

‘Will you come up to Glasgow for the weddin’?’

‘Don’t write, not a word,’ was Bob Nicholson’s answer.

There was an awkward pause. Kirsty waited, a little apart from the men. She sensed their reserve, the shyness between them, saw, in the very corner of Bob Nicholson’s eye, the glitter of a tear.

The man did not take his son into his arms. Bob Nicholson was a true-born Scot, an odd mixture of the undemonstrative and the sentimental. He stuck out his hand.

Tense with embarrassment, Craig pumped it and let it go again.

‘Take – take care o’ yourself, Dad.’

‘Never mind me. You be sure to take good care of this wee lass, you hear me?’

‘I will, I promise.’

Craig turned, hoisted up the grip, circled Kirsty’s waist and, sweeping her imperiously before him, left the kitchen of Dalnavert for the last time. He did not, not once, look back.

 

Dunnet railway station, like all the local halts between the waters of the Girvan and the Doon, was no more than a ticket office and a brace of platforms linked by an iron bridge. Kirsty had been on the platform only once before, years ago, when Mrs Ashton-Clarke had brought her from the Baird Home to Hawkhead. She had been so petrified then that the journey seemed like a half-remembered nightmare. Today, however, with Craig’s arm about her, clear at last of the oppression of the rugged hills, Kirsty’s detachment was supplanted by an anxious anticipation of what was to come.

The iron tracks, glinting in the wan sunlight, converged away to the south. She could just see the engine, a spot of colour with a thread of smoke attached to it. A signal clanked and nodded, making her start. The railway clerk – father of Netta Deans with whom she had once shared a desk at Dunnet school – emerged from his cubbyhole and, hands on hips, looked up and down the track, checked his watch, put on his hat and took his stance at the foot of the bridge by the little green gate that led out into the lane.

Craig had set down the canvas grip and had taken his arm from about her waist, had left her alone while he went into the cubicle to buy the tickets. He did not appear to be excited. His expression was grave, a tiny furrow creasing his brow as he watched the train approach. He had not put on his Sunday-best suit but had changed his trousers and had replaced his working-boots with shoes. He might have been travelling no further than the cattle mart at Cawl or the seedsman’s store in Maybole except that she was with him, the lass from Hawkhead, a fact that made it strange and remarkable.

Suddenly Craig said, ‘He asked where we were goin’.’

‘Who did?’ said Kirsty.

‘Mr Deans, when I bought the tickets.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘I told him we were just goin’ to Ayr an’ had met by accident on the road.’

‘But are the tickets not for Glasgow, Craig?’

Confused, Craig took the two billets from his pocket and squinted at them. ‘God, so they are! I asked him for two to Glasgow, no return. At the same time, in the same breath, I told him we were goin’ to Ayr. He must think me a right damned fool.’

‘It doesn’t matter what he thinks, does it?’ said Kirsty. ‘We’re not likely to be seein’ him again.’

‘I suppose we’re not.’ Craig paused. ‘Aye, damn him! Let him spread what tales he likes. We’ll be safe out o’ harm’s way in Glasgow.’

Silent again, Craig watched smoke thicken and plume across the fields. The vibration of the engine’s wheels was audible now and its whistle screamed in the distance.

Craig said, ‘Comes up from Stranraer, this train. I’ve never been to Stranraer, have you?’

‘I’ve never even been in Ayr.’

‘I wonder what Glasgow’s like.’

‘I’ve heard it’s big.’

‘Aye,’ said Craig. ‘It’ll be big all right.’

As it came closer it seemed to Kirsty that the train would not fit between the platforms, that it would grind its way up the ramp and fall upon her. Steam hissed and, even before the train halted, a carriage door slammed like a gunshot. She clung to Craig’s arm, trying not to flinch, clung tightly to him as if she feared that he would vanish in the smoke and steam and she would be left alone there, foolish and abandoned, when the train pulled away again.

Craig propelled her forward. She glimpsed glass and painted wood. She smelled the choking cindery smell of smoke and the hot smell of grease. She saw a brass handle, heard Craig say, ‘Open it, daftie. Open it quick.’ She pushed down the handle. The door swung out towards her. The canvas grip nudged her from the rear. She climbed up and into the carriage, into the odour of stale tobacco smoke and dirty plush stuff. The compartment was empty, no larger, she thought, than a pony stall at Bankhead. Craig heaved the grip on to one of the netted shelves. He peeled off his jacket, unstrapped the window, let it rattle wide open and leaned out.

Seated, breathless, Kirsty stared from the window at Mr Deans who seemed oblivious to the drama that was taking place only yards from him, who would be there when the train pulled out, when they were gone, who would be there again tomorrow and the next day and for ever.

‘Nobody else got on,’ said Craig. ‘Just us.’

The engine jerked. Kirsty was thrown forward as if a hand had shoved her. Couplings clanked and clinked, stiffening. There was a great bellow of steam and, unexpectedly, the train was slipping slowly forwards, Dunnet station sliding neatly away from her, not she from it. Craig continued to lean out of the window.

Kirsty’s anxiety congealed around the fact that she had read of terrible accidents on railway trains. She tugged at his jacket and begged him to come inside before his head got knocked off. He grinned, rattled up the window and threw himself down on the seat by her side, sending up a whirl of stale dust that hung like chaff in the streaky sunlight.

‘God, you’re bonnie,’ Craig said.

Kirsty was both frightened and flattered by his sudden change of mood. She had never been alone with Craig before, not indoors, not in a close and intimate place like this. Now she had committed herself to him. She was his. He could do what he liked with her. But his compliments soothed her. He had never seemed more handsome for spring weather had tanned his face and hands, long brown hands, not squat and gnarled like Mr Clegg’s.

‘Are you blushin’, love?’ he asked.

The carriage rattled and rocked. Green landscapes streamed past the windows. Kirsty had a vague impression of loamy fields, of trees, a steep bank of charred grass that duly obliterated the long view and carried the compartment into shadow.

‘Come here,’ said Craig.

He put both arms about her and lifted her bodily on to his knee. Kirsty uttered a gasp just before his mouth pressed down on hers. Leaning back against the dirty plush, he cradled her. He put his hand upon her breast. He kissed her with more urgency than tenderness and, when he pulled away, left her gasping.

Once more he came down upon her, pushing her along the seat, almost smothering her. He brought up his leg and crooked it about her ankles and stroked and fondled her breasts through her bodice.

She had been kissed by Craig before, had been touched by him in the green lanes about Bankhead but then it had seemed daring and childish. For an instant she felt shut off from him, separate and alone. She put her fist against his shoulder. She did not quite punch him but the gesture was sufficient to tell him that she did not want to be taken roughly.

‘Wait, Craig. Please wait.’

He gave a growling sort of sigh and released her, let her sit up.

Craig was no bully, no brute. He realised that he had hurt her and said, ‘I – I don’t know what came over me.’

‘It’ll be all right between us, dearest,’ Kirsty told him. ‘But later, not now.’

Once more he apologised. He looked so sad and solemn that Kirsty lifted herself against him and kissed him upon the lips, then she laid her head against his shoulder and let him stroke her hair while they stared, together, at the changing vistas that lay between the railway and the sea.

 

Gloomy old Saint Andrew, leaning over an X-shaped cross, peered grimly down the staircase at Kirsty and Craig.

At first Kirsty had thought that the saint was part of a tall window and had been amazed to find such a thing inside an ordinary house. Soon, though, she realised that it could not be a window for it had grown dark outside and the painting was lit, albeit dimly, from behind.

She remained fascinated by it. He was such an old, old chap, Saint Andrew, and so untidy, with straggling hair, a long unkempt beard and a robe that looked as if it could do with a good scrub. From the ground at his feet nettles sprouted – perhaps they were meant to be thistles – and a lumpy blue-black rain cloud compressed his silvery halo. His eyes were the sharpest part of the portrait. Red and piercing they glared straight at Kirsty so that she could not shake the feeling that it was Saint Andrew who was judging them and not Mrs Agnes Frew.

If she had not been so exhausted Kirsty might have given Craig a sign that this place made her uncomfortable and that she would prefer to find another less genteel lodging for their first night together. She kept still, though, because she was afraid that Craig would take her at her word and continue his search for a boarding-house all night long. Hour upon hour they had tramped Glasgow’s streets, moving away from the proximity of the glass-roofed cathedral of St Enoch’s railway station, across Argyle Street and, left, along Bothwell Street and eventually into St Vincent Street.

Kirsty had only known where she was by observing the name-plates at corners for Craig did not see fit to inform her of their destination, if he had one. Kirsty had been dazed, not enthralled, by the size of the city. She had been deafened, choked and generally jostled and had had no opportunity to pause before the great gaslit stores, the ‘Bonanza’ sales, window displays of incredible richness and variety.

Every conceivable commodity was for sale in Glasgow, weird and wonderful objects as well as food and drink and clothing. Corsets, artificial limbs, anchors, metal chimney cowls were all shown off behind glass, like treasures in a museum. Meat by the ton and beer and spirits by the gallon, gaudy hoardings and posters for theatre shows, craft shops exhibiting violins and bath taps, cabinets and laces; Kirsty could not take in a tenth of it all as she dragged along by Craig’s side on his tour of hotels and boarding-houses.

He would pause on the pavement outside an establishment, study its tariff board and dinner menu, complain about the price and lead Kirsty away before she had a chance to offer an opinion. She did not know what rate was expensive, what was cheap. It was not her money that would pay for their room and board. Craig had eyes only for notices that offered Rooms. But he rejected each and every one of the accommodations with a shake of the head, and went on, lugging the canvas grip and holding Kirsty by the arm. It grew dark. Dusk accumulated in the smoke, settled over the long streets and roadways. Pedestrian traffic on the pavements grew heavier. Gas-lamp lighters trooped about with long poles on their shoulders and brought a golden glow to the closes and the lanes. On Craig went, dourly, until St Vincent Street had been left behind and they were tramping along Dumbarton Road.

At length Kirsty put her foot down. She stopped dead in her tracks, like Nero.

‘Craig Nicholson, I’m starved,’ she said.

‘Oh! Aye, I’m hungry myself.’

‘Can we not find somethin’ to eat in this town?’

He frowned. Realising that Craig would be quite incapable of making up his mind which tea-room, restaurant or pie-shop should have their custom, she grabbed him by the arm and whisked him into the first place that advertised Sit Down Suppers and from whose doorway wafted a delicious effluvium of pan fat.

It was hardly the Grand Hotel. Four or five wooden tables and a dozen wooden chairs, no customers; the man in a dirty apron who emerged from behind a curtain in the rear of the shop did not exactly brim with welcomes. He told them what there was to eat in a dialect so coarse that it was all Craig and Kirsty could do to make sense of it.

The choice of fare was strictly limited but Kirsty was so hungry that a dish of fried haddock, boiled potatoes and white beans seemed like a royal feast, a cup of black-brewed tea like finest champagne. She concentrated on appeasing her appetite while Craig ate with an air of distraction and gazed out of the window over the wooden half-partition.

‘What are you lookin’ for, Craig?’

‘I think we’ve come west.’

‘West?’

‘Do you not remember Mr Douglas?’

‘Who’s he?’

‘Did you not go to Sunday School at Bankhead kirk?’

‘You know I didn’t. I wasn’t allowed.’

‘Aye, that’s right. Well, Mr Douglas was my Sunday School teacher. He told us all about Glasgow. He used to come up here for prayer meetin’s an’ Bible study. He said the nicest part o’ the city was the west end. Told us about this place he stayed in.’

‘How long ago was this, Craig?’

‘Nine years, ten maybe.’

‘Perhaps it’s changed since then.’

‘Nah. It would be the place for us, if I could find it.’

‘What was the name o’ the street, where Mr Douglas stayed?’

‘Nineteen was the number. Funny me rememberin’ that.’

‘An’ the name o’ the street?’ Kirsty prompted.

‘Walbrook Street. Aye, that’s it.’

‘But where is Walbrook Street?’

‘Somewhere near here,’ Craig said. ‘I think.’

It did not occur to Kirsty any more than it did to Craig that they might dare to become passengers upon a municipal horse-tram or even to hire a cab to drive them to the destination that had become so obsessively fixed in Craig’s mind.

Kirsty said, ‘Look, you’d better ask somebody. It’s gettin’ late. We might be miles from Walbrook Street.’

‘Good idea, Kirsty,’ Craig said. ‘But who can I ask?’

‘Ask the man when he comes for the money.’

In spite of his apparent truculence the man from behind the curtain turned out to be amiable and helpful. He led Craig out on to the pavement and, observed by half a dozen small boys who seemed to find the scene entertaining, pointed out directions with a great many zig and zags and rolling motions of his fat hands.

Craig thanked the man profusely and, taking Kirsty’s arm once more, hurried her along the road in a more cheerful mood.

‘It’s not far, Walbrook Street,’ he told her.

Dumbarton Road was broad and bustling but navigation seemed to come naturally to Craig and he turned confidently from the main thoroughfare into a maze of short, tenemented side streets. Finally he rounded a corner marked by a small clean-cut church, into a row of trim terraced houses set behind patches of what had once been grass. There was only one ‘side’ to the street. Even Craig paused at the sight of the spectacular skyline that towered over the green privet hedges. Cranes and masts and ships’ rigging and the blank gables of sheds and warehouses were cut from the odd beige glow that never seemed to leave the Glasgow sky.

‘Is this Walbrook Street?’ said Kirsty.

‘Aye. I never thought I’d be here.’

‘Like Mr Douglas?’ said Kirsty.

‘Well, hardly,’ said Craig. ‘I mean, we’re not goin’ to a prayer-meetin’, are we?’

Number 19 was only fifty yards along the street from the kirk corner. It had a plain black door and a transom of dove-grey glass and a low step of some marble-like material. It struck Kirsty as queer that such a fine row of houses would be sited in the shadow of quays and dockland cranes.

There was a bell-pull with a wrought-iron handle, above it a painted board of no great size: Accommodation for Gentlemen – No Mercantiles – No Commercials.

Craig hesitated. He stepped on to the step with Kirsty clinging to his arm, rang the bell and waited, stiff and tense and silent, trying to appear as un-mercantile and un-commercial as possible.

The outline of the woman was abruptly there in the open doorway, as if she had been seated behind it like a porter.

‘Aye?’ she said.

‘A – accommodations?’ Craig stammered.

‘I am vacant, as it happens. How long are you?’

‘What?’

‘Staying?’

‘Oh,’ said Craig. ‘Three nights, at least.’

‘Step inside, if you please.’

The place had the same sort of smell as Baird Home dormitories. For that reason it seemed unfriendly to Kirsty as she followed Craig over the threshold into the hallway.

Old Saint Andrew was quick to draw her eye. For the rest there was a huge lump of oak furniture, a sideboard perhaps, two plants with longboat leaves, and just the peep of a gas jet under a glass funnel to give light to the ground floor.

‘I am Mrs Agnes Frew. Names?’

‘Mr Craig Nicholson an’ – an’ Miss Barnes.’

‘Not related?’

‘No, we – we’re here to get married.’

‘Are you, indeed? Not in my house.’

‘No, I – I – we – Two rooms,’ said Craig.

‘Have you a recommendation?’

‘What?’

‘I prefer references,’ said Agnes Frew.

‘Mr – Mr James Douglas,’ Craig stammered.

‘Mr Douglas?’

‘From Bankhead, in Carrick. He told me—’

‘Oh, that Mr Douglas.’

Mrs Frew smiled. Kirsty assumed it was a smile. The woman was small and prim and seemed coated with a fine white powder about the face, head and shoulders. Her hair was gathered into tight, girlish buns worn like ear-muffs, hair that was neither quite white nor quite blonde. Her complexion too was bloodlessly pale. The only hint of colour was about her eyes which, as they were not back-lit like those of the patron saint, were pink and dull. It was impossible to guess at Mrs Frew’s age for she had the immutable and unchanging quality of wax statuary.

‘Mr Douglas,’ said Craig, ‘told me to come here.’

‘Presbyterian?’

‘Aye,’ said Craig.

‘Regular?’

‘What?’

‘On the Sabbath?’

‘Never miss a Sunday at Bankhead kirk.’ Craig answered with such sincerity that Kirsty was almost tempted to believe him.

She was unprepared for the woman’s question to her.

‘Pure?’ Mrs Frew enquired.

‘I – I don’t understand what you mean,’ said Kirsty.

‘Before marriage?’

Craig cleared his throat. Kirsty wondered if he would take umbrage at the personal nature of the question and would defend her against its unpleasant implications.

She was a good Christian girl, even if circumstances had prevented her attending the kirk very often. She bristled with resentment. Craig said nothing, however, merely gave her a nudge with his elbow to indicate that the question would have to be answered.

‘Aye, Mrs Frew,’ Kirsty heard herself say.

‘Mr Douglas,’ said Craig, ‘would not have sent us here otherwise.’

Mrs Frew gave another smile, as crimped and enigmatic as the first. ‘Mr Douglas knows how I am on purity. Blessed are the pure in heart, the Good Book says.’

Craig said, ‘For they shall see God – if I’m not mistaken.’

Mrs Frew was delighted. ‘You are not mistaken, Mr Nicholson. And the meek shall inherit the earth, will they not?’

‘They will, they will, ma’am,’ Craig unctuously agreed.

‘That’s the way of it,’ said Mrs Frew. ‘Now, it’s one shilling and sixpence for each room, each night, which includes clean sheets and a breakfast. Half past seven o’clock in the dining-room. I would prefer it if you paid me in advance, since Mr Douglas hasn’t been here for a while.’

They still had not strayed one foot from the vault-like hallway and no evidence of other guests had been seen or heard.

Stepping closer to the tiny gas jet, Mrs Frew held out her hand, not graspingly but close to her bosom, white against the ribbed black bombazine blouse.

Craig had already separated a single five-pound note from the sheaf in his trouser pocket and he tugged it out now and laid it solemnly across the landlady’s palm.

She looked down at it, smiling. ‘Three nights?’

‘At least,’ said Craig.

‘All paid in advance?’

‘Aye, we’ll collect the change before we leave.’

‘A sound arrangement,’ said Mrs Frew.

Any hopes that Craig might have nurtured of creeping into his beloved’s bed were dashed by the disposition of the rooms as well as that of the landlady. Kirsty was led upstairs while Craig, to his consternation, was left to cool his heels in the hall. His room, it seemed, was situated in the basement while Kirsty, like an angel, was to take her repose much higher up.

Mrs Frew said, ‘I see you’ve no luggage.’

Kirsty had already learned the value of a fib. ‘My basket’s bein’ sent on.’

‘Came away in a hurry, did you?’

‘A bit,’ said Kirsty. ‘Craig – Mr Nicholson – he has to see about a job tomorrow. I came along with him to buy my trousseau.’

Mrs Frew might have continued her line of enquiry if Kirsty had not paused on the half-landing to admire the picture.

Saint Andrew had indeed been rendered in stained glass, coloured lumps of the stuff fastened by lead beading into a wooden frame fixed to two long wooden feet. The stand was set upright before a second small gas jet which flared quietly and unflickeringly behind it.

Noticing Kirsty’s interest Mrs Frew paused on the steep dark stair above her.

‘Is it not beautiful?’

‘Aye, it certainly is,’ said Kirsty.

‘My husband made it. Specially for me,’ said Mrs Frew. ‘Before he died, of course.’

Below in the hallway Craig smothered laughter under a sudden bout of coughing while Kirsty, lips compressed, followed the woman upward into a region as dark as sin.

 

It was, as it happened, a pleasant if musty room. There was a narrow wooden bed with a headboard of polished mahogany and a spread of imitation silk. As soon as she had lighted the oil-lamp – no gas this high in the house – Mrs Frew removed the bedspread, folded it expertly and slid it into a large brown paper envelope which she popped into the bottom drawer of a tallboy. On top of the tallboy, Kirsty noticed, was a mirror, no fly-blown shard but a big clean square on a stand that could be tilted. She had seen drawings of such things in journals and had always longed to have one of her own. The wash-stand had a top of white marble upon which stood a jug of clean water and a basin. There was even a flowered dish to hold a piece of dry soap and a rail upon which were draped two towels. Tucked discreetly beneath the wash-stand was a chamber-pot in a pattern that matched the soap dish.

Kirsty sighed. It was, without doubt, the most elegant room she had ever been in, more austere, perhaps, than the parlour at Bankhead with its stuffed furniture and shelves of bric-à-brac, but more stylish too, in Kirsty’s opinion. Her weariness sloughed off at the sight of the bed, its pillow in a slip of cream lace. Though there was no fire lighted in the miniature grate the lamp itself spread a warm glow and softened the angles of the ceiling which jutted in all sorts of directions and of the heavy brocade curtains which hung on brass rods across the window bay.

‘View of the river,’ Mrs Frew said.

Kirsty gave the landlady a genuine smile.

This was not how she had imagined her first night in Glasgow, not by a long chalk. Oddly, she was relieved that she would not have to spend it in bed with Craig. She was happy to be alone, to savour the luxury of Mrs Agnes Frew’s establishment without having to contend with other novelties, with Craig.

The woman, who had been observing her closely, said, ‘You’re just a country lass, are you not?’

‘Aye, ma’am. I am.’

‘What is he to you?’

‘He’ll be my husband, as soon as we can be married.’

Mrs Frew breathed gently, hardly even a sigh.

‘You look too young for that sort of thing,’ she said.

‘I’m eighteen, Mrs Frew.’

‘I did not marry until late in life. It took my Andrew five years to persuade me.’ She breathed out again. ‘I must say that in retrospect there are times when I think I should have done it sooner.’

Kirsty did not know what to make of the woman. She was disconcerted by the fleeting revelation of lost happiness.

She said, ‘Has he been gone long; Mr Frew, I mean?’

‘These fifteen years.’

‘I’m sorry to hear it.’

‘Oh, no need to sympathise. I’ve no regrets. I have my comforts, and the Lord sustains me.’

‘Aye,’ said Kirsty, without cynicism, ‘I imagine the Lord is a great comforter.’

‘Do you say your prayers?’

‘Sometimes; not as often as I should.’

‘Do you attend religious worship?’

‘When I can.’

‘You’ll know, then?’

‘Know what, Mrs Frew?’

‘Perils and pitfalls,’ said the woman. ‘Pitfalls and perils. Traps for the unwary. Watch him.’ She turned down the quilted cover and gave it a neat dextrous flick that exposed a perfect triangle of cream linen sheet. ‘There can be a terrible strong corruption in young men.’

In the lamplight the woman’s eyes had become even pinker but her paleness had been lessened by the glow of the wick-flame.

Before Kirsty could find words to defend Craig, Mrs Frew said, ‘Breakfast. Half past seven. Prompt and punctual.’

‘Yes, Mrs Frew.’

The woman withdrew to the corner by the door. She left the lamp, would risk finding her way down three flights of steep steps without a light to guide her.

Kirsty gave the landlady a cheerful goodnight. She was relieved, though, when Mrs Frew went out and closed the door behind her and she was free at last to let her excitement have its head.

She was drawn to the window as if by a magnet. She parted the curtains and stepped into an alcove that was almost as large as the bothy at Hawkhead.

From this vantage point the city seemed less diffuse and somehow much grander. Her room was tucked under the eaves. Wisps of grass and weed had found root in the gutter, hung down like hair over the glass and fluttered in the breeze off the river. Beyond the privet hedge Kirsty saw a park of some sort, very flat and precisely bordered. There was a pavilion with a Chinese tower into which was set a huge round clock. She could make out the face perfectly and read the time; twenty minutes to ten o’clock.

If she had been at home in Hawkhead she would have been in bed by now, lonely as well as alone. Here in Glasgow she did not feel that sort of loneliness. Suddenly her heart was beating hard in her chest. She spread her fingers over her breast. She had never been so happy. In Carrick she had been nothing but the girl from the Baird Home, Clegg’s lass. Here in Glasgow she could become what she wished, a new person, wife to Mr Craig Nicholson.

The whoop of a steam whistle disturbed her thoughts.

Into sight came an engine spouting sparks. It passed along the plain between park and quays and drew behind it, clinking and chuckling, a caravan of coal wagons which rolled on monotonously until Kirsty grew bored with waiting for it to end.

Below on the pavement a middle-aged man and woman walked a pet dog, a terrier, strolled arm-in-arm along Walbrook Street. Perhaps Craig and she would walk like that, taking a breath of air before bed. Four dark-skinned men, heads wrapped in white scarves, scurried past the house, muttering to themselves. A two-wheeled cab, drawn by a lean, high-stepping horse, whisked under the lamp-standard and Kirsty glimpsed a taffeta skirt and a pair of jet black boots on the board.

It was all too much for her. She stepped back into the clean, well-furnished room. She could not believe that it was her room, at least for a time, that she might sleep in the bed, wash in the basin, sit before the mirror. The pleasure of it had to be expressed somehow.

She pirouetted, arms above her head, her patched old skirt swirling, her auburn hair shaking loose a little form its braids.

Glasgow, she felt, was a warm and welcoming place where a young wife might settle and be happy.

Tomorrow, she would learn the truth.