SCENE SIX

(SARA, TOTTIE, ELLEN, LIZA. TOTTIE is maybe still by the cradle. SARA busy cleaning horse tack, or patching/sewing sacks, or winding the home-made straw rope into neat oval balls: any wet-weather work. ELLEN — adjusting, admiring her clothes, hat? umbrella? — half pleased at her elevated status, but half laughing to herself)

ELLEN: Sweet wheaten bread, and tea, and cream and sugar and ham! All this for breakfast! Brought by a servant girl better dressed than I ever was till now. A table like snow, a floor like a looking-glass; china, lace. Great wide windows to let in the sun — to look out on the fields. Every field fifty acres square. Hedges trim. No weeds. No waste.

(TOTTIE stares at her, delighted to see her. Admires and is fascinated by ELLEN. ELLEN has always tolerated TOTTIE, with an offhand but genuine acceptance)

ELLEN: I saw you hoeing the fields this morning. I watched till you left off because of the rain.

TOTTIE: We don’t know what to call you now.

SARA: We must call her Mistress Elliott now.

ELLEN: Aye. That’s what you cry me.

(Seeing TOTTIE’S grinning welcome, ELLEN goes to her, hugs her. TOTTIE’S reciprocating hug is uninhibited, wholehearted)

SARA: (fearful of ELLEN’S gown) Mind now, Tottie.

ELLEN: I wear this one to take tea.

SARA: There’s no tea here, Nell!

ELLEN: I have just taken tea — at Langriggs.

(As awkwardness. She sits down very carefully. TOTTIE gapes at her happily. SARA motions to TOTTIE to start work)

TOTTIE: (still with her eyes on ELLEN) Ellen Rippeth-that-was. Like a lady now. She sits like a lady.

ELLEN: It’s the stays. Can’t bend forrard. Can’t bend back. I’m tied up every morning — let loose at bedtime.

TOTTIE: Who ties you — the maister?

ELLEN: (to SARA) D’you mind Betty Hope? The maister’s auld mither hired her for my maid.

SARA: She’s got the sort of face that comes in useful for a wake.

ELLEN: Nae crack from Betsy. It’s hot in here.

TOTTIE: It’s wet out there!

SARA: Too wet for work. The lassies are throwing their money at the packman. The lads are in the stables, larking.

TOTTIE: Larking.

ELLEN: By, it rained for the flitting. I watched the carts from the window, coming down the loan. Bung fu’: beds, bairns, clocks, dressers, grandpas, geraniums — a’thing drookit.

SARA: I’ve a hundred rheumatisms since the flitting. Maggie’s bairns have the hoast yet.

ELLEN: My shoothers are always dry now. If my stockings are soaked, or my shoes, someone fetches another pair.

SARA: ‘And was she no very well off — / That’s woo’d and married an a’!’

ELLEN: Here, Tottie — let loose my stays! (shows TOTTIE where to loosen the laces under the bodice)

SARA: (shaking her head at NELL’s old ways) Mistress Elliott!

(ELLEN flops on the straw. TOTTIE imitates her. SARA never stops working)

TOTTIE: Bad Nell!

ELLEN: Not now! I’m a married lady now!

TOTTIE: Are you having a baby? Is it in there yet?

ELLEN: No… Not yet.

SARA: (after a pause; softly) There’s time enough.

ELLEN: A hind wouldn’t think so! Some of them would have you swelled before they called the banns, even!

SARA: Och, now, Ellen —

ELLEN: Well, it’s true!

SARA: Not at Blacksheils. The maister wouldn’t stand for it. He’s stricter than the minister.

ELLEN: He’s — he’s — a fine man. Keeps his passion under hidlings, though!

SARA: And his mother, the widow?

ELLEN: She calls me ‘the new blood’. ‘No sense growing prize turnips, Gordon, without prize sons to mind them!’

SARA: Well, you know what they say: the bull is half the herd.

(ELLEN lolls in the hay. More like the bondager she used to be)

ELLEN: Is that true for folk, as well as beasts?

SARA: Must be. Surely.

ELLEN: He had a son. It died before it got born. It killed its mother before it was even born.

TOTTIE: How could a baby kill you?

SARA: The Elliotts have farmed here since I don’t know when. His grandfather drained those cold fields of clay. He died before they were ever first cropped. Look at them, now. Tatties, clover, the finest neeps in Europe. People come from all over — Germany, England — just to look at Blacksheils, and talk with the maister.

ELLEN: A son for Blacksheils. Of course he wants a son.

TOTTIE: (tormenting ELLEN, pulling at her) How could a bull be half the herd? How could a baby kill you? ELLEN: Babies are mischief. Like you, Tottie! No telling what they’ll do.

(LIZA appears)

SARA: It’s Liza, Mistress Elliott, Liza Kerr. Andra’s bondager.

TOTTIE: (to LIZA) You must cry her Mistress Elliott, now.

(LIZA gives a bob)

ELLEN: (getting up, brushing off the straw — but not put out at being caught lolling there by a servant) I would hardly have known you. You’ve grown.

(ELLEN is going)

LIZA: Steenie’s in Canada.

ELLEN: Yes, I heard. I hope he’s well?

(LIZA doesn’t answer. ELLEN goes)

LIZA: (muttering after her) No thanks to you if he’s well. No thanks to you!

TOTTIE: (softly) Sas-katch-u-wan.

LIZA: Steik yer gab, you!

(Gives TOTTIE a shove, as she goes)

TOTTIE: Sas-katch-e-wan.