My Friends the Miss Boyds Read online

  On this evening, when Danny arrived, my mother took me to her room, brought a cardboard shoe box out of her wardrobe and took out of it a pair of proper dancing pumps that were just my size. Until now I had always danced bare-footed.

  “When you go to the Harvest Home on Friday,” she said, “Lady Lydia wants you to dance for the people.”

  “Oh, Mother, no!” I wanted to run away to the moor and hide. The dancing was just for Danny and me and my family and I could imagine with terror those hundreds of people at the Harvest Home all looking. “Mother, no!”

  She laid the beautiful fine leather pumps down on her bed.

  “When you go to a thing like the Harvest Home, Janet, you don’t go just to eat the good supper and take everything you can get for nothing, like Jock Skinner’s bairns coming to school on Christmas Eve just to get their apples and oranges. If there is something you can do that people may enjoy you have to do it. And Lady Lydia thinks that her visitors may like to see you and Danny at your fiddling and dancing.”

  “Danny will be there?”

  “Of course! It wouldn’t be a Harvest Home at all without Danny with his fiddle and Bill the Post with his melodeon and your father with his pipes.”

  “Dad plays the pipes for them?”

  “Every year. Everybody does something—those that can, any way.”

  “What do you do, Mother?”

  “Lady Lydia usually puts me to sit with her visitors from the South so that I can explain our local ways and customs to them and answer their questions. Wouldn’t you like to try your dancing with the pumps on?”

  “Yes—but, Mother—what if people laugh at me?”

  “Well, what of it? If they’ll be laughing, they’ll be happy, and the Harvest Home is a happy thing. You wait till you hear them laughing at Tom and George doing their reel to the pipes!”

  I began to laugh myself, then, at the very thought, for George and Tom at their reel were enough to make a cat laugh, but I had never known that they did it anywhere except in the privacy of the Reachfar barn. I put on the lovely shoes with the leather tassels on the ends of the long laces that tied up round my ankles and went through to the kitchen where the big table had been pushed back against the wall and Danny stood against the dresser with his fiddle.

  “My,” he said, “but that’s a right fine pair o’ shoes! I better see that this ould fiddle o’ mine is in good tune for that shoes.” And he put the fiddle under his chin, snuggled it the way Fly did when she had pups and then went ‘Tap, tap, tap, tap . . .’ round the four sections of it with the end of his bow and played the little tune called ‘The Old Four-poster Bed’, which ended again with the four taps from the butt end of the bow on the wood to make the four posts.

  “Aye. She’ll do,” said Danny. “We better take the Sword Dance first, Duncan, while we have plenty o’ wind. That’s a devil of a thing you have there.”

  From the little table my father picked up an enormous sword with a big, cairngorm-set, basket hilt and drew it from the long silver-mounted scabbard.

  “The Clansmen cried Claymore! Claymore!” bawled Tom and George in lusty chorus. “I will rise and follow on! Rise and fight for Charlie!”

  “Hold your noise, you two!” said my grandmother.

  The claymore belonged, I knew, on a rack above the fireplace in Sir Torquil’s study and I had never seen it at close quarters before. Lying on the floor, crossed over its scabbard, it looked enormous, the basket hilt over which I had to dance seemed to be about a foot high, and the area around blade and scabbard seemed to cover about half an acre. The poker and tongs had been easy compared to this. And if Sir Torquil had sent the claymore to Reachfar this was serious. He really required that I should dance at his Harvest Home. I was on the brink of wishing that I was not Big Enough Yet to go at all.

  “The great thing is,” said Danny, “to try and get the size o’ the bliddy thing in your mind and then not be looking at it at a-all. Chust as if it was the poker and tongs that was in it. I will be seeing some o’ the exheebeetion dancers looking down at their swords with their shoulders humped like dogs looking into jeely jars. Now, when the clansmen in the old days shouted ‘Claymore, Claymore!’ like Tom said, they used to doon wi’ the sword on the heather and wallop into it—and not looking at the sword, for if they was looking down at the ground like that, how would they be seeing the Englishmen coming?” He gave a pluck or two at the strings of his fiddle. “Right, Janet—chust you mind to be champing a little higher and a little further than usual and be looking up at the fiddle. One and two and three and four!”

  “Hwee-ow-ow-ooch!” yelled Tom and George, and Danny proceeded to raise the ghosts of the clansmen through the floor of the Reachfar kitchen into the toes of my new dancing pumps.

  When we came into the ‘quicktime’ at the first practice I forgot to ‘chump a little higher and further’, caught my flying toe in the basket hilt and ended in a heap on the hearthrug, but after about four turns through the whole thing Danny decided that we would ‘do’, and while we had a rest Tom and George had a go, clowning their way round to their own ‘deedling’ for music in their big working boots until my father picked up the claymore in case they would damage the hilt. “And you’ll have to take her yourself for the Fling with your pipes, Duncan,” Danny said.

  “Och, no, man!” said my father.

  “Och, but so! The fiddle is fine for the hoose here, but the Fling is better to the pipes, and the Poyntdale barn has plenty of room for them. And yon can make as good a chob of the Marquis o’ Huntly as ever I heard.” He turned to my grandmother. “You’ll have to put up with the pipes in your kitchen for a wee whilie the-night, mistress.”

  “Och, well, well, Danny,” she said assentingly.

  The great night came along and all of us except Aunt Kate set off for Poyntdale—Auntie Kate would go down to the dance when my father brought my mother and me home; and the dance and the midnight second supper being the parts she liked best, everybody was happy. Driving down in the trap, with the claymore wrapped in an old pillowslip at my feet, and dressed in my white Sunday skirt and blouse with a big sash of my mother’s tartan tied in a big bow at the back, I was wishing that it was not Harvest Home, but just any other ordinary evening of doing my knitting or doing a little reading and writing with George and Tom, but when we reached Poyntdale Square I forgot all that, and even forgot about the claymore and the dancing. This was better than the coal boat. I had always told myself that Everybody came to the coal boat, but now I saw that that was not true, for there were people here that one never saw anywhere except at their homes, like old Granny Fraser and Johnnie Greycairn’s wife and just Everybody. And, of course, six Miss Boyds, dressed to kill, giggling in a covey in a corner by themselves. People continued to come in from all angles, and my father, Tom and George disappeared to attend to the disposal of the many horses, traps and carts. Sir Torquil took my grandparents, my mother and me away in our trap to the Big House, to the big drawing-room where Lady Lydia, Mrs de Cambre and some other ladies and gentlemen were and said: “The Reachfar party, my dear. I’ll come for you all when we are ready to start.” In my opinion everything had ‘started’ long ago and, breathless with excitement, I wondered what was to happen next, but for the moment I could concentrate only on the beautiful dresses of the ladies and the funny black-beetle sort of coats that the gentlemen who were not wearing the kilt had on.

  “Janet,” said Lady Lydia, after I had made my curtsy, “there is something here you will like.” She turned to one of the gentlemen and said: “Would you lift down the old music box, Drake?”

  He lifted a long wooden box with a glass top, through which you could see a lot of machinery, down from a table and put it on the carpet and he and I sat down beside it. When he had wound it up with a little handle, shaped like the thing for turning our sharpening stone at Reachfar, it began to play music, tinkling music like the sound the dry bell heather made in autumn, but much, much better to listen to. I did no
t want to leave it when my mother said we had to go now, but of course I had to, and another thing I realised I had to do was get into a governess cart with two of the ladies and two of the gentlemen and none of my family there at all, and drive with them to the barn. I saw that this was all right, for my mother too was separated into a different trap from my grandmother. Mrs de Cambre was in my governess cart, wearing a long pink satin dress with sparkling things on it, with its pink train all bunched up on the floor at our feet, and she had a pink feathery thing fixed in her dark hair with a jewelled brooch. She was very, very beautiful, I thought. My aunt had told me that the dresses the Poyntdale House ladies wore for the Harvest Home were always the talk of the countryside until the next year, and that seeing them was the biggest treat of all, for you could hardly believe that such beautiful clothes could exist. I realised now that this was true. Here were the trains, the long gloves, the feather fans, just like the picture in our parlour of Lady Lydia going to see the King at Buckingham Palace before the war, only in the picture the dress looked plain white and not pink or green or blue as were the dresses tonight.

  “A’ah you gonna write a pome about all this, Janet?” Mrs de Cambre asked, and said to the others: “This sweetie is a poet, you-ou know.”

  “And her grandmother is a witch!” said the gentleman called Drake, who was Lady Lydia’s brother. “Isn’t she, Janet?”

  “What-at?” Mrs de Cambre’s eyes were round.

  “Sometimes people will be saying so,” I said, for this was true.

  “But witches a’ah scary people! Miz Sandison ain’t like that-at!”

  “But Granny isn’t a scary witch,” I said, adopting this new and descriptive word. “Granny is the clever, kind sort of a witch, except when people are thinking about doing badness, and then she can see it in them. As long as you don’t think of doing any badness, she is very nice.”

  “Yuh hear?” said Mrs de Cambre to the other lady and gentleman. “Don’ you-all get to thinkin’ ’bout any badness!”

  And then we all laughed and we were at the barn door. The ladies and gentlemen all went to sit up in a corner beside the big threshing mill which was covered tonight with a green tarpaulin and decorated all over with sheaves of oats and barley and big bunches of flowers and vegetables from the Poyntdale garden. Lanterns hung in rows from the rafters, and all round the walls were the sheaves again. In one corner there was a low platform, hemmed in by freshly painted ploughs, with shining shares as if they were split new, and on this platform was My Friend Danny with his fiddle and Bill the Post with his melodeon and a lot of ploughmen and gamekeepers whom I knew, but had never known they could play the instruments they were holding, John the Smith was there too, already singing a little to himself in his big tuneful voice. My mother was right, as she always was—at Harvest Home everybody contributed something. I was quite pleased now that the big claymore was lying at the back of the platform in its pillowslip.

  I found My Friend Alasdair, who was also having his first turn at the Harvest Home, and we went round the end of the big mill and had a peek into the big straw barn next door, and in there you never saw the like, Mrs Fergus, the fierce, black-dressed housekeeper of the Big House, with the bunch of keys hanging from the belt around her waist, was in there, with all the servants and the ploughmen’s wives, all with aprons on over their best dresses, and tables and tables covered with white cloths and more dishes than I had ever seen in my life, and there was a grand smell of roast beef coming from somewhere. Alasdair and I were going to follow the smell, but, of course, Mrs Fergus turned us back. Tom said that Mrs Fergus was enough to frighten the devil himself, and I told Alasdair so, but when we were out of her hearing Alasdair said: “Ach, I’m not heeding her. There isn’t a Mr Fergus, and she’s only an old maid that’s in it after all!” but I knew that this was just boastingness, for he had heeded her and how could she be Mrs Fergus if there was no Mr Fergus? Alasdair told some real lies now and again.

  Then Sir Torquil made a little speech and said how glad he was to see us all, and the soldiers and sailors who had come, and his visitors from the South and from America who had never been to a party like this before, and then he asked John the Smith to be ready. Then the Reverend Roderick said a short prayer about thank you for the Harvest and then John the Smith sang the Hundredth Psalm, but it was far bonnier than in church, for all the riddles and melodeons played it too, and I wanted to cry but before the tears quite got the better of me it was over, and after a moment the fiddles began to dance and John began to sing his comical song about ‘The Wee Cooper Who Lived in Fife’.

  For me, after that, the evening was full of sheer wonder. The proceedings had started about five in the afternoon, and although the lanterns were burning in the rafters the evening sun was still streaming through the open doors of the big barn, and now through these doors came eighteen sailors in white jerseys and white bell-bottomed trousers, six of them carrying brass instruments like horns such as I had never seen before. These six went up on to the musicians’ platform and the other twelve formed two lines in the middle of the floor, folded their arms high across their chests and with their right feet forward began to tap out the rhythm of the gay tune that came from the platform. Then, with incredible precision and fantastic lightness of foot, they all began to dance the Sailor’s Hornpipe.

  This was over much too soon for me, but then I was swept away by Tom and George coming up with stern faces to the Soldiers’ Matron who was standing beside us in her pretty white veil, and Tom said: “Matron, we’ve come to get you for the boys to be doing an operation on you!”

  Matron, who was red-haired and Irish, yelled: “Begorra an’ ye’ll not now!” and ran away round the barn, and now the soldiers were coming in with a white table on wheels and the stable barrow and they all had big knives, and one had a carpenter’s saw and another had a big axe, and George and Tom were chasing Matron round and round the barn until John the Smith suddenly out with his big fore-hammer from the platform and hit her on the head and her eyes looked across one another and she fell down and Tom caught her and lifted her on to the table. I got very frightened, but my mother said it was all just pretending and to wait and I would see that Matron was all right. So I watched and the soldiers started on her with their knives and they pulled strings and strings of sausages and black puddings and two or three horseshoes out of her and threw them into the barrow; they sawed, and threw a leg in a long black stocking into the barrow and one way and another you would not believe what they did to poor Matron on that table, until suddenly she sat up, hit Tom on the head with the hammer so that he fell into the barrow and then she wheeled him out through the door.

  I was still holding on to Alasdair and laughing about Tom in the barrow, when Tom and George pushed the big sack platform for the mill into the middle of the floor and Sir Torquil said: “And we have a new performer this evening, ladies and gentlemen. Janet Reachfar is going to dance for us. Come, Janet.”

  All I saw clearly in the big ring of faces was My Friend Danny, smiling over his fiddle at the front of the platform, and then my father, George and Tom sitting on the edge of the platform at his feet. Sir Torquil picked me up, stood me on the sack platform, then drew the claymore from its scabbard and crossed one over the other at my feet. I stared at it for a moment, the slanting sun struck a golden ray from the big cairngorm in the hilt and: ‘Poop to you!’ I thought, gave myself a shake, put my hands on my hips and looked up at Danny. He smiled at me, snuggled his fiddle with his chin, “Hee-ee-ow-ooch!” shouted my father, Tom and George in the time of the opening four beats and we were off. It was the easiest thing in the world. The big claymore might not have been there at all—it might have been the poker and tongs at home, the way my feet came over and back dead on Danny’s beat, for after that first shout all the people began to shout on the turns and all the fiddles and melodeons began to play, so that it felt as if all the people in the barn were dancing through my feet. When it was over, and they were all
shouting and clapping their hands, I bowed all round as my mother had said and then bowed to Danny. Danny, laughing all over his leathery face, bowed back to me over his fiddle, and then I jumped off the platform and ran to my mother. Danny had been pleased, I knew, and I was very happy.

  After that the Dinchory shepherd’s wife who was from Skye sang one of her beautiful Gaelic songs to Danny’s fiddle, and then the minister rose and went into the middle of the floor.

  “I have been asked to announce a special new item, ladies and gentlemen. The youngest chentleman among us is now going to play a waltz, to be danced by six people whom we a-all know to be some of the best waltzers in the county.” And as he finished speaking, who should come slow-marching through the door with his little boy’s pipes on his shoulder but My Friend Alasdair, with the last sun shining on his carroty head! But more amazing to me still was what followed. First my father came and bowed to Lady Lydia, who looped her train over her wrist and then began to waltz round and round Alasdair; then Doctor Mackay came and got my mother and they started to dance, and then Sir Torquil bowed to Mrs Mackay and the three couples were revolving round the boy with the pipes that were playing ‘Over the Sea to Skye’ in perfect waltz time. I watched Lady Lydia’s blue satin, Mrs Mackay’s golden-yellow silk and my mother’s black velvet with the cream lace swirl past in a happy dream of sheer astonishment. I had never known before that my father and my mother could dance. What things you discovered when you were Big Enough to Go Out!