My Friends the Miss Boyds Read online

  ‘Well!’ I thought. ‘Out of coal already and it only June of the year and the boat won’t be in until October. What a disgrace!’

  I went up to the door, covered with blushes of shame for the Miss Boyds. However, the three ladies in the kitchen did not seem to be feeling the slightest disgrace or any need of my blushes. Jock Skinner was drinking tea at the kitchen table, and they were all sitting round chatting to him as if they had nothing better to do.

  “Good morning,” I told them severely from the open door, for they were so busy talking that they did not at first see me.

  “And who is this pretty girl?” one of them said.

  This made me feel more severe than ever, for it was well known that I was not a pretty girl like Jean Macintosh with the reddish-gold curls and the blue eyes.

  “I am Janet Sandison from Reachfar,” I said. “My granny sent me with the butter and eggs.”

  They all started flapping and fluttering about like the hens in the hen-house when I had to crawl in in the evening and catch a broody for my grandmother.

  “But what a long way!”

  “And this heavy basket!”

  “Poor little thing!”

  I was mortally insulted—nothing, But Nothing, connected with Reachfar or the Sandisons was poor—and, to make things worse, Jock Skinner, who had finished eating and was filling his dirty clay pipe, threw his head back and began to laugh like a man gone crazy.

  I looked at him, and thought of my grandmother.

  “Have you no work to do?” I asked, just as my grandmother would have said it. He got up and slid out of the kitchen with the slithering movement of his own skinny dog. The women watched him go and then stood staring at me. I stared back, and after a moment they all gathered round the basket with their backs to me and I had a good look at them. Two of them were quite old, with grey hair, but the third one was much younger, about the same age as my mother, I thought, and, of course, there was between the older two and the younger one that difference in dress that prevailed in those days and made the difference in age even more marked. They all bore a strong resemblance to one another. They were all tall and thin, with big, beaky noses and long necks, and they all wore steel-rimmed spectacles. I thought them three of the ugliest women I had ever seen, and they made me think of the picture of the Ugly Sisters in my Cinderella book, especially the two older ones. The next most striking thing about them was that they had not the slightest idea what to say to, or do with, me. I was a horrible embarrassment to them, I could feel, and this was an embarrassment to me too, for I had never before met grown-up people who could not control the situation and me along with it. They looked at the things in the basket, they looked at me, they looked back at the basket, they looked at each other, looked at me again and I looked back at them.

  “You take the butter and eggs out,” I said at last as kindly and helpfully as I could, “and give the basket and the napkin back to me to take home to my granny.”

  In a frenzied sort of way the two older ones started picking eggs out of the basket and laying them down on the dresser and the table, where they rolled dangerously.

  “Would you be putting them in a bowl or something?” I suggested, stopping an egg at the table’s edge. All three sprang at a cupboard and came back with three bowls. “I’ll take them out,” I said, for there would be a Big-Bother at home if any of these eggs got broken, and they all sat down on three chairs at the table, like the Three Bears, while I unpacked the basket.

  “It is very good of you to bring the eggs down for us,” the young one said at last.

  I could not think of any reply to this, for it was not ‘good’ of me at all. I had simply come because I had been Told, but the young one was determined on conversation and tried a new tack.

  “Do you know the gentleman who brought the coal, Janet?” she asked.

  I appreciated that she was trying to be polite, so I said: “Yes, but he’s not a gentleman. He is Jock Skinner, and he is a dealer, Miss—Miss Boyds,” and then I looked at all three of them, because you have to look at the person you are speaking to and I was telling this to all three of them and they were all Miss Boyds.

  They all giggled like anything again, I could not think why, and then the young one said: “That’s Minnie and that’s Lizzie”—she nodded at the two old ones—“and I’m Annie and you are Jannie. Four girls!”

  I privately thought they were all crazy, as they sat there nudging one another and giggling.

  “No. I am Janet,” I said. “We are three ladies and one girl.”

  There would be more than a Bother if I went home to Reachfar and said I had met three girls called Lizzie, Minnie and Annie Boyd. Did they even want me to get a slap on the bottom with their foolishness? I folded the napkin, put it in the empty basket and said: “Well, I have to go now.”

  They began to flap and flutter again. “Oh, you don’t have to hurry away. Wouldn’t you like a biscuit?”

  This was more like the thing. “Yes, please, Miss Annie,” I said, and they all nudged each other and giggled again, but a very nice plate with pink roses on it and four biscuits were produced. I thanked them and began to eat.

  “And there’s the money for the eggs and butter,” one of the older ones said.

  “You don’t give the pennies to me,” I told her. “You wait until you see one of my family and give them to them or leave them with Miss Tulloch at the shop. I am not allowed to carry the pennies.”

  “Oh! Not even one for yourself for carrying the basket?”

  I had never heard of anything so ridiculous as this.

  “Oh, no!” I said. “Carrying the basket is Doing What I Am Told. I have to do that—I don’t get pennies for it.”

  They nudged each other again and stared at me in wonder, which made it obvious that they did not know the basic principle of Doing What You Are Told, which is that you do not get anything for doing it, but you get something you do not like at all for not doing it. I would have explained this to them in a kindly way, but that Jock Skinner at that moment pushed his ferrety face with its sharp little eyes round the lintel of the door and said: “Well, leddies, that’s your coal! Any time you’ll be in need of any little thing, jist gi’e me a call. I’m intirely at yer service. I’m always willing to oblige the leddies!”

  He gave a leering smile round the table which turned itself off when it came to me. I went on with my biscuit-eating, and stared at the spot where his face was until the face disappeared, fading out like the face of the Cheshire Cat.

  “Just a minute, Mr Skinner!” Miss Lizzie fluttered and ran out to the passage behind the kitchen.

  Jock was already whipping up the ragged horse and trundling out of the yard. I pulled open the back door.

  “Jock! Wait! Miss Boyd wants you,” I said.

  He pulled up the shabby equipage. “I’m a-always at the service of the leddies!” he said with a leer.

  “That’s enough of your impudence!” I said to him in my grandmother’s voice.

  He stopped leering, gave me his skulking weasel’s smile and began scratching himself under his jacket with the butt of his whip, and as Miss Lizzie came out of the house with her purse I went inside and left them together. When she came in again after a few moments I said: “You should buy your coal direct and not from that rascal.” I discovered that they did not know about the coal boat, owing to having come to Achcraggan only for the summer in past times, so I told them I would ask my father to come to see them and make proper arrangements about it, now that they were going to be living here permanently, as had emerged in the course of the conversation.

  When you became used to their giggling manner they were really very nice and most generous in the matter of biscuits, but ask questions? In Tom’s phrase, they would speir a hole in your hide. Did I go to school? Did I like school? Had I any brothers or sisters? Wasn’t it a long, long way to Reachfar? Didn’t I get tired with all the walking?

  I have always liked questionful conversati
on, there always having been many questions to which I myself have wanted answers, but the Miss Boyds’ questions seemed to me so dull and silly that I thought I would ask them a few. So I enquired if it was correct that there were three more Miss Boyds. Yes, they told me, that was quite correct. They were six girls all told, they said, and had themselves another fit of giggling and nudging.

  “Of course,” said Miss Annie when she had got her breath back, “the Girls are much younger than us,” and off they went into another cackling. I had never been in the presence of so much fluttering, cackling, nudging and Girls in my life.

  “And are you all going to live here?” I asked.

  “Yes, but the Girls will only come down at the weekends, mostly. They have the Business to attend to.”

  “What is the Business?”

  “Well, we have a shop in Inverness, a drapery.”

  “And what are the Girls’ names?”

  “Iris and Daisy and Violet—Violet’s the baby.”

  I could not see how a person could be a shopkeeper and a baby both at the same time, but let the matter pass, as I was fascinated with all these floral names which my grandmother would undoubtedly call ‘silly and outlandish’. I had always wondered what an ‘outlandish’ thing or person was really like, and I thought that maybe I knew at last. Could it be that the Miss Boyds were ‘outlandish’?

  “Will there be plenty of room for you all to sleep?” I asked next, which seemed to me to be a practical, sensible question.

  They all giggled like mad again and offered to show me the house. I was delighted. I have always enjoyed being shown anything that anyone has to show me.

  One way and another, I spent the whole morning with the Miss Boyds and became quite interested in them, giggles, vases of pampas grass in the parlour and all, and agreed to carry home a letter to my grandmother telling her how much butter and eggs they would like to have each week. I even agreed to make a special delivery to them myself each week, apart from the normal one by the trap on Fridays, but “not on Wednesdays,” I said, “for that is Tom’s and George’s and my soldiers’ evening.”

  In 1915 Lady Lydia—the wife of Sir Torquil—had turned part of the Big House into a convalescent home for wounded soldiers who were well enough to move about on crutches or with their arms in slings, and they roamed about the Poyntdale policies and Home Farm in their light-blue suits and red ties and were all very pleasant and cheerful. On Wednesdays my aunt spent a large part of the day baking scones, which were then packed into big baskets under white cloths, and Tom, George and I drove down in the trap to Poyntdale with them on Wednesday evenings. But although I told the Miss Boyds all about this, I did not tell them about the Big Secret about which no one but Tom, George and I and certain soldiers knew. This was the letter in my kim-oh-no pocket which I had to give to a certain soldier when nobody was looking. It was tremendous fun, and very easy to do, for all the soldiers would pull me close and give me a hug and all I had to do was whisper to the chosen one: “It’s in my pocket,” and he would pick out the paper like a flash. I could deliver the letter unbeknownst with Lady Lydia, the Matron or a nurse standing right beside me and the chosen soldier, and Tom said I was ‘real clever’ at it.

  It was about ten years later that my father told me how he used to shudder when Lady Lydia would come up to Reachfar and would say to my grandmother: “I cannot think, Mrs Sandison, how the boys are getting the whisky. Not that I mind, but Matron makes such a fuss and it makes her furious to know that they are getting it against the rules and under her very nose. After all, no one is allowed in the wards except the visitors she passes herself, and the boys are never allowed out without an orderly with them. Can they have some arrangement with that rascal Jock Skinner who comes for the swill, do you think?”

  “Och, poor Jock!” my grandmother would say sanctimoniously. “He’s a rogue in many ways, but I wouldn’t put that on him.”

  Matron never found out, however, that the smugglers were George and Tom, on whom she doted, and that I, to whom she was always so kind, was their go-between-in-chief. I am a little irritated even now when I realise that even I did not know exactly what I was doing, but feel better when I realise that the cunning of Tom and George was too much for people far cleverer than I shall ever be.

  Although I did not tell the Miss Boyds a word about the secret letters, however, they were very, very interested in ‘soldiers’ evening’ and said that they would like to have one too, so I told them that if they had some cakes or something to bring I was sure the soldiers would like to see them some evening, and that they would like the soldiers, and, having arranged their special delivery for Tuesdays, I took my way back to Reachfar.

  I reached home in time for dinner at half-past eleven, and after my grandmother had asked where I had been all this time. My Friend Tom asked how I had ‘got on’ with the Miss Boyds, so I told the members of my family who were present all about my morning. No. That is not true. I did not tell them all—I reserved my views about the giggles and nudges for private discussion with Tom or George or both.

  “But, Janet,” my mother said, “you must not take orders for butter and eggs like that. Granny may not be able to supply them.”

  “Och, the poor craiturs!” said my grandmother. “I’ll manage to give them a little, anyway. The hens are doing very well.”

  “Granny, they are not poor! They have plenty of pennies in a black purse and a parlour with South American grass in vases and a black clock on the mantelpiece!”

  “Never mind that,” said my grandmother. “Eat your pudding.”

  “And Jock Skinner was there and got pennies for coal, so I told them they must get it direct from the boat and not from that rascal.”

  “Janet Sandison!” said my grandmother. “That tongue of yours will be the disgrace of us all!”

  “It’s your own tongue that’s in it, Mistress,” said my grandfather. “If the bairn had never heard it, she wouldn’t say it. Now, be done of your blethers and give Tom and me a little more of that pudding.”

  During the afternoon, when I went out to help Tom and my grandfather with the hay, there was plenty of time while riding up and down from field to stackyard in Dick’s cart to go further into the matter of the Miss Boyds with Tom.

  “They are very, very different sort of people, Tom.”

  “Are they now? What way would that be, could you be telling me?”

  “They don’t do any work—no cleaning or baking or anything—just sit there laughing and nudging one another and it the middle of the morning.”

  “Och, well, Lady Lydia won’t be baking or cleaning in the mornings either.”

  “But they are not like Lady Lydia!” I was indignant. “And they are not like us either, and they are not like the fisher people, or the Dominie or the minister. They are just different—they are different like Jock Skinner is different.”

  Tom was inclined to be scornful. “Where would the three decent craiturs be like that dirty, twisted rascal?”

  “Oh, they are not dirty or clever like him—they are clean and sort of silly—but they are like him all the same.”

  “Och, away with you!” said Tom. “W-oah, Dick. And stand still, ye capering craitur! The very ould Nick himself is in that beast this day. Stand there, now, before I take the wheep to ye!”

  Dick had never felt the touch of a whip in his life, but seemed to realise what the dire threat meant and elected to stand still. Tom began to fork the hay up on to the cart while I tramped about packing it, and then my grandfather and Betsy came on to the field and Tom came up on Dick’s cart with me while my grandfather forked to us.

  Granda was a tall, spare man with white hair and a long white beard, and he lived, much of the time, in a happy, dignified silence. He was a little hard of hearing, but he often pretended to be more deaf than he really was in order not to be bothered with idle chat. He was happy, working easily yet swiftly in the warm sun amid the good smell of the hay, and would stop forking, no
w and then, to give Tom time to balance the load, and would stand with one gnarled hand on the horse’s face, while he looked away across the Firth to the Ben, with his brilliant old eagle’s eyes shaded by his old tweed hat.

  Families like mine did not run to the keeping of archives and muniment rooms, so I do not know where we originated or when, but I think it must have been out of the soil of Highland Scotland a long time ago. By hearsay, I have been unable to trace us back further than 1800, but my memory of Granda convinces me that he was a product of a long pure-bred line, which is backed by Lady Lydia’s dictum—she was the daughter of an English duke who married our local baronet—that ‘Reachfar was the handsomest man’ she had ever seen.

  He had been grieve to ‘Old Sir Turk’, a general of the Boer War, when Lady Lydia came to Poyntdale as the bride of the heir, and she never tired of telling of her first meeting with the tall, spare, dark man.

  “We were riding,” she would say, her blue eyes looking away into the distant sky, “and we stopped in a corn-field and Torquil said: ‘This is Sandison of Reachfar, our grieve.’ And I looked at him and he said: ‘It’s us that’s pleased to welcome you, Your Ladyship,’ and I just knew it was true and that I hadn’t left my home for nothing. I was only twenty-two.” She would smile in the direction of her husband. “You didn’t convince me about Poyntdale as a new home, Torquil—it took Reachfar to do that.” Granda and Lady Lydia remained a little in love with each other all their lives, and she was one of his sincerest mourners when he died.

  The men of the Highlands are very good at this thing of loving reverently and from a distance—the women are not so good at it and have little patience with it, and my grandmother, therefore, kept the situation within bounds although still respecting it in a queer, acid way. “Och, aye,” she would say. “Leddy Lydia this and Her Leddyship that, but in the long run it will be ‘Have ye fed the calves, Mistress?’ for where would Reachfar be if the calves didn’t get fed? But she’s a fine leddy and no mistake and a blessing to all around her.—Janet, for pity’s sake don’t stand there gawping about you! Did you ever see Leddy Lydia gawping like that? Have you shut in the young turkeys yet?”