My Friends the Miss Boyds Page 5

  Had she ever seen Lady Lydia shut in the young turkeys? My grandmother could be aware of dreams although not herself a dreamer and she kept them in their place. My grandfather was a dreamer who yet could recognise the frail fabric of a dream and he also kept the dreams in their place. I have often wished that just one of their descendants could go all out for the dreams and forget about pinning them down, tidily, in their ‘place’, but that has not happened yet. We are all as mixed in mind as my grandmother and grandfather.

  But in us, as I became aware at eight years old, there is nothing of the material that is in the Miss Boyds of this world. The gulf between them and us was as great as that between the fisher people and us, but, in the strange way that a child can know much more than adult people think it can know, I knew that my people had not the respect for the Miss Boyds that they granted to the fisher folk.

  * * * * *

  My next visit, to the Miss Boyds was on Friday, when Tom, Dulcie and I went down to Achcraggan to the market. Of course, there was not really a market at Achcraggan now—not a sale of animals as there had been when my grandfather was a boy—and ‘going to market’ meant going down with baskets of butter and eggs, a box of sections of honey, a basket of wild raspberries which I had gathered and several pairs of wood pigeons that Tom had shot. The butter, eggs and honey would be delivered at the houses that had ordered them, and some would be exchanged for our groceries and butcher-meat through accounts that had been going on for years, but the raspberries and pigeons were for Tom’s and my Red Cross, and we were both wearing our Red Cross clothes and had our Red Cross box hanging on the front of the trap. My clothes were a miniature nurse’s cap and apron made by my mother, and Tom’s consisted of a cross of red ribbon sewn to the front of his Saturday second-best tweed bonnet.

  The people of Achcraggan were very good about our Red Cross, and would always put something in our box in exchange for our raspberries, rabbits or pigeons or whatever we happened to have, while plenty of people like Sir Torquil or the minister, if we happened to meet them, would put something in the box in exchange for nothing at all. Sometimes, too, a liberty boat would have come ashore with some sailors to let them have a dram at the Plough and ‘stretch their legs, poor fellows’ as Tom said, and the sailors would put pennies in the box for nothing, too. And then Tom would take the box into the Plough and get some more pennies there. Indeed, nearly every week my father had to take our box down to Lady Lydia to be emptied so that she could buy things for the sick soldiers with the money, for, of course, the Red Cross was really Lady Lydia’s and Tom and I just helped her with it in a neighbourly way.

  So down Tom and I went to the village on Friday afternoon, both in very good form behind Dulcie, who was spanking along, once we were out on the County Road, as if she thought it a fine thing to be alive, and so it was. Everybody knew us, of course, and stopped to speak to us, and Doctor Mackay reached out of his own trap and put a threepenny piece in the box on the shore road when we were still a mile out of Achcraggan—‘just for luck’ he said; and, feeling that it was a good omen, we went gaily on our way, talking all the time as we always did.

  “And we have this new call to make the-day, on the Miss Boyds,” said Tom. “Should we be keeping a pair of Red Cross-ing pigeons for them, do ye think?”

  “Maybe they couldn’t pluck them, Tom,” I said. “They are awful handless-looking, somehow.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Tom agreed. “It’s them being from the town, the poor craiturs. People from the town is very inclined to be useless in a lot of ways. They’ll be buying their pigeons from a mannie that plucks them all ready for the pot, so they never get a chance to learn a thing for themselves. Aye. We’ll chust sell the pigeons as usual, and maybe they’ll be putting a penny in the boxie whateffer.”

  It was a good Red Cross-ing day in Achcraggan. Quite a lot of sailors were ashore stretching their legs, and they put pennies in the box in exchange for a try-on of Tom’s Red Cross bonnet while Tom tried on their caps with the H.M.S. ribbons on them; and it being summer-time, Dominie Stevenson had visitors from the South staying with him and an old gentleman who had a single spectacle for only one eye—a thing I had never seen before—asked me a lot of questions about history and geography and then asked: “And why does a hen cross the road?”

  This was one of Tom’s riddles to which I had long known the answer: ‘To get to the other side,’ so, having answered this, I thought I would try Tom’s other riddle on him.

  “Do you know, sir, why the Prince of Wales wears red braces?”

  “Wheesht, now!” said Tom. “It’s time we was going”

  “Just a minute,” the gentleman said. “No, Janet, I don’t. Why?”

  “To be holding up his trooser,” I told him.

  The gentleman and Dominie Stevenson laughed like anything, and so did Tom, and then the gentleman put a whole half a crown in the box and we drove away to the Miss Boyds.

  “We will not,” said Tom, staring solemnly ahead as we drove, “be saying a word at home about speaking chokes with the dominie’s chentleman.”

  “All right, Tom,” I agreed.

  Once, in the course of some Bother at home, my grandmother had said:“It’s that Tom! He has her as fly as a badger.” And although I was not sure what this meant, I had always found it beneficial to take Tom’s advice about what to tell at home and what to leave unsaid.

  At the Miss Boyds there were no less than five of them, all cackling and fluttering round the cart to the degree that even Dulcie, who came to Achcraggan every Friday or Saturday and every Sunday and was used to strangers, began to show the whites of her eyes and fidget with her feet. Tom got out of the trap and went to her head. “I’ll chust tie the mare to the gate here, leddies,” he said,“and we’ll be taking the basket inside.”

  In order to get them away from Dulcie, I handed down the basket and climbed down over the high wheel myself while they all screeched and giggled, far enough away from the mare to be safe themselves, but too near to be comfortable for Dulcie. The old ones had been giggly enough, but the two young ones had to be heard to be believed, and they were young and active and sprightly on their feet into the bargain—they reminded me of the hens at feeding time, running hither and yon and cackling. They all talked at once—a thing which we were never allowed to do at Reachfar—and interrupted each other, and when one was interrupted, she went off into another gale of giggles. The only one of them who was half reasonable at all was Miss Annie, the middle one, who stood in age, rather nondescript, between the two old ones with the shawls and the long black skirts and the two young ones with the ‘glad-necked’ blouses and hobble skirts. At last we were all in the kitchen, Tom carrying the basket, and there at the sink, if you please, was Jock Skinner.

  Tom looked at him. “Aye, Jock?” he said. “And what are ye at the-day?”

  “I was chust skinning this rabbits for the leddies,” said Jock slyly.

  “Iphm,” said Tom and put the basket on the table. “Ootside would be a better place for that job than making that clart and stink in the house.”

  “Have you a bowl for the eggs?” I enquired, while Jock gathered his rabbit refuse into a bucket and took it and himself outside. The Miss Boyds were busy blowing up the fire with a pair of bellows, getting cups and saucers out of a cupboard and getting in each other’s way while I unpacked the basket and Tom stood by the window looking awkward. They were very kind. They insisted that we have tea, and the table was spread with an embroidered cloth, and lace doilies were fetched from another room and put on the plates, and the bread and the biscuits were put on the doilies and Tom was made to sit in a padded wicker chair that creaked every time he breathed and told to ‘make himself quite at home’.

  I was very interested in all these Miss Boyds and amused to watch them flapping round, but even I began to think that the tea would never get ready. And Tom was looking crosser and crosser and more and more impatient, although they were all being so nice to h
im and nudging him in their giggly way, for he always ‘had business’ to do at the Plough on market-day while I usually had tea with Miss Tulloch. As time went on, I became very, very worried about Tom. I had never seen him so quiet, not speaking a word at all, just sitting there with his bonnet on one knee while they all fluttered about him with plates of biscuits, and I thought he must be feeling sick. I was going to ask him if he was feeling sick, but with all the Miss Boyds talking you could not get a word in edgewise and I just had to wait until, at long last, we were in the trap and driving away.

  “Are you feeling sick, Tom?”

  “No, no!” said Tom, in a comforting voice. “Where would I be feeling sick and it market-day? ... Can ye be eating another tea with Miss Tulloch, do you think?”

  “Och, surely,” I said, equally comfortingly. It was quite easy for me, always, to eat two teas.

  On the way home, after I had had my second tea and Tom had done ‘his business’ at the Plough, though, it was not like a usual market-day. Tom was very quiet and did not seem to be interested, even, in talking about how well we had done with our Red Gross that day, so I was quiet too and went over the whole thing in my mind while Dulcie plodded slowly up the steep road from the County Road, through Poyntdale to Reachfar. Everything had been all right, I decided, and quite as usual until we came to the Miss Boyds. It was the Miss Boyds who had spoilt things. Poop to the Miss Boyds!

  Even at home, at supper, Tom went on being unusual until my uncle noticed it. Of course, my uncle would just be the one to notice a thing like that. The Big World outside Reachfar thought that my father was far cleverer than his brother, my uncle, but all of us of my family knew that this was not the case. My father was cleverer than my uncle at letter-writing and business—though not at farming—and, of course, my father was a year older which gave him a little more of that thing called experience, but my father would never be as good or as quick as my uncle at noticing when people were not ‘in their usual’ as Tom was tonight.

  “Well,” said my uncle, “I hear that you and Tom was calling on the Miss Boyds the-day, Janet. ... And did they give you a tea-par-ty?” My uncle, who did not like to be called ‘uncle’ but by his name of ‘George’, was very fond of doing what my grandmother called ‘playing the clown’, and one of his ways of doing it was to pronounce words in a queer way, like saying ‘tea-par-ty’ with the accent in the middle like that. This was a signal for me to play the clown too, so I said: “Och, yes, man, George! A proper tea-par-ty with lace doilies on the plates an’ a-all.”

  “Now, now!” said my grandmother. “None of your lies. Janet!”

  My grandmother was always accusing me of telling lies, especially when I said that Fly had ‘told’ me this or that. I often thought my grandmother was a little too clever when she was so much more certain than other people what was a ‘he’ and what was not, for, although Fly could not speak, Fly could still tell me that Bill-the-Post was on Reachfar ground with letters although nobody else could see him or hear him.

  “ ’S not lies, Granny!” I said now, for it was not.

  “Gently, Janet,” my mother said. “Not that tone of voice to Granny. Lace doilies, you said?”

  “Yes, and a cloth with coloured flowers sewn on it, too!”

  “Mercy on us!” said my aunt.

  “And, Tom,” said my clowning uncle, “did you mind to be lifting your cup like this”—he picked up his own cup with his little finger curled into a question-mark—“and you having your tea with all them nice leddies?”

  “Ach, hold your tongue, George, man!” said Tom disgustedly.

  “My,” said my uncle, “but it’s me that would like fine to be having my tea with a-all that leddies and the lace table cover and a-all! And me sitting there and them a-all waiting on me and saying Take another droppie tea, George, dear, och, do and”

  “And ye can bliddy well be doing it next week!” said Tom in a wild-angry voice that made me jump.

  “Now, then!” said my grandmother.

  “That will do, now, George,” said my father quietly. “That’s enough of your capers.”

  “I’ll do anything mortal that’s needed,” said Tom, looking at my grandfather, “but back among that lot of cackling ould bitches I will not go!”

  “That will be a-all right, Tom,” said my grandfather quietly. “Come over to the fire, man, and take your smoke. . . . Did you bring the teebacca the-day, Janet?”

  After that, there was a quietness in the house about the Miss Boyds, and even I did not dare to mention them to Tom, for if he had got away with saying ‘bliddy’ and ‘bitch-meaning-a-person’ in the house about them, it meant that they were not a subject to be trifled with.

  The next day my father and George stayed at home and the first ploughman from Poyntdale came up with his pair of horses and two carts and by the evening we had all the hay in and my father and George were roping the first big stack and we were all so busy that I quite forgot all about the Miss Boyds. Then, it was Sunday, which, especially in summer, was always a very nice day at Reachfar. All of us except one—for one person (who never was I, of course) had to stay at home to look after the dinner and the beasts—went to church in the morning, and then, after dinner, my family had their Sunday Sleep, during which I had to keep quiet, and in the later afternoon Tom and often George and I would go for a Look Round, and quite often we had visitors in the evening. It was not only for all these things that Sunday was a nice day, however. It was nice in having a different feeling from other days, for no one was doing anything very much, so that they had time to talk and did not just say: “Och, Janet be off now with your ask-ask-asking!” as they so often said on weekdays. Also, on Sundays, my grandmother had no errands to be done—not even little ones up to the well for a little ice-cold water to pour into the churn—for she did not churn or bake or do anything on Sunday. I was not allowed to do my knitting or sewing—and I was not supposed to dance or sing—on Sunday either, but I was allowed to read and write and, really, you could not want much more than that—‘not in ordinary reason, you couldn’t’, as Tom said.

  Church was always enjoyable except for the sermon, which could be tedious and sometimes even a little alarming. On this Sunday my mother, who sometimes was not very well and who always tired easily, was to stay at home and my father was going to stay with her, so my grandmother and my aunt got into Dulcie’s trap while the rest of us walked. It was another beautiful day, and I had on my short white Sunday skirt, my white blouse, white socks, black shoes with ankle straps and a white linen bonnet with a wreath of blue cornflowers on it, while my grandmother had my white gloves and black Bible on her knee in the trap.

  “Janet, stop hopping like a hen on a hot girdle!” she said as we turned eastwards through Poyntdale on to the County Road. “That bairn’s skirts are too short,” she told no one in particular, giving her feather boa a shake, “especially hopping and dancing as she’s always doing.”

  “Ach, the bairn is fine,” said my uncle. “What would she do with big long skirts walloping round her feet like an old maid?” My gentle mother controlled my clothes and would not hear of the frills and sashes that my grandmother thought proper for Sunday, nor would she hear of the long skirts and petticoats. At that time I was the only little girl in the district who was really comfortable, who went to church and school in skirts above my knees and socks that came just to my ankles in summer and to my knees in winter.

  “Some of the Miss Boyds don’t have big skirts, George,” I said, restraining a hop and a skip, “although they are old maids.”

  “We’ll not be speaking of that the now,” said George. “Come on. Here’s the County Road—we’ll all get up in the trap and give Dulcie a bit of canter to herself.”

  Once on the smooth tarmacadam of the County Road that wound eastwards beside the sea, Dulcie was only too willing to make with all speed for Achcraggan, to get to the stable behind the Plough and get her nose into her manger, so off we went at a fine pace. As we ne
ared the church we fell in behind a line of traps and governess carts which were coming in from all directions and then there was a general raising of hats by the men and bows from the women as the Poyntdale wagonette came past behind its pair of greys, with Sir Torquil himself driving and Lady Lydia with her house visitors in the back. Lady Lydia was, in my eyes in those days, the most beautiful person I had ever seen, with her golden hair, her big beflowered hats, her soft grey or blue frilly summer dresses and the long white gloves with the row of tiny buttons. None of her visiting lady friends were half as beautiful as Lady Lydia herself, I thought, although my mother and my aunt were often enraptured by the ‘up-to-date London’ clothes of the visitors.

  On a fine summer day like this it was the custom for everyone to gather in the churchyard while the bell pealed overhead and the horses were being stabled by one male member of each group, and Sir Torquil, the doctor and the dominie would go round talking to everyone until the bell stopped, when, led by Sir Torquil, we would all go inside and take our places. On this day Lady Lydia brought the ladies who were staying at Poyntdale over to meet my grandmother where we were standing outside the porch, and they all had pretty dresses and big hats and long gloves, and after my grandmother and my aunt had shaken hands with them Lady Lydia said: “And this is Janet Sandison—you met her father yesterday, remember?”

  The ladies smiled and the first one held out her long-gloved hand; but not being a grown-up person yet, I had to curtsy before shaking hands, and just as I bent my knee the most extraordinary thing happened that had ever happened in all my days of going to church. A troupe of six Miss Boyds, in a fluttering, giggling covey, with more frills and feathers on them than a dozen Lady Lydias, came rushing up the path and into the church, leaving me in mid-curtsy on one side and Lady Lydia and her friends on the other. At the same moment, the big bell stopped and there was the usual silence before the little bell would start its little hurrying ringing, but today it was more than the usual silence—it was deader and longer, as everyone in the churchyard, and even the tombstones, seemed to stare at the door through which the giggling covey had disappeared. “Yes,” said Lady Lydia’s clear voice into the silence, “this is Janet,” and something in her voice actuated my muscles so that I came up straight again, let go of the sides of my skirt and shook hands with each lady in turn. The normal hum of quiet conversation broke out around the churchyard again and the little hurry-up bell began to ring. Soon we were inside, the Reverend Roderick announced the Twenty-third Psalm, John-the-Smith, who was the precentor, made his tuning-fork go ‘Ping-oing!’ on the pulpit stairs and we all rose and began to sing.