My Friends the Miss Boyds Page 7

  “Nice smell,” I said, sniffing.

  She looked at me. “Lay the table for me!” she said and dashed out to the wash-house. By the time I had got the cups and saucers out of the dresser she was back and the kitchen was pervaded by a strong odour of carbolic soap.

  “That’s fine,” she said. “You’re a smart little craitur. Go out to the milk-house and bring me the little blue cream jug and I’ll do the rest.”

  My grandmother was the last to come into the kitchen, and she paused in the doorway and sniffed. “What a stink of carbolic!” she said.

  “It’s me, Granny,” I said. “I got some soot on me and used the carbolic soap.”

  This was true. I had been at pains in the interval to do both.

  “Then you had no business! The carbolic is very dear and not for you to waste, Janet. Go and wash that stink off your hands with the proper white soap!”

  I did as I Was Told, but the kitchen still smelled nicely and concealingly-for-my-aunt of carbolic, and all eyes, except those of my unsuspecting parents and grandparents, were downcast and seeking the hidden corners of the room.

  We had just taken our places round the table when there was an unusual noise outside, which became a gradually increasing crescendo of screeching, fluttering and giggling as it came nearer to the open door, and my silent grandfather became very upright at the end of the table, looked accusingly round at us all and said in a stern voice: “And what, for goodness’ sake, is that?”

  Had I dared to speak, I could have told him, but I did not. In no time at all six Miss Boyds appeared in a covey of frills, feathers, gushes and giggles in the kitchen doorway, and out of the general babel of sound came the words of one of them: “The door was open so we walked right in!” followed by another chorus of giggles.

  Slow, majestic, silent and dark as a thundercloud rolling over Ben Wyvis, my grandmother rose in her place at the end of the table.

  “So,” she said, “I see.”

  The giggles stopped. The silence was deadly. Not a hen squawked outside. She turned to my mother, who sat at her right hand.

  “Come, Elizabeth,” she said, and to my aunt: “Kate, tea for——” Her cold eye moved over the covey. “—eight of us, in the parlour, please.” And like one of the mighty warships in the Firth, with my mother in her wake, she clove a furrow through the massed Miss Boyds and led the way to the parlour.

  “My Lord God Almighty!” said my aunt, which was an Awful Swear, and collapsed on to a chair.

  Tom rose in the same moment, seized a plate of scones and a dish of jam and with a “Come on, for God’s sake, George, man! Bring our cups!” the two of them went out through the back way through the wash-house faster than I had ever seen them go anywhere in All My Born Days, carrying their tea with them. I ran to follow them, but my father thundered: “Janet! Stay here and help your aunt!” so that was that.

  “The second-best cups, Janet!” said my aunt, and while my father and my grandfather finished their tea in silence she and I plunged into the fray.

  The Reachfar kitchen was a well-equipped place, both as to food and utensils, and my aunt, trained by my grandmother, was a swift worker, but that was the quickest meal ever prepared at Reachfar, so anxious were she and I to get through to the parlour to see what was happening. My Aunt Kate was—and is—one of the ‘dark’ Sandisons, which means that she is also one of the beautiful ones. Her dark waving hair had in it none of the Scandinavian reddishness to make it brownish like mine, and her dark eyes have none of the Scandinavian blue that lightens mine, and her skin in those days had a clear soft warmth brought to it by the inherited limpid rains of my grandmother’s native West. In nature she was—and still is—as full of mischievous gaiety as a brown trout jumping on a summer evening. “Are we ready?” she asked, the brown eyes dancing. “I’ll pour the tea, you carry the cups to them. Got your wee tray for the cream and sugar? That’s right.”

  Ceremonially, she and I carried the tea-tray, the trays of scones, cake and biscuits into the parlour, and I, with my ‘wee tray’ at the ready, took up my position beside her as my grandmother said to one of the oldest Miss Boyds: “Strong or weak, Miss Boyd?”

  “Oh, just as it comes, thanks,” said the Miss Boyd, while my aunt and I, at the side table, suppressed our uprising giggles.

  It was a dreadful tea-party. When I think of it now, forty years later, my flesh crawls, and what my poor mother—I am said to resemble her very strongly in some ways—must have gone through as she sat at my grandmother’s side I cannot bear to imagine. The Miss Boyds were cowed beyond all thought of a giggle and afraid to make the slightest fidget with their frills or gloves, and my redoubtable grandmother had reduced them to this pathetic state, I knew, without making a single gesture or speaking a single word that did not conform to the letter of social intercourse and to the law of Highland hospitality. She chatted about the weather, the crops, and listened to their attempts to be coherent about the beauties of Achcraggan, and, at the same time, by sheer force of pent-up disapproval, reduced them to a jellied mass of dithering subjection, so that, when tea was over, they did not even have the strength of mind to get up and go away. I am probably biased and my exaggerated view is probably erroneous, but I have always felt that if my grandmother had paid a visit to Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany during July 1914 the Great War of 1914-18 would never have come to pass.

  My aunt and I carried our trays out of the parlour and she said: “We’ll leave the dishes till later—come on back!” and the two of us went back to the other room.

  “Janet,” said my grandmother, “you can go off for your walk now.”

  “Yes, Granny,” I said and left the room at once. My aunt was allowed to stay.

  Usually George, Tom and I went for a Look Round on Sunday evenings, but I did not know where they had gone now, so I went to my ‘bitties’ drawer and got out the paper with my Maddy Lou song and took myself round to sit on the bench at the end of the house with Fly. I had not been there for five minutes when who should come walking towards me across the Long Park but Lady Lydia and Maddy Lou. This was indeed being a Memorable Sunday. I did not know what to do, for our parlour would hardly hold one more person with all these Miss Boyds in it, and my grandfather and my father had disappeared like Tom and George, so I had a moment of panic as I rose from the bench to make my curtsy. However, let it be said to the honour and glory of my family that never has it deserted me in an hour of need, and just as Lady Lydia came up Tom and George appeared round the north side of the house.

  “Good evening, all,” said Lady Lydia, leaning on her ash-plant. “How are you, George? I didn’t get a chance to speak to you at church this morning.”

  “Fine, thank you, your leddyship. And yourself?”

  “Well, thank you. Mrs de Cambre, did you meet Mr Tom and Mr George at church this morning?”

  “Ah wish Ah ha-ad! How a-ah you? An’ Jah-net, too,” she smiled.

  “The rest are in the house.” George hesitated and gave the back of his neck a rub with his left hand. “But, to tell ye the truth, Leddy Lydia, all that Miss Boyds that’s come to Achcraggan to stop is in there and Tom and me was just—well, we was just”

  Lady Lydia gave a pealing laugh and choked it off short with a glance at the house. “Keeping out of the way, were you?”

  “That’s about it,” said George, looking relieved.

  “My friend and I will just rest here a moment,” said Lady Lydia and sat down on the wooden bench along the gable.

  I was still holding my paper and my pencil and Mrs de Cambre said: “You been drawin’, Jah-net, honey?”

  “No, Mrs de Cambre.”

  “She would be at the writing likely, madam,” said Tom. “She’ll often be at the writing for a whilie when she has the time. What is it the-day, Janet?”

  “Nothing,” I said, that hopeless defence of a child as a reply.

  “Oh, come, Janet!” said Lady Lydia.

  I put the paper behind my back, but, of cours
e, that was fatal. Even my ‘clown’ of an uncle would not let that pass.

  “Give Leddy Lydia the paper, Janet,” he said gently, and I had to hand it over.

  Lady Lydia began to read, then glanced at her friend and then began to read again with concentration.

  “Well!” she said at last. “Maddy Lou de Cambre, you had to cross the world to get a poem addressed to you! Listen to this!” and she read my song aloud. I could not look at any of them, but stood there, scarlet, blind, beyond all feeling or movement until suddenly Mrs de Cambre sprang up from the bench and caught me in a perfumed hug. When she came so close, I could see tears in her eyes, and, somehow, the tears made everything all right, but, in a second, she was laughing again and her smiling voice was saying: “My, that’s jus’ the cutes’ thi-ing Ah evah heard! May Ah have it to keep, Jah-net?”

  “If you like,” I said.

  “Ah mos’ sut-nly do like! Why, that’s jus’ the nices’ thing that evah happened tuh me!”

  George and Tom were embarrassed now, too, at the contents of the paper, and serve them right, I thought. Poop to them for making me show it, anyway.

  “Och,” said Tom, “she’ll often be at the writing when she is by her lone, madam. Chust any kind of capers and nonsense that will be coming into her head, like.”

  George gave the back of his neck another rub and then: “My mother—her granny—will not be knowing about her writing that way, of coorse. That kind of capers is chust for bairns and foolish ones like Tom and me.”

  “A-and me!” said Mrs de Cambre, and winked in a very clever way with one long-lashed eyelid over one sparkling eye as she folded the paper and hid it away in the pocket of her tweed jacket. Lady Lydia smiled and then looked at Tom: “Sir Torquil was telling me you have another fine new litter from the white sow, Tom?”

  “Aye, your leddyship, a bonnie enough puckle piggies—would ye care to be seeing them?”

  In his pride in the young pigs Tom had forgotten that to reach the sty we had to walk east past the front of the house, and, of course, when we reached the porch there was my grandmother, shooing the six Miss Boyds in front of her like a flock of frightened chickens. “So it’s yourself, Leddy Lydia! Good evening to you,” she said, and the Miss Boyds broke into a fluttering and giggling. “The Miss Boyds was chust leaving,” she added in a voice of doom, and silence descended not only on them but on all of us, until it was broken by Lady Lydia.

  “Oh yes, the Miss Boyds.” She gave them a collective smile and bow. “I believe I saw you at church this morning, but I did not have an opportunity to meet you. You have come to stay permanently in your house in Achcraggan now? That is very nice. I am sure you will soon get used to it although it is so different from the Town. Good evening.”

  She smiled again, and, sucking Mrs de Cambre, Tom, George and myself into her wake, she made her way through the silent ranks of the Miss Boyds into the Reachfar kitchen, she and my grandmother somehow giving the impression of ‘speaking’ each other in passing (though silently), as might the great liners Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth do if they had to pass one another among the small craft on a summer day on Southampton Water.

  Nothing more was said, in my hearing, about the Miss Boyds, but on Tuesday morning, when at breakfast I asked my grandmother to get their basket ready as early as she could because I wanted to get back early to go round the sheep with Tom, she said: “The basket won’t take you long, Janet. I arranged with the Miss Boyds on Sunday that you would leave it with Granny Fraser at Rosecroft and they can send there for it.”

  “Oh? Why, Granny?”

  “Why! Hark at her! And her forehead like a last year’s tattie with wrinkles from asking questions! Because we have more to do than dress you to go trailing off to Achcraggan every Tuesday, that’s why. . . . Off you go and pick out the wee tatties for the hens’ pot for me, like a clever bairn.”

  “All right, Granny.”

  The new arrangement suited me very well. I had no particular wish to ‘go trailing off to Achcraggan’ every Tuesday, for, by my standards, the Miss Boyds were less interesting than many of the things I could find to do at home; and although the hens’ pot did not come into the interesting category, it did not take long and it kept my grandmother quiet.

  * * * * *

  In the course of the week I forgot all about the Miss Boyds, and, indeed, I did not remember them at all until the Friday, when they were mentioned again as the butter, eggs, honey and Red Cross items were being loaded into the trap.

  “And the Miss Boyds, Tom,” said my grandmother. “Chust leave the basket with Miss Tulloch as I told you. . . . George! Are you ready? If you are to get to the bank for Mr Macintosh this day it’s time you were away. Tom and Janet are waiting for you!”

  This was one of the Very Fine Market Days which came about once a month, when George had to go to Mr Foster, the banker, on behalf of his employer Mr Macintosh. Mr Macintosh was lame and did not go out much.

  “Janet, have you got that pattern of thread for your mother? What are you to tell Mrs Gilchrist?”

  “The same as this or a little darker, and a little thicker rather than a little thinner, Granny.”

  “That’s right,” my mother nodded as George got into the trap.

  “All right. Off you go,” said my grandmother, with a wave of the hand that the station-master at King’s Cross might give as the royal train pulled out.

  “Would I get coming into the bank with you, George?” I asked as I always did when Mr Foster was to be visited.

  “No,” said George, which was how he always answered too, but no harm in trying.

  In my own opinion I knew all about the bank already, but I always persisted in my efforts to enter it simply because everyone was always so putting-off about it, and I was wondering for perhaps the hundredth time why they were so secretive about Mr Foster’s Bank as Dulcie picked her way down over the rough track on to the Poyntdale farm road and thence to the County Road on the shore. After all, we had a bank at Reachfar, the Bluebell Bank, which, in principle, was just the same as Mr Foster’s Bank. The Bluebell Bank bred rabbits and Mr Foster’s Bank bred pennies—that was the only difference. The Bluebell Bank lay along the south side of the West Parkie, at right angles to the Strip of Herbage, and in summer it was covered and made blue all over by the nodding harebells that rang their rustling, faint chimes in the breeze. It was riddled through and through with rabbit burrows, and if you went there early in the morning you would see the families of young rabbits rolling in the dew on the grass at their doors like the slum children that you read about rolling in the dust.

  Mr Foster’s Bank did not have harebells, but it was a sort of rockery with a stone staircase going up through it to his house which sat on top, and I knew that in his house he had a lot of holes going into the rockery bank and that he put the pennies in these holes. My father had told me that if you gave pennies to Mr Foster to put in his bank ‘they got more, the longer you left them with him,’ and I knew that one of the holes in his bank was mine, where the pennies I got when I sold my ducks at Christmas were breeding. I thought it only reasonable that I should be allowed into the bank to see the hole where my pennies were, and see how many farthing children they had at the moment. I could not see why everybody had to say that the bank was ‘no place’ for people who were not grown up. I had known for years where calves and kittens came from. What was so special and different about farthings?

  “You’re awful quiet, Janet!” George teased. “Are you feeling sick?”

  “Ach, you and your old bank!” I said. “You can keep it.” I tried to think of something to say that would annoy him as he had annoyed me about Mr Foster’s Bank, and, the devil and I always having been firm friends, the words came to my tongue almost unbidden. “I’ll just go and wait for you and Tom at the Miss Boyds.”

  The results of this were excellent. They were both far angrier than I had been about Mr Foster’s Bank.

  “You’ll not go near the Miss B
oyds!”

  “You’ll do dang a-all of the kind!” They both spoke at once.

  “Why not?”

  “You just won’t!”

  “I don’t see why not—all that nice leddies——” I said.

  “Hold your tongue, you wicked little clip!” said my uncle.

  “George Sandison! I’ll tell my granny on you—calling names like that! You should be ashamed!”

  “Now, Janet——” he began in conciliatory tones.

  “Don’t you try your smooth tongue on me!” I told him in the voice of my grandmother. “Being like that about the Miss Boyds, as if there was something wrong with them——”

  “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with them!” Tom burst forth as the mare turned of her own accord on to the County Road. “They’re the dangdest, foolishest, hot-arsed-est lot o’ ould bitches I ever saw in a-all my born days, and ye can tell your granny that if ye like, ye wee, cunning besom that ye are!”

  “There, now!” said George. “You’ve made Tom right wild angry at you!”

  Things had Gone Too Far. This was really worrying.

  “Tom, I’ll not tell her!” I pleaded. “And, Tom, I’ll not go near the Miss Boyds, either!”

  “That’s right,” said Tom forgivingly. “You’ll just stop with Miss Tulloch as usual while George and me does our business at the bank and the Plough.”

  “All right,” I promised.

  I wanted to ask what that word ‘hot-arsed-est’ meant, for it was new to me, and I was always interested in words, but I decided to wait for a better opportunity.

  When we reached Achcraggan, however, and I opened Miss Tulloch’s shop door with its tinkling bell so that Tom and George could carry the baskets in, there were four Miss Boyds all giggling and nudging and fluttering in the middle of the floor, and they converged on Tom and George like wasps on a jam-pot. They invited us to tea. We did not have time. They would help us with our shopping. It wasn’t so much the shopping, it was the business at the bank. Oh, surely we just had a wee while to spare? Well, you see, there was the horse. Oh, Mr Skinner would look after the horse.