Pat McIntosh - The Rough Collier

As Adam Crombie said, Forth village had an unappealing setting. Perched below its chapel on a bald hillside, surrounded by ribbed fields and bent trees, the little group of houses seemed chilly and exposed. However the welcome a stranger received was warm. Gil and Socrates were noticed first by a rough-coated bitch tethered by a doorway, and when she began to hurl abuse at the intruders a group of the children gathered to stare. Gil dismounted and spoke to them, and they came slowly closer. One of them, taking his eyes reluctantly from Socrates, admitted that Sir Martin dwelt here.

‘He’s at the plough,’ said another.

‘My da’s at the plough and all,’ confided a diminutive person with cropped hair and no front teeth, bare feet firmly planted in the mud, well-worn tunic revealing nothing of gender.

‘Is your mammy here?’ Gil asked, aware that he was observed from several doorways.

The tethered dog continued to bark. Socrates, ignoring her loftily, sat down at Gil’s feet. The child with no front teeth shook its head, but the boy who had spoken first said, ‘Her mammy’s went to the wash at the Cleugh. My mammy’s here, but.’ He pointed at one of the low houses.

‘My mammy’s here and all,’ announced someone else. ‘Does yer dog bite, maister?’

‘Only if you’re rough with him,’ Gil said. ‘If you’ll tell your mammy I’d like a wee word with her, you can speak to the dog after.’

The boy he addressed nodded and ran off, leaving behind him a chorus of, ‘Can I? Can I? Can we all get clapping yer dog, maister?’

‘You can take turns,’ Gil temporized, wondering how Socrates would cope with the assault. A bigger girl organized them into a line at his words, and by the time his messenger returned with a woman bundled in a vast sacking apron he was showing the first child how to offer a hand to the dog for inspection.

‘Our John says you’re wanting a word wi’ me,’ she said, bobbing a curtsy while her hands picked nervously at the apron. ‘Are ye from the coal-heugh, maister? Was it about the coin? For it’s no here.’

‘The coin?’ he repeated, straightening up and raising his hat to her. ‘That’s right, show him the back of your hand. Let him sniff you.’

‘It’s kittly!’ said the candidate, snatching the hand away. ‘His whiskers is kittly!’

‘The coin the colliers left,’ said John’s mother. ‘Is that no what you want, sir?’

‘Let me!’ said the messenger, pushing the other child aside. ‘He said I could!’

‘I came up to ask about the colliers. Do you tell me they’ve been here and gone again?’

‘Oh, aye,’ she assured him. ‘Near a month since.’

Someone silenced the barking dog along the street, and the women gathered from their doorways, one or two still settling their linen headcoverings in place

‘There’s nobody here burns coal,’ said one. ‘They’re asking ower much for it when there’s peat in plenty up yonder.’

‘Forbye there’s coal lying on the ground for the gathering, over at Climpy,’ said another, and they all laughed.

‘What happened, then?’ Gil asked. ‘Why did they leave the coin here?’

‘Who’s asking?’ countered one of the older women. Gil introduced himself, raising his hat to them all, at which they curtsied and several giggled nervously.

‘You’ll have heard about the corp found in the Thorn peat-cutting,’ he said.

‘Aye, yestreen,’ said one or two.

‘I have, I have! He’s all dried like leather,’ said one of the boys with relish, ‘Robbie Wishart tellt us that when he came up to drink ale in our house. He said his face is all thrawn.’ He pulled a hideous grimace in demonstration, and the child with no front teeth began to cry.

‘Who is it, maister?’ asked a thin woman in faded blue. ‘They’re saying it’s the man Murray from the heugh, is that right?’

‘Are they?’ said another woman. ‘And him only here last quarter. Is that no a shame!’

‘Last month, surely,’ said Gil. Heads were shaken, their folded linen bobbing in the sunlight.

‘No, he never came last month,’ said John’s mother. ‘It was just the two Paterson lads, and then they went on their way to Blackness.’

Gil looked round the group.

‘You’re saying that last month,’ he said carefully, ‘Thomas Murray was never through Forth on his round.’

‘No last month,’ agreed a stout woman in homespun, ‘though he was here in February, I think it was, him and Tam Paterson but no Jock that time, wi’ the ponies and all the empty creels. Shifted the lot, so he had.’

‘Is it the coin you’re wanting to know about, maister?’ demanded John’s mother. ‘Will we send up the field to Sir Martin to come and let you know what he done wi’ it?’

‘Aye, do that anyway,’ said another woman, ‘and you can take a seat, maister, and a wee refreshment, and tell us all the world’s doing. Is that right, that Jamie Stewart’s looking to wed the King of England’s daughter?’

Much as had happened at Thorn, he was drawn into one of the little houses, given a seat, and a jug of thin sour ale was brought. All the women crowded in to watch and listen as the housewife and the brewster officiated over the receiving of news, in counterpoint to the renewed barking of the dog tethered before the door. They were surprisingly well informed, for cottars at the far end of a large parish.

‘Oh, that’s Sir Thomas’s doing,’ someone assured him, when he commented. ‘Sir Thomas Bartholomew, that’s vicar at St Mary’s down at Carnwath and a man of some importance, so he is. He’s aye over at Linlithgow, you see, signing papers and talking to the King, and he aye stops here on the road back, to rest hisself and get a stoup of Ellen’s brew, and says a Mass for us while he’s here, and tells us all that’s new.’

‘It was Sir Thomas fetched the Paterson lads from Blackness,’ said Ellen the brewster. ‘Which is right beside Linlithgow, ye ken,’ she explained kindly. ‘One time he was in our house drinking ale, and some of the colliers was saying they needed a sinker, for they’d lost one deid in a rock-fall, and Sir Thomas asked about next time he was at Linlithgow. And Jock and Tam was looking for another place, seeing their last one had got flooded wi’ the sea, and was glad to come up here. So they said,’ she finished, nodding.

‘So they are the sinkers, right enough,’ said Gil.

‘Oh, aye,’ agreed several people.

‘That’s what they are. And mighty big fellows, too,’ added someone appreciatively.

‘You need to watch your tongue, Maidie,’ said the woman of the house slyly. ‘You’ll no speak like that in front of your Eck, will you?’

‘When were they here?’ Gil asked.

This gave rise to a brisk argument. By the time the tethered dog outside stopped barking they had reached the conclusion that the men had left Forth village at the end of March. One of the boys, leaping up and down, kept trying to interrupt and finally broke in with, ‘I ken! I ken, maister! It was the day afore Hunt-the-gowk! I mind, for I’d a good gowk to play on them, I was going to tell them the wrong way to Linlithgow, but then they left afore I could play it.’

‘That was just daft,’ said another boy. ‘You’re a gowk yersel, Andro Johnston.’

‘Am no!’

‘Aye ye ur!’

John’s mother, with practised ease, evicted the pair as they struggled, and stood aside to let a thin, balding, muddy man over the doorstep through a group of giggling children.

‘Here’s Martin Clerk,’ she announced. ‘He’ll tell you all about the Paterson lads, maister. It’s a man to hear about the coin from the coal-heugh, Martin.’

‘I didny ken what to do wi’ it,’ said the clerk defensively. ‘They never said what to do if Murray didny come for it, maister, and he’s never appeared.’