Michael Innes - Lament for a Maker

‘Poor soul!’ cried Mistress Roberts, ‘he has much to thole, I’m sure’ – and she cast her eyes up to heaven like a hen after a bit drink. ‘It’s right disgusting what they find to say about him and that strange quean Christine.’

‘Shameful,’ said Carfrae, licking his lips as if the ginger had been extra tasty; ‘and the more shameful to speak of since it seems like enough to be true. Bred up to it from a wean, poor lass, the same as you might breed up a sow.’

It’s this kind of speak makes me times doubt the blessings of Reformation and agree with those that say the muck-rake came to Scotland along with presbytery. But Dr Jervie – and I think he’s in the right of it – says No, that’s a false thought: it’s the tough land and the short leases, the long-grey lift and the chill raw haar seeping to the heart, that robs us of half our right sensuous life and sends us to warm and stir ourselves before the fires of evil speaking and whispered lust. I’ve learnt long since to hold my whisht when folk unbridle their tongues so, and I held my whisht now. But Rob Yule, for all that his silver has long lain cold in his cellars, has a warm heart and a quick temper, and forbye he had ever liked Christine. So he rose now to the creature Carfrae’s bait. ‘Is the old lie about the quean,’ he said, ‘wearing that thin that there’s a new one needed?’

You must know that Christine was Guthrie’s ward and bore his mother’s name. She had come to the miekle house as an infant – the child, it was explained, of Guthrie’s mother’s brother, who had been killed with his young wife in a right terrible railway accident abroad. I can remember well enough that none doubted the story until just such a white idle winter as this I’m writing of; it was then that the wee speak grew that what had been given out was no true part of Christine Mathers’ story and that Ranald Guthrie was more to her than uncle. But it was only the secretiveness and the ill name of the laird, the few sensible bodies in Kinkeig ever thought, that gave gradual colour to the claiking: when the quean was never sent to school folk said it was because Guthrie was ashamed of his natural daughter. That was what Rob Yule was calling the old lie – and now here was the wee man Carfrae, sure enough, with another. Fine, he said, you could understand Guthrie turning away Neil Lindsay: wasn’t he jealous of his young mistress, the dirty old stock that he was?

The Roberts wife rinsed a glass. ‘You mean she’s not his daughter at all?’

Carfrae hesitated and looked warily over at us. ‘It’s just the talk,’ he said. And then he gave a bit snicker into his Sabbath School cordial.

Mistress Roberts made a shocked-like click with her tongue and poured herself out a cup of tea: she ever has a great teapot at her elbow in the private and anyone comes in she’ll like enough over a cup to, gratis; it makes Roberts fair wild. The Thoughtful Citizen said Faith, these were terrible lax times for sure and it was a real pity they’d stopped the papers publishing the full revelations of the Divorce Courts; there was nothing kept people more moral than reading those awful-like examples of fast life among the English. And as for Guthrie, it was just awful to think he might have brought up the quean not out of duty as his natural daughter but to make a mistress of her.

Carfrae snickered again at this, and hummed and hahed and hinted and at last the stationy saw what he was driving at, and however much he’d read of fast life among the English I think he was decent enough to be honestly shocked. He looked quite stern at Carfrae and ‘Are you suggesting,’ he said, ‘that these are not mutually exclusive propositions?’

I doubt if the wee greengrocer man understood this – but certain he understood Rob Yule. For Rob walked over to him and took the glass of ginger beer from his hand and emptied it, careful-like, in Mistress Roberts’ nearest aspidistra. ‘Carfrae,’ he said, ‘the Non-Injurious is wasted on you, man. It’s over late for such precautions: you’re nought but a poison-pup already.’

It wasn’t what you could call an ugly situation, for the greengrocer was far from the sort would put up a fight against Rob Yule, there was just no dander to rouse in him. But it was fell uncomfortable; Carfrae was looking between yellow and green, like one of his own stale cabbages, the stationy was havering something about its being technically an assault, and Mistress Roberts had taken up her teaspoon and was stirring furious at the teapot – which was what she ever does when sore affronted. And then Will Saunders, who had been holding his whisht the same as myself, thought to cut in with a bit diversion. ‘Faith,’ cried Will, ‘and look at the aspidistra!’

I don’t believe the plant had really suffered any harm from the Non-Injurious, but the way Will spoke and his pointing to the poor unhealthy thing in its pot fair gave the impression it had wilted that moment. I mind I gave a laugh overhearty to be decent maybe in a man of my years and an elder of the kirk forbye. Rob gave a great laugh too and then we saw that this time Mistress Roberts was real black affronted, she rattled her teapot like mad, herself making a noise like a bubbly jock with the gripes. After all, the Non-Injurious was some sort of symbol to the wife of her struggle against Roberts and the massed power of darkness that was the liquor trade she’d married into. And it was to placate and distract the old body, no doubt, that Will thought to cry out: ‘Mistress Roberts, could we have a look at your grand atlas and see Newfoundland?’

Both the Roberts loons are at sea, and their mother right proud of the great atlas they gave her to follow their wanderings in. So, ill-thoughted though she is against those that are helping keep the roof over her by drinking a decent pint of beer, she couldn’t resist that invitation; away she went and was presently back with the atlas, and a fresh pot tea forbye.

So we all – except the greengrocer Carfrae, who was still chewing over the insult to him – had a keek at the map, and Will asked Would Newfoundland be in America? I said it was as much in America as Canada was and no more; you could say it was in the Americas maybe. And then Will wondered Where was it Guthrie’s American cousins lived, the creatures that syne tried to have him proved skite?

Mistress Roberts was that delighted she forgot Will’s tink joke on her aspidistra and offered tea all round; even when Rob Yule said No, he’d have another pint thanks and pay for it she drew it without as much as a sour look. She thought Will had found for certain what was troubling the laird and why he had cried out to Isa’s hearing about Newfoundland and America. Myself, I wasn’t that impressed.

But Will said that was why Guthrie was opening Erchany; the cousins had near got him in the asylum on the strength of his meanness and solitariness, and now he had heard they were plotting at him again and it was driving him to make some show of sane liberality: no doubt he’d bring Christine to witness he was in the habit of cracking a bottle of wine for her. And if we knew the name of the cousins, which we didn’t, certain enough it would be Kennedy or Henderson, the same that Isa minded him calling out in his gallery. At this the stationy said there was a great fascination, sure, in amateur detection, and Rob Yule said that might be, but there was more sense in a bit solid knowledge; if Will didn’t know the name of the American cousins he did, and it was nothing but plain Guthrie. He had been but a wean when the younger Guthrie lads went out to Australia but he minded well his father saying they’d near gone to America instead, their father’s brother’s sons were there, and that they didn’t go was said to be because there was bad blood between the families.