Lament for a Maker (2 page)

When the speak came down Glen Erchany that Ranald Guthrie had taken his own ungodly life there was little grieving in Kinkeig. A coarse man he was known to be for all his years and gentry, who had lived nigh solitary like a crow as long as most could remember: a recluse, the last minister called him. And there was a story how the minister, years back, had made way up the glen to call on Guthrie and beg a subscription to a work of charity. Some said Guthrie, thinking the minister had come to chide him over the aye-empty great pew in the kirk, fired off a rusty gun at him. And some said he had but let loose the dogs – and some said the rats, for the Erchany rats were more famous in that land than all the rats of Hamlin town. And whether gun or dogs or rats all Kinkeig laughed, for the minister – him that was before Dr Jervie – was ill liked. But if folk disliked the minister they fair hated Ranald Guthrie. And that was unco at a first thinking, for while the minister was ever about folk’s houses, crying out ‘Is any of you indoors?’ and next moment stepping over the door-sill with his havering and expecting a dram for-bye, Guthrie was far enough away and himself plagued none. But folk hated his very name, he was that near-going.

Guthrie was the nearest-going man in all the lands about, and there were some that were near-going enough. Rob Yule, who farmed the fine parks down the Drochet and had more silver than most, would walk behind the cart that brought his meal home from the mill, crying to the lad to go warily; and he had a bit grocer’s shovel and when a handful of meal coupt from the cart he’d be down with his shovel and scraping it up from the glaur. And Fairbairn – him at Glenlippet whose wife was crippled with rheumatism, and such a church-worker that she made him keep a motor so she could be sure always to get to the Dorcas and such – Fairbairn took out the motor licence by the quarter – her being by ten years the older, and him being ever in hope. But neither Rob Yule nor Fairbairn could hold a candle in meanness to Ranald Guthrie – Guthrie who was as well set-up among the gentry as Rob was among the tenant-folk, and who had been a great scholar too, men said, in his day. Of all the dwellers in the glens about it was only of Ranald Guthrie you could honestly say he was as mean as an Englishman. Most in Kinkeig had suffered through him, for he owned the lands far round and his factor, the creature Hardcastle, took kindly to the pinching and screwing he was employed in. When the word got round Kinkeig that Guthrie had done himself a fatal mischief there were many that were right glad and a few that were sorry. The many were glad, hoping surely for a better laird. But the few with a spark of imagination were sorry, for to them the pity came that Guthrie had not thought to take the coarse creature Hardcastle with him, to do his pinching and screwing for him when he was set-up – as syne he’d be sure to be – among the propertied souls in hell. But Hardcastle’s neck was as sound as the day his mother first scraiched at the ill sight of him; and there was that look in his eye – Laurie the policeman said – you could tell he expected to come fair comfortable and well-feathered out of the tragedy. When folk heard there had been a strangeness in Guthrie’s end and that the sheriff himself was coming to Kinkeig to get the truth of it there were tongues enough to prophesy that Hardcastle would soon be gaoled; and when the strangeness grew with the daft gossip of what had befallen the corpse, so that the hanging of young Neil Lindsay was on the lips of every gawpus and bap-faced old body in the parish, there were plenty that would still have Hardcastle involved as well. Old Speirs the stationy, him they called the Thoughtful Citizen because he was ever blethering out of the English newspapers, went about saying that for certain Hardcastle was an accessory before the fact and would be held on suspicion as sure as sure. Full of criminal law was old Speirs ever since he started stocking Edgar Wallace for Dr Jervie’s loons, and would air his views every night at the Arms, with a pack of bothie billies listening to his stite as if it were the wisdom of Solomon. But there – I’m losing my thread again.

It was a hard winter. Armistice morn saw the clouds gathering leaden behind Ben Cailie, the snowy summit standing brilliant still against them in a bleak early sun. Then the lift darkened and at eleven, while the minister was holding his service by the memorial, the first flakes fell: you could tell at once it was going to lie, the way it lay on the minister’s robes. Some thought he would interrupt the service, but he went on unheeding; and a few folk put up umbrellas and the rest gathered shawls about them – widow-bodies mostly, their thoughts twenty years back and more – and sang the hundred and twenty-first psalm.

Unto the hills around do I lift up

My longing eyes…

Sweet and strange it was, no hills could be seen, neither Ben Cailie nor the braes about, the words like a queer parable of faith in things invisible. And then the flakes came thicker, not dancing but in a steady fall, and took the psalm from folk’s lips and muted it, so that the singing might have come from far away. There is ever something piercing the mind in an open-air service in Scotland, so piercing they are but seldom held: we had our stomach-full of that in the days of the Solemn League and Covenant.

The eleventh of November, I say, was the beginning of a bitter season. For the snow that began that day in flakes so broad folk said it would be gone the morning’s morn lay for a fortnight in a still, cold air: you could see the boughs quivering at the tips with the weight on them. And that snow went out with a quick thaw and a great storm, a hurricane fit to bring down in ruin another Tay Bridge, that went howling up the glen to rip great sheets of lead from the crazy battlements of Castle Erchany. And hard on that, with the stubble lands still steaming, came a black frost.

The snow was falling again in mid-December and the bairns were right pleased with the white Christmas they were like to have. But as it fell fine and unceasing day by day the canny in Kinkeig began to look to their provisions and outlying crofters made sore haste to get an extra load of corn to the mill. The Thoughtful Citizen said the winter would be a record, sure, and a grand season for the curlers. And that was fine comfort for those who were thinking of their bit kye. There’s this to be said for making your stock of Edgar Wallace and Annie S. Swan: they need no cake and no mucking.

By the time that snow stopped we knew there had to come but another fall and a bit drift to snow the place up entirely, for though the county has snow-ploughs enough these days it would be long before they’d think to let drive at a remote place like Kinkeig. So we sat down in next to idleness, the old men with a bit park maybe sharpening a coulter against the spring and the farmer billies toasting their big bellies before a gey fire and nodding their heads over a catalogue of tractors from the coarse American creature Henry Ford. And the silence the snow brings thickened about us: fient a sound in all the glens except the peewits, that went crying their own strangeness still to the strange and blanketed earth, with whiles a bit stir in a corn yard as some wife went out to meat the hens. There’s ever a sense of expecting in a white Christmas season, and has been belike since A.D. One. And sure there were plenty to say afterwards that they had felt an Expectation; they hadn’t known of What, it was just a Feeling, awful, they never minded the like. And one old wife said that when the minister was preaching on the Herald Angels and she was trying, decent-like, to conjure up a bit picture of them in her mind like what they put on Christmas cards, she had a vision of the daftie Tammas, coming louping through the snow from Erchany and yammering murder; it would be just a week before he did that same certain enough, but she hadn’t let on at the time, thinking it a fell unchristian fancy. Mistress McLaren the smith’s wife, that was; she must be said to have a talent for what the stationy calls publicity.

If an unco silence had fallen upon nature with the snow those weeks there were plenty of human tongues in Kinkeig to make good the deficiency. The less work always the more gossip, and there must have been even more claiking than usual about the meikle house. Castle Erchany is far enough from Kinkeig, but it’s the laird’s house and forbye the nearest gentry house barring the manse by many a mile, so it’s a natural centre for idle talk. It would be that were it owned by the dreichest and quietest folk in Scotland – which it’s not. The Guthries have ever had a way with them that catches the eye and sets folks either crying out or whispering: their valour of the shining kind, their treasons showing lurid in the discovery, their births at a strange term, a rape or a romance keeking out from behind their canny wivings, violence or madness or some unlikely ecstasy casting flare or shadow over their end. Many old families have as much colour to their stories as the Guthries, but few have as much colour that have contrived too to hold what they have through the centuries. The Guthries have been at Erchany since long before the Reformation – and, Reader, I warn you that back beyond the Reformation with them you and I must presently go. But for the moment my best course seems by way of Ranald Guthrie and the bogles. It was with this that the chief gossip of those weeks began.

Ranald Guthrie was near-going: how near-going few in Kinkeig knew. For though all knew about the bogles – it was the fashion he treated the Gamleys and not the bogle business itself set folk talking – that was far from giving the measure of his meanness. I had long known myself that his meanness was next to madness – ever since the time his American cousins had tried to prove it on him. Since my mind is on it we’ll take that affair first.

It was a couple of years back that two English creatures, gey shifty-eyed folk under their little bowlers, came speiring round Kinkeig about Guthrie, getting the billies to talk over a dram at the Arms and wheedling the women – who needed little encouragement to haver anyway – by giving pennies to the bairns. And one of them came in on me bold as brass and asked could I remember anything peculiar about any dealings I’d had with Guthrie? and I believe the chiel would have crackled a pound note at me had I not looked at him fell stern. Fine I knew Guthrie to be peculiar: only the week before he’d sent a pair boots to sutor – with the laces all frayed and knotted so that I’d put new laces in and thrust the old inside when the boots went back to him. And the next day down came the daftie Tammas with the old laces in one hand and the silver to pay my bill in the other – less one halfpenny for second-hand laces returned: had I not written
Net Cash
right large he’d have had discount as well. But knowing Guthrie peculiar was one thing and conspiring with a bit London informer another, and, faith, I sent the creature away with a flea in his lug. But that was not the end of it. For the next week a pack of doctors came.

That was sensation enough for Kinkeig: a motor full of medicals in black coats and lum hats, as if they were holding themselves ever ready to attend their patients’ funerals; three from Moray Place in Edinburgh and a fourth, a full-fleshed gawpus, from Harley Street in London. They took up Dr Jervie – fell unwilling he was, but his brother was a colleague of one of the Moray Place lot and that gave them a handle – and away they went up the glen to Erchany. What happened there most folk had from Gamley, who happened to have come up for orders from the home farm. The doctors got into the house and bided about half an hour – the time, no doubt, it took Guthrie to discover what they were nosing after. Then there was hell let loose – with Cerberus well to the fore, for this time certain it was the dogs Guthrie unleased. And syne out of the house and across the moat came the medicals, scraiching and roaring, the London one holding himself behind where the fiercest dog – a tink mongrel enough – had taken a great collop out of his dowp. Into the cars they got and were driven to the manse, the fat one greeting as if he were no more than a bairn sore skelped by his nurse. And later in the day – standing by Dr Jervie’s sideboard, poor chiel – he wrote a long report for the American cousins. Ranald Guthrie, he said, had had a warm and affectionate nature fatally warped during the trauma of birth. And it was a great pity he had never been given a bit plasticine – or even a good patch of glaur for mud pies – during his early and formative years, for that might have made all the difference. As it was, he had a fell unpleasant way with him and was subject to severe nervous disturbance, but he was no more certifiable than the folk who had fee’d the doctors. And as for prognosis, he gave it as his considered opinion that Mr Ranald Guthrie might very well grow worse, and the American cousins have some hope yet. On the other hand he might very well grow better, or for that matter he might very well remain the same. And there the Harley Street medical left off, adding a bill at a guinea a mile from London, and a claim for damages to a like amount – though the tink mongrel had taken only what he could well spare, gross slummock that he was, and who would grudge a Guthrie dog a bold bid for a square meal? Anyway, that was the end for the time being of the American cousins trying to get control of the Guthrie affairs. Guthrie had served them a gey queer turn, it appeared, and it was this had put the attempt in their heads.

This and a bit more I had from Dr Jervie, us running the kirk session together and so having a bit talk at times over the graver affairs of the parish. More than once our thoughts had turned to the folk at Erchany, for the minister was fell anxious about the quean, Christine Mathers. But that will come: it’s the bogles I’m on the now – a bogle, you must know, being no more than what the English call a scarecrow.

Well, all Kinkeig knew how Guthrie was fair haunted by the bogles in the fields roundabout; fair haunted, that is, by the thought some feckless chiel might have left a bittock silver in the pooches when breeching and jacketting the sticks. An unco sight it was to see the laird striding his own parks from bogle to bogle, groping ghoul-like among the old clouts for those unlikely halfpennies. About he’d go and back again, visiting the same bogle three times, maybe, in the same day; so that folk said it was plain daft. But the Harley Street slummock said No, that was just neurosis,
folie de doute
, and no sign of madness, any more than getting up in the night to bar the door when you were full certain you’d barred it already. No doubt he was right from what you’d call a strictly medical point of view.