The Burry Man's Day (3 page)

‘Sweetheart,’ he cried, pronouncing it swee-durrrt. ‘You should have called me. I was only up on the roof with Dudgeon. Welcome to Cassilis, girls. What do you think of the pile?’ He was fearfully American, every word sounding as though he were trying to speak whilst gurgling treacle, but so affable that I took to him at once.

He threw himself into a chair and rubbed one of its arms with his jersey sleeve. ‘What do you think of the library? Have we got it off?’

‘Oh, Cad,’ said Buttercup, blushing a little but beaming too. ‘You can’t say it like that, darling, really.’

Thank goodness for her intervention. The library, with its buttoned leather, portraits and brass reading-lamps, looked like the perfect stage-set of a library, just as Cadwallader’s jersey and bags looked like the perfect costume for the owner of it, but one could hardly tell him.

‘It’s perfect,’ said Daisy, and I caught her eye and smiled.

‘It’s good of you girls to come over and help Freddy out,’ said Cadwallader, taking his teacup from Buttercup and rewarding her with a beaming smile of his own. ‘Has she filled you in on the run-down?’

‘Not a word,’ I said. ‘What are our duties, But– . . . darling? What exactly does this Ferry Fair of yours entail?’

‘Oh, this and that,’ said Buttercup. ‘The usual, I expect. Don’t you have fetes in Perthshire, Dandy?’ I shook my head. ‘Odd,’ Buttercup went on. ‘I remember your mother fagging away at it no end that summer I stayed with you after Paris. D’you remember? I wanted to tell fortunes and she wouldn’t let me, so I put red and white mushrooms in the tea-tent jam.’

‘Buttercup!’ said Daisy. Cad frowned in understandable puzzlement at this remark.

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ said Buttercup. ‘Boring old Dandy made me tell and I got sent home in disgrace. But I must say I thought you two would be old hands at it by now. What about you, Daisy?’

Daisy shook her head.

‘The Scots don’t go in much for fetes,’ she said. ‘It’s one of the things that makes being married to a Scotchman bearable. No Punch and Judy to speak of either, thank God. And don’t take offence, Cadwallader, we don’t count you.’

‘You don’t
count
me? As a Scotchman, you mean?’

‘Well, no,’ I said. ‘I mean, where will you be on Saturday, for instance?’

‘At the Ferry Fair,’ said Cad. ‘Saturday is the day of revelry itself.’

‘Quite,’ I said. ‘Saturday the twelfth of August. And you’ll be at the village jamboree.’

‘Oh, I see!’ said Buttercup. ‘Yes, I see.’

‘Well, I wish you’d tell me,’ said Cadwallader, good-naturedly.

‘The twelfth of August?’ said Daisy. ‘The glorious twelfth?’

Cadwallader shook his head and raised his eyebrows at her.

‘Grouse,’ I said, taking pity on him at last.

‘Oh yes,’ he said, slapping his leg. ‘I did know. I just forgot.’ Which was rather the point.

‘That’s why you two are here without the men, isn’t it?’ said Cadwallader. ‘Silas and – uh?’

‘Hugh,’ said Buttercup after a difficult moment.

‘Hugh, right,’ said Cadwallader. ‘Yes, I suppose the timing of the Fair is awkward in some respects. That’s probably why it’s ended up being run by that bunch of –’

‘Cad,’ said Buttercup, placidly enough but with a note. ‘New neighbours, darling, we should give them a chance.’

‘Do go on now though,’ said Daisy. ‘Since none of them is around to hear you.’

‘Well, I don’t pretend to understand what the problem is,’ said Cadwallader. ‘Too many cooks is one thing, but matters are . . . what would you say, Freddy? Tense? Fraught?’

‘Nonsense,’ said Buttercup. ‘It’s nothing. Lightning quick, darling,’ she added as Cadwallader reached forward for more cake. ‘Cocktails, remember.’

‘What’s nothing?’ I said.

‘The Ferry Fair,’ said Cadwallader, after washing down his cake with a gulp of tea and looking at his watch, ‘is the typical Scottish fair in most respects. I’ve been reading up on it, you know. It was a hiring fair to begin with, and now it’s a good wholesome frolic in the sunshine. Sure, there’s drinking and there are showmen and where there are showmen there are girls to flirt with them, but it’s hardly a hootenanny.’

Daisy and I tried to look as though we knew what a hootenanny might be, and were fashionably unshocked by the thought of one.

‘There are games and races, fancy dress competitions, a children’s picnic, so far so dull, right? But also there’s the Burry Man.’

‘The . . .?’ said Daisy, blaming his accent I think.

‘Wait, I’ve heard of the Burry Man,’ I said.

‘A man wearing a suit of burrs,’ said Buttercup. ‘You know, little fluffy things off burdock plants.’

‘Hardly fluffy,’ said Daisy. ‘Torture I’d have thought. I fell off into some once, eventing.’

‘Yes, I remember now,’ I said. ‘He used to walk the town.’

‘Thousands of years of tradition. And they think we should just sweep it all away,’ said Cadwallader.

‘Good Lord,’ I said. ‘You don’t mean to say he still does it?’

‘Every year,’ said Buttercup. ‘The day before the Ferry Fair. Tomorrow.’

‘Why?’ said Daisy.

‘Warding off evil spirits, wasn’t it?’ I said. ‘Or bringing fertility? Something like that, anyway.’

‘Yes indeed,’ said Cadwallader, rather grim all of a sudden. ‘It’s the something like
that
that’s the problem. To listen to the Parish minister – what’s his name, Freddy? – you’d think the guy was used to summon the devil. And then the Presbyterian minister is caught between wanting to find fault with the Parish minister and not wanting to look like a heathen in front of him, but really he’s more concerned with all the drinking and fornication.’

‘The drinking which
does
go on and the fornication he imagines
must
go on,’ supplied Buttercup.

‘So Madam Marchioness decides to try to bring it all into line with a pageant celebrating St Margaret – who was the Queen, you know, who took the ferry at Queensferry – but of course St Margaret was a Roman Catholic, so the Parish and the Presbies are down on that like a ton of bricks, which sends the priest off into a huff, even though he couldn’t care less about the Burry Man
or
the drinking.’

‘Cad, you make it all sound so torrid,’ said Buttercup. ‘Don’t listen to him, darlings.’

‘So where we are now is that unless the committee either bans the Burry Man, gets up a pageant or hands out Temperance leaflets with every picnic, at least one of the ladies who usually does the honours is going to stay home and sulk.’ He paused. ‘Enter Freddy – which was the Provost’s idea. Provost Meiklejohn is an excellent fellow, as you’ll see when you meet him tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’ said Buttercup, looking uncomfortable.

‘So you’re oil on troubled waters, darling?’ I said. ‘That’s a new look for you.’

‘It’s all nonsense,’ said Buttercup. ‘And you’re about to see that for yourselves. Now run along all of you and change for cocktails. Quick, quick, because they’re coming at six.’

‘Who’s coming at six?’ said Cadwallader, standing over Buttercup, hardly threatening really but tall and broad enough to be classed as looming.

‘Friends and neighbours,’ said Buttercup, pushing out her bottom lip. ‘Lady Stewart Clark from Dundas, and Lady Dalmeny, and possibly the Marchioness although she might be away.’

‘They’ve agreed to meet here?’ said Cad. ‘But they’re at daggers drawn.’

‘Well, I may not quite have said to each that the others are coming but it’ll be fine. Anyway, there’s them and lots of other ladies from the town and Mr Dowd and Mr McAndrew, the ministers – although I haven’t told them it’s cocktails, obviously. And Father Whatsisname, who didn’t seem to mind the cocktails a bit. And Provost Meiklejohn, darling, whom you yourself are so keen on. And I’m sure once they’ve all had a little sip of something delicious and a jolly good chat everything will be as right as rain.’ Cad shook his head, speechless, and I could not help thinking of the roast suckling pig.

Poor Buttercup. Cocktails were served in the Great Hall, footsteps clanging on the stone floor, swords glinting and tiny summer fires smouldering miserably in the cavernous fireplaces, and jollity was not the party’s most powerful note. Daisy and I had been helpless with giggles while dressing, lying on Daisy’s bed whooping and kicking our legs, but even we gulped and went quiet as we entered.

They had all got there before us and we had missed their names being announced so, although Buttercup flapped her hand at people and murmured Lady This and Mrs That – really her parents might quite reasonably have asked our finishing school for a refund – I never did get them straightened out. Besides, they had brought assorted daughters and chums so there were hordes of them in total. And the three men in dog collars, who added a surreal note, were no easier to distinguish. One would think that a Free Presbyterian, a Plain Old Presbyterian and a Catholic Priest would appear respectively as the Grim Reaper, more or less a vicar, and either a fat little man with a hip flask or a dashing prince in something purple, but here were three men with grey suits and pursed mouths and although one of them must be drinking lemonade to the other two’s martinis they were all drinking them out of cocktail glasses and with identical expressions of distaste.

I joined a group, taking a huge slurp from my own glass – delicious! – and began to listen. I imagine that either they thought I was one of the Dundas or Dalmeny ladies or they simply did not care, for they made no effort to tone their opinions down.

‘But it’s unchristian, my dear lady,’ said one of the ministers or the priest.

‘It’s
pre
-Christian,’ said a snooty-looking lady in a red dress.

‘Well, then,’ said another. There were puzzled looks all round. ‘I mean to say,’ she went on. ‘So is Mrs de Cassilis.’

‘What on earth do you mean?’ I said.

‘My dear, haven’t you heard? She’s a’ – whisper – ‘Hebrew.’

‘A Hebrew?’ I echoed. ‘She’s from Hampshire. Oh, I see what you mean. No, no, no. That was her husband.’

‘Really?’ said the snooty lady turning to look at Cadwallader with deep interest. A maid had just given him a whispered message and as he swept out of the Hall to go and deal with it, he looked simply too Viking for words.

‘Not Cadwallader!’ I said, unable not to laugh at the idea. ‘I mean her first husband.’

‘First!’ spluttered the minister, possibly the priest, and took a restoring swallow from his glass.

‘A re-enactment of the pilgrimage would shift the whole thing on to a higher plane,’ said a young lady to my left. At the word ‘pilgrimage’, the minister – probably
not
the priest? – spluttered again and I took the opportunity of the hiatus while he was being banged on the back to detach myself and join another group.

‘Well, she
says
she’s a widow,’ someone was saying in poisonous tones, but she broke off upon seeing me. Clearly this one knew who I was. ‘My dear lady,’ she went on, ‘if this unpleasant episode goes ahead tomorrow after all, you’ll be able to see for yourself. It terrifies the children for one thing.’

‘Some of them,’ put in a gentle-sounding man in a pronounced Scottish rumble. This must be the Provost.

‘And those it doesn’t terrify are whipped up into a very unhealthy excitement by the whole proceeding.’

‘And the last thing we need,’ said a stout lady with a surprisingly squeaky little voice, ‘is to have the children as high as kites while their parents are too intoxicated to discipline them, wouldn’t you agree?’ She turned on me and caught me unawares.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ve never seen it of course, but I believe there are games, aren’t there? Races and suchlike? And nothing works off excitement like running about in the fresh air, or so we were brought up to believe. I daresay it’s a fearfully old-fashioned idea these days.’

‘Precisely!’ said a tall man with an earnest face, marking his words with his glass and slopping a little. ‘Fresh air and healthful exercise.’ He looked around the gloom of the Great Hall as if ready to knock through a french window as he spoke. ‘The trouble with this district goes far deeper than the Burry Man once a year.’

One of the ladies could be seen to bristle and she made a crackling sound as she did so, telling me that although her cocktail dress was bang up to the minute her undergarments were still in the Edwardian era.

‘What
do
you mean?’ she said.

‘Ghosts and monsters, lucky charms and who knows what superstitious nonsense,’ the tall man said.

‘Perfectly harmless fun,’ squeaked the stout lady. ‘No more to do with ghosts and monsters than dancing round the maypole or bobbing for apples. Perhaps when you have been in the district a little longer, Mr Turnbull . . .’ This quelled him. He smiled stiffly and walked off.

‘I had heard as much,’ said the crackling lady to his departing back.
‘Very
peculiar ideas, I heard.’

‘And no reluctance to share them,’ said another.

I could not hear what was being said in all the other groups of people around the room but from the general tune of the talk – gossipy swoops over a deep hostile mutter – I saw that Buttercup’s cocktail party was going exactly as swimmingly as Daisy and I had predicted, so it was with some relief that I perceived Cadwallader beckoning to me conspiratorially from the half-open door.

He drew me out and shut the door softly behind us.

‘Come with me, Dandy,’ he said. ‘The plot thickens.’ He made towards the staircase and began to ascend. ‘I have a visitor,’ he went on as we felt our way up the worn stone treads to the drawing-room floor. ‘The Burry Man. And there’s something up that he won’t tell me but I’m hoping he’ll tell you.’

‘What about Buttercup?’ I said, loath to be drawn any further into the squabble.

‘What about
what?’
said Cadwallader, but we had arrived at the library door and he did not pursue it.

I was half expecting a little green man covered in burdock seeds, I suppose, for it was a slight disappointment and relief to see standing in the middle of the rug, twisting his hat in large red hands, what looked like a perfectly ordinary farm-worker of about fifty, still in his breeches and collarless shirt although with his hair slicked down for this visit to the Big House.