‘Weel, weel, noo,’ said Miss Josephine.
The good humour shone in her. She was burnished with it. When Mrs. Williamson and Bella came to Birelybeg, the summoning of Aunt Josephine followed as a matter of course. So did whist: and it was no idle game.
Aunt Josephine was in a delightful bustle. There was her best black silk boady to fetch and air, her boots to polish, her clean handkerchief to lay in readiness beside the bonnet with the velvet pansies. One thing Aunt Josephine forgot was the dinner. The beheaded stalks of rhubarb lay in a heap in the garden where she had left them when Willie Patterson appeared. Their skin had tightened and toughened in the sun and shreds of it were curling up like tendrils. The mince was still upon the shelf.
‘We canna wait noo or it’s cookit,’ said Aunt Josephine when she remembered. She was standing in her petticoat and slip-body in the middle of the kitchen floor. ‘We’ll just hae a cup of tea an’ an egg, an’ you’ll carry hame the mince to yer mither in yer bundle.’
On the strength of the cup of tea and the egg Aunt Josephine locked her house door and pocketed the ponderous key. On the strength of the cup of tea and the egg Martha watched her go and turned to face her first revisitation of her home.
When Aunt Josephine had walked off westward in her best silk boady, Martha turned back alone to Wester Cairns. Life was a queer disappointment. Its Aunt Josephines had incomprehensible transactions with the world. Its very woods were dumb. She crawled in among the bracken to rest. Its great tops swayed above her, smelling good. The earth smelt good too; and she fell asleep.
When she awoke the shadows had altered. Thin blades of sunshine had stolen into the wood, shadow had stolen over great patches of the sunny land. She had slept till evening. But Martha was as yet unskilled to read the light and did not know that she had slept so long. She rose and left the wood.
The iron gate to the field was open and two small boys lay on their stomachs beside the puddle. Beyond, a black-eyed girl was strutting, an old cloak tied round her middle.
‘Ye micht lat me by, Andy,’ said Martha.
Neither of the boys budged.
The lady in the cloak here intervened. Martha had never seen her before; and suddenly she noted that it was her own mother’s cloak that dangled from the stranger’s waist.
‘You can’t get this way,’ said Blackeyes. ‘It’s to my house.’
‘It’s nae to your hoose,’ cried Martha. ‘It’s to my hoose and it’s my mither’s cloak ye’ve got on.’
‘It’s her hoose richt eneugh,’ said Andy. ‘She bides there.’
‘She disna bide there,’ said Martha. ‘It’s nae her hoose and it’s nae her cloak. Ye’ve stealed that cloak. It’s my mither’s cloak.’
And with that Martha sprang at the puddle, leaped short, and fell in the mire on the farther side.
‘Sic a mucky mess ye’re in, Matty,’ said Andy with deep satisfaction. ‘You’ll get yer hi-ma-nanny when ye win hame. Yer mither’s in an awfu’ ill teen the day. Isna she, Peter?’
‘Ay,’ said Peter, without looking up from his mud-grubbing. ‘She’s terrible short i’ the cut.’
‘Ye’ll fair get it, Matty. I wadna hae a mither like yon. She’s a tongue, yon woman, an’ nae name feart to use it,’ went on Andy, repeating lusciously the judgements current in his home on Mrs. Ironside. ‘Hisna she, Peter?’
‘Ay,’ said Peter, intoning his portion of the antiphon from the mud. ‘She’s a tongue that wad clip cloots.’
‘An’ a gey heavy han’ as weel,’ chanted Andy. ‘She fair gied it to Peter the day as she gaed by. She fair laid till him. Didna she, Peter?’
‘I dinna care a doit,’ said Peter, altering the antiphon abruptly under stress of recollection.
Martha attended to neither. She was now on the black-browed stranger’s side of the puddle and promptly laid violent hands on the cloak. Blackeyes wrenched herself free, pirouetted out of reach, and over one shoulder, with the most mischievous little sparkle in the world, thrust out her tongue at Martha.
Martha flew upon her, her limbs dancing of themselves with indignation. The black-burnished lady raised a pair of active sun-browned arms in readiness for the onslaught, and as soon as Martha was near enough, flung them tempestuously round her neck and smacked down a slobbery kiss upon her mouth. Martha had no time to adjust herself to the astonishment of a kiss. Her lifted hand came against the stranger’s cheek with a sounding slap, and turning she ran until she reached the cottage.
On the flag by the door she paused and stared for a minute or two at the untidy thatch, the jagged break at the bottom of the door, the litter of cans and leaky pots and potato parings beside the pump. When she went in, her father was alone by the fire, in shirt sleeves, his sweaty socks thrust up against the mantel.
‘Ye’re there, are ye?’ he said to his daughter.
Martha said, ‘Imphm,’ and climbed into the chair opposite her father.
Not a word from either for a while.
Then: ‘Faither.’
‘Weel?’
‘Fa’s the lassie wi’ the black pow?’
‘It’s a lassie come to bide,’ said Geordie slowly, ‘Yer mither brocht her.’
Silence again, through which Martha’s thoughts were busy with the queerness of family relationships. Other people’s families were more or less stationary. Martha’s fluctuated. It was past her comprehension.
‘Faur’s mither?’ she asked.
‘She’s awa oot.’
Geordie did not think it necessary to add that she was out in search of more family. His wife’s preoccupation with other people’s babies was a matter for much slow rumination on the part of Geordie. He knew well enough that she did not make it pay. But Emmeline would undertake any expedition to mother a child for gain. She liked the fuss and the pack in her two-roomed stone-floored cottage. The stress of numbers excused her huddery ways. Some of the babies died, some were reclaimed, some taken to other homes. Martha accepted them as dumbly as her father, brooding a little − but only a little − on the peculiarities of a changing population.
Geordie himself interrupted her thoughts this evening. It had occurred to him to wonder why she had come home.
Martha explained. Roused from her brooding, she realized that she was hungry.
‘Is’t nae near tea-time, faither?’ she asked.
Geordie took his pipe from his mouth and surveyed his daughter with trouble in his eyes.
‘The tea’s by lang syne,’ he said. ‘Did ye nae get ony fae yer aunt?’
‘Nuh … Ay … I some think I had ma tea, but it was at dinner-time. I hadna ony dinner. She was ower busy wi’ the cairds to mak’ ony, an’ syne whan she heard she bude to ging to Birleybeg there wasna time.’
This preposterous situation slowly made itself clear to Geordie’s intelligence. Aunt Josephine had neglected for a new-fangled triviality like cards the great primordial business of a meal. It was a ludicrous disproportion. Geordie flung back his head against the chair and roared with laughter.
There was something