‘Jeannie’s tae the toon, Miss Josephine,’ she would say. And, jubilantly, ‘I’ve on the tatties. I dinna need muckle breakfast, but I maun hae ma dinner. I’m nae nane o’ yer gentry kind o’ fowk. I’m jist the common dab. I jist eat whan I’m hungry.’
‘The gentry has jist three meals a day,’ Miss Josephine would answer. ‘It’s the common dab that has five or sax an’ jist eat whan they’re hungry.’
‘I dinna ken’ − all her old anxiety was in Mary Annie’s voice and countenance − ‘I dinna ken. I’m jist plain Geordie Williamson.’
And she would trot away, between a walk and a run, to eat gleefully of smoking hot potatoes and salt; and then pick and fidget at the meal she shared with Jeannie.
‘I dinna need muckle mate, an auld body like me,’ she said.
June was a hot and heavy month. Martha found the eight miles to Slack of Mar a little longer every morning. There came a morning when, nauseated by the odour that clung about Aunt Josephine’s room, she sickened and could eat no breakfast. She climbed on her bicycle nonetheless and set off up the road.
‘She has her ain a-dae wi’ they littlins,’ Aunt Josephine was saying somewhat later to the doctor, who chanced to call that morning.
It did not occur to her that Martha might have her own ado in Crannochie as well. How could she be a trouble to anyone, sitting there so quietly in her chair, with never a word of complaint upon her lips?
Quarter of an hour later the doctor came on Martha herself, sitting by the side of the road where she had stumbled from her bicycle, her head sunk in her hands.
‘If you could take me on to the Slack −’ she said.
‘The Slack!’ quoth he. ‘It’s slack into your bed that you’re going.’
And to Miss Josephine he said, ‘You’ll have to get a woman in to notice you, or I’ll be having two patients instead of one.’
‘Weel, weel,’ said Miss Josephine, ‘what we canna help we needna hinder. We’ll jist e’en hae to dae’t.’
But that evening as she sat in her chair her mouth was a little grim. A woman in to notice her indeed! What noticing did she require? It was not as though she were raivelled, as her old mother had been, poor body, or Miss Foubister of Birleybeg, who had been a terrible handful for years before she died, getting up and dressing herself in the middle of the night and trotting away down the road to the yowie woodie in search of a sweetie shop to buy her peppermints; or clearing the dirty dishes off the table into her apron and flinging them like so much refuse on the grate, where they smashed to smithereens. No, indeed, she was not like that. And a stranger body, too, meddling among her things, preventing herself perhaps from going and doing as she pleased. Her mouth was still a little grim in the morning.
‘I’m fine, auntie,’ Martha insisted. ‘I’m quite all right today. Really I am.’
‘Wi’ a face like that!’ said Miss Leggatt. ‘Like a deuk’s fit.’
Martha laughed. ‘I’ve been waur mony a day an’ nae word o’t,’ she said, giving Miss Leggatt back one of her own sayings.
The old lady’s mouth relaxed a little.
‘I shan’t go to school today,’ said Martha, ‘but by tomorrow, wait till you see, I’ll be as right as ever. The house can do without cleaning today.’
The mouth relaxed a little farther.
‘The doctor thinks ye’ve some muckle to dae,’ said Aunt Josephine. ‘“Hoots, awa’, doctor,” I says, she’s managin’ grand.” “O ay, grand, “he says, “but ye’d better get a woman in to notice you.”’
‘If only she would,’ thought Martha swiftly. ‘O God, I’m tired.’ But she read the note of entreaty in Aunt Josephine’s voice.
‘We don’t want a woman, do we?’ she said.
The grimness went quite away from Miss Josephine’s mouth.
‘It gings clean by my doors,’ she said, ‘fat’n a way fowk can like to hae strangers aboot them. They’re like the craws amang the wifie’s tatties. I mind fine, fan I was stayin’ wi’ that cousin o’ yer grandpa’s, her that was terrible ill, there was twa fee’d weemen in the hoose − a cook an’ a hoosemaid. I crocheted a cap to the hoosemaid, but nae to the cook. I didna dae richt. I should ’a’ gi’en her a cap tae. But she was sic a discontented besom. She micht ’a’ been mair contented if she had gotten a cap.’
Its natural pleasant line was restored to Aunt Josephine’s mouth. She talked gaily on of the fee’d woman of half a century before and forgot the project to fee a woman on her own behalf.
‘Matty and me’ll jist scutter awa’,’ she said to the doctor. ‘Her play’ll seen be here. We’ll manage grand.’
He looked at the girl’s sunken eyes. They were not sunken because of Aunt Josephine, nor yet on account of the bairns at Slack of Mar: but that was her own affair.
‘Term’s nearly over,’ she said. ‘Of course we’ll manage.’
‘It can’t be for long,’ he told her as she saw him out.
But they had said that so often. The holidays came and Miss Leggatt was still smiling and serene, and viewed her growing kail plants with satisfaction; and Martha drew in her lip and wondered what was to happen about her visit to Liverpool. That visit had been promised for a year, and for a year she had luxuriated in the thought of it. Now − ? Aunt Jean and Aunt Leebie came occasionally to Crannochie, though Aunt Leebie was fragile now and ailing nearly all the time. ‘Leebie’ll dee first o’ us a’,’ Aunt Josephine had always said; and Leebie herself accepted the probability as a distinction. It was a melancholy business for her to come and look on Josephine usurping, as it were, her right. She came but seldom. Aunt Jean came, brusque and brief, and found rust on the pan lids. Aunt Margot came, once only, harassed with flesh. But none of them offered to relieve Martha, and she was too proud to ask.
‘She could get a body in for a whilie, surely,’ said Emmeline, who knew of the invitation to Liverpool.
‘She wouldn’t like it,’ Martha said.
‘Oh well, ye’ll need to humour her. She’s gey far on her way,’ Emmeline responded, and thought no more about it.
‘There’s mair last in her nor a body wad ’a’ thocht,’ said Geordie, who did not know of the Liverpool project but had overheard the last few words between his wife and his daughter before the latter left again for Crannochie. He was wanting his daughter home. Matty might have her head stuffed with queer notions, but he liked her presence about the doors.
‘Fat way wad she nae get a wumman?’ he asked Emmeline. ‘Has she nae the siller?’
‘O ay, she has the siller, but she has mair, she has the sense to keep it. What ill-will hae ye at Matty’s bidin’ wi’ her?’
‘O, nane ava’, but that the lassie wad need her holiday.’
‘Holiday eneuch for her to be awa’ fae the geets, surely to peace,’ said Emmeline. Remembering a disclosure Martha had inadvertently made anent Aunt Josephine’s marketing, however, she added, ‘But she’s funny wi’ her cash.’
‘We’re a’ funny wi’ something,’ Geordie answered, stretching his legs out in the sun. Matty, he reflected, was funny with her notions about book-learning, and sleeping in the field − ‘like the nowt,’ he thought − and now there was Madge trying on the same caper; and Emmeline was funny with her notions about other folk’s bairns. There he paused, ruminating.
Emmeline had designs upon another baby boy.
Unfair,