She had reared twelve children and buried three. She was already exhausted with the labour of child-bearing and the labour of nursing and mothering them. And only last year had she managed to free herself of the early morning rising and preparations for breakfast that had now fallen to Agnes.
The peats blazed and burned on the crude ribs of the fire and the porridge stottered and bubbled in the pot. David slowed in his stirring to watch the tiny craters erupt and the bubbles explode. He was fascinated. His world was a small, circumscribed, but active and populous one. From the moment he wakened till he went to sleep, usually exhausted, there was activity. The coming and going of his brothers and sisters; the endless coming and going of the hens, either to lay under the bed or to forage for crumbs and scraps; the wag at the wa’ clock with its swinging exposed pendulum and its weights and chains; the bucket stools constituting his toys when the most of his brothers and sisters were absent; the odds and ends of domestic lumber stacked about the four corners of the house.
But the gaunt and weary figure of his mother dominated his world. Her irascibility irritated and thwarted him. He carried his head on a tautened neck: tautened against the continual cuffs from his mother as he either got in her way or got into some mischief or other.
And his outside world? It lay in a little hollow in a dip towards the sea. From the doorway a rough pathway wound towards the cart-track to Achgammie farm, lying grey and dour among its bare stony fields. All around the house was rough pasturage and out-croppings of stone. There were no trees and the only cover the bare land provided was that of innumerable little whin-covered knolls. There was the garden: about a quarter of an acre of ground running from the back of the house. It also was bare and devoid either of flower or shrub.
The sea was at hand. But the heughs of the coast line were hard and cruel: the grey sea crashed and spumed on its crags. Even on the calm of a summer’s day the sough of it could be heard in the Suie; and after a storm the sea-foam would be flecked across the roof thatch.
The outside world was cold and menacing to David: he clung to the dim but more homely world of the cot-house. He was only beginning to recognise the bare outlines of his world: only beginning to cast child glances across its restricted boundaries: only beginning to glimpse its more distant horizons. He was beginning to realise that the water had to be carried in pails from Achgammie, three-quarters of a mile away. Only dimly beginning to realise that he had brothers who went out on the sea and sometimes brought back fish – and occasionally a crab for him to play with.
And yet already something of the slavery and cruel tyranny of the life around him had impressed itself upon him. He had already known the pain of hunger and cold and neglect. And his instinct for life had driven him to face and overcome his difficulties in his own child fashion. He supped the monotonous meals of porridge and brose with hungry avidity and would have supped more had there been more. Already he had begun to rely upon his own resources and avoid his mother.
But childlike, he was quickly able to forget pain and distress in the bliss of a happy moment. As he stirred the porridge by the warmth and comfort of the fire he forgot everything in the warmth of his own immediate happiness. Cold, wet, hunger; scoldings and cuffings were all forgotten: his parents, his brothers, his sisters were forgotten. The moment was timeless: without past or future – save perhaps, for the dim, unconscious anticipation of breakfast.
And then there came to Agnes’s olfactory sense the knowledge that the porridge, due to the lethargic and inadequate stirring of David, was burning. The realisation of such a major calamity and the dire consequence that would accrue from it, caused her to lose her control. She dropped the heavy boot she was greasing with pork fat.
‘Dave: the parritch’s burning!’
The shrill terror of her voice shattered David’s dreamworld. He started for an instant, lost his balance on the bucket stool and toppled into the fire. The high-pitched hysterical shriek of Agnes carried almost to Achgammie.
In a moment the house was in an uproar. Every one was out of their beds including Mrs. Ramsay and the child Peter. Agnes had rescued David even before her shriek died in her throat.
It was her father who took the child from her, called loudly for the castor oil and when it was brought to him applied it liberally to David’s abdomen, chest and left shoulder. Both his hands were blistered. John and William stood gaping at David: stood silent and almost imbecilic-looking in their coarse shirt-tails.
Across David’s crying and sobbing cut his mother’s scolding and bullying of Agnes, until she broke under the strain and commenced to cry. At this, her mother seized her thin arm, swung her round and rained blows on her head and back.
The wind, rising suddenly to an angry bluster, tore away from the thatch the cries of child-pain and fear and torment.
A light appeared in the kitchen at Achgammie: the dreaded signal that another day of toil had commenced.
CRAIGDAROCH
Ned MacWhirrie of Craigdaroch was a power among the farmers of Kirkmaiden. Ned would have been a power almost anywhere for he was cunning beyond the average and was utterly without conscience, though not without humour. He was avaricious, greedy, and drove a harder bargain than any other man in the Rhinns. But if he had the art of acquiring wealth he had also the art of enjoying life – after his own fashion.
His pleasures were simple: whisky and women. Yet perhaps his keenest pleasures were his love for a mettlesome horse.
At the age of forty, Craigdaroch was the father of ten legitimate and twenty-three illegitimate children. At least he acknowledged to this number: there may have been more: certainly there were more to come.
Although a leading elder in the Auld Kirk, Mr. MacWhirrie was not above feeling proud of the fruitfulness of his fornications. As an elder, he was particularly severe to fornicators and to women who bore illegitimate children to men other than himself. It was seldom that he had children to women who were not in his employment. He owned Craigdaroch farm and was the tenant of High Melton farm. Of his twenty milkmaids – or milkers as the less picturesque term of the day had it – eight were unmarried and averaged three children each to him. An odd one lived with her parents but most of them had cot-houses of their own. He saw that they did not actually starve; for the older of the children provided him with cheap necessary labour. As long as their mothers had enough meal and milk there was no pressing necessity to pay them even the low wages that prevailed. Virtually, when a girl bore children to him, she became his chattel slave.
No one, least of all the parish minister, questioned the morality of Craigdaroch. If he employed women who had illegimate children, what of it? Most farmers did. And as their spiritual welfare was in a leading elder’s hands (as well as their secular welfare) no doubt Mr. MacWhirrie duly catechised them. Strong as the hold and authority of the church was upon the agricultural labourer it was by no means as strong on the wealthy and powerful farmer.
Already in the prime of his life, Craigdaroch was a power in the parish and held the promise of progressing with the years.
With it all, he took life calmly. He found it good. He had no wish to spoil its goodness by unduly worrying about it. Every Friday he went to Drummore market and every Friday he returned home drunk. There were other days and nights in the week he might be drunk. But he was discreet about them. On market days he was royally and publicly drunk as befitted his status. Here again his actions did not in any way conflict with his religious authority. He was a leading and responsible elder. But he was also a farmer of consequence. He did not get drunk as an elder but as a farmer. Every one took care to note the difference – if they were subtle enough to recognise one.
Physically, Ned MacWhirrie was in complete contrast to his grieve. He was a small bandy-legged ferret of a man. His face was sharp and pinched: his eyes grey and shifty. He trimmed his beard to a neat point. He was careful of his appearance and, for a Galloway farmer, was always trim and trig. His brown leggings were always highly polished when he set off on his morning rounds. His step was brisk