The Quarry Wood. Nan Shepherd
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as though she would batter the smoke back up the chimney. ‘We’ll be smokit ooten existence. Haud back yer chairs a bit.’ And she swung the poker with a virago brandish that made both Geordie and Stoddart scrape back their chairs. The feathery ash from the charred wood blew in their faces.
Balked of serenity, Emmeline took refuge in cleanliness. The kitchen was certainly not out of the need of it. Slush and smoke together − smuts and soot and dribbled snow − clods of earth tumbled from drying boots − dubs and dung and crumbs and ink arid dishwater not yet emptied out, tea-leaves swimming in it, and the rind of bacon flung on the hearth and dissolving in greasy dirtiness among the ashes − a very slattern among kitchens. Emmeline flung herself upon the dirt like a tornado.
‘As black’s the Earl o’ Hell’s waistcoat,’ she grumbled, sousing the floor.
She splashed and soaped and scrubbed. The steam from her soap suds thickened the air. She lunged with her scrubbing-brush towards Geordie’s seat and he moved farther and farther back before the soapy flood; she dived towards Stoddart and he retired with an edgy and raucous creak from the legs of his retreating chair.
By the time the chair was marooned against the wall Stoddart bethought himself and took his leave. Geordie tip-toed across the dripping floor and reached for his boots. Hospitality hardly requires of a man that he conduct his neighbour home (if the neighbour be so ill-advised as to visit him in such conditions) through pitch-black ploughland, an edged south-easter and a barricade of sleet. But Geordie pulled to the outer door with a terrific bang, settling the business of that impudent baggage the wind that threatened to wrench his own door-handle out of his hand with its blufferts, and steered Stoddart across the field by the elbow, roaring at him in gusts between the palavers of the gale.
‘They tell me she’s byordinar clever. … Faith, it beats me a’ thegither fat way a bairn o’ mine can ’a gotten brains. … Man, it’s a sort o’ judgement on a body. There ye ging, a’ yer life long, rale pleased an’ comfortable. Naething to gie ye a shog ooten yer ain road. An’ then yer ain lassie, that’s the fruit o’ yer ain loins. … Man, it beats a’.’
In the kitchen Martha fumed miserably. She was troubled with a raging conscience. She was wrong. Of course she was wrong to burden the family for two extra years. − But might her father’s authority be considered final? Was her fight really won? − She had not fought at all, then! − stood mute and foolish. She underwent a rush of self-contempt. And in spite of conscience and contempt together she was throbbing with exultation. Back to work, quick − master the throb before it mastered her; though how could she work with her mother nyattering like that?
‘That’s jist yer faither a’ ower,’ Emmeline was grumbling. She had already raised Geordie’s aberration into a universal law governing his being. ‘That thrawn there’s nae livin’ wi’ him. Aince he taks a notion intil his heid, naething’ll move him. He wad argy-bargy ye intil the middle o’ next week. Ye micht as weel ging doon on yer knees an’ speak to a mole that was crawlin’ on the grun’. He taks a bit o’ understandin’.’
Martha bent grimly to her Latin. But inspiration had fled. The four shabby sentences declined to be made less than four. The prose was completed, with much searching of the heart and the vocabulary.
Geordie came in again. Wind, water, earth, came with him, spluttered in his tracks. Emmeline dabbed at the filthy runlets − ‘as muckle dirt’s wad fill a kirk. I never saw. …’
The boys were beddit. They slept in the middle place, a sort of box between the rooms. Madge was sent packing. Martha pulled her books together and went too.
Emmeline’s resentments were messy, but brief.
Next day Martha went to town − in a bitter downpour − by train. Her mother gave her the fare without demur: but she missed the early train home and it was already past the family meal-hour when she returned. There was sign of neither family nor meal. Emmeline on her knees, in splendid isolation, scoured the floor as though it had not felt water for a twelvemonth.
‘Where’s father?’
‘Awa’ to the wall for peats.’
Finality in that reply. Martha’s heart sagged. She went through to the bedroom.
There she found Madge, curled on the bed, her shoulders hunched, devouring her penny trash. Her grunt was inarticulate; she did not lift her eyes from the page. She had an end of candle stuck in Martha’s candlestick.
‘Where did you get the candle?’ cried Martha sharply. Was it hers? Had Madge stolen it? secreted it?
Madge smirked: not audible enough for one to say, giggled.
‘It’s nae yours, onyway. − Ye needna stand there and glower,’ she added, raising her head. ‘I‘ve tell’t you, it’s nae yours. I suppose I can hide things as well’s you.’
But where did she get it? Martha continued to ponder, still glowering at the child. One fragment of her brain said reasonably: Of course she can; and another cried in fever: She mustn’t criticize me − she’s much too young. The voices in her head circled and intersected; shortly she became aware that they were laced by actual voices, coming through the shoddy wall. She listened − noises too: the stir of industry. Her father and the boys must be in the lean-to against the house-end. She dashed out through the rain and pushed the door. Inside was a reeking, buzzing warmth − an oily lantern, unwashed and sweaty skins, stale air, animation, laughter. Geordie was cleaning Martha’s neglected bicycle. The boys were also engaged on the bicycle; wreathing a towsled bit of rope through the spokes of the front wheel and ripping it smartly out again. A terrific display of industry. The flaring and smoky light from the open lantern, shifting, smearing, exaggerating what a moment ago it had suppressed, suppressing what it had exaggerated, gave their actions a fantastic air of unreality. Baby Flossie, hoisted aloft on a barrel and some boxes, a little insecure but in great content, presided over the scene like some genius of the place − an immature deity whose effort at creation had resulted in grotesquerie. She was like a grotesque herself-a very tiny baby, ‘an image’ Emmeline contemptuously called her: and there she squatted on her barrel, preternaturally solemn, a little above the level of the lantern, that juggled her features all askew so that she seemed to wink and leer upon the workers. But then of course the workers (Geordie excepted) were labouring a little askew.
‘She’ll kick up a waup for a whilie,’ Geordie said when he saw his daughter, ‘but it’ll wear by. She’ll keep’s ooten languor an’ inen anger.’
He wiped his oily hands on his buttocks, picked up Flossie and happed her in his coat, and extinguishing the lantern made for supper.
‘Ay, ay, it’ll wear by,’ he said.
In spite of a sore throat and aching limbs, Martha did her lessons that night in the cold. She held an illumination, lighting two candles to elucidate the sine of A + B. Madge’s candle-end was gone: she must have secreted the stump for future use. Martha pushed one of her candles into the candlestick and fixed the other by its own melted end to a broken saucer.
Madge poked her head in.
‘You’ve got to come ben. You’ll be perished.’
‘I’m not coming. I’m quite warm.’
‘A’ richt, then, dinna.’
She remained staring for a minute at the twin candles, but said nothing and went away. She could keep her own counsel and was quite willing to keep Martha’s also.
Martha was glad of the feeble heat the candles gave. There was warmth also in the recollection of her father’s words, ‘Ay, ay, it’ll wear by.’
It wore by. In very short time Emmeline had comfortably persuaded herself that a daughter with a University degree was a grandiloquence worth the waiting for. She took care, however, to hide her persuasion: in case of need still protestant.
When some months later Martha’s examination was over