named it without a tremor.
A contorted look passed over the skipper’s face and the grieve shifted uneasily and kicked his foot into the soft earth of the wheel-rut.
The skipper held out his hand. Craigdaroch took it, a thin cruel smile on his lips. The bargain was sealed.
‘I’ll send the carts down right away, skipper. You can have your dram now or after.’
‘After will be early enough,’ replied the skipper and turned away.
‘You see now, Tom,’ said Craigdaroch, on their way back to the farm, ‘you see how a profitable bit bargain can be driven when a man can keep his wits about him. I’ll have saved £10–£15 on the deal.’
Tom Gibson nodded. He did not trust himself to speak for his palate was bitter. He saw nothing to admire about Craigdaroch’s conduct. His sympathy was all with the skipper. But he too, like the skipper, had a wife and family: and Craigdaroch was his master. Nevertheless, after the lapse of a decent interval he allowed himself a remark.
‘Just the same, Mr. MacWhirrie, we’d better hurry the unloading or I’m afraid …’
‘Aye …’
‘There’s a storm coming up, Mr. MacWhirrie.’
‘You noticed that, eh?’
The grieve did not reply.
‘Aye … you see things too, Tom. I misdoubt but you would be thinking more of the skipper’s problems than mine, Tom?’
‘Mr. MacWhirrie well knows—’
‘Don’t fash yourself, Tom. Your feelings are a credit to you. But I’ve to make the money to pay the wages – and the rent and taxes. And I’ve allowed for a fair profit in my price. Put your fears at rest: they’ll no die of starvation.’
‘That’s just hardly fair, Mr. MacWhirrie. There’s no’ a better farmer in the Rhinns than yourself-or a more just. Your interests have aye been mine.’
‘Man, can ye no’ take a bit banter in the spirit it’s given. Don’t forget I’d be a puir louse if I hadn’t my feelings for that puir devil of a skipper. But feelings don’t put salt in the kail, Tom. That’s something you must never forget.’
Craigdaroch’s manner hardened as he entered the courtyard.
‘You’ll see the men yoked smartly after dinner, Tom? And I’m depending on you to see that you get the cargo home safe.’
‘Mr. MacWhirrie can lippen on me.’
Craigdaroch nodded and turned towards the farmhouse.
Tom Gibson was in a black temper when he sat down to his dinner of potatoes and braxy. He chewed the rotten mutton with a savage stubbornness. Jean, his eldest daughter, sat cowed at the table for she Knew as well as her mother when he was angry.
Mrs. Gibson said nothing. He would speak in his own good time or not at all.
It had been the grieve’s intention not to speak but towards the end of the meal he took a large drink of sour milk. He had dulled the edge of his hunger and the displeasure was wearing off. His ear timed itself to the sough of the wind. He looked directly at his wife.
‘There’s a storm in it, Aggie?’
‘There is, Tom … is it the lime boat?’
‘Aye …’
‘You’ll want your oilskin?’
‘Maybe.’
And he thought to himself that a man can’t do heavy work in an oilskin.
‘You’d be as well with a good fire for me coming hame.’
‘Are you to be working on the lime yourself, Tom? Can the men no’ see to that?’
His look silenced her. He reached for his pipe and filled it with a careless deliberation.
The child cried in the cradle. Mrs. Gibson undid the buttons of her dress and bared a scraggy breast that surprisingly held milk. Jean began to clear up the table …
Andy Frame, the boy, had a touch of the devil in him. Nothing depressed him, though there was much that might have depressed him. He was a hard enough worker but the joy of life was strong in him. He had a great fondness for the lassies and a great fondness for dance music. Tom Gibson solemnly prophesied that he would come to a bad end and that the lassies that had anything to do with him would come to a worse. But for the most part the lassies were willing enough to take that risk with Andy.
The boy was the life of Craigdaroch. An uncle had given him a melodeon and instructed him in the art of playing. Andy had taken to the playing as naturally as he had taken to the lassies. He could play reels and jigs and strathspeys with anybody in the Rhinns.
As his playing disturbed the many younger children in his father’s rackle of a house and as his father hated the sound of music at any time Andy’s favourite place for a tune was on the iron corn bin in the stable. He gobbled his dinner and was back in the stable with twenty minutes to spare for The Haymakers’ Jig or Strip the Willow.
He had paid little attention to the grieve’s instructions. To hell: he was always sharp at dinner time. Time enough to worry about work when it was yoking time.
Behind the merry notes there was a pleasant huskiness. The instrument was an ancient one and in need of repair.
The Willow was being stripped in fine style when Tom Gibson turned the corner of the stable. The notes, assisted by the rising wind, danced across the dung midden, gathering a fitting fragrance before they played upon the senses of Ned MacWhirrie, enjoying a pipe at his own fireside. The music blended well with his mood – a pleasant, harmonious exhalation, a fitting background to his wandering thoughts.
But they jarred on Tom Gibson. There was licence, there was defiance about them. Music was the essence of frivolity. Music did not blend with bare fields and incessant toil.
He kicked open the stable door and the notes were at his ears like a hive of wasps. The men put their pipes in their waistcoat pockets and slid off the bin. Andy thought he would finish his tune.
‘Stop that damned infernal noise, will ye?’
Andy’s fingers slackened on the keys. The grieve’s vehemence struck him like a blow. A pathetically discordant death-rattle sounded in the throat of the tune.
Ned MacWhirrie’s foot kept on beating. The tune echoed down the open corridors of his mind. Imperceptibly the doors closed on his mind. His teeth slackened and the pipe slid to the floor. His head sank over on his chest.
The iron shoes of the horses clattered on the stone paving round the stable door and a moment later were silent on the soft earthen court.
A few minutes later, in the first sudden squall of rain, eight carts jolted and juddered their way towards Craigdaroch Bay.
It was a race against time and tide. A race against the remorseless forces of nature. Water and wind cared nothing for the commands of Ned MacWhirrie of Craigdaroch. It was the energy of the grieve and the skipper against the incoming tide, the rising wind, the driving rain and the early oncoming darkness.
Both men knew what was demanded of them: they worked in brutal harmony. They did not spare their men: least of all did they spare themselves.
It was a bleak grey scene overcharged with tragedy. The headlands to right and left, Dumbreddan Point and Lagganmore, were hidden in sea-spume and driving rain. Sky and sea merged across the bay, obscure and indeterminate. The long waves surging on the shoulders of the incoming tide tore and rasped for a hold on the long shelving gravel beach.
Not a sea bird was to be seen or heard. Occasionally the cry of a whaup uncoiled itself with a melancholy despair.
At