Moorland Mist Read online

  ‘Don’t let them sense you’re nervous,’ Mrs Sinclair warned. ‘Keep your feelings well-hidden and under control …’

  ‘With animals and with men,’ William quoted, causing his mother to glare at him.

  ‘Don’t be facetious, William.’

  ‘It’s what you’re always telling Bess and Maggie,’ he grinned.

  ‘And don’t interrupt, either,’ his mother scolded, while Emma chewed her lower lip and struggled to hold back tears.

  ‘You’ll soon learn, lassie,’ John the ploughman whispered in her ear.

  ‘It’s not as bad as ye think and they’re a canny lot, the old cows. You leave the heifers to William and if ye’ve any bother with the pigs ask Jim, or Master Sinclair and ye’ll dae fine.’

  ‘The – the pigs?’ Emma turned startled eyes to him, reminding him of a nervous colt.

  ‘Didn’t ye know we have pigs as well? Bonnybrae has a bit of everything and the mistress is a fine cook. Ye’ll not get a better training.’

  Maggie was patient when she took Emma to the dairy and showed her where the milking pails and stools were kept, how to set up the milk cooler with the pipes in the right places and the D pan on top with its brass tap.

  ‘Make sure it’s taken out and cleaned when you’re washing the dairy dishes and turn it off when you put it back until we’re ready to cool the milk. You must put a milk can underneath, like this, to catch the cooled milk.’ She demonstrated, deftly rolling the heavy churn on its rim and placing it beneath the ridged cooler. ‘Remember that or you’ll be in big trouble if the milk runs down the drain.’

  Emma nodded. There was nothing difficult about that. She was not stupid but she was in terror of sitting next to one of the huge Ayrshire cows with their long pointed horns. Maggie seemed to understand.

  ‘It’s always best to confront the things you fear most, Emma,’ she said firmly. ‘Things are not half as bad as you expect, and even when they are they have to be faced.’ They were words which came back to Emma many times in the years ahead and when she looked back to her first year at Bonnybrae, she cringed at her ignorance of life beyond the village school.

  Two

  Eighteen months later, Emma remembered how homesick she had been so she had a lot of sympathy for 14-year-old Billy Watkins, the boy who had come to live in the bothy to replace Jock.

  ‘You’ll get used to it, Billy. I was scared to death of the cows when I first came. Now I love all the animals, especially the wee pigs and the calves.’ She sighed. ‘William’s collie bitch had some puppies last spring and they were beautiful.’ She didn’t tell Billy she had wept into her pillow when all but one had gone to other owners. ‘You’ll enjoy helping with the lambs when they’re born in the spring.’

  In spring, the ewes and lambs were moved back to the higher pastures but any motherless lambs, or a sickly ewe with lambs, would be brought to a nearby shed for the women’s attention. Emma loved to care for them and in the evenings, Billy came to help her when there was more than one lamb to be fed from a bottle.

  ‘I’ll not cry if the Master shouts at me,’ Billy said. He was small for his age and he seemed more like a 12-year-old but Emma told him they had all teased her about being too small.

  ‘He’ll not shout when you get used to things and Jim doesn’t shout at you, does he?’

  ‘No. He’s a good sort. William’s all right but he gets impatient because I can’t reach the horse’s head to get the collar on.’

  ‘You’ll grow if you eat your porridge and cream every morning?’

  ‘Of course you will, Billy,’ Maggie said, smiling as she came into the kitchen, ‘then you’ll harness the horses as well as anyone.’

  Whenever Emma went home, Eliza and Bert were delighted by her smiling face and healthy colour.

  ‘It was fate the day I ran into James Sinclair in the village,’ Bert Greig declared. ‘Our bairn has fairly thriven since she’s been up at Bonnybrae.’

  ‘She has but she’s grown out of her best Sunday clothes,’ Eliza sighed. ‘I’ve had a word with Miss Wilkins about making her a new dress and maybe a jacket. I do wish Bonnybrae had been in our parish, then they would have come down to our wee kirk every Sunday instead of going over the hill.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have had time to come home if she had,’ Bert said. ‘The animals have to be fed and milked on Sundays, the same as every other day. Let’s be thankful she’s happy up there. I never hear her coughing now.’

  At fifteen-and-a-half, Emma was still young enough to feel shy in the presence of the Sinclair men. James Sinclair was sometimes abrupt, though he treated her kindly enough. Jim and William rarely seemed to notice her, or so she thought. They had been used to the farm since the day they were born and sometimes they teased her, at others they were irritable when she didn’t understand, or couldn’t do things they took for granted. Fortunately she had grown taller since her arrival at Bonnybrae, and she was proud of her five feet four inches.

  In one of his more mellow moods, Mr Sinclair had made her blush when he declared she was filling out nicely and she would make a good wife for some lucky man in a few years’ time. Out of the corner of her eye she had seen William and Jim exchanging glances. She was used to her brothers exchanging silent messages and mischievous grins and she wondered what the Sinclair brothers were thinking. She didn’t know they had also recently remarked on her pretty face and developing curves.

  ‘You’d better keep your eyes to yourself,’ Jim warned his younger sibling. ‘She’s developing into an attractive young woman but Mother would send her packing down the road if she caught you admiring her.’

  ‘There’s no harm in looking.’ William grinned, but Jim knew his youngest brother was restless.

  Since he reached his twenty-first birthday, he had pestered their father to enquire about farms to let. It was accepted that, as the eldest son, Jim would take over Bonnybrae when their parents grew too old for the work. William knew his father had arranged tenancies for his other brothers and he was impatient to start farming on his own too.

  It was usual for neighbours to help each other by sending men for a day’s work when the thrashing mill was in the area. Jim and William enjoyed these occasions. They were strong and fit so the work didn’t trouble them, and they enjoyed the company of the other men and the gossip at the end of the day when they gathered for an evening meal. It had been at one of these gatherings a year or two earlier that the brothers had overheard some of the older men discussing Bonnybrae. They learned that their father had been a dashing young man and could have had the pick of the girls in his younger days, although he had settled down when he married.

  ‘Ye’re the image o’ your father when he was your age, young William,’ one of them declared.

  ‘Aye, and no doubt he’ll have inherited his father’s eye for a bonnie lassie.’

  William had been eighteen at the time and he’d seen little of the wider world. He was fair-skinned and he hated when the colour stained his cheeks like a blushing girl. The men had roared with laughter at his expression and embarrassed him further with exaggerated tales of his father’s prowess as a youth. After that, the brothers regarded their father in a different light. They realized he still had an eye for an attractive woman when they accompanied him to the kirk or the market, though they were fairly sure he was never unfaithful to their mother.

  ‘I’m sure he loves her,’ Jim said. ‘I was eleven when you were born and the doctor thought Mother was going to die. I can still remember being frightened because Father was distraught. I have never seen him show so much emotion as he did then.’

  ‘I always wondered why Mother seemed to love me less than the rest of you,’ William said, unable to hide a faint bitterness.

  ‘Och, that’s your imagination and you’ve always got into more trouble than the rest of us.’

  Now, a couple of years later, William had gained a new understanding of what the men had meant that day at the thrashing mill. His experience was br
oadened unexpectedly by the wife of a farmer over the hill from Bonnybrae. He had been rebuilding a stretch of the stone wall which marked the boundary with the neighbouring sheep farm. He had watched the men who were trained to build the loose stone dykes and found it was a task he enjoyed, at least for short spells. There was satisfaction in choosing the right stones and placing them with care, knowing a well-constructed wall could last a lifetime. It was the highest and furthest point of Bonnybrae where the fields met the open moor and he was content to work alone with Mick, his faithful collie for company and the birds and the rabbits. Often he sang at the top of his voice, believing there was no one to hear. He brought his piece bag with bread and cheese and a bottle of cold tea to save the long walk home at midday. It was on one such occasion his solitude was disturbed by the approach of a woman on a sturdy pony.

  ‘I’ve seen you working up here for several days,’ she greeted him. ‘It must be lonely on your own. You are alone?’

  ‘Aye, I am, but I’m never lonely when I’m up here,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I enjoy the beauty of my surroundings and this job needs concentration.’ He straightened his aching back and looked at her.

  ‘I’m Eva McGuire.’ She smiled and slid from the horse’s back. ‘A little company now and then can be er – satisfying, I think?’

  Inexperienced though he was, it didn’t take William long to recognize the invitation when Eva McGuire made her desire plain. He knew she must be at least ten to fifteen years older than him but she was attractive and her figure was nicely rounded in all the right places. She came again the following day and William needed little persuasion before he succumbed to her wiles. She hadn’t laughed at his fumbling, indeed she seemed to enjoy teaching him things he had never guessed about a woman’s body. He had no regrets about losing his virginity, indeed he had enjoyed the experience and repeated it on several more occasions when she appeared while he was working alone on the hill. He never arranged to meet her but she always seemed to know which part of the boundary to find him.

  He had taken all she offered but when the repairs to the boundary wall were finished he made no move to see her again. The episode was over. At the time he felt no guilt for taking his pleasure with another man’s wife but several weeks later, he was sitting between his mother and Maggie in Church. He was sure the Reverend Jamieson was looking down from the pulpit straight at him as he intoned the words, ‘thou shalt not commit adultery,’ and ‘thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s.’ He squirmed inwardly, convinced the sermon was aimed at him. Afterwards he elected to walk home. He needed to think but Maggie decided to join him, leaving Emma and Jim to go in the trap with their parents.

  ‘Are you well enough, William?’ Maggie enquired. ‘I didn’t hear you singing the last hymn and you’re looking unusually grim.’

  ‘I’m fine. I was thinking, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh no,’ his sister groaned softly. ‘I expect you saw Mother’s letter from her cousin Florrie. Has it made you restless again? Are you wondering when Father will speak to the factor about setting you up in a farm of your own?’

  This was the usual reason for her youngest brother’s moods, generally after an argument with their father. Although it was William’s burning ambition to rent a farm of his own, it was the last thing on his mind for once, but he couldn’t tell Maggie the real reason for his uneasy conscience so he went along with her supposition.

  ‘Cousin Drew seems to be doing well since he moved south to farm.’

  ‘He is only a second cousin. His mother and our mother are cousins.’

  ‘What difference does that make? He rents a farm of his own, even if it is down in Yorkshire.’

  ‘He’s older than you. He’s at least as old as me. I hope you’re not contemplating anything wild, like leaving the glen, William?’

  ‘Would you miss me?’ he teased.

  ‘You know I would. We all would. Mother wasn’t going to tell you she’d had a letter from her cousin Florrie. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.’

  ‘She left it on the kitchen table and it was open so I read it,’ William admitted. ‘Drew seems happy. He’s getting on well with his new factor, or land agent as he calls him. He says some of the neighbouring farmers only cultivate the fields around their farm steadings. Think what an opportunity that would be for a young fellow like me, Maggie.’ As he talked William half-convinced himself, as well as his sister, that this was the only reason he had been brooding. ‘I wouldn’t mind visiting Drew and his wife. We always got on well when he lived up here.’

  ‘We were younger then, but that’s exactly what Mother feared you would say,’ Maggie declared, pursing her lips.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m only teasing you, big sister. We-ell, mostly I was teasing. We have too much work to do at Bonnybrae right now for me to journey to far off places.’

  ‘Thank goodness for that,’ Maggie said with relief as they approached the farm yard. No more was said about going to Yorkshire to visit.

  The following autumn, the thrashing mill arrived at Bonnybrae, along with several men from neighbouring farms. Maggie and Emma had been busy for several days, plucking and boiling a couple of old hens for a huge pot of soup, peeling vegetables, cooking a ham and setting out pickles and chutneys, baking bread and scones, churning the butter and bringing out jars of homemade jam.

  ‘You’re making a fine wee cook these days,’ Mary Sinclair said to Emma as she watched her taking loaves from the oven at the end of a busy morning. Emma flushed with pride. The mistress rarely gave praise. Maggie beamed at her.

  ‘Aye, Emmie is quick to learn,’ she said, ‘and willing too. There’s not much she hasn’t tried since she came to Bonnybrae.’

  ‘You’re a patient teacher, Maggie,’ her mother said, ‘and a good one. I admit when I first saw you, Emma Greig, I didn’t think you’d last five minutes, so small you were, aye and timid as a mouse. I thought Sinclair had taken leave of his senses hiring such a puny maid to replace Bess, but you’re a good lassie and you’ve proved your worth. Keep it up.’

  When the thrashing was finished at Bonnybrae, Jim and William spent several days following the thrashing mill to the neighbouring farms. It was then William overheard one of the other men mention Eva McGuire. Although it was some time since he had seen her, and he had no desire to see her again, he listened to the lewd comments and heard the guffaw of laughter. He cringed inwardly. What a fool he had been to believe she had singled him out for her attentions. It was clear she was the type who would go with any available man. He felt sickened. He looked up and saw Jim’s eyes on him. The blood rushed up beneath his fair skin but he bit on his lower lip and thrust out his jaw, unaware that it gave him an air of arrogance. It did not fool Jim who could remember him in nappies.

  As they made their way home in the darkness Jim said quietly, ‘You’re not the only one to be tempted by the wiles of women like Eva McGuire, Billy boy. If you’ve learned what you wanted to know, then forget about her.’

  ‘How did you know?’ William stopped in his tracks, glad of the darkness to hide his burning face.

  ‘I saw you listening to that lot gossiping about her and I saw your expression.’

  ‘Did she try it on with you as well then?’

  ‘Not Eva McGuire, but there’s other women like her, eager to teach young sprogs like us a thing or two. I learned my lesson when I was younger than you.’ He grinned in the darkness, remembering.

  ‘God, Jim, and I thought you were a saint.’

  ‘I don’t reckon there’re any saints alive in this world,’ Jim said easily, ‘but I’ve no desire to rake round the towns to pick up a woman. I’ve no plans to marry, but if ever I do, I should want a woman with pride and dignity, and I’d expect her to be a virgin.’

  ‘Even though you’re not one yourself?’ William laughed. ‘Eh man, ye’re as bad as Father.’ William felt closer to his brother than he had ever been, but he still loathed himself for using another man’s wife. Deep down he knew he resented
being one of many. Even as a child he had always wanted to be in control of any situation or game, and it irked him to know it was Eva McGuire who had decided he would share her favours, and when and where. He vowed he would never fall into that trap again but he was honest enough to admit he didn’t envisage living like a monk for ever. He had too much spirit and a zest for life.

  Emma was developing into an attractive young woman with her brown wavy hair, her fair skin and wide, green-blue eyes. Her features were not the finest but her high cheek bones and her ready smile, with a dimple in one cheek, made up for the youthful look of her rounded chin. She kept herself clean and neat. Her hair was always well-groomed, but otherwise she paid little attention to her looks. She would be seventeen next summer but she had never been to a dance. Bonnybrae was too isolated for her to go to the village dances which she might have attended with her brothers had she still been living in Locheagle. Despite her innocence of life in the world beyond Bonnybrae, she was now skilled in most aspects of house and dairy work. She enjoyed the cooking and baking, and she and Maggie made a good team together.

  ‘You’ll be seventeen next year, Emma. I shall be sorry if you decide to leave us,’ Maggie said one day as they worked together at the spring cleaning.

  ‘Leave Bonnybrae?’ Emma echoed. ‘Why should I do that?’

  ‘Your father had ambitions for you to find employment in one of the big houses, or so he told Father when you first came here. You must find it quiet up here. Except for young Billy, we are all so much older than you and you’ll soon be wanting to go to dances and meet other young people.’

  ‘I don’t want to live in a town, or work in a big house,’ Emma declared. ‘I love it here. I’d miss all the animals.’ She chuckled. ‘I’d even miss the cows now.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’ Maggie smiled. ‘Did you ask Jim to tie a cart rope between the apple trees? We must lift and turn the sitting room carpet but it will need a good beating before we put it back down.’

  ‘Yes, Jim tied the rope and he said he would come and help us lift the carpet when we get it rolled up. He even promised he and William would help us beat the dust out when they come in at noon.’