Land Of The Leal. James Barke

peats on the fire and went out to the milking, making the door fast from the outside. The wind had risen to a storm and the rain was torrential.

      Agnes Gibson hunched her narrow shoulders against the storm and ran towards the byre. She had watched the carts labouring into the court as long as there had been light and then as the light failed she had listened to the sound of the lumbering carts in an endeavour to estimate how the unloading of The Dolphin was proceeding. She was filled with forebodings of disaster that not even the activity of milking could dismiss.

      Agnes Gibson was not a talkative woman: she had little time for gossiping. And she had the married woman’s dislike of the unmarried mother – or rather of the mother who continued to remain unmarried. She had little talk, therefore, for the majority of the milkers though she was always civil to them and they in turn reciprocated the civility with a respect that was not lacking in cunning: for they never knew the day they would require her services. In her errands of mercy and healing Agnes made no moral distinction although she may have been more sympathetic to the ‘deserving’ cases than the ‘undeserving’ ones. Moreover, as the grieve’s wife she could not allow herself the same degree of familiarity as the ploughmen’s wives.

      Craigdaroch always appeared in the byre at milking time morning and night. Milk was his most important produce. He liked to keep a sharp eye on the milkers. He recognised how important it was to get every drop of milk from the cow. His theory, which he dunned into the heads of the milkers, was: it’s the last drop that pays. But Craigdaroch also knew that the health of the herd depended on good milking and he left nothing to chance.

      He strode up and down the narrow passage between the stalls like a captain on a bridge. He was fully conscious that he was in command – and the milkers were equally conscious he was in command. They kept their cheeks or their foreheads to the cow’s flank and plied their fingers as ably as they knew. There were fifty cows down each side of the big byre: and ten milkers. It was a good milker who could milk her cow in six minutes. Craigdaroch did not allow more than ten.

      But to-night he was worried about the lime cargo. As he paced up and down the byre, his hands deep in the cross pockets of his whipcord breeches, his ear was cocked to the storm. At intervals a powerful gust of wind would tear round the byre and the swinging oil lamps would flicker and dim.

      And then his ear would catch the sound of a cart and he would pause in his step – that was another load home. They would manage if they kept to it. Ah, Tom Gibson was a splendid brute of a man: he would tear the muscles of his bones but he would get that cargo home. Aye: the like of Tom Gibson was not to be had for the picking up.

      He stopped before Mrs. Gibson whose milking was quiet and efficient.

      ‘It’s a wild night, Mrs. Gibson.’

      ‘It is that, Mr. MacWhirrie.’

      ‘Aye…’

      He always felt uneasy with Mrs. Gibson. The woman’s respect for him was formal. He sensed this. She did not respect him: she did not look up to him. It was he who respected her. But his politeness was also formal. He prided himself that he was above the more petty vanities of his fellow-farmers who might have adopted a gruff or even brutal indifference to her. No: Ned MacWhirrie could afford to be polite: he was strong enough, firmly enough entrenched, to be above the petty irrelevance of intercourse.

      Or so MacWhirrie thought. But there was a coolly calculated menance behind his manners and methods. He would never check a man for idling. He would give the man a look and pass on as if he did not employ him. And if he caught the same man in a similar offence he would still say nothing but he would mention the fact to his grieve or his dairyman or to his field ganger. But it was seldom he caught a man at the same offence twice in succession. His silence and his cold look was more effective than hectoring abuse would have been. The men would have understood and even appreciated a swearing. But they could not bear the menace of his silence. They were not long in sensing, if they were new to him, that that silence was cold and utterly merciless.

      When he heard the sound of a second cart, Craigdaroch strode out of the byre, taking his hands from his pockets in order to button his oilskin. The routine of farming palled on him sometimes. This was the reason for his drinking and his interest in women. This was the reason for his mettlesome mare. And in getting home the lime cargo there was much more than the satisfaction of achieving a plan and the saving of a few pounds. There was adventure in it: there was activity and drama in it: something into which he might throw his restless energy. He had a feeling that the time was ripe for his intervention.

      He stepped briskly into the barn where the lime was being unloaded.

      ‘Well, Johnston?’

      ‘It’s a sair trachle, Mr. MacWhirrie.’

      ‘How many tons have you here?’

      ‘Full fifty.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘Aye: it’ll no’ be the nicht she’ll be unloaded, Mr. MacWhirrie. The tide’s coming in fast. An’ there’s hardly light to see what you’re about.’

      Craigdaroch said nothing. He looked at the horse in the shafts. A thick steam was rising from it. He looked at Johnston, his second ploughman. Johnston was showing signs of exhaustion. He could easily lose a mare on a job like this and his men wouldn’t be worth much in the morning. He sucked his greying moustache downwards with his lip. Call the job off and let the rest of the cargo go to hell? He wouldn’t be losing much. And his men would say: Aye, Craigdaroch thought he’d got his lime for nothing but the storm was over many for him. Well, he hadn’t seen the storm that was over many for him yet. Things were just ripe for him to take charge of the helm. He would have a word with MacAtear the dairyman and then get down to the shore.

      Jean Gibson was the eldest of the family: she was coming five. After her came James and Mary: after them Robert, who was eighteen months old and still in the cradle. He was a heavy child and had not yet begun to walk.

      Jean had the duty of watching them when her mother was at the milking. Her main task was to keep the children back from the fire. But the fire was the main attraction for them and Jean had to be constantly on guard. She had to keep rocking the cradle at intervals, Robert being a fretful child who could only be effectively disciplined by his mother. He had the child’s sense to know when that discipline was withdrawn.

      Jean was a bonnie child. Her cheeks were round and apple red: her body plump and strong. Her eyes were large and black as sloes and gave to her child’s face a remarkable depth of beauty. And if she had her father’s quickness of temper she had also her mother’s sensitiveness.

      Like most of the children of her age, she was experienced beyond what a later generation was to know as normal. She could wash and dress the children: she could wash dishes and set the table – though all the setting it required was harmless enough. And she could scrub potatoes. In the meagre economy that had to be practised, the wastefulness of peeling could not be tolerated.

      Her mother, though she did not encourage her in the sin of idleness, did not impose on her innocent years. Most of the tasks she did impose on her were for her good – serving as a training that would stand her in good stead in later years.

      Sometimes Agnes Gibson looked on her eldest child with her bright impetuous ways and sighed. She knew that soon enough her body would be racked with the toil of the hard insatiable fields: that the day would come when she would have to surrender her body to the will of a man and the marriage bed: that the day would come when she would have to put on the harness of life from which she would only be released by death.

      God had imposed a hard lot upon womankind: a lot which had few recompenses and which they had to suffer in silence. Knowing this, she saved her child unnecessary toil and hardship.

      Agnes Gibson had not yet become brutalised by the brutalities of her existence and she was to fight against brutalising tendencies even to her death-bed. And she was a Protestant even as many Roman Catholic mothers were Protestant – in their deepest nature. Her God was to all external purposes the God of Abraham