The Cone-Gatherers. Robin Jenkins

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      Though not capable of conveying it well, either by word or expression, she was pleased and relieved to see him home. Her voice was squeaky with an inveterate petulance, although sometimes, disconcerting everybody who heard it, her old gay laughter could suddenly burst forth, followed by tears of wonder and regret.

      He stood by the door.

      ‘Am I to get a kiss?’ she asked.

      ‘I’ve still to wash, Peggy. I’ve been in the wood, handling rabbits.’

      ‘I don’t care. Amn’t I a gamekeeper’s wife? I used to like the smell of rabbits. I want a kiss.’

      Her wheedling voice reminded him of the hunchback’s. There wouldn’t, he thought, be room in the hut for so large a bed. Here too everything was white and immaculate, whereas yonder everything was dull, soiled, and scummy. Yet he could see, almost as plainly as he saw his wife in heart-rending coquettish silly tears, the hunchback carving happily at his wooden squirrel.

      ‘It was another fine afternoon,’ he said.

      ‘Fine for some folk,’ she whimpered.

      ‘Didn’t you manage to get out into the garden?’

      ‘You know it’s too much for my mother to manage by herself. I just had to lie here and watch the tops of the trees.’ Then her voice brightened. ‘Do you know what I was thinking about, John?’

      ‘No, Peggy.’

      ‘I was thinking of a day at Fyneside long ago. It was autumn then too. I think autumn’s the bonniest season. You put rowan berries in my hair.’

      ‘The rowans are just about past,’ he said.

      ‘For me they’re past forever,’ she cried. ‘I used to love the time when the berries were ripe and red.’

      He saw the appeal in her streaming eyes, but he could not respond to it; once it had sent him away with his own eyes wet.

      ‘Red as blood,’ she sobbed.

      Her mother called from the kitchen: ‘Will I put out your tea, John?’

      ‘In a minute, Mrs Lochie,’ he shouted back. ‘I’d like to wash first. I’ll have to go, Peggy. I’ll come in later, after I’ve had my tea.’

      Upstairs in the bathroom he was again haunted by that feeling of being in the cone-gatherers’ hut. Such amenities as toilet soap, a clean towel, and hot water, recalled the bareness and primitiveness there. The flushing of the cistern sent him crouching in the darkness of the cypress. When he stared into the mirror and saw his own face, he was for an instant confused, disappointed, and afraid. He could not say what he had expected or hoped to see.

      The table was set for him in the little kitchen. The morning newspaper, which usually arrived in the late afternoon, lay beside his heaped plate of eggs, bacon, and beans. Mrs Lochie was glancing over the table to see that nothing was missing. He never grumbled if anything was, but she always took it as a trick lost.

      He thanked her and sat down. He said no grace.

      ‘Any news at six?’ he asked, nodding in the direction of the wireless set.

      They listened for a few moments to the sadness of ‘The Rowan Tree’ played in waltz time. He remembered, with a strange jarring of his mind, his wife’s talk of rowans. For an instant he seemed to see a way clear: the tree within was illuminated to its darkest depths. Next moment darkness returned, deeper than ever.

      ‘It was about Stalingrad,’ she said.

      ‘Has it fallen yet?’

      ‘No. It’s in the paper.’

      He glanced at the headlines. ‘Aye, so it is.’

      Lately she had taken thus to lingering in the kitchen while he ate. Neither of them enjoyed it.

      ‘Peggy’s getting difficult,’ she said.

      It was spoken as if she’d been saving it up for months; yet she’d already said it that morning.

      She laid her hand on her heart. ‘I’m finding it beyond my strength to lift and lay her when you’re not in.’

      ‘There’s Mrs Hendry,’ he murmured.

      Mrs Hendry was the wife of the gardener; she lived next door.

      ‘She’s not a young woman any longer, and she’s never been strong. I don’t like to ask her.’

      ‘There’s Mrs Black.’

      She was the wife of the forester, as devout as he.

      ‘She’s strong enough,’ he said.

      ‘But is she willing?’

      ‘I would say so.’ He thought she was jealous of Mrs Black, who was very patient, kind, and capable; besides, Peggy liked her.

      ‘Every time she’s asked,’ blurted out Mrs Lochie, ‘she comes running, but there’s always a sermon to listen to. My lassie was never wicked. You should ken that, John Duror.’

      He nodded.

      She sniffled grimly. ‘Peggy was not just happy herself,’ she said. ‘She made other folk happy too.’

      He had been one of the other folk.

      ‘What pleasure is it for me then,’ she asked fiercely, ‘to listen to Mary Black making out that what happened to Peggy was a punishment.’

      ‘You’ve misunderstood her.’

      ‘I ken it’s your opinion, John, that I’m just a stupid stubborn old woman; but I’m still able to understand what the likes of Mary Black has to say to me. A punishment inflicted by God, she says. And when I ask her to explain what she means, what does she say then? She just shakes her head and smiles and says it’s not for her, or for me, or for anybody, to question God or find fault with what He thinks fit to do. But I told her I’d question God to His very face; I’d ask Him what right had even He to punish the innocent.’

      He had kept on eating. Not even this impiety was original. God had been defied, threatened, denounced, reviled, so many times before.

      ‘Why argue with her?’ he asked. ‘You only vex yourself. Forby, she means well enough.’

      She pretended to be astonished.

      ‘How can she mean well enough,’ she demanded, ‘when she suggests your wife deserved a punishment worse than any given to bloodstained murderers.’

      ‘Does she not also say there’s to be a reward?’

      ‘If the punishment is suffered gratefully?’

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