A Scots Quair by Lewis Grassic Gibbon Read Free Book Online Page B

called down the stairs Man, it’s a fair tough case, I doubt I’ll need your help, and at that father turned grey as a sheet and covered his face again and cried I dare not, I dare not! Then the doctor childe called him again Guthrie man, do you hear me? and father jumped up in a rage and cried Damn’t to hell, I’m not deaf! and ran up the stairs, fleet as ever, and then the door in the room closed fast and Chris could hear no more.
    Not that she wanted to hear, she felt real ill herself, cooking the egg and laying a meal in the parlour, with a white cloth spread above the green plush cloth and all the furniture dark and shadowed and listening. Then Will came down the stair, he couldn’t sleep because of mother, they sat together and Will said the old man was a fair beast and mother shouldn’t be having a baby, she was far too old for that. And Chris stared at him with horrified imaginings in her mind, she hadn’t known better then, the English bit of her went sick, she whispered What has father to do with it? And Will stared back at her, shamed-faced, Don’t you know? What’s a bull to do with a calf, you fool?
    But then they heard an awful scream that made them leap to their feet, it was as though mother were being torn and torn in the teeth of beasts and couldn’t thole it longer; and then a little screech like a young pig made followed that scream and they tried not to hear more of the sounds above them, Chris boiled the egg over and over till it was as hard as iron. And then mother screamed again, Oh God! your heart stopped to hear it, and that was when the second twin came.
    Then quietness followed, they heard the doctor coming down the stairs, the morning was close, it hung scared beyond the stilled parks and listened and waited. But the doctor cried Hot water, jugs of it, pour me a basin of water, Chris, and put plenty of soap near by it . She cried Ay, doctor , to that but she cried in a whisper, he didn’t hear and was fell angry. D’you hear me? And Will said to him, calling up the stair, Ay, doctor, only she’s feared , and the doctor said She’ll have a damned sight more to fear when she’s having a bairn of her own. Pour out the water, quick! So they poured it and went through to the parlour while the doctor passed them with his hands held away from them, and the smell of his hands was a horror that haunted Chris for a day and a night.
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    THAT WAS THE coming of the twins at Cairndhu, there’d been barely room for them all before that time, now they’d have to live like tinks. But it was a fell good farm, John Guthrie loath to part with it though his lease was near its end, and when mother came down from her bed in a fortnight’s time with the shine of the gold still in the sweet hair of her and her eyes clear eyes again, he raged and swore when she spoke to him. More rooms? What more room do we want than we have? Do you think we’re gentry? he cried, and went on again to tell that when he was a bairn in Pittodrie his mother had nine bairns all at home, nought but a butt and ben they had and their father nought but a plough-childe. But fine they’d managed, God-fearing and decent all he’d made them, and if one of Jean Murdoch’s bairns were half as good the shame need never redden the face of her. And mother looked at him with the little smile on her lips, Well, well, we’re to bide on here, then? and father shot out his beard at her and cried Ay, that we are, content yourself
    But the very next day he was driving back from the mart, old Bob in the cart, when round a corner below the Barmekin came a motor-car spitting and barking like a tink dog in distemper. Old Bob had made a jump and near landed the cart in the ditch and then stood like a rock, so feared he wouldn’t move a step, the cart jammed fast across the road. And asfather tried to haul the thrawn beast to the side a creature of a woman with her