“It wouldnae be just fun if you played it with me, Annie, it would be a way of life. I’d contrive a hygienic latrine and hot-water system. We wouldnae come back.”
“But surely we would feel lonely after a few weeks!”
“Aye, very. We would hate it at first. Then the hard work of making an old-fashioned house together would teach us to depend on each other and love each other more than other men and women love each nowadays. Then the weans would come.”
“Who would deliver them?”
“Me. I’m no stranger to blood and screams, Annie, I’ll make sure nothing goes wrong.”
“That’s very cheery news, Wattie, but they’ll be sad wee weans with only me to love — no aunties and grannies — no cousins to play with — no neighbours!”
“They’ll have me as well as you.”
“Bairns don’t love dads.”
“They would have to love me because they’d have nobody else — apart from you. I’d be always sleeping in the same house, bringing in the food you cook for us, teaching them how to hunt and plant and chop firewood and clean the latrine.”
“But no neighbours, Wattie! The husbands and wives of historic times were so desperate for neighbours that they crowded into big huge ugly cities.”
“Right!” said Wat, growing heated, “And the cities bred poverty, plagues and greedy governments! So a few brave men and women — pioneers they were called — left the cities for the wild in couples and made clean new lives there like we can make.”
“Where and when did they do that?”
“In America three or four centuries ago.”
“I’m sure they’re no in America now. How long did they last?”
“I … I don’t exactly know.”
“Well, Wattie,” said Annie in a friendly voice,
“I’m sorry we’ve no plagues, poverty or governments to escape from, but I’ll be your pioneer wife as long as you can bear it.”
She shut her mouth tight to stop the smile at the corners becoming a grin. Wat saw it; she saw him see it, grinned openly and said, “But will wee me be able to content you when you’ve had big Rose of Cappercleuch and those Bowerhope twins and Lizzie of Altrieve and my mammy? Will you never want to see my mammy again? And have you forgot you’ll grow old and die in that wilderness, Wattie? I thought men fought battles and became heroes because they were afraid to grow old.”
He suddenly saw he had been a fool and the knowledge changed him. His face and neck reddened. With a sudden fixed smile, in a singsong voice unlike his usual gruff one, he asked if she knew why he hated women. Annie, aghast, stared and trembled. He said, “I hate women for their damnable smug security and for always being older than me, always older and wiser! Even a kid like you, Annie Craig Douglas, has stripped me of my self-respect by knowing more about me than I know about myself. And when I’m dead you’ll have lovers and babies and lovers and babies till you’re a great-great-granny telling stories to wee girls. And I’ll be one of your stories, the first warrior who fucked you — a daftie who wanted to run away and live alone with ye forever!”
Tears streamed from her eyes at this. She tried to embrace him. He pushed her away saying, “Keep your pity! I want the bad old days when wars had no rules and bombs fell on houses and men and women died together like REAL equals! Equal in agony and mutilation!”
“You’re sick, Wattie. Your head’s sick,” said Annie, weeping, “You’re worse than mad Jardine, your daddy.”
His rage stopped at once.
“True!” he said, ruefully touching his brow, “And it’s the only head I have. I’m sorry I lost my temper.”
“As mad as his father,” she muttered, pressing her hand to her womb, “O I’ll have to ask about this.”
She jumped out of bed and pulled on her dress. “Come back, Annie! Let’s have another wee cuddle. I’m all right again. I said I was sorry.”
“I don’t want a mad baby, Wat.”
“There is no such thing as a mad baby.” She slipped on her shoes without looking at him. Wat said, “Done with me, have you?”
“I’m too young to say, Wat. Bowerhope men never come here now because twice Craig Douglas women got weans with diseased blood by Bowerhope — and the disease was curable. I don’t know if daftness is, and my mammy is your dad’s second cousin. The grannies will know what’s right. But O Wat,” she wailed, tears flowing down her cheeks again, “I liked you fine before this! I wanted a bairn by you!” He said, “Aye,” and got up and started dressing. She lingered by the door, drying her tears and watching.
“I’ll be in the Warrior house if your grannies want to test my sanity,” he said abruptly, “They might want that before deciding you shouldnae carry our bairn. But I’ll no come back to Craig Douglas unless invited — tell everyone that. Tell Nan. Say goodbye to her for me. I never much liked the Warrior house but now it seems the one place where I’ll be welcome — though mibby no for much longer.”
THREE WARRIOR WORK
LIKE ALL WHO LOVED VISITORS Annie had a room with a door onto the veranda of her home, so Wat left Craig Douglas that morning almost unnoticed at first. Near the stables he heard musical jangling and shrill shouts of, “Fall down you’re dead!” — ” No I clonked you first!”
In a sandpit by the path a jumble of colourful shelled creatures were hitting each other with tiny swords: infants in helmets and armour which pinged, twanged or clonked under different strengths of blow. They stood still as he drew level then the smallest ran to him and stuttered breathlessly, “When I grow up I’ll be a Amazon and kill men like you do cousin Wattie!”
She was a very wee girl. Wat paused and said politely, “Name and age?”
“Betty. Four.”
“Soldiers don’t fight to kill each other, Betty. We fight to win the respect due to courage.”
“Aye but killing men is still fun intit cousin Wattie?”
He shook his head hopelessly and entered the stable.
Three twelve-year-old lads knelt on the floor playing jorries. They sprang up, led the dapple grey from her stall, saddled and bridled her.
“Are you for the Warrior house Wat?” said one,
“Can we come with ye?”
“I’m for a quiet ride on my lonesome lone, men,” Wat told them sombrely, “I’m sorry your brothers got killed.”
“But they helped us draw with Northumbria,” said one gently as if offering consolation.
“Don’t fool yourselves, men. Geneva will declare our draw a foul. I know because I was chief fouler. Open that door.”
On the common he found his hands had healed enough to let him mount Sophia with dignity and after waving goodbye rode down to Yarrow. He suspected many eyes now watched him from the big house with the wood behind so did not look back. Wanting solitude he headed downstream toward Mountbenger along a mossy track between tangled hedges which followed the line of an old motorway.
The air felt close and heavy this morning though little gusts of wind sometimes refreshed it. A dull sky looked full of rain which never fell. Yellow gorse on the hillside was the only vivid colour. A mile above Mountbenger he soaked his legs fording the river and rode up the glen behind White Law, avoiding the houses of Altrieve and Hartleap by keeping to the hillside, and ascending Altrieve burn to the saddle between Peat Law and the Wiss. Though still brooding on the affection and respect he might lose by his quarrel with Annie he was soothed for a while by lonely distances which grew more visible the higher he came. Houses, cultivation, everything human was hidden in dips between a wilderness of grey heights. Vapour from powerplants was buried in ragged cloud which dimmed the highest summits. Nothing he now saw had changed since these hills divided Scotland from England in the historical epoch, the killing time when huge governments had split the world into nations warring for each other’s property. He recalled with pride that for centuries the border clans had held aloof from England and Scotland, siding with whichever nation was too weak to tax them. But theft and murder had flourished in these rough hills too. The old ballads were full of it. The only wealth here had been small black cattle and when illness or famine thinned the herds the wife of a homestead set a plate with a pair of spurs on it before her man when he sat down to eat, a hint that he must now raid the English farms or starve. Yes, it was luxury to fear the ill opinion of the Ettrick aunts more than an empty belly, to worry about an unfair blow struck in a war between willing fighters, to suffer because he had frightened a healthy young girl in a moment of rage. He smiled and heard wind stir the grasses, near and distant cries of the whaups, and once what sounded like voices behind a clump of whins. Crossing a shoulder of hillside with a view into the gardens of Hartleap he saw what seemed half the family down there looking up at him. Later he glimpsed tiny figures withdraw behind the cairn on the summit of Bowerhope Law.