“I’m reading about folk who struggled to stop all that,” said Wat, “They were the greatest heroes.”
“Well, mibby, but it was the powerplants that stopped all that.”
For a while the only sounds were sparrows twittering on the bird table, infant shouts and splashes, a dull distant boom from Oxcleuch where something metallic was being synthesized. Joe said, “How would you like to die, Wat, if not in a battle folk would replay for centuries?”
“By heart failure while weeding a cabbage patch.”
“Aye, only dafties despise gardening,” said Joe thoughtfully, “But soldiers like us have no patience for it.”
Wat pocketed his book and stood up.
“You’re no fool, Joe,” he said, “You’re also brave, honest and good-natured so you’ll be our next general.”
“Me? General Joe of Ettrick? Why not General Wat?” said Joe grinning shyly, “You’re our hero.”
“I’m moody — a Hamlet type — good for sudden sprints and useless in the long run. I’ll go now.”
“Aye, a ride will help ye relax. Arrange one for me.”
Wat went down to the lawn, showed the larger of the little aunts his bandaged palms and said politely, “Lend me your hands Auntie Jean, these arenae much use.”
She jumped happily up and trotted beside him through an orchard with beehives under the trees. They entered a stable with a backdoor onto the common on the far side of the deer fence and went through it, collecting saddle, bridle, sugar lumps and whistle from the tackroom. On the common several horses grazed within sight of a water trough.
“I need an experienced old pony,” said Wat,
“Sophia will do.”
He blew three notes on the whistle. A sedate dapple grey with long mane and tail moved nearer without ceasing to crop grass.
“I know where you’re going! I know where you’re going!” shouted Auntie Jean excitedly. Wat threw the saddle onto the pony, offered it sugar and held the head while Jean’s strong little hands slipped on the bridle and tightened buckles on that and the girths. Wat inspected the buckles, set foot in stirrup, thrust most of himself over the pony’s back and with some groaning arrived upright in the saddle.
“I’ll lead you!” shouted Jean skipping about,
“I’ll lead you to all the randy aunties of Craig Douglas!”
“You willnae,” said Wat, “Give me those.”
With a pout of annoyance she handed up the reins. He gripped them clumsily with his thumbs and said, “You don’t know where I’m going, Jean. Clap her and goodbye.”
Jean turned the pony to face east and downhill and clapped her rump. Sophia, liking her rider, set off briskly although he turned her uphill and north.
By easy slopes he headed for Hawkshaw Rig but later turned right into a glen between that and Wardlaw, then crossed a fast-flowing burn and descended into woods behind Craig Douglas house, hoping to enter the grounds unseen. He failed. The backdoor in the deer fence banged open as he neared and four boys ran out, jostling for priority in helping him dismount and stable Sophia.
“If Jean clyped on me she’s a sleekit wee bitch,” he told them. They said nothing. Leaving the stable for the garden he saw all the Craig Douglas children and adolescents standing to left and right of the path, staring. Even babies in the arms of older sisters were gazing at him in silent wonder. He paused and said, “When I last came here you were a lot noisier.” Nobody spoke.
“Have you no tale for me Annie?” he asked a tall girl with a humorous cast of features. She said faintly, “We’re glad you’ve no come back like our uncles, Wat.”
He shrugged, went on to the house and found a mother waiting on the veranda. A week before she had been pleasantly plump; now there were dark hollows under her cheekbones and red-rimmed eyes. He said gruffly, “You look twenty years older, Mirren.”
She said coldly, “You’re the same as ever. Have you come to see your pals?”
He thought for a moment. The outer walls of the house and most of the inner ones were transparent just now. Only the dark-walled infirmary and the room of the woman he wanted to see allowed no glimpse of their interior. He sighed and nodded.
And followed the mother inside and across floors where only young women looked straight at him. Grannies, matrons and even a girl suckling an infant ignored him or looked away: this disturbed him far more than the silence of the youngsters outside. He was brought into the infirmary where five big translucent boxes lay, each containing what seemed pink fog with a complicated shadow inside. The mother pressed a stud. The infirmary darkened but the shadows became the well-lit bodies of young, naked, badly dismembered men, each with limbs and organs floating beside their torso and linked to it by threads like cobwebs. Only one body exhibited movement: eyes which slowly blinked in time with a mouth opening and shutting like the mouth of a fish. The face had no intelligence in it. Wat abruptly turned his back on these things. The ceiling went clear and admitted sunlight again.
“You can mend them?” he asked in a voice shrill with unbelief.
“Mibby. Perhaps. It will take years but they’re just lads.”
“Mirren, most of Charlie’s head is gone.”
“He’ll grow a new one if we can restore the heart. The new brain will have his character if not his memories.”
“Our memories are our character, Mirren.”
“Then the mother and sisters who love him will restore his memories, Wat Dryhope. We’ll give him back all the good things the war sliced away, but you won’t be one of them, Wattie! When he starts thinking again we’ll only remind him of what’s harmless!”
“You’re so maddened by grief that you’re blethering, Mirren. I know it’s a cruel injustice that I’m almost unhurt and your lads are nearly dead, but I’m the man who argued for what would have saved them. They refused it. And have you forgot that bloody Daddy Jardine was born and bred in this house by Craig Douglas women? Our general’s obstrapulous conceit wasnae nourished by the aunties of Dryhope.” “No woman on earth nourished Jardine’s conceit!” cried Mirren, “He got it in the Warrior house. We never scorned him for his wee-ness but other soldiers did until he showed he was spunkier than them and could take knocks without squealing. So they made him their pet, then elected him boss, and after that Craig Douglas never saw him again — except through the public eye — until two days back when the Red Cross gave us his remains with sixteen other corpses and the pieces you’re feart to turn round and see. Women had no part in making a bloody hero of Jardine Craig Douglas. Yes, he fathered weans in half the houses along Yarrow but he only wanted women for one thing. Like all soldiers the only folk he really loved were men!”
Wat heard this with bowed head then said, “All true, Aunt Mirren, but women arenae wholly innocent of the war game. You don’t take to fighting like we do — the world holds hardly a dozen tribes of professional Amazons — but many girls, aye, and many women are daft about soldiers. I’m a graceless brute so when I came home from the stars few women outside Dryhope house would look at me — not until I fought for Ettrick and showed some talent.”
“I cannae be fair to you, Wat,” the mother said drying her eyes, “Go to Nan.”
He walked swiftly to the other opaque-walled room, looking ceilingward to avoid eye-contact with anyone before reaching it. A teenage girl scampered out as he was about to enter, followed by another. He went in and shut the door by pulling across a heavy tapestry curtain. Then he faced the woman inside and said, “See me Nan! I’m a rare animal now, an Ettrick warrior with nothing obvious missing. But I cannae move my fingers and I feel nine tenths dead and as sexless as a neep. Do you still like Wat Dryhope?”