Mrs. Edie Aubrey was also preparing for a busy day. For the past six months, she had been trying to run an exercise class in the community hall but without much success. Now her classes were suddenly full of sweating village women determined to reduce their massive bums and bosoms.
In the general store, Jock Kennedy unpacked a new consignment of cosmetics and put them on display. He had found the women were travelling to Strathbane to pay a fortune for the latest in anti-wrinkle creams and decided it was time he made some money out of the craze for youth that the incomer had roused in so many middle-aged bosoms. As his own wife seemed unaffected, he was one of the few in the village who was not troubled by Peter Hynd. Drim did not have any young women, apart from teenagers at school. The school-leaving daughters took off for the cities to find work.
Jimmy Macleod, a crofter, came in from the fields for his dinner, which, as in most of the homes in Drim, was still served in the middle of the day.
His meal consisted of soup, mince and potatoes, and strong tea. He ate while reading a newspaper, folded open at the sports section and propped against the milk jug. He had just finished reading when he realized that something was different. In the first place, his wife should have been sitting opposite him instead of fiddling over at the kitchen sink.
“Arenae you eating?” He looked up and his mouth fell open. “Whit haff you been doin’t tae your hair?”
For his wife Nancy’s normally grey locks were now jet-black and cut in that old–fashioned chrysanthemum style of the fifties, which was the best that Alice MacQueen could achieve. Not only that, but Nancy’s normally high colour was hidden under a mask of foundation cream and powder and her lips were painted scarlet.
She patted her hair with a nervous hand. “Got tired of looking old,” she said. She turned back to the sink and began to clatter the dishes with unnecessary energy.
“You look daft,” he said with scorn. “And that muck on your face makes you look like a hooker.”
“And what would you know aboot hookers, wee man?”
“Mair o’ your lip and I’ll take my belt tae ye.”
She turned round slowly and lifted up the bread knife. “Chust you try,” she said softly.
“Hey, I’m oot o’ here till ye come tae your senses,” he said. He was a small, wiry man with rounded shoulders and a crablike walk. He scuttled out the door. For the first time he regretted the fact that Drim was a ‘dry’ village. He felt he could do with a large whisky. He headed out to the fields. His neighbour, Andrew King, hailed him.
“Looking a bit grim, Jimmy.”
“Women,” growled Jimmy, walking up to him. “My Nancy’s got her face painted like a tart and she’s dyed her hair black. Aye, and she threatened me wi’ the bread knife. Whit’s the world coming tae?”
“Ye’ve got naethin’ tae worry about,” said Andrew, an older crofter whose nutcracker face was seamed and wrinkled. “I ‘member when my Jeannie went daft. You know whit it was?”
“No, that I don’t.”
“It’s the Men’s Paws.”
“The whit?”
“The Men’s Paws. The change. Drives the women fair daft, that it does. I talked to the doctor about Jeannie and he said, ‘Jist ignore it and it’ll go away,’ and so it did.” Andrew fished in the capacious pocket of his coat and produced a half bottle of whisky. “Like a pull?”
“Man, I would that. But don’t let the minister see us!”
♦
Drim’s minister, Mr. Callum Duncan, was putting the finishing touches to his sermon. He gave a sigh of satisfaction. He would now have free time to write to his son in Edinburgh and his daughter in London.
“I’m just going to write to Agnes and Diarmuid,” he said to his wife, who was sitting sewing by the window. “Do you want to add a note?”
“I wrote to them both yesterday,” said his wife, Annie.
“Well, you’d better tell me what you told them so I don’t repeat the gossip.” The minister rose and stretched. He was a slight man with thinning grey hair, grey eyes, and a trap of a mouth. Annie had begun recently to hate that mourn, which always seemed to be clamped shut in disapproval.
A shaft of sunlight shone in the window and lit up Annie’s hair. The minister stared at his wife. “What have you been doing to your hair?”
“I put a red rinse on it,” she said calmly. “Jock has some new stuff. It washes out.”
“What’s up with brown hair?” he demanded crossly. He had always considered his wife’s thick brown hair her one beauty.
“I got tired of it,” she said with a little sigh. “Don’t make a fuss about trivia, Callum, It wearies me.” And she went on sewing.
♦
Harry Baxter drove his battered old truck down the winding road to Drim. He was a fisherman. There had been a bad-weather forecast and so the fishing boat at Lochdubh that he worked on had decided not to put out to sea. He was chewing peppermints because he had spent part of the morning in the Lochdubh bar, and like most of the men in Drim he liked to maintain the fiction that he never touched liquor. Just outside the village he saw a shapely woman with bright-blonde hair piled up on her head tottering along on very high heels. Her ample hips swayed as she walked. He grinned and rolled down the window and pursed up his lips to give a wolf whistle. Then he realized there was an awful familiarity about that figure and drew his truck alongside.
“Hullo, Harry,” said his wife, Betty.
“Oh, my God,” he said slowly in horror. “You look a right mess.”
“It was time I did something tae masel’,” she said, heaving her plump shoulders in a shrug. She was carrying a pink holdall.
“We’d better go home and talk about this,” he said. “Hop in.”
“Can’t,” she said laconically. “I’m off to Edie’s exercise class.” And she turned on those ridiculous heels and swayed off.
♦
There was a fine drizzle falling by early evening. Stripped to the waist and with raindrops running down his golden chest, Peter Hynd worked diligently, as if oblivious to the row of village women standing silently watching him. Rain dripped down on bodies sore from unaccustomed exercise and on newly dyed hair. Feet ached in thin high-heeled shoes. And beyond the women the men of the village gathered – small sour men, wrinkled crablike men, men who watched and suddenly knew the reason for all the beautifying.
“Men’s Paws,” sneered Jimmy Macleod, spitting on the ground.
♦
Several days later, Hamish was strolling along the waterfront with his dog at his heels and his cap pushed on the back of his head. A gusty warm wind was blowing in from the Gulf Stream and banishing the midges for one day at least. Everything danced in the wind: the fishing boats at anchor, the roses and sweet peas in the gardens, and the washing on the lines. Busy little waves slapped at the shore, as if applauding one indolent policeman’s progess.
And then a car drew up beside him. Hamish smiled down and then his face took on a guarded, cautious look. For the driver was Susan Daviot, wife of his Chief Superintendent. She was a sturdy woman who always looked as if she were on her way to a garden party or a wedding, for she always wore a hat, one of those hats that had gone out of fashion at the end of the fifties but were still sold in some Scottish backwaters. This day’s number was of maroon felt with a feather stuck through the front of it. She had a high colour which showed under the floury-white powder with which she dusted her face. Her mouth was small and pursed. “Ai’ll be coming beck with Priscilla to pick you up,” said Mrs. Daviot.
“I am on duty,” said Hamish stiffly.
“Don’t be silly. I told Peter I was taking you off for the day. There is this dehrling house just outside Strathbane I want you and Priscilla to see.”