Louis reached for another pastry, still trying to grasp a thread of sense in the conversation. He wanted to know why he was so welcome. Apparently she hadn’t mistaken him for anyone else. And she didn’t seem to wonder what he was doing in her house in the middle of the night. He kept trying to think of a way to frame the question without incriminating himself.
Steam was rising in white spirals from the pot on the stove. The old lady took a deep breath over the fumes, and nodded briskly. “Right. That should be done now. Tell me, lad, are you old enough to take spirits?”
After a moment’s hesitation, Louis realized that he was being offered a drink and not a séance. “I’m twenty-two,” he mumbled.
“Right enough, then.” She ladled the steaming liquid into two cups, and set one in front of him.
Louis sniffed it and frowned.
“It’s called a het pint,” said the old lady, without waiting for him to ask. “It’s an old drink given to first footers. Spirits, sugar, beer, and eggs. When I was a girl, they used to carry it round door to door in a kettle. Back in Dundee. Not that I drink much myself, of course. Doris is always on about my blood pressure. But tonight is Hogmanay, and I said to myself: Flora, why don’t you stir up the het pint. You never know who may drop in. And, you see, I was right. Here you are!”
“Here I am,” Louis agreed, taking a swig of his drink. It tasted a little like eggnog. Not bad. At least it was alcoholic. He wouldn’t have more than a cup, though. He still had to drive home.
The old lady-Hora-sat down beside Louis and lifted her cup. “Well, here’s to us, then. What’s your name, lad?”
“Louis,” he said, before he thought better of it.
“Well, Louis, here’s to us! And not forgetting a promotion for Doris!” They clinked their cups together, and drank to the New Year.
Flora dabbed at the corners of her mouth with a linen napkin, and reached for a piece of shortbread. “I must resolve to eat fewer of these during the coming year,” she remarked. “Else Doris will have me out jogging.”
Louis took another piece to keep her company. It tasted pretty good. Sort of like a sugar cookie with delusions of grandeur. “Did you have a nice Christmas?” he asked politely.
Flora smiled. “Perhaps not by American standards. Doris had the day off, and we went to church in the morning, and then had our roast beef for dinner. She gave me bath powder, and I gave her a new umbrella. She’s always losing umbrellas. I suppose that’s a rather subdued holiday by your lights, but when I was a girl, Christmas wasn’t such a big festival in Scotland. The shops didn’t even close for it. We considered it a religious occasion for most folk, and a lark for the children. The holiday for grown people was New Year’s.”
“Good idea,” grunted Louis. “Over here, we get used to high expectations when we’re kids, and then as adults, we get depressed every year because Christmas is just neckties and boredom.”
Flora nodded. “Oh, but you should have seen Hogmanay when I was a girl! No matter what the weather, people in Dundee would gather in the City Square to wait out the old year’s end. And there’d be a great time of singing all the old songs…”
“ ‘Auld Lang Syne’?” asked Louis.
“That’s a Scottish song, of course.” Flora nodded. “But we sang a lot of the other old tunes as well. And there was country dancing. And then just when the new year was minutes away, everyone would lapse into silence. Waiting. There you’d be in the dark square, with your breath frosting the air, and the stars shining down on the world like snowflakes on velvet. And it was so quiet you could hear the ticking of the gentlemen’s pocket watches.”
“Sounds like Times Square,” said Louis, inspecting the bottom of his cup.
Flora took the cup, and ladled another het pint for each of them. “After the carrying on to welcome in the new year, everyone would go about visiting and first-footing their neighbors. My father was always in great demand for that, being tall and dark as he was. And he used to carry lumps of coal in his overcoat to be sure of his welcome.”
“What,” said Louis, “is first-footing?”
“Well, it’s an old superstition,” said Flora thoughtfully. “Quite pagan, I expect, if the truth were told, but then, you never can be sure, can you? You don’t have a lump of coal about you, by any chance?”
Louis shook his head.
“Ah, well. First-footing, you asked.” She took a deep breath, as if to warn him that there was a long explanation to follow. “In Scotland the tradition is that the first person to cross your threshold after midnight on Hogmanay symbolizes your luck in the year to come. The first foot to enter your house, you see.”
Louis nodded. It’s lucky to be burgled? he was thinking.
“The best luck of all comes if you’re first-footed by a tall, dark stranger carrying a lump of coal. Sometimes family friends would send round a tall, dark houseguest that our family had not met, so that we could be first-footed by a stranger. The rest of the party would catch up with him a few minutes later.”
“I guess I fit the bill, all right,” Louis remarked. He was just over six feet, and looked more Italian than Tony Bennett. His uncles called him Luigi.
“So you do.” Flora smiled. “Now the worst luck for the new year is to be first-footed by a short, blond woman who comes in empty-handed.”
Louis remembered the first thing the old woman had said to him. “So Doris is a short blonde?”
“She is that. Gets her height from me. Or the lack of it. And she can never remember to hunt up a lump of coal, or bring some wee gift home with her to help the luck. Ever since Colin passed away, Doris has been first foot in this house, and where has it got us? Her with long hours, and precious little time off, and me with rheumatism and a fixed income-while prices go up every year. We could use a change of luck. Maybe a sweepstakes win.”
Louis leaned back in his chair, struggling between courtesy and common sense. “You really believe in all this stuff?” he asked her.
A sad smile. “Where’s the harm? When you get older, it’s hard to let go of the customs you knew when you were young. You’ll see.”
Louis couldn’t think of any family customs, except eating in front of the TV set and never taking the last ice cube-so you wouldn’t have to refill the tray. Other than that, he didn’t think he had much in common with the people he lived with. He thought about telling Flora about his work at the animal shelter, but he decided that it would be a dangerous thing to do. She already knew his name. Any further information would enable her and the police to locate him in a matter of hours. If she ever cottoned on to the fact that she had been robbed, that is.
“Do you have any pets?” he asked.
Flora shook her head. “We used to have a wee dog, but he got old and died a few years back. I haven’t wanted to get another one, and Doris is too busy with her work to help in taking care of one.”
“I could get you a nice puppy, from-” He stopped himself just in time. “Well, never mind. You’re right. Dogs are more work than most people think. Or they ought to be.”
Flora beamed. “What a nice young man you are!”
He smiled back nervously.
Louis nibbled another piece of shortbread while he considered his dilemma. He had been caught breaking in to a house, and the evidence from the rest of the evening’s burglaries was in the trunk of his Volkswagen. The logical thing to do would be to kill the old dear, so that he wouldn’t have to worry about getting caught. Logical, yes, but distasteful. Louis was not a killer. The old lady reminded him of one of the sad-eyed cocker spaniels down at the shelter. Sometimes people brought in pets because they didn’t want them anymore, or were moving. Or because the kid was allergic to them. Often these people asked that the animal be destroyed, which annoyed Louis no end. Did they think that if they didn’t want the pet, no one else should have it? Suppose divorce worked like that? Louis could see putting an old dog to sleep if it was feeble and suffering, but not just because the owners found it inconvenient to have it around. He supposed that his philosophy would have to apply to his hostess as well, even if she were a danger to his career. After all, Flora was old, but she was not weak or in pain. She seemed quite spry and happy, in fact, and Louis couldn’t see doing away with her just for expedience. After all, people had rights, too, just like animals.