Bury Her Deep

2

If one considers this kingdom of His Majesty’s, stretching from rosy, lazy Somerset and the like all the way to the stark, scoured rocks of Orkney, it is tempting to conclude that harshness and despair rise like the mercury in the glass the further north one goes (with a sharp jump over Hadrian’s Wall, of course) and to imagine that a trip to Fife, lying south of Perthshire, would be a little step towards the soft shire of girlhood and home. To think this is to make, however, a fundamental error about the nature of Scotland and of Fife, and to miss the part that the east plays in the scheme of things. Perthshire is snugly in the middle and is on the way to the Highlands, where people drink whisky, wear tartan and kick up their heels. Fife, by contrast, is at the edge, almost all coast, and east coast at that, chilled to its stony heart by the haar and, I have always thought, by its own conviction that chilly is best. I was once at a christening in Fife, and I overheard an old woman, of the type who will haunt christenings if there are no funerals to be had, suck her teeth and say: ‘Aye, first breath – beginning of death.’ Ever since, that has summed up Fife for me. So, I did not foresee much jollity as I motored down there that Monday afternoon. October afternoons are never very cheerful no matter where one passes them but I fully expected the little village of Luckenlaw, which was my destination, to make Gilverton in October seem like midsummer in Zanzibar.

I had just passed through the Burgh of Falkland, tucked under the north slopes of Falkland Hill, and because of that quite the most gloomy place one could imagine at this time of the year, and I now set my sights on the distant laws. There were three of these laws running west to east, smack in the middle of Fife near its southern shore. (It should perhaps be explained that a law, in these parts, is the name for a cone-shaped hill, isolated and therefore conspicuous like a hill in a child’s painting, but I resent having to explain it, or rather I resent being able to explain it. That is, I fiercely resent the many times in my married life when I have been subjected to such outpourings on the topography and nomenclature of Scotland’s landscape that I now have the explanation all to hand.)

I thought, as I approached, that Kellie and Largo Laws were not classics of the type, being rather asymmetrical and littered around with little ridges and outcroppings like leftovers that the law-maker had neglected to tidy away. Between them, however, was the Lucken Law, in every way the most splendid of the three. It was the highest, almost perfectly conical – looking like a molehill on a putting green the way it rose up from the uncluttered fields around – and then there was its title. All three laws had furnished much of their surroundings with names, of course. Largo Law to the west had three villages, Upper (or Kirkton of) Largo, Lower Largo and Largoward, and a sandy shore named Largo Bay. Kellie Law to the east had no village but, in compensation, boasted the rather grand Kellie Castle. The Lucken Law, however, had not only that impressive definite article – it was always the Lucken Law – but also Luckenlaw village due south of the hill, and a quite breathtaking array of farms, which spoke to the absence of imagination in the Fifish spirit as could nothing else. Over Luckenlaw, Hinter Luckenlaw, Wester Luckenlaw, Easter Luckenlaw and Luckenlaw Mains were nestled in about the law itself like chicks around a mother hen. The big house – and there is always a big house whenever there is an otherwise inexplicable village and a farm called the Mains – lay to the north and was called, inevitably, Luckenlaw House.

The house and park, just like Falkland village, were quite cut off from what daylight was left by the great brute of the hill which rose up before them, and I mused as I drove past that it would be well into spring before the sun shone upon its gardens or into its windows again. I could only hope that the inhabitants were the type to take pleasure from irony, for had I inherited or married into that house – and surely no one would ever have bought the place – I should have called it anything but luck. On these points, as on so many others, I was soon to find out that my assumptions were mistaken and my conclusions quite wrong.

I skirted the hill, passing solid farmhouses squarely built from blocks of pinkish grey stone and attendant cottages made of the same stone in rather rubblier and more heavily mortared pieces, and eventually turned off to take the lane into the village. There were not, here, the crow-stepped gables and red pantiles of the pretty villages on the coast, but it was a pleasant little place; a school and schoolhouse to the left, a row of cottages with a post office on one end to the right, and a handful of houses built in pairs, set around a green with a cenotaph at the far end, last year’s faded poppy wreaths still at its base with another month to go.

A gaggle of small girls were busy with a skipping game but they let their rope fall limp and gazed at me as I approached, one or two women as well coming to look out of doors or windows at the sound of the engine. I waved, slowing as the lane narrowed to skirt the green before it led up to the kirk and manse a little way on. One or two further cottages could just be glimpsed straggling upwards, but beyond them the lane ended at a gate into a field. This, then, was Luckenlaw. I swung my motor car into the open gates of the manse just as Mr Tait and a young woman of the same comfortable build and smiling countenance, who must be the daughter Lorna, came out onto the step to greet me.

‘No Bunty?’ said Mr Tait, as I stepped down. ‘I’ve been telling Lorna here all about her.’ I was sure he had, but I have learned from bitter experience that Bunty’s absence is the only thing that makes any hearts grow fonder of her and so, while someone who has not seen her for a week can think it a pity that I have left her behind, I am sure that that same someone, faced with Bunty exploding out of the motor car after the constraint of a two-hour journey, would roll his eyes and think: Oh Lord, not that dog again.

I shook hands with Lorna and she made that odd little sideways gesture which is almost a bob, the very last vestige of the curtsey which began to decline in the reign of the last King George but has not quite finished its death throes yet. I do it myself from time to time when faced with someone terribly old or monstrously grand and I hoped that it was some spurious air of grandeur hanging about me which had stirred the impulse in Lorna for, looking at her close up, I could see that she must be around thirty and so was almost certainly less than ten years younger than me. From a distance, one might have said she was older for as well as the comfortable figure she had a mild, wide face which seemed formed for maturity rather than girlhood and which was framed by a lot of dark hair gathered gently into a soft bun at the nape of her neck. Her nose and mouth, sharper than Mr Tait’s, must have been inherited from the mother but her eyes and appley cheeks were his and I felt a surge of friendliness mixed with a little relief as I followed her into the house.

The relief does me no credit; it is shallow and self-regarding and absolutely typical, although surely some respect is due me for its admission. The truth is that I had been working myself up into something between a huff and a temper at the prospect of this trip, and not only because a visit to the SWRI meeting and a chance to hear a hospital sister lecture on infant nutrition were so completely without allure. I was disgruntled, too, at the thought of being the guest of a young Miss Tait, with all her life before her, dreading the evidence of my own creeping middle age and the unscalable walls of my chosen path when I compared my lot with hers. One might suppose it foolish fancy for a Miss Leston as was, now Mrs Hugh Gilver, with all that I had and all that I commanded, to feel anything at all much less this churlish envy about a girl of Miss Tait’s station in life and until very recently one would have been right. My mother would have felt no stab from Lorna’s mother, I am sure, but in those days all there was were husbands and all there was to choose between one husband and another were the kinds of things which would see a Mr Gilver of Gilverton trumping a Reverend Tait every time.

Now however, these days, there was the chance that a Miss Tait, beloved child of a reasonable man, would have been to school and perhaps to college too and might be just about to plunge into a life of fun in a flat in the city or about to marry an even more reasonable man and spend her life writing books about Egypt and making frequent trips there with her adoring husband in tow. Such a Miss Tait could easily have made the Mrs Gilver whom I had imperceptibly but now undeniably become feel hopelessly ancient and humdrum by comparison, but such a Miss Tait would have had short hair and smart little pleats to her skirt or at least – Egyptologists not being known for their chic – short hair and corduroy breeches with a penknife at the belt. This Miss Tait, on the other hand, the real Miss Tait, Lorna, wore clothes which were the woven equivalents of her loose-tied bun: pale woollen garments in grey and pink, looped softly around her plump shoulders and hips and decorated only by a heart-shaped brooch pinning to her collar a silk rosebud and black velvet bow which spoke of love and loss.

In fact, by the time I rejoined Lorna and her father in their sitting room for tea, having taken off my hat and washed my hands in the usual chilly expanse of the best spare bedroom, I had quite forgotten my earlier imaginings and just about forgiven myself for them, assembling instead a more seemly collection of emotions towards Lorna; a readiness to like her and a stirring of desire to help her which was almost free of pity. Besides, I was not alone in my reckoning of Lorna as unworldly and slightly to be protected, because as I sat down Mr Tait said to me:

‘It is good of you to take your commission as speaker so seriously, Mrs Gilver. Very good of you to make this extra trip just to see the lie of the land. I don’t recall any of the other speakers doing so.’

I am not always the most intuitive woman one could imagine – I have dropped hodfuls of bricks in my time – but even I could not mistake the firm way he said ‘speaker’ and the very direct stare he gave me. His meaning was obvious: Lorna did not know the true nature of my commission and nor was she to find it out. I was pleased enough; the fewer the better is an excellent general rule when deciding who should be privy to an investigation as it unfolds, for not only are the notions and fancies of others a severe distraction from one’s own avenues of thought (and very annoying when they turn out more accurate too) but sometimes, in pursuit of the truth, I find myself having to tell such lies – whoppers, my sons would call them – that I could never get through them without blushing if anyone in earshot knew what I was up to. Also – and perhaps, if I am to be scrupulously honest, this is the weightiest consideration – if anyone is told anything, it is all too easy to forget who was told what and it is trouble enough to keep straight the questions of what I know, what I think, and what I have merely conjectured without having to remember what portion of what version I have shared and with whom.

So it suited me perfectly well not to be obliged to sit through Lorna’s take on the affair. Instead, we had the usual desultory chat as she fussed with the tea-things, Mr Tait evidently not one of those cosy little ministers who brandish the teapot and toasting fork himself. I do not mean to suggest that he disdained his tea, sitting there blank and superior for as little time as he could decently get away with before escaping back to his study. I have never had any patience with men who do that, for I have found that on days when tea is late, cold, burnt or even – in the event of some household calamity – missed, they complain as loud and long as anyone and thus reveal that they have no business acting so above the proceedings when all goes well.

Mr Tait was the perfect teatime father, quietly appreciative and settled into his chair with no thoughts of moving, and I found time to think what a waste of a man it was, that there was no wife to share in this tableau. Hard on the heels of that came the question of what he would do without Lorna, and whether the day was ever likely to dawn when he would find out. I turned to look at her as this ambled through my head and found her smiling back at me, calmly.

‘What a pretty spot you live in, Miss Tait,’ I said. ‘That is, one can imagine that it’s charming in the summertime.’

‘Lorna, please,’ she said. ‘“Miss Tait” sounds like my Aunt Georgia.’ She spoke lightly enough, but a quick frown passed across her face, a moment’s flickering of her brows and faltering of her smile, like the merest wisp of cloud over the sun. ‘Yes, we are lucky to live here,’ she went on. ‘It’s a great good fortune, these days, when so many people seem to lurch about from pillar to post, never settling, or live all cramped up together in bed-sitters. I count myself a very fortunate girl.’

Oh dear, I thought. How sad and, if I am honest, how rather dreary too. Lorna then, like so many others, was fighting a desperate battle under that limpid façade. She was still mourning whoever it was whose death had put that rose and ribbon at her neck and half of her wanted no more than to call herself blessed to have loved at all, while the other half was beginning to panic at the passing years, to make sure and call herself a girl but wince each time she was reminded that she was fast becoming a Miss Tait like her Aunt Georgia before her.

There were many in the same boat and by now, six years after the end of the war which put them there, one was beginning to see distinct patterns in how these poor girls responded to their fates. Some simply married the first male creature to come into view and so joined the rest of us in the great lottery of life. Others dedicated themselves to the memory of their lost loves and let the rest of the world grow indistinct. Yet others railed at their misfortune, turned bitter and sneered at anyone who had what they lacked, pretending not to care, not to grieve, hardly to feel, and I usually thought these the saddest of all. Lorna was threatening to make me change my mind, however, for her path it seemed to me now was even more painful to witness. She was one who would hope and hope and fade, quite out in the open for all to see, causing friends and kind strangers to plot matches for her and crueller types to pity and, in the end, despise her for her sadness and her helpless longing. Oh dear, I thought again, and I smiled at her father who smiled back and might well have been thinking ‘Oh dear’ himself.

Then I told myself sternly that I was not here to comfort and befriend poor Lorna, and that, although I should certainly ask Hugh if there were any young men of good prospect lurking around Gilverton who seemed not to be finding our own collection of poor Lornas to their liking, this evening I had to harden my heart and not allow myself to be sidetracked, for there was still much to be learned.

My introduction to the case, after all, that day in my sitting room at Gilverton had necessarily been rather short what with Hugh and the coffee tray waiting.

‘There is an unfortunate state of affairs developing at Luckenlaw, my dear Mrs Gilver,’ Mr Tait had begun, ‘and although it is too far advanced for it to be nipped in the bud exactly, I think we could still weed out the pest before it sets seed.’ Long years with Hugh had equipped me ably to handle any horticultural metaphor and I nodded, encouraging him to go on. ‘It started in the spring,’ he said, ‘and at first it was rather worrying. A dairy maid from a local farm arrived home one evening with a tale of being set upon in the lane. She wasn’t hurt, but she was very badly shaken. Naturally the police were summoned and they, along with the men of the village and the neighbouring farms, searched high and low for the rascal but found nothing. As the days and weeks passed, the girl put the nasty experience behind her like a good sensible lass and no more was thought of it until it happened again. A different girl, the same story, another search and no one to be found. The third time it happened the police went through the motions, as they must, but with no great hopes of catching him, and that’s when people started wondering aloud whether there was really anything in it. Some of the details of these attacks were extremely fanciful, you see, and the sergeant told me that it wasn’t the first time they had wasted a lot of effort on girls’ silly nonsense, nor would it be the last. I preached a good stiff sermon on as near a topic to wasting police time as I could find in scripture’ – here I could not help a chirp of laughter and I longed to ask Mr Tait for chapter and verse – ‘and that seemed to do the trick, for a while. But now it’s started again. And it’s not silly girls any more, Mrs Gilver, anything but. Farmers’ wives, sensible married types with children of their own, women I’ve known for years to be steady and down-to-earth, women who would no more make mischief with a lot of silly tattle than they would…’ He took a deep breath before starting again. ‘Now, as you can imagine there are all sorts of rumours and fantastical stories flying around and I’m afraid that it’s beginning to be spoken of outside the village. Lorna, my daughter, told me that it came back to her from a friend she has down in Earlsferry, five miles away. No details and Luckenlaw was not mentioned by name thankfully – that’s the last thing we need – just a tale that there was a “dark stranger” roaming the hills in Fife and grabbing girls who were out alone at night.’

‘Grabbing them?’ I asked.

‘You see!’ cried Mr Tait. ‘Already it’s getting worse in the telling. The girls – if there’s any truth to the tale at all – are certainly not being “grabbed”. They’re not really being harmed at all. Just waylaid. And frightened.’

‘I can imagine,’ I said.

‘And while it’s bad enough to think that a Luckenlaw man could be doing it,’ said Mr Tait, ‘someone I see from the pulpit every Sunday, someone perhaps that I’ve christened and married myself, at least that could happen anywhere. The alternative – that the women are making it up – is much worse.’

‘And so you would like me to speak to them?’ I said.

‘My dear, if you would,’ said Mr Tait. ‘I would hate to see Luckenlaw get a name for this kind of thing.’

‘You’ve grown fond of the place then?’ I said. ‘It always seems rather brutal to me the way a minister is just landed in a parish and must make a home there come what may. I’m glad you’ve been “lucky” at Luckenlaw.’

‘Oh no, Mrs Gilver,’ said Mr Tait. ‘You are quite wrong on both counts. At least, my dear late wife was a Luckenlaw girl – she grew up on a farm there – and the village took me quite to its heart because of that. And the name of the place has nothing to do with luck. But there, you’re English. You’d hardly know.’

I tried to look interested in the history lesson I felt sure was on its way.

‘It’s a common mistake,’ he continued, ‘but actually the Lucken Law gets its name the same way as the old luckenbooths did.’

‘Luckenbooths?’ I echoed.

‘Silversmiths’ shops,’ said Mr Tait. ‘Literally locked booths. Locked up because of their precious contents. Likewise the Lucken Law: the locked hill. That is to say, containing a sealed chamber. You find them throughout Scotland. Hard to know what they were originally used for: hiding places; ancient ceremonies, perhaps. Certainly, there were burials for a time in the Luckenlaw chamber.’ And then, amazingly, he stopped as though the subject were at an end. It was the shortest lesson on the thrilling history of ancient Scotland I had ever encountered and surprised gratitude spurred me on to speak.

‘Very well then,’ I said to him, ‘I’ll do my best.’

‘And I hear that your best is very good indeed.’

I should not say I was an excessively modest woman, and certainly not one who cannot bear to be complimented when compliments are due – I have always felt that to rebuff perfectly reasonable praise is churlish and, in its way, more demanding than simple thanks would be: one forces the giver into much greater efforts at subtlety and evidence than most casual admirers would care to take, for one thing. At the current moment, however, I felt I really had to speak. It would be better to set matters straight from the outset than to waft along on undeserved praise and disappoint him in the end.

‘I have to say, Mr Tait,’ I began, ‘that I have no great expectations about solving this for you. If it’s a mare’s nest I doubt whether anyone knows who started it, much less why. These things do tend to take on a life of their own. Look at the Loch Ness Monster, for instance. Whose fault is that? And even if the dark stranger exists, if no one knows what he looks like then catching him at it seems the only hope, and unless we can discover some kind of a pattern to the thing, we won’t know where to look. So, please, be sure that I will do my best but do not, I beg you, get your hopes up.’

Mr Tait nodded and appeared to take my protestations to heart.

‘Like you,’ he said, ‘I don’t know whether to hope that he exists or not for each possibility is as unappealing as the other. But as to a pattern, that’s very clear. Didn’t I tell you? It’s the SWRI that’s the pattern, my dear. It always happens after one of their meetings. That’s half the trouble. It always happens on a night when just about every man in the place is on his own and no wife to say where he’s been. It always happens on a night where almost every woman is out walking in the dark, when the very best of them might fall prey to fancy.’

‘Except they’re not out walking in the dark, are they?’ I said, recalling what he had told me. ‘It’s the full moon.’ Mr Tait put his head in his hands and groaned.

‘Yes,’ he said, straightening up again at last and heaving a mighty sigh. ‘There is that. A man out prowling the lanes or a woman making up silly stories would be bad enough, but it has to be said: there is that too.’