The Burry Man’s Day

Chapter One

Far above us a train hurtled past and we raised our eyes to it in longing. If we had any sense we would be up there, sitting back in a carriage, instead of down here with everything clenched as the Bonnie Dundee climbed each crest and smacked down again on her plucky way across the Forth. The woman beside me sucked a breath in through her bottom teeth and shut her mouth firmly as we rose on a particularly lusty swell to tremble at its peak for a moment before walloping into the hollow beyond.

With a deep breath of my own, I tried to forget about the train, now huffing and hissing its way into the station, and concentrate instead on the bridge, since here we were toiling along at its base like Lilliputians on Gulliver’s beach with a better than usual chance to study it.

It is often called beautiful and it was certainly impressive from this angle but I have never cared for crochet-work and the colour is unspeakable, like the strips of dried liver one gives to dogs. Besides, I bear it grudges. For one thing, I could just remember being at its opening, four years old, and being smacked on the backs of my legs by Nanny Palmer for saying ‘Ugh’ in a loud voice when I saw it for the first time. Well, what colour would I have painted it, she had demanded when I – quite reasonably I thought – burst into tears. Primrose yellow, I had said, with touches of pink, and Nanny had laughed.

I could see now, more than thirty years later, that the touches of pink were not practical but I held to my primrose yellow – because really it had to be soul-destroying to the men who spent their lives painting the thing that the paint was the colour of rust.

In addition to that long-ago slap on the legs, however, I resent it because it would not be too far a reach of fancy to say that the Forth Bridge had sealed my fate. I had been present at its opening, as I say, on my way to visit my grandparents who had taken a house in the Highlands for the summer but after that I had not given it a thought until, years later, staying at a house party in Derbyshire during my coming out season, I had been unable to sleep. This was not, as one might expect, because of too much Champagne and Romance but rather out of sheer boredom. (And to anyone who has never been too bored to sleep I can only say it is as unpleasant as any other kind of insomnia and not helped by being quite ridiculous.) Eventually, having planned my outfits for the following day – boring tweed for golf, boring cream voile for tea, only slightly less boring coral velvet and pearls for dinner – I gave in and turned up the gas. On my bedside table the selection of reading matter comprised Volume Two of a three-volume Victorian romance with those tissue-thin pages like a prayer book and print far too small to read at two in the morning, something initially enticing with a new and brightly coloured jacket which turned out to be a history of Nottingham and, finally, The Flower of Scotland: Great Engineering Feats of the Century. (I see now that the pitifulness of such a library at the bedside of a debutante doing her Season was not accidental. It was intended to send a gentle little message about getting married as quickly as possible or ending up an embittered spinster with a knowledge of Nottingham far beyond what could ever be needed.)

Anyway, thinking that at least there would be pictures I picked up the last of these, turned to the chapter on the building of the Forth Bridge for nostalgia’s sake – Nanny Palmer had recently died and I missed her horribly – and read myself to sleep.

The very next evening, in my coral velvet and pearls and looking, I imagine, all the more fetching for the violet shadows with which my restless night had left me, I found myself at dinner sitting beside one of those fearfully reserved Scotchmen one tended to meet and upon asking him the usual bright questions I found that he was from Perthshire. My eyes must have blanked for he went on to explain that Perthshire was ‘just across the Forth from Edinburgh’. Well! One can only assume that reading the stuff while dropping off engraved it upon my brain like the grooves on a gramophone record, because out it all poured: weights of girders, numbers of labourers, depth of foundations… the lot.

So I can see why this dour individual, this stern devotee of solid building and proper maintenance, this Hugh Gilver as he turned out to be, must have thought he had just met the first serious-minded woman of his life. Add to this the twinkling and simpering which had been pounded into us at finishing school until it was second nature and one can almost forgive his assuming that I had taken to him as much as he to me. Thus, you see, I can blame the Forth Bridge almost entirely for my finding myself now, Mrs Hugh Gilver, listener to plans of drain improvements, helpmeet in projects of pond construction, and mother to two little chips off the same dour Scottish block.

That was all a long way under the bridge now, if I may be pardoned the pun, as were we: I heard a new grinding note in the ferryboat’s engine and recollected myself just in time to be drenched in the backwash as the Bonnie Dundee drew into the pier. Shaking off the worst from my hat and hair – why cannot people shake themselves as efficiently as dogs? – I stepped up into my motor car and slammed the door. This was why I was on the ferry in the first place, this gleaming little Morris Cowley of mine, just six months old and still so much my pride and joy that I could not bear to leave it behind, and as I waited for the foot passengers to blunder off towards restorative cups of tea at the Hawes Inn, I breathed hard on the glass of the dials and rubbed them with my glove. Eventually, one of the ferrymen came to crank the starter and I roared away straight off the landing planks and up the Hawes Brae to the station where my maid, come on the train with my luggage, would be waiting.

It had hardly seemed like summer on our choppy crossing but now under the beech trees lining the road it was as warm and as richly, rankly green as August could be and Grant, sitting on my dressing case under the station canopy at the top of the ramp, clutching a pair of hatboxes, looked rather creased and cross in the heat, like a pink-faced toddler after an unsatisfactory nap. I wheeled around in the parking yard and drove backwards up the slope towards her – the ramp is terrifically steep – whereupon she stepped into the passenger side and slammed the door leaving the porter and me to deal with the small bags and arrange the delivery of the larger items in the dog-cart.

Even Grant at her most truculent, however, could not do much to dent my mood. I was on my way to visit Frederica de Cassilis, who as Frederica Pettit twenty years before had been my dearest friend in the world after Daisy; had in fact been Daisy’s and my chief interest whilst at finishing school in Paris – a cross between a pet and a court jester, whom we enjoyed tremendously while always believing we might tame her in the end.

After school I had thought Frederica to be lost for ever since she had contracted a dazzling marriage and disappeared into a stratum of New York society where I could not hope to follow her, but then finding herself widowed at a young age she had extricated herself from her New York connections most adroitly, remarried within a year and come with her new husband to South Queensferry, on the banks of the Forth. Here Daisy and I were now converging upon her for a visit which promised to be the most fun we had shared since we slipped our chaperone in the Louvre and went off in search of classical statuary to complete our education.

Cassilis, where Frederica and the new husband were ensconced, is one of four estates with various claims to grandeur gathered around the little Burgh of South Queensferry. Hopetoun away to the west is indisputably the most splendid – a Georgian mansion in which all three Adamses had a hand, and the seat of a marquis to boot. But then Dalmeny House squaring up to Hopetoun from the east, although it is Tudor Gothic and shelters mere earls, has a prime minister to its name, a castle in its grounds and a very pretty estate village. Dundas Castle to the south has been there since the Conqueror landed and is built on lands gifted by King David himself, all of which counts for a lot. Besides, it would have housed earls of its own had one of the Jameses not most inconsiderately died before sealing the warrant. On the other hand there is a fearful Victorian façade and the family who lives there now, whilst being perfectly respectable, are a mere Lord and Lady and no connection to the ancient Dundases at all.

When set against all of this, Cassilis was very small beer indeed, or so Frederica’s letter led Daisy and me to believe; neither of us knew the place. To be sure her Mr de Cassilis was a Mr de Cassilis of Cassilis which is always nice – I rather like being Mrs Gilver of Gilverton if it comes to that, although I would not call myself a snob in most ways – but he was a Mr de Cassilis, and a cousin come back to the old place from across the Atlantic what is more, and although Frederica reported that Cassilis Castle was a real castle and not just a house with a silly name and small windows, the estate itself she said was tiny. We had been amused and puzzled, then, to learn that shortly after arriving Frederica had found herself suddenly promoted above all her neighbours into the post of Lady Bountiful for the imminent celebration of the Ferry Fair. How this could have happened in a neighbourhood so heaving with more suitable females was beyond Daisy and me. (The Rosebery noses had to be particularly out of joint, for the family had only just built a splendid new town hall for the village and could reasonably have expected a lifetime of gratitude.) We could only surmise that no one on the committee had got to know Frederica very well yet.

I am far from being an Angel in the Home myself and am capable of mucking things up in ways that most adults of normal intelligence find incomprehensible, but Frederica made me look like an ambassador, his wife and his entire staff of diplomats rolled into one. To take just one example: at her first big party in New York where a great many of her guests were members of her husband’s family, that is to say Felsteins, and most of the others were friends of theirs – various Levys, Cohens and the like – Frederica had taken it upon herself to serve a roast suckling pig as the centrepiece of the dinner. One would have come a lot further than Perth to Queensferry, then, to see what she would make of presiding over the Ferry Fair. However, one thing that must be said of Frederica is that she knows her limitations and when she invited us it was made very clear that we were there to help, not just to watch and giggle. There is a phrase in the Army, I believe – to be booted upstairs – meaning to be promoted far enough beyond one’s competence to prevent one doing any actual damage and Frederica, by drafting in Daisy and me, had in effect booted herself upstairs. We were to make the speeches, fire the starting pistols and judge the competitions, leaving her to smile and look decorative, which task – unless the years had been very unkind to her – she would have no trouble carrying off at all.

Daisy and I converged indeed, almost drove into one another at the Cassilis gate lodge in fact, and she hopped out of her motor car and into mine to trundle up the drive together.

‘Hello, darling,’ she cooed. ‘Hello, Grant. Heavenly shade of lilac, Dandy.’ I blinked. My frock was white.

‘The stockings, I mean,’ Daisy went on.

‘Ah, well, yes. Thank you,’ I said. The stockings were white too, but white over sunburn is a peculiar colour; I had spent the previous day with the children to stop them whining about being left behind now and had lain a little too long on the riverbank in my bathing dress.

We bumped over a humpbacked bridge spanning a little burn, rounded a copse and then Cassilis Castle lay before us.

‘Good God,’ said Daisy. ‘It’s a castle. I mean, it’s a castle.’

I knew exactly what she was getting at. Frederica had told us it was a castle, and so we should have been surprised to see Tudor beams and horsehair plaster, but even so. What faced us now was a tower six, possibly seven, storeys high and about fifty feet square, built out of huge craggy lumps of grey stone. It sat plonked on top of a steep, grassy hill, which was utterly unadorned by trees or even the shrubs and flowers one might look for – positioned, that is, the way that castles used to be when their occupants needed a good view of approaching marauders and a clear run to pour their boiling pitch down. There was no obvious door, nor any windows on this side at least, just arrow slits and what looked suspiciously like the outlets for slop channels. We might have concluded then that this was an earlier version, kept as a garden ornament, and that the real Cassilis Castle lay somewhere beyond, but as we drew nearer the signs were against it: there was bright new timber on the roof behind the crenellations and new glass winked in the arrow slits and pistol crosses. Furthermore, on top of the roof I could see coloured cloth billowing halfheartedly in the warm air and a chance puff of stronger wind showed me just for a second a lion rampant, a Union Jack and a Stars and Stripes. No doubt about it, then, we had arrived.

I rounded the bottom of the hill and saw that on this side a track just wide enough for the motor car zigzagged up to the castle walls. Cheeringly, there were a few windows round here as well and a door, massive and heavily studded with black iron rivets, through which Frederica now burst to stand hopping up and down and waving both hands like a jazz dancer as we approached. Daisy and I stepped down, although Grant remained in her seat with her mouth hanging open.

Frederica beamed and hunched her shoulders at us in the way she always did when planning some devilment or other and immediately, as though a spell had been cast, the years fell away.

‘Buttercup!’ Daisy and I shrieked in chorus and threw our arms around her.

‘No!’ Frederica shrieked back. ‘Absolutely not. If Cad hears you he will never call me Freddy again. Besides, it’s much too accurate these days, don’t you think?’ She patted her hips and shook her curls and, granted, both hips and curls were very buttery indeed and disconcerting when attached to the face and voice of the thin, brown-haired, most unbuttercuplike Buttercup of my memory.

‘Yes, what about your hair?’ said Daisy. ‘A touch of the Oscar Wildes, was it?’

Buttercup chortled. One could always say anything to her and never cause offence.

‘No, my darling. Not “gold from grief”, I’ve had it this colour for years. It’s called April Sunrise – isn’t that killing? But thank the Lord it was gold already when the mourning came along, otherwise – shriek! Edith Sitwell. I’ve brought cases of it with me, if you’re interested.’

She cast piercing looks at my dark head and craned to see under Daisy’s hat but made no actual offer, saying only: ‘Hmm. We’ll talk later.’ Daisy and I grimaced at each other.

‘Now, come in and see the castle,’ said Buttercup. ‘You won’t believe it.’

‘I don’t already,’ said Daisy, but Buttercup had turned away and did not hear her.

Inside the massive door, a narrow stone passageway with a rounded ceiling and an uneven floor led to the corner of the tower and a spiral staircase. Up this we trooped, with Buttercup urging us to caution saying that one got used to the bevelled steps in the end but it took a day or two.

‘That’s the Great Hall,’ she said as we reached the next level, ‘but look here first.’ We stopped in the doorway to the Hall and peered down at the floor of the passage, finding under our feet an iron grille which showed us to be standing just above the front door.

‘It’s a murder hole,’ said Buttercup. ‘You hide up here with your bow and arrow and if the guests get past the doorman but they still look unappealing – peeyong! Dead.’

‘Handy,’ I said and walked into the Great Hall.

Great was the word. I could have driven my motor car into either of the two fireplaces and I was sure that two were needed since the room seemed so huge I could hardly believe the outside of the tower contained it. Perhaps though it was just the cold, our echoing footsteps and the fact that it was almost totally empty that made it appear so cavernous. For decoration there was only a display of swords laid out in a complicated pattern like a sunburst on one end wall and the furniture consisted of the kind of table, thirty feet long or so, in rough-hewn wood polished only by the greasy hands of centuries, that one imagines Henry VIII dining at and then sliding underneath. I wondered just how far Buttercup might be taking all of this, and how I should be able to face Grant after gnawing turkey legs and heaving flagons on to my shoulders in my new beaded chiffon.

‘The chairs aren’t here yet,’ said Buttercup, needlessly. ‘Nor the tapestries to help with the draughts. And then upstairs again…’ She plunged off towards the spiral staircase and we followed.

Upstairs again was a little better. A drawing room and a library, each with a window, no swords and some furniture, although still with stone floors and gargantuan fireplaces, and by the time we went up yet further to the bedrooms it was beginning to look almost cosy, at least one could imagine that a caveman would think it was the Ritz and I had given up planning to offer my excuses and leave.

‘There are only six bedrooms,’ said Buttercup, ‘but look how clever we’ve been. The walls are so thick and there are these little chambers simply all over the place, sleeping chambers I think, or private closets or whatever, but…’ She threw open a door in what was to be my bedroom to reveal a dressing room just big enough for a single bed and a tiny wardrobe. An arrow slit above the bed gave a wink of light. Just for a moment I wished Hugh were there so I could see his face.

‘And this one,’ said Buttercup, springing over to the far side of the room and flinging open another door, ‘is the dearest little bathroom.’ One could only imagine what an architectural historian would make of the gleaming chrome pipes and eau-de-nil bath shaped like a shell bolted on to the stone walls, but my spirits lifted no end. Of course Buttercup could not have spent fifteen years with American plumbing and then come back to dry closets and stone chutes to the garden. Perhaps I would be all right after all.

‘There’s just one last thing I have to show you,’ said Buttercup. ‘All the way to the bottom now.’ She sped off back down the staircase and Daisy and I descended gingerly after her, clutching the iron rail and feeling the way with our stockinged toes, our shoes in our hands.

‘The kitchen!’ Buttercup announced, entering a room right opposite the front door. It was a vaulted cavern as big as the hall above and fifteen feet high, with not a single window, not even an arrow slit, and a floor crisscrossed with channels in the stone. At the far end a blue and white enamel stove lit by electric lamps stood against the wall beside an ancient bread oven big enough for all three of us to have sat in. Opposite were a pair of gleaming white china sinks and at one of these a cook was working with her back to us, her shoulders eloquent with suppressed fury.

‘Don’t mind us, Mrs Murdoch,’ sang Buttercup, waving us over to the corner. ‘Now, what about this?’ We were looking through another grille in the floor to a stone-walled chamber, perfectly round and so deep we could barely make out the bottom.

‘An oubliette!’ Buttercup cried, eyes dancing. ‘Well, a prison pit, anyway. Can you imagine anything more romantic! Just think. They would throw the poor unfortunates down there and leave them to die. And the smells of the kitchen would waft down through the grille and torture them while they starved. Only we can’t think what to do with it, can we, Mrs Murdoch?’

The cook turned and gave her A Look but said nothing.

‘We had thought it would make a larder,’ Buttercup went on, ‘but we’d have to put in a ladder and Mrs Murdoch doesn’t fancy it. And anyway, there are so many other wall chambers for larders and suchlike we hardly need it.’

‘Well, no,’ I said. ‘And do you really think you’d want to keep your food there, darling? I mean, if people died in it.’

Mrs Murdoch turned on her way from the sink to the stove and keened towards me yearningly, but Buttercup only laughed.

‘Oh, we don’t worry about all that, Dandy darling. It was years ago. They’d be dead now, anyway.’

I suppose this made some kind of sense.

‘So I think we’ll just bash through from downstairs and use it as a cupboard,’ Buttercup said, sounding regretful.

‘Downstairs?’ said Daisy.

‘The dungeons,’ said Buttercup. Then: ‘Damn! The basement, I mean. We haven’t quite given up on the idea of persuading the servants to take up residence down there, but Cad reckons that calling it the dungeons doesn’t help.’

Mrs Murdoch threw a tray of scones into the stove and slammed the door with a clang.

‘Where are they now, then?’ said Daisy through a mouthful of warm scone, half an hour later. ‘The servants, I mean.’

‘They’re in the old house,’ said Buttercup. ‘I mean the new house. The house, you know. Where we were until the castle was ready.’

‘There’s a house?’ Daisy asked, piningly, and I had to bite my cheeks not to giggle, but Buttercup did not see me through the gloom.

‘Oh yes,’ said Buttercup. ‘A boring Georgian square. The de Cassilis family hadn’t lived in the castle for simply aeons until Cad came back. Aren’t people dull? And the servants are all still there. I keep telling them how much easier it would be for them to sleep here in the dun-… basement. We’ve fitted it up beautifully, you’ve no idea. But if they’re silly enough to want to tramp half a mile through the park every night and morning good luck to them. They’ll come around, I rather think, in the winter.’

‘But what makes you imagine they’ll stay?’ I said. ‘Servants these days just don’t stay unless you treat them like the gods of Egypt.’

‘Oh, I know,’ said Buttercup. ‘We’re on the second lot of maids already. Third, maybe. And I’m in a super-inflationary wages war with Mrs Murdoch. She’s up to three hundred at the last count.’

‘Well, she’s worth it,’ said Daisy. ‘These scones are divine. So I’d shut up about the larder if I were you.’

Buttercup chuckled, then cocked an ear.

‘Oh goody,’ she said. ‘Here’s Cad. Now drink him in and tell me what you think later.’

Cadwallader de Cassilis appeared in the doorway and strolled towards us. At once I had the fanciful notion that here was why Buttercup seemed not to notice the Stygian gloom of the castle, for he exuded light. From the top of his head, where his hair was polished and golden – real gold too, I rather thought, not April Sunrise – to the tips of his toes, in appalling patent co-respondent brogues, he shone. Part of it was the spanking new cricket jersey and cream bags – billowing acres of these – but some of it was the bursting, pulsing good health of his eyes and cheeks and teeth, the sheer Americanness of him altogether. Although one knew he was Scottish by ancestry, at least two generations’ worth of buffalo steaks, corncobs and milk must have gone to produce what stood before us now.

‘Sweetheart,’ he cried, pronouncing it swee-durrrt. ‘You should have called me. I was only up on the roof with Dudgeon. Welcome to Cassilis, girls. What do you think of the pile?’ He was fearfully American, every word sounding as though he were trying to speak whilst gurgling treacle, but so affable that I took to him at once.

He threw himself into a chair and rubbed one of its arms with his jersey sleeve. ‘What do you think of the library? Have we got it off?’

‘Oh, Cad,’ said Buttercup, blushing a little but beaming too. ‘You can’t say it like that, darling, really.’

Thank goodness for her intervention. The library, with its buttoned leather, portraits and brass reading-lamps, looked like the perfect stage-set of a library, just as Cadwallader’s jersey and bags looked like the perfect costume for the owner of it, but one could hardly tell him.

‘It’s perfect,’ said Daisy, and I caught her eye and smiled.

‘It’s good of you girls to come over and help Freddy out,’ said Cadwallader, taking his teacup from Buttercup and rewarding her with a beaming smile of his own. ‘Has she filled you in on the run-down?’

‘Not a word,’ I said. ‘What are our duties, But-… darling? What exactly does this Ferry Fair of yours entail?’

‘Oh, this and that,’ said Buttercup. ‘The usual, I expect. Don’t you have fetes in Perthshire, Dandy?’ I shook my head. ‘Odd,’ Buttercup went on. ‘I remember your mother fagging away at it no end that summer I stayed with you after Paris. D’you remember? I wanted to tell fortunes and she wouldn’t let me, so I put red and white mushrooms in the tea-tent jam.’

‘Buttercup!’ said Daisy. Cad frowned in understandable puzzlement at this remark.

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ said Buttercup. ‘Boring old Dandy made me tell and I got sent home in disgrace. But I must say I thought you two would be old hands at it by now. What about you, Daisy?’

Daisy shook her head.

‘The Scots don’t go in much for fetes,’ she said. ‘It’s one of the things that makes being married to a Scotchman bearable. No Punch and Judy to speak of either, thank God. And don’t take offence, Cadwallader, we don’t count you.’

‘You don’t count me? As a Scotchman, you mean?’

‘Well, no,’ I said. ‘I mean, where will you be on Saturday, for instance?’

‘At the Ferry Fair,’ said Cad. ‘Saturday is the day of revelry itself.’

‘Quite,’ I said. ‘Saturday the twelfth of August. And you’ll be at the village jamboree.’

‘Oh, I see!’ said Buttercup. ‘Yes, I see.’

‘Well, I wish you’d tell me,’ said Cadwallader, good-naturedly.

‘The twelfth of August?’ said Daisy. ‘The glorious twelfth?’

Cadwallader shook his head and raised his eyebrows at her.

‘Grouse,’ I said, taking pity on him at last.

‘Oh yes,’ he said, slapping his leg. ‘I did know. I just forgot.’ Which was rather the point.

‘That’s why you two are here without the men, isn’t it?’ said Cadwallader. ‘Silas and – uh?’

‘Hugh,’ said Buttercup after a difficult moment.

‘Hugh, right,’ said Cadwallader. ‘Yes, I suppose the timing of the Fair is awkward in some respects. That’s probably why it’s ended up being run by that bunch of -’

‘Cad,’ said Buttercup, placidly enough but with a note. ‘New neighbours, darling, we should give them a chance.’

‘Do go on now though,’ said Daisy. ‘Since none of them is around to hear you.’

‘Well, I don’t pretend to understand what the problem is,’ said Cadwallader. ‘Too many cooks is one thing, but matters are… what would you say, Freddy? Tense? Fraught?’

‘Nonsense,’ said Buttercup. ‘It’s nothing. Lightning quick, darling,’ she added as Cadwallader reached forward for more cake. ‘Cocktails, remember.’

‘What’s nothing?’ I said.

‘The Ferry Fair,’ said Cadwallader, after washing down his cake with a gulp of tea and looking at his watch, ‘is the typical Scottish fair in most respects. I’ve been reading up on it, you know. It was a hiring fair to begin with, and now it’s a good wholesome frolic in the sunshine. Sure, there’s drinking and there are showmen and where there are showmen there are girls to flirt with them, but it’s hardly a hootenanny.’

Daisy and I tried to look as though we knew what a hootenanny might be, and were fashionably unshocked by the thought of one.

‘There are games and races, fancy dress competitions, a children’s picnic, so far so dull, right? But also there’s the Burry Man.’

‘The…?’ said Daisy, blaming his accent I think.

‘Wait, I’ve heard of the Burry Man,’ I said.

‘A man wearing a suit of burrs,’ said Buttercup. ‘You know, little fluffy things off burdock plants.’

‘Hardly fluffy,’ said Daisy. ‘Torture I’d have thought. I fell off into some once, eventing.’

‘Yes, I remember now,’ I said. ‘He used to walk the town.’

‘Thousands of years of tradition. And they think we should just sweep it all away,’ said Cadwallader.

‘Good Lord,’ I said. ‘You don’t mean to say he still does it?’

‘Every year,’ said Buttercup. ‘The day before the Ferry Fair. Tomorrow.’

‘Why?’ said Daisy.

‘Warding off evil spirits, wasn’t it?’ I said. ‘Or bringing fertility? Something like that, anyway.’

‘Yes indeed,’ said Cadwallader, rather grim all of a sudden. ‘It’s the something like that that’s the problem. To listen to the Parish minister – what’s his name, Freddy? – you’d think the guy was used to summon the devil. And then the Presbyterian minister is caught between wanting to find fault with the Parish minister and not wanting to look like a heathen in front of him, but really he’s more concerned with all the drinking and fornication.’

‘The drinking which does go on and the fornication he imagines must go on,’ supplied Buttercup.

‘So Madam Marchioness decides to try to bring it all into line with a pageant celebrating St Margaret – who was the Queen, you know, who took the ferry at Queensferry – but of course St Margaret was a Roman Catholic, so the Parish and the Presbies are down on that like a ton of bricks, which sends the priest off into a huff, even though he couldn’t care less about the Burry Man or the drinking.’

‘Cad, you make it all sound so torrid,’ said Buttercup. ‘Don’t listen to him, darlings.’

‘So where we are now is that unless the committee either bans the Burry Man, gets up a pageant or hands out Temperance leaflets with every picnic, at least one of the ladies who usually does the honours is going to stay home and sulk.’ He paused. ‘Enter Freddy – which was the Provost’s idea. Provost Meiklejohn is an excellent fellow, as you’ll see when you meet him tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’ said Buttercup, looking uncomfortable.

‘So you’re oil on troubled waters, darling?’ I said. ‘That’s a new look for you.’

‘It’s all nonsense,’ said Buttercup. ‘And you’re about to see that for yourselves. Now run along all of you and change for cocktails. Quick, quick, because they’re coming at six.’

‘Who’s coming at six?’ said Cadwallader, standing over Buttercup, hardly threatening really but tall and broad enough to be classed as looming.

‘Friends and neighbours,’ said Buttercup, pushing out her bottom lip. ‘Lady Stewart Clark from Dundas, and Lady Dalmeny, and possibly the Marchioness although she might be away.’

‘They’ve agreed to meet here?’ said Cad. ‘But they’re at daggers drawn.’

‘Well, I may not quite have said to each that the others are coming but it’ll be fine. Anyway, there’s them and lots of other ladies from the town and Mr Dowd and Mr McAndrew, the ministers – although I haven’t told them it’s cocktails, obviously. And Father Whatsisname, who didn’t seem to mind the cocktails a bit. And Provost Meiklejohn, darling, whom you yourself are so keen on. And I’m sure once they’ve all had a little sip of something delicious and a jolly good chat everything will be as right as rain.’ Cad shook his head, speechless, and I could not help thinking of the roast suckling pig.

Poor Buttercup. Cocktails were served in the Great Hall, footsteps clanging on the stone floor, swords glinting and tiny summer fires smouldering miserably in the cavernous fireplaces, and jollity was not the party’s most powerful note. Daisy and I had been helpless with giggles while dressing, lying on Daisy’s bed whooping and kicking our legs, but even we gulped and went quiet as we entered.

They had all got there before us and we had missed their names being announced so, although Buttercup flapped her hand at people and murmured Lady This and Mrs That – really her parents might quite reasonably have asked our finishing school for a refund – I never did get them straightened out. Besides, they had brought assorted daughters and chums so there were hordes of them in total. And the three men in dog collars, who added a surreal note, were no easier to distinguish. One would think that a Free Presbyterian, a Plain Old Presbyterian and a Catholic Priest would appear respectively as the Grim Reaper, more or less a vicar, and either a fat little man with a hip flask or a dashing prince in something purple, but here were three men with grey suits and pursed mouths and although one of them must be drinking lemonade to the other two’s martinis they were all drinking them out of cocktail glasses and with identical expressions of distaste.

I joined a group, taking a huge slurp from my own glass – delicious! – and began to listen. I imagine that either they thought I was one of the Dundas or Dalmeny ladies or they simply did not care, for they made no effort to tone their opinions down.

‘But it’s unchristian, my dear lady,’ said one of the ministers or the priest.

‘It’s pre-Christian,’ said a snooty-looking lady in a red dress.

‘Well, then,’ said another. There were puzzled looks all round. ‘I mean to say,’ she went on. ‘So is Mrs de Cassilis.’

‘What on earth do you mean?’ I said.

‘My dear, haven’t you heard? She’s a’ – whisper – ‘Hebrew.’

‘A Hebrew?’ I echoed. ‘She’s from Hampshire. Oh, I see what you mean. No, no, no. That was her husband.’

‘Really?’ said the snooty lady turning to look at Cadwallader with deep interest. A maid had just given him a whispered message and as he swept out of the Hall to go and deal with it, he looked simply too Viking for words.

‘Not Cadwallader!’ I said, unable not to laugh at the idea. ‘I mean her first husband.’

‘First!’ spluttered the minister, possibly the priest, and took a restoring swallow from his glass.

‘A re-enactment of the pilgrimage would shift the whole thing on to a higher plane,’ said a young lady to my left. At the word ‘pilgrimage’, the minister – probably not the priest? – spluttered again and I took the opportunity of the hiatus while he was being banged on the back to detach myself and join another group.

‘Well, she says she’s a widow,’ someone was saying in poisonous tones, but she broke off upon seeing me. Clearly this one knew who I was. ‘My dear lady,’ she went on, ‘if this unpleasant episode goes ahead tomorrow after all, you’ll be able to see for yourself. It terrifies the children for one thing.’

‘Some of them,’ put in a gentle-sounding man in a pronounced Scottish rumble. This must be the Provost.

‘And those it doesn’t terrify are whipped up into a very unhealthy excitement by the whole proceeding.’

‘And the last thing we need,’ said a stout lady with a surprisingly squeaky little voice, ‘is to have the children as high as kites while their parents are too intoxicated to discipline them, wouldn’t you agree?’ She turned on me and caught me unawares.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ve never seen it of course, but I believe there are games, aren’t there? Races and suchlike? And nothing works off excitement like running about in the fresh air, or so we were brought up to believe. I daresay it’s a fearfully old-fashioned idea these days.’

‘Precisely!’ said a tall man with an earnest face, marking his words with his glass and slopping a little. ‘Fresh air and healthful exercise.’ He looked around the gloom of the Great Hall as if ready to knock through a french window as he spoke. ‘The trouble with this district goes far deeper than the Burry Man once a year.’

One of the ladies could be seen to bristle and she made a crackling sound as she did so, telling me that although her cocktail dress was bang up to the minute her undergarments were still in the Edwardian era.

‘What do you mean?’ she said.

‘Ghosts and monsters, lucky charms and who knows what superstitious nonsense,’ the tall man said.

‘Perfectly harmless fun,’ squeaked the stout lady. ‘No more to do with ghosts and monsters than dancing round the maypole or bobbing for apples. Perhaps when you have been in the district a little longer, Mr Turnbull…’ This quelled him. He smiled stiffly and walked off.

‘I had heard as much,’ said the crackling lady to his departing back. ‘Very peculiar ideas, I heard.’

‘And no reluctance to share them,’ said another.

I could not hear what was being said in all the other groups of people around the room but from the general tune of the talk – gossipy swoops over a deep hostile mutter – I saw that Buttercup’s cocktail party was going exactly as swimmingly as Daisy and I had predicted, so it was with some relief that I perceived Cadwallader beckoning to me conspiratorially from the half-open door.

He drew me out and shut the door softly behind us.

‘Come with me, Dandy,’ he said. ‘The plot thickens.’ He made towards the staircase and began to ascend. ‘I have a visitor,’ he went on as we felt our way up the worn stone treads to the drawing-room floor. ‘The Burry Man. And there’s something up that he won’t tell me but I’m hoping he’ll tell you.’

‘What about Buttercup?’ I said, loath to be drawn any further into the squabble.

‘What about what?’ said Cadwallader, but we had arrived at the library door and he did not pursue it.

I was half expecting a little green man covered in burdock seeds, I suppose, for it was a slight disappointment and relief to see standing in the middle of the rug, twisting his hat in large red hands, what looked like a perfectly ordinary farm-worker of about fifty, still in his breeches and collarless shirt although with his hair slicked down for this visit to the Big House.

‘Dandy, this is Robert Dudgeon. Carpenter and Burry Man. Robert: Mrs Gilver has come to help Mrs de Cassilis with the Fair and she’s very much looking forward to seeing you tomorrow.’

Mr Dudgeon touched his forehead but said nothing.

‘So,’ said Cadwallader in a hearty patronizing voice. ‘You’re not really going to let Mrs Gilver down, are you? Not to mention the rest of us?’

Mr Dudgeon shifted his weight awkwardly from foot to foot. He was in his stocking soles, presumably having left his workboots at the door on his way in, and I felt a stab of pity, for his obvious discomfiture could only be deepened by having to hold this interview with no shoes on.

‘I was so surprised when Mr de Cassilis told me the Burry Man still went on, Mr Dudgeon,’ I said. ‘I can’t wait to see it.’

‘Well now there, madam,’ said Robert Dudgeon. ‘I’m sorry about that then, but I’ve just been telling Mr de Cassilis here I can’t do it. It’s a shame, but there it is.’

‘Yes, but why?’ said Cadwallader, clearly very exasperated.

‘I can’t tell you that, I’m afraid, sir. You’ll just have to take my word for it there.’

‘Now look, Dudgeon,’ said Cadwallader with a new note in his voice. ‘Obviously someone’s got to you’ – Mr Dudgeon’s head jerked up – ‘and I want to know who it is and what he said and then I’ll get to him.’

Robert Dudgeon stared at him, with his mouth stuck out in an obstinate purse making his large moustaches bristle.

‘But you’re being ridiculous,’ said Cadwallader. ‘What has he said? Is it Rev. Dowd? Is it the whisky? Could you do it without the whisky? Is it Rev. McAndrew? Has he said that you’ll bring down the wrath of God?’

‘It would be a wee bit late to be worrying about that now, sir,’ said Mr Dudgeon. ‘I’ve been the Burry Man for twenty-five year.’

‘Well, exactly!’ said Cadwallader. ‘Twenty-five years. Tradition. Not to mention the thousands of years of tradition before that.’

‘Don’t you think I know that? Sir,’ said Mr Dudgeon, glaring at Cadwallader. ‘Why do you think I’ve done it year in year out? It’s not easy.’

‘I’m well aware of that, Dudgeon,’ said Cadwallader. ‘And did I not say that I’d give you Monday off as a holiday? As well as Friday. And Saturday for the Fair. On top of last Monday.’

‘Last Monday was the August Bank, though,’ I said gently. ‘One can’t take credit for that.’

‘Bank holidays!’ said Cadwallader. ‘They’re a new one on me, I must say. I thought the servants were having me on. And there are dozens. All paid.’

‘A handful,’ I said. ‘And, speaking of pay, Mr Dudgeon, what about the Burry Man? Do they pay you for that?’ I am not the subtlest woman ever born and this was blunt even for me, only I was thinking that we might be witnessing a stand-off for higher wages and Cad, as an American, might not have been able to read the signs. I mean, an American who wanted more money might simply say in a loud voice: ‘Give me more money, pal!’ but a Scot would rather die.

‘Not to speak of, madam,’ said Mr Dudgeon. ‘It’s not the money.’

‘Although there is money,’ said Cadwallader. ‘And I wouldn’t have thought you could just thumb your nose at it, Robert. That’s very surprising.’

Mr Dudgeon glared at him again.

‘So how about it?’ said Cadwallader. ‘What would it take?’

Mr Dudgeon did not answer this, but just shook his head and curled his lip rather.

‘Oh yes, I know what you’re thinking. Coming over here, taking over, thinking he can buy anything,’ said Cad.

Mr Dudgeon and I were both squirming now. Someone would have to have a word with Cad about talking to servants.

‘But you mark my words,’ he went on. ‘They’ll find a way to blame me for this. Next year when all those so-called ladies and their tame pastors have stopped playing holier-than-thou and soberer-than-thou all they’ll remember – all they’ll remember – is that the Yank came and a thousand years of history went out the window. You just watch.’

‘Cad,’ I said, seeing that he was working himself into a temper, but he interrupted me.

‘And I’d like to know, Robert – as well as who’s threatening you – just exactly what they’re threatening you with. I mean you’re my estate carpenter and you live in one of my cottages, so who else can threaten you?’

‘Cad,’ I said again.

‘No, God damn it,’ said Cadwallader. ‘That’s a very good point. Robert, I am ordering you to do the Burry Man routine tomorrow, as your employer and as your landlord. Do I have to make it any plainer than that?’

‘Cadwallader!’ I said. ‘Can you give Mr Dudgeon and me a few minutes?’ Cad seemed more than ready to refuse, even though this was exactly why he had roped me in, but he caught hold of himself in time and, with a last disgusted look at Robert Dudgeon, he left.

‘Now then,’ I said. I gestured to a chair and Dudgeon, after hesitating a moment, sat down stiffly and rested his rough, red fists on his knees. ‘I am quite sure Mr de Cassilis didn’t mean a word of that, and of course if you are adamant then you must have very good reasons, but let’s see if we can work something out.’ Robert Dudgeon looked at me stonily but seemed ready to listen. I thought for a moment or two.

‘Surely someone else in the village could step in,’ I said at last.

‘It’s hard work, madam, it takes a load of stamina and willpower to keep going all the day long. It would be a very bad thing if someone tried and failed. A very bad thing.’

‘You mean bad luck?’

‘It doesn’t bear thinking about,’ said Mr Dudgeon, and shuddered.

‘But isn’t it almost as bad if no one does it at all?’ I said. Perhaps if I kept him focused on this aspect he would come round of his own accord. His face showed me that he was struggling, but he won himself over in the end.

‘It’s worse. It’s the blackest bad luck you could have, but it can’t be helped.’

‘And can’t you think of someone, anyone, who feels as strongly as you do about it? Who would just make himself find the stamina no matter what? Do you pass it down the generations? Do you have a boy you could play the heavy father with?’ His face was clouding as I spoke, and I should have known better. One should always know better now, since the war, than gaily to ask a man of fifty if he has sons.

‘He didn’t come home, madam,’ said Mr Dudgeon and we sat a while in silence.

‘I say, what about Mr de Cassilis!’ I was half joking and was delighted to get a smile out of Mr Dudgeon in spite of himself. ‘He seems keen enough, judging by what we just saw, doesn’t he? And he certainly has a vested interest.’ The more I thought about this, the more the idea grew on me. ‘There might be a bit of talk about an incomer taking over,’ I said. ‘But if we can swear the inner circle to secrecy, once the burry suit is on, it will be too late for anyone to do a thing about it. And no one would go as far as to rip it off again, now would they?’

He was still shaking his head but at least he seemed to be thinking, his eyes darting back and forth over the pattern in the rug.

‘Are you having an idea?’ I asked, eagerly. ‘Is there someone?’

‘Eh? Oh no, there’s no one I can think of, madam. But… mebbes it’ll be all right after all.’ He was looking at me without seeing me, plotting furiously at something or other.

‘You can do it?’ I asked. He chewed his lip for a bit before answering.

‘I think so,’ he said. ‘Aye, I can. I’m sure I can, madam, yes.’

We chatted on for a bit about this and that, his work on the castle roof, the determination of Cad and Buttercup to live here. I had not been used to think of myself as handling servants well – my own run rings around me – but after all, I had been mistress of my house for over fifteen years now and I must be almost exactly what Mr Dudgeon was used to, compared with Cadwallader at least.

So I fairly bounced downstairs to the Great Hall ten minutes later. On entering it, I found the guests departed and Cad, Daisy and Buttercup sitting on the table, for want of anywhere else to rest themselves, looking dejected.

‘Was any blood shed?’ I asked. ‘I heard no klaxons.’

‘All very well for you,’ said Daisy. ‘You escaped. I’ve had “fresh air and exercise” in one ear and “the demon drink” in the other for a solid half-hour, Dan.’

‘So much for your sip of something delicious, darling,’ I said to Buttercup. ‘Expect to be damned in every pulpit come Sunday.’

‘Yes,’ said Buttercup. ‘But even the ones who drink seem to disapprove of me anyway. Father Whatsisname was fearfully sour.’

‘They think you’re divorced,’ I told her.

‘They’re a little premature,’ said Cadwallader, but at Buttercup’s pout, he shoved her with his elbow and said: ‘I’m only joking, Droopy,’ and Buttercup cheered up and beamed.

I took pity on them at last and told my news.

‘Miracle worker!’ said Buttercup. ‘What did you say to him?’

‘Oh, I haven’t told you about Dandy’s new-found talent for… well, everything, have I?’ said Daisy.

‘I got chummy and then appealed to his pride,’ I said. ‘And I’ve promised him a ten-pound tip.’ I had done no such thing, had only just thought of it there and then, but I felt Cadwallader needed to make some reparation for his outburst.

‘We’ll call it twenty,’ said Cadwallader. ‘Another Manhattan before dinner? I would advise it – Mrs Murdoch is a good plain cook with lots of plain.’

‘Ugh,’ I said, goose pimples rising at the very suggestion. ‘Nothing with whisky for me, darling, please.’

‘All right, then, a Sidecar,’ said Cadwallader. ‘But don’t let them hear you tomorrow, Dandy. About the whisky, I mean. This town runs on the stuff.’