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“Och, aye.” Mrs. Baird waddled along at a brisk pace, asking no quarter from our younger limbs. “Older than anyone knows, Mr. Randall. Even back before the days of the giants.”
“Giants?” I asked.
“Aye. Fio
“Gaelic folktales,” Frank remarked with interest. “Heroes, you know. Probably from Norse roots. There’s a lot of the Norse influence round here, and all the way up the coast to the West. Some of the place names are Norse, you know, not Gaelic at all.”
I rolled my eyes, sensing another outburst, but Mrs. Baird smiled kindly and encouraged him, saying that was true, then, she’d been up to the north, and seen the Two Brothers stone, and that was Norse, wasn’t it?
“The Norsemen came down on that coast hundreds of times between A.D. 500 and 1300 or so,” Frank said, looking dreamily at the horizon, seeing dragon-ships in the wind-swept cloud. “Vikings, you know. And they brought a lot of their own myths along. It’s a good country for myths. Things seem to take root here.”
This I could believe. Twilight was coming on, and so was a storm. In the eerie light beneath the clouds, even the thoroughly modern houses along the road looked as ancient and as sinister as the weathered Pictish stone that stood a hundred feet away, guarding the crossroads it had marked for a thousand years. It seemed a good night to be inside with the shutters fastened.
Rather than staying cozily in Mrs. Baird’s parlor to be entertained by stere-opticon views of Perth Harbor, though, Frank chose to keep his appointment for sherry with Mr. Bainbridge, a solicitor with an interest in local historical records. Bearing in mind my earlier encounter with Mr. Bainbridge, I elected to stay at home with Perth Harbor.
“Try to come back before the storm breaks,” I said, kissing Frank goodbye. “And give my regards to Mr. Bainbridge.”
“Umm, yes. Yes, of course.” Carefully not meeting my eye, Frank shrugged into his overcoat and left, collecting an umbrella from the stand by the door.
I closed the door after him, but left it on the latch so he could get back in. I wandered back toward the parlor, reflecting that Frank would doubtless pretend that he didn’t have a wife – a pretense in which Mr. Bainbridge would cheerfully join. Not that I could blame him, particularly.
At first, everything had gone quite well on our visit to Mr. Bainbridge’s home the afternoon before. I had been demure, genteel, intelligent but self-effacing, well groomed, and quietly dressed – everything the Perfect Don’s Wife should be. Until the tea was served.
I now turned my right hand over, ruefully examining the large blister that ran across the bases of all four fingers. After all, it was not my fault that Mr. Bainbridge, a widower, made do with a cheap tin teapot instead of a proper crockery one. Nor that the solicitor, seeking to be polite, had asked me to pour out. Nor that the potholder he provided had a worn patch that allowed the red-hot handle of the teapot to come into direct contact with my hand when I picked it up.
No, I decided. Dropping the teapot was a perfectly normal reaction. Dropping it into Mr. Bainbridge’s lap was merely an accident of placement; I had to drop it somewhere. It was my exclaiming “Bloody fucking hell!” in a voice that topped Mr. Bainbridge’s heartcry that had made Frank glare at me across the scones.
Once he recovered from the shock, Mr. Bainbridge had been quite gallant, fussing about my hand and ignoring Frank’s attempts to excuse my language on grounds that I had been stationed in a field hospital for the better part of two years. “I’m afraid my wife picked up a number of, er, colorful expressions from the Yanks and such,” Frank offered, with a nervous smile.
“True,” I said, gritting my teeth as I wrapped a water-soaked napkin about my hand. “Men tend to be very ‘colorful’ when you’re picking shrapnel out of them.”
Mr. Bainbridge had tactfully tried to distract the conversation onto neutral historical ground by saying that he had always been interested in the variations of what was considered profane speech through the ages. There was “Gorblimey,” for example, a recent corruption of the oath “God blind me.”
“Yes, of course,” said Frank, gratefully accepting the diversion. “No sugar, thank you, Claire. What about ‘Gadzooks’? The ‘Gad’ part is quite clear, of course, but the ‘zook’…”
“Well, you know,” the solicitor interjected, “I’ve sometimes thought it might be a corruption of an old Scots word, in fact – ‘yeuk.’ Means ‘itch.’ That would make sense, wouldn’t it?”
Frank nodded, letting his unscholarly forelock fall across his forehead. He pushed it back automatically. “Interesting,” he said, “the whole evolution of profanity.”
“Yes, and it’s still going on,” I said, carefully picking up a lump of sugar with the tongs.
“Oh?” said Mr. Bainbridge politely. “Did you encounter some interesting variations during your, er, war experience?”
“Oh, yes,” I said. “My favorite was one I picked up from a Yank. Man named Williamson, from New York, I believe. He said it every time I changed his dressing.”
“What was it?”
“ ‘Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,’ ” I said, and dropped the sugar lump neatly into Frank’s coffee.
After a peaceful and not unpleasant sit with Mrs. Baird, I made my way upstairs, to ready myself before Frank came home. I knew his limit with sherry was two glasses, so I expected him back soon.
The wind was rising, and the very air of the bedroom was prickly with electricity. I drew the brush through my hair, making the curls snap with static and spring into knots and furious tangles. My hair would have to do without its hundred strokes tonight, I decided. I would settle for brushing my teeth, in this sort of weather. Strands of hair adhered stickily to my cheeks, clinging stubbornly as I tried to smooth them back.
No water in the ewer; Frank had used it, tidying himself before setting out for his meeting with Mr. Bainbridge, and I had not bothered to refill it from the lavatory tap. I picked up the bottle of L’Heure Bleu and poured a generous puddle into the palm of my hand. Rubbing my hands briskly together before the scent could evaporate, I smoothed them rapidly through my hair. I poured another dollop onto my hairbrush and swept the curls back behind my ears with it.
Well. That was rather better, I thought, turning my head from side to side to examine the results in the speckled looking glass. The moisture had dissipated the static electricity in my hair, so that it floated in heavy, shining waves about my face. And the evaporating alcohol had left behind a very pleasant scent. Frank would like that, I thought. L’Heure Bleu was his favorite.
There was a sudden flash close at hand, with the crash of thunder following close on its heels, and all the lights went out. Cursing under my breath, I groped in the drawers.
Somewhere I had seen candles and matches; power failure was so frequent an occurrence in the Highlands that candles were a necessary furnishing for all i
Mrs. Baird’s candles were far more utilitarian – plain white plumber’s candles – but there were a lot of them, and three folders of matches as well. I was not inclined to be picky over style at a time like this.
I fitted a candle to the blue ceramic holder on the dressing table by the light of the next flash, then moved about the room, lighting others, ’til the whole room was filled with a soft, wavering radiance. Very romantic, I thought, and with some presence of mind, I pressed down the light switch, so that a sudden return of power shouldn’t ruin the mood at some inopportune moment.
The candles had burned no more than a half-inch when the door opened and Frank blew in. Literally, for the draft that followed him up the stairs extinguished three of the candles.