The center cannot hold, p.1
Greater Sins, page 1
About the Author
Gabrielle Griffiths grew up in Aberdeenshire and now lives in Brighton. She was a Madeleine Milburn Agency mentee in 2021 and is a graduate of the Curtis Brown creative writing course. Her short fiction has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize.
Gabrielle Griffiths
* * *
GREATER SINS
So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
John 8:7
PART ONE
* * *
ROUND WHITSUNTIDE
May 1915
JOHNNY
A toast to himself for getting by unseen. Outside are the folks who’ll want things from him – so first, alone, a drink. Johnny has his ritual: slip a hand round a cool glass, feel the weight as it rises heavenward. Agnes has lit the paraffin lamps despite the bright day and so he holds the dram before the light to admire its syruped beauty. He brings the whisky to his lips and pauses, lets the scent beguile him – peat-sweet, a sigh in the nose. But as Johnny opens his mouth to drink, something disturbs him. A noise slips under the door – a plaintive keening that starts low then swells like the river in spate. It is not a babby’s cry but something wilder, the lavish wail of a woman. Johnny lowers his dram and waits – if there is trouble, it’ll surely come strutting in. The cry rises higher, until the chatter outside ceases and it hovers in the air above the inn then stops, clipped.
‘A sad day for someone,’ Agnes says.
Johnny shrugs. The Cabrach is not a place for great displays of emotion – its people know hardship and they know loss, and it’s expected they won’t fall down weeping about either.
Outside, talk resumes. Johnny begins his routine again: the grasp, the lift, the tilt, then the first mouthful. A sharpness on the tip of the tongue; the land made liquid – the heather and the hay and the cold, clear water, the tang of the midden that gets into everything.
No trouble has found him.
Johnny takes his second sip quickly. A moment, and he will feel it in his shoulders. On the third, he realizes his fist is clenched. He waggles his fingers and tips his head back, a knot cutting into the soft flesh of his throat. He could forgo the neckerchief on such a fine day, but it is how folks know him – today a twist of sanguine. Could just as easily have been violet or ochre or turquoise – Johnny likes the way those words sound, the imagination in them. His kin round here like to tease him about the colours at his throat, but he pays no heed to loons with shirts like sheep, filthier the closer you get to them. He rolls his head, runs the pad of his thumb over the worn-smooth bar and the years of drink embedded there – beer from jubilant tankards, whisky from glasses smashed over wages or women. Johnny could lick it and fall down pished, probably.
Outside, engines start up. Some folks will surely be there more to witness the spectacle of two polished motor cars than to wish Godspeed to their soldiers – little excitement to be had here, the arse-end of nowhere, an hour’s walk between every croft. That, and they’ll be glad of a break from their labours – today, the Cabrach’s pastures will go unsown, the peat half-cut. The cars move off, raking up the track, and must only have got as far as the bridge over the Black Water when the door clatters open. Sunlight sloshes across the floorboards and here they come, proud as provosts and replete with drink. The landlord tops up glasses as they pile in – not his best stuff, mind, but a free dram is always a fine thing.
‘A toast!’ someone cries. ‘A toast to our good men!’
Johnny takes in the lie of the land: a rabble of farm lads, bellies jangling with ale – they’ll want his wit and a song or three. Then the auld men, who’ll settle at the hearth and beckon him with hooked fingers, whispering for ghost stories. The men fill the air with pipe smoke, and Johnny pretends not to notice someone hollering his name. Rab is here, a head above the others, and it pleases Johnny to see a smile on his friend’s face. He rolls his shirtsleeves up and necks his last mouthful.
‘I should have known he’d be here.’ Johnny’s earlobe is pinched hard and he whips round to a faceful of Dougie’s spittle. ‘Where were you this afternoon, then?’
Johnny stays quiet, for that is their game. Jock Campbell is here for a turn too, his neepie head emerging from behind Dougie’s shoulder. ‘I thought he’d be halfway tae Dufftown, off singing for his supper.’
‘I’ll bet he was lying wretched in his bed. Heavy night last night, eh, Johnny?’
Neither accusation is true, but that is not what matters. Johnny reaches out and twists Dougie’s red nose. ‘You ought tae stay out of my business.’ He turns to Jock. ‘And you and all.’
‘It’s nae like you to miss such a thing as this.’
‘But it is like him tae pass the time of day at the inn while the rest of us get on.’
The two farmers splutter their mirth, and Johnny regards them in affectionate irritation – it has all been said before. He lays a hand to Jock’s shoulder. ‘Come on then, tell me what happened.’
They take their usual chairs at the hearth, the cushions so knackered they bear the shape of the farmers’ arses: Jock’s, hefty off his good land and his wife’s good suppers; Dougie’s so narrow his breeks drop off him, for the main reason he opens his lips is to wrap them round a bottle. Sinclair, who scrapes a living from a stony plot of land near the kirk, is here too. He’s allowed himself a sensible wee nip and a few minutes of leisure, though he’ll no doubt rise at four in the morn to atone for it. When he sees the others he folds his paper carefully and sets it down square at the edge of the table. The news is days old, of course, by the time it reaches them, the latest from the front at a remove that makes the war seem to Johnny to be distant, unreal.
‘Right,’ says Jock, settling himself. ‘This is how it went. The men came down and gathered outside – six of them, though you surely know that. The wee one tried the first speech, God love him—’
‘—No, Mysie came darting round with flowers first.’
Sinclair tuts. ‘That woman.’ He eyes Johnny, as though she is somehow his fault. There is quiet for a moment, each man absorbed in discontent – whether they rue the inheritance of Mac’s hundred acres by that woman, or picture with dread the single audacious hair that sprouts from her chin, is not for Johnny to know.
‘Fair enough – white heather for luck, speedwell tae haste the journey.’ Jock holds his hand up, a concession to Mysie’s charms.
Sinclair looks askance. ‘Prayer is what they need. And luckily our good Reverend was there to give it to them.’
Johnny slips a finger behind his neckerchief, loosens it a touch. The air is close, a fug of muck and stodge, the heat of the day in a hundred armpits. ‘That’s all well and good,’ he says, ‘but I want tae know what that scream was about.’ Across the room, Johnny signals to Agnes for an ale. He will give the men a moment to assemble the story.
Jock leans forward. ‘That was William Calder’s wife. Folks were saying their goodbyes and she opened her mouth and howled like a banshee. It was as if someone had stood on a cat’s tail – I’ve never heard the like.’
‘And they say the wealthy have more dignity.’
‘I wouldnae have expected that of her,’ Sinclair says. ‘What I’ve seen of her at kirk – she seems a quiet wee thing.’
‘Och, but would you nae be hysterical if you were her? Her husband off tae fight.’
‘And as good a man as that.’
Johnny hasn’t properly seen or spoken to the man Calder, but understands he comes from some high-born line, lives in the stoic granite house by the Black Water. He owns the inn, but doesn’t lower himself to drink in it. Johnny has peered at him in his motor car, flitting from business in Huntly or Elgin, and has doffed his cap at the roadside, but Mr Calder always speeds by, his face a blur.
‘No one made him go,’ says Dougie.
Jock wags a finger. ‘Soon enough they’ll call up the married men, you mark me on that.’
‘Maybe nae you though, they’ll nae get a helmet the right shape for your head.’ Johnny looks to the others for a laugh, but they’re strangely sober for now. He meets Sinclair’s eye and the farmer takes a tight sip of his bitter.
‘Disnae seem right tae me, married men feeling they need to go. They should round up all the rest of them first.’
Agnes has left Johnny’s drink on the table and he picks up the tankard and studies himself closely in its side. The scuffed surface warps him, makes him dull and edgeless. From the corner of his eye, he sees Sinclair’s pursed lips twitching under his moustache. Can always tell the state of that man by what his mouth’s doing, and it’s seldom smiling.
‘You ought tae join up, Johnny, though I cannae see you in army gear.’ Sinclair eyes Johnny’s neckerchief, his good white shirt, as though he considers it a vanity to try to keep yourself clean in this place of filth and labour. Johnny ignores him; it seems inevitable he will end up knee-deep in mud eventually, whether it be toiling on the land or shuddering in a trench somewhere. This lot talk as though the only place a man might find his honour is in the ground.
‘Aye, no excuse if you’re young and single,’ says Dougie, nudging Johnny’s shin with the toe of his boot.
‘I’m nae so much a whippersnapper as I look, gents.’
‘You’re nae yet thirty.’
‘Nae too far off it. And only a bachelor as long as I want to be.’
Shoving his way through the crowd, Johnny picks over the young faces. He knows most of them. Most have agreed to bide this Whitsuntide term, which is not surprising – with so many off to fight, those who have stayed can name their price. There are a few newcomers, edgy lads who posture half in shadow. They are watching, getting the measure of the rest: who can be trusted, who is a cheat, who can be relied on for a dram and a fine time. They get the odd rogue in the Cabrach – in such a faraway place, either you’re here because you were born so, or because you came to get away.
Alex slings a friendly arm round Johnny’s shoulders. ‘Didnae see you there when they left.’
Johnny gives the lads an angel’s smile. ‘I was otherwise engaged.’ Knowing his audience, he leaves it at that and shoots the new loons a final glance, satisfied that he recognizes none of them.
‘Here,’ Alex calls, ‘anyone see what lassie was missing this afternoon?’
There are sniggers: this is the type of banter they come for.
‘That should be your first story, Johnny.’
‘There’s no story there lads, I’m sorry tae say. I’ve a good one about a horse trader at Tomintoul, but there’s time for all that. I want tae know what happened at the market.’
Lads wet their lips and get the facts straight in their heads, or whichever facts will give the best tale. In the niches and neuks of The Pheasant, gossip tends along common lines – money made and lost, seed scattered where it shouldn’t be. As they ready themselves for their tattling, Johnny turns to Alex. ‘Rab get his second ploughman?’
‘Arrived this morning.’
‘Where is he then?’
‘Back at the farm. Knackered fae the journey, supposedly. Said he was still suffering on account of his send-off the night before.’
Johnny snorts, for a wicked headache and green stomach are no excuse not to show your face at the inn. ‘How far’s he come from, like?’
‘Up Nairn way.’
‘Oh aye? He’s always been up there? How old is he?’ Johnny takes a sup of his ale, too much, so it slops over his lip and makes quick progress through his beard.
Alex shrugs. ‘No idea, a few years younger than you?’ He is distracted by a whoop from beyond them, where another gang has pushed back tables and formed a circle, making drums of their breeks.
Johnny calls over the caper. ‘Did he say which farms?’
The tempo is established, quick and jittery, a thud of boots on the boards. Alex opens his mouth but only to yell some goading words at the dancers.
‘Alex – did he say which farms?’
Before he gets his answer, Johnny’s wrist is seized from behind and a calloused thumb presses to the smooth place where his pulse beats. ‘Come and do us a tune, Johnny.’
He has done six or seven songs and his throat hurts. Johnny’s voice starts supple as good leather, but after a few, bellowing over the rabble, he gets hoarse. He has sung the usual ballads of bastard grieves and snide farmers, bonny lasses with golden hair, though the lads scoffed at that. Tell us about her tits! one of them called, and Johnny laughed but thought – use your imagination, boy. He sinks now beside the fire, weighted by booze and exertion. As the sky outside slipped past gloaming-pink the auld men had dragged themselves off home, then the gangs had gone too, down the tracks to drink ropey whisky in their scattered crofts.
At the inn, the party is over. Johnny is with Rab, ending the evening as they always do – Johnny and Rab at the hearth, melting into companionable silence. Rab is what anyone would call a decent man. He works hard and treats his men and beasts well, provides for his family, is sensible with his coin but will stand any man a drink. He dons his Sabbath best each week at kirk. Rab Stuart bounces his bairns on his lap, plays the fiddle with passable competency and, Johnny imagines, at the end of a long day he might take his wife’s work-worn hands in his own and rub the ache from them.
‘I hear your new second’s come a long way – strange for lads to travel all that distance,’ says Johnny. ‘What farm was he at before?’
‘Och, one of those that sounds like the grimmest of places on God’s earth.’
Course, they all do up there, names made of words like cold and bleak and windy. Johnny considers. ‘Has he references?’ He looks at his friend, who frowns at the dwindling fire.
‘There wisnae much choice. If you’d turned up this afternoon you could have sussed him out yourself. He went away soon after the cars left – tired fae the journey, he said. And he said he would forgo his liquor tonight in order to make a good impression at kirk.’
‘Is that so?’
Rab manages a smirk. ‘Aye, I know. It was a case of take what you could get. You couldnae move for khaki jackets trying tae make farmhands into soldiers. But the lad seems fine enough. A bit timid, maybe. You’ll meet him at kirk anyway.’
Johnny lifts his head and goes to speak, but Rab does it for him. ‘You’re nae coming tae kirk, aye, I know fine well. Monday then, come up and help with that fence?’
Already Johnny has lightly disappointed Rab with his reluctance to rise for Sunday service and it seems easiest not to refuse him anything else. When he agrees, something slackens around his friend’s eyes.
‘I worry, Johnny. What if I cannae get the labour? What if Alex joins up? I cannae do much more myself.’
‘It’ll be fine. There’s plenty dinnae want tae go.’
‘It winnae be a case of want, at this rate.’
‘Aye, but even if they start calling men up, they cannae take everyone – we still need workers.’
‘They’ll get the lassies in tae the fields then. There’s already been a meeting in Keith about it.’ Rab sighs. ‘You’re off wandering this year then?’
It has been playing on Johnny’s mind. The last trip, war just declared – it hadn’t been the same. Before, it seemed noble enough to make his living through music and laughter, shaking folks loose. But the last time there had been a futility to having nothing in his hand but a dram. Johnny realizes that Rab is watching closely for his answer and is unsure what to say – instead he drinks, as the final clod of peat in the hearth cleaves and drops, taking the moment with it.
The friends stand, Rab mumbling about work to do in the morn. They do their usual routine – the reach to shake hands, but then there is the ah-go-on-then grin and their arms clamping round each other. When Rab pulls back there is a delicate set to his lips, a seriousness not usually there at this time of night, and in Johnny’s chest something clenches. It is aching, strange – surely just the acid swill of whisky making pain at his heart.
LIZZIE
She’d thought it a nice touch, that howl. It had unspooled quite naturally from her mouth, volume increasing in direct correlation to the alarm seeping across her husband’s face. Folks paused mid-sentence, shuffled their feet, accepting Lizzie’s performance as touchingly heartfelt. Jane, though, was clearly unconvinced and, when it came down to it, neither woman had cried as William Calder ducked into the car and, with a curt raise of his palm, slammed the door closed.
Despite Lizzie’s dry cheeks, one of the farmer’s wives had broken rank and come to lay a tentative hand on her shoulder as the motors started up. So brave, so noble, this woman whispered. Folks had cupped their hands over their eyes and watched until the cars crossed over the Black Water and slipped from sight. William drove, being one of the few who could, and Lizzie wondered if he would slow to let the lads toss an offering over the bridge. Before the burn reaches its namesake – the Calders’ house – it diverges around a small island, unremarkable aside from the superstition some folks hold over it. They lavish the island with coins, silvers glinting under bent brown grass, and ask for prosperity or protection. William doesn’t believe in such things, and some might call that a shame, for he has cash enough to be richly blessed with both. Lizzie had swatted an errant fly from her arm and closed her eyes against the sun. It was a fine and bright day, when her husband went to war.
