Gemma James 09 - Now May You Weep by Crombie Deborah

Author:Crombie, Deborah
Language: eng
Format: epub

Now May You Weep

Chapter Twelve

The sharp constraint of fingertips Or the shuddering touch of lips, And all old memories of delight Crowd upon my soul tonight.

—robert louis stevenson,

“I Saw Red Evening Through the Rain”

Carnmore, April

Will stood in the door of the warehouse, gazing at the ranks of casks. He had discovered in the past few months that this was the one thing that gave him a sense of satisfaction, of completion. Some of these casks now were his, his legacy, as the ones before had been his father’s.

He breathed in the scent of oak, of hard-packed earth, and even on this cold April day the ever-present vapor of maturing whisky. This was his life, his world, embodied in barrels and hogsheads, stamped with the Carnmore seal. He had put away his books, and along with them his dreams of university in Edinburgh, of studying medicine.

The promise he had made his father bound him more

tightly than any physical constraint, and he had determined that he would commit himself well.

Will poured over his father’s ledgers and account books, he questioned the men, absorbing details of the distilling process he had never thought to notice. They were patient with him, these men who had been his friends since childhood, and he noticed that as time passed they listened more and more readily when he offered an opinion. He could only hope that he would live up to their expectations.

Closing and locking the warehouse doors, he started out across the yard towards the office. He had paperwork to do, there were orders to be filled, but just for a moment he stopped at the edge of the yard and looked out across the Braes.

They were strip-burning the heather up on the moors—

late this year because of the persistent rains in March.

The smoke rose in curls, and he caught the smell of it, sharp and acrid on the dry air.

Since he had put aside his books, he had begun to feel the land like a living thing, a presence that never left him.

The life and rhythm of it pulsed in his blood, in his skin, the tips of his fingers, the soles of his feet. When the first buds appeared on the trees, he’d felt the hard nodules on the ends of his fingers, masked by velvety skin. He felt the water moving through the earth, the green shoots pushing upwards, the delight of the lambs frisking in the fields.

He told no one, afraid they would think him mad.

It was the same in the distillery. He felt the whisky at every step, from the malting of the barley to the final dis-tillate—and he knew when it was right. He began to wonder if his father had found grace with God after all, and so been allowed to bestow a last gift upon his son. What

other explanation was there for what had happened to him?

This uncanny awareness did not extend to people, however. Watching his mother as she went about her daily tasks, he was unable to penetrate her reserve.

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