The End of an Old Song by J.D. Scott

Author:J.D. Scott [J. D. Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781847675668
Publisher: Canongate Books
Published: 2009-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

So there began a new phase. Alastair was now welcome again at Kingisbyres, since he figured as a friend, or at least a protégé of the Clandillons.

‘She doesn’t like me any better,’ said Alastair, ‘but’—and he allowed his voice to broaden into the local patois—‘she jist has to thole, puir bitch.’ And he gave me a malignant smile.

‘But,’ I said, ‘why do you go there if they don’t like you and you don’t like them?’

‘Patrick! I can’t hide it from you—I’ve fallen madly in love with little Miss Surcingle.’ He leered at me horribly. ‘My little bowler-hatted beauty in her old but well-cut breeches.’ He rose to his feet. ‘Now let’s go,’ he added. We had been sitting on the lichen-covered base of one of the Covenanting memorials on the moors, having met there and being now about to embark on one of our long, discursive, argumentative walks. On this particular day the Kingisbyres party had gone visiting; it would be the first day for almost a week on which we would not see the two girls. For Catherine and myself Alastair’s presence was, apart from anything else, a great convenience. It meant that Hero was taken off our hands, and that we were able to be alone together. Alastair had looked after Hero with great amiability and with a masterful ease and dexterity. He laid himself out to be agreeable, to entertain and charm her, and he succeeded surprisingly. I myself couldn’t make the girl out. She was always rather impassive, and I thought her self-centred and cold. Her prettiness, too, seemed to me over-regular, oriental; if one could have thought of her as anything but an English sub-débutante, it would have been as a haughty Chinese princess. Alastair however struck sparks from her; he amused and astonished her with verbal fireworks and foolery and high spirits. He even talked to her seriously sometimes, shocking her by quotations from Marx, which was his latest interest, and saying that he was a Communist. I had never seen him in such form. He had been that way ever since he sat the Bursary Competition. His self-confidence, his sense of power, his ease, his ambition, and perhaps also his recklessness, were all growing, and sometimes during the last few days I had seen Hero looking at him with a kind of wonder. She did not fall in love with him—he was too far removed from her and from the people she was accustomed to for that—but she was fascinated, and happy to spend her time with him.

Almost as surprising as this surprising friendship was the continuing hostility between Catherine and Alastair. After a week in which they had seen quite a lot of one another, they were still barely friendly even on the surface. Catherine, when she was alone with me, never passed by an opportunity to make disparaging remarks about him; in his company she often behaved towards him with childish rudeness. He on his side now adopted towards her a

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