And Ma Cleghorn would sit at the top of the table, her big red face set square on its neck, sonsy and sturdy, you’d liked her from the first, she you, you supposed you’d neither of you frills, you’d seen over much of this queer thing Life to try hide from its face by covering your own with a ready-made complexion out of a jar, or ready-made morals from the Unionist Club, or ready-made fear and excitement and thrill out of the pages of the Daily Runner…. And you’d sit and stare at your own porridge plate till Ma would call out: Will you fill up the cups?

By ten the lot would have clattered away, on trams and buses, on foot and a-run, tripping along like a sparrow, Miss Murgatroyd, Mr Piddle whirring away on his bike like a snake going pelting back to the Zoo, Miss Ena Lyon with her heels so high that her shoulders drooped and her bottom stuck out, quite up-to-date, Εwan in dungarees, no hat, books under his arm, black hair almost blue, shinning down the Steps of Windmill Brae two at a time, hands in his pouches…. And they left the real work of the house to begin.

You and Ma Cleghorn couldn’t run to more help than Meg for the washing-up in the kitchen, Ma took the first floor with the dining-room and sitting-room and swept them and dusted them and tore up the rugs and went out to the back and hung them on the line and thrashed them to death in a shower of stour. You had the bedrooms, Ma’d asked if you’d mind—Some of them stink like a polecats den. You’d said you didn’t care, we all stank sometimes. And Ma had nodded, Fegs, and that’s true. But fancy you being willing to let on—you that was wed to a minister body!

You’d mind that speak as you redded the rooms, gathered the mats and pulled wide the curtains, opened the windows and made the beds, swept out and polished each of the rooms, emptied slops and carried down washing, and cleared the bathroom of razor blades and bits of paper stuck with shaving-soap hair, other things that Miss Murgatroyd would half-hide, so would Miss Lyon in a different way…. Wife to a minister—wife to Robert: it faded away in the stour of the days though only last Spring you had been in Segget, had slept beside him in those chill hours that had come trailing down a blanket of dark to cut you off one from the other, Robert sleeping sound while you woke and heard the wail of sleet from the Grampian haughs. All ended, put by, Robert himself no more than a name, you’d loved him so deep that the day he died something had broken in you, not in your heart, it didn’t break there, something in your belly went numb, still, and stayed so … but the queerness of things! You could hardly mind now the shape of his face—his eyes, were they grey or blue?—Oh God! … And you’d sometimes stop and feel sick to think how quickly even your memories went, as though you stood naked in an endless storm shrilling about you, wisp by wisp your garments went till at last you’d stand to all uncovered—love, pity, desire, hope, hate put by under the sail of the endless clouds over Cloud Howe, the Howe of the World—