The Good Provider Read Online Free PDF Page A

serious at all. School seemed far back into the past. There they had been chums, as close as a boy and girl could be without incurring the opprobrium of classmates to whom male and female were still natural enemies, like dogs and cats. Kirsty could not bring herself to accept that Craig meant what he said, that the promise he had made was other than a display of anger. She tried to be sensible, to tell herself that she could not hope to escape so easily from Hawkhead and that this night spent under the same roof as her sweetheart would soon be no more than a memory.
    She had no idea what time it was when the bedroom door creaked and, out of the darkness, Craig whispered her name.
    Blinking, she sat up.
    He had brought a lamp with him. He lighted it now and left it by the doorpost where its quivering rays would be too low to disturb his sister.
    ‘Kirsty, are you asleep?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Are you cold?’
    ‘No.’
    Over his nightshirt Craig had pulled on a threadbare coat. He knelt by the made-up bed on the floor, one arm bridging her legs, his face close to hers. Blanket held to her breasts, Kirsty sat upright. She felt wicked being here with him, wicked but not guilty.
    ‘Pay no heed to Mam,’ Craig whispered. ‘She’ll come round in due course.’
    ‘I doubt that, Craig.’
    ‘It’s her hard luck, then.’
    ‘Did you mean what you said – about marriage?’
    ‘Aye, every word. Unless you’d prefer to stay with old man Clegg.’
    ‘Please don’t make a joke of it.’
    ‘Kirsty, I’m sorry it had to happen like this.’
    Locks of dark hair, soft and curled, bobbed on his brow. It was all Kirsty could do not to stretch out her hand and touch them. There was nothing girlish in the set of his mouth, though, or in the squareness of his jaw and when he clasped her hands in his she could feel the strength in him.
    She said, ‘What’ll happen to me, Craig?’
    ‘I mean it, damn it. I will marry you.’
    ‘But – when?’
    ‘You can stay with us for a while. Mr Sanderson’ll find you day work at the Mains, I’m sure. Come autumn, we’ll be wed, I promise.’
    Kirsty said nothing. In delay she saw a risk of losing him. She could not play tug-of-war with Craig’s loyalty to his family.
    ‘If I hadn’t come here tonight,’ Kirsty said, ‘would you have courted me?’
    ‘I’ve always wanted you, Kirsty. That’s the truth.’
    He was trembling. She longed to put her arms about him and draw him down under the blankets with her, to hold his strong muscular body against hers. She drew back a little, pressing her shoulders against the side of the bed.
    ‘I want you too,’ she whispered.
    Craig sat back on his heels, widening the gap between them. He was tense and formal all of a sudden. ‘I’d better go. It’s late and I’ve a hard day’s work ahead of me.’
    ‘Craig, wait.’
    She crossed a forearm over her breasts and leaned forward, upward, offered him her pursed lips.
    He hesitated then kissed her on the mouth, swiftly, and then left.
     
    Bob Nicholson and his sons were late out of bed, late to the breakfast table and, by a good half hour, late starting along the road that would lead them to the cross gates where their ways would part. From there Craig would head up to the high acres and Gordon and his father would cut across the pasture to Bankhead. Craig would be planting grain seed all that day if the milky frost melted from the ground and if not he would be mending fences. For Gordon and Bob Nicholson it would be byre work since Jim Fry, the cattleman, was sick with a quinsy throat.
    Kirsty and Lorna had been dead to the world when Craig peeped in at them. Lorna did not have to be up till a quarter to eight and Mam assured her son that she would not ‘fling Kirsty out’, not until the matter had been properly settled, though neither Craig nor his father had had the temerity to enquire what properly settled might mean. Craig assumed that Duncan Clegg would have to be told of Kirsty’s