pidgin2

Just as Mr Longhern had expected Matt opened the door to his cottage clutching a book. He wasn’t a small man, but framed in the warm light of the oil lamp, with that faraway look in his grey eyes, he seemed that way.

‘Jock?’ He moved aside to let him enter, but there was a question in the way her pronounced his name. In the long nights between tending the beasts on his croft and blinks of daylight Matt's only companions were Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and for a little light relief Seneca and Epictetus. Book learning was respected in the village. So when Jock Longhern glanced up at the shocking state the he'd let his eaves get into he hardly even registered it.

Mr Longhern sat in the only other seat in the one-room cottage. It was a hard seat, in the same way that everything in Matt’s possession was hard and lean, in the same way that owner was hard and lean, with no room for comfort. Matt angled himself into the chair across from him, sipping at the corner of moustache, offering nothing, not even the common courtesy of a cup of tea, or a simple dram. All around them lying spread out across the stone floor like cat’s snoozing were half-opened or half-shut books so many that they seemed to be moving, waiting for their owner to stroke them. The rumours about Matt must be true, thought Mr Longhern, clearing his throat to speak.

‘The thing is Matt,’ Mr Longhern leaned in bridging the gap, between him and the unlit fire in the hearth. ‘We’ve had a few visitors.’

Matt frowned, his hand reaching up and massaging the sheep like curls and falling from his head seemed to discover the leg of his specs and taking them off began to clean the begrimed lense in one of the eye- frames and waited, the old clock in the corner ticking out time between them.

‘The thing is Matt,’ Mr Longhern sat upright, his back pushed into the ramrod stiffness of the chair, ‘these visitors, these strangers, they look funny.’

Matt’s mouth pursed and straightened as he bit down on his lips and clutched at his fingers as if considering this.

‘And they talk funny.’

Matt’s fingers flutter about his mouth and nose and stroked at his chin. ‘What do you mean they talked funny?’ He cocked his head like a jay, as if to listen.

‘I don’t know.’ Mr Longhern flopped back into the chair, the enormity of trying to describe what he’d heard too much for him.

‘Well, what did it sound like?’ There was an edge to the way Matt spoke, an excitement that seemed to send sparks into his eyes and animate him.

‘I never.’ Mr Longehern shook his head from side- to- side and puffed his cheeks out. ‘I don’t know what it sounds like. If I knew what it sounded like I wouldn’t need to be asking you. Would I?’

Matt face crinkled into a smile. ‘Can I offer you a glass of ale then?’

Mr Longhern shrugged and his body slid down the chair a little, his legs sprawled in front of him. ‘Can’t say I’d mind too much.’ He looked about him. It was a cosy little room. All it needed was a woman’s touch, without the woman, of course. He could see himself settled in a room just like this, with only the ticking of a clock for company and peace.

‘Thanks,’ Mr Longhern sipped at the froth on the glass of ale proffered. As always, It was ice cold. Matt sipped at a chipped glazed mug. He made the best ale in the village, but drank water. He was a human conundrum that was only explainable by him being one of those strange Catholics, with all their Latin, chanting, bead rattling and hee-hawing at God as if they were monkeys at the bottom of a tree.

Mr Longhern tried to draw out the conversation about what the visitors looked like, to stretch it into another glass, but the more he described the less sure he became. He too shifted to the edge of his seat, the shadows on his face deepening. He looked at the bottom of his glass hopefully, and swirled it around, to show he was nearly finished, but the truth was he was as eager as Matt to be back home. With the rain lashing down outside, the visitors seemed now like some kind of dream.

Matt stopped at the half finished ditch that ran part of the way around his field. They stepped over it and onto the solid stone and cobble of the road. He looked up and down and in that quiet rasp of his: ‘You said there was a car?’

Mr Longhern walked into the heal of Matt's shoes. His thoughts were on the warmth of his house and crust of bread in his hand. ‘Yeh, a car,’ he grunted. He was almost home.

Matt turned to face him, his forehead slicked and his curls dampened down, for his strangeness extended to not wearing a proper hat, indeed no hat at all. ‘Where is it now then?’

Mr Longhern looked one way and another. He thought he spotted it down at George Anderson’s house, but when it moseyed away he realized it was just a loose cow. ‘I’m not sure.’ He didn’t want to commit himself. He looked again. But it was only an outcrop of rock at Andrew Taylors. ‘Hmm, maybe they’ve drove away.’

Matt bent down and picked up a stone. Rubbing small circles in it with his index finger and thumb. ‘Warm.’ He passed it to Mr Longhern to feel.

But he snorted and let it drop at his feet and was striding towards the warmth of home. ‘Warm,’ he said, shaking his head at such tomfoolery.

Matt feet followed behind, but through the smear of rain on his glasses he looked up, watching the lights on the black peak of Ben Skeau.