Sunset Song Page #2

- Father, you can't.

- Hold your tongue.

Or I'll be taking you out as well.

There are lovely things in the world.

Lovely that do not endure...

and are lovelier for that.

Well, you'll be my neighbour,

Guthrie, man.

Aye.

And you'll be the new minister, Mr Gibbon.

You've a fine-kept farm, Mr Guthrie.

Trig and trim,

though I hear you've sat down

a bare six months.

Oh.

- My daughter, Chris.

- Ah.

I hear you're right clever, Chrissie,

and go to Duncairn College.

How do you like it?

Fine, sir.

And what are you to be?

A teacher, sir.

There's no profession more honourable.

How do you find the land to work,

Mr Guthrie?

Oh, Mother.

Have I vexed you?

Oh, not you, Chris.

Just... life.

I cannot tell you a thing or advise.

You'll need to face men for yourself.

When the time comes,

there's no one can stand and help you.

Mind that for me sometime...

if I cannot suffer it longer.

Chrissie!

Chrissie!

The doctor's come, Chrissie!

Now go and play outside.

What's wrong?

It's Mother.

She's poisoned herself...

and the two bairns.

Why?

Why did she do it?

She was pregnant again

and it unbalanced her.

You'd better send for Mistress Munro.

No.

I'll write to my sister Janet

in Auchterless.

She'll come.

Come on, Chris.

She's ready for you.

You can go up and see her now.

Jean...

Jean...

Something died in her heart...

and went down with Mother

to lie in Kinraddie Kirkyard.

The child in her heart had died then...

and Chris of the books and dreams

died with it.

And the dark quiet corpse

that was her childhood

was folded in the tissue paper

and was laid away forever.

You're to come to Auchterless

with your uncle and me.

So you would steal my own flesh from me?

Aye, John, just as you asked

when you wrote.

We've never a bairn of our own.

God knows it's not for want of trying.

Ill blood breeds ill.

Aye, but it'll be long

ere I'll have to kill myself

because my man

beds me like a breeding sow!

You dirty b*tch!

They won't go back to school!

Why won't you go back to school?

Why should they go back? I wouldn't!

Oh, aye?

And where do you wander off to

every night, hm?

They say:
Whose mother's a daftie?

Daftie

Daftie, they say.

Well, that's all past now.

You're to come and live at Auchterless

with your uncle and me.

Chris, dinnae let Father make

a damn slave of you as he'd like to.

We've our own lives to lead.

Well, what else can I do

but bide at home now?

If I saved long enough...

I could go to Canada.

A man is his own master there.

Oh, Will, would you send for me

as your housekeeper?

Aye, maybe.

But maybe it would hardly suit you.

I got it at Echt.

We can cut the crop quicker now.

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