Death of a Charming Man Read Online Free Page A

in so many middle-aged bosoms. As his own wife seemed unaffected, he was one of the few in the village who was not troubled by Peter Hynd. Drim did not have any young women, apart from teenagers at school. The school-leaving daughters took off for the cities to find work.
    Jimmy Macleod, a crofter, came in from the fields for his dinner, which, as in most of the homes in Drim, was still served in the middle of the day.
    His meal consisted of soup, mince and potatoes, and strong tea. He ate while reading a newspaper, folded open at the sports section and propped against the milk jug. He had just finished reading when he realized that something was different. In the first place, his wife should have been sitting opposite him instead of fiddling over at the kitchen sink.
    ‘Arenae you eating?’ He looked up and his mouth fell open. ‘Whit haff you been doin’t tae your hair?’
    For his wife Nancy’s normally grey locks were now jet-black and cut in that old-fashioned chrysanthemum style of the fifties, which was the best that Alice MacQueen could achieve. Not only that, but Nancy’s normally high colour was hidden under a mask of foundation cream and powder and her lips were painted scarlet.
    She patted her hair with a nervous hand. ‘Got tired o’ looking old,’ she said. She turned back to the sink and began to clatter the dishes with unnecessary energy.
    ‘You look daft,’ he said with scorn. ‘And that muck on your face makes you look like a hooker.’
    ‘And what would you know aboot hookers, wee man?’
    ‘Mair o’ your lip and I’ll take my belt tae ye.’
    She turned round slowly and lifted up the bread knife. ‘Chust you try,’ she said softly.
    ‘Hey, I’m oot o’ here till ye come tae your senses,’ he said. He was a small, wiry man with rounded shoulders and a crablike walk. He scuttled out the door. For the first time he regretted the fact that Drim was a ‘dry’ village. He felt he could do with a large whisky. He headed out to the fields. His neighbour, Andrew King, hailed him.
    ‘Looking a bit grim, Jimmy.’
    ‘Women,’ growled Jimmy, walking up to him. ‘My Nancy’s got her face painted like a tart and she’s dyed her hair black. Aye, and she threatened me wi’ the bread knife. Whit’s the world coming tae?’
    ‘Ye’ve got naethin’ tae worry about,’ said Andrew, an older crofter whose nutcracker face was seamed and wrinkled. ‘I’ member when my Jeannie went daft. You know whit it was?’
    ‘No, that I don’t.’
    ‘It’s the Men’s Paws.’
    ‘The whit?’
    ‘The Men’s Paws. The change. Drives the women fair daft, that it does. I talked to the doctor about Jeannie and he said, “Jist ignore it and it’ll go away,” and so it did.’ Andrew fished in the capacious pocket of his coat and produced a half bottle of whisky. ‘Like a pull?’
    ‘Man, I would that. But don’t let the minister see us!’
       
    Drim’s minister, Mr Callum Duncan, was putting the finishing touches to his sermon. He gave a sigh of satisfaction. He would now have free time to write to his son in Edinburgh and his daughter in London.
    ‘I’m just going to write to Agnes and Diarmuid,’ he said to his wife, who was sitting sewing by the window. ‘Do you want to add a note?’
    ‘I wrote to them both yesterday,’ said his wife, Annie.
    ‘Well, you’d better tell me what you told them so I don’t repeat the gossip.’ The minister rose and stretched. He was a slight man with thinning grey hair, grey eyes, and a trap of a mouth. Annie had begun recently to hate that mouth, which always seemed to be clamped shut in disapproval.
    A shaft of sunlight shone in the window and lit up Annie’s hair. The minister stared at his wife. ‘What have you been doing to your hair?’
    ‘I put a red rinse on it,’ she said calmly. ‘Jock has some new stuff. It washes out.’
    ‘What’s up with brown hair?’ he demanded crossly. He had always considered his wife’s thick brown hair her