“Do you remember the day we had the fight in the school?” The village school. Yes, he remembered.
“I thought you were getting snooty,” said Dusky, “just because you were going to the town school. That was the cause of it.” He spat expertly on to the pavement. “I thought that right enough.”
Actually, Malcolm had thought they were fighting because they had had an argument about an aeroplane which had just flown over them, whether it was a Hurricane or a Spitfire. He remembered the two of them standing by the crumbling wall looking up at the blue hollow shield of the sky and the aeroplane quite low down.
“That was the cause of it,” said Dusky. “I wish I had stayed on. I was good at writing,” he added. “Here, I’ll buy you a lemonade. I wish I’d stayed on all right. Oh, look at that!” whistling after one of the schoolgirls in her uniform of black with yellow stripes. “I bet they’re pretty hot,” he said, winking at Malcolm.
“I don’t know, I suppose so,” said Malcolm, and was surprised at his distaste that Dusky should be talking about them in such a familiar way. He was also thinking about that fight and the blood on his nose, all because, as he had thought till now, of an aeroplane. The fight had been a one-sided one: he had lost in a short furious engagement behind the school at four o’clock. The other thing he remembered was bending his face under the water spurting from an old copper tap and later feeling if he had all his teeth intact. As well as that, he could hear again the tongue lashing he had received at home, as if he had been responsible.
Ah, well, it was all over now: he could afford to pity poor Dusky, condemned to servitude in the galley of a fishing boat, and probably putting sugar instead of salt into the men’s soup.
10
THAT MONDAY EVENING just before he went on the bus he met Sheila standing outside the cinema. She was wearing a yellow coat, her black hair neatly shining, her high cheekbones heavily powdered above the rather too thick lips. She was shorter and squatter than Janet, less fine, her legs stronger and fatter than Janet’s: where Janet was air and fire she was earth.
He talked to her, swinging his bag in an embarrassed way.
“Going to the flicks?” he asked.
“What do you think?” she said, half impudently.
When he went to their house she was always quiet, sometimes standing behind him as he played her father at draughts, watching with a kind of contempt the latter’s rather neolithic efforts at strategy. When she was in town as now her personality seemed to change. She became more of a flirt, more obvious in her tactics, as if she were imitating the town girls who patrolled the streets at night like destroyers. She had just too much lipstick, too much powder, a caricature of what she considered to be sophisticated.
“Waiting for someone?” he asked casually.
At this she looked meaningful and significant, like an amateurish actress in a B picture, but didn’t say anything, wearing her mysterious provocative Hollywood look.
Suddenly he burst out: “If I didn’t have to go home we could take a walk in the park.”
“Why don’t you?” she said again. (Rather French now, with the gamin look and the skin-thin raincoat.)
“I meant the two of us, but I have to go home. I’ve got a lot of work to do,” he muttered.
“You’re always working,” she said in the same coquettish way. Two town boys walking past whistled in unison. She looked at him, smiling, her glazed handbag in her hand.
At that moment he thought of Janet and she seemed so regal, so imperious, so clear beside Sheila that he felt as if he had been guilty of treachery.
For some reason he felt inclined to explain:
“I’m going in for the Bursary Comp,” he said, half proudly.
“What’s that?” she asked negligently. “Is it something important?”
“Yes. It’s quite important.” He had sometimes felt that her mother might have wanted him to take an interest in Sheila.
“It means that I would have more money for university,” he said.
“Will you write to me if you get to university?” she asked.
“Yes. What’s on at the flicks?”
“Tarzan. And there’s Laurel and Hardy.”
“Do you like Laurel and Hardy?” he asked, patronisingly watching the yellow bus out of the corner of his eye.
“Yes, I like when they throw the pies at each other.” She burst out laughing. “His face. The fat one’s face. And the thin one always looks so sad. But I like Tarzan better. There’s more adventure.”
Malcolm was very conscious of her while she was speaking. Was she really going to the cinema on her own?
A sailor on leave, his blue collar flapping, his idle hands hanging down at his sides, was hovering about, looking up and down the street and pretending to study a shop window which contained men’s suits.
For a moment their eyes met and he was startled by the avaricious glitter in hers which slowly dimmed into a dark blankness.
“I’d like to come, but I’ve got to go home,” he said.
“Perhaps some other time,” she said, as if speaking with another voice, that of the small-time American actress. “I see your brother at the dances.”
“Oh?”
“He’s a good dancer. But it’s always you who come for the butter.”
His face reddened. He glanced at the clock. Soon the bus would be leaving. It would be terrible if he missed it.
“I’ll meet you some day,” he said, “at the dinner interval.”
She smiled again, stroking her hair, standing in front of the Hollywood mirror of the bright day. “If you like,” she said.
“And I’ll write if I get to university.”
The sailor was jingling some coins in his pocket, pretending to examine the film trailer. She smiled at him and the sailor smiled back, then looked out to sea where a ship was lying at anchor in the bay.
Suddenly she half whispered to Malcolm: “Everyone says you’re very clever.”
He saw the bus moving and turned away. As he leaped on to the step he saw her enter the cinema, the sailor following close behind.
The last thing of all that he saw was the sailor removing his cap as he climbed the steps into the cinema. It was like a man going to church, except that he could see a flash of her short stumpy legs ahead of him.
11
THE GAELIC CLASS was a small one. Janet was in it, himself and two or three others. The Gaelic teacher was a small, spectacled man with a ginger moustache, who would sometimes doze off at the desk. When he did so there was a profound silence in the room. None of the pupils moved, they did not turn a page, they did not read, they did nothing except look at each other or perhaps at a fly buzzing heavily in the window. Suddenly the teacher would wake with a start, his ginger moustache seeming to take on animation, and he’d say: “Well, why aren’t you working, eh? Why aren’t you working?”
That Monday they were studying a love poem by the Gaelic poet William Ross. Little James was seated at the desk next to Malcolm, like a mouse that had been cornered behind a pile of boxes and stays there petrified and motionless. For some reason the Gaelic teacher had taken a strong dislike to James and would shout at him for the most trivial things. On the other hand, Malcolm was one of his favourites.
“William Ross is the greatest love poet in Gaelic,” he said. He turned to James: “Well, why aren’t you taking that down? Or are you depending on your memory, eh? Do you think you’ll get through your Highers by depending on your memory, eh, by going to sleep in the middle of your lessons?”
His face suddenly flushed with rage as if he had been insulted, and James immediately began to write in a nervous jerky script (as did all the others): “William Ross is the greatest love poet in the Gaelic language.”
They waited. After a long while the teacher continued: “He died of TB. In the old days it was called consumption.”
Malcolm was looking at Janet, her dark head bent over her book, and he thought of himself as William Ross being n
ursed by Janet while he wrote poems to her of astonishing beauty and power. He wrote: “William Ross—consumption”; and after that he wrote: “Keats—consumption, Lawrence—consumption, Robert Louis Stevenson—consumption.” Without thinking, he said aloud: “Why do so many poets die of consumption, sir?” The island was full of it.
The teacher looked up and smiled: “That, Malcolm, is an intelligent question. A very intelligent question. It is perfectly true that a lot of poets have died of consumption. Can you think of a reason yourself?”
“Unless it is that they are more sensitive than other people,” said Malcolm lamely.
Suddenly James said. “Burns didn’t die of consumption,” and then retreated into himself as if he had returned from a daring reconnaissance.
“What?” said the teacher. “What did you say? Burns? Yes, true, Burns was a love poet,” he admitted grudgingly. “In fact he is said to have influenced Ross. Calder says that. Yes, Calder has a few words on that in his valuable introduction. But then Burns died young too. Though of course it wasn’t from consumption.”
James looked down at his book like a nun at her rosary.
“Perhaps then we should rephrase the question,” said the teacher cheerfully. “Perhaps we should ask: why do so many poets die young, even if they don’t die of consumption.”
Malcolm suppressed a terrible impulse to laugh but the teacher himself lost interest in his question as if he had heard it somewhere before many, many, years ago and he had answered it once and for all. His eyes began to close and he forced them open.
“William Ross’s most important poem is the one to Summer. It begins: ‘Oh let us wake joyfully and gladly.’ These are the opening lines. And make sure that you know some of these lines for your Highers. Additional marks can be gained by correct quotation; though on the other hand incorrect quotation may lose you marks. I’m tired of telling you that you must be able to quote accurately.”
What beautiful lines, thought Malcolm. “Oh let us waken joyfully and gladly. Let us waken joyfully and gladly”, and he thought of himself getting up in the morning and walking across cool green linoleum while everyone else in the house was asleep.
He had no fears about his Gaelic. He would pass his Gaelic all right.
After a while the teacher looked up again and said: “There was a love poet in Janet’s village. Wasn’t there, Janet?” His mouth wreathed itself into the semblance of a smile.
“I think so, sir,” said Janet, smiling brightly back.
“Do you know his name, Janet?”
“It was Mackinnon, sir, wasn’t it?”
“No, it was MacLennan.” His smile remained in spite of the wrong answer. James was watching him and his mouth twisted into a frown. Malcolm wished that she had known the poet’s name.
The teacher leaned back in his tall skeletal chair. “Yes,” he said, “He wrote a lot of love poems. But they were all to his wife.” He waited for the laughter to subside and then continued: “He went abroad to Australia or somewhere.”
Malcolm was listening, but at the same time an original verse was forming in his mind:
The wind moves above the draughtboard.
I see your face beside his dying face.
There are daffodils growing in the garden.
Your face is white as the moon.
Where had that verse come from? Quite spontaneously it had been forming below the surface of his mind.
He listened again.
“Yes,” said the teacher, leaning forward, his hands judiciously clasped. “He has a verse which goes something like this:
“Love will not die.
It is like the sun behind clouds.
It is like gold that will not rust.
It is like rock with the sun on it.”
“That is quite beautiful,” said Malcolm, blushing as he spoke.
“I’ll tell you,” said the teacher, becoming more expansive as the end of the period approached, “Janet can bring you the book, Malcolm. I’m sure her parents will have a copy. No harm in breadth of reading. No harm at all. You might get something out of it for the Highers. They might look more favourably on you if you compared the two poets. Can you do that?” he asked Janet.
“I think so, sir,” said Janet. “I think I’ll get it from home.”
“Good, good. Now,” he said, becoming brisk, “take this down. William Ross, apart from being a great love poet, also wrote a drinking song and a song about the Jacobites.” He continued for some time to dictate till the bell rang.
As they were going out, Malcolm said to Janet: “Will you remember to bring the book?”
“Yes,” she said, “next time I go home I’ll bring it. You’re very interested in poetry, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I’m pretty interested.”
She looked at him in her half mocking way, her books on her arm.
“Yes, I knew you were. I’ll see if I can find it. I can’t promise, mind, but I’ll try.”
Suddenly he blustered out: “I suppose you’re still going with Ronny?”
“Who told you that?”
“Oh, I know. Everybody knows that.”
“Well then, ask no questions, get no lies.” And again he hated Ronny, son of a prosperous town lawyer, lots of money, car, good footballer, captain of the school, captain of the football eleven. Their house stood all by itself in great grounds with a curving drive and a garden red with flowers. There was a bell push set in the stone. He knew the house all right but had never been inside it.
She suddenly laughed. “Anyway, we’ve just proved that poets die young.”
She turned away, leaving him with James to whom he said:
“I can’t understand why he’s after you all the time.”
“Can’t be helped,” said James bitterly. “If it’s up to him I won’t get my Gaelic in the Bursary Comp.”
“But it’s not up to him,” said Malcolm, watching Janet going away, his heart aching with longing.
“No, perhaps not,” said James, his small eyes flashing. He didn’t say anything more but walked beside Malcolm along the corridor, the light flashing through a window as they passed. What a beautiful day. What a priceless summer. Framed in the window they saw some boys playing football, and Malcolm’s legs seemed to move over grass, great power accelerating through them. And then he thought of Janet again, and the book. But later he felt the real ball at his feet.
“I’ll get where I want without him,” said James, his veined hands clutching his book. “He doesn’t know much anyway.” Malcolm was surprised at the bitterness in his voice. He himself could truly say that he had never felt bitterness in his life.
“Yes, isn’t that funny,” he said, bursting out laughing. “William Ross is the greatest love poet in the Gaelic language, as if that was the Sermon on the Mount. As if that was an important statement.”
Below his mind a new verse moved:
One face dies. The other is alive.
One has chequered shadows and the other
moves in the yellow wind …
12
THINGS WERE CHANGING at Dicky’s house. As his health deteriorated so his mother was beginning to discourage visitors, except for the minister who was there more often than the doctor. Malcolm thought sometimes that it might have been better if he had had brothers or sisters. Dicky was now in bed all the time in a small room, the windows of which were often curtained across, his throat covered by a white bandage. Beside him was a table on which were tumblers, pills and a bible. In front of him was an old dresser on which was perched precariously a green helmet in green netting. Where it had come from Malcolm couldn’t tell. They no longer played draughts. In the first instance Dicky was too weak to play and in the second his mother was beginning to think that such activities were frivolous.
One day Malcolm was sitting by his bedside when the minister came in, removing his hat and bending as he crossed the threshold. “Ah, you’re Mrs Gordon’s boy,” said the minister, looking at him keenly, h
appy that he had recognised him.
Malcolm didn’t know what to say, so didn’t say anything. He wanted to get away but couldn’t think of a way of leaving without embarrassment. He shifted his position in the chair and looked at Dicky’s mother, who was standing in the doorway, smiling sadly at the minister. She was wearing black and her face was gaunt and lined. Malcolm thought that she was beginning to dislike him for some reason: yet he had been the most consistent visitor of anybody.
“And how are we today?” said the minister, gazing benevolently at Dicky whose face was chequered with the sunlight and shade cast on it by a lime-green curtain.
Dicky didn’t say anything. On his face there was a slight flush. He was gazing from his bed towards the window and listening to the sounds coming from outside, the mooing of cows, the bark of a dog, the sudden crowing of a cock. The minister, clad in his black coat, leaned forward: “I will read you a passage from the bible.” He said this as if he were about to prove a continual expertise in himself. Dicky’s mother folded her hands. The minister continued: “For if we haven’t the bible, what have we? We are but sinners and there is no grace in us.”
He stretched out his hand for the bible on the dresser, changed his mind and took one from his pocket. He read with fine articulation and great style a passage from the Old Testament. The whole room seemed to have become frozen, the human beings in it scarcely breathing and the curtains almost ceasing to sway.
“And it came to pass after these things that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold here I am. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of …”
In the doorway, Dicky’s mother was standing in the attitude of a statue looking down at the floor. Malcolm suddenly thought: she is seeing her son dying, and it became real to him for the first time. And the thought also came to him: if I were seeing my mother or my brother dying what would I feel? And the room became chillier than ever, so that he wanted to be outside where it was hot and where there were flowers growing.
The Last Summer Page 6