The Last Summer

by Iain Crichton Smith

  Dicky’s eyes were closed. One couldn’t make out whether he was listening to the words or whether he was lost in a dream of his own without energy. The green helmet looked moss-coloured in the green light, like some object underwater. The floor was chequered with light and shade like a draughts board.

  “Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place afar off. And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you. And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son …”

  The minister’s head was bent over the book so that one could see the startlingly live hairs on the back of his neck. His white finger, fat as a worm, touched the page, seeming to follow the writing word by word. It all seemed so unreal, like swimming about at the bottom of the sea wearing a diver’s helmet. Outside, the grass was growing rich and green and hot. Here on the other hand, there was this droning voice and a woman standing at the door, black and gaunt.

  “And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for burnt offering?”

  The moor aflame, the sun rising like a cock crowing behind a creel, Sheila’s lips laughing …

  “and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven …”

  And Lawton and Gillick and Carter in their strips and white shorts landing like angels on the green sward, the globe at their feet.

  “And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son …”

  And the lime-green curtains swayed and Malcolm kept his mouth shut lest the germs should enter.

  “And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son …”

  And the room was so warm and musty and there were Japanese pilots clad in black turning and spinning in the sky, buzzing. And the minister closed the book and stood up and said, “And now let us pray.”

  And Malcolm found himself kneeling on the floor, his hands propping his chin while he stared at the brown linoleum, scarred with many boots.

  “… once again offer thanks to thee who art our saviour and who gave thy only begotten son that we might be saved by his intercession, that we should not perish but have eternal life. Thou who restored unto Abraham the son of his loins after thou didst command him to sacrifice the fruit of his old age. We come to thee in trembling and in adoration, for your dealings with us are kind beyond our deserving and it is not our part to question that covenant which thou madest with us. Let thy hand stretch over this house and over him who is lying on the bed of sickness and her who keeps the watches of the night. Be thou gracious unto them and make them to know that thou art constantly thinking of them and that our life is not a vain dream but an offering meet for thy receiving.”

  Shifting a bit, Malcolm looked sideways and noticed for the first time that the bible was lying on top of a Penguin New Writing. He smiled to himself very carefully. “And make him to come to thee in love and adoration knowing that thou alone art his true saviour and his true stay and that with thee are the sweet waters of salvation. Amen.”

  The minister unclasped his hands. He bent down and said to Dicky, who was breathing with difficulty:

  “I hope that you will be better when I come again which, please God, will not be long.”

  He smiled warmly but Dicky’s eyes remained closed. As he got up, Dicky’s hands touched the bible accidentally. It was cold though the sun seemed to be illuminating it. The minister went out, talking to Dicky’s mother and clasping her hand in his, and Malcolm, with one last look at Dicky, followed him. He said goodbye to Dicky’s mother in an embarrassed rush. But she hardly seemed to notice him, so occupied was he with the minister, her cheeks flushing with what might have been pride.

  Instead of going round by the gate, Malcolm jumped over the wall, landing in the dry ditch among all the rusty canisters, pieces of wood with nails sticking out of them, bottles flashing in the sun, and made his way home. In a field in the distance a blade flashed like a semaphore. A little dog ran along in front of him, purposefully intent on its business, its eyes shining. He saw a black snail on the road and on the edge a daisy with the yellow sun blazing out of the white. In the sky a lark was singing deliriously and far in the west a crow was sauntering about. The scent of summer growth was in the air, musky and heavy as sleep.

  13

  HIS MOTHER DIDN’T want him to go to the wedding party or réiteach that night. She didn’t like him being away from his studies. This, of course, didn’t apply to Colin but then he didn’t do any studying anyway. Standing at the washing line and taking the pegs out of her mouth she said: “I don’t understand why you want to go. You never wanted to go to weddings before.”

  “I need a break sometime.”

  “You should have your break when your examinations are over. You’ll soon be sitting your bursary and you should be working every night. I don’t want you to go the way your father went. He was clever but he wasted it.”

  Her thin nose interrogated the air.

  His father had run away to sea when he was sixteen and had served in ships all over the world from Liverpool to Hong Kong. It was perhaps a myth that he had been clever but it suited her to keep it up.

  “And I brought you up to be a cut above these people. Remember, they’ve never been out of the island, and I have and I’ve seen the world.”

  She didn’t like him visiting Dicky so much.

  “You might get TB,” she would say, “and then what would happen to your career? He should be in a sanatorium though I’ve nothing against the boy. He was always a nice boy.”

  The sheets hung above her in the breeze like ghosts.

  Sometimes she would tell of her time in Yarmouth and how poor Peggy had pulled the communication cord by mistake and a little railway man with a peaked cap had come into the compartment to investigate and Peggy didn’t understand what it was all about and all the other girls had pointed at her and then at their forehead, the strategy being easy to execute as Peggy couldn’t speak a word of English.

  She was very tough, there was no doubt about it, but Malcolm was determined to go to the wedding party, partly because it was Donny who was marrying and Donny was Dell’s brother and he was home on leave from the Navy. He liked Donny and thought he should go to his wedding. So he went.

  He combed his hair just like Colin did and put on his blue suit and his blue jersey and his black shoes and walked across in the night with the moon just rising in the sky, thinking of the Vergil on his table, which gave him a slight touch of conscience but surely he couldn’t be expected to be working all the time. His mother had probably placed it there quite deliberately: and he didn’t like that. But at the same time he could see her point of view too. But he didn’t like her attitude to her neighbours. After all, they had been very kind, especially the summer before when he had come home with the two silver cups and all the other prizes he had won. They had been very flattering and the story had gone round that he was one of the most brilliant students the school had ever had: only he knew how wrong this was.

  14

  HE COULD HEAR the music from the house even before he reached it. He crossed the moonlit plank and walked along the road towards Donny’s house. It was eleven o’clock at night and the road was white with light, as were the roofs of the houses, and the smell of the flowers mixed with salt was in his nostrils. He put his hand on the wooden gate, lifting the sneck and remembering to close it behind him. He stood there for a moment listening to the music growing louder. He walked down the earthen path, stepping delicately in his polished shoes, an
d came round the side of the house, from the windows of which there was no light because of the black-out. He stood there for a moment looking out towards the sea with the moon shining on it in white scrolls and felt a strange melancholy mixed with excitement. The night was as bright as day.

  He entered the barn at the side of the house and stood gazing round him into the dancers, who were whirling round in an eightsome reel, emitting sudden shrieks as they did so. For a moment as he stood there he felt like a stranger. The dancers were so involved in their dancing, their faces so flushed and sweating, their concentration so intense that they wouldn’t notice him. He remembered the story of William Ross, who had been struck with love by the sight of a girl with golden helmet and ordered hair, gazing back at him out of the dance.

  Donny was marrying young Jessie, a buxom girl with big breasts who would make a good mother but had no fire about her at all. He couldn’t see either of them and thought they might be in the house. Most of the dancers seemed to be under eighteen and some old and middle-aged people were sitting around watching them.

  Tinker was sitting on a bench and said “Oidhche mhath” as he came in. Malcolm said “Good evening” and sat down beside him. A girl’s eyes, wide open, rested on him for a moment mindlessly and then were gone as she was carried away shrieking.

  “Ah, we can still have a wedding,” said Tinker, who was smoking a small stubby pipe, “but it’s not so good in time of war.”

  “No,” Malcolm agreed as a red skirt whirled past.

  “Not as in the old days,” said Tinker reflectively. “We used to have a small réiteach and a big réiteach and a wedding.” He paused. “The things we used to do!”

  Malcolm gazed down on to Tinker’s head, which was bald as a stone and partly corrugated.

  “What did you use to do?”

  “We painted Hugh’s door red,” said Tinker, laughing quietly and then coughing because of the smoke. “It was green usually and when he woke up in the morning it was red. I never saw a man so dumbfounded in all my days. He thought he was in the wrong house.” Here he began to splutter again. “He kept looking at the door and scratching his head.” Tinker took the pipe out of his mouth and jabbed at Malcolm with it. “You see it was green before and then it was red. Hughie was scratching his head and the beauty of it was he didn’t like red paint anyway. Not a bit. The things we used to do,” he said again. “Do you remember Bellag?” he said screwing up his eyes.

  “Yes. She used to stay alone, didn’t she?”

  “Ay, she’s dead now. Well she used to stay in this thatched house. She was mad, you know. She used to go after rats all night. Well, we took a string and a dead rat and we were stroking it up and down the door and she would rush out and we would go round the side of the house and she would look up at the sky with her mouth open …” He went off into a paroxysm of coughing and laughter. The music stopped and Big Dan was seen with his accordion, one foot resting on an upturned box, his eyes unsmiling and clear.

  “They won’t get him in the war,” said Tinker, clamping his pipe between his teeth.

  Sheila waved to Malcolm and he got up excusing himself.

  “Where’s Dell?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. He said he was coming but I haven’t seen him. He’ll come later on.”

  Squat and dark in her yellow she looked up at him, her wide mouth open in a smile.

  “Would you care to dance?” she said, curtseying mockingly and keeping her eyes fixed on him.

  The music began again and he put his arm round her, feeling the cloth rustle under his fingers. Looking down he saw that she was wearing black shoes with a pink ribbon on them, and a pleated skirt. She slid closer to him, her eyes closing under the spell of the music. He could feel the rank perfume wafted up from her.

  “I wonder where Dell is,” he said.

  “I don’t care,” she said almost angrily. “He should have come when he said. He’s with your brother most likely.”

  “Yes.”

  The Faoilcag drifted past tall as a stork and he waved to her.

  “Have you seen Donny?” he asked.

  “He’s in the house.”

  “How much leave has he got?” he asked.

  She laughed. “What questions. I think he’s got two weeks. He’ll need them all,” she said coarsely. Tinker was watching them with his small beady eyes, pipe clamped between teeth, and thinking probably that the young people nowadays weren’t so well behaved as they were in his youth, when green doors were painted red in the middle of the night.

  Malcolm suddenly thought: “Why do I always feel as if I’m being watched in this place?”

  Seventeen-year-old Donald, who was going to be the captain of the local football team, nodded to him as he swung past, his arm round a red-haired girl, his gipsy cheeks shining.

  “When is the food?” said Malcolm, looking down into Sheila’s upturned face.

  “Whenever you like,” she said. His heart began to beat furiously so that for a moment he missed the tempo of the music and had to apologise for his clumsiness.

  He thought: “Perhaps I could take her home. On the way there are cornstacks. Suppose we left now.”

  “Do you want a breath of fresh air?” he asked, controlling his voice.

  “Up to you,” she said. He held her by the bare arm as they manoeuvred their way through the crowd towards the door. As they stood outside they heard a giggle coming from the side of the house and then Tinker’s voice: “They should have shut the door. Don’t they remember there’s a black-out?”

  They stood together watching the sea miles in the distance and the islands, all green in the daytime, now golden. In front of them the cornstacks were all golden too. In the distance he could hear a plover crying and the sound of a river flowing.

  He felt the silken rustle of her dress below his hand. Without his thinking his hand slid down her side caressing her back and then her buttocks. She turned in his arms, looking up at him without saying anything. Then her eyes seemed to close. He looked into her half closed eyes and the veined eyelids and at that moment heard a drunken cry:

  “What the hell are you doing there?”

  It was Dell and he was drunk and beside him was Colin. Dell’s collar was open and he was waving a bottle of beer in his hand. Sheila moved away and looked disgustedly into the distance.

  “What are you doing?” said Dell. “Eh?” He came closer holding the bottle in his hand. “Think you can do anything, eh? Just because you’re a student. Is that right, eh? Well, by God I’m going to teach you.” He began to take off his jacket fumblingly, throwing the bottle on to the ground. Colin was still watching, not saying anything.

  Malcolm felt suddenly cold. “I’ll have to fight him,” he thought. So far he hadn’t spoken a word.

  Dell was struggling with his jacket and shouting: “You won’t play for the village, eh? You’re too stuck-up, aren’t you? You’re a student, that’s what you are,” and he spat on the ground.

  He came over and thrust his face into Malcolm’s.

  “Do you hear me? Are you going to fight? Eh? Are you going to fight? Man to man, eh?” He suddenly pointed to Sheila, swaying on his feet. “That’s my girl. You’re my girl, aren’t you?” She turned away without a word and went inside.

  The earth was white with moonlight and Colin was standing there waiting to see what he would do.

  “Look,” he said to Dell, his voice trembling, “don’t touch me again will you?”

  Dell began to laugh throwing his head back like a wolf.

  “Did you hear that? Don’t touch me. Who do you think you are? You’re one of the town boys, aren’t you? He thinks he’s one of the town boys, Colin.” He went over to Colin and put his hand on his shoulder. “Colin’s my friend, aren’t you, Colin. You’re not a town boy, are you Colin?” He seemed almost to kiss him, so close did he thrust his face towards him. “Eh? You’re my friend. You’re my pal.”

  Malcolm suddenly felt a terrible isolation. H
is voice rose. “I told you not to touch me.”

  Dell walked over to him with the deliberation of the drunk and pushed him, catching him off balance. Malcolm fell and got up slowly. He felt a most terrible anger. Dicky, the English teacher, Ronny, his mother, the eternal Latin, all seemed to swim together in his head and he got up ice cold with rage.

  “Look,” he said speaking very slowly, “I’m giving you your last warning. You push me again and I’ll hit you.”

  Dell looked at him for a long time, swaying on his feet, his disordered collar drifting about his throat. “Good for you,” he said at last. “Good for you. If it wasn’t for your brother I’d have clobbered you.” He came closer, pulling a bottle out of his jacket pocket. “Have a drink? Just for old times’ sake, eh? I’d have clobbered you but for Colin.” He sat down on the ground and said again: “There’s a bottle. Have a drink.” He looked towards the house. “Let’s get out of here.”

  They walked together, the three of them, and sat down in the shadow of a cornstack, the stubble biting into their bottoms.

  “Go on, have a drink, student boy.”

  Malcolm took the bottle and drank. It was very sour stuff and he didn’t like it.

  “Go on, go on,” said Dell, pushing the bottle at him. “It’s all right. I’ll get another one. To hell with them. You’re Colin’s brother. I wouldn’t fight Colin’s brother. You’re a good footballer.”

  As he drank the filthy beer with Dell’s arm round his shoulder Malcolm felt at peace for the first time in weeks and months. This was how life should be, sitting against a cornstack drinking beer with Dell and his brother watching him with a new respect.

  “Go on. Drink it all up. It’s good for you. Good for that brain of yours. Wish I had your brain, eh, Colin, eh? What’ll we do, eh? Out on the fishing boat but, student boy here, he’ll have a good job. Good luck to him. Good luck to student boy. Take off your cap to student boy here.” He stood up waving the bottle in the moonlight and then collapsed against the cornstack, his legs up in the air. He stayed like that for a long time gazing up into the sky.