The Last Summer

by Iain Crichton Smith

  “Ay, good old townsboy,” he muttered. “When they leave us they leave us.” In a maudlin voice he continued: “Ay, I remember, do you remember Miss Mowat, eh? Do you remember the time I put the mouse in her desk, do you remember?” He imitated her voice shrilly. “I’ll report you to Mr Craig at once. At once, do you hear? Do you hear?” He began to laugh and he couldn’t stop and then he wiped his eyes.

  “Have another drink. Old times’ sake. Go on.” Malcolm wiped the mouth of the bottle in the darkness and drank some more, screwing up his eyes and his mouth.

  There ensued a companionable silence during which they all looked out to sea and then Dell said: “I wish I was sailing. I wish I could get out of here. To hell with arithmetic. What’s the good of it, eh? You tell me, student boy. And history. What good do they do you? That’s what I’m asking. Do you know the answer to that?”

  After a long time Malcolm said: “No, I don’t.” He suddenly stood up and did a little dance and shouted, “I like you, Dell. I thought you were going to fight me there. But I like you just the same. I think you’re a great man. A great man.”

  “Have another drink. We’re all great men. Colin’s a great man too, aren’t you, Colin?”

  “Right, I’ll have another drink. I’ll have another drink. Your good health, Dell.”

  He suddenly had the impulse to put on Dell’s jacket for him and struggled with it for a long time while Dell lay against the cornstack, his feet up in the air, waving the bottle above his head and singing.

  Finally he finished. “There you are now. You’re presentable. The student boy has put on your jacket for you.”

  “Ay, you’re a good sort,” said Dell, “but you keep away from Sheila do you hear, do you hear? You’ve got enough already.”

  Swaying he got up, staring at the ground for a long time and with great seriousness as he took his bearings. “Come on, let’s go to the dance. Let’s all go and get some food. Colin, you come here in the middle and we’ll go and get some food. My brother’s wedding, you know, and he won’t be here for long.”

  Malcolm looked at his flushed face, his high cheekbones, his unfastened collar, his tie screwed half way round his neck and thought: “I love him. We used to build tents together when we were young. He’s real. This is real life. This is what life is about.” They walked along together in the moonlight, clinging to each other in a wavering chain, Colin in the middle supporting the two of them, Dell and Malcolm making little dancing steps as they approached the door.

  15

  THAT SUNDAY, MALCOLM met Dell quite by chance when he was out walking on the moor.

  “How’s the head?” said Dell, grinning and picking up a stone which he threw at a passing seagull.

  “Fine,” said Malcolm, feeling, just the same, a certain throbbing.

  They walked along, hands in pockets. They saw a lark rise soaring out of its nest and found the nest without great difficulty. It had tanned speckled eggs in it and one chick, its red beak wide open. Dell bent down and touched it. The eggs were warm under their hands. They walked on.

  As if by an unspoken compact they did not say anything about the incident the previous night.

  Soon they came to a river which ran through a gulley; the bed was stony for the water had dried up. The side they were on was higher than the opposite side and they stood there looking down into the river bed. A column of ants was crawling along on the other side.

  “Jump?” said Dell, getting to his feet.

  Malcolm looked at the distance which had to be traversed. “Pretty wide, isn’t it?”

  “I’ve jumped wider than that,” said Dell, his hair blowing in the breeze. They stood there for a moment in the silence, nothing breaking it, not even the sound of an insect. A sheep wandering along by itself regarded them briefly and then went back to cropping the grass.

  Dell walked back, his boots making an imprint in the dewy earth.

  “I’m going to try it,” he said stubbornly.

  He ran and stopped at the edge. Then he went back again. This time he let himself go, slithered for a moment on the opposite side, digging his boots into the earth, steadied himself, and turned round, grinning and waving.

  Malcolm got up, feeling frightened, his mouth dry. If he slid down among all these stones he could injure himself seriously. He looked across the divide to where Dell was grinning back at him, squatting down on the ground, a blade of grass in his mouth. The longer Malcolm looked, the wider the divide became. When he studied the ground it seemed that the land on his own side was greener and smoother whereas on the other side the earth was more trampled and one was more liable to slip. It was also stonier. At that very moment he saw that Dell was removing some of the stones in case Malcolm landed on one of them.

  Malcolm had jumped before and he didn’t like the sensation of going through the air, holding on to yourself as if part of you were liable to disappear.

  To the south was the village where Janet stayed and he could see smoke rising from the houses as he deliberated. He went back slowly, walked up and had a long look and walked back again. Then he ran and stopped at the edge. He couldn’t do it. It was impossible. Looking down at the other side he felt nausea and giddiness and his imagination frightened him as he saw himself broken among the stones in the river bed.

  He went back again, Dell watching him steadily as he chewed the blades of grass.

  He ran and jumped blindly into space and knew that something had gone wrong. He was going to slip on the other side. He knew this as well as he knew he shouldn’t have jumped at all. He wasn’t going to gain a foothold. The tackets in his boots weren’t holding. He saw the bank spinning in front of him, he saw the large stones circling below him, and he saw Dell’s face for a moment, the hands unmoving, the expression ambiguous. Then a hand was held out to him. He held on to the hand. The hand was pulling him, two hands were steadying him. It felt as if Dell was going to slide down with him, the two of them together, and then he was safe. He straightened slowly looking up into Dell’s grinning face, and said “Thanks.”

  “It was nothing,” said Dell walking away, he following him. They carried on, coming round in a curve which took them past the river bed. The sun was high in the sky: they jumped peat banks in silence.

  “Tell you what,” said Dell suddenly, “let’s go down to the school.”

  “It won’t be open,” said Malcolm.

  “No, but we can have a wander round.”

  “All right.”

  They walked on, past the standing stones, meeting no one, except that now and then a bird would fly up in front of them. They descended from the crest of the hill to the back of the school, which was made of old stone, scarred and weatherbeaten. They jumped the wall at the back and landed inside, just behind the privies. They went in. The gutters were urine-stained and there was writing on the wall.

  “Merry Christmas to all our readers,” said Dell. Pieces of old newspaper were strewn on the floor.

  They left the privy and looked in through the window at a classroom. It was much smaller than the ones in the secondary school, dimmer, more cramped. The desks, too, looked small and cramped and old, unlike the yellow ones in the secondary school. A large dim globe stood on a table.

  Malcolm had the oddest sensation of returning to a place which he had known but which had at the same time diminished. He remembered writing laboriously on his slate in wintertime with a scratching slate pencil: he could almost feel himself at one of these desks in his woollen shorts. Dell was making faces into the empty room. Strange how small everything had become, as if more suited to dwarfs than to human beings. A lady in a helmet of grey hair like a maenad seemed to move pleadingly towards him. He felt slightly sad thinking of the stained copper taps and his own head inverted below them, the privy with its stained aged stone, the classroom with its faded map of Europe, the seats with the names carved on them, the large lady with the huge bosom, the primary colours that warmed the day.

  He didn’t spe
ak much for the rest of their walk.

  16

  MR COLLINS STRODE into the room, the book open in his hand, the red forelock of hair falling about his face.

  “Will you please read, Miriam,” he said without looking up.

  Miriam obediently began to read:

  “i, sequere Italiam ventis; pete regna per undas. Spero equidem mediis, si quid pia numina possunt, supplicia hausurum scopulis, et nomine Dido saepe vocaturum.”

  “Now, translate please,” said Mr Collins, “let me hear you translate.” He perched on the window ledge, a bird about to take off.

  “Go seek Italy,” Miriam began, looking down at the book over her white formal collar.

  “No, no. Better would be ‘Go look for Italy’. Use ‘seek’ for pete.”

  Miriam began again. “Go look for Italy …” She came to a halt. Collins looked up. “Well, well, have you stopped, girl? Ventis, ventis.”

  Miriam didn’t know what to say. She looked down at her book. Malcolm looked at her, not having noticed her much before. Strange how he hadn’t known her father was dead.

  “Ventis, ventis,” said Collins again, pleading with his hands. “Malcolm, what does ventis mean here?”

  “Before the winds,” said Malcolm.

  “Good, excellent, quite right. ‘Before the winds.’ An idiomatic use. Pray continue, Miriam.”

  She began again. “Go look for Italy before the winds, seek kingdoms through the sea.”

  “Better would be ‘seek your kingdom over the sea’,” said Collins. “Better, I think, the singular in this instance.”

  He waited. She continued. “I indeed hope,” she said, knitting her brows.

  “Not ‘hope’. Better would be, ‘I do indeed foresee’, if pia—now what would pia mean there? Ronny, what would pia mean there?”

  Ronny looked up briefly from his corner seat, his mouth twitching.

  “Dutiful, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but I think a better word would be … James, what would you say?”

  “Gentle, sir.”

  “Good, good, James, excellent. Good indeed. ‘If tender heaven has any power, that you shall suffer punishment on the rocks and often call on Dido’s name.’ ” Like a litany he began to chant, “Haurio, hausi, haustum, haurire—to draw, drink, drain the cup of. Literally, drain the cup of punishments on the rocks.”

  He continued impatiently:

  “sequar atris ignibus absens: et cum frigida mors anima seduxerit artus omnibus umbra locis adero. dabis, improbe, poenas: audiam, et haec manes veniet mihi fama sub imos.

  “ ‘I shall pursue thee, though absent, with fires of hell.’ No, that’s ambiguous. Better would be ‘I, absent, shall pursue thee with fires of hell and when icy death shall sever soul and body’ (artus of course means ‘limbs’ but I think we would be justified in saying ‘body’), ‘my ghost shall haunt thee everywhere. Wretch, thou shalt suffer retribution. I shall hear it and the news shall reach me amid the shades below.’ ”

  Malcolm heard the echoing words. “And the news shall reach me amid the shades below.”

  Collins looked up and added briefly. “Fama of course can mean ‘rumour’ but here I think we might use the more common word ‘news’. Come now, Malcolm, let us move on to line 393. Begin at At pius Aeneas … Construe.” His beaked head with the red hair turned towards Malcolm. “At pius Aeneas, quamguam lenire dolentem …”

  Malcolm began, “But pious Aeneas, though he longs to calm his pain by consolation and avert her sorrow by words …”

  “ ‘Dispel’, Malcolm. ‘Dispel’ is better than ‘avert’. Much better. In this instance.”

  Malcolm continued, “sighing deeply and moved in soul by strong love obeys the orders of the gods and returns to the fleet.”

  He stopped.

  “Why have you stopped reading, Malcolm? Have you not prepared it?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Do you mean that you have or have not prepared it? Which? Or is there some other reason? We know of the perpetual weddings in your area”—the class giggled—”and the high incidence of fertility. Eh? Have you or have you not prepared it?”

  “That wasn’t why I stopped, sir.”

  “Oh? Some other reason? Some abstruse reason? Please let us all into the secret.”

  Mr Collins was looking up into the light, his beaked prow of a nose questing, the eyes quick below the brows.

  “I don’t know, sir. I was thinking.”

  “Thinking of what?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing, sir. Shall I go on?”

  “No, I wish to hear what you were thinking. In fact I’m sure that all of us are waiting with bated IQs to hear what you were thinking. Aren’t we?” He twinkled at the class.

  They all murmured appropriately. Gravitas had for the moment given way to playfulness: the senator was relaxing.

  “It’s just, sir, that I thought of his leaving her and then Vergil calling him pius.”

  “Ah, but Malcolm, pius doesn’t meant ‘pious’. We mustn’t say that Aeneas was Free Church, must we?”

  There was a roar of laughter from the class. Even Miriam smiled faintly above her white collar.

  “No, sir, I mean the dutiful part. I meant that Dido was in love with him and then he left her so coldly and then the poet writes pius. It’s something in the poetry.”

  “Poetry?” said Collins. “What are you saying about the poetry? Come on, come on. After all Vergil is supposed to be second only to Homer, at least in the civilised parts of the world. But perhaps the news hasn’t reached us here amid the shades below.” He laughed briefly and the class smiled again.

  “I don’t know, sir,” Malcolm pursued doggedly. “I just feel the poetry becoming cold after she says, ‘The news shall reach me amid the shades below’.” Why did that line make him shiver almost uncontrollably, that vengefulness, that remorseless love?

  Collins looked at him for a long time and then his voice softened.

  “What do the rest of you think?” he asked, looking keenly round the class. “Ronny? Have your romantic attachments allowed you to pass judgement on Vergil?”

  “On this love affair, sir?”

  “Yes, Ronny, if you would bend your sardonic mind towards it. For a moment.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Ronny grinning. “I would say that the whole thing is a bit exaggerated.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning too romantic, sir.”

  “I see. As we all know, however, that the word romantic has a number of meanings, might you elaborate a bit more?”

  “Yes sir. I was just thinking …” and then he stopped in midflight, looking at Malcolm, as if some idea had come into his mind. Then he started again.

  “I was just thinking, sir, that the ideas presented—I mean those of duty and love, which I take to be the two main ones—are shown rather naively.”

  “We’re listening. Pray continue.”

  “I mean, sir, that when the gods speak to him and tell him directly that he should go, it seems to me to make the contrast too deliberate.”

  “You mean as distinct from inner conscience, I suppose.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Collins was no fool: sharp as a needle in fact.

  “Malcolm,” he said.

  “If I may say so, sir, I think that is nonsense. Our conscience is equivalent to their gods. The point is that he led Dido to believe that he was in love with her and then left her and then congratulated himself on the fact.”

  “It doesn’t say that he congratulated himself on the fact,” said Ronny quickly.

  “No, he doesn’t say it. The verse says it. Don’t you see? There is the poetry of the passion and then there is the poetry when Aeneas speaks. Which of them is the better? That is the question.”

  “It is not a football game with one side winning and the other losing,” Collins interposed, looking birdlike from Ronny to Malcolm and then letting his eyes rest for a moment on Janet.

  “Oh, I don’t agree, si
r,” said Malcolm “The verse tells one. The one who is on the side of life is shown in the verse …”

  “I don’t understand that,” said Miriam, “surely it’s a question of conscience. I don’t know what Malcolm is saying but I think he is right just the same. Aeneas wasn’t loyal. He couldn’t have loved Dido.”

  She flushed quickly and looked down at her book. Bred on Annie S. Swan. The squire leaves the girl in the lurch even though she’s a queen. She sat upright in her chair looking down at her folded hands.

  “James?”

  “I am on the side of Aeneas, sir. He had his duty to do. The race is more important than the individual.”

  “Fascist,” said Malcolm suddenly. “What do you think we’re fighting for. Isn’t that what Hitler says, that the race is more important than the individual?”

  There was silence. Collins looked uncomfortable for the first time and his expression became more serious.

  “Malcolm, we mustn’t have you saying things like that.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, I was referring to the ideas. I didn’t mean that he personally was a Fascist.”

  “I accept the apology and I can see your philosophical point. Do you agree, Ronny? Rome was more important than the individual woman. That is your point, isn’t it, James?”

  “Yes,” said Ronny, “I do agree on the whole.”

  From the back Neil spoke. “I was wondering, sir, whether there was a race element involved here. Did the Romans consider themselves superior to the Africans? I mean, Aeneas, wouldn’t he for instance consider an African queen inferior? Or am I wrong?”

  “A very good point, Neil, a very good point indeed. I think you may have something there. Dido was coloured of course. Line 362 on.” Rapidly he turned to the line knowing the book backwards, forwards, inside out. “Here it is. ‘While yet she spoke these words she looks on him in scowling anger rolling to and fro her eyes.’ ” He emphasised the last words. “I think that is what Negroes do. As witness Othello. Have you read Othello, Malcolm?”