She put her hand in his quite casually and trustingly.
It was probable of course that when he got to university he wouldn’t write to her. One never knew a thing like that. He walked on with his slightly rolling gait, in his black jacket and black hat, casting a dense shade on the road, massive and heavy, solid as a black stone.
Ahead of him appeared the rolling mesa. “Get out of my way,” he said under his breath as a tall man without holsters came towards him. “Get out of my way or I’ll gun you down.”
His two guns hung low at his holsters.
He squeezed Sheila’s hand and she looked up at him in her red gown. He frowned slightly. “Only passing through,” he thought. “Twenty-four hours is all.”
His black boots glittered in the light. He was the biggest man in that town. No question of it. He tightened an imaginary belt slung low and diagonally across his waist.
They walked through the woods together among the tall trees which cast dappled shadows on the ground.
“They say there are deer here sometimes,” she said.
“No,” he said definitely, “there are no deer.”
There was a lot of greenery and moss. A rabbit or a hare suddenly jumped up in front of them and then he was gone. The tall trees made an avenue down which they walked. As he looked at her he suddenly saw that her face was green and he burst out laughing.
She was offended. “What are you laughing at?” she said.
“It’s you,” he said, “your face is green.”
“So’s yours,” she answered.
The road wound to the right. In the wood there was no sound at all but that of running water which flowed underground. They passed a house, then another one, and then up at the top of the brae they saw the sanatorium. It was a big building and all the windows were wide open.
They stood at the door and pressed a bell. A nurse in white uniform came to the door. “Is it visiting time?” said Malcolm. Sheila still clutched his hand. The nurse looked at them.
“Who did you want to see?” she asked.
Malcolm was about to say “Dicky” and then he said, “Robert Morrison.”
“Come with me.” They walked down the cool corridors. Everything seemed to be cool and without perfume or smell of the open air even though the windows were open. Sterilised. They followed the nurse, watching her white starched uniform ahead of them. In the distance they saw two nurses wheeling a trolley piled high with clothes across the shining polished linoleum.
She stopped at a small room. It clearly wasn’t the general ward.
“Fifteen minutes,” said the nurse and left them. Dicky was sitting propped up in bed against the pillows, looking emaciated.
“Hello, Dicky,” said Malcolm uneasily.
The window was open and he could see green leaves beyond and he could hear birds twittering. There was a tumbler on the small table beside the bed and a bunch of green grapes. Dicky seemed very lonely.
“Hullo, Malcolm.” His throat seemed to be better anyway. “Long time no see.”
“You remember Sheila,” said Malcolm.
“Of course. Come in, the two of you.”
Malcolm sat on the edge of the white bed, Sheila on the chair. She was looking around her and twisting her hands.
“Well, what’s the news, Malcolm?” said Dicky out of his emaciated face.
“No news, nothing at all. There was a game of football today but I don’t know the result yet.” Dicky nodded as if he wasn’t interested and as Malcolm continued to look round the room said:
“Looking for some poetry?”
“No, not really. I’ve given it up.”
“You’re joking,” said Dicky. “How do you mean given it up?”
“I’ve got interested in maths.”
“Have you lost interest in draughts too?”
“No, I’ll play you sometime when you get out of here.”
Sheila looked at him warningly when he said this.
“Fair enough,” said Dicky. “It’s better for me here anyway.”
He coughed slightly and covered his mouth with his hand. There was a silence. Malcolm felt more and more uncomfortable and his hand slid into Sheila’s who stood up and said, “Are you sure your pillows are comfortable?” Before Dicky could answer she was arranging the pillows, looking down at him tenderly.
“As a matter of fact, I doubt if we’ll have another game of draughts,” said Dicky suddenly.
“What did you say?”
“I said that I doubt if I’ll last another three weeks.”
“You don’t mean that?” cheerfully.
“Oh yes I do. To tell you the truth I don’t care much. I’m fed up lying about here. I get boils among other things.”
“Do you have many visitors?”
“No. To be quite honest, I’ve never visited anyone in the sanatorium myself and I don’t see any reason why they should visit me.”
Malcolm looked at him for a moment. He noticed a change in him. It was as if he were looking at himself from a distance. Was it tranquillity or indifference?
“Would you like a game of draughts now?” he said.
“Of course not,” said Sheila warningly. “What a lot of nonsense.”
“No, I wouldn’t thanks just the same. I get tired rather easily.”
Malcolm could see that in spite of his pose there was terror behind the eyes. He covered his mouth whenever he coughed.
“The nurse will be coming soon,” said Dicky. “There are all sorts of regulations. Tea at six in the morning, would you believe it? It’s like being back in the Army again.”
He looked down at his green pyjamas.
There was another long silence. Malcolm heard a bird suddenly trilling outside and listened for the variations and imagined it hidden among the dense leaves in the cooling twilight. He imagined it singing under the harmonious stars which shone even on this sanatorium. He tried to imagine the noises of the night, the coughs, the spittings, the groans, the complaints, and the nurses moving about in their starched blue and white, among the dying, and was afraid. Even under the harmonious stars. Through the door he could see into another room where a man was sitting up in bed staring ahead of him, not seeing anything. He appeared unshaven though clearly this wouldn’t be allowed: it must be some darkening of the skin.
“No,” said Dicky suddenly, “I can’t see you giving up reading poetry.”
“I’m giving it up all right.” said Malcolm.
“Why?”
“Because it’s false.”
“What isn’t false?” said Dicky, coughing again.
At that moment Malcolm looked into Sheila’s eyes and thought, “You aren’t false, are you? At least not for now.” And he wished that he was out of there, walking with her hand through the warm green wood. Janet was somewhere else, perhaps up among the harmonious stars. And Ronny too. Among the harmonious stars.
Dicky coughed again and pulled out a large white handkerchief. Afterwards he picked out a green grape and chewed it.
“My mother brought these,” he said. “She was here one day. I wish she wouldn’t come. She doesn’t know anything. And she makes a scene. She just doesn’t know. It would be better if she didn’t come. Her English isn’t too good either.”
He stared unseeingly into the night. The shadows of the leaves flickered on his face as if an invisible loom were plying backwards and forwards.
The nurse came to the door. “Time up,” she said unsmilingly. Dicky gazed back at her, also without smiling. Malcolm stood up, trying to hide his joy that he was leaving. “I’ll be coming oftener,” he said, “now that I know where to come.”
Sheila got up and said decisively. “I’ll be coming with him. It wouldn’t look good if I came on my own.” Her short squat body, her coarse black hair, her largish red lips seemed to be the only real living things in the room.
The nurse stood watching the two of them, not saying anything, starched dress, very white, very stiff, very formal, unstained.
&
nbsp; “Cheerio just now,” said Malcolm. Dicky smiled and put back a grape he was going to eat. The nurse shut the door and then they were walking down the corridor again.
“Will he be all right?” Malcolm asked the nurse. She appeared not to hear the question for she didn’t answer. Perhaps that was one of the forbidden questions. Finally she said after a long time, “We’re not allowed to speak about our patients. You’d have to see the doctor.”
As they were walking along they heard someone coughing and coughing without stopping. The sound punctuated their walk down the corridor. A radio somewhere was softly playing some Scottish dance music. Once they saw a wild face staring around it over the top of a striped pyjama jacket. They turned right, along the polished floor to the entrance hall, and walked out. Sheila’s hand sought for his.
They walked away from the sanatorium. The air was slightly cooler and the grass greener. A small bird was standing in the garden with a worm trailing from its beak. They tried to find Dicky’s window so that they could wave but couldn’t see it. A man in a wheelchair waved at them. They entered the wood hand in hand, not speaking. Malcolm was thinking of Mr Thin’s harmonious stars which would soon be rising in the sky. And from there he began to think about football and wondered for the first time which side had won. He hoped that Colin had had a good game. He thought of the warmth of the bus with all the people and wanted to be home as soon as possible. Sheila was looking at him sideways with a puzzled expression as he walked along thinking. He drew her to him and put his arm around her quite spontaneously. Perhaps he would write to her after all. They stopped against a tree and he kissed her. Below he could hear the sound of the buried water and on the edge of his mind a cough among the leaves. The harmonious stars had not yet come out. He strained against her, feeling the heat penetrating his body. Her lips were open towards the heavens which were beginning now to lose their blue and turn red. The leaves of the trees (in the place where they were standing) cut them off from the sanatorium. Everything was as yet very green.
EPILOGUE
THE TAXI DROVE up to the quay and the taxi driver got out. Then Colin and Malcolm got out. A drunk was wandering about the quay singing and waving a bottle in his right hand, spittle at his mouth. The ship itself loomed up white against the stone, some officers in white on the deck looking like waiters. The gangway was already laid down. The taxi driver led Colin to the back and Colin took the green case out of the boot. He humped it on his back and without saying anything carried it down the gangway, pretending that it wasn’t heavy. Like a servant. Malcolm watched him out of a deep desolation. That moment was one of his worst, if not the worst. The taxi driver had taken out a cigarette and gone away by himself to smoke it.
Malcolm looked into the taxi where his mother was sitting very black and very frail with a sparse fur at her neck. He said, “Well then.” She said: “Make sure that you write. And take aspirins if you catch a cold. And ask the landlady for a hot water bottle.” He leaned down briefly and touched her dry lips with his. She almost cried but didn’t. He turned away and met Colin coming back up. They shook hands like adults, Colin grinning and squeezing Malcolm’s hand as if to show his strength.
Malcolm walked down the gangway and turned back once to wave. Colin had got into the taxi, into the front seat this time, and the driver was already stubbing his cigarette, stamping it carefully with his boot. Malcolm stood looking down at the green case and then turned again as the taxi accelerated and drove off, his mother waving frantically through the back window. He waved back once and then picked up his case. He descended the stairs with it, making his way to the berth which had been reserved for him, kicking aside one or two beer bottles which were lying at the foot of the stair. He wondered if James was on the boat as well and felt again the same anger and contempt. To think that James should have won the Bursary after all and he himself get nothing. Sheila’s parents hadn’t liked it. No doubt about it: their attitude had changed and so had Sheila’s. It had been in the paper too and no way of hiding it. He made his way along the lit corridors white as milk, passing a steward on the way. It was like being in an underground prison, cell after cell on each side. He consulted the numbers on the doors and finally opened one of them. He switched on the light and saw the shining wooden dressing table with the mirror, the bed with the one grey blanket and the white sheets folded below it, the single chair at the side of the bed.
He went out to look for a lavatory and found it not far down the corridor. It was white and tiled like a palace, with lots of mirrors and liquid soap in a silver container that you tilted over into the water. He washed his hands and his face in the blazing bare light, in the marble whiteness, and dried himself with a roller towel.
Then he went back to his room, took his pyjamas out of the case, and laid them on the bed. He removed his jacket, tie, collar and trousers and shirt and laid them on the back of the chair. He put on his pyjamas and got into the bed, which was rather chilly with only the one blanket. Below him he could hear the thud of the engine.
He switched off the light and lay there in the darkness alone for the first time in his life. Absolutely alone. From now on he was on his own. He crawled down the bed and drew aside the curtains on the porthole. Looking out he could see the water lapping against the side of the ship. It was oily and greasy and dirty, shore water. Drifting ahead of him he could see an almost swamped wooden box. So far the ship hadn’t moved and he wanted her to move so that he could get out of there.
Somewhere above he thought Ronny and Janet might be moving but he wasn’t sure if they would be leaving for a day or two. Ronny might not be going to the university anyway. And he himself was going to do maths. He might also study philosophy. He pulled the bedclothes up towards his chin, thinking that he felt a slight change in the hammering resonance of the engine. He moved over to the porthole again and pulled the curtains aside. Sure enough the ship was moving. He could see white waves thudding against the side of the ship and then thin green threads through the spray. But he could see nothing else except the sea high against the side of the ship which moved on absolutely majestically. He lay back on his bed again. At last he was alone. Free of everything, everyone. Ready to begin. He lay in the darkness deep in the bowels of the ship, feeling the waves thudding against the sides, imagining the bows cutting into the green water, hearing also as he dropped into sleep, high above him as if in another world, the gay laughter of the passengers from the disordered saloon, and then high above the again a piper playing “The Barren Rocks of Aden.”
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM POLYGON
BY IAIN CRICHTON SMITH
Consider the Lilies
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00VIGXTJO
‘Retrained, finely wrought … Mr Crichton Smith shows us isolation, perplexity, loneliness, a combination of blindness and indifference’ – New Statesman
‘Mr Crichton Smith has an acute feeling for places and atmosphere. The wind-blown heaths, the grey skies, the black dwellings, the narrow lives, the poverty – are all vividly depicted … one can linger over the sheer beauty of his phrases’ – Observer
The eviction of the crofters from their homes between 1792 and the 1850s was one of the cruellest episodes in Scotland’s history. In this novel Iain Crichton Smith captures the impact of the Highland Clearances through the thoughts and memories of an old woman who has lived all her life within the narrow confines of her community.
Alone and bewildered by the demands of the factor, Mrs Scott approaches the minister for help, only to have her faith shattered by his hypocrisy. She finds comfort, however, from a surprising source: Donald Macleod, an imaginative and self-educated man who has been ostracised by his neighbours, not least by Mrs Scott herself, on account of his atheism. Through him and through the circumstances forced upon her, the old woman achieves new strength.
The Last Summer
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00VIGXSGI
A sensitively written and memorable novel of youth by one of Scotland’
s most distinguished twentieth century writers.
Malcolm, studious, imaginative, footballing, shy, sexually aware but uncomfortably innocent, is in his last term at school on a Hebridean island during the Second World War. His awkward relationship with his teachers, his widowed mother and younger brother, his friends – and with Janet whom he loves from a distance and the less comely and warmer, but to him still enigmatic, Sheila, are marvellously realised. Above all, this is the story of a boy, on his own, trying to discover himself and through himself to find his way in life.
My Last Duchess
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00VIGXRKA
Iain Crichton Smith’s third novel is as different from his second, The Last Summer, as that was from his first, Consider the Lillies. Crichton Smith is at the height of his powers as poet and prose writer. This new work of fiction follows hard upon his Selected Poems and his volume of short stories, Survival Without Fear.
Mark Simmons, aged 42, is a teacher at a training college. His wife has just walked out on him because she has found him so much less interesting than she expected the man she married to be. This event, which he has by no means expected, has jolted him into a major reassessment of himself, of his place in the universe. He realises that he has become bitter, cynical and disillusioned: he is a failure intellectually – he wanted to be a writer, but for years he has striven at one book, which he privately knows to be not very good. He is a failure as a teacher – he wasn’t competent enough to obtain a post at a university. He is a failure as a husband, because his wife was daily moving away from him. He is a failure as a father, because he and his wife had had no children. Above all, he is a failure as a human being, because he despises everybody, not least himself. Mark Simmons hates himself for being more concerned with argument than happiness.
My Last Duchess is a novel of great resourcefulness and energy.
An Honourable Death
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00VIGXQQU
The Last Summer Page 16