by Alan Warner
‘Not quite Old Vic standard.’ And then she was gone with her own superior brood. You stupid bitch, he muttered under his breath, you Observer-Magazine-reading bitch who never liked anything in your life till some critic made it respectable, who wouldn’t recognise a good line of poetry or prose till sanctified by the voice of London, who would never have arrived at Shakespeare on your own till you were given the crutches.
And he knew as he watched her walking, so seemingly self-sufficient, in her black gown across the hall that she was as he had been and would be no longer. He had taken a journey with his class, a pilgrimage across the wooden boards, the poor abject furnitureless room which was like their vision of life, and from that journey he and they had learned in spite of everything. In spite of everything, he shouted in his mind, we have put a flag out there and it is there even during the plague, even if Miss Stewart visits it. It is there in spite of Miss Stewart, in spite of her shelter and her glasses, in spite of her very vulnerable armour, in spite of her, in spite of everything.
The Telegram
The two women – one fat and one thin – sat at the window of the thin woman’s house drinking tea and looking down the road which ran through the village. They were like two birds, one a fat domestic bird perhaps, the other more aquiline, more gaunt, or, to be precise, more like a buzzard.
It was wartime and though the village appeared quiet, much had gone on in it. Reverberations from a war fought far away had reached it: many of its young men had been killed, or rather drowned, since nearly all of them had joined the navy, and their ships had sunk in seas which they had never seen except on maps which hung on the walls of the local school which they all had at one time or another unwillingly attended. One had been drowned on a destroyer after a leave during which he had told his family that he would never come back again. (Or at least that was the rumour in the village which was still, as it had always been, a superstitious place.) Another had been drowned during the pursuit of the Bismarck.
What the war had to do with them the people of the village did not know. It came on them as a strange plague, taking their sons away and then killing them, meaninglessly, randomly. They watched the road often for the telegrams.
The telegrams were brought to the houses by the local elder who, clad in black, would walk along the road and then stop at the house to which the telegram was directed. People began to think of the telegram as a strange missile pointed at them from abroad. They did not know what to associate it with, certainly not with God, but it was a weapon of some kind, it picked a door and entered it, and left desolation just like any other weapon.
The two women who watched the street were different, not only physically but socially. For the thin woman’s son was a sub-lieutenant in the Navy while the fat woman’s son was only an ordinary seaman. The fat woman’s son had to salute the thin woman’s son. One got more pay than the other, and wore better uniform. One had been at university and had therefore become an officer, the other had left school at the age of fourteen.
When they looked out the window they could see cows wandering lazily about, but little other movement. The fat woman’s cow used to eat the thin woman’s washing and she was looking out for it but she couldn’t see it. The thin woman was not popular in the village. She was an incomer from another village and had only been in this one for thirty years or so. The fat woman had lived in the village all her days; she was a native. Also the thin woman was ambitious: she had sent her son to university though she only had a widow’s pension of ten shillings a week.
As they watched they could see at the far end of the street the tall man in black clothes carrying in his hand a piece of yellow paper. This was a bare village with little colour and therefore the yellow was both strange and unnatural.
The fat woman said: ‘It’s Macleod again.’
‘I wonder where he’s going today.’
They were both frightened for he could be coming to their house. And so they watched him and as they watched him they spoke feverishly as if by speaking continually and watching his every move they would be able to keep from themselves whatever plague he was bringing. The thin woman said:
‘Don’t worry, Sarah, it won’t be for you. Donald only left home last week.’
‘You don’t know,’ said the fat woman, ‘you don’t know.’
And then she added without thinking, ‘It’s different for the officers.’
‘Why is it different for the officers?’ said the thin woman in an even voice without taking her eyes from the black figure.
‘Well, I just thought they’re better off,’ said the fat woman in a confused tone, ‘they get better food and they get better conditions.’
‘They’re still on the ship,’ said the thin woman who was thinking that the fat woman was very stupid. But then most of them were: they were large, fat and lazy. Most of them could have better afforded to send their sons and daughters to university but they didn’t want to be thought of as snobbish.
‘They are that,’ said the fat woman. ‘But your son is educated,’ she added irrelevantly. Of course her son didn’t salute the thin woman’s son if they were both home on leave at the same time. It had happened once they had been. But naturally there was the uneasiness.
‘I made sacrifices to have my son educated,’ said the thin woman. ‘I lived on a pension of ten shillings a week. I was in nobody’s debt. More tea?’
‘No thank you,’ said the fat woman. ‘He’s passed Bessie’s house. That means it can’t be Roddy. He’s safe.’
For a terrible moment she realised that she had hoped that the elder would have turned in at Bessie’s house. Not that she had anything against either Bessie or Roddy. But still one thought of one’s own family first.
The thin woman continued remorselessly as if she were pecking away at something she had pecked at for many years. ‘The teacher told me to send Iain to University. He came to see me. I had no thought of sending him before he came. “Send your son to university,” he said to me. “He’s got a good head on him.” And I’ll tell you, Sarah, I had to save every penny. Ten shillings isn’t much. When did you see me with good clothes in the church?’
‘That’s true,’ said the fat woman absently. ‘We have to make sacrifices.’ It was difficult to know what she was thinking of – the whale meat or the saccharines? Or the lack of clothes? Her mind was vague and diffused except when she was thinking about herself.
The thin woman continued: ‘Many’s the night I used to sit here in this room and knit clothes for him when he was young. I even knitted trousers for him. And for all I know he may marry an English girl and where will I be? He might go and work in England. He was staying in a house there at Christmas. He met a girl at a dance and he found out later that her father was a mayor. I’m sure she smokes and drinks. And he might not give me anything after all I’ve done for him.’
‘Donald spends all his money,’ said the fat woman. ‘He never sends me anything. When he comes home on leave he’s never in the house. But I don’t mind. He was always like that. Meeting strange people and buying them drinks. It’s his nature and he can’t go against his nature. He’s passed the Smiths. That means Tommy’s all right.’
There were only another three houses before he would reach her own, and then the last one was the one where she was sitting.
‘I think I’ll take a cup of tea,’ she said. And then, ‘I’m sorry about the cow.’ But no matter how you tried you never could like the thin woman. She was always putting on airs. Mayor indeed. Sending her son to university. Why did she want to be better than anyone else? Saving and scrimping all the time. And everybody said that her son wasn’t as clever as all that. He had failed some of his exams too. Her own Donald was just as clever and could have gone to university but he was too fond of fishing and being out with the boys.
As she drank her tea her heart was beating and she was frightened and she didn’t know what to talk about and yet she wanted to talk. She liked talking, after all what
else was there to do? But the thin woman didn’t gossip much. You couldn’t feel at ease with her, you had the idea all the time that she was thinking about something else.
The thin woman came and sat down beside her.
‘Did you hear,’ said the fat woman, ‘that Malcolm Mackay was up on a drunken charge? He smashed his car, so they say. It was in the black-out.’
‘I didn’t hear that,’ said the thin woman.
‘It was coming home last night with the meat. He had it in the van and he smashed it at the burn. But they say he’s all right. I don’t know how they kept him out of the war. They said it was his heart but there was nothing wrong with his heart. Everyone knows it was influence. What’s wrong with his heart if he can drink and smash a car?’
The thin woman drank her tea very delicately. She used to be away on service a long time before she was married and she had a dainty way of doing things. She sipped her tea, her little finger elegantly curled in an irritating way.
‘Why do you keep your finger like that?’ said the fat woman suddenly.
‘Like what?’
The fat woman demonstrated.
‘Oh, it was the way I saw the guests drinking tea in the hotels when I was on service. They always drank like that.’
‘He’s passed the Stewarts,’ said the fat woman. Two houses to go. They looked at each other wildly. It must be one of them. Surely. They could see the elder quite clearly now, walking very stiff, very upright, wearing his black hat. He walked in a stately dignified manner, eyes straight ahead of him.
‘He’s proud of what he’s doing,’ said the fat woman suddenly. ‘You’d think he was proud of it. Knowing before anyone else. And he himself was never in the war.’
‘Yes,’ said the thin woman, ‘it gives him a position.’ They watched him. They both knew him well. He was a stiff, quiet man who kept himself to himself, more than ever now. He didn’t mix with people and he always carried the Bible into the pulpit for the minister.
‘They say his wife had one of her fits again,’ said the fat woman viciously. He had passed the Murrays. The next house was her own. She sat perfectly still. Oh, pray God it wasn’t hers. And yet it must be hers. Surely it must be hers. She had dreamt of this happening, her son drowning in the Atlantic ocean, her own child whom she had reared, whom she had seen going to play football in his green jersey and white shorts, whom she had seen running home from school. She could see him drowning but she couldn’t make out the name of the ship. She had never seen a really big ship and what she imagined was more like the mailboat than a cruiser. Her son couldn’t drown out there for no reason that she could understand. God couldn’t do that to people. It was impossible. God was kinder than that. God helped you in your sore trouble. She began to mutter a prayer over and over. She said it quickly like the Catholics, O God save my son O God save my son O God save my son. She was ashamed of prattling in that way as if she was counting beads but she couldn’t stop herself, and on top of that she would soon cry. She knew it and she didn’t want to cry in front of that woman, that foreigner. It would be weakness. She felt the arm of the thin woman around her shoulders, the thin arm, and it was like first love, it was like the time Murdo had taken her hand in his when they were coming home from the dance, such an innocent gesture, such a spontaneous gesture. So unexpected, so strange, so much a gift. She was crying and she couldn’t look . . .
‘He has passed your house,’ said the thin woman in a distant firm voice, and she looked up. He was walking along and he had indeed passed her house. She wanted to stand up and dance all round the kitchen, all fifteen stone of her, and shout and cry and sing a song but then she stopped. She couldn’t do that. How could she do that when it must be the thin woman’s son? There was no other house. The thin woman was looking out at the elder, her lips pressed closely together, white and bloodless. Where had she learnt that self-control? She wasn’t crying or shaking. She was looking out at something she had always dreaded but she wasn’t going to cry or surrender or give herself away to anyone.
And at that moment the fat woman saw. She saw the years of discipline, she remembered how thin and unfed and pale the thin woman had always looked, how sometimes she had had to borrow money, even a shilling to buy food. She saw what it must have been like to be a widow bringing up a son in a village not her own. She saw it so clearly that she was astounded. It was as if she had an extra vision, as if the air itself brought the past with all its details nearer. The number of times the thin woman had been ill and people had said that she was weak and useless. She looked down at the thin woman’s arm. It was so shrivelled, and dry.
And the elder walked on. A few yards now till he reached the plank. But the thin woman hadn’t cried. She was steady and still, her lips still compressed, sitting upright in her chair. And, miracle of miracles, the elder passed the plank and walked straight on.
They looked at each other. What did it all mean? Where was the elder going, clutching his telegram in his hand, walking like a man in a daze? There were no other houses so where was he going? They drank their tea in silence, turning away from each other. The fat woman said, ‘I must be going.’ They parted for the moment without speaking. The thin woman still sat at the window looking out. Once or twice the fat woman made as if to turn back as if she had something to say, some message to pass on, but she didn’t. She walked away.
It wasn’t till later that night that they discovered what had happened. The elder had a telegram directed to himself, to tell him of the drowning of his own son. He should never have seen it just like that, but there had been a mistake at the post office, owing to the fact that there were two boys in the village with the same name. His walk through the village was a somnambulistic wandering. He didn’t want to go home and tell his wife what had happened. He was walking along not knowing where he was going when later he was stopped half way to the next village. Perhaps he was going in search of his son. Altogether he had walked six miles. The telegram was crushed in his fingers and so sweaty that they could hardly make out the writing.
Murdo’s Xmas Letter
Dear Friends,
Another Christmas has come again, and I am sending you a report of my activities during the year. It doesn’t seem so long ago since last Christmas was here, but as we all know it is twelve months ago – no more and no less.
My main project in the early part of the year was to encourage Scottish writing, by running a competition for short stories. I asked for a sum of ten pounds to be enclosed with each story: this was to cover administrative costs, coffee, stamps, and whisky, etc. The prizes which I presented in March were ten pounds for the best story, one pound for the next story and 10p for third best. I hope to do something similar for Scottish Writing next year. I shall advise entrants that a maximum of 200 words is entirely reasonable, as it seems to me that one of the faults of Scottish Writing is that it is too long, and with shorter short stories I shall be able to apply better my critical techniques. Far more emphasis should be placed on the single word, which is the hallmark of the truly great writer. What I look for first is good typing, then originality.
Another project in which I was involved gave me great satisfaction. I have noticed in the past that the standards of In Memoriams in the local paper is very low, and it seems to me that with a little practice they could be improved. I therefore started a workshop for that purpose. I told my class that epitaphs have concentrated mainly on names and dates, without referring in depth to the individual nature of the dead person. I told them that the best writing of the twentieth century is above all truthful. Thus if the dead person was highly sexed, perverted, or a habitual thief, this should be stated. As a result of our final workshop (the cost for the whole course was £50 to each member) I shall put together a small anthology of the best In Memoriams.
Here are two examples:
“May James Campbell’s randy bones rest in peace.”
and
“May John MacDonald be able to find his way to his own g
rave.”
The classic, I think, was
“Let her RIP.”
I may say that the sales of the local newspaper have soared since these epitaphs were inserted and I had a congratulatory message from the editor.
Old clothes is another area of my research, the idea for which I got from the local Oxfam. I have started a campaign by which I hope to convince people that old clothes are better than new ones. The logic of my argument goes like this. Community, I say, is the basis of our life here in the island, and what would be more communal than to wear clothes which in the past have been worn by someone else. In this way we inherit history, sweat, stains and genealogy. Old clothes are like a time machine: they give an insight into the past that cannot be gained in any other way. Look, I say, at these rags which better men and women than you have worn. They did not know where their next meal was coming from. Indeed they did not know where their last meal had come from. Do you not wish to have thoughts like them, pure healthy thoughts, and not impure unhealthy thoughts such as people who wear new clothes have?
Such people, I say, existed on bread and sour milk. Many of my hearers, and I don’t blame them for this, have been so moved by my rhetoric that they have stripped off their new clothes on the spot and have taken old clothes of a similar size. This, I say, is what Christianity was really about. Did Christ shop at Harrods? Such a statement has only to be made for the absurdity of it to be revealed. Nor in fact has anyone found an answer to my logic and I do not think anyone will.
So you see, my friends, that I have not been idle.
I have also decided during the course of this year to change the subject of my novel. It was originally to be about a bank clerk, but I have noticed on television a resurgence of the detective story. Thus I have created a private eye called Sam Spaid who walks, as I write, the mean streets of Portree. He wears a bowler hat, and when he is in his office listens to tapes of Free Church sermons. He doesn’t drink or smoke and his only vice is sniffing. In his first case he opened his door to find a stunning Free Church woman there. He immediately knew that she spelt trouble. The elastic which she kept round her Bible had been stolen. This investigation, which of course ended in success, took Sam Spaid to a cache of black elastic in Inverness. Sam Spaid’s fee, which never varies, is £20 per day plus expenses! He will never be rich but he will be an interesting moral phenomenon. His next case will involve the serial murders of Free Church ministers by a crazed sniper who was made to spend his early years in the Sunday School.