by Alan Warner
He took his dazed eyes off a couple who were snapping their fingers at each other just in front of him, and said: ‘Well, it’s been very dry so far and we don’t know what we’re going to do.’ He had to shout the words against the music and the general noise. ‘I have a good few acres you know though a good many years ago I didn’t have any and I worked for another man. I have four cows and I sell the milk. To tell you the honest truth I didn’t want to come here at all but I felt I couldn’t let her down. It wasn’t an easy thing for me. I haven’t left the island before. Do you think this is a posh hotel?’
I said that I thought it was. He said, ‘I tell you I’ve never been in a hotel before now. They’ve got a lot of carpets, haven’t they? And mirrors, I’ve never seen so many mirrors.’
‘Come on,’ I shouted, ‘let’s go into the bar.’ We did so and I ordered two beers.
‘The people in there aren’t like human beings at all,’ he said. ‘They’re like Africans.’
After a while he said, ‘It was the truth I said about her, she’s never at home. She’s always been working in hotels. I’ll tell you something, she’s never carried a creel on her back though that’s not a good thing either. She was always eating buns and she would never eat any porridge. What do you think of her husband, eh? He was talking away about cars. And he’s got a good suit, I’ll give him that. He gave the waiter a pound, I saw it with my own eyes. Oh, he knows his way around hotels, I’ll be bound. But where does he come from? I don’t know. He’s never ploughed any ground, I think.’
I thought at that moment that he wouldn’t see his daughter very often in the future. Perhaps he really was without knowing it giving her away to a stranger in a hired cutprice suit.
After a while we thought it politic to go back. By this time there was a lull in the dancing and the boy in the lightish suit had started a Gaelic song but he didn’t know all the words of it, only the chorus. People looked round for assistance while red-faced and embarrassed he kept asking if anyone knew the words because he himself had lost them. Suddenly the father pushed forward with authority and standing with his glass in his hand began to sing – verse after verse in the traditional manner. They all gathered round him and even the waitresses listened, there was so much depth and intensity in his singing. After he had finished there was much applause and requests for other songs for he seemed to know the words of all of them. The young girls and the boys gathered round him and sat on the floor in a circle looking up at him. He blossomed in the company and I thought that I could now leave, for he seemed to be wholly at home and more so than his audience were.
The Hermit
We were on a touring bus one morning and it stopped at a shed by the side of the road. A hermit lived there. The shed was made of tin and had a long chimney sticking out of it. The bus driver, very upright behind the wheel, tooted the horn a few times and then stopped. We were looking out the window at the hut. After the driver had stopped tooting a man came out. He was very thin, and white, bristly hair was seen not only on his head but on his cheeks as well. His trousers were held up by braces. He was carrying a chanter. He scratched his head and then came over to the bus. He stood on the step and said, ‘Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, I’m afraid I was late getting up.’ He spoke in a sort of educated voice.
He looked down at the ground and then up again and, laughing a little, said, ‘Would you like if I played you some tunes to speed you on your way?’
He took out his chanter and blew through it. Then he took out a dirty white handkerchief and wiped it. He played ‘Loch Lomond’ very badly, and put the chanter on a case beside him, a case belonging to one of the passengers.
‘This is the day I go for my pension,’ he said, and someone laughed.
‘I go down the road there to the Post Office.’ He pointed into the slight mist ahead of us.
The driver said, ‘He’s been on TV, haven’t you?’
The hermit scratched his head again, looking down at the floor, and then, looking up again with an alert bright look on his unshaven ravaged face,
‘Yes, I was on TV,’ he said.
‘What programme were you on?’ someone shouted from the back, greatly daring. It was a woman’s voice.
‘It was called “Interesting People”. I was interviewed, I played the chanter.’
‘Will you be on again?’ someone asked.
‘I don’t know. I may be. Depends if they like me.’
Everyone laughed, and he grinned impudently.
‘I was late getting up,’ he said to the driver.‘ I was washing my clothes last night.’
‘You should get married,’ another woman shouted out.
‘It’s too late now,’ he said perkily. ‘Would you like to hear another tune? I must play for my money.’
This time he played ‘Scotland the Brave’. He put the chanter down and said – ‘It’s too early to play.’ He had played it very badly. In fact, his playing was so bad it was embarrassing.
He handed his cap round. When it came to my turn I debated whether to put threepence or sixpence in. After all, even though he was a hermit, he did play very badly.
As the cap was being handed round he stood on the steps and said – ‘No, I don’t have a gun. Anyway, there’s nothing here to kill, madam. I get my cheese and bread from down the road, and that’s all I need.’
When the cap was handed back to him he took out his chanter again and said – ‘I hope it’ll behave better this time. I’ll play you one for the road if my chanter behaves.’ He played ‘I’m no’ awa’ tae bide awa’. ‘I’m afraid my chanter is playing up on me today,’ he said, laughing. He got down from the step on to the road. The driver let in the clutch just as the hermit was saying, ‘I hope you have a pleasant day.’ The bus picked up speed. I saw him turning away and going into his hut. He didn’t wave or even look back, though some people in the bus were waving.
I didn’t know whether I hoped he got on TV or not. Playing like that he didn’t deserve to.
I heard a woman behind me saying: ‘Such an educated voice.’
And another one: ‘Perhaps he’s got a tragedy in his life. He sounded an intelligent sort of man.’
If I’d had the courage I would have spat on them. Who was he, anyway, making money from us just because he was a hermit? Anyone could be a hermit. It didn’t take courage to be a hermit. It only took despair. Anyway, he was one of the worst instrumentalists I had ever heard. I’d have given the money to Bob Dylan if he’d stood there singing ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right’, but not to that faker.
The Exiles
She had left the Highlands many years before and was now living in a council flat (in a butterscotch-coloured block) in the Lowlands. Originally, when she had first moved, she had come to a tenement in the noisy warm centre of the town, not much better than a slum in fact, but the tenement had been pulled down in a general drive to modernise the whole area. The council scheme was itself supposed to be very modern with its nice bright colour, its little handkerchiefs of lawns, its wide windows. The block swarmed with children of all shapes and sizes, all ages and colours of clothes. There were prams in practically all the hallways, and men in dungarees streamed home at five. Then they would all watch TV (she could see the blue light behind the curtains like the sky of a strange planet), drink beer, or shake the flimsy walls with music from their radiograms. On Saturdays they would go to the football matches – the team was a Second Division one – or they would mow the lawn in their shirtsleeves. The gardens were well kept on the whole, with roses growing here and there; in general, though, it was easier to lay down grass, and one would see, lying on the grass, an occasional abandoned tricycle.
The walls of the council houses were scribbled over by the children who ran in and out of the closes playing and shouting and quarrelling. Apart from the graffiti, the council houses would have been all right, she thought, but the children wouldn’t leave anything alone, and they were never looked after by their mothers
who stood talking endlessly at bus stops, bought sweets for the family when they ought to buy sustaining food, and went about with scarves on their heads.
She herself was seventy years old. She didn’t go out much now. For one thing, there was the stair which was steep and narrow and not meant for an old person at all. For another, there weren’t many places she could go to. Of course, for a young person there were plenty of places, the cinema, the dance-hall, the skating rink and so on. But not for her. She did sometimes attend the church though she disapproved of it: the minister was a bit too radical, leaving too many things in the hands of women, and there was too much of this catering for young people with societies and groups. That wasn’t the job of the church. In any case, it should be left in the hands of the men.
She didn’t go to church very often in the winter. The fact was that it would be lonely coming home at night up that road with all these hooligans about. They would stab you as soon as look at you. You could see them hanging about at windows waiting to burgle the shops: a lot of that went on. She herself often put a chain on the door and wouldn’t open it till she found out who was behind it. Not that very many people called except the rent man, the insurance man (she was paying an insurance of two shillings a week, which would bury her when she passed on), the milkman, and, occasionally, the postman. She would get an airmail letter now and again from her sister in Canada telling her all about her daughters who were being married off one after the other. There were six, including Marian the eldest. Her sister would send her photographs of the weddings showing coarse-looking, winking Americans sitting around a table with a white cloth and loaded with drinks of all kinds, the bride standing there with the knife in her hand as she prepared to cut the multi-storey cake. The men looked like boxers and were always laughing.
In any case, it wasn’t easy for her to get down the stair now. Perhaps it would have been better if she had never come to the Lowlands, but then it was her son who had taken her out, and the house had been sold, and then he had got married and she was left alone. And it was pretty grim. Not that she idealised the Highlands either, don’t think that. People there would talk behind your back and let you down in all sorts of ways, and you couldn’t tell what they were thinking half the time. Out here they left you alone, perhaps too much alone. So far she hadn’t had any serious illness, which was lucky as she didn’t get on well with the neighbours who were young women of about thirty, all with platoons of children who looked like pieces of dirt, with thumbs in their mouths.
Most days she sat at the wide window watching the street below her. Off to the right, she could see the main road down which the great red buses careered at such terrifying speed, rocking from side to side. They would hardly stop for you. One of those days she would fall as she was boarding one. The conductors pressed the bell before you were hardly on, and the conductresses were even worse, very impudent if you said anything to them.
Down below on the road she could see the children playing. She couldn’t say that she was very fond of children after what had happened with her son: leaving her like that after what she had done for him. Not that some of the children weren’t nice. They would come to the door in their stiff staring masks at Hallowe’en, and she would give pennies to the politest amongst them. They were much more forward than the children at home and they had no nervousness. They would stand there and sing their songs, take their pennies and run downstairs again. Late at night, in summer, the boys and girls would be going past the houses singing and shouting; half drunk, she shouldn’t wonder. And their language. You could hear every word as plain as could be. And there were no policemen where they were. Not that the housing scheme she was in was the worst. There was another one where none of the tenants could do anything to their gardens because the others would tear them all up. You got some people these days!
Really, sometimes she thought that if she had enough money she would go back to the Highlands: but she didn’t have enough money, she had only the pension, and the fares were going up all the time. In any event, she wouldn’t recognise the Highlands now. She had heard that the people had changed and were just as bad as the Lowlanders. You even had to lock the door now, an unheard-of thing in the past. Why, in the past, you could go away anywhere you liked for weeks, leaving the door unlocked, and, when you came back, the house would be exactly as you had left it, apart from the dust, of course.
It was hard just the same, being on your own all the time. All you got nowadays was closed curtains and the blue light of TV. It was just like a desert. Sitting there at the window all day was not a life for anyone. But what could she do about it? She must put up with it. She had been the fool and now she must put up with it. No use crying.
So she rose late in the morning, for time was her enemy, and took in the milk and made the breakfast (she always had porridge) and then went down to the shop in the council house scheme, for bread, meat and vegetables. In the adjacent newspaper shop she bought the Daily Express. When she had had her dinner she sat at the window until it was time for tea. After that she sat at the window again unless it was a Wednesday or a Sunday for on these evenings she went to church. She used the light sparingly in order to save electricity, and sometimes she would walk about in the dark; she was afraid that the lights would fuse and she would be unable to repair them. Her son had left her a small radio to which she listened now and again. What she listened to was the news and the Gaelic programmes and the sermons. The sermons were becoming very strange nowadays: sometimes, instead of a sermon, they had inexplicable discussions about all sorts of abstruse things. Trying to get down to the juvenile delinquents, that’s all they were doing. Another programme she sometimes listened to was called The Silver Lining. She only used the one station, the Home: she never turned to the Light at all. She was frightened if she moved the hand that she would never get back to the Home again.
But the worst was the lack of visitors. Once or twice the Matron would come in, the minister now and again, and apart from that, no one except the rent man, the milkman and the electric man. But the only thing the last three came for was money. No one ever came to talk to her as a human being. And so the days passed. Endlessly. But it was surprising how quickly they passed just the same.
*
It was a Tuesday afternoon, on a fine summer’s day (that morning she had been to the Post Office to collect her pension as she always did on a Tuesday). She was sitting by the window knitting: she had got into the habit of knitting many years ago and she couldn’t stop even though she had no one to knit for. The sideboard was full of socks – all different colours of wool – and jerseys. Everyone said that she was good at knitting and that she should go in for prizes, but who wanted to do that? It was really a bright hot day, with the sun reflected back in a glitter from the windows of the houses opposite. Most of them were open to let in the air, and you could see the curtains drifting a little and bulging.
Looking downwards like a raven from its perch, she saw him trudging from house to house. He was pressing the bell of the door opposite, his old case laid down beside him, dilapidated and brown, with a strap across it. She saw him take a big red handkerchief out of his trouser pocket and wipe his face with it. The turban wound round his head, he stood at the door leaning a little against the stone beside it, waiting. He seemed to have been carrying the case for ever, pressing doorbells and waiting, with an immense patience. The windows of the house opposite were open and she could see Mrs whatever-her-name-was moving about in the living room, but she didn’t come to the door: probably she had seen him coming and didn’t want to let him in. After a while he turned away.
As he did so he happened to glance up, and saw her sitting at the window. It was just pure chance that he saw her, but he would probably have come anyway since he would go to all the houses. On the other hand, on such a hot day, he might not be willing to face the high stair. He bent down, picked up the case and crossed the road, a slim man. She was looking down directly on to the turban. Strange pe
ople these, they had a religion of their own.
She listened for his foot on the stairs as she often listened for the step of the postman, who reached her house about eight o’clock in the morning when she was still lying in bed. Most of the time he would have nothing but bills, and she would hear him ring the bell next door, and then his steps retreating down the stair again. Sometimes she would even get up and watch the letter box with bated breath waiting for a letter to drop through on to the mat below.
In a similar manner, she waited this afternoon. Would he come up to the top or wouldn’t he? There was the sound of steps and then they faded. That must be someone going into the house on the middle floor, perhaps the woman coming in from her shopping. Then silence descended again. It must have been another five minutes before the ring came at the door. She hurried along the passageway trying to keep calm and when she opened the door on its chain, there he was, his dark face shining with sweat, his red bandana handkerchief in his hand. His case was laid down on the mat outside the door.
‘Afternoon, missus,’ he said in a deep guttural voice. ‘Wish to see dresses?’ He seemed young though you couldn’t tell with them. He smiled at her; you couldn’t tell about the smile either. It seemed warm enough; on the other hand, to him she was just business. She led him along the passageway to the living room which was at the far end of the house, and he sat down in a deep armchair and began to open the case as soon as he had sat down. He gave the room a quick, appraising look, noting the polished side-board full of glasses of all kinds, the copper-coloured carpet, the table in the centre with the paper flowers in the glass.
The case looked very cheap and cracked and was stuffed to the brim. It amazed her to see how much they could cram into their cases and how neat and tidy they were.
‘Fine day, missus,’ he said, looking up and flashing his white teeth.