The Big Music

by Kirsty Gunn

  ‘Iain, I’m back!’

  Well, are you, Johnnie?

  ‘So bring the Land Rover down for me, will you?’ ‘Get the dogs ready for the morning?’

  To hell.

  Is the one thing Iain can think about old Johnnie now, and smile.

  As he turns his gun. And it’s his gun.

  Slips the cleaning rod down deep into the barrel and takes another sip of whisky that’s his own.

  For bring the Land Rover down nothing. He’ll see him dead before Iain Cowie does another thing for old Johnnie.

  one/third paper

  By now it’s as though all the hills can hear that song, and all the dark air. Can hear too, as Johnnie’s poor mind can hear, that of course it’s the voice of a woman singing, the whole lullaby is hers. The words of her song insist upon it.

  It becomes higher and truer in the air, in the man’s mind, with that knowledge. High and fine like migraine and no amount of rain on his face will take the sting out of the tune, bring coolness to his skin.

  You took her away.

  And not just the one woman singing now, there in the chorus, but all of them. All of the mothers. As though all the women in the world are singing out to the dark hills, to the poor crying sky …

  You took her away, young Katherine Anna,

  Carried her off, tall Helen’s child.

  And then the one woman’s song, coming in higher and finer above the rest of them, singing out on her own and ringing in his head like pain.

  Her mother is me.

  ‘Hush’ Johnnie whispers at the baby, as though to quieten her. ‘Hush’ again, when she’s making no sound and there’s nothing he can do anyway, nothing, to take the crying away. For that is in the tune too by now, of course it is, the slanting tears, the weeping and the rain. As much as the theme, all this Urlar22 grey ground that’s around him, it’s there, and the terrible octave drop, the ‘G’ to the Low ‘G’, for the thing he has done.

  You took her away.

  And he can’t leave any of it out of the music any more than loosen the bundle from his arms. So ‘Hush’ he may say but what’s the use in that, ‘Hush’? No use. No more than ‘You took her away’. There’s no comfort in it, no sense, how could there be? Of a calming or a peacefulness for the child out here on the open hills away from her mother? For an old man with a baby – it’s all wrong, it goes against nature. And somewhere deep in himself John Callum must know that, I believe he does know …23

  Still he keeps saying to the baby, ‘Hush.’

  Though she’s not crying.

  ‘Hush.’

  It’s the hills that are.

  The sky.

  The mother’s song.

  The weather now is fully down upon them. The fine’ness gone. Rain comes in long pieces and he has to keep strong, is what he’s trying to think, Johnnie is: how despite the mothers with their babies and their songs he must be fit and cunning and fast and strong. For they’ll be after him, down there somewhere on the flat, Iain and Margaret and the rest. They’ll be coming up behind and wanting her back, young Katherine Anna. They’ll be wanting her home with them and safe.

  It would have taken them no time at all to fix it this morning that they’d be after her and fast. The minutes of that first hour would have ticked by rushed and livid from the very second they found out she was missing from her basket and that he, too, was gone. There’d be Helen running outside, half dressed, in her bare feet, screaming his name into the bare hills, and ‘No!’, ‘No!’, Iain up from the table, clattering the things, and straight out to the hut for the Argocat and his gun. Unlocking the dogs from the kennels and setting them off across the grass, already with the binoculars’ glass casting across the distance …

  And –

  ‘Steady, Johnnie. Steady.’

  Cursing himself as he stumbles on a sharp rock.

  ‘Steady.’

  For can he see him now? Iain? Can he see that speck who is himself against the grey green’ness of the hill? A scrap of movement on the distant stillness? Can he see him now, where he is? Standing here panting and a bundle in his arms mustn’t let fall?

  ‘Steady.’

  With Helen running, screaming his name out from there on the grass for him to bring her baby home and only Margaret can catch her, hold her, holding her back. Saying ‘Iain will find him’ and that voice of hers low and steady, soothing her. Saying ‘Don’t worry, Helen. Be calm. For her, you must be. And babies are strong. So get her things now that you can take them, get some bottles, some blankets, milk. Some warm things for her’ she says, ‘Quickly, go!’ – but putting her hand up to shield her eyes against the sun the minute Helen’s gone, for she too, Margaret, is straining to see …

  Him.

  ‘Johnnie. Steady.’

  Where he is, where he’s gone. Iain with an old jersey held at the dogs, it’s Johnnie’s old fishing jersey and he’s giving it to the hounds to pick up a scent, so straight off they make a fast line to the right, towards the river – and …

  ‘Oh, John’ says Margaret to him then, looking out towards the hills where he may be. ‘What have you done?’

  Well.

  Margaret.

  No point in thinking about Margaret now. What she might say. How she may consider him. What she may think.

  For Margaret …

  He can have no thoughts about her now. No thoughts. Of that low and lovely voice of hers. Of the things she might say.

  For ‘Hush’ is all he must think now, against her voice, against all the voices, all of them. And –

  Faster. Further. Up the way, the path. To step again, and another step. On, and on and up again –

  ‘For they’re coming, Johnnie.’

  They’ll be close by.

  Right up there behind him with the dogs and coming hard.

  ‘Coming after you.’

  From the first thing this morning when they knew that he was gone. With the glasses played across the hill and Iain’s eye wanting, wanting to be upon him, and the gun at his side.

  ‘So be faster than they are. Be further away.’

  With every footstep. Every breath.

  Because it doesn’t matter, none of it, not to him.

  ‘Old Johnnie.’

  It doesn’t matter.

  Because they still don’t know, do they? About the boulder and the path that’s like a deer path going down into the crevice of the other hill, sitting in the lee of Mhorvaig and with a lost valley there and in it, tucked away, his secret. The private, private place.

  ‘They still don’t know about that, do they, Johnnie?’

  And any minute, he thinks …

  Any second …

  Once the boulder’s there, once he sees it, that’ll be him. He’ll be up and over where no one could spy him or follow. Not a mother with a scent for her child. Not a man with the dogs and a gun.

  He turns, and heads now towards this last part, up the fast steep way across the high side. Because fast and fleet he can make these last steps, for this last climb, up and hard … And so he stumbles, a slide of fresh wet from the rain, and no coat on but just the thin shoes … And so outcrops of rock are jutting and with the wet they could be like knives – and they’re behind him now, behind him and they’re close …

  The music’s still counting for him, after all. And it will carry the story along even if he stumbles on the path. It will keep him strong. Despite them all after him, Helen screaming in the air and that tune of hers wanting to take him over to pull him back – still he’s got his ‘B’ to ‘E’, that stubborn’ness of him and thrawn, and the ‘F’ to the ‘G’ and the ‘F’ to the ‘A’, that sequence too, he has that too, the music trying to release itself, to let something new come in, enter, one note, and another, and another, to climb back again into the theme as a lightness, a relief, but the theme he’s laid down won’t allow it, the scale won’t allow it.

  And Iain …

  Forget about Iain. He wasn’t born here. Wa
s not a boy here. He has no knowledge of the hill. For all his gun and his shot he has nothing of this place in him while Johnnie … He’s everywhere upon it. There’s not a way or dent in the heather he doesn’t know or plan for and remember. The very stones are like a path. And he can put more distance between himself and the House by imagination if he needs to, more than footsteps can do, for he’s all-powerful here, he’s all strength and knowledge and he’s wise. So move on!

  Though the dogs might be coming, because there’s the sound of them now …

  Quick footsteps on the beaten, shiny path! And faster again! Further again! And as though to hasten him this second the weather clears a little, opens up. The sky lightens. He takes a big step up the path, and clears it. Another few seconds and here’s a patch of blue about him, a sudden bit of sun. The day thinning out, the weather, and it’s fair again, it will be, and he’ll look ahead and the boulder will be there and –

  though the dogs are getting louder –

  no one knows about his path, only him. Only Johnnie. It’s his own secret from a long time ago after his father had died and he came back to his father’s music then.

  And so they’re louder …

  The dogs …

  Still he will bring her, this one in his arms, to that same place, to finish it, the tune.

  And the dogs …

  The dogs, anyway. They’re his dogs. His own and Callum’s dogs. They’re not Iain’s dogs. And so they’re coming for him, so he’ll whistle them in. He’ll take them with him if wants to. He’ll call them in for they’re his dogs, Callum’s dogs.

  And he stops then. Just here, stopped, just now and he shouldn’t have, with the weather clearing, second by second it is thinning and brightening and a new clean’ness, clarity in the air so he should be moving on by now – but he’s stopped. With the sound of his own breathing, and the glass that’s upon him now in the sudden sun. Hearing the sound of his own breath beneath the glass, in this clearing of the air. Though he should have found by now the place with the big stone. Though they could catch him out now while he’s still out here and visible clear on the fresh hill. Though they could shoot him down.

  He’s stopped.

  Waiting.

  For it’s Callum.

  It is. It’s Callum.

  ‘Callum?’

  And very close.

  Up there with the dogs, for they’re his dogs, they’re Callum’s dogs.

  Callum.

  ‘How are you, boy?’

  And with him … He recognises who’s with Callum here. Even from over on the hill, with the light in his eyes he knows him by that way of standing, his father. So his father’s here, too.

  Yes.

  Come up with Callum, he must have, the two of them gone on up Mhorvaig ahead of him and now they’re both here together, just over there where he can see them, and quite near, after all this time …

  His father.

  His son.

  And he didn’t think they were close at all, that they were just memories. For his father’s been dead forty years and a long, long time since he’s seen Callum by now but –

  Here they are with him, just the same, and with the dogs, right here on the hill.

  ‘My father’ he says.

  ‘My boy.’

  They’re together – and listen! You can hear it? How they have all come in? When first there was the one theme, and only Johnnie out here and on his own, but then the singling, and the doubling came in …24

  With his father.

  And Callum.

  With the sound of Callum’s dogs – and:

  ‘Come in! Come in!’ Callum is calling to them. The sound of their barking … Close …

  And with those notes, these variations – first the one, then the other …

  The hold on the awful drop, the ‘G’ to ‘G’ … It’s broken.

  With his father.

  And Callum.

  And himself standing here.

  So the theme can be released now, he can hear the way it goes free –

  all the extra notes of the variations let in –

  with the singling and the doubling and the three of them together …

  The music’s hold on him broken with this change, this turn, that lifts him, like in a dream.

  A lovely dream.

  Iain’s hard behind him, though, and the sound of the dogs’ barking is no dream. The whole day like a charge for him.

  When Helen had let out that cry this morning, the sound of her, he’d never heard anything like it – when she realised what the old man had done. When she’d stood at the dining room doorway, saw them all at the table but that the baby was not there, was not with Margaret, or with them at all … How they’d rushed from the table to look through the House and realised that he was gone, too, the old man not in his bed. ‘No!’ she’d screamed then. ‘No!’ And Iain was out in the grounds in a second, and away looking down to the river, up the back paddock, but he’s nowhere to be seen, the old man who’s stolen their child, he’s nowhere there or out beyond the green, past the stand of trees, the little burn – Iain’s looking but nothing, nothing. So he’s to the shed then straight away for the Argocat and his gun. Because Helen … She’s like a daughter to him, his daughter, and of course he would protect her, do anything he had to do to protect her and her child –

  As she ran screaming out onto the grass!

  Flying out of the House, no shoes on her feet, like she was burning – screaming! That sound of her like a wound in the air, against the bright of the day. Like something he’d never heard before, her flying out of the House and screaming as she runs to be on the hill for to find him and to bring her baby home.

  And only Iain can make it right. Bring the Argocat round, keep the engine revving on the grass while Margaret can talk some sense into her, that she must get some things and go with Iain now, to look for the old man who has her child. Only Iain can wait – while Margaret is gentle with her, calming her. Telling her that she must gather up her things, Helen must, to take with them. While he’s keeping the engine running, found a jersey of the old man’s so the dogs can get a scent. S taying there with the engine running until Helen is back with a bag, with the baby’s things – but then they’re off. Straight off across the flat towards the hill and the dogs up ahead already like a banner streamed out before them – and still, only Iain. Only Iain. For this is his family. They’re his family. And they need him here. His wife. His daughter. His granddaughter. Though Helen’s not to be comforted and she’s crying, there’s that sound of her, but Margaret is managing to calm her even so and tell her that he, Iain, will make it right.

  That he’ll go after …

  Him.

  For whom he’s loosened out the dogs. Had them smell the air. For he’s like a criminal, the old man who’s been living amongst them. Stealing out of the house with their baby in his arms.

  A criminal. A thief.

  So, yes, take a gun.

  Take dogs and a gun as he would for any criminal, for any hunt upon the hill. If he may need it, to take a shot at the criminal’s foot or at his knee. If he has to, to bring him down. He’ll do anything he needs to do, Iain will. To make it right. To protect the child. And quickly pack the sack with a jersey and some blankets, the things Helen has got together, provisions, milk, and medical things. Throwing them on the Arogocat that’s sitting running on the grass, the motor turning over, and he gets in, Helen beside him, and he manages to soothe her, too, like her mother soothed her, with low words. Like soothing an animal. Telling her that they’ll get her baby home, the dogs have picked up a scent already, that she’s not to worry. Chucking the motor into gear then and the tyres spin, catch. Increasing speed and increasing – and they’re away. Keeping it to himself as the Argo ploughs down the hill towards the river that it’s even crossed his mind for a second that he’d need a gun. That the idea of what an old man would want with a child, and a damaged man, a man with his mind not right and with his
own family far away from him … Would occur to him at all, make him want to take it … Keep all those thoughts to himself. And keep the other simple fear in place instead: the simple fact that not enough’s been provided for an infant out on the hills, carried any distance or cared for by someone who is frail and sick and weak. That she’ll be hungry, frightened and very cold. A baby who is very, very cold.

  That most simple fear perhaps the most dangerous part of all.

  For the criminal has nothing with him, nothing.

  To protect a child from the weather, to keep her from the sudden cold – and though the dogs have a scent, he could be anywhere out there …

  Anywhere.

  But for the white blanket.

  The white blanket that Iain will see.

  The flag to bring her home.

  And it won’t be long now, though it will seem like hours to the mother – after crossing the river and up the first hill’s long side – Iain catching in the glass the glimpse of white on the face of Mhorvaig and sending the dogs ahead straight up in that direction. After turning the engine up a notch, and they’re up there and over, and they’re starting to climb again …

  So no time, it will take them no time at all then. Though it feels like hours to Helen … No time. To get him, the criminal, to bring him in. Rising up on the first side of the hill and over, down the dip and back up again, the tyres taking the rock and the peat in one action. With the weight of the gun at Iain’s knee, the sound of the baying dogs …

  And the temperature dropping, after that bit of rain before, and it’s much colder here than it was back down on the flat, but they’ll get there, Iain will, up the green face where he first saw the glimpse of white in the binoculars’ glass – ‘There!’ – and so fast over the tops and the baby alive when he comes upon her, so he’ll wrap her up in a thick blanket and have her back to her mother, back into her mother’s arms, Helen’s crying, she can’t stop crying while she holds her daughter close.