The Big Music

by Kirsty Gunn

  Anyhow, be that as it may, the point here is the beginning of an enterprise that came to be known, by the time of Roderick’s son, John Roderick Callum (known as John ‘Elder’), across the Highlands as ‘Callum’s Rest’13 – the comforting walls of a house on the flat of a bare hill, at a time when a man may need it most. And it became something that the Lairg shepherds would talk about as they came over, getting nearer to that place: how much they were looking forward to the warmth of the fire there, the bowl of soup prepared by John’s wife, Anna Alexandra,14 and the music that would be heard while the sheep too might have some shelter in the byre out of those winds.

  Now all this marks a different kind of climate, you might say, to that which raged and made a thin kind of air with snow in it around so many other parts of the Highlands. For Roderick Sutherland, and by then his son John, with their own sheep and cattle which, by this time, had increased greatly in number, could challenge in the markets for better prices for animals they themselves had raised and tended and so were not like those beasts that had just been collected and driven by shepherds who were working in bondage for the estate. All this put the Sutherlands in a better position than most, this enterprise of their family strengthening their resolve to build on it further, increasing the value of the land on the tops by burning off the heather there and turning it to some reasonable grazing, taking what they had and managing to make something more of it even so. And that’s not to give the impression here that any resented the tithe that had been taken in the past, in exchange for shelter, for the opposite was the case. Agreement had been made and understood amongst the men themselves, at the beginning, and in time, as John Roderick developed these arrangements further, the way ‘Through Callum’s’ became known, so it was established that the big estates of the district would also pay a reasonable fee for the improvement of the route for the good it did both their animals and the men they had working for them, that would in turn favour their own fortunes. So too should I mention that, in part, there was good feeling for this enterprise because of the music that this area of Sutherland was known for, so the men who passed through the district viewed the family Sutherland as friends, as people who, through hard work, had made something of their lives and yet were as they were themselves, with frugal ways and making of little education as much as they could, and with none of the glitter of the landed classes that had the big houses tucked away into the hills for their pleasure. Indeed, it was the music more than anything else set them apart – as old John Roderick had been known as a great piper in his boyhood and his son had continued that tradition, and so had his son, too, John ‘Elder’, known as ‘Callum’, who was taught, it is said, by the last MacCrimmon15 and was a composer whose work was known at the time by Angus MacKay of Raasay and is written of in accounts of that time.16 And in the same way, as the century progressed, and the generations continued, many felt, by the time of John Callum MacKay, that the Sutherlands had been a family that had used its wit and cleverness to put back into the way of life up in that part of the hills something of the goodness of the land and its ways that, over the time of the Clearances, had, for many, been lost.17

  The music of course played its large part there. Giving life and a colour, a sense of the past and its traditions to the present way of doing things, making occupations that were otherwise quite simple – some may say menial and poor – to have dignity in their own right, laid down as they could be upon a grand ground.18 For a man tired, living outdoors with animals, to be able to stop at this part of the world and hear the piobaireachd that he’s heard his grandfather talk about or sing, hear again a tune that comes right back from the grand times of the MacCrimmons,19 to hear again the complexity and the depth of that music that reached back through centuries yet had relevance to him now … It lent structure to his world but softness too. After a hard day of work and great physical labour and exertion the music gave easing place, that rest.

  So, in this way, life continued in this part of Sutherland, through the 1800s and into the turn of the new century when John MacKay’s father, Roderick Callum, was born. By now the House had itself well settled as a place where people could come and hear a tune, and where they could send their boys for some tuition and to learn canntaireachd and the true phrasing and the marking up of the tunes so as to be able to play them thoroughly and well. Everyone then would talk back to the great days of Skye and the MacCrimmons’ School of Piping on that island, all would take a dram, have stories of their own then to follow – about that incredible family of musicians, and about their tunes and what they knew of the origins of those tunes, or how they remembered various people playing then a certain way – and they would make a toast or two to the assembled company, that here they were in Sutherland, three hundred years later, and setting up a School of their own, you might say, where the pipes were played and compositions made in the proper style of the old laments and salutes.

  Johnnie’s father, then, this John Callum, known, as his grandfather had been before him, as Callum, ‘Himself’,20 grew up with these men and boys around him, some of whom were near his own age, who might come to stay for a part of the winter when there was little to do on their own crofts and holdings up in Caithness or down by the sea, with the weather too brutal to take out the herring boats that time of year.21 So they would gather at the House through parts of those winter months, boys and their fathers, old men who had fathers who as boys had known old John ‘Elder’ when he was an old man, who may have learned some of the old tunes from him that they could get them down on paper to remember.22 And these the tunes their sons were now playing in the annexe of the House, away from the kitchen and the rooms for sleeping, in a room that became known by them all as the ‘Study’, also ‘the Big Music Room’ – and you can imagine the feeling it must have given those who gathered there, people who worked outdoors in all conditions, who had little in the way of material goods, who may have crofts of their own but paid hard for them, or were indentured to the factors of the estates that were managed … To come into this House that was like a free house, a free-held building and not part of any estate but sitting there on the hill in its corridor of land and no man could take it … And to have something of a room called a ‘Study’, a ‘Music Room’ – you can think about that. What it did to the minds of people who came there. That there was a room for the playing of ‘The Big Music’ … In a house that was established for teaching and learning … How it enlarged the spaces in the visitors’ minds. Sent them home again in the early spring with a sense of their own place in the world, with dignity and pride and a largeness come out of the music itself, that there was more to life than work and feeling poor and powerless. That you had this other thing in you, as part of who you were, that held you up.

  So John’s father grew up, following the lessons of his father before him, to become a great teacher himself and known, not just through the Highlands but down south in Edinburgh and further, in London even, where by now the Society for Piobaireachd23 had been established and ‘Young Callum’, as he was known to the old pipers of his father’s day, ‘Callum Og’, some of them called him, with a laugh but in deference to the MacCrimmons’ famous son,24 was invited over and over to come down there and play and to talk and to give his own private lessons to those in the south who might not otherwise, apart from having the manuscripts of the old music to hand, have a chance to hear it played in the right way, with the right phrasing and nuance.

  Therefore the House became well known throughout Britain at that time by pipers, and was referred to, though unofficially, as ‘The Highland School for Piping’.25 And we may consider here the significance of such a ‘School’ in that part of the country then. For this was the time before the First World War and the area was still held back, you might say, by an old economy, and by the stripping of the population through the work of the Clearances – with many still alive to remember how that was, to be turned out of a home, a place where you had given birth to the babies and nursed
the old – and all this to be argued over, of course, and this not the place for it here, but to say just that there are many too who also believe that time of our history was a natural thing in so far as it was brutal, as natural things often are, who will say that the land could not support the kinds of numbers were living there, and badly living, many, on bits of food and only barely managing to survive in dark places in Caithness and in the Sutherland Hills. And others will say it was the fashion for the grand houses and their sports that caused such disruption – that there are no economics in it at all and nothing natural in it or fair – with the land to be kept apart from the many just for the summer shooting or the salmon for the few …

  But as all these arguments go on, here is this House standing, and people coming to the House, and the man who lives in it and his wife known all over the country and respected for what they are doing here, what they have done. Making more of simple talk or the songs that may have been sung in blackhouses at night, through ceilidhs or for weddings, creating more than just a kind of entertainment that would simply exchange information in the traditions of spoken word. Because now you have a formal culture: music written down, performed in Edinburgh and in London, competitions established all through the Highlands and through Scotland to support and encourage technique, the art, the excellence of the music.26 And at the heart of all of these activities, by the mid-twentieth century, is John MacKay’s father, Roderick John Callum, ‘Himself’, son of John Callum, and before him John ‘Elder’, son of Roderick Mor, son of ‘First John’ Sutherland.

  Piper. Teacher. Composer. This was the man who was Johnnie’s father. Who stood over him as the boy played. The one who shouted at him that word ‘Again!’ That man.

  two/second paper

  They knew at the House that Callum would be on his way. Sarah had phoned and spoken to Helen first and then to Margaret and said that she’d talked to Callum yesterday afternoon and that he’d leave London as soon as he could. This after Margaret had already called her, after the long morning out on the hill, finding the old man up there having got all that way with the baby in his arms, but Iain faster in the end – and he was havering by then, old Johnnie, out in the rain and thinking his father was with him, and that Callum was there … But Iain had had the injection ready and they were able to give him that, get the baby safely in her mother’s arms and dry and fed, old Sutherland slumped like a body into the seat of the Argocat, so it took no time at all to get him back to the House and into bed and the doctor was called, though what would he do, or say – there’d be nothing.

  In his dreams all that day the old man was still talking to his father. It would be the afternoon but he was well away from them by then and thinking he was with his son and with his father as though they were both right there in the room with him, laughing with them both at times so you may have thought they were just there at his bed. Just as up on the tops this morning you’d have thought the same thing, that they were standing there beside him – his father and his son – you’d have believed from the way he turned back on the path to talk with them both that they were present, not just ideas or hopes in his mind.

  In the end that’s what made Margaret want to phone them in London and tell them, tell Sarah that Johnnie had had a turn, out there on the hill. Not tell her what he’d done, of course, with the baby – that would just bring the police in, or Sarah would find a way for locking him up in that hospital of hers for good – but just to let her know that help was needed now, that they could no longer manage on their own. And that he’d been calling for Callum, Johnnie had, that he was lying in his bed now and asking for his son.

  So there in turn Sarah had got hold of Callum, she’d called him at work where he was trying to finish a project he’d got started, a big project, Sarah said, and he’d been going over the final drawings for it when she’d called. So he would have been busy thinking about that, she said, and not about his father at all but about the plans before him and perhaps thinking about his wife’s birthday, too, for it was Anna’s birthday that next day and he might have been thinking about a dinner or doing something to celebrate in the evening ahead …

  But all that changed when the call from his mother came through.

  ‘I need you to go up there’ she’d said. ‘I need you to leave straight away.’

  Which is why Callum had done what he did. Missing his wife’s birthday and just getting in the car. Not bothering with organising a flight because that wouldn’t have been much quicker in the end, he worked out, by the time you allowed for the schedules and getting out to the airport from work and then the hiring of a car. It would be easier simply to get up in London and be gone.

  ‘See you soon’ he’d whispered to Anna in the dark before leaving, and kissed her, going through to his sons’ bedroom to kiss them, too, on the tops of their heads. ‘I’ll be back in a few days.’ He’d had a couple of hours’ sleep, no more, the night before, but was wide awake, alert, ready to be on his way. The feeling in him then that what he was doing was the right thing, he would say later, getting up like that and leaving, and that long before the coming dawn and later on the road when the knowledge in him had fully risen that here’s the right place to be, coming up here to be with his father. That none of the rest, the sleeping wife or children, the business plans, none of it matters as much as getting to the House. The seconds counting off, the distance closing. That nothing is as important as that. His father’s life.

  For all that, though, he takes his time arriving. Having stopped off, finding himself waiting, hanging back, at the service station where he lingers for petrol, water. For all the sense of urgency before him and at his back, still he found himself there near Clashmore and stopping at a services again. Checking the tyres. Buying some food, fruit, sandwiches, a coffee that he drinks right there in the forecourt, leaning up against the side of his car, reading over the headlines in the papers that are bound up outside, looking at advertisements for chocolate and lottery tickets and cigarettes. Taking time, more time. Then after that, driving some more he stops again, switches off the engine again, at the side of the road, twice, just before the turnoff, trying to call the House on the mobile, on the clear open bit of the road there, but of course there’s no reception, and then again, later at the pub in Rogart, going into the bar but nobody he knows or recognises, still … He found himself anyhow taking a seat at the bar, buying a beer, and waiting some more.

  So that finally when he gets up the road and turns off into the farm track it’s late afternoon and the light’s near gone. Here’s the sky that’s been all around him from dawn to long morning and silver grey, clouded as it was back over the Moray Firth with a kind of a sun in it beneath the cloud, like an underbelly and soft, but since then, leaving Rogart, all that’s been getting darker, and darker still, so all he sees as he drives the long narrow track to the House is the peaty bank cut in deep either side, reflected back in the car’s headlights as black welts in the heathery dark grey land.

  Then he comes around the final corner and there it is, lights on in the side lodge but the House itself, its peaked gables in darkness, just a silhouette against the last of the colour, when he turns off the car’s lights, of the sky.

  The End of the Road.

  A good name for a house, Callum thinks. A good name. Ailte vhor Alech. The End of the Road. A good name for a place that has nothing more ahead of it, and now that he’s here in the growing dark, no sense of anything behind him either. Better than The Grey House, ‘the End of the Road’. And better in English, too, than the Gaelic that makes it sound less lonely than it is. Just say ‘End of the Road’ instead.27 When the track he’s been driving on has disappeared into shadows and all around is the sense of building night, the hulk of the hills, the sweep of distance contained within the quantities of the night time … The Grey House. The end of the road, all right.

  Margaret’s at the door in the time it’s taken to turn up into the driveway.

  ‘We thought it w
ould be today you’d come’ she says to him as she approaches.

  Nothing about her changed as far as Callum can see, though it’s been a good ten years.

  ‘Your mother said, when we spoke to her …’

  ‘Margaret’ he says.

  ‘Hello, Callum.’

  ‘How are you?’

  There she is. Still the same stature, the same calm. He takes her hand, gives her the customary kiss upon the cheek and the dogs in the kennels up behind the generator have started barking. It’s the strange car, their sense of an arrival, that’s set them off.

  ‘You’ll see a difference in him’ Margaret says, straight away. ‘We’ve had the doctor in but –’ She pauses. The dogs’ barking increases. They’re wanting to find out who it is, who’s there. ‘I know I don’t see it in the same way’ she is saying, ‘when he’s here all the time, as he has been, and these last few years … But even so. Just today, after yesterday. I’ve noticed him quickly going down, going right down. We’ve all noticed it. Quiet!’ she calls to the dogs then – as though she’s only just become aware of them – for their barking sounds desperate. ‘Quiet!’ With Callum standing there, the strange car – it’s as though the dogs can sense him and know that it’s him, that it’s Callum, even though they’re not his dogs and the kennels are turned the other way from the House where he is standing, still the sound of their barking makes it seem as though they all this minute want out, to fling themselves out of their enclosures and rush out to meet him, whirl all about him, barking, to greet him. Hello! It’s me! It’s me! You’re home!

  Margaret is still talking. ‘You’ll notice’ she is saying, ‘that in his mind – he’s wandering now. Imagining. Seeing things. The doctor says it’s to be expected.’