by Kirsty Gunn
And for a second I stop.
‘I saw him before’ he says, ‘with the guns, he was cleaning the guns but tell him –’
He means Iain.
Though for a second I had thought –
Your father. My father.
Then I say, ‘I don’t think –’ I start to reply, but …
What are you saying, Callum?
That you would talk to me like this?
Who are you trying to be? Who are you?
That you would act this way?
‘I don’t think that he’s expecting it’ I say. ‘Iain. To take you out, I mean. He’s not expecting to do that. With your father so ill.’
And I look at him again, the poor man. He’s drunk. That’s all. The whisky bottle is there on the sideboard half done. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. Doing. He’s drunk and he’s scared.
‘But yes’ I say. ‘I will tell him.’
Because I must go to my baby now, before my mother gets there before me. To pick her up in my arms, feel the pang of milk coming, unbuttoning my shirt for her as I go up the stairs.
And poor Callum …
He doesn’t know. Anything. Can’t say.
He’s let everything be gone. Let himself down before me, be lost, be scared. Weak and with no father, as though he’s never had a father.
Callum.
For who were you trying to be just then?
That you would talk to me that way?
‘Goodnight’ I say.
Yet, as I turn, finally, to leave the room – the piece of light is still there. Left from before with the two of us together. From this man who’s come to us from where he was, come back up the long road that’s behind him and I don’t know what will happen with us now. For I can’t talk to Callum about any of it, what happened yesterday, why it happened, what we’re going to do. That his father has stopped taking the medicine, doesn’t sleep, not really, any more. That for weeks before now he’s been going off on his own, for hours sometimes – and we don’t know what he’s been thinking, how to help him. We can’t help him, not really, not at all.
I can’t say.
None of it would make sense to him now. It’s too much, and it’s also not enough.
So I say nothing. I leave the room.
Yet still I sense the broken piece of light behind me as I go down the hall. It’s there at my back as I hear Callum call out, ‘Please tell your mother, Helen, I need her! To talk about what we’re going to do here! What I should do! Please, tell your mother –’
Even in those words, drunk words, half meaning and undone, light.
As he slumps back into his father’s chair. Slumped down, eyes closed, with his father on his way by now, way up into the far hills, he’s already there, and staying. There where the music is and he’ll not be back, Callum.
Come up over the top of the hill and to the other side.
insert/Callum
It’s late now, outside the night drawn into itself with darkness, and this man, this Callum Innes Sutherland who’s driven north today, a man who is acting out of duty here, or so he thinks, so he’ll believe …
Who is he, really?
For he hasn’t gone through there, has he, to say goodnight? Just as frightened of his father as he ever was.
With number 23 playing in the room.42
Just as frightened.
The sound of his father is all around him by now, and loud, coming in on him, holding him down. And with the sound of his father’s pacing in the music, too, the tread of his footsteps heavy, beating out the rhythm beneath the notes …
‘The Return’
And where do you go with that? How to proceed? How enter into the man’s bedroom at all when there’s nothing but the sound of him here and the thought of him and the memory of him. The sound and the pacing and the notes of him and the beat of his tread …
Though his father, Margaret said before, is light as a leaf.
A leaf. That’s how she put it, such a light, pretty way of talking about something that could take Callum’s breath from him. For when there’s ‘The Return’ or ‘Retreat from the Hills’ or ‘The North Ascent’ or ‘On Going into Battle at Lochinver’ or ‘The March to the Western Side’ or ‘Tune for Murray, Son of John Murray’ or ‘The Birds’ or ‘The Capture of the MacKays’ … Or … Or … Or … Any of them … Any of the tunes … Numbers 23 or 15 or 7 or 2 … All the CDs and cassettes lined up in their places in the cupboard below the sideboard, each with its title, its number, each carrying in its depths the sound of his father, of his heavy tread … To say that what’s imprisoned in the dark room through there is light as a leaf, as light and delicate and frail … Still he is his father! He’s Callum’s father! And this – Callum may indicate around the room, the firelight, the black panes of glass, and the huge expanse of the emptiness beyond – this … ‘Home’, he might say …
Is his father’s House.
With his number 23 and his music everywhere in it.43
And it’s his father in that bed through there now, not a little thing – not a light and delicate thing, a leaf, Margaret – it’s his father, and God knows how he could have made it out to the hill yesterday for there’s nothing to him, Margaret says, just nothing …
But listen to the sound he makes! John Callum MacKay! Even the night is listening, pressed in at the glass.
To the Ceol Mor. The Big Music.
To all of it, its ground and mountain and hill and its stepping off the edge into air.
Its variations and embellishments and lovely, dazzling crown.44
It’s here. Listen! As Callum stands, drinking his father’s whisky from a glass that’s his father’s glass, and hearing the Urlar and Taorluath and the Crunluath and the Crunluath A Mach.45
A tune imagined for somewhere much larger than this room can contain.
All playing in this one small room.
So that, yes, his father may not be here with him but so he is also here. With his music, his CD case open and his dark writing, No. 23, inked on the paper flap. With the sideboard and the shelf where his father keeps the recordings of all his other tunes, the cases with his father’s marks, his hand, his signature, the numbers marked from No. 1 to No. 30, with No. 4 and 17 and 27 and 11. Recordings of all the piobaireachds he has ever made, the strathspeys and the marches and the songs and the laments. All of this … And this … And this …
All music that plays back to …
The secret place.
Where the tunes were written.
That hidden, secret place.46
And not you, Callum thinks, of his mother, of his wife, of his sons, of his father, or Margaret or Iain, or you or you … Not one of you know.
His father doesn’t even know.
That he and Helen went there, that they found it, his father’s secret place where the tunes came from, and that they went in.
two/fourth paper
It was always Margaret used to take Callum through. He would be too scared to go in on his own, first too young and then later, when he was a man, too aware of the absences between his visits, those long months passed into ugly gaps of time that made it difficult to return then and so he felt ashamed and, as though he were still the little boy, afraid.
Yet there were reasons for his staying away. His father telling him increasingly not to bother coming up, so why would he? Arrive just to stand and wait? With his father there in his chair, gone deeper and deeper into himself and not caring about anyone else. Sipping at his whisky and not even answering for a time his son’s Hello, Daddy. His How are you? Not answering that question even.
Back then Margaret was the one who had always taken care of things between himself and his father. Just as she was the one, long ago, used to bring Callum into this room where he is now, holding him by the hand: ‘Best come and say goodnight to your father.’
All the time, back then, it was Margaret taking care. Callum would be through in the kitchen with her and Helen for his
breakfast and his tea, a sandwich in his pocket and then off with Helen for the whole day, away at the hills or the river. Margaret looking out for him as well as looking after his father – because, always, she’s been looking after him and hadn’t it always been that way?
Margaret.
His father would say her name and the air around him went soft.
Just – Margaret.
Just so.
For she did everything for his father. Everything. And maybe that was why it was easier, later, when Helen was gone and Callum himself finished at university and working and away … To stay away. Knowing Margaret was there. For, after all, what need to come back when his father had Margaret and her family in the House, when Margaret herself had been part of the House for so long and knew everything about it, how best to take care of his father over the years, what best to do? And, anyway, Callum always thought – with the old man not speaking, not caring whether anyone came to see him, any member of his family, his wife, or his son – what reason would there ever have been anyway for him to make the journey back here? So that, over the years, the visits became fewer, and more years passed between them, and by the time Callum was married, had a family of his own, sons of his own … How often did he come here then? Not often. Ten years ago the last time. Maybe more.
So, Margaret.
Just –
‘Margaret …’
Is what his father used to say.
‘Just so.’
She’s the one who’s made it possible for him to stay away.
And by now – well, he’s used to it, Callum is. With his father the way he is, the life he’d chosen for himself a quiet life and alone … So Callum is used to not having to come here. Until just now, and his mother’s phone call – because really, what’s the need? Really, why bother? When –
Don’t bother.
Is all his father ever said to him. When he was a young man and newly arrived at the House after a long drive, or a boy coming to wish his father goodnight and always Margaret would take him through –
Took your time, didn’t you?
So, really, why would he bother? Come all the way up here? When –
Don’t know why you bothered
– is all his father ever used to say.
But there was Margaret then. She was always here. And she would help him, take him through to his father – and she would stay on in the sitting room with them, she’d ask Callum questions, she’d talk to him and his father both. ‘How was the journey?’ ‘Tell your father how well you’re doing at school.’ ‘At university, how is it there?’ ‘Have they given you a pay rise yet?’ ‘How’s the business?’ ‘How is your wife?’ ‘How are your boys?’ All –
Margaret.
Back then. All –
Margaret.
Margaret.
Margaret.
As the air would soften around his father then, as he looked at her.
As she stood there with them both, by his father’s chair.
Margaret, his father’s eyes said to her and everything could be soft.
Margaret.
Margaret.
Margaret.
But she can’t take Callum into the dark bedroom to see his father now.
The soup is untouched, and the roll, and tea, where Helen left it. He’s had too much to drink and should take something to eat but his mouth is ashen and his stomach turns at the thought of food, at the sight of it, there on the tray.
The light in the hall casts a dim glow down the little passageway off the sitting room, down the east side of the House where his father sleeps these days, no longer in his own room upstairs but down here where he can be looked after, in that little single room with its single bed. It’s the place where, Callum knows, they’ve all been brought – all his grandfathers, his father’s father, and his father before him. All the long line of Sutherland men. All the Roderick Johns. The John Callums. All brought down in their time to the bedroom on the ground floor, the first bedroom,47 where they can be looked after and then laid out in. The narrow room where they come to die.
Callum has had a fair bit to drink but he’s steady on his feet, and he must go in there, to that same room. After all these years away and now he must see his father, with Margaret not here to guide him, he must, and be strong, go in there. He will be strong. So he pushes wide open the door of the sitting room and goes down the hall to where his father is, and the room is dark where he is but the moment he steps inside it the voice comes from the bed –
‘Daddy?’
His father’s voice.
‘Daddy?’
His father calling for his own father.
Christ.
Who’s been dead for – what? Thirty years? Forty years?
Calling out, ‘Is that you?’
‘No.’
Callum steps towards the bed. ‘No, Dad’ he says. ‘It’s Callum here.’
There’s a pause then, a minute, half a minute, a mark of time. Callum’s eyes adjust to the darkness, and he can see … The bed, a form outlined upon it.
‘Callum?’
‘Aye.’
‘Callum?’
And –
Where did that come from, just then? That Aye?
Yet ‘Aye’ he says again, when his father asks him for the third time, ‘Callum?’
So it’s started.
Aye.
The being home.
The being here.
It’s started and it’s finishing here.
All at once Callum is exhausted. He sits down on a chair in the corner of the room. He could sleep now. Right here. Close his eyes. As though all the day has just come down upon him, on his shoulders, on his head … So all he wants to do is close his eyes.
‘My Callum?’ his father says. ‘Or are you someone else’s boy?’
‘No, Daddy’ he replies. ‘It’s me.’
And what was that Margaret said before?
Light as a leaf.
So how? Is all Callum can think, right this second. How? Now his eyes have adjusted fully to the dark and he can see fully the frailty of the figure lying here. That’s calling out for his father like a little boy … How could … That? Get up onto any hill? Get out of bed even? How do anything when what is here before him is just a shape, the outline of a man, beneath the bedclothes? When what is left is no more than a voice, a shallow breathing in the dark? How could that … Even be his father? Yet it is.
They’ve given him something …
Margaret had said that the doctor had been.
To help him sleep.
And, yes, Callum thinks now: Just sleep. Is the best thing. For his father. For him. Is what he wants to do, sleep. Here … In this room …
Let the dark come down heavy on his own head and sleep, sleep.
And just as he does, feels himself pulled right down into the centre of unconsciousness where his father and all his father’s fathers are waiting … There’s movement from the bed, a rumple of sheets, the figure trying to right itself, to heave itself up – and in that second Callum is awake, is up and over to the bed. He lays his hand on a thin restless arm, his hand enormous upon it, and there’s a sigh then, and the figure lets itself fall back upon the mattress.
For a space, an intake of breath, nothing happens. Then Callum hears his father’s breath starts coming again, shallow but even. In. And out. And in. Out. Like a dry strip of paper let out of an old machine, one breath, another breath. In. And out. Tick. Tock. Goes the machine. Then a word. One word. Two words. More words:
First, ‘Callum.’
First, his name.
Then –
‘The dogs.’
Two words. Then –
‘Were barking.’
Tick, tock.
‘Before …’ say the words. First one, then another. ‘When we …’ they say, ‘were out … today.’ And on the hill …’ they say. Printing, breathing. In, and out. Upon the page.
‘Callum.’
&
nbsp; And there’s a gap then. His father shifting in the bed. As though the last of the words that have come out from out of the dark have gone back into it again, printed back into silence.
So it is still again.
And only the breathing …
The quiet …
Is left. The figure on the bed who is his father but who is also barely anyone at all.
Callum takes his seat like before in the corner of the room. He’s wide awake now. He won’t be sleeping. All he can think, like before, is … How could that … Whisper? That … Figure, beneath the sheets … Take itself … Anywhere? Do … Anything? Though his mother had said when she called that his father had been missing, and Margaret told him that it was all yesterday morning his father had been gone, away up over the hill, and with a baby in his arms, and singing to himself Iain had said when they came upon him, and calling out … How could that … Story? That Margaret told … How could it have happened at all? When what is here in the bed is no more than a shape in the bed, no more than an outline of a sheet on the bed …?
But, despite his thoughts, there’s a shift now in the room and his father has turned his face towards him in the dark and he’s speaking to him again, and stronger now than before, sounding like himself again, nearly, only quieter, saying, ‘I knew when I saw you today on the hill, Callum. I knew then that you’d come home for good.’ Then he says ‘Come here,’ and he pats the sheet beside him. ‘Don’t sit way over there on your own’ he says. ‘Come here to the bed and sit with me. For when the dogs found you on the hill you were so thin. Callum, you were forlorn. Come over here, boy, and sit with your father now.’
Callum can’t speak. This could never happen. First the dark and the strangeness of the dark and now – and now to have to go over there to the bed and sit with his father in that close way. To be with him, close. No thoughts can even attach themselves to that idea, no words, no phrases. Even so, going over to the bed is what he does all the same, like sleepwalking, in a waking dream. He goes over to the bed and sits down on it beside where his father is lying. Though it could never happen, he sits beside his father’s body. He covers his father’s hand with his hand, though he would never do that either, touch his father’s hand. Still he does, he sits there. He holds his father’s hand while his father speaks.