Nothing happened. Whatever it meant, nothing else happened. But you don’t forget something like that. Not ever.
2 June
May Colvin
from an old ballad
False Sir John came wooing, and that’s a polite word for it. He wooed a young woman of great beauty, the only child of her father, and her name was May Colvin.
Sir John would not leave her alone. To him, ‘no’ never meant ‘no’. At last she gave in and agreed to go with him.
So he went down to her father’s stables and picked out the best horse there. He took that horse and mounted it, and May Colvin went with him, and they rode till they came to a lonely place, a cliff beside the sea.
‘You can get down now,’ said false Sir John. ‘There’s your bridal bed. Seven lasses I have drowned, and you’ll be the eighth. But first, off with all your finery, your silk dress and your fancy shoes. It would be a shame to ruin them in the salt sea.’
‘You’re a despicable monster,’ she said, ‘but I think you are still gentleman enough not to watch while I undress. Please turn your back and spare me my shame.’
His pride was flattered. No sooner had he turned away than May Colvin rushed at him and barged him off the cliff into the sea. Piteous then were his cries for help, but she neither helped nor pitied him. ‘If you drowned seven lassies, you can be husband to them all,’ she said, watching him sink.
Then she rode her father’s horse through the night, and was home before dawn.
But as she crept in, a parrot in the house began to squawk, ‘Where have you been, May Colvin? Where’s false Sir John, May Colvin? You rode away with him, May Colvin.’
‘Hold your tongue, pretty bird,’ hissed May Colvin. ‘I did what I had to do. Hold your tongue and I’ll make you a golden cage to hang in the willow tree. But carry on with your chatter and I’ll not be half so nice.’
Her father called from his room. ‘What’s wrong with that parrot? It’s never stopped prattling since daybreak.’
‘A cat, a cat,’ the parrot cried. ‘A cat was at my cage door. But May Colvin scared it away. All’s well again, all’s well.’
3 June
Thomas the Rhymer
from an old ballad
Thomas struggles to his feet, rubbing sleep from his eyes. A shining lady, on a horse bedecked with silver bells, is riding towards him.
He doffs his cap, bows. ‘All hail, Queen of Heaven!’
‘No,’ she says. ‘I am only the Queen of Elfland. Play me a tune, Thomas, sing me a song. Entertain me, and I’ll entertain you. Dare to kiss me, though, and I will own you.’
Someday I’ll regret this, he thinks, but you’re only here once. And he kisses her full on the mouth.
‘Regret it now, Thomas,’ she says. ‘You are mine, my slave for seven years.’
She takes him up on her white horse, and swifter than the wind they ride, till they come to a desolate, lifeless place.
‘Get down,’ she says. ‘Lay your head in my lap. Rest, and I’ll show you three wonders.
‘See the narrow path, thick with thorns and briars? That is the way of righteousness, though few take it.
‘See the broad road across the lilied lawn? That is the way of wickedness, though some call it the way to Heaven.
‘See the bonnie road that winds round the ferny brae? That is the way to Elfland, where you and I are going tonight.
‘But listen well, Thomas: whatever you hear or see, you must hold your tongue. Say one word in Elfland, and you may never get home.’
They ride and they ride. Utter darkness. They wade rivers to the knee. No sunlight, moonlight, stars: the only sound the ocean’s roar. They wade red blood to the knee – all the blood shed on Earth is in that land’s rivers.
They come to a garden. She pulls an apple from a tree. ‘Your wages, Thomas. Eat this and it will give you the tongue that never lies.’
‘A fine gift that would be!’ he retorts. ‘With such a tongue, how could I barter at market, or speak to the gentry, or seek favour of a lady –’
‘Enough!’ says the lady. ‘Did I not warn you?’
The spell is on him. A coat of fine cloth, shoes of green velvet are his, but for seven years, Thomas will not be seen on Earth.
4 June
The Cruel Brother
from an old ballad
‘Hey ho, the lily is gay, and the primrose spreads so sweetly.’
This was the song of three sisters. A knight joined them at their play. Tall and fair was the eldest sister, graceful and kind the middle one, but it was the youngest, bonnie beyond compare, that he fell for.
‘Marry me and be mistress of all that is mine,’ he pleaded.
‘I am too young,’ she told him. ‘I will not wed you until you have the consent of all my kin.’
He went to her parents, and they gave their consent. He went to her sisters, and they gave theirs. He won the consent of every one of her family, except her brother, John, whom he forgot or did not think to ask.
The wedding day arrived. There was not one man among the guests who saw the bride and did not wish to be her groom.
The time came for leaving. Her father led her down the stair, her sisters kissed her fondly, her mother took her through the courtyard, and her brother, John, set her on her horse.
But when she leaned from the saddle to kiss him goodbye, he drew a blade from his tunic, and stabbed her to the heart.
Before they were halfway through the town her dress was soaked in her own blood. Appalled, the groom and best man hurried her away to a quiet place.
They laid her down, but there was nothing they could do for her. As life ebbed from her, she began to make her will.
‘To my dear father, I leave the horse that brought me here.
‘To my dear mother, I leave my velvet cloak.
‘To my sister Anne, I leave my golden fan and my silken scarf.
‘To my sister Grace, I leave these bloody clothes to wash and mend.’
‘And what to your brother, John?’ they asked.
She raised herself a little. ‘The gallows tree, to hang him on.’
‘And what to his wife?’ they asked.
‘The wilderness,’ she said with her dying breath.
It would have torn your heart to see the bridegroom’s despair. ‘The lily is gay,’ her sisters sang, ‘and the primrose spreads so sweetly.’
5 June
Experience
They were sitting against the back wall of the pub, side by side. The little table in front of them looked as if it might have arrived some time after they had, a mere convenience. The man wore a grey suit and a buttoned-up shirt with no tie. The woman wore a black dress. Her hair was grey. They looked poor, foreign and old, but perhaps they weren’t any of these things. They were drinking red wine. I noticed how her right hand rested on top of his left.
The usual crowd were out. We were young and loud, half a dozen of us round another table, which hardly had space for all our bottles and glasses. It was a very ordinary pub. I don’t remember how we had ended up in it, but there we were, and the bar staff and the other customers tolerated us. They knew that the next night the place would be theirs again.
We were recounting foreign adventures, trying to outdo one other, bragging about dangerous situations we’d been in or managed to get out of. That was the thing: we’d always got out of them, and most of them weren’t that dangerous. We’d almost been killed, or there’d been a threat of violence, robbery or arrest, but none of our stories ended in disaster. We were young and invincible: our loud laughter proved it.
That couple didn’t say a word all night, as far as I could see. They just sat, sipping their wine, her hand on his. Then they got up to leave. As they passed us, they paused. The man said, ‘You don’t know you are born. You don’t know.’ And they went out into the street.
There was silence, which somebody, I forget who, broke by imitating that thick, unfamiliar accent. ‘You don’t know you are born.�
� And there was another burst of laughter.
I did not join in. I had no idea what those people had experienced, what had brought them to where and who they were, but I felt it must be something huge and tragic, something more terrible than the worst any of us could ever imagine. And I felt ashamed.
6 June
Sonnets Galore!
In this film from 1950 the slightly sinister and very superior men and women at the ‘Ministry of Culture’ in London decide to send a writer to a remote Scottish island for a year, as a kind of experiment. The idea is to enlighten and improve the lives of the natives by exposing them to contemporary literature. The islanders are not happy about this at all. They have their own bardic tradition, their own songs and poetry, and in Gaelic moreover, the language of Eden, compared with which (according to the village postmistress) ‘the sound of English is as a tractor ploughing a field of stones’.
The civil servants send the writer, a poet, anyway. ‘Well, well, I am not surprised,’ another islander comments. ‘Where else would they put the poor creature but here? If it blows up, only a few sheep and a crofter or two will be the casualties, and nobody in London will notice.’
Roger Livesey, who plays the poet, wears a white polo-neck jersey throughout the film – he never takes it off, and indeed this is one of the reasons he is mistaken for a sheep by the character played by Duncan Macrae after a drunken night at a ceilidh. Nobody can understand a word of his impenetrable poetry, but nevertheless the islanders grow to like him because in other respects he is very practical, and expert at servicing the engines of their fishing boats. He falls in love with a local girl and, abandoning his dreams of literary fame, assists in the sabotage of a touring arts festival organised by the Ministry. This comes to the island in August, which the civil servants refuse to believe is an exceptionally wet month when the midges are at their fiercest. In one amusing scene the literati are driven into the kirk by the midges, and endure a two-hour sermon on the decadence of modern culture. During their ordeal the poet and some accomplices loosen the festival marquee’s guy-ropes and it is blown into the sea. Yet even with such moments the film itself never really takes off, and it is noticeable that despite its title it does not contain a single sonnet.
7 June
Death Takes a Drink
‘It’s not like that,’ he said, refilling his glass. ‘If it were, it would be easy. Best job in the world. “You deserve it, you don’t.” “You’re going now, you on the other hand get another five years.” Or, in some cases, the reverse: “You’ve had enough, pal, haven’t you? Okay, let’s go.” “You, mister, on the other hand, are a rotten bastard and always have been, so can suffer a bit longer.” If only it were like that. But my hands are tied.
‘It’s about process, as much as anything,’ he continued. ‘Sure, the present system’s unfair but start letting me make judgements and there’d soon be plenty more complaints. “Oh,” they’d say, “you don’t know all the facts. You don’t know how she treated her daughter.” “You don’t know what a decent man he was before the war.” In no time there’d be ethical commissions and rights of appeal and God knows what else. And God too. I mean, do you really want him getting involved again?
‘I understand why people get so upset. Especially when it’s children. Of course I understand. You’d have to have a heart of stone not to. But what can I do? It’s not democratic, it’s not fair and it’s not logical but you come up with a better plan. Believe me, sometimes I wish I could move a famine or a cholera outbreak from one part of the world to another. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see an earthquake demolish the lives of the rich and selfish rather than those of the poor and helpless. But, as I said, my hands are tied. And it’s not all down to chance, anyway. People can make a difference. They can lengthen the odds, for themselves and for others. They just need to want to.’
The glass was empty. He eyed his friend, the bottle.
‘Another thing,’ he said, and heard the slur in his voice. ‘Not only is it not the best job in the world, it’s the loneliest. But it’s a job, isn’t it? A job for life, and there aren’t many of them around these days.’
He reached out. He’d have just one more.
8 June
Loss
What I said to them was, nobody could have told you how to do this. Nobody. Even people who’ve been through something similar, they couldn’t have told you. Because however similar it was, it wasn’t the same. It happened to them, it happened to you, but what happened was different. And when you’re faced with something so big, when it comes at you, there isn’t a primer or a manual that will tell you how to cope, how to survive, how to come out the other end. You’d have to write a new manual for each occasion, for each individual, and it wouldn’t be ready in time to help because it couldn’t be written till it was over, and anyway only he or she could write it. The thing I’m saying, the thing I tried to tell them, is that we lose the ones we love in our own ways. Everybody can sympathise but nobody can feel it the same way.
What I said to them was, there’s one thing you can take from what you’ve been through: you are good people. You did everything you could and it wasn’t enough, but still you did it. You did it even knowing you were going to lose. You kept going, right up to the end. You are good human beings. That’s what I told them.
You get a sense sometimes, with a child. Whenever I held that child, she turned away. It wasn’t a deliberate act, she was too young for that, and it wasn’t always a physical act. It was something in her eyes, in what she was seeing. You looked at her and whatever she was looking at, it wasn’t you. She went beyond you. I heard someone say, ‘That child has been here before,’ as if she’d lived another life. As if, perhaps, she’d be back again. I don’t really hold with any of that, but I kind of understand it. She was going, and whether or not she knew it there was no stopping her. And it was terrible to see their grief when she did go, but they were good people, and they always will be. That’s what I told them.
9 June
Unrelated Incidents
i.m. Iain Banks
Two middle-aged men sitting on a sofa at a party discover a shared interest in the lives of Celtic saints and the places associated with them.
A boy of three has his face painted at a library open day. He is wearing a green T-shirt and the artist gives a green tinge to the boy’s face so that he resembles a tiger emerging from the jungle undergrowth.
A woman spends the afternoon weeding her garden. She is eighty-six and finds the bending and kneeling hard work, but loves the fact that she can still do it. She is invigorated by the dirt under her nails, the heat of the sun on her back. In a chair next to the shed, her husband dozes. She should probably cover his head with a hat, but at his age, she thinks, what difference will it really make?
A pizza delivery van arrives at a block of flats. The driver presses the buzzer of the flat whose occupant ordered the ‘Quattro Stagioni’. Nobody lets him in. He phones the restaurant to check the address. He tries the buzzer again. Still no answer. He carries the box back to the van and drives away.
Two teenage girls sprawl on a blanket in the park. They are friends. One is texting, the other is reading a book. They don’t say much to one another. They don’t have to. They are friends.
A young man busking on a street corner plays one last song, then scrapes the coins out of his guitar case and puts away his guitar. Nobody was listening, nobody gave him a round of applause, but he’s made enough money in three hours to buy himself a couple of beers. He gets out his mobile and phones a mate. They arrange to meet in a certain pub.
A Scottish writer dies of cancer at the age of fifty-nine. He has had only a few weeks’ warning – enough time to finish his last novel, not enough to do everything he had left to do. He has recorded a final interview, not yet broadcast. ‘I’ve had a brilliant life,’ he says in it. ‘I think I’ve been more lucky than unlucky.’
10 June
Relax
&n
bsp; My wife is always busy. She can’t sit still for a minute. At breakfast she’s wondering what we’ll have for dinner, and keeps jumping up to look in the fridge and in recipe books for inspiration. She leaves the table for other purposes too, for example to wipe a slight mark off a surface or to straighten a picture. And this is the pattern for the rest of the day. I’m not saying I don’t appreciate her commitment, but even if the house is spotless she finds things to clean, paintwork that needs retouching or rugs that need to be taken outside and beaten thoroughly – simply for being rugs. And before you accuse me, I do my share of the chores. I just don’t do them as quickly, as frequently or – I admit – as thoroughly as she does.
The thing is, she keeps saying she’s going to stop. She’s worked hard all her life, and now she wants to do less, at a more moderate pace. But she never does. She seems to have a psychological aversion to relaxation. One of these days, I fear, she’ll overdo it and go bang. And I really don’t want that to happen – and nor does she.
So I summoned up the ghost of Michel de Montaigne, and sat him in the library, and before long she found him there.
‘Who are you?’ she asked as she dusted around him.
‘I’m an old friend of your husband,’ Michel said. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Dusting the books,’ she said.
‘And when you’ve finished, what will you do?’
‘Wash all the glassware.’
‘I see. And after that?’
‘Weed the garden.’
‘And when you’ve done that, what then?’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’ll pour myself a glass of wine, sit in the sunshine with a book, and relax.’
‘I tell you what,’ Michel said, ‘why don’t you just do that now?’
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