Listen to the Voice

by Iain Crichton Smith

  ‘And what are you going to give me for my birthday?’

  ‘I’ll think of something.’

  ‘You won’t give me anything, will you? Not a thing will you give me!’

  The old woman stole sausages from the fridge, matches from the cupboard. She borrowed cigarettes from Eileen. The latter gazed at her in wonderment, testing how far she would go. The old woman began to wear three coats all at the one time. She tried to go to the bathroom as little as possible: she was hoarding her pee.

  ‘The old woman will live forever,’ Eileen screamed. ‘She will never die. She will take me with her to the grave. She will hoard me. She will tie string round me, and take me with her to the grave. And the innocent selfish ferns will spring from me. And the baby will feed head down in it, its legs working.’

  * * *

  ‘No,’ she said to Harry, ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘Why not? What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘I don’t want to. It’s like the bee.’

  ‘What bee?’

  ‘The bee, I tell you.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ he said. The bee sucked at her body. It sucked her breasts in a huge wandering fragrance.

  ‘I don’t know you,’ said her mother. ‘Who are you? Are you the insurance lady? I’m not giving you any more money. You’re after all my money. Are you the coalman? Eileen should pay for that. She owes me ten thousand pounds. I saw that in the paper.’

  ‘It will cost ten thousand pounds,’ Eileen said to Harry.

  ‘What will?’

  ‘The baby. To bring it up. It was in the paper. I don’t want to have it. It will want its own snooker table. It will smile and smile and be a villain.’

  ‘You will have to go,’ Harry told Terry.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Because I can’t do anything with you.’

  ‘What do you mean? You’ll be sorry.’

  ‘Are you threatening me?’

  ‘No, I’m not threatening you. But you’ll be sorry. You’ll wake up one day and say to yourself: Did I destroy that boy?’ And Terry began to cry.

  ‘You won’t get anything out of me that way,’ said Harry. ‘I can see through your tricks. You will have to go.’

  ‘All right. But you’ll be sorry. You’ll hate yourself.’

  ‘I failed but he went,’ said Harry to Eileen. ‘And he started to cry before he went. Oh he’s so cunning. But there comes a time.’

  ‘A time?’

  ‘Yes, a time to save oneself. It’s a duty. I see that now. She will have to go.’

  ‘She?’

  ‘Yes. She’ll have to go. There comes a time. I made a mistake. I shall have to act.’

  ‘Act?’

  ‘That’s it. Act. She will simply have to go. We can’t afford her.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What I say. You’ve done enough. This is not asked of us. I can see that now. Tell her she will have to go.’

  ‘You tell her.’

  ‘Right. I’ll tell her.’

  The two of them were alone. The house seemed to close in on them.

  ‘What’s that?’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The phone,’ she said.

  ‘It isn’t the phone. You’re imagining things. The phone isn’t ringing.’

  ‘Yes it is.’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’

  The ferns shut off the light. The floor was a huge beach of sand. She saw the child crossing it towards her. It smiled.

  ‘I love you,’ she said.

  ‘I love you,’ she repeated.

  ‘The Club is quieter now,’ he said. ‘Ever since he left. We know where we are. I’m putting on weight.

  ‘Yes, I see that.’

  ‘It’s much quieter. He kept us on our toes. Everyone is obedient.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The child cried.

  ‘I love you,’ she said. The circle closed again. The baby smiled and smiled and laughed and laughed. It wobbled on unsteady legs among the ferns.

  ‘I’m wounded,’ she said, ‘between the legs. Between the legs.’ And its hairy head blossomed there. ‘Between the legs. I’m wounded,’ she said.

  * * *

  In the operating theatre on the snooker table its wild cry came towards her. She cradled the globe of its wet head, which had streamed out of the earth. Her hands closed, opened.

  ‘I love you,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing else for it.’

  The phone rang. There was heavy breathing. ‘You’ll be sorry,’ said a voice.

  ‘He never gives up,’ said Harry. ‘But I don’t care.’

  ‘He has become remorseless,’ she thought. ‘We have been infected.’ And she clutched the baby’s head to her breast. ‘We inherit the disease,’ she thought. The baby warbled in its own kingdom. ‘Isn’t he beautiful?’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  And the baby burbled like an unintelligible phone.

  Murdo

  WITH HIS PEN in his hand Murdo looked out at the tall white snow-covered mountain that he could see ahead of him through the window.

  He was trying to write a story.

  He looked down at the green pen in his hand. The day was cold and white, and now and again he could see a black bird flying across the intensely blue sky.

  His wife was working in the kitchen. After she had finished cooking she would polish the table and chairs and the rest of the furniture. Now and again she would come to the door and say,

  ‘Are you finished yet?’

  And Murdo would say, ‘I haven’t even started,’ and he would look out at the mountain again, he would resume his enchanted scrutiny of it. The white stainless mountain that was so cold and high.

  Murdo had left his work as a bank clerk and was trying to write. When he had arrived home and told his wife that he would not be going back to the bank any more, she had begun to weep and scream but Murdo had simply walked past her to his room and had taken out a pen and a sheet of paper. He had left his work in the bank on an autumn day when the brown leaves were lying on the ground, and now it was winter.

  He would sit at his desk at a little past nine o’clock every morning.

  The white paper lay on the wood in front of him, as white as the mountain that he could see through the window which itself was entirely clean since his wife was always polishing it. He had not written a single page so far.

  ‘Your tea’s ready,’ said his wife at eleven o’clock.

  ‘Right,’ said Murdo.

  He went into the kitchen where she was. The room was as neat as a pin, as it always was. He couldn’t understand how she could spend her time so remorselessly cleaning rooms, as if it had never occurred to her that a particular table or a particular set of chairs could be elsewhere rather than where they were: that they could be in another house, in another country, on another planet even.

  From the time of the dinosaurs, Murdo said to himself, was it predestined that this table should be standing by this window, that these chairs should be settled in the centre of this room? This was the sort of question that perplexed him and made his head sore.

  He didn’t say any of this to his wife, for he knew that she wouldn’t understand it.

  They sat at the table opposite each other, and between them the pot of tea. His wife, Janet, was as neat and tidy as the room.

  ‘When are you going back to your work?’ she asked him as she did so often.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Murdo, putting a spoonful of sugar in his tea. His wife didn’t take sugar, but kept saccharins for occasions like these. The saccharins were kept in a tiny blue box.

  ‘Oh?’ said his wife. ‘You know of course that people are talking about you.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ said Murdo, drinking his tea.

  ‘But I care,’ said his wife. ‘They’re always asking me if you’re ill. You aren’t ill, are you?’

  ‘Apart from a touch of the Black Death there’s nothing wrong with me,’ said Murdo.r />
  ‘And my mother and father are always asking me when you intend to go back to the office.’

  ‘Are they?’ said Murdo, thinking of the red cross on the door. There was green paint on the wall. Why had he in those early days of happiness put green paint on the wall? Why not blue paint or yellow? Ah, the soul of man cannot be plumbed, Murdo sighed to himself. A clock, colour of gold, was ticking between two clay horses that he had once won in a fair.

  Her father was a large red angry man who would sometimes become bloated with rage. He had been on the fishing boats in his youth.

  Janet had left school at fifteen. When she married Murdo she expected that her life would be as limpid as a stream, that there would be money coming into the house regularly, that Munro would at weekends be working stolidly in the garden reclaiming it from the wilderness, that they would have a daughter and a son, and that she would sit knitting by the fire when she wasn’t talking to the neighbours.

  She was a very capable housewife, small and alert. A good woman.

  Murdo was trying to write a story about a bank clerk who had one day left his work and had begun to try and write. But one morning he had been enchanted by the white tall mountain with the snow on it and he had written nothing.

  ‘This tea is very good,’ he told Janet.

  ‘Huh,’ said Janet.

  She would now begin to cook the dinner, and that was her life, and that life perplexed and astonished Murdo.

  Why were the two horses set exactly like that, one on each side of the silently ticking clock?

  ‘I’m going out tonight,’ said Janet.

  ‘Where?’ said Murdo.

  ‘Out,’ she said. ‘You can carry on with your writing.’ She spoke simply, without irony.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m going to call on Mother,’ said Janet.

  ‘Oh,’ said Murdo. ‘I thought you had called on her on Monday.’

  ‘I did,’ said Janet. ‘But I’m going to call on her again tonight.’

  Your eyes are blue and cunning, said Murdo to himself. She was still pretty with her blue eyes, her dark hair, her red healthy cheeks.

  ‘That’s all right,’ he said.

  He rose and went back to his room.

  He sat at his desk and gazed at the white mountain.

  I should really, he thought, leave the house this minute and climb the mountain. I should leave my prints in the snow.

  It occurred to him that his wife might have been lying, that she wasn’t going to see her mother at all. But he said nothing about his suspicion to her at lunch or at tea. She left the house at five o’clock and he went back to his room again.

  The red sun was lying across the snow like blood.

  What am I going to do? Murdo asked himself. Am I going to stay here staring at this mountain without writing anything?

  The house felt empty after his wife had left it. He wandered about in it, looking at the made bed, the still ornaments, the mirrors, the dishes, the books.

  The whole machinery of her world was impeccably in its place, his wife had built a clean orderly world around them.

  But this world wasn’t as clean as the mountain.

  At half-past five he left the house and went to his mother-in-law’s house and rang the bell at the side of the door. There were actually two bells but only one of them worked. His father-in-law came to the door and his face was as red as the sun that shone on the white mountain.

  ‘Is Janet there?’ Murdo asked timidly.

  ‘No, she isn’t,’ said his father-in-law and didn’t ask Murdo to come in. Murdo could see through the window that the TV was on.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I only thought …’

  ‘You thought wrong,’ said his father-in-law. The houses around them were quiet and grey. Murdo saw a man going past with a large brown dog. ‘Oh,’ he said again, shivering in the cold since he wasn’t wearing a coat. He turned away and walked down the street. Where was Janet? He felt his breast empty and he had a sudden terrible premonition that she had run away with another man, a man who never tried to write, but who was happy with the world as it was and his own position in it, and he felt shame and fear as if the event had happened in reality. He went into a bar but she wasn’t there either. When he came out he looked round him in the raw cold but he couldn’t see the white mountain from where he was since there were houses between him and it. He stood on the pavement and he didn’t know where to go next. Why had she lied to him?

  Well, he said to himself, I shall have to find her or I shall have to climb the mountain. What shall I do?

  I’ll see if she is in this bar.

  He went in and there she was sitting in a dark corner and there were some people with her.

  He recognised John, who was a teacher in the only large school on the island, and his wife, Margaret. And another teacher (he thought) with a red beard, but he didn’t know his name. And his wife as well. And a man who worked as a reporter on the local paper, a small pale-faced fellow who smoked endless cigarettes and whose name was Robert.

  ‘Do you want a pint?’ asked John, half rising from his seat.

  ‘No thanks,’ said Murdo. There was a glass of vodka or water in front of his wife. Murdo sat down on the edge of the company.

  The bar was warm and dark with reddish lights and black leather seats.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Janet asked him.

  ‘Oh, just walking around,’ said Murdo.

  ‘He’s trying to write,’ said Janet to the others.

  ‘Write?’ said Robert, his eyes lighting up. ‘What are you writing?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Murdo. ‘I’m only trying to write.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Robert, the light almost visibly leaving his eyes as the light at the tip of a cigarette might cease to glow.

  John and the red-bearded man began to talk about the school and Murdo listened to them.

  At last he asked John why he taught.

  ‘Why?’ said John. ‘Why am I teaching?’ as if he had never asked himself such a question before.

  ‘For the money,’ said his wife, laughing.

  ‘That wasn’t what I meant,’ said Murdo and in a whisper to himself, ‘What the hell am I doing here anyway?’ He was grinding his teeth against each other to prevent himself from howling like a wolf.

  ‘This is a philosopher we have here,’ said Janet in a sharp bitter voice, her lips almost shut.

  ‘You must answer his questions.’

  ‘Oh,’ said John, ‘I’m teaching History. What can people do without History? They would be like animals.’

  ‘Right,’ said Murdo, ‘Right. Right.’ And then,

  ‘Are you an animal?’

  John looked at him for a moment with such ferocity that Murdo thought he was going to leap at him like a wildcat but at last he said quietly: ‘Animals don’t teach each other History.’

  ‘Very good,’ said the red-bearded man. ‘And now do you want a pint?’ he asked Murdo.

  ‘No thanks,’ said Murdo and then quite untruthfully, ‘My doctor has told me not to drink.’ (He used the phrase ‘my doctor’ with an air of elegant possession though he had hardly ever been to a doctor in his life. He would also sometimes talk about ‘my lawyer’ in the same aristocratic tone.)

  ‘It would be very funny,’ said Robert, ‘if animals taught History to each other.’

  ‘It would indeed,’ said Murdo.

  They were silent for a while till at last Murdo said: ‘Once I was sitting opposite a man in a café and there were cakes on the table, some yellow and some white. I took a yellow cake and he took a white one. What’s the reason for that?’

  ‘My coat is yellow,’ said Margaret. ‘That’s because I like yellow.’

  Janet looked at her own coat which wasn’t as rich-looking as Margaret’s and a ray of envy passed momently across her face.

  ‘That’s a question,’ said John to Murdo. ‘That’s really a difficult question.’

  ‘What caf
é did this happen in?’ said Robert as if he was about to take the story down for his newspaper.

  ‘I can’t remember,’ said Murdo.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you he’s a philosopher?’ said Janet, sipping some vodka or perhaps water or perhaps gin.

  Murdo was gazing at the bearded man’s wife, a beautiful girl with long blond hair who was very silent. Beauty, O beauty, he said to himself. Yeats said something about that. My head is so heavy.

  Margaret said, ‘I just went into the shop and I bought this yellow coat. I don’t know why I bought it. I just liked it.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Robert. ‘What more can one say about it?’

  ‘What are you writing?’ he asked Murdo again.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Murdo.

  ‘Uh huh,’ said John.

  Murdo knew that his wife was angry because he had come into the bar disturbing people with his strange questions, and he was glad in a way that she was angry.

  At the same time he was afraid that she would get drunk.

  John said, ‘Well, it’s time I was going.’ And he and his wife rose from their seats.

  ‘You’re sure I can’t buy you a pint before I go,’ said John again to Murdo.

  ‘I’m sure,’ said Murdo.

  The bearded man and his wife also rose.

  They all went away muttering their goodbyes and Janet, Murdo and Robert were left sitting in their dark corner by a table which was wet with beer.

  ‘What are you writing yourself?’ Murdo asked Robert.

  Robert looked at him with small bitter eyes. What did he write but pieces about whist drives, local football matches, things without importance?

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘Did you ever see’ Murdo asked him, ‘the white mountain?’

  ‘White mountain,’ said Robert. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Don’t listen to him,’ said Janet. ‘He doesn’t know what he’s talking about?’

  ‘Sometimes you’re right,’ said Murdo.

  Robert had been working as a journalist on the local newspaper since leaving school and he had never been out of the island.