After a while we sat down at the table and watched the wedding party coming in and sitting down. We ate our food and the girl on my left spoke to another girl on her left and to a boy sitting opposite her. She said: ‘This chap came into the hotel one night very angry. He had been walking down the street and there was this girl in a blue cap dishing out Barclay cards or something. Well, she never approached him at all though she picked out other people younger than him. He was furious about it, absolutely furious. Couldn’t she see that he was a business man, he kept saying. He was actually working in insurance and when we offered him a room with a shower he wouldn’t take it because it was too expensive.’
The other girl, younger and round-faced, said: ‘There was an old woman caught in the lift the other day. You should have heard the screaming …’ I turned away and watched the bride who was sitting at the table with a fixed smile on her face. Her father, twisting his neck about, was drinking whisky rapidly as if he was running out of time. Her mother smiled complacently but wasn’t speaking to anyone. The minister sat at the head of the table eating his chicken with grave deliberation.
‘Did you hear that Lindy has a girl?’ said the boy in front of me to the girls. ‘And she’s thinking of going back home.’
They all laughed. ‘I wouldn’t go back home now. They’ll be at the peats,’ said the girl on my left.
‘Well,’ said the boy, ‘I don’t know about that. There was a student from America up there and he wanted to work at the peats to see what it was like. He’s learned to speak Gaelic too.’
‘How did he like it?’ said the girl at my left.
‘He enjoyed it,’ said the boy. ‘He said he’d never enjoyed anything so much. He said they’d nothing like that in America.’
‘I’m sure,’ said the small girl and they laughed again.
‘Wouldn’t go back for anything anyway,’ said the girl to my left. ‘They’re all so square up there.’
When we had all fnished eating, the Master of Ceremonies said that the groom would make a speech which he did very rapidly and incoherently. He was followed by the best man who also spoke very briefly and with incomprehensible references to one of the bridesmaids who blushed deeply as he spoke. There were cheers whenever an opportunity arose such as, for instance, when the groom referred for the first time to his wife and when there was a reference to someone called Tommy.
After that the telegrams were read out. Most of them were quite short and almost formal, ‘Congratulations and much happiness’ and so on. A number, however, were rather bawdy, such as, for instance, one which mentioned a chimney and a fire and another which suggested that both the bride and groom should watch the honey on their honeymoon. While the telegrams were being read some of the audience whispered to each other, ‘That will be Lachy,’ and ‘That will be Mary Anne’. I thought of those telegrams coming from the Highlands to this hotel where waitresses went round the tables with drinks and there were modernistic pictures, swirls of blue and red paint, on the walls. One or two of the telegrams were in Gaelic and in some strange way they made the wedding both more authentic and false. I didn’t know what the bride thought as she sat there, as if entranced and distant. Everything seemed so formal, so fixed and monotonous, as if the participants were trying to avoid errors, which the sharpwitted city-bred waitresses might pick up.
Eventually the telegrams had all been read and the father got up to speak about the bride. I didn’t know what I expected but he certainly began with an air of business-like trepidation. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I am here today to make a speech which as you will know is not my speciality.’ He twisted his neck about inside the imprisoning collar and continued. ‘I can tell you that the crossing was good and the skipper told me that the Corona is a good boat though a bit topheavy.’ He beamed nervously and then said, ‘But to my daughter. I can tell you that she has been a good daughter to me. I am not going to say that she is good at the peats for she is never at home for the peats and she never went to the fishing as girls of her age used to do in the past.’ By this time people were beginning to look at each other or down at their plates and even the waitresses were smiling. ‘I’ll tell you something about the old days. We turned out good men and women in those days, good sailors who fought for their country. Nowadays I don’t know about that. I was never in the city myself and I never wore a collar except to the church. Anyway I was too busy. There were the calves to be looked after and the land as you all know. But I can tell you that my daughter here has never been a burden to us. She has always been working on the mainland. Ever since she was a child she has been a good girl with no nonsense and a help to her mother, and many’s the time I’ve seen her working at the hay and in the byre. But things is changed now. Nowadays, it’s the tractors and not the horses. In the old days too we had the gig but now it’s the train and the plane.’ The bride was turning a deadly white and staring down at the table. The girls on my left were transfixed. Someone dropped a fork or a spoon or a knife and the sound it made could be heard quite clearly. But the father continued remorselessly: ‘In my own place I would have spoken in the Gaelic but even the Gaelic is dying out now as anyone can read in the papers every week. In the old days too we would have a wedding which would last for three days. When Johnny Murdo married, I can remember it very well, the wedding went on for four days. And he married when he was quite old. But as for my daughter here I am very happy that she is getting married though the city is not the place for me and I can tell you I’ll be very glad to get back to the dear old home again. And that is all I have to say. Good luck to them both.’
When he sat down there was a murmur of conversation which rose in volume as if to drown the memory of the speech. The girls beside me talked in a more hectic way than ever about their hotels and made disparaging remarks about the islands and how they would never go back. Everyone avoided the bride who sat fixed and miserable at the table as if her wedding dress had been turned into a shroud.
I don’t know exactly what I felt. It might have been shame that the waitresses had been laughing. Or it might have been gladness that someone had spoken naturally and authentically about his own life. I remember I picked up my whisky and laid it down again without drinking it and felt that this was in some way a meaningful action.
Shortly afterwards the dancing began in an adjoining room. During the course of it (at the beginning they played the latest pop tunes) I went over and stood beside the father who was standing by himself in a corner looking miserable as the couples expressed themselves (rather than danced) in tune to the music, twisting their bodies, thrusting out their bellies and swaying hypnotically with their eyes half shut.
‘It’s not like the eightsome reel,’ I said.
‘I don’t know what it is like,’ he said. ‘I have never seen anything like it.’
‘It is rather noisy,’ I agreed. ‘And how are the crops this year?’ I said to him in Gaelic.
He took his dazed eyes off a couple who were snapping their fingers at each other just in front of him, and said: ‘Well, it’s been very dry so far and we don’t know what we’re going to do.’ He had to shout the words against the music and the general noise. ‘I have a good few acres you know though a good many years ago I didn’t have any and I worked for another man. I have four cows and I sell the milk. To tell you the honest truth I didn’t want to come here at all but I felt I couldn’t let her down. It wasn’t an easy thing for me. I haven’t left the island before. Do you think this is a posh hotel?’
I said that I thought it was. He said, ‘I tell you I’ve never been in a hotel before now. They’ve got a lot of carpets, haven’t they? And mirrors, I’ve never seen so many mirrors.’
‘Come on,’ I shouted, ‘let’s go into the bar.’ We did so and I ordered two beers.
‘The people in there aren’t like human beings at all,’ he said. ‘They’re like Africans.’
After a while he said, ‘It was the truth I said about her, she’s never at
home. She’s always been working in hotels. I’ll tell you something, she’s never carried a creel on her back though that’s not a good thing either. She was always eating buns and she would never eat any porridge. What do you think of her husband, eh? He was talking away about cars. And he’s got a good suit, I’ll give him that. He gave the waiter a pound, I saw it with my own eyes. Oh, he knows his way around hotels, I’ll be bound. But where does he come from? I don’t know. He’s never ploughed any ground, I think.’
I thought at that moment that he wouldn’t see his daughter very often in the future. Perhaps he really was without knowing it giving her away to a stranger in a hired cutprice suit.
After a while we thought it politic to go back. By this time there was a lull in the dancing and the boy in the lightish suit had started a Gaelic song but he didn’t know all the words of it, only the chorus. People looked round for assistance while red-faced and embarrassed he kept asking if anyone knew the words because he himself had lost them. Suddenly the father pushed forward with authority and standing with his glass in his hand began to sing—verse after verse in the traditional manner. They all gathered round him and even the waitresses listened, there was so much depth and intensity in his singing. After he had finished there was much applause and requests for other songs for he seemed to know the words of all of them. The young girls and the boys gathered round him and sat on the floor in a circle looking up at him. He blossomed in the company and I thought that I could now leave, for he seemed to be wholly at home and more so than his audience were.
An American Sky
HE STOOD ON the deck of the ship looking towards the approaching island. He was a tall man who wore brownish clothes: and beside him were two matching brown cases. As he stood on the deck he could hear Gaelic singing coming from the saloon which wasn’t all that crowded but had a few people in it, mostly coming home for a holiday from Glasgow. The large ship moved steadily through the water and when he looked over the side he could see thin spitlike foam travelling alongside. The island presented itself as long and green and bare with villages scattered along the coast. Ahead of him was the westering sun which cast long red rays across the water.
He felt both excited and nervous as if he were returning to a wife or sweetheart whom he had not seen for a long time and was wondering whether she had changed much in the interval, whether she had left him for someone else or whether she had remained obstinately true. It was strange, he thought, that though he was sixty years old he should feel like this. The journey from America had been a nostalgic one, first the plane, then the train, then the ship. It was almost a perfect circle, a return to the womb. A womb with a view, he thought and smiled.
He hadn’t spoken to many people on the ship. Most of the time he had been on deck watching the large areas of sea streaming past, now and again passing large islands with mountain peaks, at other times out in the middle of an empty sea where the restless gulls scavenged, turning their yellow gaunt beaks towards the ship.
The harbour was now approaching and people were beginning to come up on deck with their cases. A woman beside him was buttoning up her small son’s coat. Already he could see red buses and a knot of people waiting at the pier. It had always been like that, people meeting the ship when it arrived at about eight, some not even welcoming anyone in particular but just standing there watching. He noticed a squat man in fisherman’s clothes doing something to a rope. Behind him there was a boat under green canvas.
The ship swung in towards the harbour. Now he could see the people more clearly and behind them the harbour buildings. When he looked over the side he noticed that the water was dirty with bits of wooden boxes floating about in an oily rainbowed scum.
After some manœuvring the gangway was eventually laid. He picked up his cases and walked down it behind a girl in yellow slacks whose transistor was playing in her left hand. Ahead of her was a man in glasses who had a bea case with, stamped on it, the names of various foreign cities. There were some oldish women in dark clothes among the crowd and also some girls and boys in brightly coloured clothes. A large fat slow man stood to the side of the gangway where it touched the quay, legs spread apart, as if he had something to do with the ship, though he wasn’t actually doing anything. Now and again he scratched a red nose.
He reached the shore and felt as if the contact with land was an emotionally charged moment. He didn’t quite know how he felt, slightly empty, slightly excited. He walked away from the ship with his two cases and made his way along the main street. It had changed, no doubt about it. There seemed to be a lot of cafés, from one of which he heard the blare of a jukebox. In a bookseller’s window he saw From Russia with Love side by side with a book about the Highlands called The Misty Hebrides. Nevertheless the place appeared smaller, though it was much more modern than he could remember, with large windows of plate glass, a jeweller’s with Iona stone, a very fashionable-looking ladies’ hairdressers. He also passed a supermarket and another bookseller’s. Red lights from one of the cafés streamed into the bay. At the back of the jeweller’s shop he saw a church spire rising into the sky. He came to a cinema which advertised Bingo on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Dispirited trailers for a Western filled the panels.
He came to a Chinese restaurant and climbed the steps, carrying his two cases. The place was nearly empty and seemed mostly purplish with, near the ceiling, a frieze showing red dragons. Vague music—he thought it might be Chinese—leaked from the walls. He sat down and, drawing the huge menu towards him, began to read it. In one corner of the large room an unsmiling Chinaman with a moustache was standing by an old-fashioned black telephone and at another table a young Chinese girl was reading what might have been a Chinese newspaper. A little bare-bottomed Chinese boy ran out of the kitchen, was briefly chased back with much giggling, and the silence descended again.
For a moment he thought that the music was Gaelic, and was lost in his dreams. The Chinese girl seemed to turn into Mary who was doing her homework in the small thatched house years and years before. She was asking their father about some arithmetic but he, stroking his beard, was not able to answer. At another table an old couple were solidly munching rice, their heads bowed.
The music swirled about him. The Chinese girl read on. Why was it that these people never laughed? He had noticed that. Also that Chinese restaurants were hushed like churches. A crowd of young people came in laughing and talking, their Highland accents quite distinct though they were speaking English. He felt suddenly afraid and alone and slightly disorientated as if he had come to the wrong place at the wrong time. The telephone rang harshly and the Chinaman answered it in guttural English. Perhaps he was the only one who could speak English. Perhaps that was his job, just to answer the phone. He had another look at the menu, suddenly put it down and walked out just as a Chinese waitress came across with a notebook and pencil in her hand. He hurried downstairs and walked along the street.
Eventually he found a hotel and stood at the reception desk. A young blonde girl was painting her nails and reading a book. She said to the girl behind her, ‘What does “impunity” mean?’ The other girl stopped chewing and said, ‘Where does it say that?’ The first girl looked at him coolly and said, ‘Yes, Sir?’
Her voice also was Highland.
‘I should like a room,’ he said. ‘A single room.’
She leafed rapidly through a book and said at last, ‘We can give you 101, Sir. Shall I get the porter to carry your bags?’
‘It’s not necessary.’
‘That will be all right then, Sir.’
He waited for a moment and then remembered what he was waiting for. ‘Could I please have my key?’ he asked.
She looked at him in amazement and said, ‘You don’t need a key here, Sir. Nobody steals anything. Room 101 is on the first floor. You can’t miss it.’ He took his cases and walked up the stairs. He heard them discussing a dance as he left.
He opened the door and put the cases down and went to
the window. In front of him he could see the ship and the bay with the red lights on it and the fishing boats and the large clock with the greenish face.
As he turned away from the window he saw the Gideon Bible, picked it up, half smiling, and then put it down again. He took off his clothes slowly, feeling very tired, and went to bed. He fell asleep very quickly while in front of his eyes he could see Bingo signs, advertisements for Russian watches, and seagulls flying about with open gluttonous beaks. The last thought he had was that he had forgotten to ask when breakfast was in the morning.
TWO
The following day at two o’clock in the afternoon he took the bus to the village that he had left so many years before. There were few people on the bus which had a conductress as well as a driver, both dressed in uniform. He thought wryly of the gig in which he had been driven to the town the night he had left; the horse was dead long ago and so was his own father, the driver.
On the seat opposite him there was sitting a large fat tourist who had a camera and field-glasses slung over his shoulder and was wearing dark glasses and a light greyish hat.
The driver was a sturdy young man of about twenty or so. He whistled a good deal of the time and for the rest exchanged badinage with the conductress who, it emerged, wanted to become an air stewardess. She wore a black uniform, was pretty in a thin, sallow way, and had a turned-up nose and black hair.
Listen to the Voice Page 30