(I, Sandy Grey, come up for air. How far must I, as writer and recorder for Alan Macaulay, go? He’s finished, isn’t he? Must I follow him even unto death? I search the pages of The Storehouse of Thought and Expression for guidance and find nothing but such truisms as “Men are not moved by the prospect of remote rewards” and “Children prefer stories which end happily.”
More Scottish grrroans, with rolled r’s from Alan Macaulay.)
The evening before the day of my death, the jailer brought me a large package. It was wrapped in oiled paper, tied with string and the knots sealed with wax. I recognized the knots as my mother’s work. I undid the wrapping, careful not to break the string, but to wind it into a small ball and place it in my pocket; neither did I tear the paper, but folded it into a neat square and placed it inside the Bible I’d been given as my only reading material.
The package contained an overcoat. I shook it out. It was made of the heaviest cloth and lined with sheep’s wool. The close and careful stitches were in my mother’s hand. How many hours had it taken her to make it? I put it on, and my body, for the first time in months, for the first time since the accidental death of MacKenzie, was warm. I huddled in my coat and leaned my back against the wall: I did not sleep. No one came to visit, not even Frank, although he’d sent a letter to say how sorry he was about how things had turned out. I’d raised the note to my nose and thought I’d caught a faint whiff there of the dog, Nellie, still in Frank’s care.
What had my life come down to? Many coloured memories, an affectionate recollection of a dog, and a warm coat.
I felt in the pockets, but they were empty.
To say I wept all night would be wrong: I spent most of my time imagining the wheel of the stars across the sky as I had seen it from the deck of a ship. I felt, for a time, that I’d found a place amongst them: something to aim for.
At seven o’clock in the morning, the jailer brought tea and porridge with cream. The cells all around lay quiet. Not a mouse squeaked. When I was taken out, just before eight o’clock, I saw that a black flag flew from the flagpole. Seven men, in good dark suits, but none with so fine an overcoat as mine, stood ranged at the foot of the gallows. The hangman bound a belt over my arms behind my back and led me up the steps. At the top, he instructed me to kneel on the trap.
I had no thoughts at all, Sandy Grey, none at all. The neat and intricate spiralling that bound me to my body had already unravelled. I felt nothing when the rope was placed around my neck and adjusted to fit, but the texture of the rope. Texture! Fine fibres of hemp, hand-picked by sailors; a texture reminiscent of grass on the machair where it falls smoothly to the sea; my skin prickled alive by wind and salt.
The hangman’s blows on the bolt to release it were a thunderclap. Only then did I try to cry out, only then did I think, “But there have been no last words!”
“And so to silence,” says Alan Macaulay, utterly visible to me now in the dim light of my cell, with his hands tucked inside the sleeves of his overcoat. “Now I’m done. You get me that pardon and I’ll leave you alone.
“That wasn’t our bargain.”
“What say?”
“Our bargain was for me to tell your story. I have no power over the rest.”
He rubs his hand over his chin. “That’s so. But I’m not happy about it, Sandy Grey.”
“I’ve done what I can.”
“Aye.”
“I’ll ask.”
There’s a deep sigh from the shadows that now occupy the place where he sat. “As for the hanging,” I say, “the witnesses reported that you never moved after the drop, they considered your death a success.”
I tuck my cold feet back under my blanket, turn my back to the bars and follow the dark.
SIXTEEN
May 24, 1942
Each morning when I wake up, I feel like a baby—secure and content in my innocence. The Board has let me go. Not for good, of course, and they took some time to think about it, but I’m out of the East Wing at last. It’s been a long haul, a hard road. But it’s over. I sleep on an iron cot with a thin mattress, but no matter. I have a pillow and a warm blanket and I sleep well and dreamlessly. Most importantly, no one bothers me, not even Alan Macaulay! At night, in my room, one of four on the top floor of the newly acquired farmhouse, I tune my ear towards the main building—just in case—but he isn’t there. No ghost. Nothing but the hum of the power line that now links the former dairy farm to the main building. On my first morning outside, after I’d been shown round the changes, I managed to slip away (I’m a trustee these days and have grounds privileges!) to the wooded hillock where Pete Cooper had told me Alan Macaulay was buried. There’s nothing there, either, except for the firs and alders, a little taller than when I first saw them. Some animal has snuffled through the roots, but all sense of Alan’s presence is gone—wherever his bones may lie. May he rest in peace.
It took two weeks for the Board to make up its mind and for Dr. Love to spring me, but spring me he did. Paul (the new guard), who was on top-tier cell rotation, brought me a suit of work clothes: heavy wool trousers, a flannel shirt and twill jacket (an attractive moss colour) and a sturdy pair of boots. “What’s this?” I said.
“You like outdoor work, don’t you, Sandy?” Paul placed the items on the bed.
“I’m going back to the rabbitry?”
“Not the rabbitry, no. Haven’t you heard?”
I’d heard that Burma had been lost, Australia attacked and the Americans had surrendered the Philippines, but nothing about the rabbitry or what was going to happen to me. I shook my head.
“Dr. Frank’s gone and bought the farm at the southwest corner.”
“The Speller farm?”
“That’s it.”
“I’ll be going there?”
“So they say.” Paul retreated to the other side of the bars.
“What about the rabbitry?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “You’ll have to ask Dr. Frank.”
So I did, in the interview that followed, once I was dressed and ready to go.
“It’s not in your best interests to return there,” he told me. “We’ve decided to place you in as normal an environment as possible. Anyway, we’re closing the rabbitry for the time being.”
I pondered that. I had loved the work, been proud of my abilities in small animal husbandry, had learned, I felt, to distance myself sufficiently that I was not overly sentimentally attached to the creatures (although my hands recalled the sensation of silky fur under my palms). My thoughts plunged on, however, to the scene in the rabbitry as I’d last viewed it.
“I can understand that,” I said.
“Good boy.” Dr. Frank clapped me on the back. “You’ll have more freedom than you’re used to, Sandy, I know you’ll repay my trust in you.”
“Indeed, I will.”
We looked at each other, he and I, measuring. We’d both been through a lot. He’d recovered some of his health but not his weight. I’d gone to the edge of what I could endure.
“Sir?”
“Yes, Sandy?”
“What’s next for us?”
He sighed, stood up with his back to me and peered out through the slats in the new venetian blinds in his office. “We’ll take up where we left off. We’ll complete your treatment.”
“I know that, sir. I was wondering…your health?”
“Ah.” He faced me. “Diabetes, Sandy. I’ve had to make adjustments.” He pointed at a tray on the sideboard. It contained a large bottle of dark blue liquid, a test tube, a metal measuring cup, a small Primus stove, a set of scales, a number of vials, and a box labelled FRAGILE: GLASS SYRINGES. A colour chart, ranging from blue through shades of orange, was tacked to the shelf above it. He gave me then a smile of utmost sweetness. “A little discipline and all my problems are solved. I wish it were that simple for everyone.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“Nothing to be sorry about, Sandy.” He gazed at his desk and gave i
t a solid knock with his knuckles. “I’ll have to get a new one.”
When Dr. Frank sat in the space that had been cut for his former bulk, he seemed childlike. A little lost. “I’ll be sorry to see the old desk go, sir,” I said. “It served you well.” What I was really sorry about was the diminishment of his world. You could find it in the too-clean shelves and desk surface. The trophies and certificates had vanished. It was hardly like his office at all. Once, he’d been larger than life; now he was an adjunct, an accessory. What was he doing here?
“You should know that I’m director on a temporary basis while the new director is needed elsewhere. For health reasons I’ll be leaving as soon as possible, but we’ve a severe labour shortage because of the current crisis and I’ll stay as long as I’m needed.”
I must have raised my eyebrows, for he went on to elaborate, “We expect an attack by the Japs any day. Just about everyone has been called up to deal with the emergency.”
“I didn’t know it was urgent.”
“No reason you should. You’ve had other things on your mind. It’s a problem for the farm, though, Sandy. I’ll be asking you, once you’re settled in, to assist with all the farm projects.”
“I’ll be glad to do it, sir.”
“You’ll also run Deceased Property. We’ve moved that from the main building to the former Chinese quarters.” I recalled Winchell’s comment about the Chinese being sent “on a slow boat” to China. Had they had a choice as to whether to go or stay? Was it purely a function of their medical state?
“A lot of changes, sir.”
“You’ll note, as well, once you’re outdoors, the installation of anti-aircraft guns and searchlights on the roof.”
My consternation must have shown on my face—what about my turret room? How could I return to it now? I’d hoped to have another crack at building a glider. He mistook my expression for concern for my personal safety.
“You’ll be safer, by far, living in the farmhouse where we’ve put you, than here, Sandy—and I doubt we’re the Japs’ first target, anyway.”
“We’re on the flight path to the airport.”
He frowned, long creases gathering in the loose skin of his face. “And what would you like me to do about it?” This was a testy Dr. Frank, another change!
“I meant it as a statement of fact, sir. You’ll recall my interest in aircraft.”
He made no response. His attention had shifted to that medical tray.
“I know you’re busy, sir. I don’t want to keep you, but can you let Mrs. Jones-Murray know where I am?”
“Of course.”
“May I write to her?”
“You may have all the writing materials you require, Sandy. We’ll consider it part of your treatment, just as before.”
“Yes, sir, thank you, sir, I realize I may write, but will the letters be private?”
He gave me a long steady look. “You know the rules as well as I do, Sandy. If you’re asking me will your letters be sent—yes, they will. If the question is, will they be censored, the answer should be obvious. All mail is censored, these days. Because of the war.”
Dr. Frank prevaricating. Dr. Frank not being straight.
—
I’m not entirely out of touch with those in the main building. Once the farm is ready and the other trustees and the overseer are installed, we’ll cook for ourselves in our own kitchen. But for the moment, I sleep on my own in the farmhouse and take my breakfast and dinner in the cafeteria. I make a lunch to carry with me. I’m pretty much on my own, in fact, while the barn and outbuildings are being renovated. My duties consist of sprucing up the farmhouse living quarters with a scrub brush and paint brush in the mornings, and in the afternoons, sorting through boxes of “deceased property.”
Today, a particularly quiet day because it’s both a Sunday and Queen Victoria’s birthday, I take time for two sets of exercises. I face the sun through my open window, thank God for it and the clean, invigorating air, then set to using Indian clubs I’ve devised from old table legs I found in the basement. After breakfast, I sweep out my room and make my bed. Then I return to the basement and haul up a door and trestles to make a writing surface. I hand-sand the door until it’s smooth, wipe it clean, place a kitchen chair in front of it, lay out my writing paper and pens and The Storehouse of Thought and Expression and sit down. I tack a postcard onto the windowsill. It came while I was in the East Wing; Dr. Frank kept it for me. The message says only, “Wish you were here!” The card is unsigned. The front features a soldier on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. The caption is “Save Gas, Oil and Rubber.” The rider peers over his shoulder at the viewer from under a peaked cap, and he bears a remarkable resemblance to Bob! My heart lifts, and at the same time I become aware of the sound of a motorcycle engine—it’s not the first time I’ve heard this—as someone rides by on the road beyond the perimeter walls. The noise fades.
My window faces northwest from the eastern border of the farm. From there I can see the slope of the land towards Kosho’s pond. What’s beyond it, I don’t know, but bearing in mind the clues given to me by Georgina in “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” I know I must begin my search for Kosho there.
I return my thoughts to the project at hand. I make a number of beginnings, but none of them sticks. “Beware,” cautions The Storehouse of Thought and Expression, “of believing you’ll get something for nothing.” Well, I’m not afraid of hard work. “Have your main thought clearly in mind, express it as plainly as you can, emphasizing it by repeating it in various ways, and be sure that it is logically developed.” There’s the rub. My main thought isn’t at all developed! If I’m to write The Romance of Stanley Park as it should be written—that is, as a partnership between me and Karl—I’ll have to find whatever Karl and I have in common; and whatever that is, it certainly isn’t logic! Indeed, I don’t believe—despite what The Storehouse says in these chapters—that reason is the source of literature. All I know, all I feel, argues against it. Is Shakespeare reasonable? Are Lady Macbeth and Hamlet? Or, to bring the matter home, was it reasonable for Karl to set free the birds in the Stanley Park aviary? It wasn’t an act of madness; it had an inherent, sophisticated logic to it, but was it both rational and prudent? Likewise, was it reasonable for me to sacrifice my freedom for the sake of a primitive sea creature? Has it been a reasonable act for me to spend so much of my time on the case of Alan Macaulay? None of these acts was reasonable, but they were not without cause or purpose or justification.
Philip Sidney wrote, “ ‘Fool,’ said my Muse to me, ‘look in thy heart and write.’ ” Guidance comes not from the mind and what “should be” but from the heart and “what is.” But what’s in my heart is unfinished; and what’s in Karl’s is now dark—occluded (that word that so upset Winchell)—and likely to remain so forever.
I turn the page and The Storehouse leaps from Reason to Art. “Art is a way of looking at Nature. But you must remember that your own mind is a part of nature. Your chief task is, thus, to discover yourself—let us say, by a walk on a May morning.” So here it is, the answer I need on this bright May morning as I turn my full attention from Alan Macaulay to Sandy Grey.
I put down my pen and run downstairs and outside. The sky is a seascape of blue and white—clouds roll and break on the far hills. Swallows fly and flip in arcs of silver. Sheep move and stop across the green and yellow grass, a workman in blue overalls crosses from the barn to the dairy. I’ve been in there: There’s a milking machine and sterilizer and cooler, separator and tubs. The barn has now been “beefed up” with Beatty stalls and stanchions. There are hay storage and feed bins and a steel bull pen. The earth in the fields, where turned, shows rich and brown, all cleared and fenced and ready for a first crop of potatoes. From some such scene came the great pastoral symphonies; from the play of light on water, on grasses and spring flowers came the poems of the master artist (Yeats) himself. What infinitely complex rhythms, what atoms dancing, what waves and pulses
of the great tides of life as they form and reform in innumerable patterns are here. “What is it in Nature that has an intensely personal significance for you?” The Storehouse asks.
I walk, “between the stars and the fishes”—that is, this morning, through the brilliant landscape of daylight, each step uncovering a pleasure: the long unmown grasses abuzz with insects, the skylark nests, the overgrown path, moister as it falls towards pond-bottom; and lilies and pink shooting stars, and camas. A hummingbird slips its minute long beak between the lips of an orchid. If I were not overlooked by the anti-aircraft battery on the roof (who knows who is up there?) I would fall to my knees and worship.
Wouldn’t I?
It’s darker down here. The reeds close in, and I find Kosho’s stand of bamboo from which we constructed Bob’s vaulting pole. I move near. Duck and swan footprints splay through the shore mud. I push through, rushes and reeds sharp against my skin. I can see where the bamboo was cut, the puckering of the split, but there’s nothing else that speaks of Kosho. I thrust my way out of the thicket, slog through the shallows of yellow and green skunk cabbage to a sudden surge of upland. Behind me the asylum looks like a castle in a tale; ahead is thick wood; before me is a wall topped by barbed wire and glass, and strung above with electric wire. Not even Bob could have leapt clear here.
I gawp—a thin trail…a deer trail?—follows along the bottom of the wall and then just vanishes. I’m about to investigate when I hear, “What in tarnation are you up to!” and it’s Ron Signet, red in the face and sweating, looking madder than I’ve ever seen him as he emerges from the swamp below me. “What the bloody hell, Sandy! You’ve got half the institution watching your antics. Where do you think you’re going?”
I fix my position in my mind—the nearest trees, the face of the stone wall, the hint of a trail that appears to disappear under the wall—then batter my way back through the brambles at an angle. Ron shadows my progress, stumbling along below; he’s swearing a blue streak. I jump down the last of the slope and land beside him. He wears a portable two-way field radio strapped to his chest. A set of headphones clings to his neck. “Just a sec,” he says, “I’m going to call you in.”
What It Takes to Be Human Page 22