To Be Continued

by James Robertson

MUNLOCHY: He said I was a butterfly. I don’t think he said I was promiscuous. I advocated free love too, and practised it, but that is not promiscuity either. I was for freedom but not for freedom without responsibility. In fact there is no freedom without responsibility. The most important thing is to be able to change your mind, and to move with the times. That is why one must look to the future. Ask the young what they think.

  ELDER: Do you miss your public life, your political life? Even after you left Parliament, you were very active in local affairs.

  MUNLOCHY: No, I don’t miss it. This is my life now. I was much younger then. I was probably your sort of age – how old are you?

  ELDER: I’m fifty.

  MUNLOCHY: I was younger than that when I lost my seat in the Commons. Much younger. I needed to be rushing about. When you are young you must rush about. When you are older you don’t have to. Things stop being a blur and come into focus. You appreciate the detail of the world. That’s why it is fine not to leave the glen, hardly even to step outside the garden. So long as we are here the world is here. And even when we are not …

  ELDER: Yes?

  MUNLOCHY: Something survives.

  CLEVERNESS AND WISDOM

  An hour goes by as if it were ten minutes. So much for the pace of life being slow in a place such as this. Corryvreckan appears, sent by Poppy with more coffee and a plateful of sandwiches. I am disappointed but not surprised that she has not brought them herself.

  I switch off the recorder while we eat. Already I have plenty of good quotes: by the time I have put in the background material to contextualise Rosalind’s words, I’ll be breaching the four-thousand-word limit Liffield proposed. Rosalind has not written her own full autobiography and surely will not do so now. But perhaps her biography is waiting to be written, and perhaps I, Douglas Findhorn Elder, am waiting to write it. And yet there is something about her, this bird-like, ancient, ageless fairy-queen of a woman, that defies the idea. A biography from birth to death! I can hear her ridiculing the proposal even as her jaws work at a piece of sandwich.

  ‘My editor,’ I say, ‘thinks we should portray you as a kind of mother-of-the-nation figure. How would you feel about that?’

  ‘I would strongly object. That’s a very foolish idea. I don’t feel at all maternal towards the nation.’

  ‘You stopped writing but you still have much to say,’ I say. ‘What surprises me is that you haven’t had a steady stream of people coming to consult you.’

  She chuckles. ‘Like an oracle? Because of this silly number I’m approaching?’

  ‘Not just because of that. For the last two or three decades you seem to have been, well, forgotten. I have to admit, a week ago I didn’t know anything about you.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. Society doesn’t remember much from the day before yesterday. I mean, really remember. It is more interested in fashion than wisdom, and everything is disposable. Not that any guarantee of wisdom comes with longevity. I am about to start havering, Douglas. Is that thing switched off?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Good. Then I’ll continue. In medieval Edinburgh they had a noxious swamp called the Nor’ Loch, into which they threw all their rubbish and waste until at last it was such a danger to public health that they had to drain it. It became Princes Street Gardens. That’s a metaphor for the Enlightenment. I was lucky. When I was born the garden was still flourishing and knowledge still useful. Knowledge could free us, improve and empower us. But what we didn’t notice was that knowledge was itself becoming an engulfing swamp. People wade in it now without any sense of direction or any notion of what it is they are wading in. The philosophical stepping stones and walkways are submerged. Many people can’t distinguish between cleverness and wisdom. However, there speaks a woman with no experience of computers or the internet so I may be talking through my hat. Am I talking through my hat, Douglas?’

  ‘Yes and no. It’s an interesting hat. You are an interesting person, and not just because of your age. That’s why I’m wondering why you have been neglected.’

  ‘I was happy to be. There was a time when I did not want to speak or be spoken to.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘That is the matter we have not yet come to,’ she says.

  The happiness is gone from her face, and this, combined with her last words, puzzles me. It does not fit with the trajectory of the interview as I have envisaged it – moving through phases of her life towards her thoughts on the independence referendum. Knowing how fatal to spontaneity and frankness it can be to discuss something with the tape recorder off and then cover the same ground again, I change tack.

  ‘I suppose what I’m thinking is that there should be another way of depicting you and your life – not your past life, but the one you are living now, with Poppy and Corryvreckan here in Glentaragar. There should be another way of capturing it.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘A film, perhaps. A documentary film, but one made so unobtrusively that you would hardly know it was going on.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s very special, this life of yours. I’m not just saying that. I really feel it.’ Which is true.

  She dabs a spot of egg mayonnaise from the corner of her mouth, staring hard for some time at the fire. Eventually she bestows one of her warm smiles on me.

  ‘I’m glad. You have not come here in vain, then, whatever you write in the Spear. What makes our life special, do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Even better! You are learning. Perhaps you will take something of this place away with you when you go.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘And perhaps you will come back again.’ She finishes her coffee. ‘And now it is time for a nap. Put two or three more logs on the fire, Douglas, and sit very still. I am going to have half an hour’s sleep, and I advise you to do the same. When we wake up, we will go out into the garden.’

  ‘What about the rest of the interview?’

  ‘Oh, we have plenty of time for that. Logs, please.’ She waves her tiny hand at the fireplace, pushes herself back into her cushions and closes her eyes. I put logs on the fire. ‘Thank you,’ she says. A minute later she is snoring gently.

  I think of escape, of going in search of Poppy, but to leave Rosalind by herself would feel like an act of betrayal. I don’t know why, but it would. We have plenty of time, she said. I am not so sure. I have the rest of the day and night at least, and tomorrow morning. And I do feel sleepy in the hot, crowded room.

  The cat, Sitka, watches me with one lazy eye, as if she has decided to wake and keep watch while Rosalind sleeps. I close my own eyes, just for a minute.

  A MATTER OF PERCEPTION

  A carriage clock above the fireplace chimes twice. Simultaneously I receive a poke in the ribs from something hard, which I discover to be the business end of a walking stick.

  ‘Wake up, Douglas,’ Rosalind says. She is out of her chair, standing like a child wanting to play, except that the child has a wizened old lady’s face. The stick is thin and dark with a brass ferrule at its base.

  ‘It is two o’clock. The sun is shining. Don’t you have any more sensible shoes than those? If not you can borrow some boots downstairs.’

  When I stand, I tower over her. She clutches my right forearm in her left hand and steadies herself with the stick. Actually the stick seems superfluous: she feels astonishingly secure despite her fragility.

  ‘Sitka, are you coming? No, I didn’t think so. I don’t know why I bother asking. Lazy beast.’

  Down in the oak-lined lobby Rosalind sits on the bench while I help her into a pair of light boots, then root around for a pair of wellingtons that fit me. She points out a dark green waxy jacket and I hold it for her to put on. It comes down to her knees. ‘You had better do me up,’ she says, ‘or Poppy will be cross. My fingers can’t work the zip very easily.’ The jacket is mud-streaked and smells of earth and things left for a long time in its pockets. One of these is
a woolly hat, which she pulls so far down over her ears that half her face disappears. ‘Help yourself to a coat,’ she says, but when I open the front door there is such warmth in the sun, and the high clouds are moving so slowly, that I decide to do without. Then we descend the stone steps and along the avenue that cuts through the lawn, towards the row of oak trees.

  ‘In my childhood there were ornamental shrubs and flowerbeds here,’ Rosalind says, ‘but Ralph took them all out when I was a Member of Parliament. We had no gardener by then, and Ralph said he didn’t have time for that kind of gardening and I quite agreed with him. The children used this area for everything from archery to football and every so often we’d let some sheep in to keep it trim. It’s mostly moss now, which at least doesn’t need much looking after. Come along.’

  About halfway down the avenue a path goes off to the right, leading to a wooden door set into the high wall that runs along the lawn on that side. Rosalind turns the handle in the door and pushes. Nothing happens.

  ‘All that rain must have warped the wood,’ she says. ‘Could you put your shoulder to it and give it a good shove, Douglas? I want to show you our pride and joy.’

  I shove, the door gives way, and through it we go. On the other side is a not insubstantial vegetable garden, fully surrounded by the wall, and laid out in tidy beds intersected by gravel paths. Most of the beds are empty, but those that aren’t contain small stands of vegetables at various stages of maturity: I recognise kale, leeks, carrots, onions and turnips but there is much more. Against the south-facing wall are espaliered pear trees and some small apple trees, bare of fruit and foliage. Elsewhere there is a fruit cage, a large greenhouse with some missing panes boarded over, and big pots full of parsley, thyme and mint. Hens are scratching around near their lodgings under the west wall. The walls trap the sun with great efficiency and even though it is nearly the end of October the heat is remarkable.

  ‘Are you a gardener?’ Rosalind asks.

  ‘After a fashion. My father used to grow a lot of vegetables, and I learned what I know from him. But I don’t grow much nowadays. There doesn’t seem much point, for one.’

  ‘Your father is dead, I take it?’

  ‘No, not quite. He’s in a home.’

  ‘So am I, but I take it his is not his own. Why?’

  ‘The usual complications, from which you don’t seem to suffer.’

  ‘I see,’ she says. I can tell that my answer does not satisfy her. ‘I could take you round plant by plant if you like,’ she continues, ‘but I’ll spare you that. However, we will go over and speak to the hens, because one always should, and that way you can see for yourself that this is not the place of desolation some might think.’

  ‘I can see that already.’

  ‘I don’t mean the garden. I mean the house, and the glen. As we were saying earlier, it is a matter of perception.’

  Despite herself, she cannot resist showing me what they are growing – ‘they’ being herself and Poppy, although Poppy, she admits, does all the heavy labour now. ‘I can weed quite well sitting down, and I can do a lot in the greenhouse, but digging and planting are not realistic. It’s hard for Poppy, but then, we grow so much less than we used to. If we could get our produce to market, we could use the whole garden again, and even employ someone.’

  ‘As well as Corryvreckan?’

  ‘I never really think of him as an employee, but I suppose that’s what he is. We do pay him. I wouldn’t like you to think we don’t.’

  ‘Corryvreckan seems a complicated person,’ I say. ‘Does he not also have the hotel?’

  Her eyes look up at me from under the woollen rim. ‘I understand that you must be curious about Corryvreckan,’ she says. ‘Anybody would be. I will tell you about Corryvreckan later, or Poppy will, on condition that it is not for your newspaper article. That is an omission I insist upon. You are right; he is complicated. Here are the hens coming to meet us.’

  She speaks to the hens for some time, and after a while I join in. I have never been in the close presence of hens before. I have always imagined them to be very stupid, but they don’t seem to hold this against me. I rather enjoy their company, and they seem to like ours. After this we return through the wooden door and walk down to the oak trees and the gates that stand beneath them. Unlike the gates at the top of the glen, these are shut, but it is easy to unbolt one and swing it wide enough for us to pass through.

  ‘Behold, the world,’ Rosalind says.

  A well-made track, which appears to come round the outside of the walled garden and presumably begins at the back of the house, runs away from the gates, dropping in steepish bends through scrubby woodland towards the head of the loch I saw earlier from my window. The loch is perhaps a mile away, a few hundred feet below us – more or less at sea level, I guess – but it is what lies beyond that catches and holds the eye: hill after hill after hill ranked like cut-out models, their outlines intersecting, the light accentuating their contours and peaks one minute and softening them the next. Strips of water lie between and among them, now black, now silver, and stretched behind it all is the curve of the horizon and the western sea.

  ‘That is Morven, and there is Mull, and over that way is Ardnamurchan, and up there is Ben Nevis with his white bonnet on,’ Rosalind says, pointing in this and that direction. If I see half of what she sees I am lucky. I feel a profound geographical insecurity because she speaks with such certainty, and when finally I comment I reveal my ignorance.

  ‘So, is that Loch Araich down there?’

  ‘No, no, don’t be silly, how can you say that? Loch Araich is behind you, at the foot of the glen. That is Loch Glaineach and its outflow goes into Loch Glas, which is a sea loch. In the old days the puffers came up Loch Glas and beached themselves on one tide and took themselves off again on the next. There was a store, owned by people called Lamont, and they would bring their goods by cart to Loch Glaineach where there was a big flat boat like a barge. Everything was loaded onto that and brought to the top of the loch where there was another store, and we sent a cart down from here to fetch whatever goods had come in, and from here they were carried all the way down the glen. That’s a very good track, as you can see; it wasn’t hard on the ponies to pull the cart, and there were handcarts too, a couple of strong lads could manage one of those easily. So there was a constant traffic up and down between here and the lochs, and not just on the days when the puffer came, because we had the stores to keep everything dry, and also at certain times of the year sheep and cattle were driven down the lochside to the Lamonts’ store and loaded onto the boat to go to Oban or Glasgow. And that is why the house is where it is, and why it looks to the sea. Everything came in from the sea, and the glen was kept alive by that route. Now everything is back to front and no wonder it doesn’t work. Do you understand?’

  I nod. ‘I do,’ I say, even though I don’t, not really. We stand in the warm afternoon sunshine, Douglas Findhorn Elder and Rosalind Isabella Munlochy (née Striven), and I try to imagine a barge on the black water and people and ponies going up and down the track and boys pushing handcarts shouting and laughing at each other in Gaelic and the glen full of families – I try to imagine all of it, and it is a struggle, it is a dream really, but when I glance at Rosalind I see that it is real enough for her. Perception, as she said, being everything.

  She says, ‘When I asked, this morning, if you had come about a job, and that if you had there wasn’t one, I was rather wishing that there was. I was wishing there were a dozen jobs, and that you were only the first to come about one of them. That is, I know, a fantasy, but it would be good, I think, if there were just one job. Do you think you would be interested?’

  ‘What would it be, this job?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. General factotum. What we used to call an orraman. A hewer of wood and drawer of water. A spear carrier.’

  ‘I used to be one of those. It was our nickname for ourselves on the newspaper. But that job sounds like Corryvreck
an’s.’

  ‘Yes, but Corryvreckan won’t be here for ever. And it would be nice if we could justify two such jobs. Would that interest you?’

  ‘I’d need to think about it.’

  ‘Yes. I don’t suppose we could, though. Justify it. I should speak to Poppy about it if I were you.’

  And a little later she says, ‘What about caretaker? I like that title. One who cares. One who takes care. That’s a job worth doing, isn’t it?’

  ‘It sounds like Poppy’s job.’

  ‘Yes, only Poppy doesn’t have a job, poor girl.’

  I feel she may be about to say more, but just then a little breeze starts up and she turns away from it in her dirty, earth-smelling jacket down to her knees, and her bird’s head with the tea-cosy hat on top of it nods up at me, and she says in her not quite yet one-hundred-year-old voice, ‘Give me your arm again, Douglas, and take me back to the house, before I am tipped off my feet.’

  A PLAY WITHIN A DREAM

  When we walk up the steps to the big front door it is opened to us by Poppy. A small thrill of pleasure runs through me on seeing her, swiftly followed by another when she smiles. Her smile is divided equally between myself and Rosalind yet I harbour not a jot of jealousy towards Rosalind. I have to remind myself that I am very angry with Poppy/Xanthe/Coppélia. Would Delilah be a more appropriate name? I should mistrust her deeply, anyway. And I should be looking forward to my release from the frustrating situation I am in. But actually I don’t feel like that at all. I feel curiously comfortable, and unhappy at the prospect of the experience that I’m having – whatever it is – coming to an end.

  ‘Everything all right?’ Poppy asks.

  ‘We have done no work at all,’ Rosalind tells her. ‘I was acquainting Douglas with his surroundings. You can have him now.’

  ‘In that case,’ Poppy says – again, without a glimmer of shame – ‘we can make dinner together.’

  ‘What about the rest of the interview?’ I ask.