by Morris West
‘I haven’t finished yet. Maeve gave me the letter you wrote to her.’
I didn’t tell him she had burned it. I wanted to see how much he could take without flinching. To this point he was doing very well. He was cool, half smiling, weighing every word said, estimating the consequences, patient as a cat with a bird hopping in front of him. But the letter got him. The letter was a document. If I had it, the noose was really round his neck. But he still tried to bluff. He said lightly:
‘I don’t believe a word of it, seannachie.’
‘I quote, then: “See if you can talk, or sleep, some sense into him. You’re good at both.” She loved that. So did I. Big motion of confidence from Ruarri the Mactire to his friends.’
‘Where’s the letter now?’
‘Safe in Copenhagen.’
‘So it’s blackmail, is it? How much, seannachie? And how often?’
‘One instalment, Ruarri. Don’t hurt the Morrison.’
Now he truly didn’t believe me. He stared at me as if I were something odd, kicked up from under a stone. He shook his head. He blinked, and then he started to laugh, in a queer, stuttering chuckle. ‘You can’t mean it…You just can’t…! How could you police a bargain like that?’
‘You miss the point. I don’t have to police it. Because I’m one man in the world who can prove you’re shit – A to Z, right down the line. And you’re going to break your back just to prove I’m wrong. That’s the way you are, brother.’
‘I could also be tempted to kill you one dark night.’
‘You won’t do that either. There’s no need. Maeve burnt the letter after I read it.’
‘And you’re fool enough to tell me?’
‘I’m fool enough to believe your neck’s worth saving and that you and Morrison might have some joy together.’
‘Then why the hell did you go all that way round to tell me?’
‘You want respect. You cry to get it. You have to give some too. As of now the only one you respect is the man with the big stick. I just wanted you to know I’m holding it and that I could have used it this morning and didn’t. So how does that grab you, Brother Wolf?’
‘Right where it hurts, seannachie. But not for the reason you think. You’re such a patronizing bastard, you’re so chockful of wisdom and righteousness that there’s no room for sap and blood. You wouldn’t give me the smack in the teeth you owe me. No, brother! You come sliding in with a stiletto and shove it between my ribs. You won’t give me one single credit, will you? Not for the boys working out there that wouldn’t be working without me. Not for the land that’s going to be a model for other lands like it all over the Islands. Not for the promise I made to see Morrison and kept, and the bending I did to make him feel I needed him and that he could really offer me something. No…! To you I’m all shit – A to Z. Amen! Amen! Amen! I think I’d like you better if you turned me in to Rawlings. Then at least I wouldn’t owe you anything.’
‘That’s just the point, Ruarri lad. You do owe me something. I want you to know it, remember it and pay it – not to me, but to Morrison.’
‘Oh, seannachie, seannachie! You’ll have to do better than that!’
‘Any suggestions?’
‘Yes… Ask Kathleen about the locket you just stuck in your pocket.’
This time he did get the liquor full in his face. The wonder of it was he didn’t make a move. He stood there, a long moment, solid as a rock with the liquid running down his cheeks and into his beard, blinking against the sting of the raw spirit. He picked up a paper napkin and dabbed at his eyes. Then, unsmiling, he said:
‘I think we’re even now, seannachie. And I hope you’ll apologize to the girl when you get home. She came here for dinner because I asked her, and she went home at midnight without my asking or getting anything else but her company. Now have another drink and let’s have a little brotherhood between us, eh?’
To save the shreds of my dignity I had to stay. I had to apologize and take one drink with him and give him the last word in his own house. He took time to say it, and I had to give him the time as well, though every minute there was a purgatory.
‘Seannachie, we’re very close, but it doesn’t work. Why?’
‘God knows.’
‘Don’t put it on Him, seannachie. He’s not around that much. I lie to you and you snarl at me. Why?’
‘You tell me for a change.’
‘So I will and all. Here it is, straight from the horse’s mouth – or the other end of him, if you like. You want to make a statement about yourself – an act of faith, a saying of love or hate, or a shout against injustice – you do it. You write it in nice clerkly periods. You print it, black and clear, and it’s on the record. They can love you or hate you or daub you over with paint, but you’re there! Me…? I can’t do that. I’ve got two languages, seannachie, and I’m schooled in neither. I’ve got a bad name and a chequered history, so any man who wants to discredit me can do it with a wink or a nod before I’m heard. That’s a bitter thing, seannachie, a cruel thing. There’s no absolute judgment – though there ought to be. It’s all relative to unrelated things. Result? I can’t speak and be heard. I’m clamped down like a pressure cooker. So I spout steam from the cracks. I bubble and spit and sometimes blow my lid off. If I can get a lie believed easier than the truth, why not tell it? They’re as like to hang me either way. And you, brother, you’ve been lynching me in your own mind these last few days, haven’t you?’
‘It’s only half true, Ruarri. Because you never give yourself more than half a chance with an honest word. You have to wait a space until your credit’s past impeachment. You won’t wait. You want laurels hung round your neck every time you recite, “It’s a braw bricht moonlicht nicht…”’
‘You’re not overly patient yourself, brother – as we proved a minute ago.’
‘Agreed.’
‘So if, just for once, I asked you to sit something out with me, wait on me, not judge me till the end, would you do it?’
‘What have you got in mind?’
‘Come to my ceilidh, two nights from now. Bring Kathleen.’
‘For God’s sake, man! You can’t give a ceilidh now. It’s an indecency.’
‘You’ve judged me already – wrongly!’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘In the Isles, seannachie, we mourn the dying, but we drink for the burying. Lachie’ll never be buried, but there’s honour to be done to him, and something needed to be arranged for his family. So everyone who comes will bring a gift of money – you too. And for every coin that’s brought I’ll put in two. So there’ll be a fund for Lachie’s mother and her young ones. I’m inviting all my boys and their girls. Maeve’s coming and Duggie Donald will be there, and even Inspector Rawlings, if he wants to come.’
‘Now you’re right off the rails.’
‘No, I’m not. Because this is my statement, seannachie. Just as it would be if he were buried like a Christian in a churchyard. I’d be there, large as life and twice as ugly, to say I was clean and I had nothing to fear from God or man. Whatever anyone thinks after that I won’t care. Now do you see what I’m at?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you come? Both of you?’
‘We’ll be there.’
And because he could never resist the last turn of the thumbscrew, he added, ‘You’ll be like God, seannachie, with a secret in your bosom that no one else in the world knows. A man can get drunk on a thing like that….’
It was still early when I left him, and the rain had cleared and I could not bear to go back to the lodge and Hannah’s scolding affection; so I drove to the place of the Standing Stones and sat, facing the east, with the Great Stone at my back and the empty burying place under the soles of my feet. I saw no sacred wrens; I heard no cuckoo. I wish I could tell you that I saw the Shining One, but I didn’t. I did have other visions, though: of Kathleen sitting in candlelight at dinner with Ruarri, of myself with Maeve in Nyhavn and her telling me, ‘He’s
treacherous always, seannachie, playing good doggie with his feet up in the air until you reach out to scratch him – then he’s bitten your hand off!’ None of us was a match for him in the devious arts of betrayal, because all of us loved him – yes, even Kathleen – and each of us was victim to one or other of his dazzling potencies. We had only one defence against him: pack and go; step outside the magic circle he had conjured around us; meet him, if we must, like a vagabond friend, on far and neutral ground, among a press of people. I wondered what spell he had laid upon Kathleen and how she would act and what she would say when I handed her back the locket. I was resolved on one thing: I would make no jealous scene. She had asked to be free. She had left me free. I had exercised my freedom. So had she; in what fashion I had no right to ask. But now, for me, the waiting time was over. It was forward for us, caps over the rainbow. If she wanted to come with me, fine! We would lock the gate on the past and throw away the key. If she wanted to stay, then I wouldn’t be here – the Isles were too small to hold me and the Mactire together.
When I got back to the lodge Kathleen was waiting for me, and she was in my arms before I kicked the door shut behind me. Don’t ask me what we said in those first ten minutes, because it was all in the babble of the love country, and it would make no sense at all in cold linear print. Later, when we were calmer, sitting by the fire, I told her everything that had happened on board the Helen and part of what had happened in Copenhagen and of my talk with Rawlings and my afternoon meeting with Ruarri. Then I put the locket round her neck again and sat on the rug at her feet while she told me the other side of the story:
‘…The news of Lachie’s death was all over the island in a day. Even in Harris, where they don’t worry much about the doings of Lewis folk, it was gossiped in every household. There was talk of a fight over a girl, a drunken brawl on board, a fight with the Russians or the Norwegians over fishing rights…There were hard words about Ruarri and his violent ways and even about you, darling, because they said you’d run away to avoid answering to the police. When I heard that one for the first time, I lost my temper – and a couple of patients at the same time. So, when I heard Ruarri was back, I called him. He was very guarded on the phone – they’re not very private here, as you know – and asked me to have dinner with him, so that he could tell me the whole story. He asked would I mind going to his house, because he didn’t want to raise talk by a public appearance with me…I won’t lie to you, mo gradh. There’d be no point. I was glad he made the suggestion. I wanted to be alone with him. I wanted to experience what he was like and I resented your being off in Copenhagen, and knowing that Maeve O’Donnell was there at the same time… Oh yes, he told me that, very brotherly and man of the world. So by the time I got there I was just light-headed and reckless enough to enjoy myself. And I did. He made cocktails and we cooked dinner together and flirted while we were doing it – and I enjoyed every minute, because I knew I was a big girl who could handle any situation…Over dinner he told me everything, much as you’ve told it, darling. I was surprised at how much he said, but he told me he knew you and I were lovers and we had no secrets. Or did we? He asked when we were getting married. I told him the truth. I said we hadn’t decided whether we would or wouldn’t. Then he laughed and said the seannachie was a shrewd old fox who knew how to arrange himself coming and going…He is like that, isn’t he? Lots of little pinpricks, never enough to hurt, just enough to let you know you’re alive and make you want to justify yourself to him. After dinner we danced, and I knew we were dancing on a trapdoor, but I didn’t care. He had me on fire for him… You lit me, darling, but you were away and he was there, blowing on the coals. Then he asked me to go to bed with him – and I’m ashamed to say it, but I was ready… Then he laughed and held me close and said, “What price the seannachie now, princess? Pity he’s not here to watch the fun.” I went cold all over and I wanted to run away and be sick. I pulled free from him, and when he came after me I couldn’t bear him to touch me. Then …then he walked over to the bar, poured a glass of brandy and held it up in a kind of toast, grinned at me, a cold, beastly kind of grin, and said, “Your very good health, Dr McNeil. I know you’ll be very happy. You and the seannachie are made for each other….” And that’s all. After that I went home. I had to tell you, mo gradh, because I love you and I couldn’t bear to think you would hear that story from Ruarri one day and hate me ever after…Now, if you want me to go, tell me.’
‘What will you do if you go home?’
‘Go to bed. Lie awake and stare at the ceiling – and despise myself the way I’ve been doing for a long time now. Some time or other I’ll get used to the notion and make terms with myself.’
‘Rather a waste, don’t you think?’
‘Any better suggestions?’
I stood up and pulled her to her feet and held her at arm’s length from me. ‘Just one, Kathleen oge. The first and the last. Do you see where you’re standing now?’
‘Yes…’
‘When the Morrison comes out of hospital, we’ll be standing here again, and Minister Macphail will be reading the marriage service, I’m going to take this woman for my lawful wedded wife, and she’s going to take me… On one condition: that she tells me now, because there’s banns to go up and licences to get and some unfinished business I have to tidy before the wedding day. It’s yes or no, Kathleen oge. And if it’s no, you go home to that bed and the blank ceiling and a woman you’ll never come to terms with until you die.’
‘And if it’s yes?’
‘It’s love and honour and cherish and shut the door on memories until the sunset comes for both of us.’
‘Yes …yes, please, my love.’
... And if you think it’s all too simple to be true, let me tell you that’s the way most important things happen in our lives. We go through reasonings, fantasies, fears, frustrations, vast, dreary do-nothing acres of time. Then, one fine day, the doctor comes and tells us we’re dying, or the girl comes and says she’s pregnant, or the bottom drops out of the market and we’re poorer than church mice, or a plane falls out of the sky and we’re dead and standing in judgment without our notebooks. We were engaged to be married. We had all dinner-time to talk about it, and all coffee-time, and all the time after the loving. And when all that was done most pleasantly, and Kathleen was asleep beside me, there was still time for me to think about Ruarri the Mactire.
I had to take him now. I had to rub his nose in his own dirt, lift him up again if I could; and, if I couldn’t, to hell with him. But how? Unless I knew him guilty, I could not and would not turn police informer. I could not and I would not face him in private, because I would be caught once again in that shouting apocalypse of self-justification, and afterwards no one would know anything except the lies Ruarri told with so much conviction. How then? And where? And on what issue, so that he could not leap away like an acrobat and go bouncing up to the high wire, where I couldn’t follow him?
I could see no other time or place than the ceilidh – his own house, his own occasion. Kathleen didn’t want to go. She had said as much, but I had insisted, because we must walk in there and face him down and spit in his blue, smiling eyes and let him know that he hadn’t harmed us at all. I could not plan what would happen. I knew only that he would be vain for the company and drunk and talkative – and that a moment must come when I could bore in and fight him openly.
Chapter 15
NOW that I must tell it, I find I am hesitant and solicitous for the small truths.
You must not see this as an epic, all thunderclouds and clashing furies and portents scrawled everywhere like Chinese laundry tickets. The Isle of Harris and Lewis is a small place. Put all its people together and you would not make a decent football crowd. The habitations are sparse. The houses, even the largest, are modest. The roads are single tracks. So a ceilidh for thirty or forty people is by local measure a large affair. The only epic things are the eating and the drinking and the tales that are spread afterwards, wi
ld and wonderful, with miracles and moralities on every page. Which, I suppose, is the way of history; the smallest peoples have the most potent gods and the largest cities have men so tiny that you can hardly tell one from another.
The ceilidh of Ruarri the Mactire was timed for eight o’clock in the evening, so that the girls could beautify themselves after work and the boys could oil themselves in the pub before the festivities began. Kathleen and I decided that we would arrive late, so that there would be less danger of embarrassment with Ruarri. Kathleen chose to wear Highland costume, which is a most becoming dress for a woman – the velvet corsage, the arisaid plaid, the golden Celtic brooch worn like an order of chivalry. My own wardrobe was sadly light, so I had to settle for a dark suit, of a cut rather too Italian for the climate and the local fashion. Still we were not unpleased with ourselves and, if Ruarri or anyone else wanted to tread on the tail of my coat, he was welcome to try it.
There were cars parked for twenty yards on either side of Ruarri’s house and there was a piper at the gate to give a skirl or two for every guest. He was there for the dancing, he told us, and later there’d be a fiddler and a man with the squeegee box. It was them he was waiting for; but why waste the music, which was the best part of the hundred thousand welcomes!
Ruarri, kilted himself in the Matheson rig, met us at the door with a glad smile and a hearty handclasp, and never a blink or a blush to say we weren’t the best friends in the world. Then he presented us, with a sweeping gesture, to everyone at once and carted us over to the bar, spieling away like a comedian.
‘I was just about to send out search parties. For one bad moment I thought you’d never come at all. You know a lot of the people, seannachie. And those you don’t you soon will. Take Kathleen around now and introduce her. We’ll talk later when things settle down. Maeve’s on her way, and – I told you, but you wouldn’t believe it! – there’s Rawlings in one corner and Duggie Donald with the dark girl in the other. Maeve just called from Stornoway. She’ll be here shortly. Enjoy yourselves now!’