by Morris West
‘Don’t look shocked, seannachie. You’ve heard it, maybe written it, all before. This is how it looks when it happens. I’m exercising the last liberty of a man, seannachie, to pull out his own plug before the computer takes him over. The fire? That’s always been in my mind, seannachie. It was the way the old Vikings did it, and it’s clean and final. And no police surgeon will be poking round inside my guts to find what I died of – which is an obscenity I’ve always shrunk from. When you’re on your way home, turn back, just once, and you’ll see a light in the sky. That’ll be me... on the way to Valhalla, whereever that is!
‘Funny; I’ve never been much worried about the afterwards. I’ve seen so much torment and terror on this side of time that I never saw the need of hell on the other. Just being alive is punishment enough for whatever you do. I know the kind of heaven I’d like, though. Just to see it all plain, just once and calmly and wholly, and be able to say it was good. Because there is good in it, seannachie – except you need some kind of a gift to enjoy it. Maeve’s got the gift, seannachie – for all she’s a crazy loon dedicated to putting the clock back. Your Kathleen’s getting it – which is maybe what loving does for people. I think you’re getting it, too – or maybe you just lost it and are picking it up again.
‘Me? …I missed the gift. Or maybe I threw it away in the days when I was young and bitter. There were moments with you when I thought I had it back, but that was just fairy gold, which goes away when you close your fist on it…Your sextant was real, though. There was a care and a gentleness in that. And you’re the last here, to say good night to me. You’re not arguing with me either. Not that it would do any good, but it shows you understand.
‘You should go now. I’ve things to do, and I have to be alone for the last of it. No tears, seannachie. That wouldn’t be fair. I haven’t any left to share with you. Just one favour – when you go, don’t shake my hand. Don’t say anything. Just do what I’ve seen in the sunny places and laughed at first and then envied. Put your arms round me. Hold me a moment and lay your face against mine. Then get the hell out of here! It’s a silly thing to ask, but I never had a father to kiss me good night.’
When I left him he closed the door on me and turned the key. The sky was blown clean and the moon was riding high and cold among the faint and distant stars. The roadway was deserted. The hills were black, and Rawlings was dozing in the front seat of my car. He gave me that blank little smile of his and said:
‘Thought you might like some company, on the way home. You’ve had a rough night.’
‘I’m not going home yet.’
‘Waiting for something?’
‘No. There’s a visit I want to make. You’re welcome to come.’
‘I think you mean that.’
‘I do.’
‘Are you friends again?’
‘As near as we’ll ever be.’
‘Where are you taking me?’
‘A little way and a long way, Inspector…Trust me now.’
I drove him up to the place of the Standing Stones and walked him over the damp turf and down the great colonnade to the burial place. I told him the history of it, and the legends of the Shining One with wrens flying round his head and the cuckoo that heralded his coming. I told him how good it was to make love and plight troth in this place, and how there were still families on the island who belonged to the Stones in a way that they would not explain. He was very patient with me and very polite, which is no small compliment to pay because I was very voluble and, I think, inclined to ramble. He let me talk myself to a standstill before he asked me:
‘Why do you tell me this? And why here?’
‘Because this is one place where we don’t belong. It’s a great monument on a tiny island. All its history begins around here, and all the people, whether they know it or not, are touched by the history. They can’t escape it. They’re still living the consequences of the Ice Age, when the peatbogs were made…There are so few of them now, everything that happens to them is large and talked of and full of consequences. Every death is a diminishment greater than you or I can understand. Every despoilment is a tragedy, and every going away is one pair of hands lost and one heart less for the loving of the harsh place…So you want to ask me a lot of questions because that’s your job. Here in this place I’ve got all the answers. Tomorrow, because of the magic and the night air, I may have forgotten them all. I want to make a bargain with you, Inspector… I want to make it not for myself, but to save more grief for those who have enough already and will have more tomorrow.’
‘I never make bargains, my dear chap. I’m not free to do that. Sometimes, though, I make decisions on my own responsibility, which is what I’m paid for. Also, I have a conscience, and you would pay me a compliment if you believed that.’
So, because there comes a time when you have to believe or else go mad in unbelievable horrors, I turned him round, not to the east, from whence the Shining One would come, if he ever did, but to the west, where he could see over the rise of the hill the leaping flames of Ruarri’s funeral pyre.
He stood there watching, a long time, in silence. Then he said, ‘Of course he was alive when you left?’
‘Yes.’
‘He was well and in good spirits?’
‘Yes. He was tired, though. He said he was ready for a long rest.’
‘I suppose the place was still in a mess, glasses, cigarette butts, all that sort of stuff?’
‘It was a shambles. That was quite a wild party, one way and another.’
‘A generous gesture, though. And it did make quite a bit of money for a good cause… He didn’t give you any letters, depositions, anything like that?’
‘No.’
‘Any messages to deliver?’
‘None. Of course I’ll have to break the news to his father …and I should talk to Maeve O’Donnell. She was very fond of him.’
‘She’s at the lodge now with your Dr McNeil. You might give her a message from me.’
‘Of course.’
‘Tell her I’ll be busy tomorrow and I’d be happier if she took the first plane out – and left the United Kingdom the same day.’
‘You’re a gentleman, Inspector.’
‘I’m a policeman. I have a closed case… And as you say, there’ll be enough grief tomorrow. Can you stay on this road for Stornoway?’
‘We can. It’s a long way round, that’s all.’
‘I don’t like fires. They scare me. There’s a big one building up. I pray God I won’t be round to see it.’
I had never heard a policeman pray before. Which shows you how ignorant a man of letters can be and how little you can trust him in his ignorance.
It was four in the morning when I got back to the lodge and found Maeve and Kathleen still awake by the fire. They had to hear the story and I had to tell it all – because the weight of it and of the guilts which Ruarri had laid on me was suddenly beyond bearing. There was a crushing horror in the vision of myself triggering a programmed man to acts of murder and self-destruction. And yet I could not gainsay the truth of what Ruarri had told me. Maeve could, would and did.
‘…To hell with de mortuis and all that crap! He was a man with a flaw in him. He knew it, hated it, but wouldn’t do anything about it. He loved it. He had a ready-made excuse for everything he chose to do. I’m sorry, seannachie, you’re tired and you’ve had a rugged night of it, but you’ve got to think straight. Ruarri’s exit wasn’t clean. The flaw was there still. You beat him at all his games. He had to trick you into believing he’d won the last one of all. He’d have the glory and you’d have the guilt, and you’d remember him always because of it – which isn’t the kind of immortality any half-sized hero would be wanting. He’s done something good, though. He’s cured me… I wish him luck wherever he’s gone – and, by Christ, he’ll need it! But he’s out of my life at last. Thanks for the rest of it, seannachie. I’ll be off in the morning. Good night, children. Be kind to each other.’
> It was a gallant effort and she had my salute for it; but it still wasn’t the whole truth, and I knew it and so did Kathleen. For what was left of the night – and there wasn’t much of it, because I had to face Morrison soon after daybreak – Kathleen was firm and tender and would have no argument at all.
‘…Ruarri loved you, like a brother. You loved him too. And the proof is what you’re doing now, cleaning up the mess he’s left. That’s the good thing you’ll remember in the end. The rest of it? You have to forgive yourself as you taught me to do, for something much worse….’
‘What do I do about Morrison?’
‘Tell him the truth.’
‘Can he take it?’
‘There’s something I’ve learnt from you, mo gradh, and now I’m teaching it back to you. It’s only the lies that kill us and only the truth that keeps us alive. Come on now, sweetheart, close your eyes and lie on my breast, and I’ll wake you when it’s time…’
There was a time, and I have told you of it, when I condemned Morrison for weakness and was angry at the burden he had laid upon me. It is for this reason that now, before this chronicle is ended, I must show him to you in respect. He was still in bed when I went to him, and he did not need to be clairvoyant to read bad news on my face. He asked me to hand him his Bible, and while I talked he lay back, eyes closed, holding it in his hands. What strength he drew from it I do not know. All I know is that he did not weep and exclaim, but listened silently, until the long, sorry tale was done. So, I imagined, some noble patriot or martyr might have listened to his death warrant from a hireling messenger. When finally he spoke his first words were for me:
‘I blame you for nothing, laddie. I thank you for the best of it. I’m alive and Ruarri’s dead, and that’s the irony of God we talked about, the kind of harsh dispensation you have to accept or lapse into despair. Perhaps it’s the way I’m asked to pay for a kind judgment on Ruarri. I’ll be out of here tomorrow, and there’ll be a service for him in the kirk. But he should have a prayer now. I’d be pleased if you’d read it for me.’
His hand was steady as he opened the book and his voice firm as he recited the psalm with me.
‘Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy great mercy.
And according to the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my iniquity.
Wash me yet more from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin….
Cast me not away from thy face: and take not the holy spirit from me.
Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation: and strengthen me with a perfect spirit….’
When I had finished he laid a hand on my head and said gently, ‘Go home to your woman now. You’ve earned some loving for yourself.’
But she wasn’t there; she was out ministering to the sick. So I drove as far as I could, to the loneliest beach in the west, and swam until I was exhausted. The water was very cold, but it was clean; and the sands, when I came back, were as empty as I was.
Epilogue
THE emptiness was a kind of dying. I was able to recognize it because, many years before, I had lain in hospital, desperately ill, waiting for the doctor to tell me the result of his last tests. If the result was positive, I was a dead man. I had waited so long and so painfully that part of my dying was already done. I felt no sadness, only a relief that the time of waiting would soon be over. I felt no fear, only regret that I had been so inadequate a sharer in the experience of life. People I loved came to visit me. I was glad to see them, but not unhappy when they were gone because the effort to hold them was too great, and they must be about a business which was no longer mine. My perspective was different from theirs. Everything was in sharp focus, but receding to a point of infinity which was as clear to me as the glass of water on my table or the red tulips in my flower bowl. Even my own body was a detached object which I could contemplate in all its anatomy of bone and musculature and declining vitality. Try as I might, I could not get myself back into it, and finally I gave up trying. Even when the doctor came, smiling, to tell me that I would survive, I remained for a long time detached and disinterested because this meant only that I must go through the same experience another time, and by now I was familiar with it and would have preferred it completed.
For days after Ruarri’s death, I endured in this state of syncope. I made the depositions required of me by the law. I brought Morrison home from hospital and bore him company whenever he felt the need of it. I filed applications for marriage licences. I went fishing with Fergus William, and caught sometimes big and sometimes little fish, and listened to his prattle, laughed at it, too, sometimes, watching myself all the time and wondering why I was going through such a useless ritual. I went with Kathleen and with Morrison to the service which Minister Macphail held for the resting of Ruarri’s soul; but it left me cold and unmoved as though it were some alien cult at which I was a spectator only and not at all a participant. Whenever she could, Kathleen came to spend a night at the lodge and I slept with her and made love desperately, hoping that the little death would be followed by a resurrection and I could begin to live again.
She was very patient with me, and she would not let me be ashamed or apologize for the strange body which she received so generously into her own. Over and over she repeated to me the same admonition:
‘I’ve been where you are now. I know the feeling. And the life I lost was inside me, part of me. I was much more guilty than you are. You have to be patient…Every mending takes time. You are not robbing me. I’m rich and happy now….’
But she could not be there all the time, and the days were long without her and the nights a bleak wasteland. Old Hannah was brusque with me always, but solicitous, too, constant with small cares and comforts for me and for the Morrison. He seemed much older now, more stooped and lined and slower of speech. On his good days he would walk in the garden, pacing up and down, hands clasped behind his back, like a monk in meditation.
Then one day I had a telephone call from a lawyer in Stornoway. He asked me to call upon him at my convenience; he had something to communicate to me ‘of a testamentary character’. He was a fussy little man, dry as a stick, full of legal quiddities. He was charged, he said, to execute the provisions of the will of the late Mr Matheson. I was a beneficiary. There would, of course, be the usual delay in probate, but the late Mr Matheson had left his affairs in reasonably good order and there were liquid funds for the estate duty, so my legacy would probably pass to me unencumbered. He would read me the whole will if I wished, but if I would be content with the relevant clause…? I would be. He read it to me:
‘…To my friend …who is known as the seannachie, I leave my sailing boat, which is registered in Stornoway as The Mactire, together with everything by way of sails and equipment which is aboard or belongs to her. I would ask him, though I would not charge him, because I have laid enough on him already, to keep the name of the boat so long as she remains in his possession; and perhaps, one day, he will scribble an epitaph for me. He has found it hard to think very kindly of me; and I don’t blame him, because I do not think very well of myself, but I would like to be remembered sometimes and gently….’
The lawyer was at pains to be precise. The request did not constitute a condition of the legacy. No undertaking was required on my part. The sentiments of testators were one thing, their intentions with respect to their property were another and so on and so on, until I wanted to shout at him and tell him to go jump in the harbour. Finally I was free of him and I walked out into the sunshine and down to the basin, where the trawlers were clustered along the wall and The Mactire was lying at anchor, placid on her moorings.
Suddenly the dying was over, and I was back in my own skin, looking out through my own eyes at simple, familiar things: the wheeling gulls, the gossips round the bollards, the grey houses, the busy housewives, the silly seal poking his snout above the water, the wool baled ready for the weavers, and the two men mending the nets, which were laid over their knees like shawls of brown lace. They
were very old men and they must have seen many departures and many dyings and all the griefs of the sea over the years; but they were still here, working at the same simple tasks, glad of the sun while it lasted, and glad of the warm, foggy bar when it didn’t. For them, life was its own absolution, and time brought in its own healing, soon or late. I was no better than they, and certainly no wiser; so why should I ask more? It was time to be up and doing and to hell with yesterday….
A week later, Kathleen and I were married in the parlour of Morrison’s lodge. It was a very simple ceremony because its only use was to set a seal upon what was already consummated between us. Minister Macphail read the service, Hannah and Fergus William McCue were the witnesses, and Morrison passed the bride from his hand into mine. Which again meant very little, because we had already accomplished a giving that signified more than possession.
Still it gave Hannah a chance to have the last word. This was what she had seen, she told me: the three of us together, Morrison, Kathleen and myself – and Ruarri Matheson not one of us. You don’t have to believe it. I’m not sure I believe it either. But she had seen the fire, and the love given and the love refused, and all the rest of the misty things that added up to a truth in the end. She had something else to tell me, she said, but that would have to wait until the last moment before we left for the airport.
By then she was tipsy with excitement and champagne and the joy of seeing Morrison more like his old self. She called me into the kitchen. She drew me down and kissed me, holding my face between her old, dry hands. Then she said:
‘You’re lucky, laddie! And if you’re ever unkind to that sweet lassie of yours, I’ll rise up from my grave and haunt your pillow. So I’m giving you something to remember and you’ll repeat it after me: “Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir…Never a man died, but another was grateful.”’
It was a hard saying to hear on a wedding day, but later I understood it better and how many meanings it might have.