His Bloody Project

by Graeme Macrae Burnet

  During the black months, from the age of eight or so, I attended school at Camusterrach. I walked there each morning hand in hand with Jetta. Our first teacher was Miss Galbraith, who was the daughter of the minister. She was young and slender and wore long skirts and a white chemise with a ruff at her neck, secured at the throat by a brooch depicting a woman’s profile. She wore an apron tied around her waist, which she used to clean her hands after she had been writing on the blackboard. Her neck was very long and when she was thinking she would cast her eyes upwards and tip her head to the side so that it made a curve like the handle of a cas chrom. She wore her hair secured on top of her head with pins. While we were at our lessons, she would let her hair down and hold the pins in her mouth while she fastened it back up. She did this three or four times a day and I took pleasure in secretly observing her. Miss Galbraith was kind and spoke in a soft voice. When the older boys did not behave, she had great trouble quietening them and only succeeded in doing so by threatening to fetch her father.

  Jetta and I were quite inseparable. Miss Galbraith often commented that I would climb inside the pocket of my sister’s apron if I could. For the first few years I spoke very infrequently. If Miss Galbraith or one of my classmates addressed me, Jetta would answer on my behalf. What was remarkable was the accuracy with which she expressed my thoughts. Miss Galbraith indulged this habit and would often ask Jetta, ‘Does Roddy know the answer?’ This closeness between us isolated us from our peers. I cannot speak for Jetta, but I felt no desire to befriend any of the other children and they showed no desire to befriend me.

  Sometimes our classmates would gather round us in the playground and chant:

  Here stand the Black Macraes, the dirty Black Macraes.

  Here stand the Black Macraes, the filthy Black Macraes.

  The ‘Black Macraes’ was the nickname given to my father’s family, on account, he claimed, of their swarthy colouring. Father greatly disliked this designation and refused to answer if someone addressed him in this way. Nevertheless, he was known to everyone as the Black Macrae and it was a source of amusement in the village that, given my mother’s flaxen hair, she came to be known as Una Black.

  I too disliked this name and felt it to be a particular injustice that it was attached to my sister. If our classmates’ chants were not interrupted by the end of the break, I would strike out at whoever was in front of me, an act which only served to increase the glee of our tormentors. I would be pushed to the ground and accept the kicks and blows of the other boys, happy to have diverted attention from Jetta.

  Roddy Black, Roddy Black, the imbecile is on his back!

  Strangely, it pleased me to be the centre of attention in this way. I understood that I was different from my peers and I cultivated the very characteristics which set me apart from them. During breaks, in order to free Jetta from the taunts, I detached myself from her and stood or crouched in a corner of the playground. I observed the other boys, buzzing round like flies, chasing balls or fighting with each other. The girls too engaged in games, but these seemed less violent and stupid than those of the boys. Neither did they have such a mania to commence them as soon as they spilled onto the playground or continue after Miss Galbraith rang the bell to end the break. At times, the girls were quite calm and gathered in a sheltered corner to do nothing more than converse in hushed voices. Sometimes, I sought out their company, but was invariably shunned. In the classroom I inwardly mocked my fellows as they thrust their arms into the air to provide the teacher with the answer to the most obvious questions or struggled to read the simplest sentences. As we grew older, my knowledge began to surpass that of my sister. One day, during a lesson in geography, Miss Galbraith asked if anyone could tell her the name for the two halves of the earth. When nobody answered, she turned to Jetta: ‘Perhaps Roddy knows the answer.’ Jetta looked at me and then replied, ‘I’m sorry. Roddy does not know and nor do I.’ Miss Galbraith looked disappointed and turned to write the word on the board. Without thinking I stood up from my chair and shouted, ‘Hemisphere!’ to the laughter of my classmates. Miss Galbraith turned round and I repeated the word as I resumed my seat. The teacher nodded and complimented me on my answer. From that day Jetta ceased to speak for me, and being reluctant to do so for myself, I became quite cut off.

  Miss Galbraith married a man who had come to Lord Middleton’s estate for the shooting, and left Camusterrach to live in Edinburgh. I liked Miss Galbraith a great deal and was sorry when she left. After that came Mr Gillies. He was a young man, tall and thin, with wispy, fair hair. He was not at all like the men from these parts, who are mostly short and stocky with thick black hair. He was clean-shaven and wore oval spectacles. Mr Gillies was a very educated man, who had studied in the city of Glasgow. As well as reading, writing and calculation, he gave us lessons in science and history, and sometimes in the afternoon, he would tell us stories about the monsters and gods of Greek mythology. Each of the gods had a name and some were married and had children who were also gods. One day I asked Mr Gillies how there could be more than one God and he said that the Greek gods were not gods like our God. They were just immortal beings. Mythology was a word which meant that something was not really true; they were just stories to be enjoyed.

  My father did not like Mr Gillies. He was too clever for his own good and teaching children was not proper work for a man. It is true that I cannot imagine Mr Gillies cutting peats or wielding a flaughter, but the schoolmaster and I had a special understanding. He called on me only when none of my fellows could furnish him with an answer, knowing quite well that if I chose not to put up my hand it was not because I did not know the answer but because I did not wish to appear cleverer than my peers. Mr Gillies often set me different tasks from the other pupils and I responded by making special efforts to please him. One afternoon at the end of lessons, he asked me to stay behind. I remained in my place at the back of the classroom while the others made their rowdy exit. Then he beckoned me to his desk. I could not think of anything I had done wrong, but there was no other reason to be singled out in this way. Perhaps I was to be blamed for something I had not done. I resolved to deny nothing and accept whatever punishment was due to me.

  Mr Gillies put down his pen and asked me what my plans were. It was not a question which a person from our parts would ask. Making plans was an offence against providence. I said nothing. Mr Gillies took off his little glasses.

  ‘What I mean,’ he said, ‘is what do you intend to do when you finish school?’

  ‘Only what is meant for me,’ I said.

  Mr Gillies frowned. ‘And what do you think is meant for you?’

  ‘I cannot say,’ I replied.

  ‘Roddy, despite your best efforts to conceal them, God has granted you some uncommon gifts. It would be sinful not to make use of them.’

  I was surprised to hear Mr Gillies couch his argument in these terms as he was not generally given to religious talk. As I made no reply, he took a more direct approach.

  ‘Have you thought of continuing your education? I have no doubt that you have the necessary ability to become a teacher or a minister or anything you choose.’

  Of course, I had considered no such thing, and said so.

  ‘Perhaps you should discuss it with your parents,’ he said. ‘You may tell them that I believe you have the necessary potential.’

  ‘But I am required for the croft,’ I said.

  Mr Gillies let out a long sigh. He appeared to be about to say something more, but he thought better of it, and I felt that I had disappointed him. As I walked home, I thought over what he had said. I cannot deny I was gratified that the schoolmaster had spoken to me in this way and for the duration of the walk between Camusterrach and Culduie I imagined myself in a fine drawing room of Edinburgh or Glasgow, clad in the clothes of a gentleman, conversing on weighty matters. Nonetheless, Mr Gillies was mistaken in supposing that such a thing was possible
for a son of Culduie.

  * * *

  Mr Sinclair has asked that I set out what he calls the ‘chain of events’ which led to the killing of Lachlan Broad. I have thought carefully about what the first link in this chain might be. One might say that it began with my own birth or even further back when my parents met and married, or with the sinking of The Two Iains, which brought them together. However, while it is true that if any of these events had not occurred, Lachlan Broad would be alive today – or would at least not have died by my hand – it is still possible to conceive that things might have taken a different course. Had I followed Mr Gillies’ advice, for example, I might have been gone from Culduie before the events to be recounted here came to pass. I have thus tried to identify the point at which Lachlan Broad’s death became inevitable; that is, the point at which I can conceive of no other outcome. This moment arrived, I believe, with the death of my mother some eighteen months ago. This was the well-spring from which everything else has followed. It is thus not to rouse the pity of the reader that I now describe this event. I have no wish nor use for anyone’s pity.

  My mother was a lively and good-natured person who did her best to foster a cheerful atmosphere in our household. Her daily chores were accompanied with singing and when some ill or hurt befell one of the children, she did her best to make light of it, so that we did not dwell upon it. People often called at our house and were always welcomed with a strupach. If our neighbours were congregated round the table, my father would be hospitable enough, but he rarely joined them, preferring to remain standing, before announcing to them that, even if they did not, he had work to do; a remark which invariably had the effect of precipitating the dissolution of the gathering. It is a mystery why my mother married someone as disagreeable as my father, as she could have had her pick of the men of the parish. Nevertheless, owing to her efforts, we must, at that time, have loosely resembled a happy family.

  It was something of a surprise to my father when my mother fell pregnant for the fourth time. She was then thirty-five years old and two years had elapsed since the birth of the twins. I recall quite clearly the evening on which her labour commenced. The night was quite wild and as my mother was clearing away the crockery from our evening meal, a pool of liquid appeared at her feet and she indicated to my father that it was time. The midwife, who resided in Applecross, was sent for, and I was dispatched to Kenny Smoke’s house along with the twins. Jetta remained to assist with the birth. Before I left the house, she called me into the back chamber to kiss my mother. Mother gripped my hand and told me that I was to be a good boy and look after my siblings. Jetta’s face had a grey pallor about it and her eyes were clouded with fear. In hindsight, I believe they both had a portent that we were to be visited by death that night, but I have never broached this with Jetta.

  I did not sleep one moment that night, although I lay on the mattress that was provided for me with my eyes closed. In the morning Carmina Smoke informed me amid much weeping that my mother had passed away during the night due to some complication in the birth. The infant survived and was sent to my mother’s family in Toscaig to be nursed by her sister. I have never met this brother of mine and I have no wish to do so. There was a general outpouring of grief in our village, my mother’s presence having been akin to the sunlight that nurtures the crops.

  This event brought about a great number of changes to our family. Chief among these was the general air of gloom which descended on our household and hung there like the reek. My father was the least changed of us, largely because he had never been much given to joviality. If we had once enjoyed some moments of collective amusement, it was always his laughter that died away first. He would cast his eyes downward as though this moment of pleasure shamed him. Now, however, his face acquired an unalterable bleakness, as if fixed by a change in the wind. I do not wish to portray my father as callous or unfeeling, nor do I doubt that his wife’s death grievously affected him. It is rather that he was better adapted to unhappiness, and that to no longer feel obliged to feign pleasure in this world came as a relief to him.

  In the weeks and months after the funeral, Reverend Galbraith was a frequent visitor to our home. The minister is an impressive figure, invariably attired in a black frock coat and a white shirt fastened at the collar, but without a neck-tie or cravat. His white hair is kept closely cropped and his whiskers grow densely on his cheeks, but are likewise neatly trimmed. He has small dark eyes, which folk frequently remark seem to have the power to penetrate one’s mind. I myself avoided his gaze, but do not doubt that he could discern the wicked thoughts I often entertained. He speaks in a sonorous, rhythmical voice and although his sermons were frequently beyond my understanding, they were not unpleasant to hear.

  At the service to mark my mother’s funeral, he discoursed at length on the theme of torment. Man, he said, was not only guilty of sin, but was a slave to sin. We had given ourselves in service to Satan and wore the chains of sin around our necks. Mr Galbraith asked that we look around us at the world and its numberless miseries. ‘What means,’ he asked, ‘the sickness and discontentment, the poverty and the pain of death we witness every day?’ The answer, he said, was that these iniquities were all the fruits of our sin. Man alone is powerless to throw off his yoke of sin. For this reason we require a redeemer: a deliverer without whom we will all perish.

  After my mother was committed to the earth we formed a solemn procession over the moors. The day, as is often the way in these parts, was entirely grey. The sky, the mountains of Raasay and the water of the Sound offered only the smallest variations on this hue. My father shed no tears either during the sermon or afterwards. His face adopted the obdurate cast from which it would henceforth rarely deviate. I have no doubt that he took Mr Galbraith’s words greatly to heart. For my own part, I was quite certain that it was not for my father’s sins that our mother had been taken, but for my own. I reflected on Mr Galbraith’s sermon and resolved there and then with the grey sod beneath my feet that, when the opportunity came, I would become my father’s redeemer and deliver him from the wretched state to which my sinfulness had reduced him.

  Some months later, Mr Galbraith received my father as an elder in the church, this on account of my father’s acceptance that his sufferings were just recompense for the sinful nature of his life. My father’s suffering was instructive to the congregation and it benefitted them to see him prominently exhibited in the church. I believe that Mr Galbraith was quite glad of my mother’s death, as it bore witness to the doctrine he professed.

  The twins cried constantly for their mother and when I think of that time it is to the accompaniment of their unremitting wailing. On account of the disparity in our ages, I had never felt anything other than indifference towards my younger siblings, but they now aroused positive enmity in me. If one was quiet for a moment, the other would commence to weep, thus setting off the other. My father had no tolerance for the infants’ lamentations and sought to silence them through blows that served only to renew their bawling. I well remember them clinging to one another on their mattress, a look of terror on their faces as my father made his way across the chamber to administer a beating. I left it to Jetta to intervene and had she not been there to do so, I could quite imagine my father doing the poor wretches to death. It was suggested that the twins should also be sent to Toscaig, but my father would not hear of it, insisting that Jetta was old enough to play mother to them.

  My dear sister Jetta was as greatly transformed as if her fetch had overnight taken her place. The gay and charming girl was replaced by a morose, brooding figure, hunched over at the shoulders and clad, at my father’s insistence, in widow’s black. Jetta was obliged to assume the role of mother and wife, preparing the meals and serving my father as our mother had previously done. It was at this time that Father decreed that Jetta should sleep in the back chamber with him as she was now a woman and merited a degree of privacy from her siblings. In general, ho
wever, Father disdained her, as if, in her resemblance to his wife, it pained him to look upon her.

  As the most cheerful among us Jetta must have felt the general despondency which pervaded our household most keenly. I do not know if she had fore-knowledge of my mother’s death, for she has never spoken to me of it, but rather than abandon the rituals and paraphernalia which had done nothing to ward off this ill fortune, she clung all the more fervently to them. I saw no efficacy in such things, but understood that Jetta was privy to intimations from the Other World to which I was insensible. In a similar way, my father turned more fervently to the reading of scripture and away from the modest pleasures he had previously allowed himself, as if he believed that God was punishing him for the infrequent dram he had taken. For my part, my mother’s death demonstrated nothing more than the absurdity of their respective creeds.

  As the weeks passed, none of us wished to be the first to leaven the atmosphere with some mischief or a few lines of a song, and the more time elapsed, the more fixed we became in our gloomy ways.

  * * *

  My mother died in the month of April and some weeks later I was alone on the shieling, charged with keeping watch over the sheep and cattle grazing there. The afternoon was very warm. The sky was clear and the hills across the Sound were various hues of purple. The air was so still that it was possible to hear the lapping of the sea and the occasional cry of children playing far below in the village. The animals which I had been charged to watch were rendered slothful by the heat and did not stray far from one hour to the next. The stirks lazily flicked at horseflies with their tails.

  I was lying back in the heather, watching the slow progress of the clouds across the sky. I was glad to be away from the croft and from my father, whom I had left leaning on the handle of his cas chrom, puffing on his pipe. I pictured my mother next to him, bent over the ground, thinning weeds from the crops, singing to herself as she always did, her hair falling over her face. It was some moments before I realised that she was not there, and was instead beneath the earth of the burial ground in Camusterrach. I had often come across the carcasses of animals, and I wondered whether the process of decomposition had already taken hold of her body. I felt quite keenly then the reality that I would never see her again and closed my eyes to prevent myself from weeping. I tried to concentrate my thoughts on the sounds of rustling grass and the bleating of the sheep, but I was unable to banish the image of my mother’s decaying body. An insect landed on my face and this had the effect of rousing me from my thoughts. I waved it away with my hand and raised myself onto my elbows, blinking in the sunlight. The hornet then landed on my forearm. I did not draw my arm away, but slowly raised it to the level of my eyes, so that the tiny creature loomed larger than the cattle in the distance. Mr Gillies had, once, with the aid of a diagram drawn on the blackboard, taught us the names for the parts of insects, and these pleasing words I now recited: thorax, spiracle, funiculus, ovipositor, mandible. The hornet negotiated the dark hairs on my arm, as though uncertain of the terrain upon which it had alighted. It was with the detachment of a scientist that I watched the creature halt and bring its gaster down on my skin. I instinctively slapped my hand down upon it and brushed the little corpse from my arm. The insect’s tail had left a tiny barb in my skin and the area around quickly swelled into a pink bleb.