I let him in anyway, took him through to the kitchen and put the kettle on. ‘Take a seat,’ I said, indicating the chairs around the table. He sat down in Jenny’s Windsor chair. He wasn’t to know, of course. She’d been dead a long time.
‘What can I do for you?’ I asked.
‘That’s what I’ve come to discuss, what you can do for me. You know I’m working on this big project at the museum.’
‘Yes, I do. How’s it going?’
‘Early days, early days. It takes time to engage with the material. Human or otherwise. The thing is, I’d like you to be part of it.’
‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ I said.
‘Let me explain,’ he said, and was off without drawing breath. ‘I’m interested in the spaces people occupy and how the spaces affect them and how they affect the spaces. I’m building up this multi-layered experience, creating, or re-creating is more accurate, the world in which people live, bits of it that are always there but which they don’t always pay attention to. I see the world as multi-dimensional, I mean you’ve got the physical, spatial world and the metaphysical of course’ – he made a sort of half bow at me from his seat – ‘but then you need to factor in time, the past, present, future, I mean does the past exist at all for most people, not just their personal past but the community’s, history? Some would say yes, it’s what the present is built upon, others wouldn’t recognise those foundations at all, and as for the future, well, if you catch my drift. So what I want people to focus on, but obliquely, subconsciously, in an unfocused way, as they walk round the exhibition I mean, are the things they normally only deal with subliminally or not at all in fact, so they’ll see, hear, touch, interact with aspects of the man-made and natural environment which are seemingly alien but which are in fact integral to the fabric of the context in which they exist, the people I mean, and by doing this the people will feed their own energies back into the context, social, environmental, historical, whatever, the entity, do you follow me?’
This is only an approximation of what he said, because his words ran into each other and changed direction in mid-flow so much that it wasn’t at all clear what he was saying. The kettle came to the boil. I made coffee, asked if he took milk or sugar. It gave me a few moments’ grace.
‘Milk no sugar, thanks,’ he said. ‘So are you with me so far?’
‘Well…’
‘Good.’ He stormed off again. ‘I’m building items into the whole that are self-reflecting, recyclable. Echoes that are sometimes natural sometimes manufactured sometimes a mixture of both. Echoes, connections, continuities. Sometimes if you’re lucky or clever you get what I call a conjunction – space, time and narrative overlap. An example. Two men are sitting drinking in the bar down at the harbour. You know the one, the Luggie?’
‘Yes, but I’ve never been in it.’
He looked at me in surprise, as if he’d not expected me to answer. My intervention had the effect of making him slow down a little.
‘One of them is in old torn jeans and a filthy jumper, the other is in a heavy green herring-bone tweed suit. A big man. He’s a water-bailie on the Keldo. His companion is a well-known poacher. Generations of poaching in the family. But they’re both off-duty, they get on fine over a pint, they respect each other. Above them on the wall is a photograph of the herring fleet in Monimaskit harbour in the 1880s. The poacher is telling the story of the time his grandfather nearly drowned trying to land a forty-pound salmon, which got away. The bailie knows this story, but the poacher doesn’t know the story of the bailie’s grandfather. He skippered a fishing-boat out of Monimaskit in the 1880s. The boat was lost at sea with all four members of the crew. You can see the boat’s bow just sticking out from behind another vessel in the photograph. It is identifiable because of its name: Escape. That’s what I mean by a conjunction.’
‘A coincidence, in other words,’ I said.
‘No,’ Winnyford said. ‘Everything’s connected but by conjunction not by coincidence. We just don’t see the connections most of the time.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ I said, ‘but I do know the men in your wee scenario. Keir Anderson and Chae Middleton.’
‘Chae’s quite a character,’ Winnyford said. ‘He’s been very helpful. Claims he can get you pretty much anything you want, for a price.’
‘I’ve heard that,’ I said, non-committally. ‘He once brought a salmon to the back door for us, when my wife was alive. Unfortunately I was out, and Jenny sent him away with it because she didn’t like fish. He’s never been back with another, I’m sorry to say. And I wouldn’t want to run into Keir Anderson up the Keldo on a dark night, he’s a right bruiser, but he brings his kids to church once in a while and is as meek as a lamb. Coincidences, conjunctions, whatever you want to call them, they’re pretty thick on the ground in a place like this.’
‘That’s why the space for this exhibition is important. It will be circular, a circuit, ideally there should be no fixed entry or exit to the experience. Of course there is in fact, has to be, the main entrance, can’t avoid it – fire regulations, school parties, all that – but once you’re in it’ll be like one of those round wooden puzzles with silver balls. The people are the silver balls, the space is the puzzle, with openings at various points within concentric circles, are you with me?’
‘I think so,’ I said.
‘Good. So you’ll do something for me?’
‘Such as?’
‘It’s not much I’m asking, Mr Mack. I’ve been reading up the history of Monimaskit from ancient times to the present and finding all kinds of artefacts to put into this exhibition, but my main collaboration is with the people, the people are the source, the material and the interpreters even if subconsciously. And what I want from you is this chap Augustus Menteith, splendid name isn’t it, who recorded all these legends about the town. Do you know his books?’
‘I’ve dipped in and out of them,’ I said.
‘Then you’ll know he was the minister here a century ago. I just thought it would be marvellous if you would read a short extract from one of his stories. I want to record it. Today’s minister reading something written by the Victorian minister about something that happened centuries before. Reputedly. I imagine the tableau, the setting if you like, I’ve not built it yet but I have it in my head, as a room like a study or a library lined with books…’
‘Perhaps you’d better have a look at my study then,’ I said.
‘Rather not just now. Would interfere. Later perhaps. I envisage this room all very civilised sedate Victorian, but through a window at the back will be this trompe-l’oeil drop into the chasm up in the woods there, a sort of gaping view into the depths of the earth.’
‘The Black Jaws,’ I said.
‘Yes, the Black Jaws. Astonishing place. Went to look at it myself – slipped, nearly fell in. I’ve brought a photocopy of the relevant pages from Menteith’s book in case you’re not familiar with the legend. I’ve highlighted the bit I’d like you to read. It’s only a few lines, can’t do more than that or the natives get restless, attention span deficiency, what do you think, you’ll do it?’
He handed me some A4 sheets with one passage marked in yellow. I glanced over it.
‘You’ll need to leave it with me, Mr Winnyford,’ I said.
‘Bill, please.’
‘Bill,’ I said. ‘I’ll have to read the whole thing and see. It might not be appropriate…’
‘Nothing to worry about there, no filth, no blasphemy just a spooky legend, I hear you’re not afraid to stick your neck out anyway but no need in this case, a bit of fun, highly appropriate if you would read it.’
He drained his coffee and stood up. ‘I’ll leave it with you, Gideon, may I call you Gideon? You can leave a message at the museum or here’s my card, mobile number, I usually remember to switch it on.’
I showed him out, this torrential man, half of me wanting to kick his backside, half of me wishing to humour him and involve myself
in his exhibition. There was something in his description of the Victorian study with its window looking down into the void that made me think he had at least some imagination. But when I sat down to read the photocopied story that evening, I realised that the imagination, or nine-tenths of it, belonged not to Winnyford but to my predecessor, the Reverend Augustus Menteith:
The Legend of the Black Jaws
The flat coastline north and south of Monimaskit, the rich, rolling farmland surrounding it, and the douce, settled sandstone streets of the town itself, give, to the innocent stranger, little indication of the rugged, wild and inhospitable interior to be found only a score of miles distant, where the lower slopes of the Grampian range commence. On these slopes, tradition has it, the lost battlefield of Mons Graupius lies, where, some maintain – and this in defiance of Tacitus, who was but a Roman after all – the legions were put to flight when the Caledonian tribes gathered together, and, setting aside their differences, dared, under the leadership of the warrior chieftain Calgacus, to resist subjugation. The Keldo Water flows from these hills to Monimaskit, and, where it passes through the town and enters the sea, it presents a steady and stately face to the world; yet, between its source and its mouth this river takes at times a tumultuous course, and at no point is this more the case than a mere four or five miles upstream from Monimaskit, and but two from Keldo House. Here it rushes and roars through a gulf of great depth known in the locality as the Black Jaws.
This ravine, split originally perhaps by ice and subsequently scoured by the torrents of millennia, consists of walls two hundred feet in height which are always soaked black with the spray of the foaming water, and which are home to a dense mass of vegetation – mosses, ferns and grass, and trees clinging with the most tenuous grip to clefts and cracks in the rock. Above this gloomy drop the land is so thickly wooded with birch and pine that, were it not for the constant booming of the water, the unwary visitor would be almost over the precipice before he realised its existence. It was once the supposed sport of town lads to traverse the gorge on the trunks of trees which, uprooted in winter storms, had fallen across it, but in truth these narrow and slippery bridges are so dangerous that few must have dared such an adventure, and certainly I have never heard of any boy in the present time who had courage enough to essay that dread crossing. Even from the path which wends its way along one of its sides it is quite unnerving to peer down into the chasm, where the warmth and light of the sun never penetrate, and to see forest birds flitting in and out of the foliage and through the spray like seagulls on a dizzy, over-beetling ocean cliff; and it is easy to imagine that the echoing din is a chorus of lost souls cast into the awful void, or the triumphant roars of the demons that persecute them. And this, perhaps, gave rise in former times to a story, which I might myself relate, but which, by good fortune, I am able to reproduce just as it was told to me in my youth by an old woman of the town, now long dead, whose stock of lore was as rich as she was poor, and whose imagination, perhaps, was as broad as her cottage was narrow.*
‘Weel dae I ken the Black Jaws,’ old Ephie Lumsden would quaver, ‘for mony’s the time as a lassie I wad ga’e to the woods aboon it wi’ my freens to gaither bluebells an’ primroses in the springtime. But tho’ it was a bonnie-lik’ place to wander, nane o’ us wad daur to frequent it alane, bricht an’ blue tho’ the day micht be, an’ as for the nicht, weel, ye could ne’er ha’e persuaded ony o’ us to gang there efter dark, no’ for a’ the gowd in Edinbury. The place had an unco’ souch aboot it, an’ tho’ I’m owre auld to hirple up there noo, I dinna doot but it’ll aye feel the same to this verra’ day.
‘Lang lang syne, in the days whan Keldo Hoose was in the hands o’ the Guthries, an’ hadna passed owre to the present faim’ly, there cam’ a bonnie leddy to be the wife o’ the laird. She was a dark, fremmit craitur’ frae anither pairt o’ the warld – frae Spain, some said, frae France said ithers, while still ithers tauld o’ Hungary, Romania, Poland an’ sic’like distant lands. Whan she spak’, it was wi’ a saft, queer-lik’ lilt, but in a pure English that a’body marvelled at. Even the laird himsel’, a guid an’ generous man weel-lo’ed by his people, didna speak English as braw as she. Hoo he had cam’ by her naebody kent, save that he had been on a great tour o’ Europe an’ maun ha’e met her while he was awa’, but she was thocht an awfu’ fine jewel for him to bring hame to a quait place lik’ Monimaskit.
gowd: gold; an unco’ souch: a strange feeling; hirple: limp; lang syne: long ago; fremmit: foreign; weel-lo’ed: well-loved; braw: fine; kent: knew; maun ha’e: must have
‘Yet, for a’ her beauty, or maybe on accoont o’ it, she wasna weel likit at the muckle hoose. She was proud an’ aloof, an’ her speech set her apairt, as did her foreign ways, an’ forbye thae things it was whispered that she was a papist. Certain it was she was never seen at the kirk, tho’ the laird wad come his lane an’ sit in his pew wi’ a glower on him as if they had focht aboot it owre their disjune. An’ that was anither mark against her, for she was cauld an’ distant to the laird an’ a’, an’ he that should ha’e been in the prime o’ life seemed a doun-hauden an’ weariet man sin’ e’er the hamecomin’ wi his new bride. Her a’e companion was the maid she had brocht wi’ her, an’ she wes French, an’ a fykie, pettit-lipp’d, ill-to-please jaud juist as ye’d expeck o’ a Frenchwoman. Jean, her name was. She wadna mix wi’ the ither servants, nor wad she answer ony questions aboot her mistress, save to say that she an’ the laird had been merriet abroad an’ in her view the laird had the better pairt o’ the bargain.
‘The twa were in the habit o’ takin’ lang walks in the gairden o’ Keldo an’ beyond, an’ in partic’lar they wad gang up the glen that leads to the Black Jaws. In dry weather, as I ha’e tauld ye, this is a fine place, wi’ a path windin’ up the brae, the birds chantin’ in their innocent glee, an’ deer grazin’ shy-like amang the trees. But in winter, or on days o’ weet an’ wind at ony season o’ the year, the Black Jaws is dour an’ ugsome, an’ wad fleg a squadron o’ dragoons, never mind a pair o’ weemen on their ain. But the leddy somehow seemed to like it best whan the weather was at its maist dismal, an’ wad tak’ the French lass up there mair an’ mair. Whiles they wadna return till lang efter dark, whan the laird was growin’ frantic for their safety an’ the men were aboot to be turned oot wi’ lantrens an’ dogs to seek them. Syne, in they wad come, drookit an’ shiverin’, an’ gang strecht to my leddy’s chaumer wi’ scarce a word or a look, forbye ane that said the laird was naethin’ but a glaikit fule for fashin’ his heid aboot them.
quait: quiet; muckle: big; forbye: besides; his lane: on his own; disjune: breakfast; an’ a’: as well; doun-hauden: downcast; a’e: one; fykie: troublesome; pettit-lipp’d: sulky, with a protruded lower lip; jaud: wilful woman; dour an’ ugsome: grim and ugly; fleg: frighten; ain: own; whiles: sometimes; lantrens: lanterns; syne: then; drookit: soaked; chaumer: chamber
‘Noo, in the autumn o’ the year, as the days grew short an’ the leaves fell frae the birks an’ made the path by the Black Jaws mair treacherous than usual, it was noticed that Jean seemed to seecken, an’ to shrink frae her mistress as she had never done afore. Whaur she had aince walked willingly wi’ her to the gorge, noo she ga’ed wi’ a falterin’ step an’ a fearfu’ face. But she had nae freen’s amang the hoose servants, an’ naebody socht to speir at her whit ailed her. Syne, a’e nicht, the mistress cam’ hame alane, pale an’ distracted, wi’ a tale that pit the hale hoose in a steer. The lassie, it seemed, had gane owre near to the edge o’ the chasm, her denty fuit had slippit on the leaves, an’ afore the leddy could gang to aid her she had plunged doun into the roarin’ flood. Nae man kens the depth o’ the water as it rins through the Black Jaws, an’ nae man kens whit twists an’ turns it tak’s till it flows oot at the tither end, but it has aye been a truth that naething that fa’s into the Black Jaws – tree, deer, dog or lass – is ever seen again.
‘Weel, some said it was only whit they had expeckit frae t
he start, while ithers were suspicious o’ the leddy’s version o’ events, an’ said there was mischief an’ foul play in the business. The leddy retired to her rooms, an’ seldom ventured furth again, an’ wadna thole ony ither servant to tak’ Jean’s place. But it was said that whiles the leddy’s bed lay empty at nicht, an’ a licht had been seen flichterin’ amang the trees o’ the glen, but folk were owre fear’d to follow it an’ see if it was her.
‘A’e day, a week or thereawa’ efter the maid’s disappearance, a young lad, a fisher frae Monimaskit, chapped at the door o’ Keldo askin’ to see the mistress. His name was Dod Eadie, an’ he was wont to bring fish to sell to the laird’s kitchen, fresh frae his faither’s boat. Noo the laird was awfu’ fond o’ fish, an’ likit to ha’e it at his table, but his leddy didna care for it ava’, considerin’ it coarse an’ unclean: if she happened to be there whan Dod ca’ed, she wad send him aff wi’ a flea in his lug, an’ the laird wad get nae fish to his supper that nicht. But Dod wasna cairryin’ ony fish wi’ him this efternune. He threapit that he had an important message to gi’e to the leddy, an’ he wadna gang hame till he had seen her; an’ as proof o’ his seriousness, he handed to the servant that was to tak’ word to her a locket on a chain. Noo this locket had belanged the French lass, an’ as sune as the leddy saw it she ordered for Dod to be admitted an’ brocht afore her, an’ this was the tale he tauld her. He an’ Jean had been secret lovers for months, an’ she had gi’en him the locket as a keepsake. He kent that she had become unhappy an’ fearfu’ on the visits to the Black Jaws, an’ that it was on accoont o’ a tryst that the leddy kept wi’ a foreign man, but she wadna tell him mair. An’ noo Dod begged the leddy o’ Keldo to tell him if Jean was yet alive, an’ whaur she micht be found, an’ he wad gang to fetch her an’ never breathe a word o’ the leddy’s indiscretion to anither soul.
The Testament of Gideon Mack Page 21