The Testament of Gideon Mack

by James Robertson

  The pictures provoked a few more tears. ‘How come I’ve not seen these before?’ she asked.

  I explained how I’d found the camera with the film still in it. ‘They’re a bit faded,’ I said.

  ‘It’s like seeing a ghost,’ she said. ‘I remember you going away that time, over to the West Highlands.’

  ‘Did she tell you why?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We were making a fresh start. We’d drifted apart. We were getting back together again. That was the idea anyway.’

  ‘Oh, Gideon.’ And now she reached her hand towards me, and I took it.

  ‘So it can happen,’ I said. ‘People can make a fresh start. People who once connected can get back together again.’

  She frowned at me. I looked at the table.

  ‘I went to take pictures of the Stone,’ I said. My fingers were playing with her fingers. I looked at them, not at her face because I knew if I looked at her face she would take her hand away. ‘With the rest of the film. Months ago. I took these pictures of the Stone but they didn’t come out.’

  ‘What stone?’ she said.

  I couldn’t believe she’d forgotten, but I explained patiently. ‘Remember, back at New Year, I told you about the standing stone I’d found when I was out running? In Keldo Woods? I went to photograph it, to prove it was there.’

  ‘It just went out of my mind,’ she said. ‘You never mentioned it again, and we haven’t seen you… Is it still there?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but it didn’t want to be photographed.’

  She frowned again. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just that. The photos came out blank. Look, you can see on the negatives. These are all pictures of the Stone and there’s nothing on them.’

  She held the strip of negatives to the light.

  ‘Gideon, the film’s faulty.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘The film was good. It took me and Jenny. Why not the Stone?’

  ‘I don’t know. Because the film was too old?’

  ‘Because the Stone prevented it.’

  Elsie put the photos and negatives back in the envelope. She shook her head as she did so.

  ‘Don’t do that, Elsie,’ I said. ‘Don’t be like everybody else. You didn’t disbelieve me before. And anyway, it doesn’t matter that the photos haven’t come out. It’s better that way. Nobody else has seen the Stone, and I don’t want anyone else to see it. Except for you.’

  Now we looked at each other. I could tell she was afraid. I held on to her hand.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing to be frightened of. But I want to share it with you.’

  ‘Share what?’

  ‘The Stone. Elsie…’

  ‘Why are you looking like that, Gideon?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘You look strange. Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘I love you, Elsie.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘Elsie, remember what happened here,’ I said. ‘I’ve always loved you.’

  She stood up suddenly, pulling her hand away and picking up her bag.

  ‘I think I’d better go.’

  I stood up too. ‘No, not yet,’ I said.

  ‘I have to,’ she said.

  I reached out, tried to hold her, but she slipped past me. ‘No, Gideon!’ she said, quite loudly, as if I was a dog. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘I’m not doing anything,’ I said, and forced myself to stand still. ‘I just want you to see the Stone. I want us to see it together.’

  ‘What are you talking about? You keep going on about this stone. I don’t think there is a stone. I think it’s all in your head.’

  She went quickly to the hallway and then she was at the front door and then outside and half-running towards her car parked in the drive behind mine. I followed her. I wasn’t chasing her. I only wanted to tell her, but she wouldn’t listen.

  Her car wasn’t locked, and she’d left the keys in the ignition. She got in and slammed the door and pushed down the lock. I saw her fumbling to turn the key, and then the engine started, and she revved hard as she swung the car round in reverse. I stepped back, raising my hands as if in surrender. I was saying, ‘Wait, wait, wait,’ and trying to apologise with my face.

  She opened the driver’s window a crack.

  ‘You frighten me, Gideon,’ she said. ‘I think you need help. You’ve probably needed it for a long time. You’re depressed or something. Go and see Amelia, or if you don’t want to see her go to another doctor. But you scare me when you’re like this.’

  She put the car into first gear and drove off, spraying my legs with gravel. I half-thought of driving after her, but saw it was futile. She was in no mood to listen. She thought I was ill, that I had invented the whole thing about the Stone. But I knew I wasn’t ill. She’d panicked because I’d said I loved her, and because she loved me too. That was what frightened her.

  XXXIII

  A crisis was upon me. I was sweating, seething with energy. If I didn’t do something the energy would burst out of me and leave me wrecked on the floor. My left arm was twitching as if in contact with an electric fence. I wanted to go to the Stone, yet at the same time was afraid to go. It seemed to me that the Stone had provoked this crisis, had engineered it in some way. I paced round the manse, in and out of every room, up and down the stairs. I’d just decided to get changed and head off for a long run, to try to calm down, when the bell rang again. I thought Elsie must have come back and rushed to the front door. A car had pulled up in the drive, but not Elsie’s. It was Lorna Sprott.

  ‘Gideon,’ Lorna said. ‘I’ve been at the museum. I missed the exhibition opening but I’ve had a good look round.’ Something in my expression stopped her. ‘Is this an awkward moment?’

  ‘Actually, I was about to go for a run.’

  ‘You wouldn’t like to come for a walk instead? I’ve got Jasper in the car. I was thinking we might go to the Black Jaws.’

  I opened my mouth to make an excuse, but she didn’t notice.

  ‘The exhibition surprised me,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think it would be my cup of tea at all, and I can’t say I understood everything, but it was quite thought-provoking. I saw old Menteith’s study and listened to you reading while I was looking down through that window. That’s what put me in mind to go to the Black Jaws, the real place. I haven’t been there for ages, and Jasper could do with a change from the beach.’

  She looked pleadingly at me. How could I resist? Lorna stood on the step, inexorable and solid, and I knew I’d never get rid of her. Even if I slammed the door in her face she wouldn’t leave me alone. I imagined her scraping and chapping at the windows until I let her in. ‘Wait a minute,’ I said, and went to get my boots and a jacket.

  Perhaps I was meant to go for a walk with Lorna, to talk to her about what was going on. Perhaps the Stone was wielding some strange power over events and had brought her to my door at this moment. In the minute or two it took me to get ready I made a decision. I would go with Lorna to the Black Jaws and, depending on how things went, I would swear her to secrecy, take her to Keldo Woods, and show her the Stone. I could trust her thus far, I knew. If Lorna acknowledged that the Stone existed, then I would know I was neither hallucinating nor mad and I would go to Elsie and John. I would confront them with the misery and mockery of our lives and ask them to have the courage, with me, to change them. If, on the other hand, Lorna could not see the Stone, then I would have to admit that what Elsie had said was true, that I needed help.

  I didn’t know, as I locked the manse door and got into Lorna’s car, that I wouldn’t be back for nearly a week. Nor could I have foreseen that I would return utterly transformed. Nor indeed, as I strapped myself in and gritted my teeth against Lorna’s terrible driving, and was greeted by Jasper’s happy squeals and licks from the back seat, could I have guessed that it would not be Lorna who would trigger what happened next, but her dog.

>   Beside the narrow road that goes past the gates of Keldo House and then winds its way up into the hills, there is a muddy lay-by with space for three or four cars. There was no other vehicle there when we stopped and let Jasper out. A wooden signpost pointed along a path through the trees: TO THE BLACK JAWS. KEEP DOGS ON LEAD. But Lorna, unless there were sheep around, never heeded such instructions, and I couldn’t blame her, as Jasper pulling and lunging on the lead was more trouble than he was off it. Anyway, my head was so full of other things that it didn’t occur to me that the dog might be a liability to himself or anybody else. He bounded off, snorting and sniffing as if this new world of scents were even more fabulous than the beach.

  The rain came on again as soon as we set out. The trunks of the birches and beech trees were slick and shiny, the grass and shrubs at their feet beaded and dripping. The path was muddy and narrow in places, so that at times Lorna and I had to walk one behind the other. I was following her blue cagoule-draped back and wondering how to begin to tell her about the Stone when, as I had half-expected, she spoke first.

  ‘Gideon, I hope you won’t think I’m imposing on you again, but I’m having a bit of a crisis.’

  ‘So am I, Lorna,’ I said.

  She stopped and turned to stare at me. ‘You?’ she said. ‘Whatever about?’

  ‘I’ll tell you later,’ I said. ‘You go first.’

  At that point the path widened again and I was able to come up alongside her. I feared that Lorna might read something symbolic into this, and I wasn’t wrong.

  ‘You’re so polite and unselfish, Gideon,’ she said. ‘You always put others before yourself. But look, I don’t have to go first, we can do this together. Walking side by side, you can help me, and I hope I can help you.’

  It sounded like a thought for the day from the Scripture Union. I squirmed inwardly, but something had got into Lorna. As if moved by some heavenly impulse, she suddenly broke into song:

  ‘Yea, though I walk in death’s dark vale,

  yet will I fear no ill:

  For thou art with me; and thy rod

  and staff me comfort still.’

  She was not blessed with a good voice, and the words did not so much drift as crash unmelodiously among the trees. Not wishing to encourage her, I didn’t join in. It was a mercy to me that we were alone, although also worrying: if Lorna could launch herself at a metrical psalm with such vigour, might she not also launch herself at me? I began to wonder why I was even considering telling her about the Stone. At the same time I had a brief and unexpected image of us as characters in The Pilgrim’s Progress: Lorna stumping on up the narrow path as Christian, with her burden on her back, and me smirking along beside her as Mr Worldly Wiseman.

  At the sound of her singing, Jasper came bouncing back to us and planted his front paws all over her cagoule. She shooed him off, and I picked up a piece of broken branch and threw it into the wet undergrowth. He rushed after it, spent a frantic half-minute trying to locate it, then lost interest and raced up the path out of sight.

  Lorna said, ‘Gideon, do you remember last time we went to the beach, we talked about truth, and how sometimes it was hard to know whether the truth should be spoken out loud or kept to oneself?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I remember.’ There was a breathlessness in her voice which I could ascribe to neither her psalm-singing nor the slight incline of the path. She stared resolutely ahead, and went on speaking.

  ‘And you advised me to keep praying, that an answer would come if I prayed long enough.’

  ‘I don’t think I quite said that,’ I said. ‘And Lorna, you told me you were speaking about someone else.’

  ‘Well, Gideon, that’s where I was deceitful, for which I am truly sorry. I went away and thought about what you’d said and I realised that I would never be at peace unless I was honest, with myself and with you. There was no other person, Gideon, no other minister. I was talking about myself.’

  ‘I see,’ I said.

  ‘I know that must astonish you. I know how furtive it must seem, but it was the only way I could sound you out.’

  ‘Lorna,’ I said, ‘I’m not that astonished. I did suspect, you know.’

  ‘Really?’ she said. ‘Was I that obvious? Well, I took your advice, and I prayed again, and the answer came back as clear as anything this time, that the only way forward was the truth. And although this is very difficult, and I may make a fool of myself and regret it, I must tell you the truth, Gideon. I can’t not tell you the truth any longer.’

  She stopped walking and turned to me and looked directly into my eyes, and I looked back. I steeled myself against what was coming. She was going to declare her feelings, and I was going to have to hurt them. But even as I realised this, I saw that she realised it too, that she could see the rejection in my eyes, and that all she’d achieved by forcing herself to advance this far was to make a retreat inevitable. And I saw that she’d probably known all along how hopeless her planned confession was, how doomed, and that this walk to the Black Jaws would be just one more stage in the hard bloody slog that was her unhappy journey through life. And I felt something I’d never felt before, huge admiration for her. She was courageous and honest, she always believed in trying to do her best, and I was ashamed of my own cynical, calculating life. And there was something else: I envied her. I envied her futile, sad, stubborn optimism, that she would recover from this blow and carry on just as she always did, bumping and jerking her way into the future. In that moment of Lorna not saying what she’d built herself up to say, I respected her more than I ever had, and I saw why, in spite of her irritating ways and in spite of myself, I had always liked her.

  She started to cry, and I put my arms around her and hugged her. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, and through her sniffs and tears she said she was sorry too, and then Jasper, coming back to find out what was keeping us, began to leap up at us, barking and whining for attention. It was impossible to ignore him. I started to laugh, and so did Lorna. She pushed herself away from me, fumbled under her cagoule for a handkerchief, blew her nose and petted Jasper. ‘Sorry,’ she said again. ‘I’m okay now, Gideon, honestly.’

  ‘Come on,’ I said, and I put my arm through hers. ‘Let’s go and see the Black Jaws.’

  We could already hear them. The last few days of rain had poured off the hills and swollen the upper reaches of the Keldo, and now thousands of gallons of water were being funnelled through the ravine every minute. The black cliffs were drumming with the sound of it. It was difficult to tell if the haze surrounding the trees was part of the fresh rainfall or spray rising from below. The path took a turn to the right and dropped a little towards a wooden bridge stretched across the ravine – an innovation since Augustus Menteith’s day. Immediately to our left, at the path’s turn, the ground fell away ever more steeply, with trees stretching from it at odd angles, some almost horizontal, their roots like clawed hands clutching fiercely at the earth. The roar and reverberating boom of the river seemed to be coming up through the soil itself, through the layers of rock, through the trunks of the trees and the very soles of our boots. Even Jasper, who had shown only curiosity towards the crashing waves at the beach, trembled a little and slowed to a walk, keeping himself within easy reach of us. If he hadn’t been behaving like this, I would have suggested to Lorna that she put him on the lead. As it was, there seemed little risk of him doing anything daft.

  But I had reckoned without the appearance of the rabbit. As we came down to the bridge, there was a sudden burst of movement to our right, and a brown shape shot across the path and into the undergrowth on the other side. Jasper was after it in a second. Lorna and I both yelled at him, but he was oblivious to anything but the rabbit. I have never seen a dog move so fast. The pursuit was over in seconds, however, because the rabbit, plunging down through wet grass towards the wetter ferns and creepers which marked the edge of the cliff, took one leap too many as it strove to outpace the dog. Suddenly it was in flight, launched from the l
ast scrape of rock into the spray-filled air. It hung there for a long second and then dropped out of sight like a flung toy. We could not hear above the din but we could see Jasper’s desperate efforts to halt, the shower of mud and twigs and grass his back claws threw up as he skidded down the slope, and then he too disappeared. For one ghastly moment we waited to see his taut black body also flying into space, but there was nothing. Lorna let out a long scream, ‘Jasper, O God, Jasper, O God, O God.’ Nothing. And then, faintly above the terrible roar of the Black Jaws, a pitiful howl came back to us. Beyond our vision, but evidently perched somewhere on the edge of the precipice, Jasper was still alive.

  Lorna started to scramble down from the path, and slipped on to her backside almost at once. I pulled her back. ‘Stay here,’ I said. ‘No, see if you can climb along a bit further up, spot where he is. But keep back from the edge. It’s absolutely treacherous. I’ll try and reach him.’ And getting down into a sitting position, gingerly I began to work my way down the slope.

  The slight outcrop of rock from which the rabbit had jumped was only twenty feet away, but it felt like half a mile. The vegetation was completely soaked, and there was no grip on the slimy rock which it covered. Easing my crablike way across this horrible surface, clutching at clumps of grass as if they were anchored ropes, I finally made it to the outcrop. Here the noise from below battered still more loudly and relentlessly around my head, so that it was almost impossible to think. I shifted myself into a forward-leaning position and inched my way over the lip of the rock. On the other side, no more than ten feet away, was Jasper.

  He was crouched on a bare patch of quartz-speckled rock surrounded by sickly green, slippery-looking foliage. He teetered on the very edge of the chasm, unable to go either forward or back, issuing whimpering sounds that were halfway between barks and sobs. His back was arched and his feet scrabbled constantly as he struggled to keep his balance. ‘Jasper,’ I called, ‘I’m here,’ but in his overwhelming fear he didn’t hear me. I had no option but to push myself along those last few feet towards him.