The Cone Gatherers

by Robin Jenkins

  ‘Not really, doctor.’

  ‘Fine. I hope you don’t mind my blethering to you like this? Sometimes I go down to the hotel lounge and say things I rue afterwards. But you’re a man of some perception and tact. Did you bike it into the village?’

  ‘No. I came in the car.’

  The doctor brought out cigarettes. Duror shook his head. He lit one himself, with unsteady hands.

  ‘She’s a fine lady,’ he said, ‘and still a beauty. Is Sir Colin still in Africa?’

  ‘As far as I know, doctor.’

  ‘Things seem to be going a bit better there now. We’re stuck here, Duror, with the women, the children, and the old men. Like yourself, I’ve offered my services. They were turned down. They also serve who only stand and drink.’ He laughed. ‘I’d offer you a dram, Duror, but so far you’re still my patient. Once the consultation’s over we’ll become old cronies. How’s the girl keeping? Sheila her name is, I believe. She represents the peak of my obstetrical achievement. With the typical confidence of the unborn, she decided to come into this vale of tears before her time. I had to be sent for in a panic. I made an excellent job of her too. She’s as bonny and healthy and as stuck-up, I hear, as any baronet’s daughter ought to be. Her brother now, he’s not been so fortunate: I understand he’s unbraw, unhealthy, and diffident. He was an Edinburgh specialist’s job too, with fifty guineas at least in the fee. But I can see, Duror, you disapprove of such flippant chatter about your overlord’s family.’ The doctor switched on a scowling seriousness. ‘I’m in a mood for plain speaking, Duror; which is a good thing for you, because otherwise I couldn’t offer you any advice worth a pickled toe.’

  Duror missed a breath as he sat, apparently relaxed, in his chair. Was it possible that this old vain gluttonous whisky-tippling talkative doctor should have so soon discovered his secret? It seemed as unlikely as if a man should walk into a vast leaf-strewn wood and point to the spot where, years ago, a body had been buried.

  The doctor put on a professional brusqueness.

  ‘Lady Runcie-Campbell explained over the telephone,’ he said. ‘It seems you fainted when you were putting a deer out of its agony. She didn’t say just what you were doing.’

  ‘I was cutting its throat.’

  ‘Is that the usual procedure? Or was it just an improvisation in the circumstances?’

  ‘It’s often done.’

  ‘There would be blood?’

  Duror nodded.

  ‘I take it it wasn’t the sight of that? You’ll be used to bloodshed.’

  Again Duror nodded.

  ‘Lady Runcie-Campbell hinted your heart might be the culprit. Well, if there’s anything wrong with your heart, Duror, I’ll eat nothing but saps on the next ten Sundays. How old are you?’

  ‘Forty-eight.’

  ‘Have you ever had fits of breathlessness? I don’t mean of course when you’ve been racing up a hill after a hare or stag.’

  ‘No, doctor.’

  ‘Have you ever noticed your lips blue? And don’t tell me, only when you’ve been eating blaeberries. I once got that answer in all solemnity.’

  ‘Never, doctor.’

  ‘All right, Duror, if you’ll kindly bare your brawny chest, I’ll, as Bruce once said, mak siccar.’ He opened the drawer where he kept his stethoscope. ‘Was it Bruce though? It was a matter of murder completed, I remember that; murder in a kirk. Are you a staunch kirk hand, Duror?’

  Duror was calmly and tidily removing his coat and jacket.

  ‘I put in an occasional appearance,’ he said.

  ‘And do you believe what you hear there? I’m not being impertinent, Duror; this is as much a part of my examination as using this. Have you a faith? Do you believe in God?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nor do I,’ said the doctor, smiling. ‘That makes us equal in the eyes, shall I say, of Beelzebub? Now I’ll shut up for a minute while I listen in.’

  Despite his prattle he carried out the examination thoroughly. He took his time, and now and then grunted, so that Duror wondered if after all a weakness in his heart might be the removable cause.

  ‘Just as I thought,’ said the doctor at last. ‘You’re as sound as an ox. You can get dressed again, Duror.’

  As Duror dressed, he remarked, as if casually: ‘Have you ever had any dealings, doctor, with a couple of brothers from Ardmore? They work in the forest there. McPhie, I think they’re called. One’s a deformed hunchback.’

  They’re on my panel. But I’ve never had to attend them professionally. I’ve seen them in the village, of course. Why?’

  ‘They’re working in our wood just now, gathering cones. The small one seems to be an imbecile.’

  ‘Oh, he’s not that.’

  ‘At any rate, he’s not right in the head.’

  ‘Damned few of us are, Duror.’

  ‘But not many of us commit abominations with ourselves in public, like monkeys.’

  The doctor had been putting away his stethoscope. He looked up sharply.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I think I caught him at it in the wood.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Well, I did then.’

  ‘The small one, you mean, with the face and curls of Lord Byron?’

  Duror paused, seeing that face and those curls; he felt sweat again breaking out over his body.

  ‘I never saw Lord Byron, doctor.’

  ‘I’m sure you didn’t, Duror. He’s been dead a hundred years. He was a poet, very handsome. So is your hunchback handsome.’

  ‘Why do you call him my hunchback, doctor?’

  The doctor laughed. ‘Keep your shirt on, Duror,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose he’s yours any more than he’s anybody else’s. Where did you see him at his abominations?’

  ‘In the wood.’

  ‘Were you alone?’

  Duror remembered that he had told Mrs Morton a thrush had been present.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘So you’ve no witness?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Did he see you? I mean, was he doing it for your benefit?’

  Duror frowned.

  ‘Well, Duror, it was either for your benefit or for his own. If for yours, I suppose it was a crime; if for his own, an unpleasant aberration. Did he know you were watching him?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘I suppose not, for in that case your natural reaction would have been to kick his backside.’

  ‘I would never have soiled my foot,’ whispered Duror, betraying a little of his hatred.

  The doctor gazed at him, as if puzzled.

  ‘My advice is, Duror,’ he said: ‘forget you ever saw it. What a man does with himself is his own affair, except if he does away with himself altogether.’

  ‘This is hardly a man, doctor.’

  ‘Be charitable, Duror. His deformity’s an accident.’

  ‘I have to remember, doctor, that it would be on my conscience if anything was to happen in the wood. Lady Runcie-Campbell and Sheila often walk in it. There’s a young landgirl at the home farm. You’re a doctor; you must know better than I do the kind of crime that imbeciles like him commit.’

  ‘I have a fairly wide knowledge of human depravity,’ admitted the doctor. ‘It used to be a hobby of mine adding to it, until I lost the ability to be surprised. Before we leave the subject, however, I’d like to point out that as far as I know the wee chap’s reputation in the village is pretty high. He’s got a smile for every limping dog.’

  ‘He’s got none for me.’

  The ferocity of that answer astonished the doctor; but he made no sign.

  ‘Let’s discuss your own case, Duror,’ he said. ‘I hope you don’t mind answering some questions, even though they may seem to you rather inquisitive and impertinent. You’re forty-eight, you say. What age were you when you got married?’

  ‘Twenty-five.’

  ‘You would be about twenty-eight or thereabouts when your wife was
stricken?’

  ‘Yes, doctor.’

  ‘I know this is painful for you, Duror; but I think we ought to get at the truth. You had been married just about three years?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You weren’t given much of a chance, were you?’ The doctor shook his head. ‘What scunners me about these godmongers is the snivelling way they thank their god for lavishing them with blessings, and then, when disaster falls on them, they lack the guts to curse him. In the jungle they show more consistency: there they think their god’s angry with them and has to be pacified. There’s logic in that. But I apologise, Duror. A man must grapple with misfortune in his own way. You see what I’ve been leading up to? Since your wife’s illness you have never had relations with her.’

  Duror sat very still.

  ‘I understand your reluctance,’ said the doctor, ‘but I assure you this is medical territory. At first it would not be possible, and later it did not seem right. Therefore you’ve lived like a monk ever since. This has set up stresses and it’s now affecting you physically. You said you don’t sleep well? I suppose too you feel in some obscure way you are responsible for your wife’s misfortune. It’s easy enough to diagnose, Duror, but it’s a damned sight more difficult to prescribe. A wise man, a member of my own profession as a matter of fact, said hundreds of years ago that it was a pity human beings couldn’t propagate as trees do. It seemed to him so much more dignified and hygienic. He wasn’t so daft, was old Browne. Perhaps trees have minds, for all we know; but they’ve got the sense to stay in the one place and thole whatever happens. The human mind, on the contrary, ranges from heaven to hell; and usually stays a long time in the latter place. How to bail it out baffles science. Often the key is lost in itself, and there are mind doctors, called psychiatrists, whose job it is to look for that key. They don’t always find it. If I was to fling a penny into the loch out there, what chance would there be of ever recovering it? “Canst thou minister to a mind diseased?” No, Duror, I can’t. Any advice I can offer has already occurred to you long ago: other women, for one thing; religious acceptance for another, though that seems to be out, as you don’t believe; and of course there’s always the old stand-by, the prescription scribbled by primitive man on the sands of time, and still in this twentieth century unequalled: endurance. You’ve got a burden to carry, it’s getting heavier as you get older, nobody will take it from you, even for as short a time as Hercules relieved Atlas of the world. But it could be heavier, your burden: always keep applying that poultice: it could be heavier. You don’t sleep well; you have headaches; you feel depressed; and you passed out the other day like a young lassie at the sight of a deer’s blood. Why man, with your physical strength and natural sanity, you could endure such symptoms for a hundred years.’

  The doctor by this time was over at another cabinet, taking out a bottle of whisky and two glasses.

  ‘Will you join me in a dram, Duror?’ he asked.

  ‘Surely, doctor.’

  Eagerly the old man poured out the drinks. He handed a glass to Duror.

  ‘What will we drink to, Duror?’ he asked. ‘To your stoical patience, not only in tholing your affliction, but also in putting up with an old man’s longwindedness? To my own youthful dreams of obliterating disease and pain from the earth? Or just to endurance? Aye, to endurance.’

  Both drank, the doctor so greedily he spilled some down his chin.

  ‘Stay for a while and talk to me, Duror,’ he pleaded. ‘Maybe you’ve thought that if you had a son to share your burden, you could have carried it far more gallantly. Shall I tell you about mine?’ Guiltily he glanced towards the door. ‘My wife mustn’t know I’m talking about him, so if she was to come to the door listening, don’t be surprised if I switch onto the succulence of venison properly cooked. I eat my griefs away, Duror, and the amazing thing is how thin I keep …’

  CHAPTER NINE

  It was well after picture time when Duror managed to get away from the doctor’s. He’d drunk more whisky than he’d done for years. The result was a revulsion against the doctor’s reiterated philosophy of endurance; indeed, as he walked slowly but steadily along the pier road back into the village he felt in a mood for murder, rape, or suicide.

  At the edge of the harbour he halted and stared down at the water, which he could hear slapping gently against the slimy wall. Another step, and down he’d fall, enveloped in the bag of his own wish for death: perhaps, like the she-cat he’d once drowned, he’d struggle a little, cowardly at the end; but he was no strong swimmer and would soon enough sink, to rise again bloated to sicken the godly tomorrow on their way to kirk with their Bibles in their hands. Then, taking himself by surprise, he began to laugh, louder and louder, more and more harshly, as it occurred to him that perhaps the tide was going out, there was only a foot or so of water, and all that would happen to him would be a leg broken. He would be lugged out like an old boot by some officious hero, and sent home to lie in the house all day, listening to Peggy’s whines of sympathy. Still laughing, he glanced along towards the cinema where, years ago, he had seen a comedy about a man who, jilted by his sweetheart because of his torn-trousered poverty, had tried in various ways to commit suicide without success: the fun had been in the failures. He had lain down on a railway track in front of an express: it had switched onto another track a few yards away. He had tried to hang himself: the rope had broken. He had drunk poison: it had turned his hair long and curly. The audience in the picture house had squealed with laughter at his droll disappointments. In the end of course he’d dropped into a fortune and married his repentant sweetheart.

  No doubt, thought Duror, a similar comedy could be made out of his own position: Peggy was fat enough, and he was at the end of the plank of despair.

  He headed straight for the hotel bar. A drunk made to greet him with solemn civility, but he thrust him aside. The thought was in his mind to pick a quarrel in there. To feel his fist crashing against someone’s face, hateful only for its human shape, would be a relief and compensation, whatever happened afterwards.

  Yet inside the door he hesitated, checked by the blast of human enjoyment. Moreover, the fug of tobacco smoke, beer, and breaths nauseated him. He almost turned and went out again. But some had already seen him, and with their polluting interest were now watching to see what he intended to do. What he did therefore was to push roughly past them to the bar.

  They were farm labourers, forestry workers, sawyers, timber-fellers, fishermen, and shepherds: all as bronzed with sun as he, and as withdrawn in their thoughts. Some were in his company of the Home Guard. These nodded and wished him good evening. He ignored them.

  They all knew about Peggy. That they had often discussed her behind his back was plain from the way they glanced at him, as if they’d like to sympathise but were afraid their powers of speech would be inadequate. His predicament to them was not only sad, grotesque, and terrible; it was also natural, as death by drowning was, or the loss of a hand in a circular saw, or the savaging of lambs by foxes. They were disciples in the religion of endurance. If ever they laughed at the comedy of his fastidiousness forever repelled within the circle of married love, there would be nothing subtle or vindictive or superior in their laughter: it would be a sound as bearable as the hissing of rain to a farmer in the middle of his hay-making, or the roaring of gale to a woman with her man at sea. But farmer and fisherman’s wife could look forward, he to another harvest, she to safe return. For Duror there was nothing.

  As he stood at the bar, drinking beer, accepting this absolute dearth of hope, and nodding to some commonplaces about the war, he suddenly caught sight of the cone-gatherers. They sat in an alcove. The taller had a glass of beer in his hand and was talking importantly to a man from Ardmore. Beside him crouched the hunchback, not listening to their talk but smiling at their laughter, and now and then stroking his brow with a hand as small as a child’s

  Duror tried not to look in their direction. He spoke to the bletherer abo
ut war. He finished his beer and ordered another glass. He tried to think about the journey home when the smell of drink off him must be noticeable in the car. But he looked again and again.

  Soon the hunchback fidgeted sadly and plucked at his brother’s elbow. The latter paid no heed to the first tug, but at the second turned, spoke as if to an impatient child, and then resumed his adult conversation. The hunchback smiled and laid his hand on the bag of groceries between his feet.

  Duror waited. He seemed to be joining in more enthusiastically to the gossip about the war; but his mind, baulked in its virulence, was prowling in the alcove, sniffing at the affection between the brothers, smelling the fragrance of cones off them, and snarling at their unconscious complicity in his torment.

  Then all talk in the pub was interrupted by the boisterous entry of four soldiers. They were English, and one in particular, a big man with a red glistening face, was very hearty and jocular.

  ‘Now then, lads,’ he cried, ‘make way for four perishing heroes who haven’t had a drink for sixteen miles. No MPs skulking behind the bar, eh? No ruddy generals in kilts?’

  He stood with his back to the bar and addressed the company, like an entertainer at a concert. Some grinned, prepared to enjoy his free jokes. Others suspended their own private conversations, with the imperturbability of men who knew that what they had been talking about anyway was of small importance. A few scowled, resenting his aggressive foreignness.

  His mates concentrated on enjoying their beer. They seemed thankful to shift the burden of listening to him onto others.

  He told a joke about a sergeant-major and an ATS girl. It was bawdy and full of oaths. Not everybody laughed.

  The barman leant across and prodded him in the back.

  ‘No swearing in here, soldier,’ he said, ‘and no foul language.’

  The soldier wasn’t abashed. He bellowed with enjoyment at this joke of prudery.