by Neil M. Gunn
Men had gone mad. Aunt Phemie saw quite clearly that men had gone mad. Her vision went all over the earth and saw then in the logical movements of their madness, stalking here and there, into council chambers and out of them, into railway stations and air ports, across fields, all the fields of the world, intent and certain, fulfilling the high and urgent law of necessity. Whose necessity? cried her anguished spirit with an obliterating mockery. She flung herself on the bed, face down, and through her smothered mouth cried aloud “Christ! Christ!” but hardly thinking of Christ for her vision had been too much for her, too terrible to bear.
4
The following morning Aunt Phemie carefully wrapped up the picture and painting materials and stitched the lot together in a piece of canvas sacking which she addressed to Mr. Adam McAlpine and left at Shand’s shop. At the same time she posted Adam a note telling what she had done, and returned home with a sense of relief. For she had realised last night that the only thing which mattered now was Nan’s recovery; and that Nan was at last firmly on the path to recovery she had felt with a peculiar certainty. It was something in the air, her manner, an assurance, slowness, as though she could now pause in her appreciation of the beauty of the world, pause and reflect, with a simple gratitude and wonder. Tears had brightened her eyes because she was still physically weak and abnormally sensitive to the beauty she found, but now they were like rain, with light in them. Aunt Phemie could see that Nan’s secret and profound sufferings had run their course, had burnt themselves out, leaving behind some fine essence which would be forever part of her character. It was an extraordinarily delicate thing, a fragility of convalescence, but of true convalescence, with the promise in it of strength.
How far her last hours with Ranald had contributed to this, she could not be sure. There was something about it all, Aunt Phemie deeply felt, which was more than a personal relationship, which in some vague indefinable way was fundamental and lasting. Yet it was, at the moment anyhow, indissolubly linked with Ranald.
Recent broken weather had delayed the harvest. Now as Aunt Phemie left the cartshed, where she had stabled her car, it began to rain in earnest, and for three days the wind blew and rain showers slashed and tore along the ripe grain fields. Much of the heavier growth was flattened, and old Will, smoking his pipe by a sheltered gable of the steading, thought stoically of scything and extra labour. It so often happened. Ay, that’s the way it went. Aunt Phemie could never quite achieve this stoical acceptance; was still inclined to be pursued by the thought: If only it had kept off for a week or two! or had come in some moderation! But no, it must slash away and flatten as if at the very heart of nature waste had no meaning. Yet she understood Will’s attitude too; and indeed found in it a strange enduring power. She was satisfied that the men of the land never cursed the weather; just as, she felt sure, real seamen never cursed the sea. There was something in this acceptance of the elements that had in it the strength of a grey rock. This was how real men endured.
But Nan secretly looked upon the rain storm in quite a different way. She could not be kept in, and sometimes in the lee of a hedge or an elm tree she would glance around to make sure she could not be seen and then, the wet slash on her face, would laugh and suck the rain drops from her cold lips.
A flying wildness, a soddenness in the beaten earth, a freshness, a brawling of gushets, a positive spate in the miniature greenbanked burn that wound its crooked way down from the high dam, a dripping lushness of wild flowers, a crush of green stems, clover leaves and silvered rain drops, glistening berries of the wild rose—ah lovely! lovely! She broke a hip with her thumb nail, scooped out the white hairy seeds, and chewed the red skin. Like tasting her childhood, living over again. Crushed red and rain drops in her mouth, and a cold nose. When she began to shiver she went home. Aunt Phemie scolded her and she put an arm round Aunt Phemie’s waist, and Aunt Phemie told her she would have less of her blarney, and they had tea. But Nan did not now talk much about Ranald, hardly any at all. Aunt Phemie always knew, however, when she was upstairs writing.
When it looked as if the storm was going to batter everything, leaving the flattened grain as rot for a second growth to penetrate, the atmosphere cleared miraculously, and the sky. The wind blew from the opposite direction, was dry and light, and searched out the dampest places with a remarkable and happy persistence. This scented wind went to Nan’s head a little, at times to her feet. The flattened grain under the rain had affected her occasionally with an extreme sense of dismay (not unalloyed, however, with a secret marvelling at so prodigal a waste), but now when the dry wind had done its work, the grain lay as if finally dead.
But when the mowing started on the low fields it was remarkable how the men “worked away with it”; soon in their rows the stooks arose and, beyond a lengthy stubble in places, the harvest was in truth being “won”.
The work in the harvest field fascinated Nan. It aroused in her some obscure atavistic instincts which at moments held a thrill as sharp and clean as frost. Her body felt extraordinarily light, as if every clot and congestion and poison had been purged by her illness. It grew easily tired but only needed a minute’s rest for recovery; and inside her head, thought and impulse moved with the fine ease of the wind. The wind—the wind came to her from immense distances, wherein time and space were never confused yet were divided by no more than a momentary emphasis. Men and women were reaping actual fields now and in remote times. As in a dream, time itself became distance backward in space; but being awake, she had the sensation of time as distinct from space. The wind in her face and hair was now and then, for a tranced moment, a sheer laughing intoxication. She shook her head, opened her mouth, and said “Ah-h-h.”
When some of the women from the farm cottages turned out, Nan joined them. The Agricultural Executive Committee had compelled so extensive a cultivation of grain that there was insufficient labour to deal with the harvesting in anything like reasonable time. Aunt Phemie had had several consultations with the grieve about this, but he was inclined to go canny, to suggest that they would manage, said that he had “spoken” some help from the high crofts, and generally did not seem to favour a strong application to the distant “prisoners-of-war camp”. They discussed it right through to the “leading” of the stooks from the fields. “It’s not everyone can build a stack,” said the grieve, who held the old notion that finely built and roofed stacks were a farm’s crowning glory. “We can work so long as there’s daylight in it,” he concluded.
Aunt Phemie kept an eye on Nan who really wasn’t much use. She hadn’t the pith, and the skin on her hands was too tender, but she was desperately willing. The second night she slept for ten solid hours. She awoke stiff and comically happy. But nothing would finally repress her. For all the time she had one consuming notion of her own: she wanted to drive the tractor.
She made advances to the tractor lad. He was twenty, shy, open-faced, with a swaying lithe body, Will’s youngest son and a grand worker. She talked to him about engines, about a highpowered American car which she had driven in London for a time for an American officer. She sat in the driver’s iron seat of the tractor, and finally drove it a short distance with George standing on behind.
Before Nan’s enthusiasm when the tractor was silent, George admitted, “Och, she’s not bad. But if you saw the red International Diesel, with caterpillars—you drive her with two handles and she’ll turn on a sixpence.”
“No!”
“Yes,” said George. “They got one—under the American lease-lend, they say—at Balgruan. I had a go at her. She’ll do anything.”
When Nan came into the lamp-lit kitchen she said, “Aunt Phemie, I nearly kissed George.”
Aunt Phemie turned from the frying pan, a knife in her hand. “Nan Gordon, you’ll please keep your hands off my men. I saw you trying to vamp that fine lad. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“Do you think he would have misunderstood me?” asked Nan with a mixture of regret and wonder. “
He’s a nice boy. His skin is golden with the sun.”
“You leave his skin alone,” said Aunt Phemie, turning to her work.
“Aunt Phemie … ! But I suppose I must,” added Nan, sadly. “It seems an awful waste. What a gorgeous day it’s been! I’m drenched with it.” She lay back in her chair and stuck her legs out. “Do you know, a moment comes now and then when I know life is divine. It’s like a stolen moment—or is it a lost one, lost from somewhere? To-morrow I’m going to have a wee vamp at the grieve.”
“You’re not ettling to kiss him, are you?”
“No…. But it’s an idea!” Nan shook with laughter.
She found, however, that she had to do very little vamping of the grieve the following afternoon. They were working a top field whose boundary fence on the east side ran right up to the western tip of the Dark Wood. The field heaved and rolled in great smooth billows and the wind had flattened the grain badly in one part and it was impossible for the mower to cut it unless it were first struck up or straightened with a fork. This was exacting and tiresome work and the grieve needed all the assistance he could get if the tractor were not to be delayed in its continuous and ever-narrowing round of the twenty-acre field. So for the evening spell Nan was given her chance on the tractor, with Will mounted on the binder behind. Nan let the clutch in and, as she moved off, the grieve, standing some distance in front, watched her coming as he leaned on his fork, put out a hand and waved her a few inches in towards the standing corn, checked her, watched, and nodded. She had it! He stood aside and gave her a smile as she roared magnificently past with a smart salute for him as her commanding officer. I have got the exact distance of the off wheel from the grain, she thought; I can hold that till all the cows come home! A hoarse yell above the roar of the exhaust, a backward glimpse of a wildly gesticulating Will, and she stood on the neutral lever with her heart in her mouth and the engine vibration quivering to her thigh. As Will climbed down she leashed the lever and joined him. “An ould domned bit o’ wire,” Will was muttering as he tugged it clear, but no actual damage had been done to the cutting teeth. “I’m thinking you’re a lucky one,” he said with a slow smile as he threw the rusty loop of fencing wire from him. (Afterwards she told Aunt Phemie that she also could have kissed him.) Mounted again, she now realised why George seemed to be looking back most of the time he was pulling the binder. Plainly one had to stop pretty smartly if things went wrong and it was difficult to hear an ordinary cry above the roar of the engine. At the off bottom corner she did a loop into the open field, bumping over a couple of sheaves—bad! bad! she cried to herself, ashamed to look round at Will—and then swung in for the up gradient. Now she wanted to help the engine, to give it more juice, but the throttle was open, and for a few moments she waited with a curiously helpless feeling. What happened gave her a profound thrill, for it was exactly as if the engine came alive on its own. Its growl deepened, its power increased, all its internal horses put their heads down, took the full weight on their collars and walked into and up that gradient with their song of unconquerable strength. The great spiked wheels dipped into an old rabbit burrow, rode a grey stone, lurched and steadied, went remorselessly on. She turned to Will. He nodded but upward, with a tilt of his head that threw the humour into the air. You’re doing fine! His face was weathered and antique, the ginger moustache might have been growing in more than one place, but his eyes were living and looking at her and laughing. Round came the wooden arms, the flyers, swishing the standing grain over the cutting teeth, and the teeth cut it, and up flowed the cut grain, and the inner hands of the machine gathered and tied it, and round came a fork and shot the bound sheaf clean into the open field. Oh it was wonderful! wonderful! The grain went down and was reaped in a continuous golden wave, like the wave a great ship sends from her bow. You could grow dizzy looking at it. It was marvellous! Oh, it was splendid, splendid, and she patted the driving wheel and gripped it hard and looked back, and beheld the golden wave going down and Will like some old earth god aloft on his chariot. Inside her a song sang to the earth, and to the sky as she went riding into it over the last crest.
And now here she was, throttled back, bearing down on George, glad to have remembered his instruction that you could shove the throttle home going downhill. She gave him a wave, shaking her lifted hand in a hurrah! and George, smiling, gave her a sideways nod. There was something shy in his frankness that touched her heart, for she had feared lest deep in him he might resent her taking his place on the seat of mystery. But there was nothing of that, and with a warm stirring of gratitude she respected these men for it, and would do what she could for them, until the last mortal sheaf was reaped. And now here was the grieve, the undemonstrative man, watching her as she came. He stood aside as she passed and gave her a nod of approval. She had completed her first circuit. She looked round at Will. He tilted his head. You’re doing fine!
They struck a bad patch and Nan was glad when the grieve decided to shove in a new set of cutting teeth, for she had been getting a crick in her neck and a certain soreness in other muscles. She watched the grieve hammering away, then strolled up to where George was working on a tangled whorl like the unruly hair on the crown of a boy’s head. The second and third horsemen—Davie and Alan, douce married men—were also busy hitting up the tumbled stalks. She chatted away gaily to George about his engine and the crick in her neck, stretching her blue-trousered legs, rubbing her neck and laughing. “You’ll know more about it in the morning!” promised Alan, who had a compact bony face and an elemental humour in his eyes. She brought Davie into the talk also, and when George said “They’re waving on you,” she turned away like a truant schoolgirl and went hurriedly down the field.
Two pictures of that evening were to remain with her. As the shadows had lengthened the wind had dropped, and now with the sun gone and the first smother of darkening come upon the land, the full harvest moon rose over a low ridge of hill. It was golden and immense, august and slow; it was the ancient harvest moon of many rites; it came up like the fire-warmed face of an old sky god, and looked upon the earth. It’s incredible! Nan whispered to herself. But she knew it was not incredible. As she took the steep incline, she turned to watch the binder and caught the tilt of Will’s head as it drew her attention to the moon. She nodded back and smiled. Plainly he thought the sight of the moon would please her! Conversation on the high seas! She felt a melting in her breast. The engine roared. She rode right over the crest, the moon far on her right, with already its glisten on the Dark Wood. “Dear God!” she cried, for no other words would come of themselves to carry her emotion. She cried them aloud, and the engine drowned them, and she was grateful to the engine for its conspiracy. For nothing like this was ever drowned; and always the harvest moon rose in its season.
The second picture seemed as old as the moon. The amount of standing grain was rapidly dwindling and most of the flattened patches had been cut, so there was little to do for the four men with the forks. As she swung in for the top stretch in the deep twilight, already irradiated with the moon’s green light, she saw George leaning in over the grain listening, poised like a primitive hunter, still as a heron. Davie and Alan were waiting, their forks in their hands. As she came roaring along a rabbit bolted from the standing grain. Two forks clashed, then George was in hot pursuit. The rabbit doubled, for it could not run fast over the strong sharp stubble. George struck twice and missed. Davie and Alan swayed in their mirth. She heard Will’s shout and brought the tractor back into proper line. She did not see George kill the rabbit, but she felt the killing in her heart.
She felt it as a sharp pain, but somehow it did not touch the picture of the men themselves, eager, full of friendliness and laughter, hunting in the deep twilight. And this twilight under that great moon darkened their figures so that they were here and now, as sharp as the pain in her heart, and yet distant in time’s landscape, far back and bewitched, and known to her. It was at once the gloaming of her childhood and of herself as a
woman in remote times. Looking back at the binder, she glimpsed Will’s face and it seemed more than ever like an earth god’s; the flyers came round and the golden grain went down in a wave; the iron fork like a great serpent’s tongue shot the bound sheaf clear; and she fancied that in the antique face on its chariot there dwelt a smile of understanding and beneficence.
Suddenly she saw Aunt Phemie standing talking to the grieve, who waved her from the grain in a comprehensive gesture. She saluted as she passed, finished her line, and swung round and down to the flat space to which the grieve had pointed. George appeared, ran the engine for a little, and fixed it for the night.
As the engine stopped, the silence of the evening came full upon her. Aunt Phemie’s voice had a note in it that was somehow of her familiar essence, found again after a long time.
The men took their own short cut to the cottages and the women cried good night to them, Nan waving her hand aloft. Will lifted an arm like an old flail in special salute to his partner.
Nan took Aunt Phemie’s arm and chatted away about the work, but there was a quietness in her voice and a wonder. As they came down through the thistledown field, she paused and looked abroad upon the valley.
“Oh, Aunt Phemie,” she said, “how lovely is the world!”
5
Three nights later, with the reaping finished and a blatter of rain about the stooks, Nan came into the lamplit kitchen with a letter and a periodical in her hand. She had bathed and now moved in a leisurely way, the field labour still sluggish in her body. Aunt Phemie had found at last the leaflet of instructions for her petrol iron which had been giving her some trouble.
“They’re wanting me back,” said Nan, stretching herself in her chair and dropping the magazine and letter on the floor.