by Neil M. Gunn
‘But I want to hear you say it.’
‘Not here.’
‘Please! Quick! Please – before I go!’
‘Listen –’
‘Please! I must go! Now! Now!’
Tom remained silent, smiling in an awkward remote way.
She tugged and shook the lapels of his coat, her face uplifted in burning impatience. Footsteps came along the darkened street behind them. She dropped her hands. When the figures passed, she did not lift her hands again. She waited, looking at him with a white straining face. He could not speak. Suddenly she turned and walked away.
He strode quickly after her and walked by her side. ‘Don’t go in yet,’ he said. ‘Wait a bit.’
But she was not waiting, and she went in without opening her mouth.
On the way home, he felt almost sick with excitement. He found he could not go inside, and kept walking about lonely side streets for what must have been hours. It seemed to him that life had suddenly come to a point of momentous, almost monstrous, decision; nothing like it could ever conceivably face him again. It was now and here.
It is impossible to exaggerate his extraordinary state of unrest. His mouth was dry. His legs shaky. Something irrevocable had happened, was about to happen. Winnie’s face, life, time, fate – the night was charged with vast and irresistible circumstance, so that he could not think clearly, could reach to a decision only to slide down from it into despair.
He came to his lodging at last in a tired, weakened condition. His two room-mates were asleep. As he lit the candle, he saw the parcel of laundry from home. Memory of the scarlet night when he had returned to Bob and Dannie in a queer enough state of mind touched him but without even a flick of a smile. He was too weary to notice that the handwriting on the outside of the parcel was not his father’s. He drew the pin out of his mother’s scrap of letter and found inside it a pound note.
Dear Tom,
Your father had a heart attack the day afore yesterday he is in his bed and will be for a while. The doctor was in at him yesterday he says he must not get up and he must not work for a long time. Theres no need to be alarumd for the meantime though one never knows. Its the harvest thats the worst. The doctor was saying that you might come home for a little but I don know what to say myself if it made any difference at yer work I wouldnt like that unless they could let you of for a little seeing its your father. Youll know best yerself and Ill always manage fine. Be looking after yerself whatever else and let me know.
your mother.
So his father was ill. He stared before him, bereft at last of thought and feeling. The pound note was in his hand. He must put it away with the pound that he never broke on. She wanted him home. It was quite clear she wanted him home. He became worried, wondering whether the boss would let him go. He had never asked for anything. He would hate asking. And his job? They did not keep a job like his open. Dougal would have to get someone else. He would speak to Dougal first. That’s it. He would speak to Dougal first thing.
Feeling relieved, he turned his head and stared at the blinded window. The turmoil of the night was outside, and Winnie’s face.
Now there was his father’s face on the pillow. He turned away from that. He was very tired. I’m dog tired, he said, and down upon him came a strange fatal quietude. This quietude went into bed with him and in its far wastes he wandered, seeing that which did not move, hearkening for the sound that never came in its great stillness.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Philosopher rested again, for though he had been climbing slowly, even a quickened thought could increase his heart-beat, and, anyway, there was no hurry. Besides, this deliberate seeing of his past had a certain detached interest, giving to the flight of a chaffinch, to its short airy waves of flight, an indescribable pleasure. How clean and bright were the feathers this sunny day, how vivid and immediate the song and the movement! The dip of the branch, the swaying of the green leaf. The green grass and the warm scents and the wind that found its pleasure not in far wandering but in immediate eddies of fun among the small bushes.
He could still see the red pump. Henry was walking back from it to the shop. Below the cream-coloured shop, stretched the old croft house, tarred felt, black where formerly had been straw thatch. Very quiet about the house, for no-one moved around it but himself. The straw had had perhaps a brighter air, but his idea had been to make the place permanently weather-tight for his mother.
He had been full of ideas in these distant days, full of projects. They engaged his mind, for his father lying on his bed was something not to be thought about too much. He had always been rather a solemn man, slow and quiet and big-boned, his ginger beard turning quite grey as he lay in bed, and his skin turning grey, too, in a clean, washed way. His father’s spareness of build made him a tall man, his mother’s stoutness made her a short dumpy woman; he himself was like something that had escaped from between them, slight in build and stature, fair in hair between the ginger and the black, and in mind very much like something that had escaped and secretly knew it.
For the first few weeks harvesting took his time and energy. As his father had been forbidden to do any work for months, Tom had reconciled himself to not going back to Glasgow, not anyway until next spring, and had written Dougal to that effect and asked him to explain to the master how he was placed. Any other decision was impossible, and though he could see his mother was sometimes a little mournful about it, yet he could also see she was glad to have him, particularly as he himself put as cheerful an air as he could on the business.
And some of the lads of the village, and even one or two of the young farm hands from the Glen, came in the evening to help. This was a neighbourly thing to do in the circumstances, but always, in the country, for young men to give a fellow a hand was not work, it was a sort of pleasure. One did not need to do it, so the doing held a light-hearted virtue. If there was any fun going, here was the time for it! An odd but undoubtedly true thing: that in such circumstances it actually gave greater pleasure to help one’s neighbour than to help oneself. The same in peat-cutting and other half-communal tasks. Let a man look back into the crofting days of his youth, before the petrol pump came, and check his memories. The neighbourly outing for peat-cutting had all the preparations, the expectant atmosphere, of a picnic. That was, Ο Tim, a fact!
Natural enough, too, when one thought of the variety and interest, the meeting of friends in a common task, a common need, the flash and clash of personalities, and – no profits! Shades of Robert Owen!
And these lads who helped, how they pumped him about Glasgow! How eager they were to hear stories – especially about whores! Their eyes would glisten with wonder, their faces smile, half-embarrassed, as they looked away or studied the small hole a kicking heel made in the turf. Do you tell me that? A shake of the head from Andie, an older hand.
God bless me! Boys, we’re fairly missing our time here. What! They all laughed. Sometimes they laughed until their sides ached, throwing suggestions at Andie, whose face worked in a wry humour. And us slaving here to get a few stooks in! Andie shook his head and looked from one to the other. It must be a terrible place, Glasgow, yes, it was not a place he would like to be in on a dark night. Why, wouldn’t you know what to do? I would have no idea whatever, answered Andie, his eyes gleaming.
It’s sometimes not so easy as it looks, said Tom. And a fellow can get a bit of a shock many a time. He described his visit to Dose, as an example, and gave them Dose’s parting oracle. They laughed at that until they could hardly stop. Hang it, it made a fellow weak laughing. So there Tom was going along the street, a dark-glooming street with no-one about, for it was fairly late, just as if he was going along the Glen road to Taruv, when a woman spoke to him. A young woman, slim and light on her feet, with a quiet clear voice. He stopped, of course – until he heard what she said and knew it was no woman on the Glen road to Taruv. What did she say? Oh, something like Hullo, dearie. He knew what it meant all right, so he
turned and walked on. She thought this an invitation – and followed. So there he was and it was no joking matter. The dark lane – and he took to his heels. To your heels? said Andie, his eyes glinting and searching into Tom’s. Yes, said Tom, to my heels. To your heels? repeated Andie and he looked at Tom’s heels and shook his head in wonder at the strange uses to which heels could be put.
It was as good as a play and better, with the autumn air crisp about the stooks in the field and the darkness falling. It had been exceptionally good harvest weather and on the whole he had enjoyed the work. After the first week, when his body had got all muscle-bound, he experienced, for the first time in his life consciously, a rare sense of physical well-being. The morning air had a tingling fragrance and sweetness that came into mouth and nostrils like a cool invisible drink. The involuntary shiver in the frosted air made the body itself feel light and cool against its clothes. The eyes travelled over hill and glen and sky, saw it was going to be a good day again, and came back to the standing corn waiting to be cut. It wasn’t a bad thing to be astir at that hour, preparing to cut your own corn. Necessity did make a difference. Assisting your father at work you didn’t like was a slow silent rebellious business. But here, in the morning, all by yourself, before your mother milked, and fed the hens, and tidied the house, and fed and cleaned your father, and came at last to bind the corn you had cut, here in the fresh of the dry morning with responsibility and mastery in the order of your going, with a done father stretched on his bed and a dependent mother, here with a scythe that you knew how to keep an edge on – keep an edge on your scythe and you’re laughing, said Andie – here in the cool morning it wasn’t too bad, taking one thing with another. Your body was too light to keep going long at a time, but at each pause you wandered back and picked up the whetstone, and wiped the blade with a wisp, and rhythmically stroked the blade, until the ball of your thumb with a careful touch made you nod. That intimate feel of the perfect edge was, amid the broad heavy work, a moment’s delicate pleasure.
Young fellows have to meet somewhere at night, and Tom’s croft, situated both at the end of the village and the beginning of the Glen, could not have been more conveniently placed. They were not overlooked here nor overheard. And it was remarkable how the young men got to know about Tom. His stories circulated among them, with much embellishment. They were stories to them of marvel, of forbidden places, of sins that made them smile in a constrained way. They were eager to hear more and came – casually, with their reticent country faces, slow responsible youths, holding their own, not blatantly butting in, asking after his father, discussing the weather, waiting with no sense of time, until someone like Andie came along and talk opened of itself and their bodies warmed.
Some of them were loud-mouthed, some merry, some quiet and watchful, but in all of them was a sense of the marvelous, of a pagan forbidden country, of divination and second sight and ghosts, of a door behind them that might open. They kept that door shut. In company they laughed at what might be behind it, referring to this weird story or that as ‘just a yarn’. They loved laughter more than anything. For a good laugh they would go far enough. Laughter was the one thing they could let through the door, however solemn and earnest the holy might be. To come amongst themselves, to open the door and let laughter out, laughter at such things as Tom told them, and not be overheard, that was something to remember in the solemn dry hours. It was indeed. The secret thought of it made you laugh, inwardly.
The grain was stacked. The nights darkened. His father began to get up for an hour or two in the afternoon. The minister visited the house occasionally and talked and prayed. When Tom saw his tall dark figure and grey beard coming, he was careful to dodge out of sight. The possible visit by the minister exercised his mother strongly. By the afternoon, she had the kitchen very tidy, ashes removed, the black-leaded iron of the fireplace shining, the bed smooth and without crease, in clean pillow slip and bright quilted counterpane. A hush came into her voice when she spoke of the minister.
Other visitors came of an afternoon, mostly neighbour women; but sometimes a man from the Heights, visiting the village or perhaps even the distant town, would drop in to see how Adam Mathieson, now that his trouble had come upon him, was bearing up. Many knew Adam and referred to him sometimes as ‘the carter’, for at one time he had done a regular business as a carter between the town and the village, and, right up until his illness, had frequently been on the road, carting coal or other heavy goods to a given order. Never without a good draught horse, he would plough a widow’s land and help put down her crop at a rate of payment that was always reasonable and now and then amounted to no more than a dismissive wave of the hand: ‘It’s all right, mistress. We’ll say nothing about it this time.’ Many old creatures blessed him, and when one of them came into the kitchen and sat with his wife, Maria, she would recall the good deed done to her, and shake her head with mournful gladness, and together they would talk of Adam as of one in a former age, of one long dead. And then the visitor would say, ‘Isn’t it fine that you are going to have him spared to you, with God’s will, for many a long day yet?’ And they would smile pleasantly together and with little courtesies of manner, for they were dressed for such an occasion and let nothing amiss touch its decencies.
When Maria saw her visitor off, she would come down towards the byre looking for Adam. But she need not have feared that she would find him working. He would be sitting on the boulder that though built into also projected from the lower gable wall, looking across at the shoulder of the hill with its bushes and sheep and occasional passing of the shepherd.
‘Haven’t I told you that stone’s too cold for you? You should have something under you.’
Adam did not remove his eyes from the hill as he answered calmly, ‘It doesn’t matter, woman.’
He had never been a talkative man, but in former days his silence had been quite natural and was often enough encountered among crofting men who had to do much of their work alone. Speech when it came out of such silence could be gracious, have something friendly or informative in it, and when directed towards the past could bring into the present a certain meaning and warmth. Often Tom had heard him talk loudly enough with other men, and laugh, for he could take a dram when it was going and had his own humour.
Now his silence had a new element in it, withdrawn from ordinary working life. For long spells he would sit quite still with his eyes staring so fixedly at something near or far that obviously they were not seeing it.
Maria soon got used to this, though sometimes Tom caught her looking at her husband with a stare of her own. A woman could at times look at a man in a searching, hidden, but utterly objective way as if the man were a stranger, a kind of unique stranger whom she apprehended in this suspension of thought, this involuntary concentration of an inner faculty. Maria would turn away and leave him taking his rest.
Could she have so looked and turned away had it been death that was sitting with him? Yes. But it was not death, and this she divined, as Tom knew.
The figure that sat in his breast was not death but death’s neighbour. And it said to him, You cannot do this, you cannot do that, because if you do it’s death. Thus the desire itself to do anything was taken out of him. He moved slowly, carefully, went in to look at the horse if Tom was not working him, stood and looked at Tom from the gable-end if he was, looked at the two cows and the stirks, saw how things were here and there, sat down, and fell into his staring reverie, that may have had some thought or movement in it, or more likely had not.
Then he caught a chill and his wife blamed the cold boulder at the gable-end and made him stay in bed.
On the Sunday his wife said she would not go to church but would stay with him and Tom could go alone.
‘You will go to church,’ he said. ‘There is no need to stay with me.’
His voice was so level, austere, that it turned all possible objection into silence.
Tom did not mind much going to church with his mot
her. He would not have cared to go alone, but escorting his mother was a natural thing to do.
That was one blessed faculty that life had given him. Many a fellow in his position would have felt that he should have stood up for his new convictions and not have gone to church. Tom never felt like that, nor was he made in any way miserable by the thought of his own weakness. The thought of weakness or self-betrayal could not quite touch him. He was too evasive for it. When it tried, he could smile at it, avoid its solemn touch. Always there had been an untouchable core in him in such matters. Truly something to be thankful for, as for the invisible wind that played among the bushes, carrying a scent here, a bee there, in this strange life-business.
Not but that he had his own secret taboos and practices. When it came to the singing of a psalm he did not join in. That would be to take part – so he hadn’t much of a singing voice!
Thus he could listen to the singing and be moved by its slow surges. It rose like a wave gathering way, many of the voices dragging a little behind the crest high-flung by the precentor. But these voices needed time for the swell, for the fall, and particularly, with a long breath spent, for the dead period in which the waters of song gather again.
His mother’s voice had a curious effect upon him. He could hear it beside him, close upon his right ear, isolated from, while merging into, the great surge. Sometimes it gave him a twinge of discomfort, so queer the sound she made, a drawn-out hee sound behind her nostrils, pushing upward against the limit of utterance, almost an animal sound that was yet a tribal sound, going back into primeval time, before song as an individual, cultivated art emerged. It would have been ludicrous, but for a strange ultimate power in it; and even while outwardly it repelled him, so that he would not have liked anyone, listening, to have heard her, yet here, where her voice was lost, except to his ear, in the community of singing, it discovered in him, beneath his superficial reactions, a deeper movement of intimacy, of fondness, towards her, and discovered at the same time within him a sensation of far-reaching tolerance that had an element of lightness in it, of personal freedom, pleasant as a bright memory in an outside world, in a distant place.