by Neil M. Gunn
Donald twisted the handlebars, tore a small hole in the left knee of his trousers, and gave his leg and shoulder such a crack that he rolled in pain. ‘And I was nearly off!’ he moaned.
As he limped back to the shop, Tom agreed that another lesson was all he needed, for now he could mount and keep going without help. The handlebars were straightened. But the front wheel was slightly off the true. ‘That’s going to be a job,’ said Tom cheerfully. Donald made himself more comfortable and watched Tom at work.
He stayed for two hours, chatting away, telling Tom how lucky he was to have such an interesting place of his own. He put his threepence casually on the bench, dusted his clothes, found the small hole in his trousers again, and smiled ruefully. ‘Williamina is getting a bit cranky,’ he said. His dark eyes, lifting to the door, paused and glimmered, as if taken by a new and amusing thought. ‘Well, I’m off. I’ll be back the day after tomorrow. And oh, look here, if I went into town, next week or the week after, and stayed away the night, how would you? … I would be staying with a friend. I mean I wouldn’t be riding all through the night!’
‘Oh, we could fix that up, I think,’ answered Tom, smiling also.
‘That’s grand. Just to go there and come back in the morning – at the latest in the afternoon. We’ll see.’
‘Right,’ said Tom.
Tom stood facing the window, but when he saw Donald’s dark-clad slim figure going up to the road, he at once turned away, a wrench in his hand, and began looking about the shop as if he had mislaid something. Presently he was staring at the bicycle, upside down on its saddle and handlebars, and, going to the front wheel, he spun it. There was still the least suggestion of wobble. Trueing a wheel absolutely was a very delicate operation. He looked around for the wrench until he found it in his hand.
Two days later Donald appeared again. Tom went with him, and ran out beside the bicycle when Donald slowed down to dismount. After one or two awkward attempts, Donald succeeded in jumping off by the back step. ‘I have got it now!’ he cried, delighted with himself. He mounted, rode for a short distance, and got off again. Tom began to walk home. Donald flew past him at a great speed, letting out a cheer and ringing the bell.
When he came back to the shop with the bicycle he was sweating but still exhilarated. Then he felt between his legs. ‘That seat is made of iron!’
‘You’ll be a bit sore tomorrow,’ agreed Tom.
‘Never mind. No torn trousers this time!’ And he glanced, laughing, at the neatly darned rent.
‘Had Miss Williamina a few things to say?’
‘She didn’t get the chance,’ said Donald. Then he looked at Tom, his eyes glimmering with mirth, as if he might say something, but he didn’t. Tom seemed duller a bit today.
‘How’s your father?’ he asked.
‘Much as usual,’ answered Tom, pleasantly but quietly. Then he looked at Donald with a smile. ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to go. I have a job to do outside.’
‘Have you? Oh well … How long was I?’
‘Let’s call it half an hour,’ said Tom.
They went out together and Tom locked the door, acknowledged Donald’s farewell, and went down to the barn. He had nothing to do in the barn. Through the door he saw his father walking slowly past the byre towards the lower gable-end. He looked like a figure in a dream of an ancient and relentless world, a patriarch who spoke to the invisible God in waste and arid regions.
A dream of pity that had died and was no more. The vengeance of the Lord God.
Feeling that his father might come upon him, Tom left the barn and went back to the shop. Already his mother had come to the door, but Tom walked by in his usual way. Then he suddenly stopped. ‘I’ve got to go up the Glen,’ he said to his mother absently. ‘I’ll leave the key in the lock and if any of the lads come you could let them have the bicycles. It’ll be all right.’
He listened to her, and answered, and then went away.
It took him nearly two hours to climb and circle round the hills, but at last he got to the ridge at the back of the village from which he could see the manse. It was still a long way off and the outhouses obscured part of the back wall, but he could see and recognise anyone who left it for the village. Presently a young woman appeared going towards the manse. It was Janet. She was carrying a hand-basket and he lost sight of her just as she was entering at the back door.
Some time afterwards, Donald appeared round the gable of the house, passed the kitchen window and was lost in the outhouses. Half an hour later he reappeared, stood by the gable for a few minutes, and then went round to the front door.
It began to grow dark. She would have to prepare supper, wait until it was over, then wash up and leave things tidy for the night. When it was so dark that he could no longer be certain of any movement, he caught a figure against the pale gable-wall and knew it was Janet going home alone.
By the time he got back to the shop it was deserted. The key was not in the lock but he found it on the narrow ledge under the wooden eave. He locked the door behind him, but did not light the lamp. He was very tired now. After ten minutes he was on his way to the hollow. It was Friday night, a lucky night between them hitherto. He waited in the hollow for over an hour and then went along the hillside and carefully down to the henhouses. There was a light in the blinded kitchen window.
Presently voices arose at a back door twenty yards away. Tom crouched against the wall, his face hidden as a man went by with a dog. If the dog had discovered him and barked, the man, in the country fashion, would have investigated.
He stood looking at the lighted window. It had the blindness of his father’s face.
A dull heavy spite came down upon him. He could not go to the window. All at once, without making any conscious decision, against his will, he turned away and, without looking back, went up to the hillside and back to the shop.
God knows what it was had got hold of him so strongly. But he could not shake it off. Common sense told him not to give himself away. ‘I won’t give myself away,’ he answered. ‘You can trust me for that!’ Common sense told him not to take it in that bitter mood either. But already he was not listening.
On Sunday he saw Janet’s mother in church but not Janet herself. She would be busily cooking the Sunday dinner for the minister and for Donald, who was alone in the manse pew. Donald’s black hair rose from the white parting and was brushed over, smooth and trim and glistening, with a simple natural wave over the left temple. He had his father’s delicate straight nose. There was an underlash of colour in the skin, not the pallor of the student.
Janet’s absence was in some strange way a relief. It drained the church of a living quality, turned the worshippers to mindless beings who let the minister’s words pour over them as they stared in silence. Tom heard the words but their meaning was distant and the mindless hypnotic state caught him, so that he was lost for a time in a trance, then wandered beyond it into sad hill places he half knew where nothing moved and no-one came. Without change of mood, his mind came back and felt the worshippers about him, and he looked at the minister fixedly and his words had no meaning. The singing caught at a high supplicating terror, at sacrificial rites. From the wail of his mother’s voice his mind closed upon itself, smooth as wet stone.
Three nights thereafter he met Janet in the hollow.
‘I wondered if you would understand when I mentioned tomorrow night,’ she said gaily. She had cleverly introduced the words ‘tomorrow night’ in a chance meeting the previous evening on the Glen road with Tina and a few others. ‘I was longing to see you.’
‘Were you?’ His mind came out from its burrow to look upon the green earth.
‘Yes. Were you waiting for me on Friday?’
‘I was.’
She was silent for a moment. ‘I couldn’t come.’ Her voice was sombre, but quickly it came clear. ‘Never mind! Here we are. Let us forget about it.’ And then she added, ‘But you mustn’t be disappointed if I cannot come. It’s
not always easy for me.’
‘I know. But I cannot help it. And, dash it, I did miss you, Janet. I did really.’ And he caught hold of her.
She gave in to him, indeed for a moment as if a deep passion moved her, a new need of her body. She clung to him – then broke away from her own ardency, but lingeringly, with a hand that stroked his face. ‘Poor boy!’ she said.
He could not get enough of her, not nearly enough of her, and the dumb craving mood that was deep in him made him feel awkward and shy.
Her brightness, however, her spirit of gaiety was something he so loved that its presence renewed him. He could not destroy it out of any boorish craving to salve his own wounds and in no time she was telling him about her ‘situation’. She mimicked Williamina so well that Tom shook with mirth. And what a wealth of detail she had, of trivial happenings and sayings! She was not naturally a quick talker, but now her voice could race. And then there was the minister himself, quite different from what he was in the pulpit, talking in a pleasant sort of sing-song voice. He was really very kind and thoughtful in his own house. ‘You could not believe how nice he is.’ It was Williamina who ran everything and looked after the pennies. ‘Of course I only see them at meal times – except for Williamina. They never come into the kitchen.’
‘And you like it?’
‘Yes, it’s new. It’s a change from being at home. I like it fine,’ she said frankly, her voice already bubbling with some new memory.
And when, for the moment, she had exhausted her memories, she asked Tom about his own affairs.
Tom came to Donald’s learning to ride the bicycle. ‘He tore a small hole in his trousers. He was wondering who he would get to mend it!’
She was silent. ‘I know about that,’ she said.
‘Did you mend it?’
‘Did he say I did?’
‘Well, no – but I gathered as much.’ Keeping the amusement in his voice he had to ask again: ‘Did you?’
‘It was like this,’ she replied in a confidential voice. ‘He beckoned me into the front passage. He whispered that Williamina would be angry with him if he showed her what he had done. He pressed me to do it. So I did it, but I was in terror lest Williamina would find out. What else could I do? And they’re funny, too, in some ways. The minister himself is a bit frightened of Williamina about certain things. He raises his voice high as he comes near her door and cries, ‘William-eena, may I come in?’ The other night, just before I came away …’
She made no further reference to the mending and Tom was vaguely relieved, because he had felt mean, bringing it up. It had been the one thing his pride was not going to permit him to mention. But he was glad now he did, for Janet’s attitude was so natural that he understood it.
Their talk, however, was altogether so natural, so set them apart, that when Janet exclaimed that oh, she must run because she had said she was only going round to see Tina for a few minutes, and got to her feet, Tom could not break through to a more intimate mood.
At the corner of the field they said good-night. She responded again with an unexpectedly swift and strong warmth – and was gone.
Her presence remained with him as he went back along the hillside. Everything was all right. She was excited about her new job and that was only natural. There had been, too, an extra entrancement about her tonight, something that was hers alone. He had wanted to invade it and break it down and take it to himself. Because he hadn’t, he was feeling a little baffled. That was all. Selfishness.
He did not think of the hills and found himself presently in the shop, but he was too restless to settle down to anything.
She did not come on Friday.
He lived through the days in a curious poised state, his mind unable to think one way or the other, waiting, dumbly waiting.
Then one evening, as he locked the shop in the dusk and went up into the village with a few of the lads, he left them to inquire about some parcels he was expecting by the bus. When he had done this, he did not return to his companions, but walked on out of the village towards the manse. It was getting quite dark, but when he discerned two figures coming towards him, he at once swung off the road and through a field gate.
The figures stopped at a little distance, their voices low-pitched. ‘No, please!’ rose Janet’s voice with a pleading intensity, stopping her companion from doing something or coming farther. Donald laughed, restraining his voice.
Janet’s footsteps now came alone and quickly along the road and passed Tom, crouched behind the low hedge.
Tom sat there for a long time.
The following Friday, Donald in the late afternoon rode away to the town on one of Tom’s bicycles. That night Janet came to the hollow.
‘I’m not going to wait long,’ she said. ‘I’m frightened for my mother tonight.’ She seemed nervous and uncertain, but was determined to be gay, too, with much of her managing, practical air sensibly in evidence.
Tom had made up his mind to take their old relationship for granted, never by sign or word to insinuate or reproach. But it was difficult work, for everything in his body and mind urged him to insinuate and reproach. Words and intonations moved in him like serpents.
Suddenly she broke down and began to cry.
At once he was overwhelmed, and all the horrid stuff like venom was swept from inside him, and he took her in his arms, but did not speak to her because he could not trust his own throat. He blinked the tears out of his eyes. ‘Janet! Janet!’ And as he brought his face down he wiped his eyes against his sleeve so that she should not know how weak and moved he was. Janet, his own love.
‘It’s Mother,’ she said.
Yes, he knew. ‘It’s hard on you. I know.’
‘It wears you down.’
He comforted her tenderly and presently she was sitting wiping her eyes with her small handkerchief.
‘I had thought that – that – by me going to the manse, she would – she would – stop.’
Her design was a small revelation to him, so hopeful, so wise. She had always borne her burdens alone, with a brave, gay air. Anyone would think she was the most carefree girl in the whole district.
He knew that she was thinking now of nothing but her mother’s trouble. It was with them and around them. Nothing but that.
It remained with them when she smiled and said she was sorry for making a fool of herself; and with them when they went along the hillside. It bound them together and he said good-bye to her gently and stroked her hair. She almost broke down again, and pressed her forehead hard against his chest. It was her way of saying, ‘You are good to me’, as she had done before, but this time she did not say it. And she walked away soberly and quietly, like one overcome by the sadness in life which they both knew.
The following night, late, he came by the henhouse wall and listened at the window. He knew the mother’s voice and after a long time, when all was quiet, his finger-tips moved over the pane. She came. She did not speak, but resigned herself, her face in the hollow of his neck, like one given completely, caring no more.
She stirred. ‘Oh, I wish,’ she murmured, ‘I wish you –’
‘But I will, Janet; I will take you away,’ he murmured back, knowing he was completing the thought which had halted on her lips.
Slowly, sweetly, she rubbed her forehead on his shoulder and withdrew. And if somehow she withdrew, too, from her thought which he had spoken, it was with a smiling sadness in which there was strength and assurance for the future.
In that moment, in the dim light of a waning moon risen behind narrow bands of summer cloud, she stood there against the black opening of the door, his vision of love and beauty and all desire.
Quietly he went along the hillside, strangely chastened, in wonder, and to listen was to listen to the hillside, to know what the hillside said and to look at the moon.
She was waiting for him the following Friday, and her mood was now the old mood. This delighted him, because he had hatched a scheme in his mind. If dri
ven to it, he might have told her about it, but not otherwise.
Old Widow Macrae was on her death-bed. Neighbour women went in to see her every day. She was ninety-two and had no-one of her own to look after her. At long intervals a son in Canada sent her money. The cottage had been badly neglected and there was practically no land attached to it, so it was certainly not the kind of place there would be competition for. Tom could easily outbid any likely offerer. What a joy it would be to turn that cottage into a model dwelling, with front porch, back porch, and all! His job would still be exactly the same – to run his shop and work his father’s croft, and by the one stroke he would be freed from his father’s eternal presence! Janet’s mother was no distance away and Janet could look after her to her heart’s content!
Such ideas of marriage as may hitherto have floated through his head had not been definite, had referred rather to a future, not a distant future, but still an uncertain future in which he would have established himself. The glory was to come. Now, breaking upon him like something seen with the eyes, it was here. like a bird out of a legendary forest, out of a haunting dream, it was here in his workshop, flashing in magical colour, singing in the long moment when he was alone, his hands still.
What a fury of work was in his hands when the moment passed! And the plan was so simple, so complete and satisfying at every point, that it could not be countered. It had the perfect simplicity of the inevitable.
But he would not mention it to Janet. Girls were very superstitious about the simplest things, and to reveal a plan that hung on another person’s death, even the death of an old woman, might carry an air of ill omen. And he would yet have to deal with his own father.