From All Angus (Angus Writers' Circle Anthology 2015)

by Angus Writers

flower beds and the pedlar selling cutlery near the arched entrance to old Jerusalem. Suddenly dim under the echoing portals, the teeming alley was lined with booths where earnest-faced moneychangers with mobile phones checked the currency rates in New York and Tokyo. Some things never change, Angus told himself.

  There were armed Palestinian police on the Via Dolorosa. When he had been here before with Janet, it had been Israeli army patrols. The dust and noise and spicy cooking smells made it so easy to picture another time, when Roman soldiers had used their spear butts to clear a path through the Passover pilgrims for three condemned men carrying crosses.

  A surge of grief hit him again. Angus remembered that last visit to Janet’s grave overlooking the Sound of Jura. They had been going to return here to Jerusalem for their fiftieth anniversary, but the specialist in Glasgow said she must have the operation. Janet had only lived a few weeks after coming home from the hospital.

  Everyone said the first year was the worst. Once that was over, it had occurred to Angus that he could still go to the Holy Land on his own. She would have wanted that. His son and daughter-in-law thought it was daft, of course, but they could be left to look after the farm for a bit. They might even get young Lynn to help, now that she was home for the school holidays.

  After a while, he found himself at King David’s tomb. It had meant a lot to him, last time, when he and Janet had stood with the church group and sang the 23rd Psalm to the tune Crimond. Angus could understand a lot more about the words than most people as he was used to working with sheep, and had chuckled to himself at the sentimentality of some of the Glasgow minister’s illustrations. Sheep were foolish creatures, but you couldn’t help liking them. He supposed that was how God felt about people. Angus wiped a tear from his eye.

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

  Yet will I fear none ill:

  For Thou art with me; and Thy rod

  And staff me comfort still.”

  From King David’s Tomb, Angus climbed wearily and alone, pulling himself up by the handrail on the stone staircase to the Upper Room. A church-like barn of a place, it wasn’t how he pictured the Last Supper. Peter, Andrew and the other disciples would have sat around the table with Jesus in a cosy family room, not in this echoing vault that looked like a memorial chapel. There he went again, talking to himself. People were staring. He must pull himself together.

  The other day, the group he was travelling with had been taken to Bethlehem. Manger Square had been mobbed. Parking the coach had been impossible. It took ages to get into the Church of the Nativity. Over the shoulder of a weeping Greek Orthodox woman, he did manage to catch a glimpse of the metal star on the floor of the grotto, said to mark the exact spot where Jesus had been born. The smell of incense and the sweating crowd in that confined space began to get to him. On the way out, he’d put one of the little pills under his tongue. Just in case.

  Angus was glad he’d decided to miss out on today’s trip to Bethany and Jericho. After all, he was a bit old now for swimming in the Dead Sea. He remembered Janet laughing as she sat up in the water and tried to read a magazine. There were Roman columns in the sea – or was that at Caesarea? Oh yes, they’d gone there as well, on one of the optional outings. He hadn’t been keen, but Janet wanted to swim in the Mediterranean – she was a good swimmer, was Janet – then it was on up the coast to Haifa and Acre. It was all a bit of a jumble now: a Roman theatre, Crusader fortifications, bottles of holy water for sale, a sign which read Holly Land Bazaar. At home, people always said Christmas was becoming more and more commercialised! Angus shook his head. He must take it all at a steadier pace this time.

  After another visit to the Temple Area, with its view over the cemeteries in the valley towards the Mount of Olives, Angus was glad to find a seat in a kind of cloister area. Ah, he remembered it now: Janet had been really excited, picturing Jesus teaching the crowds here. It was a nice shady spot. Better to rest for a while.

  Angus was walking hand in hand with Janet along the shore of Loch Tarbert. She loved it there. They went there many times when courting, on those balmy spring days when the fragrance of wild flowers mingled with the salt tang of the sea. They’d gone there again before her operation. “Just one more time,” she had pleaded, “before....” It had been a tiring walk for her, back to his Land Rover, that day.

  He woke to a party of Italian tourists in the Temple Area. They smiled indulgently at him, then turned away to listen to their tour guide. It always got him unawares: the realisation that he was alone, even in a crowd.

  Angus looked at his watch. He’d have to miss out on some of the places he had hoped to see this afternoon. Nevertheless, there was one he must see again before he returned to the hotel. Another weary journey along the busy alleys of the Old City. Back through the Damascus Gate. A driver sounded his horn as Angus crossed the road towards the East Jerusalem bus station, beneath the skull-like rock called Gordon’s Calvary. Janet had thought the traffic spoiled the atmosphere of the place, but the Glasgow minister reminded them that Jesus had been crucified near a busy main road to make a public example of him.

  Angus pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat from his face. Not far to go now. Once he’d seen it, he could sit down for a while in the shade of the trees.

  He rounded the corner, where he joined the queue by the high wall and filed with them into the quiet garden. He sat on a bench to get his breath back, and to take in the beauty of the scene. It was a peaceful place, he mused, enjoying the sweet fragrance of the flowers and watching the other visitors as they took pictures of the smiling Arab gardener gently hoeing the weeds. Thinking Jesus was the gardener, Mary had said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him.”

  Angus smiled to himself. That young gardener must be one of the most photographed people in the world, he thought.

  Angus turned his attention to the narrow opening in the rock wall at the bottom end of the garden, and took in the significance of the broken stone in its carved channel by the entrance. He got up wearily from the bench, and followed the other visitors down the stone steps between the flower beds, breathing heavily as he rested his hand on the smooth rock face at the entrance to the tomb.

  At last, it was his turn to step inside. He was glad to get out of the oppressive heat, even so late in the afternoon. He leaned unsteadily against the iron railing as he stared at the empty ledge in the tiny chamber.

  “Are you all right?” asked an American lady, plucking at his elbow. Angus smiled, and turned to go. The sudden pain in his chest was unbearable. He clutched feverishly for his tablets, finding instead the envelope from the jeweller’s shop. What had he done with...?

  Hearing a commotion inside, the gardener ushered the anxious crowd of onlookers away from the entrance. “Let me through, please,” he said firmly, in his heavily-accented English.

  Inside, an old man lay crumpled on the floor. By his outstretched hand, some tourist trinkets and an empty envelope.

  The gardener addressed the crowd. “Is there a doctor?”

  “Here already,” said the American lady, kneeling by the body. She rose slowly to her feet, absently brushing her fingers across the stained knees of her trousers. “I tried to revive him, but....”

  They turned to look at the awed group of spectators huddled in the doorway. Above their heads, a painted sign read:

  He is not here, He is risen.

  ERIC YEAMAN: While I was preparing my presentation on the life of R M Ballantyne, I discovered that he wrote The Lighthouse, centred on the building and operation of the Bell Rock Lighthouse, off the coast of Angus. Wondering if there would be a market for a reworked version, I rewrote the first chapter. I rather liked it, but I wasn’t sure if there would be sufficiently wide interest to make it worth my while to attempt the whole book. So this little orphan remains. If you would like to read Ballantyne’s original story, Google ‘Gutenberg Ballantyne Lighthouse’.

  T
HE LIGHTHOUSE