The Man Who Wanted to Smell Books

by Elspeth Davie

  One Saturday afternoon she took the bus right out into the country to an old farmhouse where they had been a couple of months ago. It stood well back from the road amongst low, gorse-covered hills, and winding through these were deep paths where you could walk for miles in a wide circle, eventually coming out again near the house. Mrs MacLean decided to take her walk after tea. There was nobody in the place but her spirits were rather higher than usual. She ate haddocks in egg sauce, pancakes, scones and plum jam and as she ate she talked on and off to the friendly girl who served it. She even managed to bring in a reference to a great friend of hers who was unable to eat egg in any shape or form, and for a while they discussed the peculiarities of people and their eating habits. Then she set off for her walk.

  It was one of the last warm days of the year – so warm that after half an hour or so she had to remove her coat, and a mile further on uphill she was glad to lean on a gate and look down to where, far off, she could just see the line of the Crags and Arthur’s Seat with the blue haze of the city beneath. Near at hand the weeds of the fields and ditches were a bright yellow, yet creamed here and there in the hollows with low swathes of ground-mist. But something jerked her from her trance. She realized with a shock that she was not the only person enjoying the surroundings. Unseen, yet close to her behind the hedge, there were human rustlings and murmurings. She bent further over the gate and craned her head sideways to look. Seated on a tartan rug which came from the back of her own drawing-room sofa was Harry Veitch, his arm round the waist of a young woman whose hair was yellow as egg yolk. Their legs lay together, the toes of their shoes pointed towards one another, and Mrs MacLean noted that under a dusting of seeds and straws Veitch’s shoes still bore traces of the very shine she had put there the night before. For a few seconds longer she stood staring. From the distance of a field or two away it would have seemed to any onlooker that these three persons were peacefully enjoying the last moments of an idyllic afternoon together. Then, Mrs MacLean suddenly lifted her hands from the top of the gate as though it had been electrically wired, turned swiftly and silently down the way she had come and made for the bus route back to the city.

  Sunday breakfast had always been a more prolonged affair than on other days, and the next morning Harry Veitch came downstairs late in green and white striped pyjamas under a maroon dressing-gown. He looked at ease, and on his forehead was a faint glow which was nothing more nor less than the beginning and end of a Scottish sunburn. For the weather had broken. Mrs MacLean greeted him, seated sideways at the table as usual to show that she had already eaten. But now Veitch was showing a strange hesitation in lowering himself into his seat. For some moments he seemed to find extraordinary difficulty in removing his gaze from the circumference of the plate before him, as though its rim were magnetic to the eyes which, try as they might to burst aside, were kept painfully riveted down dead on its centre. But at last, with tremendous effort, he managed to remove them. Casually, smiling, he looked round the room at curtains, pot-plant, firescreen, sideboard – greeting them first before he spoke. And when he spoke it was in an equable voice, polite and low-pitched.

  ‘Mrs MacLean, I can’t take egg. Sorry.’

  ‘Can’t take?’ There was a cold surprise in her voice. Veitch allowed himself one darting glance at the smooth boiled egg on his plate and another at the mottled oval of his landlady’s face, and again let his eyes roam easily about the room.

  ‘No, it’s an allergy,’ he said.

  Mrs MacLean now got up with the teapot in her hand and poured out a cup for her lodger. ‘I don’t quite catch your meaning, Mr Veitch,’ she said, coming round and standing with the spout cocked at his ear as though she would pour the brown brew into his skull.

  ‘An allergy, Mrs MacLean,’ said Veitch, speaking with the distinct enunciation and glassy gaze of one practising his vocabulary in a foreign tongue. ‘I have an allergy to egg.’

  ‘Do you mean you want special treatment here, Mr Veitch?’

  ‘Mrs MacLean, I am allergic to egg. Egg is poison to me. Deadly poison!’

  Mrs MacLean’s face was blank, her voice flat as she answered:

  ‘Then why should you stay here? In an egg-house.’

  ‘An egg-house!’ The vision of a monstrous six-compartment egg-box had flashed before Veitch’s eyes.

  ‘Yes, I love eggs,’ she replied simply. ‘Eggs are my favourite. I shall order two dozen eggs tomorrow. There will be eggs, fresh eggs, for breakfast, for lunch, for supper. Did you know there are ways of drinking eggs? One can even break an egg into the soup for extra nourishment. I have books crammed with recipes specifically for the egg. There are a thousand and one ways …’

  ‘Poison!’ cried Harry Veitch on a fainter note.

  ‘Yes, indeed … if you stay. A thousand and one ways …’ she agreed. And for a start – with the expression of an irate conjurer – she produced a second boiled egg out of a bowl and nimbly bowled it across the table towards her shrinking lodger.

  The High Tide Talker

  ‘I’VE NOTHING TO take me back! I could stay for hours if I wanted to, or if the weather was anything. All the same, once he starts to talk it’s likely to be the same thing as yesterday and the day before.’ The woman at the first drops of rain had pushed through to the front of the crowd and now stood close to the balustrade of the promenade, looking down onto the beach. ‘You wouldn’t call him a good-looker, would you?’ she said to the young man beside her. ‘But then, he doesn’t need to be. Look at his background. Waves and clouds and ships, and sometimes even a sail or two. And no surprise to me if he got a whale spouting before he’s through with the place. That’s the kind he is. He’s lucky. You can say anything as long as the setting’s right. Now if there were brass rails and a pulpit round him or maybe an ugly black cloth behind – would you have stopped to hear?’ The young man said nothing. ‘Or come to that – if he’d black boots on instead of bare feet – would anyone look twice?’ Watson, the young man, kept his eyes fixed on the beach. A man on his other side spoke across him to the woman: ‘But have you thought of the snags of open-air talking? Gulls can tear the words to bits. Waves can gulp them up. And now he’s got the weather to contend with.’ But the big, warm splashes of summer rain had come to nothing. The woman who had stepped aside with her umbrella half-open, closed it again. ‘Will you come often?’ she asked. Watson muttered something and shook his head. But whenever possible these last ten days, he’d been here. He would come tomorrow if he could get away, and the next day and for every day after that, as long as the man below had breath to talk.

  The man on the beach was called Carruthers. He was a large man, tall and burly, wearing today a blue cotton jacket and striped grey and brown trousers rolled up at the ankles. On warmer days his shirts were brilliantly flowered and checked, and always, whether it was warm or cool, he had on a large tropic-style straw hat, red-banded, and cut into fronds round the brim’s edge. His head when he removed the hat was square and strong with stiff, straw-coloured hair which showed grey at the roots as the wind lifted it. Sometimes he would swing his arms up as he talked and his eyes would follow the green glint of a ring on his finger as it stabbed the air. Very often there was this contrast between the movements of his body and the watchful person who studied himself with interest or listened attentively to the ups and downs of his own voice. He was not always shouting. He would begin every afternoon or evening when the tide was still a good way out and all was quiet on the shore. Each time he would be cut short in full swing by the crash of waves as the tide came up. There was a beginning but never an end to his harangue.

  This evening there were not many left on the shore. A few children who had been splashing about in pools far down on the rocks were slowly beginning to move up the beach, but they could still be clearly heard against the soft, rhythmic splashing of the advancing sea. As usual Carruthers began quietly. He hardly needed to raise his voice. It was more like a casual, one-sided conversation as he looked up, s
miling, to the group gathered above him on the promenade.

  ‘You’re enjoying your holiday, I hope, as much as I’m enjoying mine. You seem to be enjoying it. I look up and think: “They haven’t a care in the world, that lot”, and you look down at me and think: “Look at him. He’s strong. He’s in good health, isn’t he? He’s lucky. He’s not the worrying kind.” But, friends, that’s not so. We’ve all got our worries. Maybe we feel good now. It’s still day. But what about the night? It’s still fair – but what about the storm? You can still hear birds and children and the cars going along up there on the road. But come down here at midnight as I do sometimes – no, no, not often I admit – but when the tide’s full in and it’s black, I’m not thinking day thoughts then. I’m thinking night thoughts. They’re different, aren’t they? I have them and you have them too, even if it’s only for two minutes as you’re turning over in bed, or just for the time it takes to get to the kitchen and back for a drink of water. But that’s enough. It’s plenty of time for one or two night thoughts – and heaven help us all, you may say, if we give ourselves much longer than that! All right then. What are these thoughts?’ Carruthers drew his hands out of his pockets and the casual air was gone in a flash. His voice dropped. ‘We’re alone. That’s the first thing that comes to mind. But utterly alone. Oh yes, you’ve got your families. You’ve got your friends. So have I. Maybe you’re lucky enough to have a best friend who comes running when you’re in real trouble. But there’s some trouble no one can help with. We’ve all got to die one day and who’s to help us then? It doesn’t matter if a bishop holds your hand. It doesn’t matter if a cardinal’s your brother …’

  ‘This is where he loses me,’ said the woman with the umbrella. ‘If I’ve got to strain my ears it had better be cheery. I never stay for the death bit – not in films, not even in books – certainly not on my holiday.’ She moved off, pausing further along at a red collection box fixed to the balustrade and inscribed simply with the two words: FOR LIGHT painted in bold white letters.

  The man on the beach spoke on for another twenty minutes at least, before he had to start gradually raising his voice above the tide. During that time he varied his performance. Sometimes he waited while a few more joined the group and he drew in the uncertain ones with extravagant, knee-bending beckonings, as though scooping them up from outer space towards his chest. Or he would turn and watch while a gang of jeering rowdies went by below him on the sand. Then he would make as though to sweep up after them by running and driving the sand before him with an invisible broom, brandishing it in the air and finally hurling it after them. When there was nothing better to do he stopped and studied himself from head to foot with interest. Without a word he would move to the promenade wall, roll up a sleeve or a trouser-leg and unbutton his shirt down to the waist. Pointing, twisting, giving himself a pinch or a slap or two, he’d show them the odd scar, a brown burn-mark, a blue bruise here and there. They were nothing at all. Most of his audience had far better marks themselves. Nevertheless the pointing and the pinching got them. They stared, fascinated, over one another’s shoulders.

  Not so far down the beach the tops of the first line of sandcastles were dissolving, their deep moats swirling. Just above them was a deep ledge of pebbles and as soon as the sea touched this the sound seemed to increase ten-fold. Carruthers was not speaking against a mere rise and fall of water but against a grinding rattle of stones growing steadily stronger as the waves drove up into their midst. He looked behind him once or twice to measure his distance. The tide was coming in fast.

  ‘But we’ve got to die the same as we’ve got to live!’ he called up, circling his mouth with his hands. ‘And who or what’s to help us? It’s a fearsome thought all right. But we can escape that fear!’ Again Carruthers looked behind and gestured to the sea. ‘For instance, you may wonder how I’ll escape a wetting if that tide comes in too fast. There are no steps at this bit. But I’ve got a way up. Not everyone knows about it but I know it’s there so I don’t worry. We’re all going to need an escape, friends. Not for the body, but for the soul. But where will we find this escape? How will we make sure of it?’ Carruthers waited for a long time examining the blank wall in front of him. He was not forced to answer. There was a roaring behind and a huge wave came lashing up yards further than the rest and broke over the top of the promenade. Spray covered the group right to the back line. In a moment they were gone. The preacher himself had disappeared along the wall to his secret escape route. Watson was carried off with the rest.

  He was carried off with the rest, but as soon as he was free of the group he slowed down. He was no holiday-maker. He had the resident’s half-scorn for the September crowd, while at the same time working all out to meet its appetite. The place where he worked was the best butcher shop in town – one which for half a century had supplied the ever-increasing demand of hotels and boarding-houses in the district. It was a large establishment, stretching far back to where the loaded tables stood, their white, scrubbed wood sagging in voluptuous waves under decades of chopping. But the meat had its class and blood distinctions. In the forefront of the shop the better cuts were arranged on frills of paper and thick backgrounds of artificial parsley. Sheets of tissue, fine as chiffon, divided ribs from kidneys, kidneys from livers, livers from tongues, and double thick parcelling made certain that no drop of blood was ever seen in the place. On the other hand the necklets of pink and cream sausages which filled the platters on either side of the counter were treated with a certain disdain. The butchers whipped them up on the points of their knives and held them in the air, waiting impatiently to slit the chain while the customer pondered his order. The main distinction of the place was that unlike other butcher shops whole animals were in evidence. On trestles in an inner room lay sheep, legs stiff in air, while on certain mornings great pink pigs, rippling with wrinkles, were swung head downward from van to shop, their smooth, debristled ears veined with scarlet like leaves of flesh. The pigs were met and escorted in by men in white coats and hats. Such sights as these gave the shop its standing. It was also, for those inside, a viewing point, standing as it did at a busy corner, with its long windows facing out on all sides. Watson had a mixture of pride and hatred for the place. All during the last fortnight he had thought about Carruthers. He had kept a look out for him as he chopped and sawed and knotted. Occasionally he caught a glimpse of him between the hooks of swinging joints, tramping past, head down, alone – and once he followed him for a bit on his way to the beach.

  It was difficult to follow Carruthers. His message depended on the sea. Without some knowledge of tides it was easy to miss him. There was even a rumour that he would be gone in a week. But early or late and as often as his work allowed Watson was on the promenade. He was not put off by repeat performances, nor that the final message or answer was always terminated by the tide. To Watson repetition was part of the attraction. What was left unsaid might one day give him his opening. ‘Which way should we look for help?’ Carruthers kept yelling before the waves crashed. ‘Is it here?’ – thumping his stomach, ‘or out there? Is there anything behind the dust and stars? Any power or reason there? Is this possible?’ Watson silently noted the questions and came back for more. He was there to catch Carruthers’ eye if need be, to stay hidden or to stand out. All he asked was to be recognized as a follower. There was as yet no sign of recognition.

  On Saturday Watson had a free afternoon and as soon as possible he set off for the promenade. But long before he reached it a heavy shower had started and as he approached he met Carruthers’ crowd already making for the nearby cafés or hurrying back for entertainment at the town’s centre. One or two were still looking expectantly over the balustrade but Carruthers had not waited till they disappeared. He was sitting with his back to the shelter of the wall drawing a pair of rubber boots over thick white socks. His straw hat, protected by a sheet of newspaper, and a light knapsack lay beside him. Watson stood at a distance watching closely until the ra
in let up a bit, until he saw the man below stand up and put on his hat, button the collar of his jacket and slowly start off along the beach – going eastward to where the distant cliffs began. Only when Carruthers was already some way in front did Watson follow him.

  The tide was still fairly far out and it was quiet on the shore. As they walked further and further along, the sand became smoother and deeper. The castles and trenches, the huge, spade-written letters, the stone circles and shell heaps gradually became sparse until at last – far out – they passed one solitary sandpile stuck round with gulls’ feathers. It was a lonely fort, defended by a complex system of walls and ditches, yet doomed like all the rest. Carruthers turned his head and gave it a sidelong look as he passed. Behind him Watson plodded on looking neither to right nor left. The footsteps he followed were sunk deep and widely spaced and sometimes he sank his own feet into them. He was disappointed with the boots. He would have preferred to follow bare feet. But as he went on he became reconciled to them. He thought of all the people who had ever followed behind – who had trekked for years after explorers, hacked their way westward, plodded north into ice on the heels of pioneers. He thought of soldiers following leaders, and of all the people beckoned on by guns and torches, crosses and flaming swords. He thought of the single, lonely followers who accompanied hermits at a distance, seconds-in-command who took over from generals, and the patient understudies who stood in at a moment’s notice for actors and preachers, taking on fans and followers and paying off the hangers-on. Sometimes Watson stood still and looked back to the complex trail of double footsteps behind, and forward to the single track he followed. And he thought of the appalling complexities and conflicts of followers compared to the single dedication of leaders.