Angel Harp: A Novel

by Michael Phillips

  “I will share with you one of mine,” he said at length. His tone was soft, thoughtful, and deeply personal. “I think my chief reluctance is fear,” he went on, “fear for what the Lord might ask me to give up, to sell, to lay down, in order to follow, fear that he might require of me something I cherish no less than the young ruler treasured his wealth. In my own case, I do not mean possessions. I cannot think of anything I own that I would be unwilling to letgo of. But what of other things of heart and mind? What if, likethe ruler, I do not want to part with the very thing standing in my way?

  “And why do I fear? He asks in love. ‘He loved him,’ Mark says. And he loves me as he asks if I, too, am willing… as he loves you when he asks if you are willing to obey the, Come, follow me.

  “There can be no fear in love. So why do I fear when it is only my good that he desires? This is the great struggle of humanity—one which, to its shame, Christianity has not adequately addressed—the realization that it is only our good that God desires. Everything he does is for our good, because the Father of Jesus is our good and loving Father.

  “Now clearly, you and I are here this morning in church because we have followed. We have come partway in answering the Lord’s summons. The rich young ruler, too, came partway. Mark says he ran up to Jesus and knelt before him.

  “But then comes the summons to follow all the way. And that the young ruler was unable to do.

  “What about us? Are we content to be halfway followers? Or, having come to him—as those of us here this morning have come—are we willing to follow all the way?

  “My friends, it is not usually the selling of our possessions he requires, but the giving of ourselves. You and I must therefore isolate our own invisible reluctances, our own encumbering possessions of heart. Because it may be one of these that keeps you or me from obeying the Lord’s timeless, Come, follow me. When he looks you deep in the eye, when he loves you, what is it that he will require of you, that you might follow?”

  With the words, When he looks you deep in the eye, my thoughts drifted away.

  Iain’s voice grew faint.

  Suddenly I could think of only the look Iain had given me the day before in the bistro. I knew it had been a look of love. Suddenly I realized that perhaps I had mistaken the reason for the look, the source of that love. Had he been looking at me with the look of Jesus to the rich young ruler, or the look of love between a man and a woman?

  For the first time, the thought crossed my mind that with Iain Barclay, perhaps the two were one and the same. For him, to love meant all that love could mean. For Iain Barclay, perhaps man’s love and God’s love could not be separated.

  I didn’t know what to do with a thought like that!

  Did it make Iain’s love—if it had indeed been love that I had seen in his eyes—greater, or less?

  Iain’s sermon was winding down. But my thoughts were spinning. I scarcely heard the rest of what he said.

  We rose for the final hymn. I knew as soon as it had concluded that Iain would say a final prayer then descend from the pulpit and walk down the center aisle to the door, where he would greet everyone as they left the church.

  I couldn’t face him like that.

  I couldn’t stand in line, knowing that he would probably see me, then wait till my turn came and I would shake his hand and mumble, “Nice sermon, Reverend,” along with everyone else.

  I turned and brushed past the people standing and singing, trying to smile and apologize as I inched by. Then I made for the door.

  Seconds later I was running back up the lane toward my car, wiping my eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Music on the Bin

  Haud the pen sae gracefu’ guidin’,

  Or across the violin glidin’,

  Tunefu’ harmony providin’

  That fills my soul wi’ joy for ever.

  —John MacLean, “Hee oro, Though We Maun Sever”

  What I needed to recover from the service was a good long tiring walk, and something to take my mind off the unexpected emotions I was facing. It wasn’t even noon when I got back home. I had the whole afternoon before me.

  I changed my clothes, gathered up a set of harp strings and a few other things in my backpack, and set out for the slopes of Crannoch Bin. No more emotions today! No Bible, no parables, no sermons, if anything just another talk about Scottish history or harps… whatever, just so long as I could keep my heart out of it.

  The walk did me good. How can you be out in the fresh air, smelling the fragrances of growth and life, the wind on your face, looking to the sea in the distance, the blue overhead with fleecy clouds drifting weightlessly through it, and not feel your spirits buoyed and invigorated?

  I reached Mr. Bain’s cottage but found him nowhere around. The door was ajar. I knocked and called out, but no answer came.

  For the first time I was aware of how still and quiet it was. How much different it was here than along the sea where the rhythm of the waves, even if you weren’t consciously thinking of it, was always in the background. Now, too, I realized that I had encountered no sheep as I made my way through the two grassy fields between the edge of the wood and the cottage. Every living creature had disappeared.

  I glanced about, then remembered the bell.

  I grabbed the little rope hanging from it and gave it a whack. The bell exploded with such a huge sound that it nearly knocked me over, shattering the peace of the hillside.

  Even as the metallic echoes were still dying away, in the distance I heard a dog bark. The baaing of a few sheep followed it.

  Four or five minutes later, the baaing increased and a minute after that I saw what must have been fifteen or twenty sheep running and skipping and waddling noisily toward me. Within no time I was surrounded by a crowd of dirty wool, nudging up to me, sniffing and baaing and bumping against my legs where I stood at the cottage door. Their shyness from the other day had completely disappeared. The bell must have worked some kind of magic. I reached out and ran my hand through their shaggy, oily, dirty wool coats. None of them seemed to mind.

  What a delight!

  Fifty yards away I now saw bearded Ranald Bain walking toward me, staff in hand, surrounded by another group of twenty or more sheep scampering about, with the two sheepdogs running alongside and in and out among them.

  “Hello, lassie!” he called as he approached. “Ye’ve made some new wee frien’s I see!”

  “Mr. Bain… hello! Why are they so friendly today all of a sudden?”

  “They heard the bell an’ are expectin’ a handout. Come tae the byre an’ gie them a wee snackie o’ oats.”

  I followed him to the pens and barn to one side of the cottage. A minute or two later I had a dozen sheep clustered about me fighting for the chance to nibble the oats out of my hand.

  “Ye’ve made them yer frien’s for life,” said Ranald. “They winna forget ye noo.”

  Leaving the sheep to a sprinkling of oats in several troughs, I followed Ranald Bain to the cottage.

  “I brought a set of strings for your harp,” I said. “Would you like me to try to restring it and see what we can do with it?”

  “Oh, aye! I been thinkin’ aboot naethin’ else since ye was here, haupin’ that maybe ye’d teach me tae play a wee.”

  “I would enjoy that,” I said. “First we have to see if your harp is strong enough after all these years to hold the tension of the strings. From what I saw the other day, I think it will, but you never know for certain until you begin to tune it. These strings are nylon and won’t put too much strain on it.”

  He led me inside and to the harp. I sat down and got out the strings and my tools.

  “Ye dinna mind gien I watch ye?”

  “Not at all.”

  I took out the old strings one at a time and replaced each with a new one before going on to the next. “You probably don’t still have the tuning key?” I asked.

  “There’s naethin’ but the harp that I ken o’.”
>
  “I might have one that will fit. Otherwise I will have to tune it carefully with a small wrench.”

  Ranald Bain watched in fascination as I progressed. After about an hour I was ready to begin tightening the strings, although keeping them several steps below pitch. The harp seemed to do fine. After getting it in approximate tune with itself, though the strings felt loose to my touch, I played a couple of simple tunes.

  Ranald’s face lit up at the sound. I thought he was going to cry!

  “Lassie, lassie,” he sighed, “sich soun’s haena been heard in this cottage for sae mony a year I forgot fit a lovely soun’ it is. I haena words tae thank ye.”

  I continued to play lightly some simple arpeggios. Quickly the strings began to stretch and drop in pitch. From what I had seen and felt, I was confident the harp would be able to stay in tune.

  “Why don’t you get your fiddle, Mr. Bain,” I said, “while I retune? Could you tune your strings down a bit to match the harp? I don’t want to tune it all the way up just yet.”

  He rose, then paused. “Gien we’re tae make music together,” he said, “which is one o’ the most intimate o’ joinin’ o’ the souls o’ men, ye maun call me Ranald. I dinna care muckle for the Mister. Gie me yer A.”

  I smiled and nodded.

  Twenty minutes later, with a lovely old threadbare and thumbworn book of old Scottish tunes leaning on a chair between us, Ranald Bain on his fiddle and I on his grandfather’s harp were playing through one old Scottish ballad after another. It was the most wonderful thing!

  “The auld wife an’ the auld mither still ken one anither a’ these lang years syne!” he said.

  Most of the tunes I had never heard of. But after Ranald ran through the tune once I could usually either add arpeggios to his melody, or I would play the melody and he would wander all over up and down with harmonies and counter melodies. We stopped every so often while I retuned and he would match the tuning with his own strings.

  He was a very accomplished violinist, or fiddler if you prefer. Every melody he played had that same unique Scottish flavor that so distinguishes the folk music of the Celts—melancholy and minor keys, a strange, repetitive, wild irregularity of rhythm that calls to mind the desolate, treeless, windy peaks and empty moors of the Highlands. Something about every tune was similar, yet so different from most other music.

  You can instantly recognize a Scottish folk song from a hymn, a classical piece, or a folk song from another country. What is that unique sound? I don’t even know. Perhaps it is the unique Scottish “snap” in the rhythm. Or is it that centuries ago they originated on the basis of different scales, or modes, altogether distinct from the classic western European music?

  It was haunting, sometimes almost primitive in its simplicity. Was it that most were originally sung in Gaelic to accompany various tasks in the fields or around the family home? I could never quite lay my finger on the basis of the uniqueness. But it was a music that moved me on a deeper level than any other. I suppose that is why I began playing the harp in the first place—the music of the harp drew me. Then the instrument drew me in its turn.

  So Ranald Bain and I played and played, and indeed it was, just as he said, as if the two instruments were being reunited after a long silence. They seemed to play themselves.

  Neither of us spoke. The music spoke for us. Words would have been a distraction, an interruption. Ranald turned page after page, played a portion of the tune until I began to pick it out on the strings of his auld mither, and then we played together until each song or ballad somehow came to a close of its own accord and we went on to the next. I remember playing “Charlie Is My Darling,” “Farewell to Lochaber,” “Far O’er Yon Hills,” “Hush Ye, My Bairnie,” “Robin Adair,” “My Ain Fireside,” “McGregor’s Gathering,” “Lochnagar,” “Wi’ a Hundred Pipers,” and so many others.

  How long we went on, I didn’t even know. When finally both instruments stilled and somehow we knew that the day’s music was at an end, I realized there were tears in my eyes. I drew in a deep breath.

  “It is a lovely instrument,” I said, looking at Ranald with a smile. “It has a wonderful sound.”

  “I had nae idea ye were sich a harpist, lassie.”

  “Nor I that you were such a violinist!”

  “I canna think fan I hae had sich a time! I haena played wi’ a harp in my life.”

  “The two instruments go together like they were made for one another.”

  “Ye’ll hae tae come again. Noo I’m anxious tae try my ain hand at the wee strings.”

  “Would you like to try it now?” I asked.

  “I dinna like tae spoil the memory o’ the music in the air,” replied Ranald. “But my fingers is itchin’ tae try. Maybe jist a wee pluck or twa.”

  I stood up and showed Ranald how to sit and where to place his hands. He didn’t pick it up as quickly as Gwendolyn had. But his knowledge of music was enough that he could distinguish the notes and could pick out a melody. Since his harp was now strung, I had the feeling the next time I saw him he would be playing tunes withease.

  When I returned down the hill to Port Scarnose, I felt good, as if I had accomplished something worthwhile that day. Yet by the middle of that night, the emotional upheaval from Saturday and Sunday had returned. Even making such wonderful music with white-bearded Ranald Bain couldn’t keep the swirl of conflicting thoughts at bay.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Along the Headlands

  The waves are dancing merrily, merrily,

  Ho ro Mhairi dhu, turn ye to me.

  The sea birds are wailing, wearily, wearily,

  Ho ro Mhairi dhu, turn ye to me.

  Hushed be thy moaning, lone bird of the sea,

  Thy home on the rocks is a shelter to thee.

  Thy home is the angry wave, mine but the lonely grave,

  Ho ro Mhairi dhu, turn ye to me.

  —“Turn Ye to Me”

  For the first time I began to question my decision to postpone my flight and rent the cottage in Port Scarnose. My life was suddenly getting a little too complicated. I hadn’t counted on a spiritual crisis and crisis of the heart at the same time.

  Actually I hadn’t officially admitted to either.

  But the warning clouds were on the horizon. There was no mistaking them.

  When you can’t go to sleep, when you wake up in the middle of the night thinking about… well, things… a man… God… that’s when life is getting too complicated!

  After the day in Aberdeen and “the look,” and my flurry of thoughts during Iain’s sermon on Sunday, and with lying awake until after midnight that night, the music in Ranald Bain’s cottage and Iain’s words from the pulpit intermingling like some otherworldly Scottish tune, by Monday I was beginning to think that maybe another road trip was in order.

  There were still dozens of places in Scotland I hadn’t seen. It would be good to get away and clear my head. Everybody talked about Edinburgh and Princes Street and the Royal Mile, maybe a visit to the Scottish capital, the jewel of Scotland, wasn’t such a bad idea.

  Before I had the chance to crystallize my plans, on Tuesday afternoon about one o’clock, I heard the doorbell. I knew it had to be either Iain or Mrs. Gauld. I wasn’t especially eager to see either of them. But I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t home. They both knew myrented car and could see well enough that it was next to the house.

  Slowly I went to the door and opened it. A gasp of astonishment escaped my lips. There sat the black BMW on the street. In front of me was neither Iain nor Mrs. Gauld.

  It was the duke himself… in person!

  “Mr., uh… Mr. Reidhaven!” I stammered. “I mean… Mr.Duke… that is, uh, I mean… Duke Reidhaven!”

  “Hello, Ms. Buchan,” he said, a slight smile on his lips at my discomposure. “I apologize for calling unexpectedly. I found myself thinking of the sea, and I realized it had been years since Iwalked along the headland. I wondered if you might like to accompany m
e.”

  Overwhelmed and still gaping, I babbled something I’ve forgotten, then went back inside to get my jacket and key and rejoined him. He led me away from the house and down the street in the direction of the Scar Nose. Among my babblings must have been something that we both construed as a yes to his invitation. As we passed the BMW I saw Nicholls sitting inside.

  Gradually I caught my breath and began to relax. Actually I felt a sense of relief. Okay, I thought, here it is out in the open. Everybody look! I don’t mind.

  I knew everyone was watching by now anyway. I had half a mind to lead the duke by Mrs. Gauld’s on our way.

  Let the rumors fly!

  It felt good to not hide it and to not think about Iain and church and God and “the look.” There was a certain safety being out with a duke. I felt no pressure or expectations. It was like walking, I don’t know, with my father or something. It had been that way at first with Iain. I’d felt safe because he was a minister. But then it had begun to get more complicated than I had anticipated.

  But this wasn’t complicated. Well… except for the fact that he was a duke, and a recluse who owned half the town and was the subject of a hundred weird rumors, and that I had been to the castle twice, and that I was teaching his daughter the harp and—

  All right, it was a little complicated!

  But not personally complicated in the same way things had suddenly become with Iain.

  We walked about halfway to the next street in silence. Again I was aware of the duke’s seeming uneasiness. For someone who had gone to the trouble to invite a comparative stranger out for a walk, he didn’t seem to be enjoying himself much.

  “Did you, uh, used to come to the sea a lot?” I finally asked.

  “Oh, yes,” he replied, almost eagerly. “As a boy, you couldn’t keep me from it. I grew up in the castle, you know. I loved the sea.”

  “Did you sail?”

  “Not much when I was young. My friend and I had a little dinghy. We used to take it out in the bay.”