The Pure Land

by Spence, Alan

  Robertson nodded, but there was something in his eyes, something unspoken.

  ‘What about Annie?’ he said at last, and Glover felt it in his guts.

  Annie.

  *

  His mother had to sit down when he told them about the letter. She tugged the hanky from the cuff of her blouse, dabbed her face with it, wafted the familiar scent of lavender.

  ‘Japan?’ she said, staring at him, unable to make sense, the word strange in her mouth, like a bad taste.

  Martha put a hand on her arm, said nothing.

  ‘It’s a bit far, is it no?’ said his father, then he took the letter, snapped the paper taut, perused it at arm’s length so he could focus. When he’d read it through, and through again, he cleared his throat, preparatory, intoned with Presbyterian gravitas, ‘Jardine Mathieson.’

  He gave the names weight, due deference, like books of the Old Testament.

  ‘They’re likely the biggest company in the world,’ said Glover.

  His father nodded. ‘They’d be paying you good money.’

  This was what mattered. Hard currency of the workplace. Prospects. Advancement. A job for life. His father had come as far as he could, worked his way up to his present position, Lieutenant in charge of the Coastguard Station.

  ‘With a start like this,’ said Glover, ‘there’s no limit.’

  ‘See the world,’ said his father, unconsciously glancing at the window, the sea beyond.

  ‘Make my fortune.’

  ‘Come back a man of substance. Settle down.’

  ‘But what if he doesn’t?’ said his mother, quiet and grim. ‘What if we never see him again?’

  There was silence a moment, a beat, the heavy tick of the clock in the room, memento mori, time passing.

  ‘Ach!’ said Glover, breaking it. ‘You’ll not be rid of me as easy as that!’

  ‘It’s no joke, Tom!’ said his mother. ‘They’re savages out there. They’re not civilised. Not Christian.’

  ‘The Lord takes care of His own,’ said his father, and he left another silence. ‘Perhaps the best thing might be to ask Him for His guidance.’

  He handed back the letter. The discussion was ended, for now. Glover nodded, said simply, ‘Aye.’

  *

  Out in the back garden he breathed deep the night air, tried to clear his head. This place was home, was all he knew. The solid stone house was tied to his father’s job. It was all achingly familiar but now, suddenly, strange. The garden sloped down, overlooked the mouth of the Don, where the river met the North Sea. The waves crashed in, rolled back, endless. The full moon hung in the sky still pale with that halflight, that never quite dark. Above the roar and hush of the sea the cry of an oystercatcher came sharp and clear, pierced him to the core. He heard a step on the gravel behind him, and Martha was standing there, taking it all in. They stood and watched the sea a while.

  ‘How soon would you be going?’ she said at last. ‘If you go.’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘A few weeks. Maybe a month.’

  ‘That’s awful soon,’ she said.

  ‘I know.’ He looked back at the house. The lamp was lit upstairs in his parents’ room.

  ‘Faither was funny,’ he said, and he copied his father’s gruff voice, his terse Northeast understatement. ‘It’s a bit far, is it no?’

  She laughed but it was halfhearted, in spite of herself. He could hear it, the catch in her voice. She didn’t feel like laughing.

  He looked up at the window, the lamplight wee and yellow in the gathering dim. ‘They’ll be talking about it maybe.’

  ‘Or not talking.’

  ‘Praying for my soul, more like.’

  ‘They mean well,’ she said. ‘They want what’s best for you. Och, we’ve always known we wouldn’t be able to keep you here, keep you here.’ She looked from the house, north along the grey coast, the harsh grudging landscape. ‘But to go so far, so very far away. That’s hard. And God, Tom, they’ll miss you. We all will. More than you know.’

  There was nothing he could say to that. The depth of emotion behind it was too great. Glib reassurance would be empty. An easy joke would be crass. There were no words adequate.

  No words. The screech of the seabirds. Relentlessness of the waves.

  She turned away, wrapped her shawl tighter about her. The moon had disappeared behind a bulk of cloud, turned the night a little darker, colder. She shivered, breathed hard. He heard her sniffle, try to stifle it, saw her wipe her face with her hand.

  ‘Something in my eye,’ she said.

  He took a white handkerchief from his pocket, handed it to her. ‘It’s clean, mind!’

  She sobbed out a laugh, through the tears. ‘I should hope so!’

  He waited, let her take her time. Her voice was calmer when she asked him, ‘Have you told Annie?’ And he felt it again, that twist in the pit of his stomach, gutting him.

  ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘I will.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When I’ve made up my mind.’

  ‘I thought you already had?’

  In her tone, in the way she asked, he heard the half hope that he might not go, even yet.

  ‘Almost,’ he said. ‘But there’s always the doubt, the not knowing.’

  ‘Aye,’ she said, quiet again, resigned. Then she looked full at him, her dark eyes wide. ‘The lassie cares for you.’

  For a moment he thought she was going to cry again, but she gathered herself. ‘Be kind, Tom. That’s all.’ She gave him back the handkerchief, held his hand a moment in both of hers. ‘I’ll away inside now. I’ll see you in the morning.’

  He watched her go, closed his fist round the hanky, still damp. Now he was the one dealing with the welter of emotion. Far out at sea a ship’s light flickered. The mass of cloud silvered at the edges and the moon slid out again, shone pure and clear and cold.

  *

  Back in the house, Martha had left the gas lamp lit for him, turned down low. The front room reeked of his father’s last pipe of the day, the thick black Bogie Roll he liked to smoke. The family Bible had been left out, conspicuous, on the scoured oak table in the middle of the room. Glover smiled. That was like the old man. Ask the Lord for His guidance.

  The book was old and worn, its cover boards warped, its pages musty from the damp. The page edges were gilt, beginning to fade with years of turning. He’d been amazed at that as a child. Holding a single thin page between finger and thumb, it was hard to see the sheen at all. But flick the pages, let them cascade, and they shimmered, glistered. Closed, the book was a solid block of gold, encased.

  He stood in front of it now, said quietly, ‘Lord, guide my hand.’ And he closed his eyes and opened the book, or let it fall open where it would. And he read. Deuteronomy Chapter 26.

  And it shall be, when thou art come in unto the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, and possessest it, and dwellest therein …

  Dear God, he knew this passage, read further down the page.

  And he hath brought us into this place, and hath given us this land, even a land that floweth with milk and honey.

  In spite of himself, he was shaken, took the words as a sign.

  *

  ‘A land of milk and honey?’ said Robertson next morning, looking up from behind his desk.

  ‘Well,’ said Glover, pacing the room, restless with the excitement of it all, ‘silk and tea!’

  On a bookcase in the corner was a globe of the world. He rotated it on its axis, found Japan. ‘There’s a fortune to be made, a whole world opening up.’

  Robertson shook his head. ‘Sometimes you worry me, Tom. Looking for signs and wonders.’

  ‘You don’t think we’re guided sometimes, led the way we’re meant to go?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Robertson. ‘But we can just as easily be misguided, misled.’

  ‘And for fear of that we’d do nothing? Christ, Andrew, sometimes you worry me! I mean, do you want to be still
sitting here, polishing that chair with your arse when you’re thirty? Or forty?’

  ‘There are worse jobs.’ Robertson’s tone was clipped, his top lip tight.

  ‘I just think sometimes you have to take a chance, grab your life by the scruff, say to hell with it!’ Glover spun the globe, blurred continents and oceans. Robertson gave him a thin, wan smile, across a great distance.

  *

  It was raining, a thin drizzle, a smirr. Like the haar it rendered everything grey. It wet the cobblestones, gave the streets a dull sheen. It deadened sounds, the rumble of cartwheels, the clop of hooves, a voice raised, the cry of a gull. Glover was walking home at the end of his day’s work, bareheaded, his jacket collar up, his mind empty, or so full it was numb.

  The summer, such as it was, was passing. Any day now his father, or some old wifie in the kirk, or one of the senior clerks at work, would grimly pronounce that the nights were fair drawing in, and take a miserable satisfaction in it.

  He walked by the docks and the shoreporter’s warehouse, stopped for a moment to watch the stevedores unload cargo in the rain, heaving crates, stacking them on the quay. A gaffer, a thickset terrier of a man with steam rising from his shoulders, shouted up at him, said he should get his arse down there, get his jacket off and do some real work instead of fucking gawping. One or two of the other workmen laughed, hard and humourless.

  Glover said nothing, turned away. He cut up the narrow lanes and wynds, the backstreets where the pubs and grog-shops were just opening, where the whores like the one he’d met would be out after dark, working a night shift in the unlit doorways and vennels.

  He kept his head down, walked on to Old Aberdeen, past the university to Bridge of Don. The bells of St Machar’s struck the hour, six o’clock, and for no good reason he was overcome by melancholy. He looked back towards the city. He had just walked the length of what was, for him, the known world. The rain fell harder. In the cold kirkyard an open grave awaited him; a granite tombstone was carved with his name.

  *

  He decided, once and for all; no more uncertainty, the matter was settled. He would go; he would sail to the East, make his way in the world. And the act of deciding, the fact of it, freed him. He was stepping into his life.

  His father nodded, said simply, ‘Aye.’ Then he filled his pipe, added, ‘What’s for you will not go by you.’

  His mother took in a quick sharp breath. Her eyes widened in momentary panic, then settled to the bleakness of acceptance. What would be would be.

  Martha looked at him with a calm, resigned sadness, her eyes deep dark pools he wouldn’t forget.

  Robertson’s look flickered between a kind of envy and a sly, relieved gladness, his thin mouth twitching in a nervy smile. He told him he was a mad bugger and wished him good luck, said he would need it.

  George peered at him over his spectacles, shook his hand firmly in his own bony claw, said he was sure he’d go far, be a credit to the firm. Then he looked out the window, said the nights would soon be drawing in.

  Annie was waiting for him at their trysting-place, Brig o’ Balgownie, where they’d met that evening, when they’d seen the heron and walked by the river, arm in arm to a quiet place he knew. Was it really only a few weeks ago? A couple of months? That was no time, no time at all. And yet. He couldn’t believe he felt so discomfited, so raw.

  She already knew, she said, her father had told her, and she’d wondered when he would be man enough to tell her himself.

  He’d only just decided, he said, that very day, and hadn’t wanted to trouble her until he was sure.

  That was most considerate of him, she said. It was good to know he was so sensitive of other people’s feelings.

  At that she turned away, stood with her back to him, and he saw her shoulders shake with the sobs she’d held in.

  ‘Aw Christ,’ he said. ‘Annie.’

  And he went to her, held her to him, kissed her neck, her hair, her mouth, and she kissed him back with a fierce need that made him want to die into her soft warmth. They walked to the quiet place, the long grass above the dunes, and lay down there, breathing hard, and he lifted her skirts and she undid his buttons, he pushed, clumsy, and with a shock, a sudden give, was in her, she gasped and he thrust till he felt it coursing through him and he pulled out and spurted, spent.

  He had done this before, in this same place, with a lassie from the docks, with another from Fittie; it had been quick and brisk and driven by drink; houghmagandie, a ride, a bit of a laugh. But this was Annie, somebody he knew and cared for. This was different.

  They lay a long time, clinging to each other, shaken by what had happened. It had been her first time; he knew that. He stroked her hair, tried to speak but had no words. Above them the sky was starting to darken. A peewit cried clear and shrill in the emptiness.

  ‘Ach, lass,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I let you,’ she said. ‘I wanted to. You’re going. We might never.’

  It was as if she were saying the words to herself, matter-of-fact, making sense, ticking off her reasons on a list. But when she sat up, straightened her clothes, she started to cry again, and he felt useless. He fumbled in his pocket for a hanky, handed it to her as he’d handed it to Martha; the same gesture but charged with so much more intensity. Annie took it from him, dabbed at her eyes. Then she reached down under her dress, wiped herself between the legs. He felt he shouldn’t be watching this, but couldn’t turn away.

  She looked him in the eye, held out the hanky to him, smeared with his seed, her blood.

  ‘Will you be wanting this back,’ she said, ‘or should I keep it to mind me of you?’

  She dropped the hanky between them on the sand, turned and made her way through the coarse grass. He caught up with her and they walked in silence to the end of her street where the gas lamps had just been lit. She said she’d walk the rest of the way by herself.

  *

  The preparations were made. He would sail to Southampton, then out via Cape Town to Calcutta and Hong Kong, spend time in Shanghai, cross from there to Nagasaki. The very names were a charm, an incantation, filled him with excitement and awe. Southampton, Cape Town, Calcutta. Jardine’s would pay for his passage, by steamship and schooner and clipper. The journey would take months, was further than most folk would travel in a lifetime. Hong Kong, Shanghai, Nagasaki.

  In the kirk, on the Sunday before his departure, the minister offered up a special prayer for his safety, asked the Almighty to keep him from harm on his long and hazardous journey, bade the congregation stand and sing, Will your anchor hold in the storms of life? His father cleared his throat, launched into the hymn. His mother blew her nose, dabbed at her eyes. Martha sang out, her voice clear with only the slightest tremor on the high notes.

  He glanced round, confirmed what he’d thought: Annie wasn’t there. The pew beside her father was empty. Old George fixed his gaze ahead, grumbled out chorus and verse.

  Outside, they fell into step, along the path through the churchyard. Glover took a deep breath, affected calm, and asked after Annie. George said she was fine, she’d just caught a chill somewhere, would be right as rain in a few days.

  He stopped and looked Glover in the eye. ‘I know you two have been walking out together. And to be honest, I would rather you’d seen fit to tell me and ask my permission.’

  Glover said nothing, couldn’t keep out the memory; Annie lying back in the dunes, himself moving on top of her, inside her. ‘Be that as it may,’ George was continuing, ‘there’s no harm done, and maybe this posting of yours is the best thing that could happen. I don’t think you’re of a mind to get married and settle down.’

  ‘Not just yet, sir, no.’

  ‘And she’s ower young. So this will be an end of it before it even begins.’

  Annie bucking under him, gasping.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Of course,’ said George, ‘when you come back from the East in a year or two, the story may be different.�
��

  Annie crying out. His seed spilled in the sand.

  ‘Aye, sir. I’ll mind that.’

  A peewit’s call. The grey North. That empty grave waiting for him.

  *

  He went one last time to Brig o’ Balgownie, stood watching the river flow by. He turned to go and there was Annie, just looking at him.

  ‘I thought you’d be here,’ she said. ‘No, I knew you’d be here. I kenned it. Don’t ask me how, I just did.’

  ‘And here was me,’ he said, ‘just coming by on the off chance.’

  ‘Chance?’ she said, as if holding up the word to the light, examining it. ‘Is that all there is? Is that all it was?’

  ‘I wanted to see you,’ he said. ‘Before I go.’

  ‘Well, here I am.’

  ‘I wanted to say goodbye.’

  ‘It sounds awful final.’

  ‘I have to do this, Annie. I can’t not go.’

  He put his hand to her face, stroked her cheek. He kissed her forehead, her sweet mouth, the kiss not fierce like before, but gentle and sad.

  ‘I have to.’

  ‘Then go,’ she said.

  They kissed once more, then she pushed him away and he walked on across the bridge. He looked back and she was still standing there, watching him. He waved but she didn’t wave back. Further on he looked again and she was gone.

  *

  Annie didn’t come to see him off at the quay, and neither did her father, or Robertson, or anyone else from the office. It was during the week, a working day, and nobody could take the time. His mother couldn’t bear the parting, had said her goodbyes and stayed at home. His father and Martha had come with him, stood awkward and tonguetied till the last moment, when his father shook his hand, gripped it tight, and Martha threw her arms round him, hugged him as she’d done when they were children.

  Then he was on deck, the gangplank hauled aboard, hawsers untied, sails set, the ship moving out of the harbour. His father raised his cap to him, a salute. Martha waved a white hanky. And he watched as quickly, so quickly, they receded, were far away, too small in the distance to discern. And the harbour itself, the seafront, the whole town, his entire world, dwindled and faded. He looked back at the wake, saw two dark shapes breaking the surface, dolphins rippling out of the water, and he felt his own heart soar, felt a huge expansiveness, an infinite sense of possibility, as the sleek creatures leapt the waves, followed the ship, out to the open sea.