The Key of the Chest

by Neil M. Gunn

  For Fraoch she had seen as the real difficulty. With her father asleep, she could have tiptoed downstairs. Old Johan would be asleep. And even if she wasn’t there was the whole depth of the house and three doors between her bed and the night outside. But Fraoch could catch her lightest step on the stairs. When he heard the outer door being opened, he would whine. He might bark. He very likely would, the anxious thin bark, which he used when he wished to call attention to himself.

  She had thought of taking him up to her bedroom, had worked out a plan for doing it after the housekeeper had retired, but had decided against it, afraid of how he might act, both in the house and immediately he got outside. Rabbits occasionally troubled the garden at night. Besides, she wanted to be free, even of Fraoch.

  But all he might do would be to come to the kitchen door – she had made sure it was shut – sniff under it, and whine. Should this waken Johan, she would threaten him in a husky angry voice from her bed. Fraoch would then lie on the kitchen floor, his nose to the wind coming under the door, until she returned. Then he would get to his feet again and whine, but when he knew she was in her own room, he would go back to his bed.

  She could picture all this with complete clarity. There was a risk. But all was risk.

  Time was going on. Charlie would not wait past two o’clock. That was absolutely certain.

  All at once, she imagined him at the stile, where she had fallen. Then, as it were, she lifted her eyes and saw him there. She saw his face. She was so distracted that she said, ‘Charlie.’

  The distraction turned her on her back. A flush went down her body. Out of the momentary exhaustion came the words: except that you are more beautiful.

  Of all he had said, these were the only words that needed no remembering.

  They had been the shell against her father’s silence, permitting her mind its secret freedom, leaving life secretly to live.

  They had inhabited not her face but her body, giving it ease and grace of movement, smooth upon the muscles, the long muscles, the round breasts, the curved shoulders, upon the whole body composed in a chair, giving to it all, as if it hardly belonged to her, an enchanting comeliness.

  Then she suddenly and clearly realized that Charlie would be at the stile, staring into the trees, waiting for her. He would come to meet her, would not let her walk all that way alone in the dark to where they had had their brief meeting.

  To go out and see, and come back, need only be a matter of minutes. Half an hour away from the house would give her time to convince Charlie how impossible it was for her to be sure that she could meet him at night. They would have to arrange something else.

  The need to tell him this was of extreme urgency. Nothing else mattered. The whole reason for their meeting became precisely this. She thought of it solely in terms of talking to him about it. Even the need for making another arrangement was only an after-thought, while anything else that might happen (for she knew how Charlie would envelop her) would be a terrible distraction, and utterly dangerous, because if they forgot themselves, even standing together, even for a minute, then the house and the menace would come alive behind her, would come alive in that minute.

  All this was perfectly clear in her mind. It simplified her problem, made it practical, straightforward, and placed its execution in so short a duration of time that she could not be overtaken and caught in Charlie’s company.

  Her eye went back to the stile. He was leaning on the fence, dark body, face invisible, staring into the trees.

  Very quietly she got on to her feet and began to dress. She had laid her clothes all ready, but the room itself had taken a slightly different aspect, its orientation had most subtly changed, so that it drew her hand a little beyond where it should have to go before an article of dress was delivered up.

  She knew exactly where the dressing table was, with its simple detached mirror. The candlestick with its box of matches was on the rush-bottomed chair by the head of her bed. But the sound which a struck match would make she now dared not risk. She dared not risk a light either for that would be a distraction, a blinding of the senses against the known dark.

  She could not find the dressing table. She groped about in the air above a floor which grew in size. She felt completely lost, and helpless. Unless she was very careful something would hit her legs.

  She stood quite still, for she knew that it would be dangerous to become more bewildered. She must now be very near the dressing table. Although she had her long brown hair already wound round her head in two twisted plaits, she wanted to feel the teeth of the comb over her brows. She wanted to comb back the roots from her forehead and above her ears. The hard cool teeth would bring her to her more normal self and she would be dressed.

  She was not afraid of the room, and as she stood quite still she made a clear mental effort to settle it in its proper position and proportions. As if in answer to her effort, the bottom slat of the blind tapped against the window-frame, tapped in small hard notes, slowly, as if meditatively struck by the toneless mind of the world outside.

  At once she realized that the dressing table was not in front of her as she had thought, but to her right hand. She stretched out an arm and let her hand descend. It landed on the comb.

  From the dressing table she walked with quiet certainty to the door and at once the long folds of her cloth dressing gown met her fingers. She put it on over her tweeds. In each pocket there was a shoe. Her Sunday shoes, for her weekday ones were in their proper place in the kitchen.

  She stood quite still for a moment, then very carefully she began to open the door.

  On the threshold, listening, she heard nothing except the noises of the wind about the house. No sound came from her father’s room.

  She closed the door behind her and walked along the strip of carpet. Opposite her father’s door she paused. In an instant its silence gripped her heart as if it were listening and alive, appallingly alive in its inner darkness.

  Automatically she began to go down the stairs, and it is probable, indeed certain, that had she not already worked out a plan she would have gone on and away into the night.

  But she had thought of the lavatory as an emergency refuge in the event of things going against her, such as her father’s silence, clumsy sounds by herself, Fraoch’s barking. She hardly hesitated a moment, went up the three steps, and stood almost swooning in the small place.

  The decision to pull the chain drained the last ounce of energy out of her. She was weakened now by the dark menace to a degree that made her gulp oxygen in to her lungs. The rush of the waters was shattering. She got back to her room as quickly as she could, closed the door and fought for a dizzy moment against throwing herself on the bed. She could not wait to take off her dressing gown. Drawing the bedclothes over her, she stopped the cry, the bitter cry against this terrible indignity, this crime against the movement of her life.

  A little time after that, she heard, as if she had all the time been listening for it, her father’s door being opened. She heard, not the rattle of a knob, but the door itself, which fitted closely, coming unstuck.

  Now she knew that she had had no fear that night until this moment. This was fear itself. It was black, and charged with unthinkable power.

  Clutching the bedclothes about her neck, she held on to them. Whatever happened, whatever was said, it must not be seen that she was dressed, for that would expose her design, would tell everything. Nothing more final could happen than that.

  He was standing now outside her door. Her fingers knotted in the bedclothes. It did not occur to her to ask herself what her father would do. She knew only the awful menace of her father and of his anger. It was of the spirit, not of the flesh. The anger of the unknowable god that destroys.

  As the blood was swelling inside her to deafening point, she suddenly heard his footsteps going into the bathroom. There was the distinct clink of a tumbler, the gush from a tap. He was drinking cold water.

  Now he was coming back. The
re was a swishing sound in the night outside, and all at once Fraoch set up a full-throated barking. Something was moving outside.

  Her father was going downstairs. She got up on an elbow. A strong urge to go to the door and listen almost got the better of her, but she resisted it. She mustn’t expose herself, not for a moment. Fraoch kept on barking – until her father entered the kitchen. She knew the moment he entered by the change in Fraoch’s throat. At once she was out of bed, her door open, listening. She must know if anything happened, if anyone… And her thought stopped on Charlie. The kitchen door lock gave its rusty squeal. Fraoch must have darted out, for her father was yelling. Fraoch, barking madly a little beyond her window, suddenly stopped. There was complete silence. Her father’s voice started calling him again.

  Now she could hear Johan’s voice and her father shouting that someone was about the house.

  Fraoch knew he couldn’t be seen and could therefore afford to ignore an order.

  Her father was outside, calling the dog in an intense voice, thick with anger.

  Presently the kitchen door banged and the lock shot home. ‘He can stay out!’

  Swiftly Flora got into bed. She felt she was safe now. Her father’s steps came heavily up the stairs. His door slammed shut. Flora breathed, and presently, slipping to her feet, began undressing.

  Trembling a little, she lay in her bed, thinking of the night, wondering if it was Charlie who had walked round the house.

  But somehow all stress was now eased, as if even her failure to meet Charlie was no longer of tremendous importance.

  She accepted her defeat. It could not be helped. Almost, in a way, life was easier now, curled here in her bed, with its wave of exhaustion and sadness washing her softly. The wave came over her in a languor, in a soft, sad, drowning sleep. She gave way to it, letting it come, but just when it was about to wash her away altogether, it began to recede.

  In the region that lies behind closed eyes, pictures formed and faded without any volition on her part. Then one formed and stayed. It was Charlie’s face.

  She tried to turn away from it, because it had that same pallor of guilt. It’s not that the face was pale. It was a whiteness of guilt coming through, straining the features a little, making small thin creases. This expression naturally searched for its own satire, its bitter dryness.

  She turned over on her face. Oh, she did not care about crime or guilt or anything. It wasn’t that. It was Charlie. Her heart was wrung.

  The only meaning of life on earth for her was to help him. Compared with doing that, nothing else had any meaning at all. She should be there, out there.

  When this emotion ebbed, she began to think again, and her real thinking, as always, was concerned with doing. The torturing hours started weaving their fantastic schemes.

  Towards the morning she fell asleep, and was awakened by the housekeeper knocking on her door.

  So astonished was she at this unusual summons – for she was always down in good time to tidy the study while breakfast was being got ready – that she leapt out of bed. She knew at once she had overslept. As she pulled up the blind, she saw her father, fully dressed, standing by a rose-bed, examining the imprint of a man’s boot in the black earth.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The doctor looked at Michael Sandeman in that objective way he had. But now there was the suggestion of an incredulous humour about his eyes.

  ‘You doubt it?’ challenged Michael, holding the look.

  ‘There is the possibility that you may have been deceived.’

  ‘Just how?’

  The doctor took up his glass. ‘In the way we all deceive ourselves at times.’ He drank, set the glass on the low table and shoved it away a little with the tips of his fingers.

  Michael laughed abruptly. ‘I can hear the same thought creaking in your head as in Gwynn’s. Do you imagine,’ and he gave the doctor a piercing glance, ‘that I am incapable of estimating the possibility of a hallucinatory experience?’

  ‘Surely not,’ said the doctor simply. ‘As an educated man, you naturally are aware of the possibility.’

  Mr. Gwynn smiled.

  ‘Damn you both,’ said Michael, his voice rising. ‘I tell you I heard the playing. I know I heard it. I listened to it for God knows how long. That’s a fact.’

  ‘I am not doubting that.’

  ‘Then what the hell are you doubting?’ Michael’s voice was getting its intolerant lash. The doctor saw the affair was really serious. ‘The only place – and you must excuse me for putting it like this – the only place we hear a thing is inside our own heads. Normally we can establish its cause outside our own heads.’

  ‘Blast you, why not say I was deluded and be done with it?’

  ‘As you like,’ answered the doctor calmly.

  ‘You simply don’t believe,’ suggested Mr. Gwynn, ‘in – well, in—’

  ‘In the supernatural?’ said the doctor. ‘No.’ He shook his head.

  Mr. Gwynn looked at him thoughtfully.

  ‘Who said I thought it was supernatural?’ demanded Michael of the doctor.

  ‘Well, what do you think it was?’ asked the doctor directly.

  ‘How the hell should I know? I’m only telling you what I heard.’

  ‘So I gather,’ agreed the doctor.

  Michael jumped up. ‘Blast you two bloody people,’ he said. ‘Don’t you think it’s bad enough for me to have to doubt myself?’

  The doctor got to his feet with a responsive courtesy. ‘And how am I to know that you are not pulling my leg? You make statements and hurl questions at me. If you sit down and tell me frankly all that happened, then I’ll tell you equally frankly what I think of it.’

  Michael threw himself into his chair. ‘I know.’ He was silent for a few moments, then all at once went on: ‘It was such an odd bloody experience. Gwynn and I were up in the Loch Geal region. A fair number of woodcock there and a marvellous assortment of duck. That was yesterday forenoon. I have ideas about them and want to put up one or two hides. There’s something about the shape of a woodcock, about its head, and there’s a duck – but never mind that. Though, by God, it’s marvellous, if I can just get it. I am satisfied that in wild nature there are certain shapes – I mean shapes – certain physical forms – that touch the unconscious – no, no, that’s not it. I mean this: these shapes touch something in our ancestral unconscious, what Freud calls the archaic heritage, and this touch is literally magical in the way that it creates a sort of responsive image, something that we have the feeling we knew before, and that, by God, we did know before, as the psychologists, the scientific ones, may yet prove. Hell, there I’m off!’ He lay back, as if this kind of effort exhausted vital energy, and laughed.

  ‘I think,’ said the doctor, in his normal voice, ‘that that’s very interesting.’

  Michael’s mouth twisted. ‘Thanks very much.’ Then he looked at the doctor challengingly. ‘Why do you think it’s interesting?’

  ‘That’s difficult,’ replied the doctor.‘But your words somehow suddenly caught – how can I put it? – not caught but evoked a sort of totemistic response. The bird – the totem – the tribe – the clan. Very vague, I’m afraid!’

  Michael’s look held and sharpened.

  ‘Interesting, yes,’ said Mr. Gwynn, who had continued drinking port against their whisky. ‘Tell me this, Doctor. We realize we are outsiders here – at least, I am. The people here are no doubt as normal and ordinary to themselves, as we all are to ourselves, in London or elsewhere. But to us they seem to have a lot in them of this primitive nature – using the word in its anthropological sense – in the way that Michael is searching it out – or even you yourself just now … You don’t mind my question?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said the doctor. ‘Please do not think I’d be touchy about anything real like that, even if I am one of them. I’m afraid, then, my answer would be that, on the whole, you come with the outsider’s eye.’

  ‘I flatly de
ny that,’ said Michael.

  ‘One minute,’ said Mr. Gwynn. ‘And we may not really be wandering from the point of Michael’s experience. Take your parson, by way of instance. And it’s an important instance because it deals with religious belief, with what is, in other words, the development of that old totem system which you have just mentioned. Christian philosophers admit as much themselves – if not perhaps in such simple terms! Now am I wrong in having an impression that this man is – it’s something more than intolerant, harsh – it’s something in a certain sense dark and weird. It’s as if there was somehow an incomplete relationship between him and the people. Something hasn’t been bridged over somewhere. Does that make any sense to you?’

  ‘I don’t know about sense,’ answered the doctor.‘I think, if I may say so, I feel what you’re getting at. But would a single instance be worth discussing – in a general way?’

  ‘Of course it would,’ said Mr. Gwynn.‘He may be the one instance left! However, I understand that he is in this respect rather typical of his brethren in these remote Highland places. I gather – and it’s wonderful how you gather information when you’re hunting it – I gather that they have, in their no doubt efficient Presbyterian way, for a long time now exercised a gloomy power, frowning on concerts and dances and similar expressions of communal gaiety. And not merely frowning, but denouncing and prohibiting. Is that fairly true on the whole?’

  ‘There are exceptions, but on the whole perhaps yes.’

  ‘You mean definitely yes,’ said Michael.

  ‘Well?’ said the doctor.

  ‘Why?’ asked Mr. Gwynn.

  ‘Because, no doubt like men in every walk of life, like, say, landlords and doctors, or kings and tyrants, they want to hang on to power.’