The Key of the Chest

by Neil M. Gunn

  Hamish’s excitement was like a flame in a wind. Grouse and claret, teal and green, march brown, zulu – the names were legendary sounds. He did not hear them properly. He could not hear anything properly, because he could not yet believe what had happened to him. In a malign moment these marvels might vanish. The fly book, for example, fell out of his hands, but he pounced on it instantly and closed it up. It had an attached brown elastic band that tried to outwit his fumbling fingers. But it gave in with a tight flip! that was a sound in itself.

  ‘There’s no need for you to hurt yourself running,’ said Erchie in a kindly voice. ‘They’re your own now.’

  ‘Yes. He gave them to me himself. I never asked him, I never spoke a word.’

  ‘You thanked him, I hope?’

  Hamish stared at Erchie. He obviously didn’t remember. He looked distressed.

  ‘Why did he give them to you?’ asked Erchie.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Hamish. ‘He never said.’ His distress grew. ‘I’ll be going now, it’s getting late.’

  ‘He gave them to you because you helped him. They’re your own, and not the richest man in the world has better. Take great care of them.’

  ‘I’ll do that.’

  ‘Good night, then.’

  ‘Good night.’

  Hamish walked off, but presently, when Erchie looked over his shoulder, he was running like a hare.

  He can’t contain himself, thought Erchie, and his old eyes smiled far back through time.

  After dinner, he went to report. The soft-voiced maid, Ina, after drawing from him such new news as he had gathered, knocked and announced him.

  Michael got up abruptly. ‘Come in. Sit down.’ He poured a large neat whisky and handed it to Erchie.

  Erchie thanked him, and though he did not say slàinte! he looked at each of them and gave a perceptible nod of courteous acknowledgment.

  Mr. Gwynn bowed.

  ‘Well?’ demanded Michael.

  ‘It’s just as I said, sir. They wouldn’t think of taking money.’

  Michael gave him a sidelong satiric look, then smiled, not without amusement. ‘Too proud are they?’

  ‘It’s not that, sir. There’s many nowadays that would take the money however it came. But Norman and William, they have the old feeling in them.’

  ‘What old feeling?’

  Erchie looked troubled. ‘It’s difficult to explain.’

  ‘You think I wouldn’t understand it?’

  ‘It’s just the old custom,’ said Erchie, with a subtle lack of any expression.

  ‘Did you see Norman?’

  ‘Yes. He was there.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said he would feel shame to be offered anything.’

  ‘Was he offended?’

  ‘Oh no. They know it was out of kindness you meant it. They were not offended because William began making a joke about it.’

  ‘Indeed! What sort of joke?’

  Erchie hesitated. ‘I shouldn’t have mentioned it.’

  ‘I shan’t give you away.’

  ‘Och, it was just a joke, but William said, “Now if he had thought of sending us a bottle of whisky for the New Year!”’

  Mr. Gwynn laughed.

  ‘You think,’ said Michael drily, ‘that if I sent them a case of whisky for the New Year, they wouldn’t take it amiss?’

  Erchie lifted his glass and looked at it. ‘If you sent a small letter with it in your own hand, they would be very happy.’ He drained the glass.

  ‘Have another drop,’ said Michael.

  Erchie protested but Michael ignored him.

  ‘Slàinte,’ said Mr. Gwynn.

  ‘Slàinte mhath,’ responded Erchie.

  They both drank.

  ‘About to-morrow?’ asked Michael.

  ‘The joiner will be ready, but they don’t think the weather will be in it.’

  ‘They weren’t offended again?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Erchie. ‘They thought it very good of you.’

  ‘Very nice of them.’

  Erchie did not appear to catch the dry tone, but Mr.

  Gwynn saw something harden in him. Then Erchie said mildly, ‘They just saw you, sir, like one of themselves, doing what you could to save Charlie.’

  ‘Have a cigar,’ said Mr. Gwynn.

  ‘No, thank you, sir, I’ll just be going now, if that’s all.’

  Mr. Gwynn made him take the cigar and Erchie got up.

  Mr. Gwynn was smiling to him, and Erchie, by way of pleasant parting words, said,‘I met the boy Hamish running. I thought he had a ghost after him.’

  Mr. Gwynn’s face lit up. ‘What was it?’

  ‘The presents he got. He was running as hard as his legs could carry him, or maybe a little harder.’

  ‘Was he frightened someonemight steal them from him?’

  ‘I’m thinking he was just frightened they would vanish.’

  Mr. Gwynn laughed merrily, his eyes on Erchie, on the lined face with its slow deep humour.

  ‘Will they be offended?’ inquired Michael, from his satiric mood.

  ‘No, sir,’ answered Erchie without looking at him. ‘On the contrary, they will think very highly of you for it.’ Then he went, without hurry, giving them a respectful good night.

  ‘And here endeth the first lesson in manners, I suppose,’ said Michael.

  Mr. Gwynn threw him a look but said nothing.

  Michael walked out of the room. Listening, Mr. Gwynn heard the click of the electric switches in the gallery.

  What had been haunting him, haunting them both, these last few days, thought Mr. Gwynn, even while his ears listened, was this mystery of the individual personality.

  It had taken a body of its own, on the cliff, on the sea, the three men bearing down on them in the Venture, Angus in his leap, Flora, and Charlie walking calmly on the arm of Death.

  Figures, individual figures, on the land, on the face of the sea.

  The individual human being, the one whole being.

  Michael’s feet were moving about the floor, empty sounds. Thudding about the floor.

  Back into the primitive?… no, back into themselves. That was the search. For oneness. Searching, with paint, for the primitive where wholeness began, but finally here, on the sea, in the leap, with death as life’s shadow, under the sun, against the gale, the body whole and singular, with warmth in it, for one other, for others, for all. Man’s strangely tragic story, so full of wonder and light.

  The footsteps stopped.

  Michael was, in fact, now contemplating his gallery of the local human comedy, with the strangled foreign seaman hung in the middle, ‘on the line’, against the light-coloured wall.

  To his right, Charlie. God, he had forgotten to ask Erchie about Charlie! Probably he had now thrown himself over a cliff to join his strangled brother! Calm, there; rising above his boat. Calm.

  To the dead man’s left, Flora. There she uprose, with the earth about her, the earth and the far sky, meeting in her quiet smile, the wandering and vagrancy of mankind, caught and stilled here. Beautiful, in an inalienable beauty of the spirit. Innocent of self-horror at the core. Without death.

  The looming policeman. Michael stared long at him, at the notebook, the pencil.

  Dougald, the mythical human monster. Gwynn’s primitive! Almost transparent, so that you see things through him. Or is it that he interpenetrates all? A master question!

  The minister – looking into the lens, the lens now of the human eye – with a polite social smile.

  Gwynn’s concentrated upward look from where he sat on the grass, all gesture shed and grace. Raw. Lifting beyond the wound. The skin of his face was naked.

  The doctor, in profile – he did not know that one had been taken! – looking from the extreme left across his local comedy.

  From nowhere Michael’s mind was hit by a swift lash. A couple of strides, and he flung his gallery into darkness. He went out and along the shore, dist
urbing sea-birds that screeched shrilly, and from his throat harshly he answered them, crying ‘Simulacra! Simulacra!’ An intense feeling of exhilaration began to well up in him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The night fell quickly, and before Dougald got back to his cottage it was dark, the thin rain whipping his face out of the rising wind. There was no light in the window. Charlie must have stayed in bed. When, however, he found the door standing open, a grunt came out of him. He shut it behind him and saw the kitchen filled with smoke. He went straight for the hand lamp, lit it, and turned into Charlie’s room, slowing his steps to peer over the light with a controlled expression. The bed was empty and in disorder. There was no one in the room. His expression opened. The lamp shook in his hand. ‘Charlie!’ There was no answer.

  He went back to the kitchen and looked in the kitchen bed. Charlie was not in the house. His expression grew congested with wrath and fear. Stock still he stood on the middle of the floor, the lamp in his hand lighting up his angry-red bushy face. Then he set down the lamp on the table, his collie looking up at him from the corner behind the peat basket.

  Suddenly he lumbered out, pulling the door after him, and went along to the byre. ‘Charlie!’ He lit matches. The cow mooed at him, the chain rattling on her neck. Charlie was not anywhere about the outhouses. He came back to the kitchen and stood on the middle of the floor.

  ‘God damn him, where has he gone now?’ His voice was harsh and defiant and the force of emotion in him thrust his feet about the floor. Then he stood again, listening. The wind whined about the house, coming in from the west. Rain beat across the small window. He saw the reflection of the lamp, outside, ghost-like in the night.

  All day he had hung about the house. Then Charlie had quietened and seemed ready for sleep, his eyes shut, breathing in little gusts out of exhaustion. The storm was plainly coming and there were a few ewes in poor condition that would have been the better of sending away for wintering with the hoggs. He had known that, but also knew he could pull them through or, at the worst, make the crofts take them for a while. The cost of wintering was the heaviest charge on the Club. He would have been back earlier had he not, after rounding up the ewes into a sheltered valley, started out for the doctor. As Charlie had refused absolutely to see the doctor, Dougald had had to struggle against Charlie’s will every yard of the road. Within sight of Ros Lodge, Charlie’s will had fought him to a raging standstill. Then Erchie, driving home a couple of strayed stirks, had come on him. ‘If you see the doctor,’ called Dougald, ‘tell him Charlie is not well.’ Turning abruptly, he had made back.

  The wind came in a gust again. The storm was rising. Then through the whine of the wind, he heard another whine, a dog’s whine, at the door. The sound of it ran cold down the small of his back. His eyes swept the floor. Nell uncurled and, twisting, whined uneasily, her eyes showing the whites as she glanced up at him from lowered muzzle. The other dog he had deliberately left with Charlie.

  He pulled the door open and Tang came in, tawny as seatangle, slunk across the floor, and flattened behind Nell, but restlessly, as if beaten and fearful.

  ‘Curse you!’ roared Dougald. ‘Get up!’

  Tang avoided him and slunk under the table. Dougald was already at the door. ‘Come on!’ he roared. The wind blew into the kitchen and sent the smoke in whirls and the flame leaping in the funnel of the lamp. Maddened, he returned and swept his boot under the table. Whimpering, Tang ran out before him.

  Dougald thought he saw the dog making for the cliff path beyond the unblinded window light.

  He could have found his way down the cliff path in pitch dark. Even when he slipped, his body knew how to twist over, his hands where to grab and hold. Now he went down it without any clear sense in the order of his going. For horror of what he might find – or not find – was already coiled round the root fibres of his life.

  The seas were spouting over the skerries, lashing and seething on the narrow beach, for they were coming straight in from the west. The stones rolled from his feet as Dougald strode heavily down till the withdrawn water came again and rushed over his feet, up to his knees.

  There was nothing there. Nothing. On the cliff wall of the Point to his left, the sea smashed and burst. Into faults and caverns beyond, the water boomed and choked, glutted. But there, coming into him, curling round the skerries, were black lumps of water, like black heads. The beach came alive in storm and wreck.

  Dougald lifted his head in mad defiance. Roaring out of his throat came challenging sounds, eager for battle. The sounds cursed the sea and the black heads and dared them and damned them. ‘Damn you to hell!’ he roared into the teeth of the rising storm, the stones crashing under his feet as the water swept over them and staggered him.

  He turned and stumbled up the stones – and saw against the black hole of the low cave into which Charlie thrust his gear for shelter, a pallor like a vague moon, like a piece of newspaper, and Dougald’s rage ebbed from him in a coldness colder than the sea, for he knew it was a face.

  He drew towards it. It was making sounds, but hardly human sounds. He went right up to it and stooped. It was Charlie.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ asked Dougald, in a voice gone strangely simple.

  Charlie slid back on his haunches.

  ‘Come on up home,’ said Dougald.

  Charlie sat staring at him.

  ‘Come on,’ said Dougald and put a hand out.

  Charlie scrambled to his feet and hit the lip of the cave with his head. This released him and in a moment they had come to grips.

  They staggered as they fought, Dougald trying to pin his arms. Charlie began to yell, but his voice broke into a scream, into a wild vicious gibberish. When Dougald felt Charlie’s fingers at his throat, a great strength came upon him, a bear’s strength, that crushed Charlie’s arms and body until they suddenly fell limp against him.

  Dougald laid him out on the stones.

  For a little Dougald stared down, his chest heaving noisily, then he looked over his shoulder at the sea, and a cry came from him, of defiance still, but broken. He picked Charlie up in his arms, shoved his body over his left shoulder as the cliff path grew steep, eased it at the cliff-top so that the blood would not choke the head, and so bore it into the house and laid it on the kitchen bed.

  He unfastened the shirt at the neck and then stopped and stared. Charlie’s head had fallen over loosely. It never moved.

  ‘Charlie!’ called Dougald. ‘Charlie!’ His hand came like a searching paw on the chest. ‘Charlie!’

  His voice broke. He turned away from the bed and put on the kettle, moving quickly but in a kind of blindness, like a wounded animal.

  The doctor was heading across the moor, for Erchie had intercepted him on his way home at the junction of the roads, and he turned away at once from the meal that was waiting for him, riding his motor-cycle right past Ros Lodge and on over the rough sea track as far as he could.

  He had been expecting this message, indeed had been hoping for it and growing uneasy when it wasn’t coming. There had been that withdrawn dignity about Charlie, that air of keeping one at a distance, which neither Norman nor anyone else had dared to intrude upon.

  This dignity of the human individual that so fascinated Mr. Gwynn! This primal wholeness on its two feet with its two eyes!

  The doctor smiled, lowering his brow against the stinging rain in a certain humoured warmth, a satiric mirth, where the satire gave strength and was healthy.

  So many of his trips were like this, to the individual between whom and his fellows death had shadowily slipped in.

  He could suggest a different kind of portrait gallery for Michael, very different, and much more revealing of his ‘human comedy’! Faces came before the doctor’s inward eye, came out of the storm into which he thrust himself, and lay each in a momentary pool of quietness, faces on their death bed.

  It was when the struggle was over and the money was made, when age had to take le
ave of the struggle and the money, the struggle and the meanness, the cunning little cruelties, the tricks of ‘success’ – what a desert was there then in the face on its death bed! He was looking upon the face of the trader who had died last week in Badloan.

  Other faces. For there is no concealment now. This is the judgment hour, the lonely hour of self-judgment, and all one’s fellows fall away, and all one’s possessions fall away, and the hour and the place are naked as the body, stripped as the body will be at the hour’s end.

  This was no fantasy. He had seen it. Seen it often. The human picture gallery in this our age. The end of the strife and the conflict, when greed had lain as prime motive at the core of self. What doth it profit a man… Profit!

  Profit that ravaged the face like a desert and made the eyes, the glassy eyes, stare in knowledge from its waste, in that last knowledge, with the lips already desert-dry and salted.

  The beds they lay on tilted the faces and bodies into the dark howl of the wind and, invigorated by his satire, the doctor struggled on, in a hurry to get at Charlie.

  For somehow it was not really remarkable that Charlie was still alive. All along, at the back of his mind, the doctor had had the odd feeling that Dougald would have been Charlie’s watchdog. Dougald had an instinct for Charlie’s sickness, not his body’s sickness so much as his spirit’s. Dougald would have had a surer cunning about it than any of them. Dougald would know it in the pining sheep that left its fellows for the lonely spot, the stag that set out on his last trek, alone, for the sanctuary. Charlie had only got to begin to drift in a certain direction for Dougald to follow.

  But the doctor was hardly prepared for the scene he came upon. It held him just outside the unblinded window of the cottage and gathered an extraordinary power because he could not hear what was said.

  Charlie’s white face was mad-eyed on the pillow. His hands were clutching at the bedclothes. There came a roar of rainwind which made the doctor thrust a supporting hand against the wall. Charlie’s fingers went up to his own throat. Dougald’s red fists gripped them. Charlie struggled and the bedclothes heaved and tossed. Now the doctor heard Charlie’s piercing yells. Presently Charlie fell back and his mouth opened for the breath to snore through. Dougald smoothed the bedclothes, folded them down from the top, and with the slow gentleness of a woman placed Charlie’s hands upon his body, and drew the clothes back to the chin. After standing a little while looking down upon his brother, Dougald turned away. Another blatter of high wind stopped him mid-floor. He stared straight at the window, and the doctor thought he was being seen. The wind howled round the walls and the doctor saw Dougald’s mouth move. In an instant, the doctor knew he was not being seen, or was certainly not being recognized, for Dougald’s shoulders hunched with a terrific suggestion of fighting power. He was challenging the forces of the night. He was prepared to meet all the forces from the sea and from hell beyond it. He was his brother’s keeper.