The Silver Bough

by Neil M. Gunn

  That’s the way it goes, he thought, remembering the quality of her voice which—and he recognised it suddenly—matched the tawny in her hair. A soft but firm voice, fatally kind.

  From the curve of the short drive, he felt the house approach, then there it was, a grey stone, plain, with flat windows, a pillared stone porch, some weeds in the gravel, and a faint air overall of tiredness or disuse. When he pulled the bell he listened, like one who did not expect it to work, but an elderly woman appeared, thin, with high cheekbones and an anxious restraint.

  “I don’t know if he’s in,” she answered, appearing to think the matter over. “But I’ll see. What name will I say?”

  “Grant. Mr Grant. He asked me to call.”

  “Oh, did he?” She seemed relieved and turned away, but came back after a few paces and showed him into a front sitting room. There were chintzes on the chairs, old prints on the walls, and the air seemed to have been exuded in stillness from the dead ivory of the wallpaper. It was not stuffy but he needed moving air. No one came. All of a sudden he felt extraordinarily tired, so that his muscles trembled as he took off his rucksack. In a moment he was angry with himself for feeling dizzy. This was appalling! He must get out. The door opened and a woman came in.

  She was so obviously Martin’s sister that she looked to Grant at that dizzy moment like his female apparition gone neurotic, such a whiteness in the pallor of her face, a ghostly brightness about the dark eyes, beneath the black hair. “I am sorry, but my brother is out at the moment.” Her voice was hurried but attractive, then anxious . . . He was aware of her eyes on him. They seemed extraordinarily large and to be coming nearer.

  “Excuse me,” he said, “but I feel a little——” My God, I am going to faint! he thought. He felt the grip of her hand as the deep chair took him. Then she had the sense to fly and he closed his eyes. But no, he was being joggled and rained on. Through the dark mist he saw the face; it was Martin’s. A glass was at his mouth; he let it clink against his teeth and then sucked; the spirit went down and he choked a little and gulped, feeling the breath coming back into him in great heaves, his heart thumping while he stared at the crystal liquid in the tumbler and gradually got control. “I’m sorry——” and he started coughing, grew utterly exhausted, and came round.

  “Sit still,” said Martin. He handed the tumbler to his sister.

  Grant let his head fall back, looked at them, and smiled. “I thought—I was going—to pass out.”

  “You did,” said Martin.

  “Ah, did I?” murmured Grant unconcernedly. “The sun—too much sun. I—lost my hat.”

  “Try some more of this.”

  “Thank you, I will.” He took the tumbler, and, though it shook, got down a good mouthful of the clear liquor. After a few moments he was able to find his voice. “Vodka?”

  “Vodka,” said Martin, with that dry humour which seemed to seep into his features at ironic moments. “It’s the only spirit we have.”

  Grant was amused also. “That’s one thing they make,” he ventured.

  Martin’s sister had now got the window shoved right up and, coming back to Grant, said, “I’ll have a cup of tea made for you at once. Then you will stop to dinner.”

  “No, please——”

  “But you will,” she said in a white flash and went out.

  “I had no intention of troubling you,” Grant explained. “All I wanted to say—was just to confirm the—the business about the cairn. I really do not wish in any way to intrude, and therefore if you would please——” He got to his feet. “—If you would please,” he repeated, gripping the back of the chair, “tell—uh——”

  “Mrs Sidbury.”

  “Your sister——”

  “She is my sister.”

  “I beg your pardon. I——”

  “I think you had better sit down.”

  “I’m practically all right now. Thank you very much. Been very good of you.”

  “In any case, I think you had better wait until my sister comes back. Don’t you?”

  “Well, perhaps,” said Grant and he sat down.

  “Another drink?” He deliberately shook his head.

  “I rather fancy—it’s gone to my head—already,” but he hardly smiled.

  There was the objective look, which Grant felt on his face, then Martin went out.

  Eyes shut and head back, he blew out gusts of breath noisily, as if the alcohol had momentarily poisoned him. Vodka! It was the sort of stuff he would have! But now he was concerned with himself, with cursing himself for being such a feckless ass. Then suddenly he didn’t give a hoot, he decided, and just rested.

  The housekeeper brought tea on a tray, arranged it on an occasional table before his chair, and withdrew.

  It was the simple truth that he preferred tea to any drink man had invented, though he was appreciative at the proper time of many wines and pinned his faith to whisky when life was cold and wet, if always in small quantities, for alcohol in any guise made him talk excessively, and he reckoned he knew his weakness. He blew on the tea and, after hearkening a moment, poured it into his saucer. Now he blew more carefully, then gulped the lot, just catching a dribble before it left his beard. Good stuff, excellently brewed! Life flowed down into him, and slowly up. When Mrs Sidbury appeared he got to his feet with some assurance.

  “Please,” she said, with a gesture to his chair. Her movements were both quick and charming, and as she sat down he saw that her face had indeed a marked pallor, but it seemed now almost a natural pallor and he forgot to think that she was neurotic. “Feeling a bit better?” she asked.

  “I don’t know what came over me,” he tried to explain. “Too much sun, perhaps. I was laid up recently. Doctors warned me to take it easy for a while.”

  “It was hot today,” she said, “enough to overcome anyone. Have you walked far?”

  “No. Only from Kinlochoscar, but I’ve been pottering about the cairn up there for a while. I—excuse me——” and he got his gold watch out of a waistcoat pocket. His astonishment was ludicrous. “Twenty minutes to seven!” He looked at her as if she had played a trick on him.

  She laughed quickly; all her movements were quick and bright, like those of a highly-strung person determined to be gay. “You forgot the time!”

  “I’m afraid I did!” He laughed also. “That’s the worst of archaeology. Sometimes you—you walk out of time; at least, out of the present.”

  “Oh, are you interested in the Stone Circle?”

  “Yes. At least I should like to have a look inside the cairn. Colonel Mackintosh, an authority on this peculiar subject, gave me a letter of introduction, as a matter of fact, to your brother——”

  “Oh but I know Colonel Mackintosh! He was here last year!”

  “Yes. They were having a look over these parts. He was particularly taken with Clachar.”

  “And did he tell you that the cairn is haunted?”

  “No. It’s the kind of—ah——unverified experience that he would be inclined to forget.”

  She laughed again. “And where are you staying? At Kinlochoscar?”

  “No. I couldn’t get in there anywhere. So I have arranged to stay in Clachar here. It will be much more convenient. And that’s why, though it was so good of you to ask me to stop to dinner, why I——”

  “But you must. We are eating in a few minutes. And you’ll want a bath.” She got up.

  As he lay thoughtfully in his bath, Grant decided there was something odd somewhere. She was in her early thirties, he reckoned, and obviously anxious that he should have the meal with them. Perhaps her husband was here—and others. A guest might be a centre of interest—in certain circumstances. He grew more thoughtful. It might not be the cairn that was haunted—not exclusively, anyhow, he decided, feeling much refreshed now and even kicking the water into a gentle wave that lapped his chin. Moods had a habit of invading him with quick irresistible boyishness. And he was not going to lose his adventurous holiday
feeling for anyone.

  At dinner, however, there were only the three of them. She talked about the food difficulties, hoped he liked curried rabbit, and, when he refused the beer, made no reference to vodka. Martin poured himself a bottle of beer and seemed more agreeable, though his talk had its easy automatic quality, like something that was intelligent but not felt.

  “And where are you staying in Clachar?” Mrs Sidbury asked.

  “Actually I haven’t been there yet. It was arranged indirectly: that’s why I felt I should have pushed on. But this has been—very kind of you. To tell the truth, I was so taken with that old cairn, that I felt—I thought—I had better make sure there would be no intrusion on my part. I hope,” he concluded, looking directly at Martin, “that you don’t really mind my doing a bit of excavating up there?”

  “Why should I?” said Martin smoothly. “It’s in the interest of science, isn’t it?”

  “Do you expect—I mean, will it take you a long time?” asked his hostess with a quick smile.

  “That’s just it,” said Grant. “It may. I’m not going back before the summer recess. So I have pretty nearly as long as I like.”

  “How fortunate for you!” said Mrs Sidbury. “I suppose you have to dig up things very carefully?”

  “Yes. Measurements, and photographs, and what not. Colonel Mackintosh will believe me if I say something is three feet five inches, but will look bothered if I record that it’s a yard or so.”

  She laughed. “I must say I rather liked him. When I said it was a pity it had been wet, he felt his sleeves before he agreed. But he has a twinkle.”

  “And his own bee in his bonnet,” added Grant. “When you hear him clear his throat—grumph! grumph!—that’s the bee getting under way.”

  She was clearly delighted with her guest, who, because he was nettled by Martin, set himself to entertain her. The vodka and the bath helped. But over coffee, he asked in direct challenge of Martin’s implicit scepticism, “Is it your contention that all archaeological knowledge is valueless?”

  “Shall we say,” Martin suggested, “rather far-fetched at this time of day.”

  “It doesn’t strike me like that,” replied Grant. “On the contrary, I think it is extremely important. I think what is really wrong with us all is that we don’t know our own history as human beings, and particularly our earliest history. If we knew that, there—there might be less bees about,” he finished in a rush.

  “Even atomic bees?”

  “Even atomic bees.”

  “You think so?” Martin spoke without any stress, but with that steady look as if his guest were some particularly large kind of bee complete with legs, antennæ, and other curious features. Then unhurriedly he lit another cigarette.

  “But surely knowledge helps, of whatever kind,” said Mrs Sidbury.

  “Helps what?” asked Martin, not troubling to look at her.

  “Helps everything,” she said.

  “Everything is nothing,” and he dismissed the words with the smoke.

  Grant saw in a moment that she could never argue in her brother’s terms, that he had her defeated before she opened her mouth, intellectually defeated; the instincts were another matter. Sparks would fly on occasion; her sparks, anyway: he was simply deadly. She had plainly arranged this meal against her brother’s wish.

  Martin’s eyebrows moved, remarking as it were: Really? This would have been sufficient to stir Grant like a lash, were it not for something genuinely uncaring in Martin’s deeper attitude. He was not being cynical or supercilious; he was just uncaring and polite as need be. Yet deep beyond plumbing, Grant was aware of an annihilating insult to the basis of human living.

  “How can everything be nothing?” asked Mrs Sidbury. “I may be dull but I think that’s absurd. Donald has merely a habit of making those sweeping statements,” she explained to her guest.

  “In a sense, I suppose, there’s got to be selection,” her guest admitted. “If I find nothing new in the cairn, then the everything that is the cairn might be deemed nothing much by Colonel Mackintosh. In that sense, everything might be nothing. But—to say that everything is in fact nothing——” He was amused and plucked an elusive piece of cigarette tobacco from his lower lip.

  “Do you really expect to find something new?” asked Mrs Sidbury.

  “Of course,” he answered. “I hope to find something quite astonishing.”

  “Splendid! May I ask—what?”

  “Ah!” Grant was mysterious. “The truth is,” he went on confidentially, “I never do open anything—much less a cairn—but I find something, if I’m looking for it. That’s the whole secret.”

  “You find what you look for?” asked Martin.

  “Yes,” replied Grant at once, “and I don’t place it there beforehand, actually or metaphysically.”

  Martin glanced at him and smiled slowly. “For instance?”

  “We had been discussing the possible proceedings when a place like the cairn up there was being ceremonially used, and a colleague asked me, ‘Have you read the Iliad lately?’ The question stuck in my head. So one night I opened the book—at the last paragraph. It’s the description, you know, of the burial of Hector. They burnt his body on an enormous pyre of wood; then, when they wanted to get at his bones, there were still burning spots so they subdued these with bright wine. Then it tells how his comrades gathered his white bones, with tears running down their cheeks, and placed them in a golden urn, wrapped in soft purple, and placed the urn in a grave and piled over it a huge cairn of stones; and after that they went and feasted right well in noble feast at the palace of Priam.”

  “How remarkable! And do you really think something like that happened—up there at the Stone Circle?” asked Mrs Sidbury.

  “With the noble feast afterwards down here? Who knows?” said Grant.

  “The same period?” asked Martin.

  “It might be, if not the same Age. We were always a few centuries behind. The Iliad is clearly the height of the Bronze Age. The cairn up there was the Age before, the Neolithic. But whether the axe-head was made of polished stone or bronze may not imply a vast difference in the human head. I am inclined to think not, for reasons which I could elaborate.”

  “You could?”

  “Yes, I could,” replied Grant at once. “I crossed over the Highlands from east to west last time I was up, and saw on the east coast a four-plough tractor in operation and on the west a foot-plough that, but for its iron tip, might have come straight from the Stone Age.”

  “Tell me,” said Mrs Sidbury, “do you really expect to find a golden urn?”

  Grant laughed, his mounting intensity at once broken. “I may find a pot—but perhaps not of gold!”

  “But, as you said, who knows?”

  “Who knows,” he repeated.

  “Some more coffee?”

  “No, thank you. And I really must go now.”

  “Well, we mustn’t keep you. But please do look in and tell us how you are getting on. I am quite thrilled. And if we can possibly help——” She looked at her brother.

  He nodded just perceptibly.

  As he went on his way towards the houses of Clachar, Grant knew that it was something far other than a cairn that worried Martin. Colonel Mackintosh had said that Martin’s father, for some local or sentimental reason, had hoped that no one would press for the cairn to be opened up, but that with young Martin it was different. It was! The fellow merely doesn’t want anyone around, thought Grant, but I’m here and to blazes with him! It was a lovely evening for such an invigorating and adventurous thought and he proceeded, refreshed and in good spirit.

  Chapter Five

  Perhaps the exhausting and exciting nature of his day had induced a certain heightening even in his vision, for the houses of Clachar had, it seemed to him, a remarkable aptness to their location. Each had grown up in its own place and was well content, taking to the lie of the ground as a man might who had time to sit down, turning a gable he
re like a shoulder and a front there like a face. Where the ground tumbled in antique frolic the grass was thick and lush with wild flowers, and the scent from uncountable blossoms came to his nostrils like an immortal essence. An old tethered dun cow stared at him over a knoll. The wandering footpath found in the end a wooden footbridge and he looked down into the clear water that seemed a warm brown. Some way below him boys were wading in a pool, perhaps looking for sea trout which the tide had left behind. Their voices were shrill and yet strangely harmonious in the flat long-shadowed evening light. All at once, as, having straightened himself, he stood still and involuntarily listened, he had the odd illusion of that extra dimension into which our solid world stands back, and this experience, as always, had for him an air of beneficence and strange beauty.

  His face turned to the west and for a moment an orange light shone on it, then he crossed the small bridge and went up towards the house to which the young woman had pointed. A big red cock by the gable-end lifted a yellow leg in high and brittle dignity, said “Kok—kok?” and winked. Along the front wall ran a narrow strip of flowers, hedged in with boxwood, a miniature border of colour all weeded and tidy, broken by the blue flagstone before the door. As he stepped lightly on the stone and raised his hand to knock, he heard an old woman’s voice say. “Now will you go to sleep! It’s ashamed you should be of yourself at this time of night and you not sleeping.”