The Silver Bough

by Neil M. Gunn

  “Granny, tell me, does the standing stone stop standing when it’s dark and go walking away off?”

  “Perhaps it’s not away off it goes. But one thing is certain: it never comes near little girls who are good.”

  “I’m good, amn’t I, Granny?”

  “You’re only just middling good. But if you went to sleep, then you would be good indeed, and it’s the other way the stone would go altogether.”

  “Tell me a story, Granny”

  As the old woman was asking the young one what story she would like, Grant’s fist slowly fell and he looked around to make sure he was not being overseen, standing there as the queer stranger who didn’t knock. The blue cat on the low garden wall had closed its eyes, and now with its whiskers sticking out from its squashed features it looked for all the world as if it had laughed in its sleep and forgotten to put its face right.

  “The Silver Bough,” answered the child.

  “Is it that one again? Very well,” said the old woman. “Once upon a time there was a king, and he was walking by his palace wall when who should he see but a young man passing by, and the young man held in his hand a silver branch—all right, all right,” the old woman interrupted herself as if she had been corrected, “a silver bough. He held in his hand a silver bough, and it was the branch of an apple tree and from it there hung nine golden apples, and when he shook the branch, the nine golden apples hit against each other, and made the sweetest music the king had ever heard in all his life. So sweet was the music that the king forgot all his cares and they departed from his mind, and he thought the world was fresh and beautiful. The king asked the young man if he would sell the branch to him, and the young man said he would, but if so it would not be for money he would sell it. What would it be for? asked the king. And the young man said it will be for your wife and your son and your little young daughter. And the king said in the end that he could have his wife and his son and his little young daughter, and so it was agreed between them, and the king got the silver bough. But when the king went and told his wife and his son and his little young daughter what he had done, then they were very sad, for they liked being with the king in the palace and didn’t want to go away. It was the sadness that came upon them then, but in the middle of it what should the king do but shake the silver bough, and the sweet music sang from it again, and all sadness and sorrow departed, and the king’s wife and his son and his little young daughter went willingly away with the young man. Now it was all right for a time, and for another time, because the king had his silver bough, but by the end of a year and a day he was missing his wife and his son and his little young daughter, and missing them very much he was, and soon he could not do without them any more, and so he set off to find them. Off he went, and on, and far away, and when at last he was very tired, a cloud came about like the darkness and he fell into a deep sleep. Then he awoke and lo! there was a palace, and a wonderful palace it was, set on a great dim plain, and he went into the palace and who should he meet but Mananan himself, the one who looks after the seas of the world—for wasn’t it Mananan who had come in disguise as the young man with the silver bough in his hand. So the king knew he was on the right track now, and he spoke to Mananan, and to Mananan’s wife, for she was there also, and told why he had come. And they understood that, for they were not bad people but only the great ones who can do what they like, except for the one thing they mustn’t ever do, not even the greatest though he is a king itself or a lord of the seas, and that is he must never be unkind to the stranger who enters at his door. So they listened to the king and nodded and gave an order to the palace servant, and soon walking down the great stairs towards them came the king’s wife and his son and his little young daughter, and right glad he was to see them, but no gladder than they were to see him. Well, at last the time came for them to go to sleep, and to sleep they went in Mananan’s palace, for what would anyone be without sleep? And then—and then—the morning came and lo! there was no Mananan’s palace, it had all vanished away, and the great dim plain had vanished away, too, and where were they but back once more in their own palace, all of them together, as if they had never left it, but behold! hanging on the wall in the morning sunlight was the silver bough with the nine golden apples on it.”

  “That place where the palace of Mananan vanished away, was it like a moor and stones on it?”

  “It was a bare moor and there was no stones on it as far as ever I heard.”

  “Granny—sing the song of the Silver Bough.”

  “Only if you promise to compose yourself and keep your hands in. For if your mother comes home and finds you still awake, it’s not music you’ll catch.”

  The lullaby the old woman crooned was about as old as the sod the Silver Bough grew out of and as deep, and Grant knew when it had taken the child away by the slowing of the old woman’s voice. In the silence, he knocked gently.

  She came to the door with a wondering expression which steadied on him as he greeted her, then her eyes brightened, but at the same time with a quickened concern she asked, “Were you knocking before?”

  “No.”

  She nodded, relieved at that, and hospitably invited him into the parlour, where the light was dim but soft, with a round table in the middle of the room, gilt ornaments on the mantelpiece, and an armchair of slippery horsehair upon which he was invited to sit.

  “My grandchild was telling me about you,” she said, and it took him a moment to fit the word ‘grandchild’ to the red-haired woman, but already he felt at home. There was a kindliness about the old lady, a brightness of eye and movement, and at the same time such an air of practical good sense that he knew he could go on talking to her with ease and pleasure.

  “Anna was thinking the place was not good enough for you, what with water no nearer than the well and food that’s difficult to get, but I said to her that you would be the best judge of that. We can’t have what we haven’t got.”

  He laughed. “And I wouldn’t be surprised but you may have some things that we haven’t got. I haven’t eaten a fresh egg for three months.”

  “Fresh eggs, is it? Och!” She lifted her hands and dropped them. “There’s as many eggs as you can eat, and we have our own cow, so there’s milk and cream, and butter and crowdie. Indeed when sometimes the milk is going wrong on me I’ll be thinking of the starving children in the world, and sad I’ll be and wishful I could give the poor things some of it.”

  Now his doctor had told him to stuff himself with as many eggs and as much fresh milk as he could naturally accommodate, and when he told Mrs Cameron this, she made a dramatic little gesture as though words failed her, and he laughed again. But something had also been worrying her and now, emboldened, she said, “Won’t you let me help you take that thing off your back?”

  He dropped the rucksack to the floor and she said, “Before you make up your mind, just come and see your bedroom.”

  “Could I have this sitting-room to myself?” he asked. “I’ll have a lot of writing and——”

  “Surely, surely,” she said. “And no one to trouble you.”

  Before the steep narrow stairs, she waited for him to go up, but he bowed her before him. She was a small woman and climbed actively. At the top he complimented her on her youth. “I feel as young as I look,” she said, “and I won’t be seventy until next month.”

  “Good for you! And you don’t look it.”

  “Och, I’m only a great-grandmother so far. Now this is your room.”

  It had a light-coloured wallpaper, a wash-basin and ewer in brightly-patterned blue, and a solid old-fashioned wooden bed. The window was open and the linen smelt faintly of wild thyme. “Perfect,” he said.

  “There’s a little placie here.” She opened what looked like a cupboard door beyond the bed in the wall towards the stairs. It was a tiny room with a skylight window and he thought of it as an impossibly small dressing room. His eye landed on a low boxed-in piece of furniture that looked like an antique in co
mmodes. When he saw that it had a lid on top, he smiled with his back to her.

  “We are glad to do what we can,” she said as he closed the door.

  “Well, it’ll do me fine, and I’ll be very glad to stay with you, Mrs Cameron, if you’ll have me.”

  “If you take us as you find us, it will be a pleasure,” she assured him. “And now I’ll hurry and get you something to eat.”

  But he explained that he had had supper and they settled on a glass of milk. She brought it to the sitting room on a tray with a plate of biscuits.

  “I might be staying a long time, perhaps two months,” he said. “I hope that’s all right?”

  “I hope so indeed,” she said. “But you’ll see how you get on with us.”

  “I’ll risk that! And now about paying you, for we may as well settle that, too.”

  “Och, never mind just now. We’ll be seeing later what you think it’s worth, for it’s not much we’ll have for you, I’m warning you!”

  “Have you never had anyone staying with you?”

  “Oh yes. The last I had was two years ago, but there was the long spell of the war when I had nobody, though Anna was good to me and made me an allowance. She was in the A.T.S., but then—she had to come home.”

  He immediately thought of the child.

  “She should be home now, but she went in to Kinlochoscar for some things. She knows how to attend to a gentleman, because she was in service before she was called up. And she’s been working in the hotel, but she always wanted to come home at night to see the child, and that was not easy and she got run down, but she’s better now, and, to tell the truth, I would rather see her occupied at home, for a spell whatever. She has ever been a good girl to me.”

  “In that case, we should all be suited,” he said lightly but with understanding.

  “Indeed that’s what I was hoping,” she responded at once. “And next month, as I’m always saying, I’ll be independent.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. My birthday falls on a Friday, and they’re telling me I’ll be able to draw my first old age pension on that day.”

  “We’ll make it a spree!” he said.

  When she had gone he stood looking out of the window, touched deeply by something brave and nameless at the end of his long journey.

  Chapter Six

  In the morning Simon Grant felt fresh and sprightly. The middle part of the night hadn’t been too good, but now he realised that he had fallen into a second deep sleep, and that, against the chances, was enough to make him more happy than if he had been victorious in a difficult argument. The cat had obviously licked up her porridge and milk and been shooed to the wall on which the sun was shining. It was going to be another glorious day. “And where were you all night?” But the cat bore his attentions with a sleepy indifference, arching her back only when she had to. The cock, in his polite fashion, was finding imaginary grain beside the peat stack for those members of his harem who wished to believe him. Grant wandered to the byre and found that the cow was already out at pasture. After a look behind him, he entered. The stall had not yet been cleaned, and the manure smell had a certain prehistoric thickness which he found not altogether disagreeable, reminding him as it did of the affiliations of homo sapiens with the animal kingdom.

  Wandering happily back, he encountered Mrs Cameron on the doorstep. There were pleasant good mornings, and inquiries about sleep, and she told him that his porridge was in. He had insisted on porridge, and not entirely because it might help his hostess in her food problems. Beside the plate was a bowl of milk distinctly yellow in colour. It stuck to his spoon. As it happened, he was fonder of cream than a cat, and the porridge was well boiled.

  When Anna came in with bacon and two eggs, he chuckled, excused himself, glanced at the plate and laughed.

  “I can’t,” he said. “I just can’t!”

  The warmth came into her face. “We have plenty of eggs.”

  “But I couldn’t. You must take one back at least.”

  Mrs Cameron appeared and asked what were two eggs for a grown man, and besides there was the old rule: one could just leave what one couldn’t take. But one couldn’t leave an egg! The thing, as he suddenly saw, had become moral. But Mrs Cameron saw it differently. “They first shrink your stomach,” she said, “and then make it a sin to leave an egg.” Laughter stayed with him.

  The meal over, he explained to Mrs Cameron that he now wished to go to Kinlochoscar for his suitcase, in which were his ration books. She assured him that the bus could bring it tomorrow, for it ran three times a week between Kinlochoscar and Clachar. When they had discussed the local travelling and postal arrangements, he came at the matter which was nearer his mind. In a few words he explained why he needed labour to help him in digging the old cairns. Was there any such labour available? While she was being thoughtful about this, he said, “As a matter of fact, I was recommended to a woman who has a son working for the County Council, taking stones out of the stream. Do you know her?”

  “You mean Mrs Mackenzie and her son Foolish Andie?”

  “I could see he was a bit—foolish, yes.”

  She was looking at him. “Who recommended you to that?”

  “It was Mr Martin of Clachar House.”

  A curious reserve invaded her face.

  “Do you know him?”

  “I met him yesterday. I had to get permission from him, seeing the cairn I want to open up is on his land.”

  “I see,” she said, and she stared out of the window. “Did you get the permission?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “You have spoken to Mrs Mackenzie?”

  “I’m afraid I have. It’s rather been worrying me off and on, because—it makes one feel sort of awkward.”

  She nodded. “He’s a good worker. You need have no fear of that. And she’s a deserving woman. She’ll get him to do what you want, if it’s simple digging or stone lifting. She has had a very hard life, very. It’s a sad story. If you could give him something to do it would help her, and she needs all she can get.”

  “Well, if you say so, I could take him on for a week and could see how he did.”

  “That might be the best plan,” she agreed. “And if you needed better help I could see what I could do.”

  “Thank you very much. That’s fine.”

  But as he went up the road he wondered why she had quietened so unexpectedly. It clearly had something to do with Martin, and his dream and restlessness in the middle night came back to him. Martin had had a brown bear on a chain and as he made it perform, the bear turned its head and it had the idiot’s features. It was not, however, the monstrous grotesque beast that had worried him, it was Martin’s face. There was something in the face that was—the word or thought now came spontaneously—annihilating, and the more so because, in a way beyond explaining, it was not actively annihilating. The face had wakened him.

  That Martin clearly did not want him about the place did not worry him; on the contrary, it made him all the more determined to go on with the work, for Martin’s attitude was an insult to the spirit of archaeology which was concerned with deciphering the hidden part of the story of man’s invasion of the earth. It was the fundamental story, the central drama, round which all the other sciences were grouped as lights about a stage. That any man should arrogate to himself the power to switch off the central bulb . . . .

  He should have got his permission in writing. So much was axiomatic. I am making a bad beginning, he thought. And now there was this business of the idiot. Excruciating! For what would they think, the Colonel and the others? It would be the joke of the club. Gales of laughter. Did you hear the latest about Simple Simon? He knew they called him Simple Simon. Blair, the petrologist, made a cult of retailing titbits about Simple Simon, which he hadn’t the wit to make up himself. Usually he was more than a match for Blair, but they all knew, with a schoolboy cunning, how to work up to his weakness, which was a sudden consuming wrath in a torren
t of spluttering language. With a touch of pricking heat, he dismissed them—for he was never inwardly dominated by them—and came back to his immediate problem.

  To employ an imbecile on work requiring so fine an exercise of care and discrimination was, he realised, despite his extraordinary thoughts during the night, quite impossible. That Martin, who obviously suffered from too much intelligence, should have suggested it was enough to make wrath bubble. He had never really intended to employ him—until he had had these fantastic night thoughts, about the idiot as a prehistoric personation. Now, in the daylight, he could afford to show some ordinary sense for a change.

  Every now and then his eye had been lifting to the stream, and at last he saw them. A primitive grouping right enough! A Palaeolithic hurtling of stones! The glottal stops of the missing link! . . . There had been something in his dream! He was smiling vaguely in an embarrassed way as at last he approached the woman. Except for the automatic movement of fingers and needles, she sat watching his approach like a figure in softstone. Her still, heavy face was a dumb question in the distance. He waded up against it and cheerfully bade her good morning. She got up but he made her sit down again, aware that she had read his face. That she had had to become skilled in this art was more than embarrassing, it was pathetic, a tragic comment on life. He moved about, considered the stones geologically, and saw the idiot pause to stare at him and then shift his glance to his mother with a sort of wondering cunning or gleam of primitive intelligence and vague noises. “It’s all right, Andrew,” she said in a quiet natural voice, with a simple nod and a glance of her eyes that set him to work again.

  “Well, Mrs Mackenzie, I don’t think really that I’ll need your son’s help. I—I have been thinking it over, and actually I would need someone with some knowledge of the work. It’s special work and—and therefore I would need someone who knew just what to do.” He went on to express the same idea in other words, for she remained completely silent.