The Silver Bough

by Neil M. Gunn

  What he saw, because of the condition he was in, must always hold for him something of the nature of legend. First he saw the woman, the water swirling about her knees, leaning forward over the sea, the wind shaping her, and he thought she was crying wildly and imperiously at the waters, like a sibylline woman; then he saw the boat, her stern in the air, pierced through the side by a jagged rock, whole in her form but spiked and held in a dumb crucifixion; the shore came at him next, roaring and seething in a tumult that was beyond the bourne of life and extended far, streaming tragic eternal elements known only to the spirit; and beyond it, the waves, mounting, curling, incoming, onrushing, and he saw the boat shudder and heave as the smashing waters lifted, and he saw a hand lift against the boat and grip the gunnel and two streaming heads appeared; now the woman moved, going down after the roaring waters, and a great cry to her to go back choked him and he spewed again, blinded, as he tried to get on to his hands and knees. The woman, caught by the waters, held to a rock, and held to something else, and the two heads rose, and Martin’s face fell over white and streaming red. Twice the sea got them after that, but the woman with Martin in her arms came at last staggering with him and fell to the ground beyond the sea’s reach; but Norman was down, yet not defeated, for on fumbling hands and knees, like a wounded beast, he crawled two slow yards and lay, and when the next wave came it swirled to his thighs, moving his legs like roped weed, but his breast was anchored and he lay.

  Grant’s eyes came back to Anna on her knees beside Martin, her hands at his throat and breast, her hair plastering her cheeks, and he saw the sheer bone of her face and the strength of it. She was a little above him, against the sky, and her face lowered to Martin’s face and cried something, but Martin lay with his head fallen over, a little river of blood on his face. Through a sick darkness he reached them. He wanted to take his oilskin off and made signs and muttered, “Under him”. Anna understood and tore the coat off him, but he held onto it and began rolling it. She struck away his fumbling hands and rolled it for him in a trice; then he made her turn Martin over upon the coat and, getting to his knees, pressed the body above the waist; let it go and pressed again, in the way he had been taught at the swimming baths when a boy. But he was dizzy, sick, and presently became aware that Anna was on her knees astride Martin’s body, pressing and relaxing, with a rhythm so natural that her head, as it lowered on the pressing stroke, seemed to be listening to what was passing inside Martin’s breast. This affected him in so extraordinary a way that he stared, fascinated, and found himself listening also and waiting. She had put her scarf under the face, and the left temple, taking the weight, had turned the face sideways a little; the mouth was partly open and the trickle of blood which had been going in at the corner of the mouth was now running back into the hair. He looked utterly lifeless, dead as any mass of tossed seawrack, and the pallor of the face held the spent tragic essence of the man, remote now beyond its earthly remoteness.

  Something touched Grant in a wild way and he reared up again. Anna’s eyes were on him. “Keep on!” he cried. “Don’t stop!” He saw her throat swallow and the face set again, but now with a quickening of light in the eyes, as though he had given her hope against all the chances. At sight of this he felt so weak that he could have wept, and a hot stinging behind his eyes enraged him and helped to clear his head and settle the involuntary urges to vomit up his inside. He caught Martin’s near hand and began massaging it towards the heart. Norman came staggering up and got down on his knees by Martin’s head, put the flat of his hand under the forehead and lifted the face just clear of the ground; then laid the head against the scarf and turned away to vent the spasm that had come over him.

  Anna worked on and Grant thought he would get Martin’s boots off and slap the feet. The fierce storm-gust had passed away completely and as his fingers fumbled with the laces a shaft of sunlight struck him. Suddenly Anna cried out in a wild heart-rending cry, “Donald!” Grant had never before heard the elemental cry of the woman to her mate; it so affected him that his skin crinkled and he turned back; but she was working on the body with the same rhythmic persistence as before. Norman slewed round and looked at her. “He moved!” she cried, the exultation in her voice high as a seabird’s piercing note. Her face was quivering now and her tears blinding her, but her hands did not stop in their strong tender exercise.

  When Martin was sitting up, she stood to one side. Norman was in front of Martin, two yards below him on the slight slope, his feet apart, his eyes on Martin’s reactions with a narrowed intensity, his cheekbones smooth, swaying just perceptibly. Grant was sitting in a slump, his shoulders and head drooping. His eyes turned on Martin and saw the fine features, in their stone-like agelessness, with death and life as equal guests who could come and go. Martin’s lips pressed, the nostrils flexed, the eyebrows gathered, and the breath that had gone in swelled his chest; he breathed again more heavily; his head fell back and he blew a great breath from him and stirred, the teeth showing between the drawn lips.

  “Let us go,” said Norman. “It’s not far.”

  Martin said nothing, but Norman stopped by his shoulder, his hand arrested as though Martin had spoken.

  A shudder went over Martin and his fallen head shook—and lifted. At once Norman put a hand under his arm and with a commanding look drew Anna to his other arm; together they helped him to his feet.

  Grant got up and saw them stumble a few paces and stop. Martin did not want their help; he wanted to be left alone so that his will would be free to take him in its own way. As he went on again, Anna walked alone but Norman was by his shoulder.

  All at once Grant became aware of the warm sun, and a surface shivering went over his body and his jaw trembled. He felt light-headed, strangely freed, and his face turned to Anna and smiled. Her distant expression softened into a faint answering smile and he saw the glisten of life in her eyes. He thought she looked beautiful, with a beauty that inhabited her, and this he would remember, he felt, as one remembered a figure in the landscape of a legend. An extraordinary reality was given to her by the solid particularity of her features, her flesh. She was walking there drenched and moulded and he saw her, and his heart was moved and lifted up.

  When Martin reached the first pine, he leaned against it. They all stopped and Norman’s features gathered in a troubled impatience, but he waited, offering no assistance. Grant saw Martin coldly measure the distance ahead, slowly push the pine from him with his palm, and start off again. As he came at the front door, his body fell against it while his fist tried to turn the large iron knob. Norman shouldered up and got a grip of it, but the door would not open. Martin’s forehead was leaning heavily against the wood as though he had let consciousness slip while still holding to his feet. Norman looked at the bell-pull. There was a clicking sound and the door opened from the inside. Martin rolled sideways but Norman gripped him as Mrs Sidbury, in a red silk dressing gown, stood slim and white-faced before them. Swiftly her flashing black eyes took them in, but Grant saw them stop for an instant on Anna, arrested in pure shock; her brother was stumbling forward and the blood on his face brought a small sharp cry from her even as she caught him and helped him into the hall. Norman went in after them and Grant was about to follow when he stopped to make way for Anna. But Anna was not moving; she was staring and listening. Martin’s body had thumped into a chair; Norman’s voice said, “Get some whisky, please.” Then slowly, as one no longer needed, Anna turned away.

  Grant watched her in a moment’s stupor as if he could not for all the world either move or utter a sound. Then he started after her. She heard his steps and turned.

  “Won’t you go in and take something?” she said.

  “No.”

  “Do go,” she said. “I’ll wait for you.”

  “I’m going with you,” he answered.

  She did not say more and they went on together. As he stumbled once, he explained, “I’m light-footed, but I’ll get home, if you don’t desert me.”
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  “We needn’t hurry,” she said.

  “Don’t say you’ll make a cup of tea.”

  “I will—at once,” she answered and smiled.

  “Now don’t weaken me.” He went on a few paces. “If anyone had said I could have come through last night——” He dared not risk shaking his head, yet the astonishing thing was that he did not feel tired: only exhausted to nothingness. He knew he was light-headed because he wanted to till her that he owed her his life and that she was a very remarkable young woman. He wondered if he could tell her this without embarrassing her. But the thought of it weakened him and he had to stand still for a little.

  “There’s no hurry,” she encouraged him.

  “Do you think we could sit down for one minute?” A treacherous trembling had come to his muscles.

  “No,” she said. “We must keep going.”

  “You’re right.” And as he started on he added, “You shouldn’t have mentioned the tea.”

  He stopped again and asked her, “Have you been hearing anything?”

  “Just the birds singing.”

  He nodded and went on. But as they came at last to the little bridge he stopped and looked at it, and looked around him at the freshness of the morning on the world, and he did so openly and unashamed. It was something very exquisite and lovely to have come back into.

  At last they entered the cottage and as she turned from closing the door, he smiled to her. “Thank you, Anna,” he said, and he took her hand and kissed it in gratitude and homage, then turned to the stairs.

  Chapter Thirty Four

  The afternoon was full of sunlight. From his pillows he looked through the window to the ridge which ran its course against the blue sky. His skin was so sensitive that he reckoned he had a touch of fever, but nothing of any consequence because he was quite certain his lungs were clear. He had inflated them powerfully several times and found them resilient as footballs. This added to the pleasure that had come out of dreamless sleep and stayed with him, for he was delighted at having come through what he had come through, and secretly proud, for it should have done for him; a still delight, like the secret life in the sunlight, which was everywhere without going anywhere. He was particularly proud of having leapt into the boat. A fellow did a lucky thing like that once or twice in a lifetime. The gods could be kind—in spite of themselves! Hearkening, he heard the muted sea, and his memories rode the waves to that fantastic shore. He also heard a foot on the stairs. How differently Anna mounted! He smiled as Mrs Cameron came in with the tea tray.

  Yes, he was feeling grand, he told her. “How’s Anna?”

  “Fine. She’s out with the bairn a walk.”

  “You’ll be blessing me for upsetting your household.”

  “About that—I don’t know,” she said.

  He laughed and glanced at her as she arranged the tray on the bedside table. “The post has been,” she said.

  “So I see. Is that a wedding present?” he asked as she laid a long narrow packet by the tray.

  “It might be better for you if it was.”

  “Instead of consorting with wild characters at all hours of the night. Perhaps you’re right.”

  “It’s no laughing matter. I’ll say what’s on my mind: we don’t like you going out like that at night.”

  “I am sorry, Mrs Cameron, to have troubled you so much; I really am.”

  “It’s not the trouble to us at all: that’s nothing. But I’ll be open with you, for I have never been happy at the thought of you being out after Andie in the night. In the day it’s different, with his mother there. But we have no right to expect from him what God didn’t put there.”

  “You think he might turn on me?”

  “He might. It’s not my place to say what you should do or should not do, but I could not have it longer on my conscience that I didn’t warn you.”

  “I appreciate that,” he said solemnly, for he could see that she was moved and uncomfortable. “But he wasn’t out last night, was he?”

  “He was out, and out late,” said Mrs Cameron. “And his poor mother was in a state, and she’s had too many trials in her life to get into a state easy.”

  “Did he defy her?”

  “He takes turns, though seldom, and when he’s in one of them she has to deal with him as best she can, for if he’s crossed he becomes violent as an enraged bairn. You know his strength.”

  “He seems very good-natured.”

  “So he is. And she never knew him so happy as in the first days with yourself.”

  “Perhaps all these people spying on them?”

  “There was that, it’s true.”

  He looked at her. “You are thinking that if I came on him when he was secretly visiting the crock of gold, he might go for me?”

  “I am sure of one thing: he would never let you take it from him.”

  “But how am I ever going to get it then?”

  “You’ll have to find out where it is and then take it away when he’s not there. But you cannot do that alone by yourself at night.”

  He thought for a moment. “Very well,” he said.

  She began pouring the tea. “There’s another thing.” Her constrained manner drew his eyes.

  “What?”

  “His mother was telling me that he’s taken a fancy for the girls.”

  “No!” He spontaneously chuckled.

  “Oh yes,” she said. “There was that Lizzie Duncan that dresses herself, and he went up to her on the road and he was twisting and smiling, she said. So she walked away, but he walked after her, and then she began to run. There was no harm done, but Lizzie said she knew what he meant.”

  He tried to keep his laughter in and shook the bed. “They’re not blaming the crock of gold for that?”

  “No. It was that one with the little short trousers on her that started him off “

  “Oh no!” he cried. His laughter took control of him immoderately and his head waggled.

  “Goodness knows what she did to him,” said Mrs Cameron.

  “I wish I knew,” he cried, beyond control. “I would like to see him t-tackle her.”

  His laughter was infectious. “Is she a bold one then?” she asked.

  “Bold as brass. Always trying to get a story for her newspaper.”

  “If she comes back this way and is not careful, she might get more than a story.”

  Presently he wiped his eyelashes and the door closed on a happier Mrs Cameron. When he had drunk two cups of tea, he tried to unknot the string on the long stiff parcel, but his fingers were still shaking, so he tackled his letters. “Dear Sir, The recent reports in the press about your remarkable find of a gold hoard have a particular interest for me as I am——” He slit the next envelope—and four more. Only six about the crock today. The spate was definitely drying up. He idly thumbed out the flap of an envelope bearing a penny stamp and unfolded an account:

  £ s. d.

  To one Silver Bough . . . 4 5 0

  To one Oak Case for same . . 7 6

  Total 4 12 6

  Never before had an account seemed miraculous; he was out of bed and fumbling through his trousers for his knife; back in bed with the knife and slitting the string on the parcel. There emerged a polished oak case that might once have held cutlery. He pressed a small bright knob and the lid opened. Lying on velvet and over two feet long was a silver bough with nine golden apples pendent. He removed soft packing-paper and lifted the bough out by its simple handle. The golden apples hung along the slight curve of the bough, increasing in size from the small one at the tip to the largest by the handle. He struck one of them with a fingernail and it rang like a tiny gong. He struck another and another; then he transferred the bough to his left hand and found he could run up nine consecutive notes as on the white keys of a piano.

  He started on the Home Sweet Home of an early piano lesson. He was utterly enchanted.

  Out of enchantment came an eye that went over the workmanship and material
with microscopic care. The craftsman, the artist!—and the fellow hadn’t even written saying he would do it! Where on earth did he get these apples of sound with their cloverleaf openings underneath? Straight out of some medieval hoard, beyond doubt! In his original letter—the only one in the whole transaction—he, Grant, had suggested a fiver as the limit. To one Silver Bough: £4 5s. But the thing was too deep for laughter. He poked at the velvet—and saw a tiny rod, with a knob at each end, clipped to a side of the case. It came away with a click. One knob was covered with washed leather; the other was silver-bright metal. Lifting the Bough in his left hand, he struck the apples with the leather knob and the notes came soft and muted; he struck them with the silver end and they leapt on the air in a dancing gaiety. For one long moment he grew still and solemn, and from the spaces of the air came the remarkable words, chiming in his mind: “Dear God, there’s hope for the world.” But the next moment he was up in the air himself and his fist was knocking strongly on the bedroom wall.

  Mrs Cameron came round the door with a face prepared for the worst.

  “Come here!” he called.

  “What is it?” she asked, looking at what his hands covered as though it might jump out at her.

  “Remember the Silver Bough?”

  But she was bewildered, so he had to explain how he had listened to her telling the story to Sheena and singing the song, how he had written to a great craftsman who lived in a little shop in the city of Edinburgh, and how lo! here was the Silver Bough itself. He pushed the closed case towards her over the bedclothes, saying, “Press the button.”

  Her astonishment was so great that it was comical.

  “Lift it out.”

  She lifted it out.

  “Now, strike the golden apples with this,” and he handed her the soft end of the striker. She caught the soft end and struck with the hard.