Only Lovers Left Alive

by Dave Wallis

  “Here,” said Kathy to Estelle, “let me. You must’ve run miles today. We only spent an hour or so chasing the four strays.”

  “It’s all right, thanks, Kathy,” said Estelle. “I’ll have a good sit when I’ve eaten.”

  “Go on, have a sit now,” insisted Kathy and felt Julia turn from the stove for an instant and glance at her.

  After the meal they sat and chatted and the girls stitched while the boys sharpened their knives and Julia rolled one of her weed cigars. Charlie got up and paced restlessly about the room.

  One wall of the cottage was bare, clean plaster. Charlie began moodily to scratch at its surface. He went and fetched a burning brand from the stove and blew out the flame by whirling it round. The low ceilinged room filled with smoke.

  “Charlie! for goodness sake!” cried Estelle. He slouched back to the wall space and drew his charcoal stick slowly across it. Everyone ignored him and went on chatting.

  “Kathy, you sh’ld’ve been with us today . . .” Ernie began.

  “So she should,” interrupted Julia. The neutrals, Estelle and Robert exchanged a look and a nod.

  “Go on, Ernie, tell us,” said Estelle. She had been present herself and the “us” could only mean Kathy, since Charlie was obviously not listening.

  “We scrambled up this ridge, Kath, after this old ram, I mean, see? And when we got to the top there was no sign of him. We found later that the old devil was hid behind some bushes, but anyway, we just stood there wondering and then we heard, I heard, these bagpipes. . . .”

  “Bagpipes!” exclaimed Kathy, who had been feigning interest and now found herself surprised in that role.

  Estelle put in, “Yes, such a sound from so far away, real weird it was, wasn’t it Ernie?”

  “Yes,” said Ernie, “we looked around and away on the other ridge there was this bloke pacing up and down and piping away. The breeze took it over to us. There’s all jokes about the bag­pipes but out there, in the open, I seen what they’re all about. Didn’t we all?” he asked Robert and Julia and Estelle jointly.

  “Yes, it was just sort of fitting in with the country up here,” said Estelle. “Wasn’t it, Julia?”

  “Yes,” said Julia, puffing at her herbal cigar, “he could really play the pipes. Heather and snow and mountains and defeat, all alone in the heather. That’s what the pipes were on about.”

  Ernie now rejected the very support he had asked for. “Maybe heather and that in it,” he said, “but the rest is girl’s stuff. There was no defeat about it, only . . . well I can’t explain, just the way the hunting is up here and if you lose you starve and dry out and rot in the heather and if you win then the deer’s body has to instead. That’s all that was in the pipes, nothing very terrific. Anyway, we heard this piper and came down the valley. We lost the ram although the dogs did very well really, didn’t you Patch, boy?” he said aside and the dog thumped the floor with his tail. “We climbed up to the next ridge and there was this piper marching up and down and a whole clan of them, all in kilts listening. They’d been watching us all the time. They were a real good crowd, they told us that they never bothered if they saw that a gang knew how to go about hunting and had trained dogs and that, even if we were a lot of sassenachs. They talked so Scotch we could hardly understand them but from what I can make out they figure a gang hunting properly won’t steal so much and only real tough gangs get up as far North as this in any case.”

  “That’s us, ‘real tough’,” said Estelle.

  “They invited us up to one of their camps, Kathy, and I said we’d go. I thought we might spare a lamb or something to take up there. They make a kind of whisky themselves and their girls know how to weave tartans and spin wool. They’re really organised up here, I can tell you.”

  “All right, we’ll go,” said Kathy.

  “Some of those Scotties look ever so handsome in their kilts,” said Julia.

  “Be nice to have a party again, won’t it,” said Estelle. “Won’t it, Charlie,” she called to him. He was bent among the shadows by the wall. “Charlie! what are you doing?”

  She stood up and crossed to the wall, “OO, look!” she said, “That’s good.” They all got up from the table and came over, Ernie holding a candle. On the wall Charlie had sketched out a bleak view of a decayed and empty street such as the thousands they had seen and left. A curve in the background hinted at wide hills and a stormy sky.

  “It’s smashing, Charlie.”

  “Do some more.”

  He shrugged. “I was always good at drawing at school. This is not much good. It’s not turned out how I wanted it to. I need some time to practise.”

  The ceiling to the right came down to form an alcove under the cottage stairs and Ernie stood with his hand above his head, resting on it. “Look,” he suddenly said. The smoke of the candle held in his other hand had left a faint outline of his fingers on the white plaster. He put his hand up in a different place and deliberately outlined it in smoke. The others tried it.

  “Now in a circle,” said Kathy. “One boy’s hand and then one girl’s hand, round in a circle.” They did this.

  “Two with a finger pointing to Charlie’s drawing. . . .”

  “No, you’ll spoil it, won’t it Charlie?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Charlie. “It’s not turned out how I wanted it to. I’m going to try again in the daylight.”

  They made quite a pattern of hand outlines and sketches of sheep and deer. The dogs came up, wagging and interested, and Estelle blacked Patch’s paw and pressed it on the wall. Everybody laughed. They went and sat back at the table. The shadows cast by the flickering candles wavered across the drawings so that the hand outlines seemed to wave and the sheep to jump about. Everyone felt more cheerful for some reason and only Charlie was morose and sat sharpening a charcoal stick.

  The party with the clan in the next valley was held in a large manse. There was roast mutton and home distilled whisky. They danced reels and jigs and modern twists and their own new, wild dances. The hosts were Scots but their guests included a tribe of drovers from Yorkshire and one or two young Cumberland shepherds and their girls as well as the Seely gang. It was a gay evening, quite like old times, except that when dawn came and they lay down the boys went to their own girls and the girls to their own boys, whatever flirting might have gone on during the dances.

  All through the summer they moved north with their new clan friends and by the end of July were in the Highlands. They bought home-stitched leather sandals and kilts and yards of tartan cloth from the young highlanders and gave them sheep­skins and a few precious tinned goods and other southern city trade goods in exchange.

  They wintered in a huge hotel back in the southern uplands of Midlothian. The place was held by a local clan who charged no rent but demanded only that the boys help in guard duties and in catching snow rabbits and snaring game, and that the girls take their turn in the kitchens. The stock was all stabled in what had once been a row of garages for tourists’ cars at the back. It was here, on a bleak January day, already at three in the afternoon, as black as midnight, that Kathy’s time came.

  They had had some instructions from the barter clinic in Edinburgh and the girls had all studied a handbook, produced years ago for crofter’s wives cut off by snow from the services of doctor or midwife. Even the boys had read it. Now, when Kathy lay there, white-faced and scared, or else suddenly moaning and biting at her wrists, everything they had read seemed to go out of their heads.

  “Look up the bit where it tells you how long this first part goes on,” shouted Ernie. Estelle was fluttering the pages of the handbook.

  “It says it can vary,” she said.

  “That’s a big help,” shouted Ernie. The room was full of the comings and goings of the gang. Everybody was scared and no one knew what to do first. Charlie arrived with buckets of boiling water and splashed some over Estelle. Kathy was now screaming every now and then, and in between lay moaning and calling o
ut, “I want my mum, I want my mum. Why did she have to do it? I want my mum.” It was very unlike the Kathy they all knew and this made them more afraid than ever. Various Scots girls looked in and offered contradictory advice. At one time there were about twenty boys and girls in the room. Ernie was now reduced to sitting, holding one of Kathy’s hands and glowering round saying, “Don’t just stand there, do something can’t you?” from between clenched teeth.

  After a couple of hours of this Julia came into the room. She had on an apron made from a torn, clean linen sheet. Her sleeves were rolled up and her hair pinned well back. “Out!” she shouted cheerfully. “Out the lousy lot of you! Go on, out!” Some visitors moved off. “Now the rest of you,” said Julia. “All of you. Ernie, Estelle, Charlie, fetch some chairs and sit on them outside the door ready to fetch anything I ask for. Robert’ll stay here with me, and you,” she said to a broad-faced cheery Scots girl who had thought to tie a towel to the bed-rail above Kathy’s head for her to claw at in her spasms. Only Ernie delayed and hung about and Julia gave him a sharp, sisterly push, “Out you!” she said. “It’s all your fault anyway. Now don’t get in the way!”

  In two hours the job was nearly done. Julia looked round her little nursing team and grinned. Kathy moaned, “After all that and now still this to come. It’s not fair. Oh, it’s as bad as the other. It’s not fair.”

  “If you wanted it fair you shouldn’t have been born a girl,” said Julia cheerfully. “Anyway, you’ve made a boy. Show him to her, Bob. Not like that idiot, so she can see without turning her head. There! see? And he’s got all his bits and pieces, finger-nails, spare-parts. And a voice,” she added as the first kittenish whines suddenly filled the room.

  Later the gang were let in one at a time but Kathy could only wink at them, not even raise a pale smile. Ernie knelt and kissed her hands and said, “Thanks, Julia, thanks Bob, thanks. . . .”

  “Martha,” said the Scots girl smiling. “What’s it feel like to be a father?”

  “Seems to have made me hungry,” said Ernie as Julia pushed him out.

  The next day Charlie visited her. The child was crying in his cradle, made from a sheepskin-lined crate.

  “Hello, Kath,” said Charlie.

  “Hello, Charlie.”

  He nodded towards the child. “See? It’s true what some philosopher said, ‘A man’s first action on entering the world is to weep’.”

  Kathy grinned. She was still feeling terribly weak, and tired beyond measure. “But even before that he has learnt to kick,” she said.

  14

  Julia lived with Kathy for a week and remained in the room to shoo out visitors. Then she left with a nod and a “See you later,” to Kathy.

  Ernie came in. “How’s Ernie the Second, today?” he asked.

  “That’s not his name,” said Kathy.

  “What do you mean?” He was silent a moment. “We didn’t give him a name yet. What do you mean, ‘not Ernie’? He is mine, I suppose? You don’t mean he’s Charlie’s or something?”

  She giggled. “No, he’s your son all right but I made him, so I’ve named him.”

  “Fair enough, I suppose. I don’t know how these things used to be done. What is his name then?”

  “Oliver,” she said.

  “Oliver? after Cromwell or somebody?”

  “After an old teacher of mine. He was trying to tell us once about people doing it. We weren’t paying much attention. He did it himself the same day. He must’ve felt something of what was going to happen and been trying to warn us or something. I don’t know. I just thought it’d be nice to call the baby after him that’s all.”

  “You’re the boss.”

  “I know,” she grinned.

  For another eighteen months they travelled the highlands, moving north to trade in the summer and then south to find winter pasture and to trade back some of the tartan cloth and wool for hay and cow feed-cake and turnips.

  A late spring found them camped high in a small crofter’s cottage which had stood empty for the winds and the wandering sheep for fifty years even before the Crisis. For a long time there had been rumours of a big meeting of the clans and now they had come to this valley for the gathering. First there had been games and races and sports and sheep-dog trials and climbing competitions. There was the first real fair any one had seen for years with the best of the woollen knitwear and tartans, and all kinds of camping stuff, made in the days of the oldies, on display. In the evenings there was dancing but Kathy could not go because of Oliver and Ernie stayed with her. He was asked to be a spokesman for two small groups of southern boys and girls as well as for the Seelys at the big conference that had been called for the last night of the fair.

  He kissed Kathy and started off down to the valley. Even he was surprised at the size of the gathering. Every clan and tribe of the North was represented. There was a raised stone platform and speakers queued up to speak. Definite proposals were put to a show of hands. It was agreed that the annual trek South should take place in an agreed week so that there could be such large numbers that nobody need fear robbers. Later there would be a planned exploration of the cities to salvage what metal and tools were there and special groups were chosen to look out text­books and manuals for medicine and building and metal work and stock-breeding. Robert was chosen to head a group of scribes to keep records and maps. Ernie spoke about organising the hunting and trading with a new group of fishermen who had been discovered to be living on the East coast. The meeting went on far into the night. It was a very exciting event and he kept trying to remember things to tell Kathy. When they broke up they lit their torches all at the same bonfire and held them up in salute to the empty council stone where their plans had been beaten out. Then they started the long climb back to their own shelters. Ernie could just make out the pin-point of light of the cottage doorway where Kathy was waiting and started to scramble up the slopes.

  Behind him the smoke of the torches eddied upwards. A high moon had risen and was ducking its way among wild clouds as if to dodge the stabs of the mountain peaks. The wet heather snatched at his ankles as he clambered up towards the light of home.

  Kathy had seen the torches scattering across the valley like drifting sparks. She stood now on the ridge watching his shadow stumbling up the hill towards her. Some distance away he paused to wave and she fancied she heard his panting breath above the rattle of a small pebble heeled away behind him. “He’ll be full of it,” she thought, “bursting to tell me. Especially if he’s been given some tribe leader’s job or other.” He waved again and shouted her name and started to run up the lesser gentler slope leading to their home ridge. Suddenly she thought, “The one thing I must never, ever say is that I still really love Charlie all the time.”

  He scrambled the last few feet and started to gasp out the news even before he had reached her. “Meet a captain of tribes! I’m elected!”

  She smiled and said, “I knew you would be.”

  He panted out further news, “It’s bloomin’ obvious only the cream got up here, the toughest of the boys and the best of the girls. . . .” He went on to explain the significance of this as seen by the gathering. He kept repeating, “I can’t remember exactly how he put it himself but . . .”

  She nodded and smiled without listening. She thought, “Charlie would’ve beat his breast like Tarzan and grinned when he said ‘toughest of the boys’ and given a courtly bow at ‘best of the girls’. But dear old Ern just brings it all out straight and solemn. I do love him, really. At least I think I do.”

  Ernie was giving details of the next winter’s move into the lowlands. He kept talking but all the time he was thinking, “The one thing I mustn’t say is that it might all go wrong and we’d all end up as slaves or get killed.”

  Far below they could see the last of the torches scattering and bobbing like blown fireflies towards the head of the pass.

  Ernie said, “When we move South there’ll be no more big meet­ings like this. Waste
of time. This is a sight we may never see again.”

  The sound of his father’s voice disturbed Oliver and he stirred and whimpered among his little pile of sheepskins.

  “Let’s get him up to look at it,” said Ernie, “all the torches. It’s a sight he may never see again.”

  “You can’t pick him up just because he cried a bit. Leave him! He’ll soon go off again.”

  Ernie had already gone into the cave-like stone hut and lifted the child. He held him high up and then sat him on his shoulder. “Look, Olly,” he said, “Look at all the men carrying lights. Look at all the lights.”

  “Lights, lights,” said Oliver.

  “Put him down this minute!” snapped Kathy, “picking him up just because he cried.”

  “But it’s a sight he may never see again,” said Ernie. “One day he may be able to say, ‘I remember my father showing me the first big meeting of the northern tribes’.”

  “That’s as may be,” said Kathy, “but we mustn’t spoil him.”