And the Land Lay Still

by James Robertson

  You’re Lucy, he said. I never knew your second name.

  Smith, she said. You’re Peter, aren’t you? You were a journalist or something.

  Bond, he said. Aye, I was. Freelance, with a special interest in the revolution, but if you want the truth I’m kind of through with all that.

  But are you still a journalist? she asked, and there was a strange quickness to the question.

  Oh aye, he lied. Got to keep the wolf from the door.

  Good, she said.

  Where did you go? he asked. Back in Glasgow. One minute you were there, the next …

  … I wasn’t, she said. So what fucking business is it of yours?

  She gave him a smile, the first time there’d been one just for him for a while. She had a dulled, charmless kind of charm. Soured innocence. Maybe that was what struck a chord. They kept pace with each other when it came to the drinks too.

  The third time she showed up he suspected she must have designs on him. He was astonished that any woman might have the slightest interest in the wreckage that was Peter Bond, but more astonished that he might have reciprocal designs on her. When she invited him home he couldn’t think of a reason not to go.

  She shared a flat on Dalry Road with a Frenchwoman, Claudine, who worked evenings as a waitress. They had the place to themselves. Lucy’s bedroom was a cowp but this didn’t cause Peter any distress, it was pristine compared with his. The bed was a lumpy mattress on a collapsed futon frame and it was hard to tell what were bedclothes and what were discarded day clothes. They had sweaty, grungy sex and it seemed to satisfy Lucy but when he started to say something afterwards she turned away from him and went to sleep. He thought of the wasteland of all his other nights and couldn’t remember the last time he’d lain down next to another person. Then he too fell asleep. When he woke Lucy had run a bath. She went and soaked in it and when she came back he went and sat in her warm water, rubbing at the stale parts of himself with a big bar of soap. The bathroom was pretty clean and he thought he could get used to it.

  He went out for a bottle of wine before the shops shut and they drank that in bed and did sex again, not so well this time. Lucy couldn’t look at him for more than about five seconds at a time. He wondered if she was bored already.

  About midnight they heard Claudine come home. He said, I better go.

  You can stay if you want.

  I’d rather go.

  Whatever.

  He started to get dressed. It was too soon to stay all night. It probably always would be. Despite the drink and the sex he could feel the nocturnal restlessness kicking in and wanted to be back in his own hovel.

  See you again then? she asked.

  You know where to find me, he said.

  You know where I live, she said. Where do you live?

  Not far away.

  So what’s the big secret?

  It’s not that big, he said. I’m just quite a private person, same as you.

  What do you mean?

  I noticed one of the names on the door is Eddelstane. I’m guessing it isn’t Claudine’s.

  Silence. He finished tying his shoelaces. There’s an MP called Eddelstane, he said.

  He’s my brother, she said. Mr Sherlock fucking Holmes.

  So what’s that about, guilt by association?

  Yeah, sort of.

  I don’t use my given name either, he said. I’m really James Bond.

  She laughed. Seriously?

  Aye. Same reasoning too, guilt by association. I used to be a spy.

  He saw the double take in her eyes.

  I’m kidding, he said. I’m only a journalist. I like my privacy, that’s all.

  Well fuck off back to it then.

  But he could see she didn’t want him to go. She said, I hate my fucking Tory brother.

  He doesn’t seem like the worst of them, Peter said.

  He’s worse than the worst of them. At least Forsyth and Portillo don’t disguise what they are. My brother thinks you can be a nice Tory.

  Like you can be a nice Marxist? he said. To her credit, she laughed.

  If I got you a story on my brother would you run it?

  I don’t work for a paper any more, he said. I’m a freelance, remember? And not much of one.

  Yeah, but if I got you a good story, a really good story, you could use it, right? You could sell it to the Scotsman or the Guardian or someone?

  Or the Sun or the News of the World, he said. I’d need to see the story, but aye, maybe I could.

  The tabloids can’t get enough, she said. They’re like mad dogs turning on their masters.

  John Major’s government was disintegrating under the multiple pressures of mismanagement of the economy, internal policy splits and a persistent trickle of sleaze. Major had tried to clean up the Conservatives’ act by announcing a policy of ‘Back to Basics’ but all that had done was give the press a ruler to beat them over the knuckles with. Some MPs were taking wads of banknotes in return for asking parliamentary questions. Others were exposed for having affairs and neglecting the bastard progeny thereof while castigating teenage single mothers on benefit. Supposedly happily married MPs were caught in bed or outdoor clinches with underage boys, escorts, researchers, secretaries … So far the Scottish Tories seemed to have escaped the worst of the sleaze effect but maybe that was because there were so few of them.

  Is there a story about your brother? Peter asked.

  Yes, she said. I don’t know what it is, but there is one.

  He stood up to go. She lay there, blotchy and grey and middle-aged, but she looked a million dollars compared with him. He smiled down at her.

  I’ll see myself out.

  She said, I’ll get that story for you.

  And she did, eventually. The story of the last gasp. It wasn’t much of a story but Lucy brought it to him. But first she made him wait for it.

  Some winters were hard. More than once you thought your time had come, and then were startled at the ferocity with which you fought against time. You weren’t ready to die, you were a survivor. There were days, though, when conditions were too severe even for you, and forced you into a town or city to beg a few coins, enough to get you shelter in a hostel till the weather eased. You hated that, the begging, the sense of defeat. The hostels were for the desperate and destitute and you were not of them, you resented sharing space with such men because in their faces too often you saw faces from that other life, blank with pain and despair and with the mark of death on them. Spring came like a release, a promise fulfilled. You came out of winters like an animal coming out of half-sleep, stretching, easing yourself back into life, and you headed back into the countryside eagerly, anxious to be alone again.

  But more than once you tried too soon to be free of winter, of the men without hope. Early in the year it was, this one time, far too early, but there’d been day after day of warm sunshine and so you struck off from Dundee, up through Angus, heading deep into the glens and up and over, aiming for Deeside. Snow covered the higher peaks but the sun was beating down on your back the first couple of days, encouraging you to press on, you felt years dropping off you even though you were no longer a young man. You were alive, and that was enough.

  Mid-morning. You were in among a circle of pines, gently brushing the upper inches of the thick needle blanket into a deep, dry bed. You were weary and it seemed a good place to rest for an hour. Your fingers brushed something softer than the needles, nestling between two tree roots, and you uncovered it and it was a squirrel. Cold and dead but whole and un-decayed. You looked at it for a while, the beauty of it, and you thought of all the millions of deaths of animals and birds and how seldom they were revealed, even to you who lived so much in their domain. You might find the skull of a pigeon, the bones of a rabbit, but a still-whole, not-yet-decomposing corpse was a rarity. A sparrow, perhaps, lying as if it had simply gone to sleep, so fine and alive-looking it was hard to believe it was really dead. So it was with the squirrel. If there ha
d been violence in its death you could see no sign of it. Had it gone there to die? Had it known it was dying? Why there and not above, in the tree itself? It was perfect and so had not been dead long. You touched the tiny claws, felt for the wiry toughness of its frame beneath the ample russet coat. The heart that had stopped beating. There was a comfort in that, one final beat and then rest, and you thought that you would want to die that way too, secretly and alone and not, perhaps, knowing that you were dying. You covered the squirrel’s body over again and lay down on the pine-needle bed and closed your eyes. Did you sniff the air before you fell asleep? Did you smell the change that was coming? All you remember thinking of was the nearness of your live body to the animal’s dead one.

  The animals would still be around long after humans were gone. Long after humans had extinguished themselves. Birds would still be around. Insects, fish, seals. Trees, rain, mud, snow, grass. The land would still be here, the sea still eating it away. Only all human endeavour and struggle and stupidity and brilliance and pain and joy and love and hatred would be over. Everything else would be as it was before.

  When you woke you had been there long enough for a white sheet to have drifted down over you. You stood and shook yourself. The daylight was a dirty yellow behind the snow that filled the sky. You set off again, stamping to get some heat into your feet, and soon you were on a track across a moor, climbing into the dimming light. The wind rose and the snow came on more densely, piling up with astonishing speed. In a while you realised you’d made a mistake by leaving the shelter of the trees. You trudged on another hundred yards, stopped, looked round for a sign that the weather might lift, walked on again. It was much later than you’d thought. The last of the day drained from the sky. You turned back. How far to the trees? Two, three miles? But now the track had all but disappeared under the whiteness, and the whiteness was losing all definition as the dark came on. You were numb with cold. You stumbled, lost the track, went knee-deep in heather. All the tiredness of years welled up in you. You could lie down but you would not, you weren’t ready. You thought of the dead squirrel. Had it been ready? And just as you sought blindly for the answer something loomed before you, black and welcoming. The treeline. You got beyond it and in among the pines. Back down to the glen you went, another hour or so in the thick white darkness, on to a road that was deep and unblemished but a road nevertheless. You were looking for somewhere to dig in for the night, but you’d come down too far, the air was colder, and you didn’t have the energy to climb back up again.

  Things fall into place. Out of the night came the scent of woodsmoke. A huddle of low buildings appeared at the side of the road. One was a cottage. Light leaked at the edges of its window shutters. You shuffled round looking for an entrance to one of the outbuildings. Inside the cottage a dog barked. A door opened and the light spilled into the yard where you were standing helplessly. Who’s there? a man’s voice said. Then the dog came, growling and barking. You reached down to clap the dog and it sniffed you and was easy. I need some shelter, you said. The storm caught me out in the hills.

  Good God, the man said. What were you doing up there? Come in and get some heat into you. And he called to somebody inside the house to stoke up the fire.

  They were a forester and his wife, and they were well used to isolation. They did not ask questions of you, but brought you to the fire and then retreated, giving you a semblance of privacy as you thawed out and took off your wet clothes in silence. The man fetched you trousers and a jersey of his own and took your clothes to hang them for drying. All right now? he said, and you nodded and thanked him. The dog settled itself on a rug in the kitchen. The woman gave you some food, and the man pressed a dram into your hand and insisted you drink it. The whisky burned your throat and made you light-headed. The fire glowed red. The woman was knitting and the man had a two-days-old paper folded on the arm of his chair. The room was full of his pipe smoke. Do you want to look at the paper? he asked. You did not. The room was panelled with dark wood and there were blue-and-white plates on the walls. They talked to you and they talked to each other and if you didn’t want to join in, which mostly you didn’t, they didn’t appear to mind. But occasionally you would see them exchange glances, or one or the other would peer at you with curiosity, as if wondering what kind of man you were. They didn’t seem afraid of you, nor was there any reason for them to be.

  You fell into a doze. Through your warmed weariness you heard the forester say, I think he was looking for a place to sleep outby, and the woman said, Well, we’re not putting him out, so he can sleep where he is, or I’ll make him a shakedown on the floor. And the knitting needles clicked on into the night and the newspaper rustled as the man turned its pages.

  In the morning when you woke the man was outside, hammering away at something, and the woman was busy in the kitchen. Your clothes were dry and folded on the chair where the man had sat. You raised yourself from the floor in front of the cold fire. There was the newspaper on the chair’s arm, at eye level. The headline ambushed you: JAPANESE SOLDIER WHO THOUGHT THE WAR WASN’T OVER. You pulled yourself on to your knees and started to read.

  A soldier of the imperial army had come out of the jungle on an island in the Pacific, clutching a rusted-up rifle and wearing clothes made of tree bark. He didn’t know about the atom bombs. He didn’t know about the Cold War. He didn’t know about anything beyond 1945. A photograph showed a bewildered-looking man about the same age as you. For a sickening moment it was as if you were reading about yourself.

  You read the story again. It panicked you a little less. At first you’d thought the whole thing was an invention. Now you saw that it wasn’t. The report said something about time having stood still for the Japanese soldier, but this was untrue. Time had gone on for him – by the hour, by the day, by the year, just as it had for you, for everybody. The difference was he had continued to live in a world that no longer existed.

  You were not him, you couldn’t be. You’d come out of the jungle, beating him and the rest of his kind against all the odds. But weren’t you the same after all? He’d never surrendered, never given up. Now he’d come out of the jungle all these years later, and found himself famous, but where were you? You were somewhere else, on another journey that had nothing to do with him, nothing to do with anybody.

  You could smell porridge cooking. Suddenly you were alert. You were grateful for the kindness of the forester and his wife, but it was a trap. It was pointless trying to explain this to them. You yourself didn’t fully understand, but you knew you had to escape. Quietly you put on your clothes, found your boots and haversack. The kitchen was down a short passage leading to the back door, and the woman could not see you. The dog was nowhere in sight. You went to the front door, taking your coat from a hook beside it, and stepped outside. The sun was shining and the road was a shallow river of slush. You closed the door gently and slipped away from the sound of the man hammering and whistling and from the smell of porridge. You had to go then or you might never have gone.

  You left two stones on the hearth, so that they would know you had not been a dream.

  Then, like the snow, you melted into the landscape.

  PART FOUR

  Scenes from Olden Days

  Borlanslogie in the 1950s: a small, suffering town always on the verge of getting to its feet, always just about to be cowped over again. Most of the men were miners, or worked in coal-related jobs of one kind or another; the rest, a scattering, were shopkeepers, labourers, bus drivers, postmen, railwaymen, a couple of publicans. A very few worked on farms in the surrounding district. Once long ago there’d been only a village and the entire population had been colliers, a race apart from the rest of the world. Then came roads and railways and the village grew to a town. Then came war and peace and war again. Some of the social divisions frayed, but not many. The mine managers, surveyors and engineers still lived, along with the doctor and the schoolteachers, in the better houses on the outskirts of the town, away from t
he worst of the dirt, while the colliers and their families inhabited rows of cottages that seemed to hunch together against the weather, accident and adversity without much expectation of avoiding any of them. These rows had no names, only numbers – 1st Street, 2nd Street, 3rd Street – and only in recent years had the cottages themselves acquired numbers.

  The women of Borlanslogie cooked meals for their hungry men, meals as vast as they could make them given the strictures of money, coupons and rations. They washed clothes and cleaned their houses and minded the bairns. During the war some of the women, in addition to all this, had worked in the Logie Coal Company’s engineering workshop, a huge shed where the bogies and engines and other equipment used in the pits were made and repaired. But with the war over they weren’t wanted there any more: some were as capable of working a steam hammer as any man but the men didn’t like that fact, and they pushed the women out of the workshop and back into their cottages.

  Other parts of the great, grimy old palace of King Coal, however, had long been considered suitable for women to work in: the tracing room, for instance. This was where Mary Murray worked. She’d started during the war and nobody, if she had anything to do with it, was going to force her from a job that paid a steady wage and enabled her to look to the future with some degree of hope.

  She was the third of four sisters. The older two, Meg and Alice, were married to miners and were breeding the next generation, three boys and a lass for Meg and twin boys for Alice. The youngest sister, Dot, had been conscripted for munitions work in Birmingham in 1942 and had settled there. Mary’s tracing work wasn’t physically hard, but she had to concentrate. There were huge sheets showing all the underground workings, the tunnels and roads and the seams of coal, and the type of rock or clay that the coal ran through at different depths and in different sectors. Like an underground city it was, and the surveyors and architects were always adding on new levels and districts, and it was the tracers’ responsibility to update the charts and maps on to the big sheets. They had to climb up on to the tables sometimes to do the job properly, carefully copying in the new information, tracing particular sections that then needed to be enlarged on the huge photostat machine, or making copies for the engineers on the even more cumbersome copying machine. Their eyes would be streaming from the ammonia that was needed to fix the images. The amount of detail on the maps was amazing: Mary felt she knew all the workings even though she’d never been in them, she could picture the men moving around down there, ghostly, glistening with sweat. The system the miners used was called ‘stoup and room’: as they cut the coal they left pillars of it in place to hold up the roof, so she thought of the mine as a kind of Greek temple in black, rows and rows of black columns stretching away in the beam of the men’s lamps. As they worked out a particular area they’d put props in and cut out the stoups if it was safe to do so, so as not to waste any of the coal. Mary diligently marked all the stoups on the plans and diligently removed them when they were cut away. Once she suggested to her supervisor, Mr Cochrane, that he should arrange for the tracers to go down in the cage to see the pit for themselves, it would give them a better idea of what it was they were mapping. Cochrane was appalled. ‘Mary, there’s been nae women doon a Scottish pit in a hundred years. It’s no a place for a woman.’ ‘I’m no wanting tae howk the coal,’ she said, ‘I’m just wanting tae see what it looks like.’ But Cochrane was dead set against the idea, and so were the other tracers, except for her best pal, Ina, who was game for just about anything.