The Silver Darlings

by Neil M. Gunn

  *

  Neither looked at the other nor spoke as they went down towards the burn, where they encountered Wull. Glancing at their faces, Wull said he was sorry to hear the sad news about Catrine.

  “What news?” asked Roddie.

  Wull glanced at Roddie and became embarrassed. “I didn’t know. I heard——It’s—it’s sort of everywhere and you can hardly help believing the worst. Did you hear that Margad is dead?”

  “No,” said Roddie.

  Margad was the witch, and that she should die like any ordinary mortal seemed, even at that moment, a dark and astonishing event.

  “Yes,” said Wull. “A terrible end she had. They had not seen smoke from her chimney for two or three days and sent word to her daughter, Lexy. When Lexy went in she found her lying on the floor, dead, her face half-eaten away. She got into an awful state. Then she saw the black cat, with eyes burning like coals of fire. Suddenly the cat flew at her. They heard her screaming as far away as James-o’-Lachlan’s. I saw her hand and neck myself where the claws tore her.”

  He shook his head. “Terrible times.” They all stood silent.

  As Roddie and Finn went up by the wood the macabre in the story drew them into talk.

  “Perhaps she had no food in the house,” gaid Roddie.

  Horror at the cat’s ghastly meal emptied Finn’s mind.

  “I feel I could do with a dram.” Roddie stopped. “You wait here and I’ll slip into the house.”

  When he came back he drew a black bottle of “special” from the cross pocket in his trousers and handed it to Finn. “Take a swig,” he said, “and swallow it gently.”

  Finn did this and coughed until the water ran from his eyes. It was the first time he had ever tasted whisky.

  Roddie smiled and put the bottle to his mouth. When he had taken a good swig, he said, after a gentle clearing of his throat, “You know fine, Finn boy, that I would do anything for your mother or yourself.”

  “I know that,” said Finn.

  Without looking at the boy’s proud mouth as it trembled, Roddie said, “Take another wee swig: it’ll do you no harm.”

  Finn was more careful this time. “It fairly burns its way down.” He smiled uncertainly.

  “I’ll have a small one to keep you company, as Special says.”

  *

  It was after eight o’clock in the morning, when they approached the edge of the wood. Two hours before, the signal had not been up. Now they were going to the house. Half an hour ago, Roddie had privately told Shiela, who was constantly calling for news, that he had no hope.

  The first thing Finn saw was the morning smoke curling from the roof. Life, anyway. And then they stopped as if their feet had been gripped. Hanging on to the tether of the red cow, her back against the brute’s inheritance of old Bel’s wilfulness, was—there could be no doubt about it, no doubt in the wide world—was Catrine herself.

  Roddie’s throat muttered something that neither of them heard, for they lived for that moment in their gaping eyes. And there was Shiela, climbing up through the bushes from the burn, as if escaping from the water-kelpie itself. And yelling, too, for they could hear her.

  Whereupon Bel the Second did a wilful dance: down with her head, up with her hind legs, off flew the tether and high went her tail. There was commotion all over the croft. While dog and cow continued their intricate dance midfield, Shiela, leaning on the stone dyke, called Catrine towards her.

  Still Roddie and Finn stood staring. What next? Soon it came. Laughter. Not melodious laughter, but high-pitched squalls of it, shrieks. They saw Catrine double up and lean weakly against the dyke.

  “Seems to be a joke of some sort,” said Roddie. The truth is they were almost embarrassed, and hardly knew where to look or what to do next, while their eyes glanced brilliantly and their smiles deepened to a warm blood-flush.

  The joke was simple enough, but it was heightened in effect by the peculiar circumstances. Catrine had made a dulse soup, knowing her body needed some specific of the sort, but shortly thereafter the two dread symptoms of “the plague”, retching and diarrhœa, had assailed her with some violence.

  She explained the whole affair to Shiela in detail. She had started taking the powders that Finn had brought. “After the turn of the night, I awoke from a doze, pouring with sweat.” Then she went to sleep again and awoke “feeling fine”. “If it wasn’t the plague,” cried Catrine, “it must have been the—the dulse soup!” for they both knew what dulse soup, with a bit of butter, could do. Catrine leaned against the wall. She had lost weight and was as weak as a kitten, but she was well.

  CHAPTER XIV

  OUT TO SEA

  “Give way then, boys,” said Roddie quietly, and the four of his crew lay on their oars. There was a crowd oh the beach seeing them off, for this was the first time a Dunster boat was to venture beyond the Moray Firth. They were bound for Stornoway, and it was a brilliant morning, with an air of wind off the land. Green had come through the grey of winter, for it was the beginning of May, and a waft of wood-smoke from a cooper’s fire brought the smell of summer, as if they were setting sail for it. Finn, whose seventeenth birthday was behind him, kept his eyes sometimes on his mother and sometimes on a dark-eyed girl, while he pulled a slow stroke on his heavy sweep. All at once old Special on the crest of the beach lifted his fist and cried, “Hurrah!” Young men and boys were glad of the chance to show how loud they could shout. The crew smiled in a self-conscious manner. Then Finn saw his mother turn her face away and a man, a stranger, come through the crowd from behind and shake hands with her.

  Finn could feel the astonishment in that meeting, emphasized as it was by the way folk turned their heads. It was a particularly dramatic moment for Catrine, who, under the vivid impulse from an old memory (her husband, Tormad, had set out from a beach), had had to avert her gaze to master her emotion—and had stared straight into the face of a man who was looking at her. The man came forward.

  “Ronnie!” she breathed.

  He had always been quiet and retiring in manner, with grey, intelligent eyes. Catrine had known he had been fond of her. The face was older, with a scar on the side of the right temple, rather distinguished-looking, as if circumstance had etched it firmly and given it an easy poise. But it was the same face, and in particular the same grey eyes.

  Catrine was completely, pitifully bewildered, and after shaking hands, stared away to sea again.

  *

  When they had gone out some little distance, they got all the wind there was and, shipping their oars, hoisted both fore-lugsail and after-lugsail, and laid their course on Clyth Ness or Clyth Head.

  It was pleasant to hear the water lapping and slapping against the bows. One would think the boat herself loved it, for if her head dipped it was only to rise again and be on, as a runner who trips will the more quickly speed. In fact, if you kept your eyes on the peak of the stem you got the impression that, whether it rose or fell, its attention was exclusively fixed on the far horizon. The quiver of eagerness ran along her sides to the rudder, the sensitive rudder that sent the impulse to Roddie’s hand, the firm hand under the head whose eyes were on the same horizon.

  Pleasant it was to see the land slipping by and the headland of home slowly closing on the stores, the yards, the beach, the river-mouth, like a gate closing in a dream until all their kindred were shut off, leaving them to adventure in the great expanses of the world.

  “Well, we’re off, boys!” said Callum “We’ll have a snuff for——”

  “The fun of the thing,” said Rob, interrupting him, because he believed it did fishermen no good to be wished luck. They smiled slowly, for there was no hurry and life was long. The sails were drawing nicely and if the wind kept up after the turn of the tide, they would have to put off time to get the first of the ebb through the dreaded entrance to the Pentland Firth. Beyond Clyth Head the seaways would be new to them all, and they had neither watch nor compass. So they had to rely on themselves, and t
hat was an encouraging thought. If knowledge of their passage depended on hearsay, well, they had a fair amount of that. Rob, in fact, was full of it. Where he managed to gather his vast miscellany of information was a mystery to them all, after making allowances for imagination.

  Sitting on top of the nets, Finn looked at the land, saw croft houses he knew grow so small that a giant could have picked them up with his hand and thrown them away. Very still was the land, and somehow a little sad, held to its own dream, and never able to move out of the bit.

  He half listened to Rob telling a story about the laird, for along the great rock wall at intervals were castles, occupied or in ruins. This laird, owner of Dunster, and of many other lands in Caithness, was an extreme miser and eccentric. “Sandy Ware, the godly man, had been telling the people that the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, but I’ll show him and them that Dunster is not the Lord’s but mine,” was one of his sayings. He had succeeded John of Freswick, known widely for his gift of the second sight, and, having studied medicine and being dark, was called “the Black Doctor”. He moved about in order to get as much hospitality as possible, but for a long spell at Dunster he conceived the brilliant idea of cutting down expenditure to the very minimum by staying in bed and subsisting entirely on cold sowans (a gruel drawn off the husks of milled grain). For housekeeper he had Black Nance, an old woman as eccentric as himself, and when he had to eat he called her to his bedroom where he kept the cask of sowans under his eye. When she handed him the bowl, he supped it greedily, leaving so little for her that her hunger was merely given edge. Then he closed his eyes, and when Nance thought he was asleep she would steal to the barrel. In his bed beside him he kept a long, black stick, and as Nance stooped over the barrel, down would come the stick on her head with a hefty crack. It was his only pastime and he was very cunning at it. Nance told her troubles to the kindly women of the neighbourhood and they would give her food, particularly cheese-crusts or rinds, of which she was fond. Rob’s story concerned the occasion when Nance came to his mother’s house and went away with the whole heel of a cheese. The Black Doctor was sound asleep and Nance, before his bedroom fire, for there was no other in his mansion, began toasting the cheese, and was so comforted by the good food that she fell asleep. “The nostrils of the black fellow began to twitch in his sleep. He wakened. Ha, what was this? He slipped quietly out of bed and over to Nance. The last mouthful of the cheese was going down his gullet when she awoke. There was the row then! Shaking her fist at him, she cries, ‘No wonder I dreamt the black dog was upon me!’ …”

  Henry said, “Ay, ay”, in his dry, satiric way. “I think he is nothing but a dirty hound, and if we had any guts in us we would pitch him over his own rocks, the bastard.”

  Finn looked at the rocks, the great cliff wall that ran to Clyth Head, and thought of the Black Doctor’s body turning over and over as it plunged downward into the sea, or smashed on the skerries, where at the moment cormorants were sitting in the sun with outspread wings like small black eagles.

  He knew why Henry was sore. For the Black Doctor had driven Henry’s people from the pleasant valley lands far up the green windings of the strath, had cleared them out to make room for sheep, just as the Earl of Sutherland had evicted Finn’s own kindred from Kildonan and Strathnaver. Finn could see the new line of cottages by the edge of the cliff that ran into the headland guarding the bay where Henry and his inland folk now lived. He remembered how silent Kirsty and his mother had been on the day when that bitter clearance took place, as if they were afraid it might be anyone’s turn next. When their rent was put up, they made no protest.

  The strange, dark deeds that could take place on the land! The year of the plague itself, what a horror, with the hundreds of dead! And yet he had to admit that in the midst of it life continued in its own secret ways and he had known moments of great happiness—particularly when his mother had got better and he had gone back to live at home. The harvest, the bringing in of the last sheaf, which his mother dressed up, the whisky he had produced as the man of the house, and the grand ceilidh there was afterwards. Often out of depression a wild gaiety comes upon the spirit…. But the worst time of all, when he had felt the awful power, the terror, of authority, arose out of the claim by Kirsty’s brother in Elgin, as oldest son of the family, to all the goods and belongings, the croft itself and, in particular, to whatever money had been left at the moment of Kirsty’s death. His mother and himself had known one or two nights of dread then! And that because, in their bones, they felt the legitimacy of the claim, the blood claim that should override any other. Catrine had not only astonished him by her hard, unyielding spirit, but by a cunning that had no softness in it anywhere. He had expected her to ask the advice of some of the wise old men—in short, to tell Roddie the whole circumstances and get him to fight for her. But, no! One evening she dressed herself carefully and, taking Finn with her, set out for Mr. Gordon’s. “Not a word to anyone till we see where we are. Mind that. You wait here.”

  She was fighting their own fight! And when she appeared an hour later, Finn, careful to be at a little distance, turned his back, because Mr. Gordon was with her. He walked on slowly, fearing that the schoolmaster might call him, feeling nervous and shy. But in a little while Catrine came on alone, and when he glanced at her face he thought it beautiful even though it was his own mother’s. There was a faint flush in her cheeks, her eyes were shining, and her lips—as always when she was gay or excited—were full of fresh blood.

  “I think it will be all right,” she said, not looking at him, head up and eyes front, as if they were returning from an ordinary visit and any curious onlooker could see there was nothing unusual on hand.

  But Finn knew there was something very unusual, and that night it came out. At first Mr. Gordon thought she had no claim at all. She could see he was sorry, but in law the next of kin…. And then she had mentioned the letter. “What?” said he sharply. When he had read it, he laughed. “You would think I had given him a present! He tried to explain about Scots law and the value of a letter written in one’s own hand. He’s a fine man. I never knew he was so nice. He took a copy of the letter. ‘I’ll write them,’ he said. ‘You may leave it to me. But cleave to that letter as you would to your life.’ Isn’t it fine of him? Do you like him, Finn?”

  “Yes, I get on all right with him.”

  “So then I told him everything. What the old man had said, when he was dying. What Kirsty had said, and how she had already told the brother the old man’s wishes. And then—I told him of the money.

  “‘Very good! Very good! Tell not a living soul.’ He rubbed his hands. Then he became thoughtful and he looked at me. I wondered what was coming. ‘I do not wish to intrude on your private affairs, Mistress McHamish,’ he said, ‘and if you do not care to tell me the total sum, you need not. But I have a particular reason for asking!’ I knew I could trust him, so I told him it was forty-one sovereigns. He nodded several times. And then said, ‘It’s enough’.”

  His mother had hesitated and looked into the fire. “Oh, Finn,” she went on, still regarding the fire, “he then said something to me and I did not know what to answer. He said you were his most promising scholar. He said he would take you in hand privately himself with Latin and—and other things. He said the money was enough to—to—send you to the University at Aberdeen. That’s what he said.” A break had troubled her voice as if she had been about to cry, and she smiled in a strange way. She wiped her nose in the white handkerchief she had specially taken with her. “He asked me to talk it over with you, and let him know.”

  Finn sat silent. Then his mother turned her head, her soul in her eyes. “Finn, would you?”

  He got up, feeling queer and troubled. Her eyes followed him about. “No, I don’t want that,” he said, miserable and angry.

  “You wouldn’t think it over? There’s no hurry.”

  “No, I won’t,” and he walked out of the house.

  For two days
he hardly spoke to his mother. On the third she said that they could not go on like this. Then very reasonably she told him the position a University education would give him, compared with all this drudgery on poor land. It was for his own good, and the money had come like a sign from heaven.

  “And who would do the drudgery when I’m away?”

  “It would be nothing to me, Finn. And I could get someone to help me. I was thinking of my brother Augus’s oldest son, Alastair …” She had it all thought out! She had it all thought out to the very manse where, when she was an old woman (persuasive humour crept into her voice here) she would come and pay him a visit.

  Again his feeling grew dull and angry. He would not look at her. She did not give in easily. “All right, then, Finn. Only I thought …” And she would come at him in another way, her voice warm, not pressing him, but painting a picture, suggesting what might be, if only … until he could stand it no more. As he walked out, she opened her hands to the fire, not to gather its warmth, but to let her short-lived dream go. In face and eyes the new flame was blown out.

  It was late before he came home that night, and he was disappointed to find her still up, for he slept now in the middle room. She greeted him naturally and offered to get him something to eat. But he muttered he was not hungry and was going to bed.

  “Listen, Finn,” she said in a calm voice. “You and I will have to solve our troubles now as best we can, so let us be sensible always. You would like to carry on with the croft?”

  “Yes.”

  “And—perhaps when you are a little older—go to the sea?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, then. I would never stand in your way. You must know that. I was thinking when you were out that the money would come in very handy, for you would have to buy your own share of nets and perhaps your own share in a new boat. For that, whatever money you need, it is yours.”