The Silver Darlings

by Neil M. Gunn

  The following day he was interested in the croft, and she showed him everything. He was a fine companion now, full of life and little jokes, delighting in the land, staring at the tender corn with a smile, hearkening to the birds, talking of nests with a half-amused, half-adventurous expression, clapping the cows when she milked them—as though he could not get quite used to the old wonder of it all. His sailor’s eye saw things crying out to be fixed up, or battened down. She saw life taking root in him and growing before her eyes, life and hope. This excited her deeply. She laughed too readily and too much. Her anxiety now was to keep him off, and yet by the very way she set about it, by the gaiety that was meant to avoid the serious, she drew him powerfully, and knew she did but could not help it.

  On the third night, with Barbara up at Shiela’s, he spoke to her, again with one of his simple questions, without intruding, in the quietness of the kitchen, their minds alive as the tongues of fire: “You would not think of getting married again, Catrine?” Not looking at him, she had answered, “No.”

  “Why not? If you care for me at all?” His voice had shaken. “I have always cared for you. Never anyone else. Couldn’t—couldn’t you think of it?”

  She had shaken her head.

  The dumb gesture had encouraged him. He had drawn nearer, close to her. “Catrine, why not, my white heart?” An arm went round her shoulders. “Our lives are before us. I could make you happy. Listen to me, Catrine. Many a long night did I think of you. Catrine, together we could make up——”

  “Oh, no, no, Ronnie!” and she turned to him blindly and buried her face against his breast in a storm of emotion.

  He had clasped her now in both his arms, and kissed her hair, and murmured words into it. But she had drawn away from him, and in a moment felt tragically calm.

  “I’m sorry, Ronnie—to behave like this—but it cannot be. It couldn’t.”

  He did not give in easily. This had come too quickly upon her. But in time—perhaps in time—give time a chance.

  She did not answer him.

  “Do you not care for me?”

  “It’s not that.” Her voice and manner were fatally calm.

  “What is it, then?”

  “I don’t know.” But she knew, oh, she knew now. She would never get away from the past with Ronnie. He was its ghost. The strath, the outline of the hills, Tormad, the red berries—with the life that ran through them, the flame of youth, quickening, terrible, enchanting. Ronnie would lead her back there, remind her. It could not be borne. And because of this revulsion, knowing now how he had suffered, seeing his mind and hope with a dreadful clarity, seeing both of them caught like this in the ways of fate, of a past inexorable fate, wanderers akin in spirit and in circumstance, she almost loved him. But they could not wander in that place. It could not be borne.

  It was out of a silence that he had said the words which desolated her and haunted her for many days, the simple words, but awful and final for him, “I see it is too late.”

  For at that moment she knew he was thinking not of her but of himself, of his past life, the bitterness of the defeated years.

  And fate had singled her out to tell him of his defeat, to show him the bitterness.

  Catrine closed the lid of the chest.

  But she could not get up, all power of volition being drained from her body. The stillness that had come upon the kitchen, with Ronnie sitting motionless, came now upon her mind, and she saw their two figures as in a quiet but terrible dream. Ronnie had got up and said he would go out for a little walk, had stood for a moment staring at the grey light in the window, and then had gone.

  Catrine leaned over the chest and her head dropped heavily between her arms, thought draining away from her, as it had done when, Ronnie gone, she had crouched in the empty kitchen.

  Presently she sat upright again, listening to the sounds about the croft. She knew them all and at first they were strange, but in a moment like little living things they came running into her heart, and she got up, went outside, looked around the croft, at her beasts, at the fields, found she had the whole place to herself, and set about her cleaning with a renewed strength in body and arms. She was scouring a tin milk-pail outside, when suddenly there came upon her from nowhere a feeling of extraordinary happiness. Such an access might have at the core of it a sadness, but not so now. It ran through her flesh, her blood, in promptings of laughter. Must be the sun! she thought, and began to hum away to herself as she worked with force. Her body was full of strength, delighted in its strength, could have scoured the bottom right out of the pail! “What are you looking at, you old fool?” she called to Bran. He got up and came towards her doubtfully, with an uncertain wag of his tail. “Off you go!” she cried. And back he went with resignation. “Poor Bran,” she said. “Come here and I’ll give you something.”

  In the late afternoon, as she was making up the beds, Shiela looked in, and when Catrine told her how she had spent the day, they both began to laugh. “Look, I scoured a small hole in the bottom of the pail!” But Shiela could not hold up the pail against the light for laughing. And when Catrine began to chew a little oatmeal with which to plug the hole, Shiela got a stitch in her side and Catrine spluttered.

  Shiela loved laughing and often had tremendous bouts of it. Her mind was quick and intelligent, and her eyes a lively bright brown. From laughing she could pass to solemnity or a tender look in a moment. Her house was never very tidy but it was always warm. She could make life itself glow almost at any time. “We’ll hurry up and do your milking. And then you’ll come up with me and spend the night.”

  They were like children again, Catrine quick on her feet and Shiela with a story about Lexy the witch that she let out in explosive bits. All the affairs of men and women, in sex and at market, were given by Shiela a consuming humour, particularly if they were outrageous.

  About nine o’clock Roddie dropped in. Shiela had seven children and the youngest of them welcomed their uncle with delight. “Yes, you’re coming on,” said Roddie to little Art, feeling the right bicep. “Another year or two and you should about do. In fact, I think you could almost hoist a sail yourself now.”

  “Oh, dear, that bairn!” exclaimed Shiela. “It’s nothing but boats with him from morning to night. Sure as death, I never get out of the bit with this swarm.”

  They all seemed to do as they liked. There was continual turmoil and often, to be heard, a grown-up had to shout. When there was a fight on, Shiela would give one of them a clout. But Mairi, aged four, was a solemn child and would stand by Catrine or sit on her knee, saying nothing indefinitely. “Now, Mairi, what would you like?” “I would like a little song.” “What about you singing me a little song? Come!” And Catrine started humming and prompting. When Mairi was at last persuaded into a few notes, a mocking laughter stopped her, and her lips began to tremble. Then Shiela set about the Philistines.

  “How thankful you ought to be that you’re not burdened like this!” cried Shiela, her voice breaking in laughter.

  About ten o’clock, Roddie saw Catrine home. It was dark, with a slight ground mist after the heat of the day. Roddie was friendly, and they talked amusïngly about the children. Once or twice Roddie took her arm to steady her on the uneven path, for they could not see the ground, and her heart was glad and relieved when he naturally withdrew it. But the stones over the burn were a more difficult matter and he had to take her hand and then almost lift her up the yard of bank.

  “Thank you,” she said. “It’s not lighter I’m getting!”

  “You’re just a sound, reasonable weight,” he replied critically, and she laughed.

  “Finn will be with all his relations now,” she said, and went on talking brightly about them. Soon they were at her door. “Is it too late to ask you in?”

  “It’s not too late for me—but thanks all the same!”

  “That wasn’t a nice way of me to put it, was it?”

  “We’ll take it that same way.”

&nb
sp; “Well, come in.”

  “That’s better! But it’s getting a bit late, Catrine. Don’t you think so?” His voice was friendly and sensible.

  “Perhaps it is late.”

  “Yes. I think so. Some other time. Well, I’ll be off. You’re not afraid to spend the night alone?”

  “Oh, no.”

  “You’re plucky!”

  “I just don’t think about it.”

  “I don’t know of any other woman who would do it—apart from Lexy!”

  “That’s a nice name to couple me with!”

  He stood quite still. She could hardly see him, but in his stillness there could always be something strong and ominous. Had it been Ronnie she would have known exactly what he felt. She was never sure of Roddie.

  “Good night,” he said in the same clear voice, and walked away.

  “Good night,” she called and, going inside, quickly found her hands fumbling with the bar, and her heart beating as if something tremendous had happened from which she had narrowly escaped.

  Quiet-footed she entered the kitchen and stood against the wall beside the window, listening. The fire was low. When it seemed his footsteps were gone from the night she drew the window-blind and, getting down on her knees before the fire, began to build it up. But why was she building it up? It was time for bed. She thought: I’m all through–other! and tried to smile.

  There was nothing tangible in her mind to explain this heart-beating and feeling of escape. Something had happened—and was over. She began to realize that Roddie had made up his mind to leave her alone. And that somehow was astonishing. She hardly knew what to do with the fire; whether to walk or sit. He had never mentioned Ronnie’s visit—nor referred to Tormad’s death.

  So then at last she was free of the dark image of Roddie. It was all over. Astonishment was not only in herself but in the air about her, in the squat stillness of the low three-legged stools, in the table, by the quiet bed.

  She did not ask herself questions, because this, as yet, was something she could not think about. Behind thought was feeling, charged with deeper meaning than thought. And this meaning was alive and immanent.

  Suddenly her thought accepted the full meaning: this was the end of another chapter in her life. It was the end. For long years Roddie’s life had run parallel with her own, ready to touch it, for ever threatening to touch it, and in some way this had been part of the rich troubling excitement of life. She had not desired it, often feared it, always was concerned to keep it at bay. Naturally enough, for there had been no absolute certainly of Tormad’s death—as Roddie knew; naturally enough, for that reason alone.

  But she was not thinking. Her mind in the kitchen was like a bird astonished at finding itself in a cage. The past was known, and had not to be thought. She was all alone in the kitchen and no-one would come.

  Sleep was so far away from her that it was no good going to bed. She did not know what to do and felt helpless. It was a pity she had not taken Shiela’s oldest girl, Janet, who was twelve, down to stay with her, as Shiela had suggested. But she had laughed and said no she did not mind being alone. For some unaccountable reason she had actually looked forward to being alone, to being all by herself, as if the essence of some long-forgotten pleasure might arise and surround her, like the scent of honeysuckle in the air.

  She began to be afraid, not merely of the emptiness in the house, but of something nameless and dark and looming, coming out of the night and out of her own mind. Images tended to form quickly and pass. She was not afraid of Ronnie; he could enter with assurance and stay. They had understood each other so utterly. But all at once she saw Ronnie’s face and heard his words: “I see it is too late,” and she was appalled.

  For now the words had a new power, a different meaning. Before, they had made the tragic pattern of life clear; they had set things at a distance: Tormad, herself, Ronnie, and the paths they had travelled, the paths traced by fate, awful and inexorable. But they had been seen with clarity, with the ultimate understanding that accepts. So figures are seen moving below in a glen of the memory or on ridges against the sky.

  But now the words were not spoken by Ronnie but in the dark recesses of her own mind, and they came upon her with a sense of immediate horror. The clear picture was blotted out like a piece of sentiment. Too late—too late—for you, Catrine.

  Roddie had nothing to do with this. It was far beyond Roddie. It touched the ultimate loneliness of herself.

  It was her first real intimation of Death.

  Her eyes brightened and glanced in fear. Her mind flew hither and thither. Would she—would she go out and run—run—all the way to Shiela’s? She could say she would rather have someone; take Janet back with her. She didn’t know what to do, and stood helpless, staring towards the door through which she should pass. Her eyes went beyond the door into the little room, Finn’s room, and saw Kirsty lying on her death-bed. The vision was so stark that she had to stare at it, unable to drag her eyes away, as though by doing so she might commit some appalling wrong against Kirsty. At last she withdrew her eyes from it, decently, if under a terrible strain. As she set one live peat against another, she found she could not lift her head to look at the door. Kirsty was standing there. She raised her head. There was no-one there. The tongs fell with a clatter from her trembling hand. She bit her lip against the scream that rose. She got up and backed away from the door. Bran moved from her blind feet with a little yelp. “Oh, Bran! Bran!” She had forgotten the dog and now, stooping, fondled him with an erratic hand, her eyes on the door.

  The dog twisted about her legs, licked her hand, and she told him to lie down. She spoke in a loud, reckless voice, filling the house with her voice, so that everything could hear it. When the dog had yelped, her eyes had blinded. In this way she got back a small measure of assurance. Now, she thought, with Bran it would be easy for her to go through the night to Shiela’s. She would hold on to the dog.

  She was trembling all over. The dog was no real company. If she went into the middle room and assured herself that Kirsty was not there, that the bed was empty and everything normal, she might be all right. It was her mind that was going to bits. She found, however, that she could not go into the room; and, with the shawl tied round her head, she found she could not go out into the night. She thought: This is madness! She had not been afraid even when Kirsty was lying dead in her room, not afraid in this way. She was losing her courage. She was becoming hysterical. She would move about exactly as if everything were normal; smoor the fire and go to bed.

  She took off the shawl, hung it up, and went about the kitchen, tidying and putting things straight. Ker body remained tremulous, felt very light, and presently she had to sit down. But she could not lift the tongs; had not the power to lift the tongs and smother the light.

  What had gone wrong with her? “The years pass …” Ronnie’s voice. Not death—but the death of the years. While you still have the years, everything is possible, everything can be encountered, even death. But with the years gone, with the years dead, all that was possible is past, and ahead, ahead in the lonely darkness, is Death.

  She raised her head and all over the skin of her face ran living pain. She pressed the back of her right hand fiercely against her mouth, and when she drew it away there was blood on it. She stared at the blood, as at a terrifying portent, for she did not know how strongly she had bitten her lip when the dog had yelped. This bright red occasionally affected her because of its colour link with the rowan berries. She now started to her feet, crying out, small strangled cries. Bran whined. She encountered her face in the little looking-glass, saw the blood on her lip, and realized she must have bitten it. But the face was dim in the glass and flickered, and she turned away from the eyes, quickly, as if someone had stood behind her. Mid-floor, tensely listening for she knew not what, she heard two faint footfalls outside. Even before Bran growled, she knew it was Roddie. He was coming back; he could not leave her as he had done! She stood unmoving, unbr
eathing. His fingers would tap at the window or tap at the door. Now … now…. He would be waiting, wondering, his hand ready; standing there, ready to tap. She felt the blind darkness of his body come against her face.

  But no fingers tapped. A long time she stood, held by the presence outside. At last the thought was born: could he have gone? She went to the door and, holding her breath, listened. A small sigh from the night went past the door. She swung the bar and pulled the door open. “Who’s there?” she asked. But no-one answered. “Go in, Bran,” she said to the dog in a formal voice, closed the door on him, and stood outside. It was pitch dark. “Who’s there?” she asked more loudly. She stepped along the house as far as the window, with a courage stronger than fear, a desperate courage. “Who’s there?” she cried, but her voice was thin and high and would not carry far. For she had to control it.

  There was a heavy stillness in the night; an absolute silence. A cold breath came on her face, damp and clammy; a faint sigh ran along the edge of the thatch. The night pressed her against the wall. She turned for the door and tried to walk slowly, normally. But once inside, she banged the door shut and hurt her finger-nails clawing for the bar and swinging it into position; then leaned against the door with her shoulder, with all her weight, breathing heavily.

  As she came into the kitchen, Bran was waiting for her, his head slightly lowered, his eyes gleaming with an unhuman intelligence, blue-green fires, lit from inside the skull. As she stared at him, his tail moved slightly, but his lowered head remained still, the eyes watching her.

  From a recess in the wall, she took a tallow candle, lit it at the fire, and, holding it before her breast, went towards the middle room. As she pushed its door open, a cold obliterating sensation crinkled her temples and ran down her back and left side. The draught flickered the candle flame and for a moment she saw nothing but swinging stabbing movements in the dark. Then the room settled and the counterpane on the bed was as she had left it, drawn smooth as sleep, passive as death, a waiting place for sleep and death. By the foot of it was Kirsty’s chest, a dark wooden box, holding “the bonnie things” from her life on earth. And holding—already—a few of Catrine’s own.