by Morris West
Which brought us, by a round turn, back to Red Ruarri and his fierce, private dreams. I told Morrison of my day’s sailing with him, of its angry end, of the gift which he had given me this very morning. Morrison was a good listener, with a canny ear and shrewd, diagnostic eye. He let me talk myself out and then gave me his own version of the story.
‘I told you it was a small world in the Lews, laddie. I’ll show you just how small it is. Ruarri Matheson was born in this house, in the very room you have now. It was January, gale weather, and there was snow such as the Isles hadn’t seen for ten years. Anne Matheson was in service here because my father had taken her when her parents threw her out from Gisla, after they found she was pregnant and no man around to marry her. She’s dead now, poor woman, but in her day she was known as a local beauty. So there was malice enough to make things difficult for her, and for the boy later. Besides that, the kirk was a stern assembly in those days – as it is still, though it’s softened somewhat – and a child without a father is a hard thing to live down in a small place.’
‘Who was the father?’
‘She never told.’
‘Brave woman.’
‘Aye, there was iron in her, as there is in Ruarri. He grew up wild, as he had to be to survive his bastardy. When the old people died, the croft at Gisla came to his mother, and he worked it with her till she died. Then he sold it and he went away. About the next ten years nobody knows anything except what he’s chosen to tell them, which isn’t much, and he’s a colourful liar when he wants to be. Three years ago he came back with money in the bank, lots of it. He bought up land over by Carloway in the west. He raised a loan for a trawler and paid it back within a year. And he’s gathered a small crew of hard-drinking, hard-playing lads that they call Red Ruarri’s buannas, which was the old name of the bodyguard of the Lord of the Isles. He works them hard and pays them well, and roisters around the island with them in between times.’
‘And why the interest of Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise?’
‘I don’t know the answer to that, and Duggie Donald’s not a man to be telling. But Ruarri Matheson is no one to miss a quick profit, inside or outside the law.’
‘He’s invited me to his house.’
‘I’d go. Have him here whenever you want. He’s an entertaining fellow – just so you don’t let him get you into mischief. If you feel like a wee stroll now, I’ll introduce you to Fergus William McCue for the fishing.’
So, for the moment, the subject was closed; yet I was left with the impression that Alastair Morrison was telling less than he knew and that, if I wanted to know more, I should have to find it out for myself.
It was ten minutes’ brisk walk to the cottage of Fergus William McCue, gillie and factotum to the Morrison lodge. We heard him before we saw him: a high, nasal, old man’s voice quavering through the tune which is called ‘Thoir a’ Nall am Botul’, the Song of the Bottle. In all the time I was in the Isles, I never heard him sing any other, and I am convinced it was the only song he knew. He was a true black Celt, small as a jockey, game and dancy as a fighting cock, with a set of false teeth that clattered every time he spoke. God only knows how old he was – or is, for only a thunderbolt could have killed him. He was sitting on a wooden bench outside the cottage, with a flat cap jammed on his head and his tweed collar turned up around his ears, making salmon flies.
When Alastair introduced me, he looked me up and down, summed me up and dismissed me with contempt ‘Ach! The truaghan! The poor, poor fellow. Anyone can see he’ll never do. He hasna the hands. He hasna the eye. So I’ll be doing all the work for a poor fraction of the catch.’
‘But you’ll try with him, Fergus?’
‘Aye, God watch me, I’ll try. But why do you bring ’em to me, Mr Morrison, why?’
‘Because you need the money, Fergus, and so do I.’
‘We do. Indeed we do.’ He fixed me with a rheumy, baleful eye and spread his flies on the bench. ‘Now let’s see how much they teach you in Europe. Name the flies for me.’
‘I wouldn’t know one from the other.’
‘Then how – may all the saints of God stand between us and the storm! – how do you expect to fish? These three here are for the trout: Black and Peacock Spider, Golden Butcher and Heather Moth. This one we call a Hairy Mary, and that a Thunder and Lightning, both size ten for the salmon. These over here are all for the sea trout, Watson’s Fancy, Black Pennell and Peter Ross. Have you got all that?’
‘No.’
‘A slow learner, Mr Morrison. A slow learner. Do you know how to cast?’
‘No.’
‘What can you do then?’
‘Nothing. That’s why I’m looking to Fergus William McCue to teach me.’
‘And how much time do you think I’ve got? I’m an old man. I could be dead before you take your first half-pounder.’
‘If you die, I’ll bury you – with a bottle of Glenlivet to keep the cold out.’
‘Make it two – one for the head and another for the feet – and I’ll take you on.’
‘You have yourself a pupil. You name the times.’
‘Morning and evening, when the sun is off the water. You bring the vehicle, I bring the tackle. Is his credit good, Mr Morrison?’
‘For a week at least, Fergus.’
‘Does he drink?’
‘I fear he does.’
‘God be thanked for small mercies. In the morning then, laddie. Nine o’clock. And be sure to bring a wee something to keep out the cold. Good day to you both.’
Before we were ten paces away, he was busy again with his lures, singing the bottle song to the circling gulls.
‘His wife died before he was thirty,’ Morrison told me. ‘He brought up two strapping sons single-handed. They’re three times his size, but neither would dare raise his voice to the old fellow. He’s well over seventy, but he still walks ten and twelves miles a day and his heart and his arteries are better than yours or mine. If you can put up with his rasping, which never stops, he’ll teach you everything you need to know about fly-fishing, and a lot more besides…’
I was sure he would; but I wondered how I would wear under the rasp in this sparse and quiet place, where every man’s interest was particular to himself, where every small knowledge was refined, annotated and commented to the minutest detail. I was restless by nature. I had lived till this point in time a life of considerable diversity, in constant contact with men of every race, language and discipline. Now I was anchored in monotony, isolated in a culture so simple that it made me feel naked and afraid. I envied any man who could spend his days luring salmon onto a hook and his nights joyfully retelling his catch; I knew I could not always be content with such a divine simplicity.
We climbed back to the track and followed its winding round the high shoulders of the headlands, down into tiny dark bays and up again onto the peat land with its runnels of stained water and its dark, acid pools lined with sedge and swamp flowers. Striding along the high places, kilt flapping, white hair windblown, Alastair Morrison was the very image of the old clansman, a concordant element of the place and its history. Yet the concordance seemed too perfect so that one wondered about the tenor of his inward life. I would not have read him for a monk, though he had obviously lived like one for a long time. I had known him first in a country where a man could indulge most sexual tastes without censure, yet all his reputation was for rectitude and sobriety. I was curious to know where he had spent all his passion and by what battles he had won his present contentment. I asked him:
‘After the life you’ve lived, are you never lonely here?’
‘Sometimes, laddie. Sometimes. But on balance I think it was wise to come back to the Isles.’
‘What decided you?’
‘Nothing dramatic. I understood, I think, that there’s a moment when it’s too late for any man to go home.’
‘You never married?’
‘No. I was in love once, a long time ago. I made a mess
of that. Then, somehow, I had no heart for another loving. I liked the work I was doing. The service was a compensation, though it never filled the whole need. Still, by and large I’ve had a happy life, especially in the latter years.’
‘Do you ever miss the East?’
‘I do. More than I expected. I dream of it often: of the wats with the sunlight on their towers and the demons with their breastplates of glass and porcelain, shining after the rain showers; of the fruit boats on the klongs and the spirit lamps floating down the river on the Feast of Lights; of the lotus in the jungle pools and the poppies red on the highland slopes. I wake sometimes thinking I hear the temple drums and the chanting of the monks and the small, beautiful women chattering like birds in the market.’
‘It’s a far cry from the Lews.’
‘Not so far as you might think, laddie.’ His face lit up with that faunlike grin that made him look twenty years younger. ‘There’s few people care to be reminded of it, but this island was bought in 1844 from the MacKenzies for a hundred and ninety thousand sterling pounds – opium money, all of it, made by Sir James Matheson on the China Coast. It was the same Matheson who built Stornoway Castle – on the yellow mud of Asia. So what does that tell you?’
‘That time makes saints out of villains. And never to believe the blather of the Tourist Board – or of those who rent lodgings either!’
‘You make your point, laddie. And I’m the first to concede it. Sure, there’s the other side of life in the Isles. We’re a closed and slightly incestuous group. There are feuds that have gone on for twenty years. There’s superstition and drunkenness and domestic tyranny and some very curious lecheries.’
‘And you’ve got a new Matheson on the way up.’
‘Ruarri?’
‘The same. Where do you think he’ll end?’
‘Wealthy or in jail. And the odds are about even either way. You like him, don’t you?’
‘I do. Though I could see myself coming to holds with him if we were together too long.’
‘Then maybe you could do him a service. You’re a travelled man. You’ve done things he respects. He’s made a gesture that says he wants your friendship.’
‘What kind of service do you have in mind?’
‘Persuade him back inside the law. He’s been outside it too long, and the taste of outlawry is sweet and dangerous to him.’
‘That’s a lot to ask of an outsider.’
‘I’d ask it of old Nick himself if I thought it would do any good.’
‘I couldn’t take it on, Alastair. I’d risk too much, and I know too little even to judge the right words.’
‘Then I’ll tell you the rest of it, laddie. And I’ll claim your secrecy as a promise between friends.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t tell me. I came here to be free. I can’t wear new burdens.’
‘Then I’ll beg you, laddie. I’ll beg you in the name of whatever God you believe in, whatever charity you need for yourself. Ruarri Matheson is my son – and there’s no one in the world knows that except you and me.’
At that moment, I truly believe, I hated Alastair Morrison. He had seduced me two thousand miles on a promise of rest and healing for myself. Now he was dragging me into a domestic tragedy of which I wanted no part at all. I had trusted so much in him, in his Olympian calm and his pawky good humour, that this sudden humbling of himself seemed a craven betrayal. My anger was the greater because I was ashamed of myself and of the weakness that had forced me to depend on him. I was ashamed of my perilous facility in social intercourse, which passes for politeness, but is sometimes an indulgence of personal and professional curiosity. I am a willing listener, which makes me too often a wailing wall for the desperate or the eccentric. Now, of all times, I wanted no tears from man or woman. I was sick of the woes of the world and of my own. I wanted to learn to laugh again and be in love, and shout to hell with yesterday and tomorrow. And yet I could find no words to say it all. I could ask only a single resentful question:
‘For Christ’s sake, man! Why now, why me?’
He would not, or could not, face me. He stood, face averted, a ravaged giant on a high clifftop, staring out over the loch. ‘I don’t know why now, laddie. Why does a dam burst suddenly when it’s held for a century? Why does a tree topple or a bird drop out of the sky? Why you? That’s easier. Because you took Ruarri’s gift, and that said you were prepared for a friendship. Because you answered to something you found in him, as I could never answer because of all the silent years that had passed. It seemed a chance; I took it. If it was a mistake, I’m sorry.’
‘It was a mistake. And I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t. I’ll make you no promises except to hold the secret. I’ll not make myself a missionary, but if a chance comes to speak a right word, I’ll try to say it. I can’t do even that if you spring surprises on me. Remember, I’m a stranger. I’m new to this sidelong Celtic way of things.’
‘If you want no surprises, then you’d better hear the rest of it. After that we’ll close the question for good.’
‘Tell me then.’
As we struck homewards across the peaty lands, with only the painted sheep and the hooded crows for company, he told me. It was a poignant, strangely dated little tale of the first years of the thirties, when the shadow of the great depression hung over the land, when the gap between the classes was a chasm that only the bravest or the most foolish could leap over. The clachan folk, the people of village and croft, made one world. The folk of lodge and manse and castle made another. Alastair Morrison was a medical student, home on holiday from Edinburgh, looking later to London and a traditional career. He ranged the island, as any young blade might, for the fishing and the deer-stalking and the drinking and dancing afterwards. Outside his own world, Anne Matheson was his playmate. He was back in Edinburgh a month when she wrote to tell him she was pregnant. Marriage was out of the question. Abortion was a crime not to be dreamed of in the Lews. So the matter was arranged in the fashion of the time. Money passed, settlements were provided and secrecy enjoined. Alastair Morrison was left free to pursue his career and wrestle with his guilts as best he might. Silence, once imposed, became a way of life, and the cost of breaking silence might prove too heavy for all concerned.
‘…But you can’t drive a stake through the heart of a truth, laddie. It lies there, buried but waiting for a day of particular judgment, and mine I think has come on me now. Ruarri is lost to me. I would like to think he might be saved to himself. I’ve burdened you, I know, but I feel a little better for the telling. I hope you’ll forgive me.’
I was humbled then, because there was more service done in his life than in mine, and more amends made for fewer delinquencies. By the time we reached the lodge we were friends again, though I knew in my heart I would never again be so free as on the day I drove through Glen Shiel and saw for the first time the wonder of mountains without men.
Even the lodge was changed for me. From the moment I re-entered the garden, the walls seemed to fold around me like the arms of an unwanted lover demanding surrender and possession. Old Hannah herself seemed to look on me with different eyes. She clucked over me like a mother hen. The cushions must be plumped before I sat on them. The fire must be brightened lest I take a chill. The scones were fresh baked, and the cream new whipped, only for me, and she prayed the tea was drawn to my special taste. She could not leave us without a pat to my shoulder and a word to Morrison in the Gaelic. When I asked him what it meant, he hesitated, then gave me a wry, shrugging answer:
‘An old woman’s fancy. It’s a local proverb. “Na ‘m b’e an diugh an dé …Would that today were yesterday, and there were sons in the house!”’
Next day I went fishing. Let no one think this is a statement to be taken lightly. On the contrary, it is as pregnant and awesome as anything in Genesis: ‘Fiat lux’, or ‘On the seventh day God rested’. Indeed, there is a whole sect of men in the Isles who claim themselves Christians only because there is a fish-image
in the old traditions, but who would as readily bow the knee to Dagon, the fish-god of the Babylonians, or to Orpheus because he was a fisherman as well as a music-maker.
They are all fanatics, though in a quiet, monomanic fashion that makes them agreeable enough to live with. Some of them have attained a high degree of mysticism so that they can endure for days and weeks without women and with very little food or drink. They worship always in solitary places: by dark pools and mountain streams and hidden arms of the sea. They are jealous of these private shrines and apt to be hostile to intruders. They measure salvation by the pound, and the merit of a man by his skill with a fighting fish. You will recognize them by their ruddy, patient faces and their faraway eyes and the coloured flies stuck on their hats. They have a discipline of silence and of secrecy and they train their neophytes with constant admonition and frequent humiliation. They would submit to martyrdom rather than use a gill net, and some of them mourn the old days when a poacher could be legally killed with a spring gun or exiled to the colonies for taking a trout from another man’s water.
