by Morris West
In the morning Kathleen and I were there. Old Hannah, who had a very knowing eye and the second sight as well, needed no telling. She clucked over us at breakfast like a mothering hen and made no secret of her approval.
‘If that’s the way it is, that’s the way it was planned, I always say. There’s good in the bad and bad in the good, and the pair of you seem to have grabbed the best of it. How or when, it’s not my business to know – and I wouldn’t ask. I’m a sound sleeper, thank God, even at the worst of times; but this morning there were new roses in the garden and that’s always the making of a happy day. The Morrison will be glad too. Though maybe you won’t want to say anything until it’s an engagement, legal-like. But he’ll need cheering and he’s fond of you both. Tell him I wish him well and want him back – but not a day before he’s ready…’
Which reminded me that Morrison had left a message in his desk for me. Before we set off for the hospital, I went to see what it was. There was a sealed envelope addressed to Ruarri Matheson and a note for me, obviously written the previous afternoon. I read it, with Kathleen looking over my shoulder.
... I do not know how the dinner will go, but I am glad and grateful that you have given me the courage to attempt it. I have had so little courage of late, so little strength for unfamiliar situations. Even after I had invited you from Rome, I regretted it. I did not want a stranger in my house. Now you are not a stranger and I am happy you came.
After our talk that noontime, I made a decision. I want Ruarri to know who I am and who he is. He has been deprived too long of the fundamental birthright of identity. I beg you to believe that I am not afraid to tell him myself; but I want him to be free to reject the identity, and reject me, too, if he wishes, without the embarrassment of a personal confrontation. I am afraid of myself, you see. The condition from which I am suffering is such that any sudden emotion may bring on a heart attack, and I would not have that happen, lest he bend to me in pity and hate me for having to do it. If he comes, it must be because he wants to come. I have explained this in my letter, omitting all mention of my illness.
I want you to give the letter into his hands. I charge you with no other responsibility than this, which I know is already too much; but I have no one else to whom I can turn. I absolve you from all secrecy, so that you may answer any question Ruarri asks – if indeed he wants to ask any at all. I hope you will absolve me, in charity, from the guilt of this imposition. You came here for healing. I have done nothing but inflict a new wound. A sad comment on my own frailty. My thanks, anyway, and my regrets and my affection.
Alastair Morrison
It was a letter to weep over, but a noble one. Yesterday I would have read it differently, as an intolerable charge to lay on any man. Today I accepted it willingly, even, I think, with joy. I was rich overnight. I was brim-full, pressed down, running over with happiness. I could be the greatest spendthrift in the world and still be rich tomorrow.
Which is one of the problems of living in the love country. You forget that it is a place of illusions and, once you step outside it, you are more vulnerable than before. You have forgotten the traps and the ambushes, the pits that open every mile under your unwary feet. The language you have learned is a meaningless babble. The cloak of invisibility doesn’t make you invisible at all. You are just a silly fellow prancing along naked with all his parts a-dangle in the breeze. The mirror simply gives you back your own face, which is a clown’s mask, smeared with custard pie. But how was I to know all that, with the glow still on me, and Kathleen leaning over me, with her hands inside my shirt, telling me I was the dearest, tenderest, wisest and most generous man in all the world?
So the decision was quickly made. This wise and tender and generous man would find a propitious time to visit Ruarri and deliver the letter and stand by him, in brotherly fashion, to help him bear the shock and adjust happily to the new and saving knowledge. After that we had a problem of our own to solve: another small matter of geography. Kathleen was a working medico, paid to keep the good folk of Harris healthy while the regular incumbent was on holiday. She had a few patients in Stornoway Hospital, but her practice was down at the other end of the island, forty, fifty miles away, depending on which road you took, and none of them were wonderful. She lived in the doctor’s house with an elderly housekeeper for company. I did not dare spend a night there, else the scandal would be all over the village next morning. At the lodge we were safe so long as Morrison was in hospital, but there would be nights and days when we would be far apart or else coasting the bleak countryside and bundling in the back of a car. All this we discussed as we drove into Stornoway to see Morrison, and found no solution to it, only that we would meet whenever we could and take our comfort wherever we found it.
As it turned out, I did not see Morrison. They had him under sedation and did not want him disturbed. However, Kathleen’s report was not too discouraging. If he survived the next few days, he would mend enough to resume a quiet life; but he would always be a man with a sword hung over his head. Which made it the more imperative that the weight of worry should be taken off him and the business of Ruarri favourably resolved. Kathleen drove me back to Laxay, then, after all too short a farewell, went on to Harris and her clutch of ailing islanders. I sought out Fergus William McCue for a couple of hours’ fishing before lunch.
It was a mistake. Fergus William was in a maudlin humour. Morrison’s illness had shaken him badly. I caught no fish, but I got two hours of theme and variations on the Grim Reaper and the grasses of the field. In that time – how long, dear Lord, how long! – I was made cognizant of every creak in Fergus’ bones, every flutter of his pulse, with drink taken and without, every wheeze and rhoncus in his pipes. I relived the last hours of his wife, ‘and her so patient, the poor bonny lass, but wasting away every minute and every hour with the horrible mess inside her’. I heard the tragic tale of Malcolm Moray, a giant of a man, six feet three in his socks, with a chest on him like a barrel, who could toss a caber like none other in the Isles, and had begotten five sons and four daughters, and there he was, no more than forty, struck down in the middle of the night without warning. When they buried him it took eight men to carry the coffin, and although only two of them were drunk, they dropped it twice on the way to the graveside. Then, for the awesome irony of it, there was Alison Macaulay, still living at ninety, but she’d lost three daughters, all under thirty, one from the coughing sickness and the other was run down by a car, and the third – well, that was a sad story, and not much talked about, though there was rumour of her dying in childbirth on the mainland, which could have been true, but there was never a record of the wedding. Before the litany of lamentations was ended, I was ready to move Job off his dunghill and sit there mourning my own imminent demise.
It was a soul-shaking experience, but at least it decided one issue for me. I might as well have all my griefs on the same day. So when I got back to the lodge I telephoned Ruarri’s house, told him how Morrison was and asked if I could drop in to see him after lunch. He asked me to make it at six; otherwise he’d lose half a day’s rent on the tractor. Besides, that way he could give me a drink and fix me a meal if I cared. That left me with an afternoon to kill. I spent it reading and dozing by the fire. Take it all in all, I had had a rather exhausting night, and I had no desire to be struck down with such promising days ahead of me.
By the time I got to Ruarri’s house I had every gambit rehearsed. First move, the greetings and the pleasantries; then the first drink poured; then myself handing over the envelope and saying:
‘Morrison asked me to give you this. I know part of what’s in it. So pour me another drink and I’ll wait outside while you read it. When you’re ready, call me in or send me home. It’s all the same to me.’
Then I would take my drink and walk out into the warm, soft twilight and think of the brotherly words he would need afterwards. He would call me in; we would drink a little more to take the edge off the world; he would cook the meal
; we would make a fraternal communion of it; he would be filled with the spirit of understanding and forgiveness and love; he would beg me to lead him to Morrison’s bedside and leave him there, hushed and humble, to be gathered to his father’s bosom.
In fact, the way of it was slightly different.
Shortly after six I walked into his house and found him, still grubby from work, sitting behind the bar with a glass of whisky in his hand. He gave a shout of welcome, then looked me up and down and sideways and laughed, ‘You smell of it, seannachie! The milk’s all over your whiskers. And if you want to curl up by the fire and purr the night away, I won’t blame you! Yes or no?’
‘You stink yourself! Go take a shower. But pour me a drink first.’
‘Where’s Kathleen?’
‘Working. More’s the pity.’
‘Morrison?’
‘I called the hospital before I left the lodge. He’s resting. They hope he’ll make it. Where’s Maeve?’
‘In London by now, I should think. Then Paris.’
‘Did you buy the horse?’
‘Not yet. What did you think of her?’
‘Quite a girl. Are you interested?’
‘Was. Not any more. She’s too damned intelligent to live with. But we still do business together. Slainte!’
‘Slainte.’
‘That was a good dinner party.’
‘Glad you enjoyed it. By the way. I’ve got a letter for you from Morrison.’
‘I’ll read it in the bath. Help yourself to the drinks. Read a good book. Turn on the television if you’re interested.’
I wasn’t. I poured myself another dram of malt whisky – fifteen years old, good enough to embalm an emperor – and walked out into the garden. The air was warm, but I was as cold as death. I plucked a green bean from the vine and nibbled on it the way the Italians do, but the taste was bitter and I spat it out. A homing shepherd called a greeting to me; I returned it mechanically and envied him the quiet incoming. Away in the distance a dog yelped and a child’s voice went shouting after it. After that, silence. I paced the gravelled path up and down, up and down, like a monk telling an endless rosary of other men’s dolours. Except that I wasn’t a monk and Ruarri wasn’t either and Morrison had been, but a trifle too late. After a long time I finished the whisky and went in to pour myself another.
Ruarri, bathed and dressed in fresh clothes, was waiting for me with the letter spread on the bar in front of him. His face was a wooden mask. I set down the glass. He filled it and pushed it back to me. He tapped the letter with his forefinger and said, ‘You had to know about this, seannachie.’
‘I did. But I didn’t ask to know.’
‘I want to believe you.’
I took from my pocket Morrison’s letter to me and handed it across the bar.
He read it slowly, digesting every word. Then he folded it and gave it back. ‘I believe you now. Tell me the rest of it.’
I told him the what and the how and the when. The why I could tell him only in the same fumbling way as the Morrison had told it to me: that a bird might fall or a tree might topple for no reason that could be put into words. He accepted that, too, reluctantly. Then the cross-examination began.
‘But it was you who suggested the dinner party?’
‘Yes.’
‘Therefore you made a judgment?’
‘I was asked to make it.’
‘By Morrison only.’
‘That’s true.’
‘You didn’t consult me.’
‘I couldn’t. I was bound by a secret.’
‘You were my friend. You kept the chessman.’
‘I couldn’t be a true friend to one and a false friend to the other. Right or wrong, I was trying to do the best for both.’
‘Who else knows about this?’
‘No one. Only Morrison and I.’
‘You’ll swear that?’
‘I swear it.’
I was swearing a lie, too; but if I could not trust Kathleen, I might as well cut my throat.
‘I hate you, seannachie.’
‘I’m sorry about that.’
‘But you don’t know why?’
‘No.’
‘Then I’ll tell you. Because you knew when I didn’t know. And you judged when I couldn’t judge. And you can go on judging – right and wrong, black and white – when I’m still tumbling round in a confusion you’ll never understand.’
‘You’ve no right to say that.’
‘I haven’t, but I’m still saying it. Hating and loving come from the guts and the balls, not from the head. I’m telling you something true, seannachie. Believe it, for Christ’s sake.’
‘So I believe it. Now what?’
‘That’s the big question, isn’t it? Now what…? Got any answers?’
‘I’d like another drink.’
‘So would I.’
He poured them, one and one, large enough for a horse, and pushed my glass back to me. We sat facing each other across the countertop, like a pair of heavies out of some old-fashioned movie. Finally I had to laugh, and Ruarri, ready as always, laughed too.
‘Funny, funny, funny. Daddy has his son. Sonny has his dad. They both live happily ever after. Sing, sing ye angel bands. Is that it, seannachie? Is that the way you’d write it?’
‘I’m not writing it. I’m just the messenger boy.’
‘So you are. I forgot that. Let me write it then, and if you don’t like the script, just remember I’m a poor, ignorant boy from the Lews with no learning at him at all. It starts like this. There’s a father, Morrison, who in the gaudy days of his youth had a son whom his family for a hundred good reasons wouldn’t let him acknowledge. Later in life – not too much later, mind you – he gets religion and goes off to look after the children of the heathen, leaving his own offspring still unacknowledged. Now he’s old and tired and sick and feeling guilty and he’d like to cleanse his conscience and have his son back and love him tenderly and die at peace. Now is that a fair statement or isn’t it?’
‘It’s true, but….’
‘No! Forget the buts! Let’s go back to the boy. He’s not Morrison’s son. He’s Ruarri the Bastard, son of Anne Matheson of Gisla. That’s the record. I’ve seen it written twenty times on a shithouse wall, carved into the top of a desk: Ruarri the Bastard. Not nice, mind you, but he wears it. Not easy, but he’s growing tougher now. Soon he’ll be having his first girl and getting his first beating in an alley and his first dose of clap. After that he grows up fast – still no Daddy, but the need for him’s fading now. After that… Well! You fill in the rest, seannachie – it’s all the commonplaces you’ve ever read or written. And now Ruarri the Bastard’s home again with money and ships and a croft and prospects bigger still. Does he need Daddy? The hell he does! Does he want Daddy – to fill the deep, dark holes in his spirit? The hell again! Daddy’s a bloody albatross hung round his neck. Daddy’s a gentleman, which Ruarri the Bastard isn’t and doesn’t want to be, because this is a rough, randy world, and he’s seen it all and he knows it’s going to get rougher still, and that’s when the bastards will come into their own. You know what I think about Daddy? I think he’s a good, sweet, stuffy Scots gentleman, and I’m sorry he’s got a bad heart, but we all get something, and I hate his bloody guts from now to eternity. Amen.’
‘You’ll tell him that, of course?’
‘I don’t have to tell him or not tell him. He’ll know. Then he can sweat it out, just the way I did.’
‘I’ll tell you something, Matheson. He’ll do just that. He will sweat it out. And he’ll never say another word about it, just because he is the stuffy Scots gentleman you think he is. And he’ll do it with more goddam grace than you’ll muster in a lifetime. Wrong he was. But it took a big man to write that letter – bigger than you are, boy. Much bigger.’
I thought he might swing at me; and if he did he would get the liquor in his eyes and a broken bottle shoved in his face, because if I let him get close he co
uld kill me. But he didn’t move. He just stood there behind the bar, staring at me as though he didn’t quite believe what he had heard. Then, damn me, he was grinning, then chuckling, then laughing, on and on as if he had heard the funniest joke in the world since Adam lost a rib and got a woman to make up for it.
‘You’re a rough one yourself, aren’t you, seannachie? You don’t look it. You’ve got all the literary talk, and the nice manners, yes sir, no sir, three bags full, sir, all present and correct, sir; but by Christ, you fight as dirty as I do! You had one hand on the glass and the other ready to reach for the bottle and smash it on the bar. You’ve been around, laddie. The only difference between us is that you know more words than I do, and you think like a snake, all sinuous and shifty. But you’re stupid tonight. You’re just hearing the words. You haven’t one idea in all the world what they really mean.’
‘So you tell me, Ruarri. I’m a dumb Sassenach. You tell me!’
He told me. He told me quietly and bitterly, leaning across the bar, his red beard wagging at me, his eyes boring into me like live coals into a plank. ‘I’m bleeding, seannachie. I’m hurting as though someone has shoved a knife into my belly and is winding my guts round it like spaghetti. I’m crying, seannachie, but all the tears dried up twenty years ago and the grief can’t get out any more. I’m hating, too, because the hate is the only thing I’ve had to keep me alive; and I lost the way of loving, with no one to teach it to me. You know what I’d like now? A woman! I’d like her to come and take me in her arms and let me cry on her breast and soothe me to sleep and wake me when I’d forgotten all the shit of this lousy world. But if she came, I’d tumble her like a whore and pay her and send her home without a thank-you. So don’t sit there, laddie, all toffee-nosed and secure in whatever little philosophy you have. Don’t judge me for big or small, against Morrison or anyone else. You haven’t the right. You haven’t the knowing. Although I think you’ve got the caring, else I’d have been over the bar and at your throat a minute ago. And I could be still if I thought for half a second I was wrong in you.’
