The Changeling

by Robin Jenkins

  ‘They’ve fallen out,’ whispered Mary. ‘But don’t ask me why.’

  ‘My God,’ he muttered, ‘are we being dragged into their squabbles next?’

  ‘You didn’t think, did you, Charlie, that when you brought Tom to Towellan you cut every connection between him and Donaldson’s Court?’

  It was asked as banter; but to Charlie it brought fresh revelation. There was no doubt he had not made the imaginative effort necessary to appreciate Tom’s difficulties in resisting his environment; and there could be no doubt either that he hadn’t made that effort because he could not: his compassion was academic, as Todd had said, not creative; and his love was cowardly.

  ‘We’ll meet you here at five,’ said Mary, ‘and then we’ll all go for tea. Have a nice time.’

  He smiled and waved after her. Already she was laughing merrily.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, and set off.

  ‘Are we going to take the bus, Dad?’ asked Alistair anxiously.

  ‘We are not.’ Charlie laughed. He suddenly felt lighter in heart; truth, as well as faith, was buoyant.

  ‘But I’m sweating already.’

  ‘Pilgrims must walk and sweat and arrive weary.’

  ‘I’m not a pilgrim.’

  ‘No, son, none of us is. But it is good to remember that hundreds of years ago, in the so-called barbaric ages, they walked thousands of miles, across mountains and deserts, through lands infested with robbers and murderers, to reach the holy shrine.’

  ‘They hadn’t any buses in those days,’ said Alistair.

  ‘No, they hadn’t.’ It was difficult to know what to say next. He solved it by turning to Gillian. ‘You’d rather walk, wouldn’t you, Gillian?’

  ‘Yes, Daddy.’

  ‘Look at the long legs she’s got.’

  ‘And Tom wants to walk. Don’t you, Tom?’

  Tom nodded.

  Alistair sneered at such gross sucking-in. Then his attention was taken up by a shop window full of toys and novelties. He soon detected a doll that pee’d when it was filled with water. Permission to buy it was refused; he had known it would be and chuckled. Then he saw a tin full of stuff that made glorious bubbles when thrown from a ring. He had enough money to buy it.

  ‘No,’ said his father, who then had a vision of thousands of iridescent bubbles floating into the sky above the hill. ‘All right. Hurry up.’

  While they were waiting for Alistair they saw Peerie again. About fifty yards along the street he peered from behind a pillar-box. Charlie fumed; it was really worse, he thought, than being out walking with a bitch in heat; in that case followers could be stoned.

  When Alistair came out his purchase was at once confiscated.

  ‘When we get to the top you’ll get it,’ said his father.

  They walked fast, to shake off Peerie; and with the same purpose they darted down two or three side streets, so that in the end Charlie himself was confused.

  At length they came to the famous long flight of steps, where the road itself twisted like a serpent. At the bottom Charlie paused, to gaze up, and see ascending, nearly forty years ago, the diffident boy with the fat knees and the fist that was always clenched. ‘What’s that you’re gripping, Charles?’ ‘Nothing, Mother.’ ‘A body would think it was a precious jewel.’ ‘No, Mother, it’s nothing; look.’

  Looking now, he saw that his fist was indeed clenched; opened, it contained nothing still. He did not know whether to rejoice or grieve.

  ‘I’ll race you up,’ cried Alistair to the other two.

  He raced up, but they waited for Forbes. It was not his son he saw on those steps; it was still that fat solemn boy who had seen the clouds at the top as castles in which giants lived, whom he must slay.

  Slowly he began to climb. Halfway up, he had to rest, and take off his jacket.

  ‘Look who’s behind you, Dad!’ yelled Alistair from the top.

  He turned and saw Peerie at the foot.

  ‘Go away,’ he cried, waving his hand. ‘Don’t pester us.’

  A stranger glanced at him in surprise. Annoyed, he dashed up much too fast and arrived gasping.

  ‘If we had a terrific boulder,’ said Alistair, ‘we could roll it down on top of him.’

  ‘Tom,’ called Peerie, in a forlorn voice.

  ‘Go away,’ shouted Forbes. ‘Lead on, Alistair.’

  Past the lush fields they climbed, past the holiday camp with its châlets, and through the gate at last on to the golf course. Canada Hill was really the highest point of the course; crowned with pine trees, it was a popular and magnificent viewpoint.

  On this green hill that boy with the chubby knees had been Balboa once. Today he was an unsuccessful dominie, still fat, still clutching nothing, but still surely with a trace of that wonder left. It was with a pang in his belly, though, that he heard Alistair shriek and saw him clamber up on to the cairn indicator, like an explorer claiming new territory. That enthusiasm could be shown only by those to whom the world was new, and whose explorations of their own beings still afforded joyful discoveries.

  Near the cairn he raised his head, and was not disappointed. Arran towered, mauve and magnificent. The sky shone; below, glimpsed through the greenness of trees, stretched the Firth, a deeper blue, the shade of milkwort. The horizon was ringed with majestic clouds. A fragrant breeze blew. Somewhere, just the right distance away, in a Boys’ Brigade camp beneath, a piper practised.

  He sighed in gratitude: this loveliness then was not forfeit; indeed, now that his appreciation of it was scaled down to suit the quality and scope of his soul, his pleasure, expressed in this one sigh, was truer than last year’s, when he had looked upon himself as a pilgrim at a shrine, and so had been goggle-eyed with ecstasy. That the restriction was just, and also humane, was proved by one glance at Tom now standing at the cairn, and by another at Peerie, the poor idiot in the coloured jockey cap, lurking behind a whin bush. As he made soberly for the cairn he realised that though he had not succeeded in saving Tom, he had at least been prevented from wrecking himself and the happiness of his family.

  The grass around the cairn was littered with gluttonous sun- eaters, lying on their backs, with their mouths open. Young lovers lay entwined in public lust. Golfers searched leisurely for balls. Two ladies, like schoolmistresses on holiday, gently scolded Alistair for being on the indicator. A young father held his toddling daughter by the hand. An ugly woman showed too much thigh. Larks sang in the blue sky. Down the Firth, past the Isle of Cumbrae, sailed a large cargo boat, faithfully bound perhaps for some port on the other side of the world. Several pleasure steamers, from Dunroth, Wemyss Bay, Largs, and the Kyles of Bute, were making for Rothesay.

  It was worth another sigh of gratitude.

  ‘Well, Tom,’ he said, ‘isn’t it fine?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The very meagreness of that response touched Charlie. How else expect the child from the hideous slum to respond to this abundance of beauty? Then he remembered that this cautious restraint might well be deliberate; behind it might lurk the thief, liar, betrayer, changeling. If it were so, it was occasion for grief, for silencing larks.

  ‘What about my bubble stuff, Dad?’ cried Alistair. ‘You said I’d get it at the top.’

  His father handed it over. ‘Let’s go to the south cairn,’ he said. ‘We’ll be able to see Towellan from there.’

  He led the way through the little pine wood. The path was overgrown with bramble bushes so that he had to thrust recklessly past in places. Hanging to one bush, like an obscene fruit, was an object, the most disenchanting on earth: a contraceptive. It was too high for him to kick it out of sight, and there was no time to search for a stick. He had to hurry past with a sudden shout to his followers to look at the hawk above them. It wasn’t a hawk, only a gull. When he turned to examine their faces he could not tell whether his innocent lie had succeeded or not. Alistair was absorbed with his bubble apparatus; Gillian was as grave as a young nun; and Tom was as inscrutab
le as ever. As he stared at them, seeking signs of their having seen that dismal symbol here in the midst of nature’s prodigality, he saw bobbing among the bushes another similar symbol, the red-blue-green-white cap of the half-wit pursuing them. He could not help connecting the one symbol with the other. Such as Peerie had no valid claim to existence.

  Then, as he hastened on, the air about him began to glitter with bubbles, some small as marbles, some huge as footballs, and all rainbow-coloured. He snatched at them as they soared past. They were the pipe music grown visible. Their insubstantiality, and their dissolving so subtly into the sunshine, redeemed the grossness of his body, hot and sweaty and cleg-bitten, and the foolishness of his thoughts, so that for a few moments, for as long indeed as a bubble lasted, he felt wonderfully buoyant, a creature of light and faith and truth.

  There were lovers by the south cairn, too, one pair in particular as rapt as nymph and satyr. Bubbles danced in profusion over them, and must have looked like true tributes from Venus. But Charlie, mindful of the duties of a twentieth-century parent, had to call to Alistair to be careful where he shed his bubbles. Not everyone would see the child as one of Venus’s sprites, seated on the grass, and tossing with classic grace and magicality hundreds of bubbles into the air, as if he were giving the sunshine back to the sun.

  Gillian was seated beside Alistair. Tom stood with him by the cairn. It was the opportunity Mary had advised him to seek.

  He rested his arms on the cairn, and spoke in a quite neutral voice.

  ‘Yonder’s Towellan,’ he said, ‘up the coast from the lighthouse.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well, Tom, you’ve been with us for a week now.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I think it’s done you good physically. You’re browner; you’re a little heavier, I should say; you look healthier. Do you feel any better?’

  This time there was hesitation, and then, most fleetingly, that smile about whose interpretation he and Todd had differed. Even now he found it hard to believe Todd was right.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Tom at last.

  ‘I wish we could have had you with us for a few days longer,’ said Forbes. ‘But it turns out now to be impossible, I’m afraid. You see, we got word this morning that a friend of Mrs Storrocks’s is coming to stay with us for a few days. It’s most unexpected, but—I’ll let you into a secret, Tom—the cottage really belongs to Mrs Storrocks, so you’ll understand we can’t very well refuse. It means, you see, the hut will be required. However, the week you’ve had has likely had the best of the weather. The sun’s shone every day, hasn’t it? Yes, every single day.’

  ‘Where have I to go?’

  The question astonished Forbes, especially as it didn’t seem to be asked of him in particular; it was just breathed out to the air.

  He had to answer it, however. ‘Home,’ he said, briskly. ‘Where we all end up sooner or later, home. Where else?’

  ‘I cannae go there.’

  The sweat on Forbes had been cooling in the breeze; now at that anguished whisper it turned icy. He felt lost in a wilderness of thorned bushes to which clung contraceptives as numerous as Alistair’s bubbles.

  ‘I’m afraid, Tom,’ he muttered, ‘there’s no help for it. I’ve explained why.’

  It was Gillian’s turn to toss the bubbles; she did it with the grace of ballet. Amid the whins the lovers had become human again and discovered discretion; she smoothed down her dress, he tightened the knot in his tie.

  Then Peerie began calling like a plaintive bird from among the pines. ‘Tom, Tom, I want to talk to you.’

  It might be as well, thought Forbes, if Tom was transferred to Brian Street as Todd and Mr Fisher had proposed.

  ‘Where in God’s name can you go,’ he asked, ‘if you don’t go home?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Peerie kept calling.

  Forbes grew angry. ‘There’s no sense in taking up this attitude, Tom,’ he said. ‘You’ve had a good week out of it. That’s always something. You’ll go back looking the better for it. I know Mrs Forbes said last night you could stay for a few days more, but I’ve explained to you why that’s now impossible. You’ll be going tomorrow. I’ll accompany you as far as Glasgow.’ He saw now he would be like an escort with a prisoner. ‘Donaldson’s Court isn’t a very pretty place, Tom, but it’s your home. Your people live there.’

  Peerie called again.

  ‘I wish to heaven you’d go and see what he wants,’ said Forbes. ‘I don’t see what harm it can do. He’s your friend, after all.’

  Tom shook his head.

  The charge of heartlessness, made by Todd and others, must then be well founded. Because he was being sent home, for thieving and deceit as he well knew, he was showing this spite against his people and that poor fool in the cap. When I called him changeling, thought Forbes, I wasn’t far wrong. How devilishly sly, really, to give his name to Mary over the telephone as ‘Tom Forbes’. For the rest of their lives he, and perhaps Mary, too, would be haunted by this son never conceived and never born.

  Peerie was still calling, monotonously and without hope.

  ‘It’s your business, Tom,’ said Forbes, ‘but I don’t think it’s right to harden your heart against your friends in this way.’

  Other cries were now disturbing the peace of the hilltop. Alistair was chasing Gillian, who had refused to give him back his bubble ring.

  ‘That’s enough,’ roared Forbes. ‘Give it to him.’

  Her obedience was so instant as to be almost insolent. She stopped and handed it over. Thereafter, she kept standing still, as if she was playing at Midas’s daughter; the breeze, though, waved her hair. Then with mysterious devotion she began to walk through the trees to where Peerie called.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ shouted her father.

  She pointed. ‘I thought if I went and talked to him, he’d be quiet.’

  ‘You’ll do nothing of the kind. You’ve caused enough trouble.’

  The loudest cry of all was then heard. Throwing bubbles as he ran among the heather Alistair had fallen over a stone. He lay howling.

  His father rushed towards him, but it was to the cairn that Gillian came.

  ‘A traitor,’ she said to Tom, ‘is worse than a thief.’

  She thought, but couldn’t be sure, so swiftly did he turn his face away and shut his eyes, that she had seen tears.

  ‘Fifty thousand times worse,’ she added.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ he whispered, ‘leave me alane.’

  Assisted by his father, Alistair hirpled up to them. His knee bled. He tried bravely not to weep, but his snuffles of restraint were as loud as weeping.

  ‘It’s just a scratch,’ said his father, ‘nothing to make a fuss about.’

  Gillian looked at it. ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘You keep quiet, Gillian,’ snapped her father. ‘His leg might have been broken for all the concern you showed.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Daddy. Shall I tie my hankie round it?’

  Alistair nodded; if the blood was hidden, half the terror would go.

  She put on the bandage with sarcastic tenderness.

  ‘We’ll have to take the bus down now, Dad,’ said Alistair, with gasps of regret.

  ‘The sooner we’re off this hill the better. I can’t say I’ve enjoyed my visit, and it’s the first time I haven’t.’

  Alistair took an experimental step; he gasped and held on to the cairn. ‘You’ll have to help me down to the bus, Dad.’

  ‘All right then, let’s go.’

  Gillian was left at the cairn with Tom. ‘You wouldn’t cry,’ she said, ‘if your leg was cut off, would you?’

  This time, without any doubt, she did see tears. Laughing in triumph, to her father’s indignation, she raced on ahead, down the green slope, through the gate, and into the bus.

  There she sat, hands tranquilly on lap, and watched the others walk slowly where she had flown. Tom came last. His offer t
o help had not been accepted.

  Gillian’s lips moved, though she did not speak; the words they formed were: ‘For Christ’s sake, leave me alane.’

  When he came into the bus she looked calmly to see if he had got rid of his tears; she was satisfied rather than disappointed when she saw he had. She paid no heed to her father’s grumble that she had not helped. She felt in her mind at last easy, safe, and sure. It was all the greater shock, therefore, when, without any warning, or reason, her triumph vanished, like one of Alistair’s bubbles, and in its place was a feeling of profoundest complicity with Tom. She knew now why he had stolen the tin-opener and ointment, and why he could not speak to Peerie.

  When he sat down beside her and put his hands on his knees with a curious resoluteness, as if he was refusing to defend himself against her, it was her turn to feel tears in her eyes. All the way down to the pier she kept looking out of the window, wondering in what way she could help him.

  Chapter Nineteen

  On the steamer returning to Towellan Mary sat with her mother in the cosy saloon. Now that Tom knew he was to go home tomorrow, she thought it was time her mother was told, but she still wasn’t sure whether she should be told the real reason.

  It was Mrs Storrocks who brought up the subject of Tom.

  ‘I’m not one who likes to admit she’s wrong,’ she said, and grimly paused, ‘but I’m going to admit I was wrong about that boy.’

  Mary, who had been so right about Tom, at first didn’t think of him. ‘What boy?’

  ‘Tom. Tom Curdie. When you told me he was from a place like Donaldson’s Court, I expected to find some freak that couldn’t keep its nose clean, far less its mind. But that boy, given a chance, could take his place in any company.’

  Mary was fascinated by that grim charitableness, based on error.

  ‘But I doubt if ever he’ll get a chance. Charles says he’s clever at his lessons?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I could believe it. You can hold an intelligent conversation with that boy.’

  Mary hadn’t known such conversations between her mother and Tom had ever taken place. That he had listened, most respectfully, she was sure.