The Cone Gatherers

by Robin Jenkins

  Lady Runcie-Campbell tried to make her voice reassuring and confident.

  ‘Listen, Roderick,’ she cried. ‘This is your mother. There’s no need to be afraid. Just hold on for a few minutes more. Help is coming.’

  She paused to give him a chance to reply. He did not take it.

  ‘I tried,’ said Graham, ‘but I’m too old.’

  ‘What’s that he’s got round his shoulders?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve noticed it, my lady. It’s a bag. I think he was meaning to collect the cones, like those men from Ardmore.’

  ‘Yes. I think so.’ Then it occurred to her where salvation lay: at Scour Point, gathering cones, were men who better than anyone else could help her son down; and they were morally obliged to do it, as it was their example which had enticed him into this danger.

  ‘Graham,’ she said urgently, ‘you know Scour Point, where the pines are?’

  ‘Surely, my lady.’ In the summer he’d fished for saithe there off the rocks.

  ‘Go there as fast as you can, and fetch the men from Ardmore. Quickly, Graham.’

  She had spoken with a sense of sacrifice: her son was to be saved by an obscene misshapen labourer; his virginal body was to be handled by hands, or paws rather, accustomed to bestial practices; his demoralisation was to be seen by eyes that had gloated over unimaginable vileness.

  ‘I hope to God,’ she said, ‘we have him down by the time you come back; but go as fast as you can, and bring them.’

  ‘At the gallop, my lady,’ he said solemnly, for, though he was willing to run all the way, he was not at all sure his heart, lungs, and legs could stand it. It was likely he would collapse somewhere, maybe in the middle of a burn, and would die, the subject not of lamentations but of revilements because he was taking too long. If his mistress was willing to take the risk, he thought sardonically, why should he grumble?

  He galloped off.

  Monty watched, and saw insincerity in that exaggerated hurry: he refused, therefore, to follow.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The quickest way to the Point lay through a field in which the home farm cows often grazed. Graham clambered over the fence, cursing at the barbed wire and the stiffness of his bones which made him unable to lift his leg high enough to avoid catching his trousers. Cramp resulted, as well as torn cloth. Nevertheless he hirpled as fast as a hero, and was amongst the cattle, smacking them out of the way, when he became aware that one was brawnier than the rest, and had a ring in its nose. In fact, it was the home farm bull, white as a daisy, but far less unassuming. It began to bellow and paw the ground, obviously resenting his familiarity with its seraglio. For a moment Graham was inclined to argue: his thigh was still cramped, and he was on a desperate mission for the damned thing’s owner: why then should he wrack his spine and rip the backside off him scuttling over the nearest fence, thirty yards away? The bull approached at a jaunty trot, and Graham set off for the fence. As he struggled over it, part at least of his prognostication was proved: his seat caught in a barb, both flesh and cloth, so that when he descended on the other side he had a wound which might turn gangrenous owing to rust, and which could never be demonstrated when he paraded for his medal. So enraged was he, he stood roaring at the bull and shaking his fist. It roared back, and hinted powerfully it was considering steeplechasing the fence: in that case he himself would have to run up a tree. A fine world, he shouted scornfully, with everybody up a tree, waiting for everybody else to come and help them down.

  He had now to traverse a great Sargasso of withered leaves. Every step was a slither, and took him over the boots; one step was particularly unlucky, it landed him waist-deep in an ice-cold concealed pool. A few yards off stood a dead Chili pine, with the ground beneath littered with its fragments, like ordure. As Graham splashed out, damning all creation, more pieces dropped off and rattled to earth. Shaking himself, he uttered every scrap of oath he knew. Some wood-pigeons flew off, clapping their wings smartly in reproof. When he moved on again, he passed under the pine stricken by disease so far from its native land; it was a tree, however, and he did not then feel well-disposed to trees; so he kicked savagely at its relics in his path.

  By the time he reached the promontory he was convinced he was suffering in a cause already won; he was like a soldier wounded after the signing of victory. Young Roderick would be safely descended, revived on chicken broth, cossetted in pink cotton wool, and snug in a bed with six hot-water bottles. Lady Runcie-Campbell would be showering out the praise to them all, even to young Harry; for him there would be none, for of all things in the world praise and gratitude were the most perishable; when he arrived back, more likely there would be blame for having taken so long. His jagged behind, sodden boots, chilled and shamed manhood, and his time-consumed lungs, might win derision, but damn-all else. If anyone laughed, he vowed, even if it was the lady herself, he would claim a free man’s privilege to say what he thought: not one tree in the wood would turn brown and die: the whole damned lot would shrivel under his blast.

  As if for perversity’s sake, the cone-men were working on the pine tree at the very edge of the loch. An angry man’s spit from the top of the tree would easily reach the water. Luckily one of them was on the ground. Luckily too this one was a decent sober man, not given to vain and foolish joking. There were men, Graham knew, who, despite the gravity of his message, would nevertheless have to waste minutes in showing off their humour at the expense of his own sweaty, soaked, bedraggled, and gasping condition; which would have necessitated his retaliating, with the loss of more time. This tall cone-gatherer would listen, appreciate, and go.

  When Graham reached him, however, he felt so exhausted he could not immediately explain; he had to sit on the ground, peching like a seal. The cone-gatherer, also seated, nodded a good-afternoon, and kept on picking cones off a fallen branch. Above in the tree the other, the hunchback, shouted down: ‘Hallo!’ Graham responded with weary wave.

  He gave a glance over the loch. Two facts struck him about it: it was flat, and there were no trees. He thought he should have been a sailor.

  ‘Give up your cones,’ he said. ‘There’s other fruit to gather.’ He was so pleased with the phrase he was reluctant to elucidate it. Still, the man he was talking to looked dumbfounded.

  ‘You’ve to come with me,’ he said, getting to his feet, ‘at the gallop.’

  ‘Did Mr Tulloch send you?’ asked Neil.

  ‘No. It was the mistress herself. Get your brother down. Leave your bags, leave everything. The boy’s got himself stuck at the top of a big silver fir tree, and you’ve to go and fetch him down.’

  Neil had himself risen, in courtesy. Now with trembling deliberation he sat down again, and went on with his plucking of cones.

  Graham kept patient: not every man was as keen-eared as himself. He seized Neil’s shoulder and shouted into his ear.

  ‘You’ve to come with me and fetch the young master down from a tree. He’s climbed up, and he’s not able to climb down again. It can easily happen. I once put my head through railings, and they’d to send for a plumber with a hacksaw to get me out.’

  Still Neil plucked the cones.

  Graham persevered: not every man was as bright-witted as himself. These cone-men, too, came from Ardmore, where even the midges were ignorant.

  ‘There’s a boy up a tree,’ he roared. ‘You, and your brother, have to come and fetch him down. The mistress sent me for you. Now what could be simpler than that?’

  Neil shook his head. ‘I can hear you,’ he said, in agitation. ‘I am not deaf. We will not go.’

  Graham clapped both hands to his head. ‘God Almighty,’ he cried, ‘all you’ve to do is to climb a tree and help to bring the boy down. You’ve climbed dozens of trees as high as yon. I’ve seen you do it. Your brother up there could climb to the moon if there was a tree high enough.’

  ‘We are not her servants,’ said Neil.

  On another occasion Graham would have admired such irrel
evancy: it was a conversational ruse he often adopted. Here it was abhorrent.

  ‘Would you save a life?’ he cried. ‘Would you sit there and let the lad fall and break his neck?’

  ‘There are other men besides us, if we are men in her eyes. I tell you,’ went on Neil, with passion, crushing a cone in his fist, ‘she cannot one day treat us as lower than dogs, and next day order us to do her bidding. We will starve first. If she wishes our help, let her come and ask for it.’

  ‘The mistress! Are you daft? Don’t you know she owns all this estate, or at least her man does, and everybody knows she’s the brains and the heart of the partnership? You can’t expect her to come like a byremaid and say “please!”.’

  ‘I expect nothing of her. Let her expect nothing of us.’

  Graham gave a jump of rage; yet he was impressed: such thrawness he had never encountered before in a sober man.

  ‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘Save the boy, and you can name your price. I have no authority for saying that, mind you, but the boy’s the heir and she loves him, and if you were to save him she’d show you gratitude like a queen.’

  ‘I love my brother.’

  Graham shot up both hands to clutch God out of His sky for having created such stupidity. Then he saw; he went down on one knee beside Neil.

  ‘Was she angry with him at the deer drive?’ he asked. ‘Is that it, eh? Was she displeased with your brother? All right, I saw it with my own eyes, and sharper eyes than Erchie Graham’s were never fashioned. They sent your brother on a deer drive, and it was a cruelty. I saw it. I admit it. You have a right to your grievance, and a Scotsman, if he’s worth his porridge, nurses his grievance till it grows to be a matter for compensation. But why punish the boy, who’s as innocent as any herring in the loch there? He’s a good lad, with no conceit in him. Nobody has a bad word for him, not even me. Maybe he’s a bit soft for his position, but is that a reason why he should be allowed to fall a hundred feet and be broken? We should spread pillows as wide as the sea to let him land easy. If it was his father now, maybe we could leave a space here and there of the good hard ground, just as a gamble; but for the boy, pillows and prayers.’

  To this eloquence, which Graham knew was exceptional, Neil returned one curt shake of his head.

  ‘To abstain,’ said Graham gloomily, ‘will be murder, if the boy falls.’

  ‘We could have perished in the storm, for all she cared. Was that not murder?’

  ‘There’s more in this,’ said Graham, ‘than meets the eye, even of Erchie Graham.’ He rose stiffly. ‘I came here at personal inconvenience, as you can see. For the boy’s sake, I would walk into that loch, up to the chin; further would help nobody, for I can’t swim. Neither can I climb trees. If it wasn’t that I’m sure he’s already rescued, I’d make an effort to carry you both back on my shoulders.’

  ‘If she wants our help, let her come and ask for it.’

  ‘There are surer ways of winning favour than taking such a message back,’ said Graham. ‘But I’ll take it back. For the last time, are you coming?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It was your example he was following. Mind that. He saw you climbing for cones, so he thought he would climb for them, as boys do; and he’s got stuck. Would it not be neighbourly to give him a lift down?’

  Neil said nothing, but it was evident to Graham that his refusal, though causing him anguish, was final.

  ‘If it was a cat up the tree would you rescue it?’ he demanded.

  ‘I wish the lad no harm,’ said Neil, ‘but a man can surrender only so far.’

  ‘I don’t understand it,’ grumbled Graham, ‘but then, most things have always been mysteries to me. For instance, to begin with, why were we ever born at all? Where’s the purpose in it? But I’ll need to go back and report. What about your brother? Is he of the same opinion as yourself?’ As he asked, he knew the answer was the poor fellow in the pine tree had no opinions at all, any more than a squirrel or a seagull had.

  ‘Calum is in my care. I am answerable for him.’

  ‘I take it,’ muttered Graham, as he began to trudge away, ‘in a world that’s at war we can’t expect sanity from every man we meet in a wood.’

  The next man he met in the wood was Duror. As he was wading with as much caution as tiredness allowed through the deep leaves, he caught sight of the gamekeeper under the dead Chili pine; and though Duror seemed to be as still as the tree itself, Graham assumed he had been sent to hasten the arrival of the cone-gatherers. He shouted to him therefore that it was no use, they were determined not to come.

  Duror’s head had been bowed. Now he looked up and saw the old man staggering towards him across the wilderness of decay. He kept silent till Graham was panting beside him.

  ‘What is it?’ he muttered. ‘Where are you going?’

  Graham was astonished. ‘Don’t you know, Mr Duror?’ he cried. ‘I thought the very worms under the leaves would have heard by this time.’ And he kicked at the leaves.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  Glad of the excuse to loiter and rest, Graham explained about Roderick and his own unsuccessful errand to the cone-gatherers.

  ‘I thought,’ he ended, ‘it was just the wee bent one had fairies in his brain; but the big one’s got them too; and, God help us, no wonder in the old stories fairies had faces like fish and hearts of gall.’

  As he spoke a piece of the tree broke off and dropped at his feet. Startled by it, he next moment was clutched by Duror’s powerful fist, biting his chest like a gigantic spider. His protest dribbled away to a series of gasps: Duror’s face was so compulsively fascinating that pain, indignity, and even fear, were momentarily forgotten. He could not have described that expression; but when, a minute later, Duror was stalking away towards the Point, it was as if the rotting tree itself had moved.

  Rubbing his chest, Graham shouted after him: ‘Maybe you’d better wait till we hear what the mistress says, Mr Duror.’

  Duror did not heed.

  ‘If they’ll not come,’ shouted Graham, ‘you can’t drag them by force. They’re not deer, remember. You can’t just cuddle them and cut their throats. Even if their wits are all asquint, they’re still men, with the right to say yes or no.’

  Duror never stopped or turned or spoke.

  ‘In any case, Mr Duror, likely the boy’s down now.’

  Then Duror was gone.

  ‘To hell with you,’ muttered Graham, and he gave the dead tree a kick. ‘You always did think yourself a lord among men. Maybe what happened to your wife was a punishment for your pride, though Christ forgive me for saying what many have thought. But I’d better get back to a tree that’s alive.’

  He had assured himself so often that Roderick would be down, that when he plodded into sight of the silver fir and saw people round it he felt dismayed. If they were still waiting for him, his arriving without the cone-men would cause as much commotion as if he’d come without clothes. Even the bloody poodle would yap at him. He had sweated out his guts, had run the risk of pneumonia, and had likely ruined a good pair of boots; yet he would be upbraided as if he’d just gone off to some mossy sheltered nook, smoked his pipe, and returned with a lie. Here he was with the baffling hard-earned truth, and he would be barked at and badgered like a rat at a threshing. Perhaps, after all, he thought, it was a good job he’d met Duror by the dead tree: Duror’s attempt would at least keep hope alive.

  He had been plodding; now he broke into a gallop, and puffed and peched and reeled so well he was astonished to realise they were not shams. Bursting amongst them, he collapsed at the foot of the fir. When he opened his eyes it was the lady’s brogues he saw. He was already hearing her voice.

  ‘Where are they?’ she was crying. ‘Are they coming?’

  ‘No, my lady,’ he replied, ‘I’m sorry to say they’re not coming.’ It would have been easier on his nerves to talk thus, to her shoes; but politeness, and honour, were injured. He rose with groans, holding o
n to a ladder that lay against the tree. A glance round showed him faces like hungry wolves: they were hungry for good news, and were savage that he was not providing it. Baird from the home farm was there, with Manson the ploughman and Betty the landgirl; Hendry the gardener, his boss; Sheila who was sobbing and the dog which was bored; and the mistress. Harry was not to be seen: he was looking round for him when Lady Runcie-Campbell seized him in a grip that, for all its fragrance and jewellery, was as fierce as Duror’s.

  ‘Did you explain it to them?’ she cried.

  The imputation was that he had bungled the message, with his labourer’s obtuseness. When he recalled the eloquence and emotion expended yonder by the pine tree, he almost smiled in a pity in no way personal, but universal.

  ‘I did, my lady,’ he said. ‘I told them the boy’s life was in danger.’

  ‘And they actually refused after that?’

  ‘Not they, my lady. To be fair, the wee one was never in the conversation. He was gathering his cones. The big one was on the ground. I spoke to him.’

  The picture she had of the tall cone-gatherer was of him slinking past her in the beach hut out into the rain and the lightning.

  ‘What possible reason could he give for refusing?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what he said, my lady, though I don’t understand what he meant by it. He said: “A man can surrender only so far.” It seems to me they’ve both lived in loneliness so long that they’re strange in the mind.’ Again he almost smiled: who so lonely as he, and who so wise?

  She retired into thought for a few moments, leaving him free to learn that Harry was up the tree keeping Roderick company; that Manson the ploughman had been up too; that Roderick, who’d been sick, kept moaning for the cone-gatherers. It seemed he had faith only in them. The pathos of the situation was not lost on Graham. He felt that there by the giant tree tremendous issues were involved; and at the very heart stood himself.