Heather Song

by Michael Phillips

  For the next hour or two, both concerts continued simultaneously. Luckily the Music Room and the Grand Ballroom were almost completely kitty-corner from each other in the castle. While the atmosphere in the Music Room, with people gradually coming and going, was not exactly quiet enough to hear a pin drop, it was sufficiently conducive to the peaceful music of the harps. The ladies and Ranald performed wonderfully and surprised even themselves. Nearly everyone in the community had known Duncan Wood and his talents for years. But the harp ensemble was something new. Most went away suitably impressed and, I hoped, touched by the music.

  So it was that the three separate venues—the buffet in the Great Room, the quartet and dancing in the Grand Ballroom, and an evening of carols with harps in the Music Room—absorbed what was probably a greater crowd by double or triple than had ever been witnessed within the stone walls of Castle Buchan.

  By ten the crowd began to thin. Hot cider, more tea, makings for hot toddies, and enormous bowls of eggnog were announced, resulting in a general exodus back downstairs to the Great Room. The quartet packed up their instruments, having put in a rigorous evening’s work. Another half hour or forty minutes of harp music followed to a standing-room-only audience. Now that the dancing feet were stilled, most sang peacefully along to our music. By eleven, weary and happy, a more general exodus toward the front doorway on the ground floor began.

  Alasdair could not resist the opportunity to address his departing guests. Bundled in scarf, hat, gloves, and as many layers as would fit under his greatcoat, he crunched out onto the snow-covered lawn and turned toward five or six hundred faces clustered in the castle entryway and drive.

  “I cannot thank you all enough for coming tonight,” he began. “You have made this a joyous Christmas for Marie and myself, and probably the most memorable Christmas of my life. You are all our family, and we consider this your home as well as our own. We hope you consider it such as well. I want to thank Duncan Wood and his quartet—”

  Cheers and applause burst out for the local musicians.

  “And my dear wife and her group of harpists—”

  More cheers and clapping.

  “And all those men and ladies from the parish church who helped tonight with food and drink. And now…it is cold, and we are all freezing our ears and noses off, so I shall detain you no longer. Only long enough to say that we love you all, and to each and every one of you a joyous and merry Christmas, and may the New Year bring you happiness, prosperity, and good health. Good night, everyone.”

  A great round of applause went up again. Alasdair was swarmed by handshakers and well-wishers.

  From somewhere a voice began to sing “Angels We Have Heard on High.” Instantly the entire throng joined in. It was followed by “The First Noel,” “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” and “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen.” What had been a move to depart for home changed to an additional twenty minutes of caroling in the cold and dark. The crisp air made the women’s high harmonies clean, precise, perfect, and exquisite, and the deep base of the men’s resonant, clear, and strong. No man-made acoustics can compare with the acoustics of God’s air on a cold Christmassy night.

  Gradually, as “Joy to the World” came to an end, a few began making their way along the two roads, the one leading to Crannoch, the other to Port Scarnose. Most of the crowd now followed, gradually flipping on their battery-torches, as Alicia—for she was the mysterious voice leading into each new carol—began “In the Bleak Midwinter.” The two streams of walkers slowly diverged through the trees to the departing words of the haunting Christmas lullaby.

  As the song drew to a close, for a few moments silence reigned. Then softly, someone among the Crannoch walkers softly began to hum, a week early it is true, “Auld Lang Syne.”

  The rest from both groups gradually joined in. The great Scots anthem continued over and over all the way, long after the walkers and their gently bobbing flashlights were out of our sight. Standing in the open door of the castle, we could still hear the sounds thirty minutes later from the revelers, apparently in no hurry to reach their homes, in stereo under brilliantly clear skies. The haunting strains seemed to rise into the night air from the two communities separated by a mile in those closing minutes before the midnight hour when Christmas Eve Day would officially begin.

  When at last we closed the door for the night and climbed the stairs to our apartment a few minutes after midnight, Alasdair nearly collapsed from fatigue and exertion. He slept fourteen hours—through half of Christmas Eve Day!—in happy exhaustion. He talked about nothing else for weeks, but he was in bed for most of a week himself.

  What a memorable night, and memorable happy Christmas that followed. We didn’t make it to the Christmas Eve service at church, but we heard the singing from across the wall, and especially enjoyed listening to the children’s recorder songs.

  It was not long afterward when Alasdair gradually began to lose weight, which could be accounted for by no change in his eating habits. Ordinarily this would have been a good thing. He was too heavy and knew it. But that it was taking place involuntarily caused Dr. Mair and his new young assistant concern. Gwendolyn, too, was a little stout when I first met her, but she had thinned noticeably toward the end.

  As the warm weather returned the following spring, Alasdair did not improve.

  At Dr. Mair’s request, we flew to London for a battery of tests. The only result was confirmation of what we feared—that the lymphomatic condition that had taken Gwendolyn’s life had emerged from its long dormancy in her father, and that, unless it reversed itself naturally, the prognosis was not optimistic. Nothing could be done but wait. The disease went in waves, we were told. If Alasdair could make it through this newly active phase, it might again lapse into dormancy for another ten or twenty years. They suggested a sort of chemo treatment as an experiment, but really offered little hope.

  Alasdair was calm, even cheery in the face of the news. He insisted that he was feeling better every day. He handled it far better than I did, I’m afraid. His main concern was for me, not for himself.

  We returned from London to Scotland and made great plans for the many things we wanted to undertake through the summer—more footpaths through the precincts of the estate, a renovation of a nineteenth-century summerhouse between the castle and the shore, along with its underground tunnel to the beach. Originally called “the temple,” the circular domed structure was now overgrown and virtually inaccessible from the woods.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  A Fright

  Sing on, sing mair o’ thae auld sangs,

  For ilka ane can tell

  O’ joy or sorrow i’ the past

  Where mem’ry lo’es to dwell;

  Tho’ hair grows gray and limbs grow auld,

  Until the day I dee,

  I’ll bless the Scottish tongue that sings

  The auld Scotch sangs to me.

  I’ll bless the Scottish tongue that sings

  The auld Scotch sangs to me.

  —“The Auld Scotch Sangs”

  Summer came on. Alasdair and I celebrated our third anniversary. We got the temple project and several of the memorials under way. Workers were busily engaged everywhere, and the people of both villages were in high spirits. This one corner of Scotland at least enjoyed full employment. Any local man or woman capable of wielding a shovel, ax, hammer, saw, masonry trowel, or wheelbarrow had no shortage of work that summer. Ranald was at the castle nearly every day, helping both as laborer and as a sort of unspoken clan chieftain and bard over the work.

  It was a warmer year than usual. This helped lessen the chills from winter. Alasdair said he felt fine. The worst of the illness had passed, he insisted. He remembered a brief bout when he was at Oxford. He recognized the signs of improvement. The worst was over. He could tell.

  I feared he was being unrealistically optimistic for my benefit. I still read fatigue in his pale face. Some of this could obviously be accounted for by the work on t
he castle grounds, which he tried to supervise along with the normal duties of the estate. But it seemed to have deeper causes as well.

  By late July, Alasdair was getting out to visit the various work sites less and less. His weight did not come back. His appetite languished. In spite of favorable weather, our outside walks grew shorter. All the while Alasdair continued to insist that full recovery was just around the corner.

  The work in the villages and around the grounds progressed nicely. But Alasdair left much of the day-to-day inspections to Ranald and me. He often said he was a little tired and would rather the two of us drove out and had a look ourselves. When the workmen and builders and stonemasons had specific questions, he told me to bring them to the castle to confer with him there.

  Most of the work was completed by mid-September. I regretted that Alasdair was not able to help as much as he had hoped. When the renovation of the summerhouse was completed and a glass roof installed and a wide new path to it cleared and graveled and packed, it was all Alasdair could do to summon the energy to ride out to see it in a horse-drawn carriage. I packed a picnic lunch to enjoy in the newly refurbished temple. But when we arrived, Alasdair said he was too tired to get out and walk up the hill the final few yards. We could hear the workers busy in the tunnel that would again connect the temple with the beach, which we wanted to make passable again as it had been in bygone generations. We would come back tomorrow for a closer inspection, Alasdair said.

  But we never did.

  Then came a day in October I will never forget. I heard a loud thud from what sounded like the library above me. I raced upstairs, terrified that a bookcase had toppled over.

  I ran in. Alasdair lay on the library floor unconscious. I shouted for Alicia, then ran for wet washcloths and hurried back and knelt down to try to revive him. Alicia was already on the telephone. Dr. Mair arrived ten minutes later. By then I had managed to get Alasdair awake and alert enough and, with the help of Alasdair’s valet Campbell, up and to a bed in a guest room on the same floor.

  He lay mostly unconscious the rest of the day. He ate nothing. Dr. Mair wanted to attach an IV to keep his fluids up. I said I would rather wait till morning. I didn’t want Alasdair waking up and finding needles in his arm and tubes attached to him. Indeed, by the next day he had come back to himself enough to drink. I began pouring water and tea and juice and broth into him by the gallon, as much as he could tolerate.

  Now at last I think Alasdair recognized the severity of his condition. His first words this time were not about getting out of bed, and pronouncements about everything soon being back to normal. He smiled wanly and accepted my ministrations with gratitude.

  I realized how seriously he was now taking the situation when the next day he asked me to send for Mr. Crathie, his solicitor from Buckie. The request itself, in Alasdair’s weak voice, made me gulp and go a little pale. When Mr. Crathie came, he and Alasdair spent an hour together.

  Mr. Crathie left, went back to his office, returned later in the afternoon with a briefcase full of papers, and again disappeared into Alasdair’s room.

  All I could think of, as I tried to be brave and keep the proverbial British stiff upper lip, were the words of Dr. Mair from months earlier: “If he can only weather this onslaught of the disease and hold off its worst effects until the wave passes, he should be robust for many more years to come. But there is little we can do now besides wait to see how strong his immune system is to fight it.”

  Several more days went by. A little color came back to Alasdair’s face. He tried to begin eating again. He managed to get up and into his favorite chair for a few hours one day. But even that tired him out. He spent most of the two days following that again in bed.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Closing the Everlasting Life Circle

  Mary, dearest maid, I leave thee;

  Hame an’ frien’s, an’ country dear;

  Oh! ne’er let our partin’ grieve thee,

  Happier days may soon be here.

  See yon bark sae proudly bounding,

  Soon shall bear me o’er the sea;

  Hark! the trumpet loudly sounding,

  Calls me far frae love an’ thee.

  —Alexander Hume, “The Partin’”

  Alasdair’s request several days later did not surprise me. I wondered if he was requesting to see a friend or a spiritual sage.

  “Would you ask Ranald Bain to come?” Alasdair said to me.

  “Of course, dear,” I said. “When…now?”

  “As soon as he is able.”

  The two men had spent much time together over the course of the past three years. But something in Alasdair’s voice made it clear that his request on this day was different, like his request to see Mr. Crathie—as if, having seen to his temporal affairs with his solicitor, he now sought some resolution to the loose ends of his eternal affairs with his spiritual mentor. But it was not the priesthood of clerical officialdom he sought in the person of Reverend Gillihan, as much as we both had come to respect and appreciate Iain’s replacement. Rather, it was his own personal wise man whom he needed close to him at this time.

  Knowing how unassuming Ranald had been, just like Iain, in the matter of my own faith as it had developed, I doubted he had been any different with Alasdair. What might he say, however, with eternity staring his younger friend in the face? Would he feel a greater urgency than before?

  How concerned was Ranald for Alasdair’s soul? Would he press him toward a salvation prayer? I had no idea. Perhaps as his wife I should have been more concerned for his soul than I was. I knew that Alasdair believed in God, and that under Ranald’s quiet and unobtrusive influence that belief had been slowly deepening. But Alasdair was completely honest about the fact that belief was not as personal for him as it had become for me and obviously was for Iain and Ranald. Yet the God I had come to know since coming to Scotland was so entirely a good and trustworthy Father who cared for his children, I could not be anxious. He obviously loved Alasdair, too, more than I did or Iain did or Ranald did, or all the people of the community did who had so taken their laird into their hearts. Whatever happened, he would be a good Father to Alasdair no less than to me or anyone else. I know that some people get anxious about salvation as death approaches. But I couldn’t be fearful. Whenever I thought of God and Alasdair together, I saw God with a smile on his face waiting to welcome one of his dear ones home. I was sad as the weight of it was borne more steadily upon me. But not afraid. Ranald had said concerning his own loss, “God is guid, an’ that’s aye the end o’ a’ things.” I had never forgotten his words. It was now my turn to apply them in what appeared to be the inevitable approach of coming sorrow in my life.

  Ranald came to the castle the moment the request came. I led him upstairs to the room where Alasdair lay.

  “Aye, Ranald, my frien’,” said Alasdair, reaching up a hand, which Ranald took lovingly. “It doesna luik sae guid, ye ken.”

  Ranald sat down beside the bed. “Are ye in ony pain, Ally?” he asked.

  “Nae till speik o’—only pain o’ the hert, ye ken—things fae my past comin’ back tae haunt me noo that ’tis too late tae set them tae the richt.”

  “’Tis ne’er too late for that, Ally. Ye’ve already set a guid mony things richt.”

  “Ye maun aye ken fit I mean—too late tae gang tae a’ those my tongue was sharp wi’ an’ spier their forgieness.”

  “Gien yer hert’s ane wi’ God, ye shall see the licht on yer friens’ faces soon enouch. Ye’ll aye be able then tae set richt onythin’ left ower frae this worl’.”

  “Ye mean…afterward…in heaven, ye mean?”

  “I am nae so particular aboot what ye ca’ it. I only ken that a’ wull be made richt in God’s family wi’ his sons an’ dochters.”

  Alasdair did not reply. He was thinking hard about Ranald’s words.

  “Ye hae been the best frien’ a man cud hae, Ranald,” he said after a minute. “I’m sorry I wasna a better fr
ien’ till ye mysel’ durin’ a’ those years whan I hid mysel’ awa’ ahind these walls, afore my Marie cam tae help open my een.”

  I was astonished as I continued to listen to the conversation. I had never heard Alasdair speak in Doric before. I understood it well enough by now. But to hear the local dialect from Alasdair’s lips was a surprise.

  “But at least I kin spier o’ ye tae spier Reddy tae forgie me for some o’ the dreadful things I said tae him when we were yoong…whan ye see him agin’, that is. My mind’s sair grieved aboot it. He’s ane I wish I cud see noo mair nor a’.”

  “I ken his hert lies open till ye, Ally, an’ the forgieness is jis’ spillin’ oot wi’oot him hearin’ ye spier for’t.”

  “’Tis good o’ ye tae say, Ranald. I haup ye’re in the richt. I hae jis’ ane mair favor tae spier o’ ye. Tak’ care o’ Marie. She’s been like an angel come tae open my hert these last years o’ my life.”

  Ranald looked at me and smiled at the word angel.

  “I wull, Ally,” he said.

  I stared down at my lap where I sat on the opposite side of the bed. It was awkward listening to two men talk about me. I didn’t dare glance up. When I did chance a peep at Ranald a minute later, he was not looking at me but was still gazing intently into Alasdair’s face.

  “An’ noo, Ranald,” Alasdair went on, “ye been a guid frien’ till me these last years, an’ ’tis time for ye tae see what ye kin de for this tired auld soul noo that my body’s aboot till gang the way o’ the earth. I hae been a prood man, too prood for my ain good. But I’m ready for ye tae pray an’ spier God gien he might hae me at the last.”

  “I’m afraid I canna de that, Ally,” said Ranald. “God doesna open his gates for ain man jist because anither man spiers him.”

  “But ye could try, cudna ye, Ranald, for a frien’? Ye wadna hae me left outside the gates?”