A Field Full of Folk

by Iain Crichton Smith

  He placed the change carefully in his purse and tilted his cap as he always did, as he had always done in the past. Be polite, salute, where necessary: after all, there are degrees in this world, not everyone is equal to everyone else.

  He left the shop and stood for a moment looking along the little street. Calum, the butcher, was standing outside his shop in his smock striped in white and blue with blood on it. His large red face turned towards David and he nodded.

  “A fine day,” he said.

  “It is that,” said David.

  Now there was a man who was making a lot of money, who had started off as a gamekeeper on the big estate. A fine poacher more than likely. But there was always a demand for a good cut of meat, not that the sausages you got nowadays were as good as the ones he had eaten when he was growing up. And then, all those days he had spent as a shepherd before retiring, how long ago was it now? Fourteen years. Was it as long as that? His wife had always complained that there was never enough money to buy all the comforts that they needed. How often they had stood outside the window of a shop gazing in while his wife had sighed and he himself had gritted his teeth but said nothing. There must be no more quarrels, there must be no more. Still there had always been the fine spring days when the lambs had whitened the hills, when there was a green freshness in the air, when the skies were so blue that one could lie on the ground and stare into them forever. He had walked about the land like a man from the Bible with his staff in his hand.

  “If the lamb is facing you,” his wife had said, “if the first lamb that you see is facing you then it will be good luck for the rest of the year.”

  In those days it seemed that he was a giant who would never be slowed by old age or anything else. And now his son was in New South Wales in Australia and he had married an Australian woman and when he had been home, which was once only, he had looked at his father’s sheep as if they were midgets and at his field as if it were a pocket handkerchief.

  He turned away towards his house, hearing again, as he so often did, the words ‘Quick March’ and seeing again that RSM—what had been his name again? Marshall? No, that had been the sergeant, he would get his name yet—that bull-necked RSM and the square on which they had marched with so many others. Then there was the front, the trenches, the wire, the frozen mud, the leap into the blinding sun, the shrapnel exploding around him, the grey shapes appearing in front of him. The straw German swung like a scarecrow when he jabbed at it.

  “Harder, man, harder,” shouted RSM Morrison, yes, that was his name. “Harder. What would your dolly think of that?” Oh, he had been a foul-mouthed fellow right enough, that RSM.

  And then Mons, that day never to be forgotten. What had they seen? The angels with their kindly faces blessing them, bending downwards out of the sun. Matthews was weeping beside him, the others were standing stockstill in amazement. The angels were winged like the Hosts of God. And then it seemed that the guns hit the angels themselves and blew them out of the sky.

  Was that place better than where he was now? Better than this lovely village? The thought eeled among the dark stones of his mind.

  He opened the door. The cat, grey and fat, came slowly to meet him, arching itself luxuriously round his legs.

  Dammit, he thought, I should have got milk. I knew there was something. I’m getting awfully forgetful. And something will have to be done about that window before the winter comes.

  He sat in his chair stretching out his legs. Would Murdo come over? He sometimes wished that he would stay away but when he did stay away he felt lonely and sad.

  And then there’s another thing, he told himself. My son in Australia isn’t getting this house. I’ll give it to Elizabeth. She is always visiting me, she is always bringing me scones, she is always tidying the house, she is like a daughter to me. And she’s only twenty-one, spending the rest of the time working in the bank since her mother died.

  I’ll give her the house and by God they’d better like it. He stroked the cat which hummed on his lap.

  “We could have done with you in the trenches,” he thought, “we could have done with you, old lad.”

  His sharp shaved grey face relaxed again as he thought of Kate’s mother. He had kissed her once behind the privy when they were in school together. He might have married her too if he had had the money. But, no, he had done what was right, money wasn’t everything even if some people thought that nowadays. He took his ribbons from the drawer and stared at them again. They reminded him of liquorice. By God, he thought, I could show them something yet. I’m not like those old age pensioners you see on TV on Remembrance Day. What did they know of it? And those poppies streaming down from the roof like rain, what were they trying to prove with them? Once again he heard the pipes playing, saw the RSM with his big red face, a cockerel on a dung hill. And heard a knock at the door. Would that be Murdo or Elizabeth? And Kate’s mother faded away from the cornfields of his imagination and waved to him as she went out the door, the stick in her hand pointed at him like a rifle.

  4

  ANNIE, WHO WAS eighty years old but still alert, stood in front of the man from the Jehovah’s Witnesses, dressed in her long khaki-coloured coat which she wore at all times. She said,

  “I should like you to tell me what is meant by the following passage from Revelations. I shall read it to you.

  “‘There in heaven stood a throne and on the throne sat one whose appearance was like the gleam of jasper and cornelian: and round the throne were twenty-four other thrones and on them sat twenty-four elders robed in white and wearing crowns of gold. From the throne went out flashes of lightning and peals of thunder. Burning before the throne were seven flaming torches, the seven spirits of God, and in front of it stretched what seemed a sea of glass like a sheet of ice.

  “‘In the centre round the throne itself were four living creatures covered with eyes, in front and behind. The first creature was like a lion, the second like an ox, the third had a human face, the fourth was like an eagle in flight.’

  “Now,” she said, “tell me about that.”

  “Well,” said Mr Wilson, peering at her earnestly through his pebbly glasses, “we are told that the Book of Revelations is the most difficult book in the Bible. We are told that this book is called the Apocalypse, which means ‘an unveiling’.”

  “I know that,” said Annie. “What do you think I am? You are not talking to an ignorant child, you know. What I want you to tell me, first of all, is the meaning of jasper and cornelian.” She stared penetratingly at Mr Wilson who took off his glasses and wiped them with a red handkerchief which had white spots on it. For some reason Annie thought of her long-dead husband and the day he had bought her the ring which she was now wearing on her finger. It had been in Glasgow he had bought her the ring after she had spent an hour or so searching through the shop. Norman had worked on the railway and she had always despised his mentality. “No brain,” she would say to the other villagers, “absolutely no brain. How he can understand the signals is a mystery to me.” Her husband had been an extraordinarily quiet man who used to leave home and sit in other people’s houses for hours in a sort of stunned silence as if he were seeking refuge there.

  “Tell me,” she would say to the villagers, “if Norman had been alive during the time of the Christians would they have crucified him? He has done more to deserve crucifixion than Jesus did. And so has everyone in this village.”

  “Jasper and cornelian,” she asked Mr Wilson again. “Do you know what they look like? Could you please tell me what they look like.”

  “Well,” said Mr Wilson slowly, “as I was saying they are kinds of precious stones.”

  “I know that they are kinds of precious stones,” said Annie contemptuously, at the same time watching through the window a rabbit racing around the grass. She thought, “If I had a gun I would shoot him and have him for my tea. Rabbits are pests, though I don’t believe in myxomatosis. The children like rabbits, they will run after them for ho
urs, spoiling my good grass.” Mr Wilson had deceived her, she could see that clearly now. She could see that he was a petty ignorant man with a very low-class handkerchief. He didn’t have the faintest idea what cornelian was. He was a fake, she would be better with Buddhism. The idea had come to her recently when he had considered trying to get in touch with Norman who was probably holding up a red flag on a celestial platform in some insignificant corner of hell. “And another thing,” she persisted, “what about the twenty-four elders? I shall have to speak to Mr Murchison about it. I’m sure he doesn’t know. Why doesn’t he have twenty-four elders in his church? It says twenty-four elders clearly in Revelations. There is such a lot of ignorance about it all.” She thought that Mr Wilson probably had a wife who wore pebbly glasses, and innumerable pebbly-glassed children as well.

  “And what,” she asked him, “is the meaning of the lion and the ox? Is the ox connected with the Nativity and the stable?”

  Mr Wilson said, “We know that the Jews divided the world into this Present Age which is bad and the Age to Come which is good.” His stomach rumbled and he felt embarrassed: his wife had told him that his breath was rotten.

  “The Beast in Revelation,” he continued, “stands for the worship of Caesar.” She looked at him with blazing contemptuous eyes. What a strange woman she was! How had she managed to retain her questioning nature for so long and why did she always wear a khaki coat? What submerged army did she belong to? Perhaps she was some kind of a witch?

  “I think that will be enough,” said Annie. “It’s clear that you don’t know any of the answers to my questions. You won’t need to come any more.” She talked to him as if she were a teacher dismissing a dim-witted pupil. “I shall have to turn to the East after all,” she said. Mr Wilson had an uncharacteristic thought. Why, he asked himself, doesn’t this woman drop dead? It was such a terrifying thought that his face paled, and anguished sweat beaded his brow. What is happening to me, he thought, that was an awful thing to think of. On the other hand she showed such ingratitude, and her contempt was so obvious. I am trying to do my best, he defended himself, I really am. But how can anyone answer the questions she asks? No one had ever asked him before about jasper and cornelian, such questions were not in his opinion theological ones, they were concerned with matters of fact which could be learned at a jeweller’s.

  He rose, brief-case in hand, which he was sure was shaking. There was a photograph of a man on the mantelpiece and it showed a face which was cowed and intimidated, capable only of a fixed smile which was like a grimace of pain. It was as if the man had been staring at Annie while the photograph was being taken, like a rabbit at a dancing stoat.

  “Only from the East will I learn anything,” said Annie expansively. How did she have the knowledge that she had an endless time to live? Mr Wilson often felt that he himself didn’t have very long to live, what with three children and his wife and the mortgage on the house. And, another thing, he never sang in the bathroom as he had used to. When was the last time that he had shouted out Halleluiah? He had failed again. How did he know that he had failed and this woman didn’t know that she had failed? It was a frightening enigma. Whenever he looked at her he had to drop his eyes immediately: he walked about the world with his eyes turned earthward. He belonged to the meek, and that was true. But this woman had an almost dictatorial self-confidence.

  “I’m sorry,” he said in a low voice, feeling like a dismissed servant who has worked out his notice.

  “From the East,” said Annie triumphantly. What a strange little worm this man was with his winding snaky blue tie and his blue collar and his look of an insurance man! How could such a man, such a dwarf, bring her news of the triumphs of Revelations, tell her about jasper and cornelian, the lion and the ox? She had always known that this village was not her true place, that it was not in her fixed stars to be trudging about with a message bag, that the measure of her worth was the heavenly arcade of jewellery and tawny lions. How had she put up with Norman for so many years? And as for the minister he was clearly a fake as well. Where had he come from anyway? Was it Edinburgh? No, she was sure it wasn’t Edinburgh, it was probably Lanark. No, there was something small about him, too. She needed worlds to stretch herself in, to yawn like a lioness.

  “You may go,” she told Mr Wilson. She watched him walk down the pathway and enter his old car which banged and spluttered and then turned a corner so that she could no longer see it.

  “Silly little man,” she thought, as if she were engraving the words on a gravestone. Last time she had been at Norman’s grave she had seen a worm winding its way along like a tiny little train. She had ground her heel into it and turned and turned it. “Little bastard,” she thought. “The East is the answer. That is where the sun rises.”

  5

  “I THINK,” SAID Murdo to himself, “that I shall go over and see David Collins, though all he does is talk, about the Great War. It is true that I didn’t go to the war because of my glass eye, but I served my country just the same.” Nevertheless, had being a postman been as glamorous as fighting at Mons or Loos? True, he had been a very good postman, making sure that his badges and boots were highly polished just as if he had in fact been in the army. Only the other day he had seen a postman in sandals and football jersey, and if he hadn’t been carrying a mailbag he would never have known he was a postman at all. Things had changed in the service right enough. When he had been a postman he would only give the letter or parcel to the addressee and under no circumstances to anyone else. He would go down to the field where the addressee might be scything rather than give the letter to his wife or mother or brother or sister. He blinked with his one eye in the autumn sun. Maybe he should have got married but he never had, and that was that. Latterly on his rounds he had seen many strange things. Why, in the village of Westdale he had seen in the early mornings strange cars parked outside certain houses, though he would never tell anyone. And then there had been the time when Mrs Glass, who was no better than she should be, had taken a parcel from him, wearing practically next to nothing. How he had blushed and stammered while she had looked at him in an amazed manner as if he were a species from another planet!

  Quite apart from his work as a postman he was an elder in the church because he had more time to do the work than many of the married men, and as well as that, again because of his wifeless state, he was always winning prizes for his garden. His only rival in that was Mrs Berry, who, like himself, spent a lot of time trimming the roses and planting new seeds. But this year he had won the cup again and perhaps he would keep on winning it till he was planted under the flowers. There was nothing in the world like seeing a flower growing to its full colouring and shape in the height of summer. It was like nursing a child through all the tribulations of life. Now, David Collins couldn’t do that, all he could talk about was death and battles, and perhaps he hadn’t done as well in the Army as he said he had done. Anyone would think that he had won the First World War by himself. He was always going on about that wound in his leg. Why, he hadn’t walked or marched as much as he himself had done on those enchanted mornings when the summer returned and the world was wreathed in a heat haze, and you could watch the ducks in the water, and the trees were putting on their berries and there was a stillness everywhere so that you could see the green leaves perfectly reflected in the lochs. There had been nothing like bringing letters from all the corners of the earth to old ladies staying in scattered cottages all over the village. And then there were all the catalogues they would send for, the divorce papers, the bank statements. He recognised them all though of course he would never open a letter.

  Still there was no doubt about it, David Collins was growing quite odd. One day, he, Murdo, had said to him, “How are you today, David?” And David had turned a bristling face on him and had said, “It’s none of your business how I am. You keep your questions to yourself.”

  It was almost as if David thought he was spying on him. But that had passed and Davi
d was quite normal again, apart from taking out old khaki shirts and washing them and hanging them on the line, and as for that woman Annie she was even queerer with her religions and her farmer’s wellingtons. Mrs Berry was all right but then she had her grandchildren to keep her company.

  Now there was another thing that had happened recently. That girl Chrissie had run away from her husband and had only taken her radio with her. It was a poser right enough. Imagine that, leaving her children behind her and taking her radio. And her husband was earning good money, too, as a joiner. She had just jumped on the train when he was at his work and that was the last anyone had heard of her. It was said that she had gone to Glasgow with that fellow who had sometimes visited her husband during the tourist season. It was funny, that whole business. He wondered what his mother would have thought of it, she with whom he had stayed till she had died at the age of eighty-seven, almost blind but still powerful in her will. If it had not been for his mother he would have married. He remembered how he had used to leave her in her bed while he would go down and scythe the corn in the field next to Mrs Berry’s and he would feel stirring within himself the sap of life—O the shameful sap of life—while he wished that his mother would … No, he had better not think of that. And then there had been the day of the gale when he had seen his cornstacks shake in the wind and he had thought, “Go on, lift yourselves from the ground, clear off to Alaska, take your big strawy bums from here.” But they had after all not moved and the clouds had raced across the sky and in the morning uprooted trees had blocked the road but his cornstacks were still there. That had been the year one of the church windows had blown in, the one with the picture of Christ on it as a yellow shepherd, among a flock of sheep. The minister had really looked shocked that day.