The Serpent

by Neil M. Gunn

  She sat quite still for a little, then shivered so suddenly that she startled him. ‘It’s cold,’ she said.

  He tried to press warmth into her, using his arms and his hands. He took her hands and rubbed them.

  ‘You’re very good to me.’

  ‘Be quiet, Janet,’ he answered, rebuking her because there was so little he could do out of so much feeling for her.

  She looked at him with her smile that was more intimate than spoken words, alive yet shy, and looked away. ‘I feel better now,’ she said in a practical, sensible way.

  ‘That’s good,’ he answered, forcing the words brightly.

  She turned her head and looked at him, then dropped her eyes to her fingers plucking about the grass. ‘Don’t worry about it. I would hate to think you did that. I am used to it now and know how to deal with her.’

  He did not answer.

  ‘Promise!’ she demanded and caught his knee and shook it, not looking up at him.

  He caught her hands and drew her to him. She kissed him lightly with a cold mouth and drew back. ‘You’re good to me,’ she said, and impulsively pressed his hands, and got to her feet. ‘I don’t know what’s made me so cold.’

  ‘There’s frost in the air.’

  She paused as though he had said something arresting and looked about her. They stood quite still, side by side. The stars were sparkling in an almost black sky. There was no moon. She could see outlines of the hill against the sky. Each solid blackness was listening, not to them, but for something that no human ear would ever catch.

  Before they parted at the corner of her croft, she was light and gay in manner, and tugged the lapels of his coat as though tugging the last remnant of a sad mood out of him. When she had gone a little way she turned and waved.

  He returned slowly towards his home, stood at the peat-stack for a time, then very quietly unlocked the shop door and relocked it, drew the blind carefully, and lit the lamp.

  With pen and ink he began drawing up a definite letter heading for his business. Tom Mathieson, Ironmonger. Cycle Agent. Repairer. The address. A line for the date. The printing firm would know exactly how to set it out. Not too showy. Quiet, for a country district, say in pale green lettering on white. Dougal himself would know the sort of thing.

  For over an hour he sat writing Dougal.

  Then, the sealed envelope in his hands, he looked about the bright wood of the shop, stared at the thoughts that turned over in his mind. life was shaping, was being shaped by his hands, into an intimacy, a goodness, into days and years of communion and kindness, of work and real comfort, of interest, of eagerness. No human opposition could do him down, neither father nor mother. Nothing could beat him down or back. Just nothing.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Philosopher sat on a half-buried boulder which was warm with the sun. He was well up now towards the ridge that gave on the moor and he commanded a fine wide sweep of country. The liberation of the hills was upon him, of the wide stretch of valley land that went away towards the town, of the sky that ran with the high horizons of the earth, a summer-blue sky alive yet half-dreamy with white clouds, distant horizons with the blue arch flattening beyond them into unimaginable remoteness.

  The Highland hills. The mountains that stretched north and south and far to the west, and the glens that wandered with them. Little villages by seashores of the west, by narrow inlets, curving with sheltered bays far inland at the feet of mountains, crofting townships on windswept headlands, all today lying quietly in the sun, the straw of their thatch a pale-gold memory of old harvests, their roofs curved against tempests past and to come, patient as the backs of cows, smooth as rounded wings from which the living brood adventured, lying at peace under the sun of this friendly day.

  A good land. Wide and high and far, yet it could be encompassed. A land that changed from bend to corner, from ridge to crest, yet had that in it from ancient time that did not change.

  The plover fell there in the air as it had fallen at the sudden sight of man on this hillside thousands of years before Joseph went up to pay his taxes at Bethlehem, taking Mary with him. Thus it had always cried and beat the air and its young had heard.

  A reluctance came on the Philosopher to pursue his past, as though it were enough to remember on this halcyon day that early reality of love which had beaten its wings in him. Yet the pattern was inexorable and pursue it he had to, from some inner need in himself, on this day that was to him, for some reason beyond apprehending but impulsive as a light-feathered mood, a day of days.

  Away over from him on the left, the shepherd was now standing leaning on his long stick, its point grounded on the slope, his hands cupped over the crook beneath his chin.

  Not so old a vision as the tumbling peewit, perhaps, yet in another and mythical sense so immensely old that it lived in legend, before reality was shaped out of legend.

  From the shepherds on shaggy hillsides, on great plains, in straths and glens, by the green pastures of still-watered valleys, slowly, through the countless centuries, drawing to a focus, drawing nigh, One who is at last the living Shepherd, who moves in historic time, tending his sheep across the continents and islands of the world.

  The Christian religion had the imagery! It focused man!

  The Philosopher smiled lightly to himself as he always did when an image entered and crystallised a mood of thought or reverie. This was one of life’s rarer possessions or capacities. And when the image formed and passed the mind was freed and uplifted.

  So that he looked now at the shepherd and remembered him as a boy of, it must have been, about nine, when he was so desperately anxious to ‘learn the bicycle’. A dark boy, with a fringe of hair over his brow and a shy manner. He was inclined to speak in a whisper and then look up at you. But because there was something taking in his face, you bent your head to listen, saying, ‘What’s that, Norrie?’ His father was the estate shepherd then, and their home stood back from the road that went across the moor to Altdhu. No other house was visible from it, and now Norrie lived there with his wife and three children. He was over forty, naturally intelligent, with the dark eyes in which there was still a certain wonder. He was the first man – and that only in recent years – who had given the Philosopher some new thoughts about the old bugbear, superstition.

  Learning the bicycle! What a rage it became amongst the young fellows that first summer!

  Threepence a half-hour and a waiting list for the two boneshakers in the long evenings. Solid tyres and a loud bell. You could hear the shouting voices up the quiet glen road where there was about half a mile of straight. That was the learning place. When three were lucky enough to raise a penny each, one would come for the bicycle and the other two wait up the road. Then it was turn about, with the distances jealously measured. On one side of the road was a ditch and on the other a thorn hedge, but the bicycles were tough and rarely bore any evidence of conflict beyond a surface scratch or two and an odd drop of blood.

  When a lad had ‘learned’ and in one way or another had amassed his fortune of threepence, he would look at the weather, button his jacket over his excitement, approach Tom’s shop and ask calmly if he could hire a machine for half-an-hour.

  ‘Thinking of tackling the village?’

  ‘I though I might have a shot at it.’

  ‘Watch Peter Grant’s dog, then.’

  ‘I’ll watch him all right.’

  Peter Grant had the little shop with the post office and his wife kept a wire-haired terrier for no reason that anyone could see, though Peter claimed exemption from license for it because he had a cow on his bit of ground. The dog was a born yapper, but if you rang the bell at him he went clean mad and followed you far enough, and you couldn’t put on a spurt because his favourite tackle was the front wheel. When he went yelping mad like that, all the other accursed brutes in the place would join in the chase. With every available inhabitant of the village enjoying the fun (excepting, perhaps, Mrs. Grant) and a few young m
en shouting sarcastic encouragement, it was beyond your dignity to dismount by the back step, even had you been able to do so with the assurance of custom, which you weren’t. Moreover, you had also to guard against the perversity of the machine itself which could develop an ungovernable tendency to run into that which you wished it to avoid.

  Life had certainly been crammed with interest that summer. After the crops were down, the stuff for the shop began to arrive in small quantities. Tom did not put up a sign, nor at first, in fact, lay out the new erection as a shop. No advertisement was needed, and small shops never had a sign in any case. His friends soon had the news round the countryside, and with the news went the intelligence that Tom could get the very latest things. Not a shop for women, no display, not even the goods on the premises – beyond a limited supply of tools and odd material that men with ready hands wanted – but Tom could get knives and forks and spoons, every kind of household gear, in beautiful cases and without cases. And, my word, if you saw the catalogues of the better-class stuff!

  In Fraser’s shop in the village the womenfolk bought all the cheap household goods they needed, unless it was a matter of cups and saucers and bowls, when they bought them from Stewart tinkers, trading-in rabbit skins at a halfpenny each or even a penny if it was a good one, had been skinned well, and the bargainer was firm. Tom never expected – or desired very much – to have anything to do with that type of small business. But outside it there was a whole range of stuff which could be got ‘on order’. Not much of this might be wanted, but profit from it would be considerable, and the very knowledge that he could supply it should give his repair work a real foundation and body. His expectations were altogether exceeded. It started with the clocks – a backwash from the social gossip over Jimmy Macdonald’s wedding present. The farmer of Taruv asked leave to take the catalogue home with him. ‘It’s the mistress,’ he explained. Two days afterwards he came back with the catalogue a little the worse of wear. ‘That’s the one she’s set her mind on, but it’s damn dear.’ ‘She has good taste,’ said Tom, with a smile. It was a black marble French clock marked at £4 5s. ‘It’s easy having good taste,’ said Taruv, showing a yellow tooth or two in the left corner of his mouth in a characteristic grin. ‘It’s dear enough,’ said Tom, ‘but it’s good value. It’ll go forever.’ ‘That’ll help me a lot!’

  A fortnight later Taruv pulled up his gig at the shop door. Tom went out. The farmer leaned over, his face reddened with weather and a few drinks, for he was on his way home from a cattle sale. ‘That clock,’ he said. ‘Braelone’s wife was in last night and didn’t the mistress show it to her. Women are like that.’ He nodded.

  Tom smiled, waiting. He had done several small jobs for Taruv and knew him well.

  ‘Braelone – you know Braelone?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tom under these watchful eyes. Braelone was inclined as a big farmer to act the little laird and his wife gave him a lead.

  ‘She’ll be wanting the same clock now or I’m a Dutchman and, damn it, didn’t the mistress tell her you took five shillings off. I thought I’d mention it to you.’ Taruv nodded and pulled on the reins.

  ‘Thanks for telling me,’ said Tom, suddenly touched by this delicacy on Taruv’s part.

  ‘All right,’ nodded Taruv, with a rough manner, at once relieved and irritated, and drove off.

  Braelone’s wife ordered a clock marked £5 5s.

  In that first month of June Tom’s clear profit was nearly £8 from these and other orders.

  It could hardly go on like this, but it was exciting. He had to be prepared, too, for bad debts. Between the order and the getting of the money was a somewhat anxious time. But when he was in real doubt – the Gilchrists of Ardbeg, for example, were known to be in a bad way – he resorted to a certain measure of cunning. ‘That’s the price. But I could knock six shillings off it, if I got the money with the order. They want cash down from me as a beginner. If it’s all the same to you, it would help me, and I could give you that off.’ Then he would add quietly, ‘You needn’t say anything about it.’

  He had taken six pounds from his mother – all she had, apparently, except for a few shillings which he refused. How she had gathered this money, he did not try to think. Perhaps she had started gathering it from the day he was weaned, putting a penny by now and then from an odd dozen of eggs which she would claim as her own. She had the saving nature in her, a little of that mistrust which moved the hen to lay away. Yet for her son – as for her husband, indeed, if in another way – she was completely unsaving of herself.

  He did not want to take the money, but the whole circumstances of its presentation were too much for him. She caught him in the byre in the morning, while his father was still in bed. She breathed secrecy, and, turning slightly from him, fumbled about her person and produced a knotted handkerchief. She had tied the knots so tightly that she had to use her small teeth. Six golden sovereigns were displayed and some silver coins. ‘Here, take them!’

  ‘No, Mother. I’ll manage –’

  ‘Hsh! Be quiet.’ She picked out the six sovereigns first and thrust them at him. ‘That’s six.’

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘Hurry up. Quick now.’

  He turned away, but she followed him. And there in the byre her urgency was warm in its own understanding of his reluctance, thrusting the money at him, breaking through the embarrassment of the moment with impatience as if it were just nonsense. ‘Here, take it. It’s nothing. I only wish it was more.’ And now she had gripped his hand.

  A couple of minutes later he heard her outside tapping the tin dish with a spoon and even calling ‘Took! took! took!’ in a relieved voice.

  Then she developed entirely on her own a method of watching for a customer and signalling to him. If the father, for example, was sitting on the boulder at the lower gable-end, she would appear at the back of the house and, lifting her right arm, swing it round and round over her head. If he hesitated to drop what he was doing in the field, she signalled him again, more urgently. Then he knew that she had assured herself of the value of the customer. Of a boy or youth, she would ask, ‘What are you wanting?’ and guide herself by the answer. ‘All right, you come back at two o’clock. He’ll be in then.’ Or, if the boy was a messenger, ‘Well, I’ll try and get him for you. Wait here.’

  In this way, Tom was able to attend to the croft sufficiently well to forestall any reasonable criticism by his father. And actually there was little to do in the fields during the growing months, and more and more his mother took complete control of all the beasts except the horse. When it came to singling the turnips, she worked with untiring persistence and a tidy skill. In a glance from a distance she was a stout dark body forever rooted in that field, but a closer view disclosed a hoe-blade ceaselessly working like a swift iron hand.

  It is not impossible that a certain happiness, a newness of life, came upon her at this time. The illness of the father was accepted as inevitable, the sort of fate which life brings, and she had to make the best of it. So long as there was work to do, she was for ever adaptable; the deeper the wound in life the greater the need, not for protest, not for opposition, but for the endless resource that knew how to hide and yield – without giving in.

  If she got Tom alone after the customer had gone, she would ask, ‘What was he wanting?’

  Tom would tell her. If it happened to be a catalogue for a wedding present, she would nod and her eyes would speculate: ‘He has the money to buy a good one, but I don’t know about herself.’ Sometimes she would give him a surprising amount of information concerning folk. ‘Have you seen her?’ she would ask about the prospective bride. ‘Yes, I saw her one day in the village.’ ‘What’s she like?’ ‘Oh, quite a nice-looking woman.’ ‘She’ll be dark and well set up, is she?’ ‘Well, she is, yes.’ ‘I knew her mother: a fine girl, but proud a little. All the Macleans were proud. But they were a good family.’ She said it in a solemn memoried way. She clearly liked talk of the kind. It gave
her snatches of life from the past and, because of a continuity in human relationship which she understood in her own way and from her own experience, snatches of life in the future. After the quiet talk, she would go away refreshed, full of her thoughts. That Tom, through his business deal, had a certain contact with the world of which they had spoken probably gave her also some real satisfaction. She nodded, anyway, as she went.

  Did she ever venture on such talk with her husband? Probably she did, but in a different way, keeping Tom out of it, until perhaps at the very end when she might introduce in an off-hand manner the approach to Tom over the wedding present, to see how he would take it, covering any lack of response by getting to her feet and doing something. That they talked together, Tom knew, but the talk grew less and less, and certainly before the summer was at its height, it dwindled into little more than occasional fleshless words.

  The processes by which the father withdrew into himself were slow but cumulative. It was remarkable how Tom and his mother got used to this. Sometimes they would talk to each other, not only about their own crofting work but about a neighbour’s, as if he were not present. Yet even such talk was meant in some measure for him, so that he could listen to it and know what was going on without being directly involved. When it came to selling a calf, the same method was employed. ‘If we’re going to sell the calf at all,’ said Tom, ‘we should send him to the sale on Thursday.’ ‘We’ll have to sell the calf,’ replied his mother. Then they waited. The meal continued. ‘Is Norman putting his to the sale?’ his mother asked at last. ‘Yes, they’re all going,’ Tom answered. The father remained silent. Nothing more to be said.