by Neil M. Gunn
‘Yes, thank you. I’m sorry –’
‘It’s all righ’. Just to wish you both a happy New Year. Goo’-night. Goo’-night, Mrs. Mathieson.’
‘Good-night, and a happy New Year to you all. I’m sorry we have nothing in.’
‘Goo’-night,’ called the departing voice.
She closed the door and as Tom joined her in the kitchen she glanced at his face. Her invitation to Andie to enter had hardly been pressing. But Tom looked relieved – and suddenly stood still as if he had heard another footstep in the night. Then he sat down.
‘That was Andie Gordon, with a strong smell of drink off him already,’ she said.
‘They’ll be going the rounds of the houses,’ he answered. ‘If they call back when we’re in bed, don’t answer the door.’
They did not call back and Tom felt that their house was shut away from all others and, behind many odd memories covering the wild jollity and singing and drunkenness of New Year’s eve (most of the lads would not go to bed tonight, for even farm workers were on holiday tomorrow), this feeling of being shut off was full of relief, at moments almost pleasant.
He found it difficult to go to sleep that night, however, and though he tried to read in bed under the bright light of the round-wicked lamp, he could hardly get any meaning out of the black-lettered words that crawled over the page like insects. A deep sombre feeling gradually invaded him, and his loneliness came about him like a darkness of the pit. When at last he put out the light and turned over, he fell asleep at once.
In the early weeks of the new year, he set himself all sorts of tasks. After talking to one or two persons whom he had not had time to avoid, for he was often now in the shop though doing most of his carpentry in the barn, he developed a cool, distant, polite method of dealing with such personal encounters. He knew, by the response and look of the person who talked to him, that folk would say amongst themselves that Tom Mathieson had gone ‘queer’, nodding at the same time in recognition of ‘a judgement’, nodding solemnly.
So long as it kept them to themselves, he did not mind.
But with his physical strength restored, he did occasionally feel a vindictive flash of anger, at the solemn-faced approach of someone he knew quite well. He began deliberately to turn his back.
February gave way to the windy weather of March, and the prospect of the heavy spring work on the land was making its appeal when chance brought a piece of news that shattered the personal frame-work he had so slowly been building.
At Big Ann’s approach, he had gone into his own room. She was a large ungainly woman with the strength of a horse, slow in her movements, working her own croft single-handed, and finding social relief in gossip, not ill-natured gossip but personal news about folk. She was good-natured and, with discrimination, kind-hearted. Moreover she had always an excellent chance of being the first bearer of special tidings to the lonely Widow Mathieson. Tom gave her time to settle down, and was stepping quickly to the front door when her voice, slow and firm as a man’s, stopped his feet dead. The door between the small entrance passage and the kitchen was not quite closed and her words were perfectly distinct:
‘Yes, the lassie Janet was coming and going to the manse as usual, for though Williamina had recovered a bit in the autumn, she had taken to bed again with a chill on the kidneys. She is a sharp one is Williamina, and lying in bed does not make one any the less sharp seemingly. Anyway, she told Peter Grant’s wife that she had been a bit uneasy for some time. However, she said nothing, but she kept her eye on the lassie for the last month or two, until from one sign and another she was sure at last. She is a well-set-up bonny girl as you know, with good colouring, and when that sort of lassie goes white as a sheet it’s very noticeable on her. At last Williamina asked her if there was anything the matter with her, but the lassie said no, naturally enough. Williamina asked her if she was sure. The lassie did not confess. She would be terrified of Williamina and the minister. But it would seem there can be no doubt about it: the lassie must be all of six months gone.’
‘Dear me! What a blow that will be to her mother!’
‘And not only to her mother. For the question now arises: who can be the father?’
‘Is anyone mentioned?’
‘Well, no, for it seems she was not keeping company with anyone in particular for a long time – not since last autumn.’
‘And who was it then?’
There was a short pause. ‘Don’t mistake me, Maria. If I would tell you anything it’s only to prepare you. Because of things that happened, many might be willing to believe anything against your son. They might like to have a pick against him.’
‘Tom!’ It was an intense whisper. As he heard his mother get to her feet, Tom stepped quietly outside. The door to the kitchen was opened and shut. Quietly Tom stepped back. The voices were now muffled but still distinct.
‘Don’t you take on about it, Maria. I only thought it would be friendly to warn you, and I wouldn’t do that same if I thought it was true. Trouble comes home to roost all too surely. And it may come home to roost nearer to the manse door than Williamina dreams of. I’m saying nothing.’
‘You mean –?’
‘I’m meaning nothing. I admit it may not look like it. The minister’s son was home for his Christmas holidays and he’ll be home again in a week or so, and you would say that that could hardly be if he was to blame in any way. And I may be all wrong. And indeed maybe I am and doing the young man a sore injustice. It looks like it. And to no-one would I ever mention it but to yourself. But one day I saw a small thing between them. It was nothing much, for the young will be young, but it stuck in my mind.’
‘Was Tom and her – keeping company?’
‘So they say. But that must be a long time back as you know. And surely if there had been anything in it, you yourself would have had some idea?’
‘As far as I know, she has never been near this house, and surely if –’
‘Surely,’ said Big Ann.
Yet in the silence that followed, Tom felt the enormous doubt swell in the kitchen. His feet began carrying him down to the barn.
Janet! By God, Janet!
His mother and Big Ann and all the world was wiped out.
Janet! So it had come to Janet! By God, it had come to her! A silent savage laughter twisted his features. His groping hands lifted a lump of wood and smashed it down on the old ramshackle bench. He threw his head back and chuckled harshly. Instantly his features narrowed in a vindictive murderous expression. He cast about him for something to grip, for something to destroy, and stood very still.
So it had come to Janet.
He sat down on a pile of straw, clutched it slowly in his hands, turned over and buried his face.
A fortnight later he waylaid Tina on the Glen road. It was almost quite dark and she was hurrying home. She smothered her cry when she saw it wasn’t his ghost and remained uneasy.
After greeting her, he asked, ‘How is Janet?’
‘All right,’ she answered involuntarily, not looking at him.
‘Does her mother know yet?’
‘I – don’t know,’ she answered.
‘Do you think she knows?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Has Donald Munro come home?’
‘No.’
‘Weren’t they expecting him some days ago?’
‘I think so.’
Tom looked steadily at her. Tina was pale and clearly distressed and could not meet his look. She was like one held in a vast fear.
‘Good-night,’ said Tom.
She hesitated a moment as if about to cry her terrible fear to him, then turned and hurried away.
The following night Tom said to his mother, ‘I have been thinking of taking a trip down to Glasgow to see Dougal Robertson. With the year coming on, I’ll have to do something with my business, or it will fall through.’
She did not speak for a moment. ‘Perhaps the change might do you good,’ she s
aid.
‘Yes, I think I would like a short change,’ he answered calmly. ‘And I could see, too, about a new model bicycle that’s come on the market. Anyway, I thought I might take a few days before the spring work.’
‘Do you that, then, if you feel you would like it.’
‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘Tomorrow is Wednesday. I might as well go tomorrow and get any little business done before the weekend.’
She was looking into the fire, her hands gripped in her lap. She obviously wanted to say something but dare not. ‘What about money?’ she asked.
‘I have plenty,’ he answered.
‘There’s the money in the kist,’ she said, ‘and at the bank. I have always been wanting you to look into that.’
‘That will be all right,’ he answered reasonably. ‘It’s good to have it behind you.’
‘It’s not only mine. It’s yours when you want it. And I don’t know about the bank.’
‘Is it in a bank book?’
‘No, it’s just on a paper.’
‘Well, if you would like me to look at it.’ He got up and followed his mother into his room.
She set the candle on a chair and, getting to her knees, removed the coloured cloth which draped the old wooden chest, unlocked and opened it. After fumbling among dark clothes that emitted a strong camphor smell, she asked him to hold the candle nearer. In a narrow boxed-in shelf, she found the money, mostly in gold, and showed it to him. She did it somehow with a mournful air, as if the gold coins were being unearthed like the dead years. Then she found ‘the paper’. It was a deposit receipt for seventy pounds.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘It’s in both your names. So it can be drawn any time on your own signature.’
This was what was usually done, for in practice it meant that the woman had no control over the money until the man died, but that then it went to her without legal trouble. The banker always advised this.
She put the deposit receipt back where it had been but seemed reluctant to close the chest. ‘I would like it to be yours, too,’ she said.
‘Don’t worry about that just now.’
‘But what if anything happened to me?’
‘It would come to me then. I know about it.’
She slowly closed the lid. ‘You know where the key is always,’ and she put it back in the coloured cream jug on the mantelpiece. ‘I’ll have to see about your clothes.’ She suddenly got busy, and dropped an iron heater in the heart of the fire.
As he was leaving early in the morning for the bus she came to the door. They shookhands. ‘Take care of yourself,’ she said. ‘You’re –’
As he glanced at her face he knew the words which she had held back: You’re all that I have.
He gave a smile and walked away quickly. For a few moments he wondered what was in her mind. Plainly she did not think of him as one going on holiday. What, then? Had that display of the money been an invitation to him to take what he wanted? She had asked no questions. And Big Ann’s story, with heaven knew what trimmings, lay unresolved in her mind.
As he entered the village street, he at once forgot her. Only those were about who had business with the bus. Peter Grant, after a steady astonished look, nodded shortly and turned to his mail bag. He glanced at Janet’s house, but it was dead.
At the booking office in town, he bought a return ticket for Glasgow, and in the long daylight hours as the train went over the Grampians, he tried to think out his plan once more but could not. He had thought over it too long already and was now committed. He left the train at Perth and bought a single ticket for Edinburgh.
His one difficulty lay in getting Donald’s address. That had been absolutely impossible at home, for the only place where it could be got was at the manse. Or from Janet! Besides, it might be very essential that no-one at home should know he had gone to Edinburgh. His hope lay in the knowledge that not all the university classes closed at the same time. There was bound to be some head office of the university where the students and their addresses were registered. And when it came to finding his way about a city, he had little to learn.
Easter was early that year, but Tom was not too late, and the following morning, directed by a policeman, he entered an archway, turned to his left, and came before a long desk with a somewhat pompous but affable man asking him his business.
‘I would be obliged to you if you could give me the address of a student who’s here. I forgot to take it with me from home, and I said I would call on him.’
‘The name?’ asked the official, smiling to this young country man with the Highland accent who was trying to look as if he wasn’t embarrassed.
In a few minutes Tom was back on the street, with the address written down in pencil, and the information that his friend had probably already gone away for the Easter recess.
For the rest of the day he hung about the end of a street that ran off the Meadows, but caught no sight of Donald. He did not want to call, however, until it was dark, for part of his plan was to get Donald to come with him out into the country in the darkness. To do that would be quite simple. He knew exactly how to go about it. ‘I have a lot to tell you from home. Let us get away somewhere on to a country road where we can talk.’ No more would be needed. No more would be said, for Donald, consumed by his own unease, would lead the way.
Tom felt perfectly calm and assured. And he knew that when it came to the final decision, he would be coldly calm. Tom’s intention would gradually grow on Donald. Donald would see it coming like fate. In a quiet spot they would face each other in the dark. Donald’s temper, his excuses, his difficulty with his father, all would be cleared to one side and the issue would be stark. There would be no evasion in that final moment.
As the lamps were lit he turned into the street, hesitated as he saw a girl enter at the open door to the tenement building, stood for a little while scanning the four small brass plates on each side of the entrance, read the name Cowan for the third time on the top right-hand plate over the bell-pull, then walked into the stone passage and began mounting the winding stone stairs.
Two flights above him he could hear the girl’s feet still ascending slowly. A young man came out of a door on the first landing, slammed it behind him, and rushed downstairs. The stairs were swept clean and small gas jets illumined the well dimly. It was a very much better style of lodging than anything he or his friends had been able to command in Glasgow.
When he started on the fourth flight, the girl’s footsteps had died away. He slowed his own steps in order to have command of his breathing. He stopped altogether when he heard a door open and the girl’s voice ask, ‘Is Mr. Munro in?’
‘No, he’s left here,’ answered an old woman’s voice.
‘Oh.’ A short silence. ‘When?’
‘Yesterday.’
‘Will he – will he be back before he goes?’
‘No. He’s gone away.’
‘Has he – did he leave any message for me, for –’
‘No, he left no message.’
‘Thank you.’
The door shut and the girl came slowly away. Tom saw her hand grope for the stair rail and heard a small convulsive sniff. As she descended slowly, he stood back against the wall. If she saw him as she passed, she gave no sign but kept her head up. She was obviously profoundly stirred, holding her sobs in with all her strength. She was a slim fair girl, and in the dim well of the stairs looked to Tom at that moment an intensely tragic figure. His heart quickened knowing so intimately the bitter suffering that shook her.
He listened to her footsteps in the hollow well. They descended slowly, and once, for a few seconds, they ceased altogether.
She, too, had been waiting for the dark.
A bitterness withered his features and his thought; a spasm of hatred for Donald cut more sharply than the edge of any knife. He had gone – but where?
He mounted a step or two, paused and stared at the shut door, then on impulse turned and began going down. As
he neared the foot, he saw the girl outlined in the doorway. From the movements of her elbows she was plainly wiping her eyes and getting command of herself before meeting the street. At the sound of his footsteps, she moved out and turned down towards the open space of the Meadows.
He followed her at a little distance, her upright forsaken figure gathering the vacancy of his mind to a living point. She was an ally in the night of the world and he felt the warm flush of blood hang heavy in the cells of her body.
She crossed the main thoroughfare, passed between some bushes, and entered one of the broad paths heading in the direction of the Infirmary. His stride quickened and lengthened, and here he was now close behind her, by her side.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘but were you looking for Donald Munro?’
At the first sound of his voice, her body grew taut, her footsteps hurried on – then slackened, and she half-turned, regarding his face with a startled, searching expression.
‘I don’t know you,’ she replied, vaguely walking on.
‘I think you come from Muirton,’ he answered companionably, falling into step beside her as if they were walking on a country road. ‘I know Donald very well.’
After a few more paces, she stopped and turned her face full to him. ‘I don’t know you,’ she repeated, getting control of herself. ‘Are you a student here?’
‘No. I merely come from Donald’s own country, as you might tell by my voice.’ He smiled, hardly looking at her.
‘How do you know – I was looking –’
‘I was behind you on the stairs and heard you ask his landlady. I was on the same errand myself.’
‘Then you don’t know where he’s gone?’
‘I thought I would catch him before he went home. But apparently I’m too late.’
She did not answer, but he felt her eyes searching his face. He looked full at her. ‘Why do you think he has not gone home?’
She glanced away, but did not answer.
‘Please tell me,’ he said gently.
