On the Island (5 page)

9

I
T WAS A
Saturday morning and Iain was in the house of Andy Macleod, known as Speedy and one of the best footballers in the village. There was going to be a big football match that afternoon between Iain's own village and the neighbouring village, a match that was considered to be the most important event in the year. Speedy who played centre forward was in the house by himself as his father and mother and sisters were out stacking the corn, and indeed Iain could see them through the window, bending down and gathering the sheaves in their arms. Their movements were curiously stylised and distant, as if they belonged to people he didn't know, or as if they could have belonged to anyone. Speedy was trying on his white shorts, bright green shirt, his green stockings and his yellow football boots. He was very stocky and his legs were hairy. Now and again with a careless gesture he would toss his hair back from his strong bulletlike head.

“Do you think we'll win?” said Iain.

“Of course we'll win,” said Speedy who was tying his laces. “No problem.” He stood up and kicked out with his football boots at an imaginary ball, but the floor was so polished that he nearly fell over, only regaining his balance just in time.

“Bugger you,” he said. And then after a while, “Mind you, it's very hard.”

“What's very hard?” said Iain curiously, happy and astonished that Speedy wished to speak to him at all.

“It's hard to keep your form,” said Speedy. “You see, Iain, it's like this. If you're good they expect you to be good all the time. You score two goals one week and then they expect you to score two goals next week as well.” He went over to a mirror and stood in front of it, passing his hand across his hair, and snapping the elastic of his shorts.

“That's the thing you must remember. Now take me. Last year I scored three goals and they'll expect me to do the same this year. It's a great responsibility.”

“I can see that,” said Iain gravely.

“Now take it if you're nervous,” said Speedy, turning away from the mirror. “You can't get the ball to do what you want it to do. And if you don't get a good kick at the beginning of the game then you're no good for the rest of it. That's another thing they don't understand. Now last year I knew everything was going to be all right from the beginning of the game, but this year …”

He went over to the window, as if to make sure that none of his family was coming back into the house, and then opened a cupboard from which he took a half bottle of whisky, and poured out a glass for himself. He sat down in a chair drinking it.

“You see, Iain, I haven't played for a year. I was working at the fishing and I never got a chance to practise and you know what they're like here. If we lose it's the end of the world. It's a great responsibility.” And he drank a little more whisky.

“Do you think you'd get a trial for a club?” said Iain who supported Rangers.

“I might, I might at that. It's all a matter of whether you're spotted or not. That's where the thing is. If there's a scout watching you you might get a trial. There are as good players playing with me as you would get in a club.”

“Do you get nervous then?”

“No. I don't get nervous much. Some of them get nervous. If you get nervous you're no good. You miss the ball or your passes go all wrong. Say just now I had the ball here,” said Speedy, getting to his feet, “and I wanted to pass it over to where you are. Well, the ball might go to the other chair there. That's if you're nervous. Do you see that?”

“Yes,” said Iain. “I see that.”

“And then you see,” said Speedy, sitting down again, “your stomach would be all upset. That wouldn't be good for you either.” And he drank some more whisky. “If I go out there today and I'm nervous I won't be any good and they'll say ‘Speedy's over the hill. He can't do it any longer.' Well, I don't want them to say that because you have your pride. And your confidence. If your confidence goes you're finished.” He stood up suddenly and walked about the room, looking at some photographs that were on the sideboard, and then sat down again.

“And your girl friend might be there.” He became silent for a while, staring into the fireplace. “If your girl friend is there and you make a fool of yourself you don't like it. And then on Monday morning when you go to your work your mates will start making jokes. But it's not them who have the responsibility. It's easy for them to speak. It's no joke.”

Iain didn't know what girl friends had to do with football but accepted that if Speedy mentioned them then he must have some reason for doing so.

“But there won't be any problem. We'll beat them right enough,” said Speedy and drank some more whisky, gazing afterwards into the glass as if he were seeing some disagreeable picture there. Then he began to cross and uncross his legs and to take deep breaths which he slowly expelled.

It occurred to Iain that football was a much more complicated game than he had thought if you had to consider all the things that Speedy was talking about.

“It's like this,” said Speedy wrinkling his brow as if he were concentrating. “You're the centre forward and everything depends on you. You're the one who has to get the goals. Say the goal is in front of you and you miss, then people will start shouting, and making a fool of you. The forward line is much worse off than the defence. The defence don't have to get goals.”

And he got to his feet and stood in the middle of the floor as if he were making a speech, while Iain noticed that his face had become redder. “Everything depends on you, you understand. The whole village depends on you.” He poured out some more whisky and then went, rolling slightly on his football boots, into the scullery and swished some water into the glass. After he had come back he looked keenly at Iain and said: “If I was you I wouldn't go to the match.”

“Not go to the match?” Iain echoed.

“That's right,” said Speedy decisively. “It won't be any good this year. Too many of the players haven't been practising. Take me now. I haven't had any practice. If I was you I would stay away. That's what I would do.”

“But …” Iain began.

“I'm telling you,” said Speedy earnestly, “it won't be as good as last year. It's all a question of practice, you see. If I had my way nobody would go to the match except the players, and then you would get a good game. That's my opinion anyway.” He stopped at the window and stared out moodily at his father and mother and sisters who were still monotonously and relentlessly gathering sheaves in their arms and building the stack. It was as if standing there in his white and green he envied them the slow certain job that they were doing, its gradual inevitability.

“I'm going anyway,” said Iain, “and all the other boys are going.”

“And they're all expecting me to score goals,” said Speedy angrily. “I know that. They all want to be like Speedy, eh? Isn't that right? But they don't know the responsibility. They think that all you have to do is go out on the pitch and score goals. Isn't that right, eh?”

“I don't know,” said Iain who was beginning to feel puzzled and rather frightened.

“But I know,” said Speedy. “I was the same. There was a footballer when I was your age and he was nicknamed Delaney and he used to score goals all the time. And then one day he lost his form just like that,” and he snapped his fingers quickly. “And they booed him. They booed him because he couldn't score any more goals. And yet he had scored a lot of goals before that. But they forgot about that, do you see? And he was still the same fellow, do you understand?” His brow wrinkled as if he were concentrating deeply. “He was still the same fellow and he had scored all those goals but now because he couldn't score any more they booed him. He was a tall fellow with very long legs. He wasn't like me at all, he was very different from me in his style of play.” He fell silent again staring into his glass. “He was drowned on a fishing boat. Nobody knows what happened but they found his body washed ashore. Anyway what I was going to say, they shout at you and tell you, ‘If you were only as good as Delaney.' They remember him now, you see, but when he was alive they forgot about him.” And he kicked out viciously as if at an imaginary ball. “That's people for you.”

He took another long breath, expelled it slowly, and then stretched out his hand in front of him, studied it, and put it down again on his knee.

“Now I'm telling you, don't go. It won't be any good. And you tell your friends not to go either. After all it's only a game, isn't it. It's not the end of the world. Someone's got to win and someone's got to lose.”

“I suppose so,” said Iain doubtfully and when he looked out of the window he saw Stork, who had a wooden leg, limping along the road on his way to the game. He had to leave home earlier than other people because of his wooden leg, and as he hobbled along Iain could see his outthrust jaw, his pale face and his angry staring eyes. The thing was, Stork would never take a lift, or accept help from anybody, and he lived on his own in a perpetual resentful silence. But when he arrived on the touchline of a football pitch he became completely transformed, and would shout insults, admonitions, frenzied encouragement at the players, and sometimes he would scream obscenities at the referee for giving perfectly fair decisions against his team. For this he was greatly respected, and as he had a wooden leg he was perfectly safe from any consequences that might have followed from his behaviour. After the match was over he would relapse into his angry resentful silence, and finally hobble away, wincing, towards his empty house.

“There's Stork,” said Iain, without thinking.

“That old fool. He should stay at home,” said Speedy. “He thinks he's an expert but he doesn't know anything. He's just making a fool of himself, that's all he's doing.”

He went over to the cupboard and poured himself another whisky and then said in a more good-humoured voice, as he sat down on his chair in front of the mirror, “It depends on the start you get. That's what it depends on.”

Iain got to his feet and said, “I'm going home to my dinner now.” He didn't like to see Speedy sitting there drinking whisky and wearing his football kit at the same time. In fact he wished that he hadn't come. He would far rather have seen Speedy emerging out of the crowd, running on to the field in his green and white, and taking his first shot at goal.

As he stood at the door he could see Stork plodding steadily and irresistibly into the distance, and in his mind's eye he simultaneously pictured Speedy on the football pitch, swerving to the right and hitting the ball so viciously that it soared high into the air, entering the net in the top right-hand corner.

He kept the image in his mind as he walked home because it seemed to him to be the best one that he could think of, and much more real than the Speedy he had just seen, more real even than Speedy's parents and sisters bending down as they gathered the sheaves of corn and stacked them. But what really bothered him was that Speedy had talked to him so much: adults didn't usually speak to him at such length. He would have felt much happier if Speedy hadn't spoken to him at all, if he hadn't explained so much to him, if he had just given him orders or told him to go home, that he was too busy. That would really have been much more like the Speedy that he thought he knew.

10

I
N THE NEXT
village there lived Iain's uncle who had a croft, from which they got some potatoes, as a tiny part of the potato field was set aside for Iain's mother. He had a larger house than Iain's mother had, and a barn in which there were old pieces of harness made of leather hanging on the whitewashed walls, hay lofts, and a byre in which the cows were dark presences among brown rivulets and channels.

Iain didn't like his uncle much, for he had a red face and staring eyes and unshaven cheeks which he sometimes rubbed against Iain's smoother ones. He preferred his aunt who had very white hair, and always smelt of flour. His uncle used to sit in his chair and say, “I don't know what these schools are coming to. When I was your age, Iain, I was doing a man's work on the croft.” And he would look angrily at his sister, Iain's mother, who didn't say anything as she needed the potatoes.

One day after they had been picking potatoes and had come home, tired and sore, his uncle whose name was Angus took him into the barn where the haylofts were. “There are mice in there,” he said to Iain. “I know they're there and I can't stand them.” In the half-light of the barn his red face looked fierce and clear, almost like a cockerel's, and his bald head shone like a stone that has been polished by the action of water for many years.

Iain sometimes thought that in the same way as he didn't like his uncle so his uncle didn't like him and wished somehow to humiliate him, as that every day he had been making comments, like, “Iain's just a scholar. He doesn't know how to use the spade. You're not teaching the boy right, Agnes. You should make a man of him. What's he going to be, eh? Tell me that.” And his mother said nothing, ignoring her brother as best she could for the sake of the potatoes.

All this time Iain felt his courage draining away from him as his foot rested on the spade and in the distance he could see his uncle's black bull pacing restlessly on his tether, and now and then coming to a halt like a statue of solid black stone.

His uncle stood in the half-light of the barn staring into the hay, the blue straps of his dungarees over his blue shirt. “Pss, pss, pss,” he suddenly said and there appeared as if by magic at his side a large golden cat which arched its back lazily and gazed up at him with a languid loving gaze.

“Get 'em,” said Iain's uncle and he threw the cat in among the hay. Suddenly before Iain's astonished and horrified eyes there was an explosion of activity, the hay stirred and seethed like porridge bubbling in a pot, and there was the cat emerging out of it carrying a large fat grey mouse in its mouth.

“Watch this now,” said his uncle. “You watch this.” And as Iain watched, the cat came over to his uncle with the mouse and dropped it beside his rough leather boots. It lay crouched on the floor watching the mouse intently, now and again pushing out a paw and touching it, its eyes gleaming in the half-darkness, while at the same time Iain sensed that his uncle was staring at him with his angry face.

Once while the cat was staring sleepily into space, its eyes blinking serenely, the mouse, as if sensing an opportunity for escape, made a sudden scamper, but the cat as quick as lightning put out its paw and drew it towards it and then remained intent as before without moving. The four of them – his uncle, Iain, the cat and the mouse – remained like this for a long time, as if they were carved on a frieze, in a motionlessness that was not inactivity but rather activity throbbing with tension, inactivity carried to an extreme of activity, as if the barn were a battlefield on which two armies, immersed in fighting, had paused, locked in each other's arms, in an intensity of the kind that is possible only to the fiercest of combatants.

As Iain watched, the mouse made another attempt to escape and again the cat, golden-bodied, golden-eyed, put out its paw playfully and pulled it back. Then it turned the mouse over as if it were inspecting it, as if it were some strange being that it hadn't seen before, and finally flicked it up in the air.

Iain's uncle said in a flat voice, “It has broken its back.” Then he and Iain left the barn.

When they were outside Ian suddenly began to beat his uncle with his fists and shout, “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.” His voice rose in a scream so high that the bull turned its black massive stony head and looked at them, before slowly bending it to the earth again. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you,” Iain was shouting, beating his fists against his uncle's body.

“What's wrong with you?” said his uncle in genuine surprise. “What's wrong with you?”

But Iain turned away from him and ran into the house and stood in front of his mother throbbing with rage and anguish, his face intensely pale. “I want to go home,” he shouted to his mother. “I want to go home.”

His aunt who had been sitting talking to his mother stood up and came over to him, stroking his hair and gazing at his uncle who was standing in the doorway and saying: “All that happened was that the cat killed a mouse.”

“It wasn't, it wasn't,” Ian screamed. “It wasn't that. You were …” His body throbbed with inarticulate rage, for he knew that more than that had happened, but he couldn't express what it was.

“I hate you,” he screamed, stamping his foot on the floor. “Come home,” he pleaded with his mother.

“Would he like a cup of tea,” said his aunt to his mother.

“No, no, no,” Iain screamed. “I want to go home.”

His mother looked from Iain to her brother and she knew that at that moment she would have to make a choice which would be hard for her, the potatoes that she needed or her son. Her brother was looking at her with clear lazy eyes as if he recognised this, and also as if he knew in which direction she would jump, which road she would take: and as if he also knew that whatever direction she took he would be able to drag her back again into his richer circle. She looked around her at the house which was so much better than her own, at the easy chairs, the carpets, the ornaments on the mantelpiece, the cream-coloured clock, the house of a childless couple who had put all their earnings into the furniture.

Her sister-in-law hung limply between the two of them and her whiteness seemed to have turned to a diminished grey, as if she had suddenly become tiny and hump-backed, and a glaze had come over her eyes.

“I never liked you,” said Agnes to her brother. “I never liked you. Ever. Even when we were young I never liked you. Our father never liked you either. I remember the time you broke my doll. No,” she said to her sister-in-law, “I never wanted to say it, not about my own brother, but it's true. You think I want your potatoes. Well, I need them but I can do without them. You're always holding that over me, aren't you? When my husband died what did you do for me? Nothing. You never even came to visit me. And yet he was a better man than you. He was a sailor and he had seen the world. You haven't seen anything. Nothing but this croft and this house. For years I've been over in that village and you never came to visit me, and you're on at Iain because he's clever, because you're not clever yourself. I know you went to Australia and you threw in your job there because you couldn't do it and you came home here, and you took over the croft. I never liked you and I don't like you now.”

“He's just a crybaby,” said her brother, “that's all he is. You can't bring him up, that's what's wrong with you. You let him do what he wants. Women can't bring up boys. Everyone knows that. It's books with him all the time. What use are books to him? Eh? Tell me that. If I had him I'd …”

“You keep your mouth shut, Angus,” said his wife suddenly. “You just keep your mouth shut.” And though she spoke strongly she was trembling. “You keep your mouth shut. You don't have an ounce of pity on your bones. She's right in what she's saying. You never had any children of your own and that's why you are what you are.” She subsided into silence again and there they stood, the four of them, Iain and his uncle and his mother and his aunt, in the living room of that house which was much better than that of Iain's mother, and they were frozen momently in time as if the clock had stopped, and poison was running like rivulets from their mouths, while outside the window Iain could see the black bull raising its head, with spittle at its mouth and nostrils, solid in the day.

His mother got to her feet. “Come on, Iain,” she said.

“Are you going then?” said her brother, as if he were surprised that she was escaping.

“I'm going and I'm not coming back,” said Iain's mother. And she took Iain by the hand and led him past her brother who was standing in the doorway.

“All right then,” he shouted, the veins standing out on his forehead. “But I'm telling you he's a crybaby. And it's high time you made a man of him.”

“A man like you?” she said, raising her head scornfully.

“Yes,” he shouted, “a man like me. I've got my own croft. I'm not a beggar.”

As she was going out the door she raised her hand as if to slap him but then thought better of it and dropped it. Without a word she walked down the path to the gate, somehow succeeding in looking larger than her brother in her draggled clothes.

“Well, now we know where we are,” she said to Iain. As she reached the gate she turned and shouted, “And you can keep your potatoes.” Then the two of them walked away together, her hand still clutching Iain's hand. When Iain looked at her he saw her proud white face staring straight ahead of her, her back straight as a ruler, her lips clamped tightly together, and her boots, slightly cracked and clayey from the potato field, heavy on the road.