On the Island (9 page)

16

T
HE SMALL GREY
-
HAIRED
precise man walked up the path to the house while Iain's mother was hanging up sheets on the line in a fresh spring breeze that whipped them about her face. She recognised him through a lash of white as the headmaster of the little village school which she herself had attended long ago under a different and more unpredictably raging predecessor, and which Iain and Kenneth were attending now. He stood smiling on the pathway near the house till she had finished fixing the sheets to the line and then noticing that she was flurried and nervous and trying to dry her hands on her long skirt, he said, “It's nothing to do with misbehaviour on the part of Iain or Kenneth, Mrs Campbell. Nothing at all. I can assure you of that.”

His trim head and body assured her of that most surely, but she stood where she was, afraid to ask him in in case he thought her house untidy, and at the same time frightened that he would consider her inhospitable. He finally solved the problem by inviting himself in.

“Please,” he said and pointed to a chair. She sat down, her hands folded in her lap, and he did the same.

“As a matter of fact,” he began, “I came about Iain.”

“What is it about Iain that the headmaster wants to know,” she asked, hoping that he hadn't noticed the patch on the curtains, or the worn linoleum.

“Well, as a matter of fact it's nothing serious. I've been watching Iain for some time now. Indeed he studies Latin with me and I've noticed that he has a real love of learning. He reads a lot, doesn't he?”

“He never takes his head out of a book,” said Mrs Campbell, as if a book were a trough. “He even reads at the peat bank.” The headmaster permitted himself a little smile as at a joke completely understood, for by it Mrs Campbell was implying that to Iain books were more important than the tasks of the day.

“I can believe that, Mrs Campbell, I can well believe that.” The curtains were astir with the spring breeze, and she thought that surely he must notice now, but all he said was, “It's fine spring weather we're having, Mrs Campbell. I saw some lambs today for the first time.” They say that if the first lamb is looking directly towards you you will have good luck, Mrs Campbell thought irrelevantly, as she turned her slightly lowered gaze in the direction of the headmaster in his well-cut precise grey suit and his polished black shoes.

“To put it in a nutshell, Mrs Campbell, what I would want to happen would be that Iain should attend the big secondary school in the town this autumn. Now before you say anything,” and he raised his white hand, “it won't cost you anything. He will get a bursary – at least I am almost certain he will – and that will pay for his bus fare. I think that he is” – and he paused impressively – “university material.”

Her mind tried to grapple with what the headmaster was saying. Material? What material? If only the man could speak Gaelic she would find it easier to understand; but no, he spoke English, though she must admit that his words though mysterious were clearly enunciated.

“You see,” the headmaster continued, as if he were lecturing, “there are few in this village of whom it can be said that they are university material,” (so it was a favourable thing then, was it?) “and therefore we must strike while the iron is hot. We must take measures in good time.”

Finally she came to his meaning as a bird circling fearfully finally settles on a branch.

“Is the headmaster saying that Iain could go to university?”

“That is precisely what I am saying, Mrs Campbell. In my opinion his grasp, particularly of languages – though he is not so strong on the side of the sciences – is such that I would commit myself to saying that. His quickness in seeing concepts in Latin, his essay and his general knowledge suggest to me that he would make, eventually, a university candidate. Now, Mrs Campbell, the question is do you want him to go to the secondary school? There might be, I can appreciate,” and he coughed slightly, “economic barriers in the way.” And he looked round the room, from the wooden dresser, with the dishes stacked in tiers on it, to the wooden table with the oilcloth cover.

Mrs Campbell sat stunned in her seat. She had been hoping that in a few years, not very long now, Iain would be able to earn money and she would be forever free of having to borrow a shilling here and a half-crown there: she would be able to go to bed at night knowing where the morrow's meals would come from, she would be, in short, like all her neighbours.

“Well, Mrs Campbell?” His voice came to her as if from a far hollow distance, as if he were indeed the evil one tempting her with gifts, placing before her an intolerable choice. For if Iain went to university her days of scrimping would be prolonged, she would be condemned to wear, as far ahead as she could see, even to church, the worn clothes that she already had, there would be no prospect of furniture for the house, she would stare bleakly into a future of continued borrowing, of worry and of toil. And she stayed silent, gazing at a point slightly below the headmaster's chin, bowed and weary.

He continued, however. “The fact is, Mrs Campbell, I know that this will mean hardship for you and that he won't earn money for some years. I can appreciate that side of it but on the other hand if one considers his welfare – his welfare as a whole – then this indubitably is the best thing for him. After all many boys take jobs that lead to nothing.”

How fine his language, was. How well he could arrange everything. If only she could do the same. Did he who was talking so glibly about money not realise that money meant butter, bread, sugar, fish, meat, and that lack of money meant an empty larder, and sleepless nights? Would his Latin feed an empty belly or put flesh on growing bones? She stared past him into the years that might come, a continuation of the years that had passed. It wasn't that she thought about Iain's future, for she knew very well that in university he might go astray, he might forget all about her and his own brother, he might never visit them again, and spend his life among corruption.

“Mrs Campbell …” She jerked back to reality as he continued, “I do understand the difficulties there will be for you. But I assure you that there will be no problem in the immediate future since as I have said he can pay his bus fares with his bursary. And think also of the honour to the school.”

So that was what he was thinking about, the honour to the school. He wasn't thinking of Iain at all, he was thinking of the praise he would receive as one who successfully prepared pupils for the university. Well, Iain was her own flesh and blood and she would show him that she could at least say no if she wished and the “No” came to her lips like meat.

But before she could say it, he added, “There is no question but that Iain is one of the ablest pupils I have had. His imagination is strong and he should go far. I haven't spoken to him about this but I am sure that he himself feels that the possibility is there. The boys of the village won't like it. They never like it when someone leaves them for a higher position and that too is understandable. Still I am sure Iain has enough common sense and tact to take that in his stride. May I therefore take it that you will allow him to go to the secondary school this August?”

He waited and her head whirled. She found it difficult to say “No” directly to the headmaster, though she would easily have said it to anyone in the village. But she would say it. What right had he, moneyed as he was, to come along to her house and take away from her her only hope of a decent future? How could he know anything about poverty, true real grinding poverty? She would send him back to his school first.

And then just as she was about to speak, to let her mouth bang down on the words as the mousetrap on the mouse among the flour, she heard as if very faintly two words that he had used and she clutched at them as a sailor might clutch at a log of wood in a stormy sea: “Higher position.” The two words danced enticingly towards her. “Higher position.” They were smiling at her. “The boys of the village won't like it.” They were happy and smiling and laughing.

“Higher position.” She saw Iain, daringly, as a minister, dressed in his minister's gown, ascending into the pulpit and he was castigating all the villagers for their lack of charity, he was telling them about the widow and the widow's mite, he was asking them why they had not, even once, gone to his mother to ask if she needed anything, he was haranguing them for their lack of love. And she imagined their faces twisted with shame and embarrassment as hers had often been, and she herself sitting triumphantly in the front seat looking up at her son, who was transfigured as if by the light of heaven. And she turned her face like iron directly to the headmaster and she said, “Iain shall go to the university.”

A remarkable woman, thought the headmaster, as he made his way down the path to the main road, and saw between curtains people peering at him. Not many of the villagers would have put love of scholarship, academic prowess, above indigence and poverty. Not many of them would have had that sort of vision.

So it was that on that spring day he inhaled the fresh invigorating air, and felt within himself the surge and sparkle of salt breezes as he saw the lambs suckling their mothers, the vernal greenness of the grass, and the white road that led back to his own school, where after all his endeavours had not been in vain. So must once the Roman poets have felt at the dawning of their language, alive and happy, setting out past their limiting geographical boundaries into the open sea. So too must Mrs Campbell feel, having made her sacrifice, having transcended her narrow parochial world. And he rejoiced, for he was a good man, and he wanted Iain to do well and on that day he felt virtue and joy all around him as he returned schoolward.

17

W
ITH THE EMPTY
jam jar in his hand Iain set out across the moor, in search of blaeberries, his body bent down to the earth. The moor stretched away from the back of the house and rose in a series of braes past the Standing Stones. Kneeling among the heather he gathered the blaeberries and put them in the jar, steadily making his way further and further from the houses while all about him flew little flies with trembling almost transparent wings, and striped wasps buzzed past his nose. Some of the blaeberries he ate, but most he placed in the jar; and while searching for them he found a lark's abandoned nest, empty of eggs or nestlings, for it was now autumn. When he looked back after a while he found that he had gone over the summit of the brae as a ship goes over the horizon and that he could no longer see the village at all except that he could distinguish trembling stems of greyish-blue smoke ascending into the sky.

All around him were the scarred peat banks, dry and black, with here and there flaky peats that had been left lying and not taken to the houses. To his right he could see the houses of the neighbouring village which curved round one edge of the moor. About him was an immense silence and he could see no one at all moving anywhere near him. For a moment he thought of returning lest he should get lost in the spaces of the moor, but some daring instinct, some sense of adventure, was urging him onwards from the houses anchored to their familiar earth. It was as if he was Columbus setting off into a new world with inadequate maps, charts that showed only dimly and tentatively unknown seas and unknown islands.

The jar was steadily filling and in his absorption it was only now and again that he looked about him. He could no longer see any houses, for he seemed to have climbed another brae. He couldn't even see the Standing Stones. He was in a landscape of broken peat banks, stones and earth, while above him now and again black birds flew, their wings lazily outspread. Steadily he made his way forward, bearing his jar, slightly nervous, slightly excited, seeing no sign of people or of animals. How alone he was, how quiet the world. It was as if he had dropped into a hollow of the earth, isolated from thought and action. And yet some power was drawing him on, ever forward into the desolate landscape, wishing to know the end of it; or would it perhaps go on forever as it seemed to him that it might. Above him was the blue hollow of the sky, limitless, towering, empty but for a few straying birds. He gazed down at his hands, stained red with the berries, and rubbed them among the gnarled heather.

On and on, a small figure in the vast landscape, he went, half kneeling, and searching, sometimes having to jump down from peat banks as he traversed them. The ground was in many places soggy and moist, and at times his shoes sank into it as into a marsh, but mostly he moved among the tangle of heather which was dry and springy.

A voice inside was telling him, “You should go back. You don't know how long you've been away because you have no watch. What if you got lost here and no one ever found you? Your body might rot among these peat banks forever.” But another voice was saying, “You've never been as far as this before. Keep on going. You might find something that you've never seen before.”

And at that instant as he raised his aching back he found himself to his astonishment facing the sea. He had somehow reached the end of the moor and was standing on a promontory and there below him, it seemed for miles, was the ocean. It was a different sea from the one he knew, it looked as if no human eye before his had gazed on it. This sea had no houses near it, no boats, it seemed to have nothing at all to do with him or any other human being, it stretched as far as the eye could see in a dark endless blue. And as he looked down, trembling and amazed, he saw ducks flying far below him above the surface of the water, and, yes, surely in the distance a liner sailing slowly past. What waters, what a sea, multitudinous, glittering, like the open page of an immense blue book so that one could imagine oneself studying it, scrutinising it for its fish.

It appalled him and it exhilarated him. If he fell down there he would be ages falling, he thought, and drew back from the promontory, for his head for heights was not good. The jam jar in his hand, he stared downwards. That sea, where did it end? It seemed as if it went on forever, dancing and happy in the rays of the sun, immeasurably deep, immeasurably dangerous. All around him flew the seagulls but these were not the scavengers that followed the plough, these were the true real seagulls of a different race from the others, seagulls of the ocean, very pure, very white, with cold beady eyes staring at him as if he were an intruder into their domain.

He looked rapturously downward as if towards a treasure that had been given to him alone, an explorer of the dangerous blue waters, and as he did so he heard above him a constant humming much louder than that of an insect. When he stared upwards he saw an aeroplane moving slowly along, its wings glittering, its engine loud in the silence. He imagined the pilot sitting in his seat gazing down through his goggles at the ocean and felt for a moment a spasm of vertigo which made him draw further back.

Glancing from plane to sea and back to plane again he was overwhelmed by a sense of largeness and space such as he had never felt before. It was as if in face of the two extended blues reflecting each other the Cook, Mrs Macdonald, Mrs Murray, his mother, Kenneth, Speedy, Daial and the rest of them had disappeared from the earth, as if the whole village no longer existed, as if he had found himself in a freedom that he could hardly endure. For there was nothing here that was human, anchored to the earth, there were only stones and water and ducks and seagulls and that one aeroplane in which sat the pilot, among the clouds: he couldn't even see any sea shells for he did not dare to peer over the precipitous edge of the cliff.

He gazed down at the jam jar in his hand, at his jersey which had begun to shiver in the strong breeze blowing towards him from the sea; he looked up at the aeroplane travelling through the blue sky and then he turned away from them all and began to run into the moor where the peat banks were, where the wiry heather was growing, beyond which the village lay, with its familiar ditches and its canisters and its old shoes, and from which he could see the sea that was known to him, with the green island in the middle.

He had run for a long distance before he stopped and began to walk more decorously, only to find that in his race he had spilt many but not all of the blaeberries. When he ate the remainder they seemed to have a bitter chilly taste which he had not felt before, a sour exciting tang which made him squirm with an exquisite agonised pleasure, which scoured and cleaned his whole body.