The Serpent (10 page)

‘No.'

It was easy to make her forget about going home, and when thought of it returned she would jump to her feet with a start.

Along the slope behind the crofts then, and down to the corner of the field where he left her.

‘When will you come again?'

‘I don't know. It's really difficult for me. Mother is – difficult – sometimes.'

‘Could you come – Friday?'

‘I don't know. I'll try.'

‘All right. I'll wait. If you can't come, I'll understand.'

She responded to generosity impulsively, and when she did so respond he hardly knew for a little while whether he was on his head or his heels.

Suddenly he ran down after her.

‘Janet,' he whispered. ‘Why not come in the afternoon? Any afternoon. You could go up this way as if you were making over for Altdhu, then circle round away behind. There's no-one ever up there but the shepherd. And I can always tell where he is.'

He was panting from running and eagerness, like one who had brought an urgent marvellous message.

She stood quite still.

‘Why not? No-one would ever see us. It's fine up there.'

‘I would like to come,' she whispered at last.

‘When? Could you come tomorrow?'

‘No. I'll see. Leave it just now.' She spoke slowly, as if turning over ways and means in her thought. ‘Good night,' she whispered quickly, and walked away.

He waited to make sure that no ominous sound had disturbed her, then turned back up the field, on fire with this new vision of her coming in the daylight into the hills.

It was then no doubt, imperceptibly, little by little, that there was born in him a first real intimacy with the earth, the earth of his own land.

Imperceptibly, because at first it was not the earth but Janet. The earth was merely his fellow conspirator. He could call it to witness silently, when he came into the hollow where Janet and himself had met in the dark. He could look at a near bush and smile in that secretive way that would often come over him when he was alone. He hardly saw the bush and the bush was more placid than a sheep, but then in a moment it was still and tough, with tough roots, a bitter invigorating tang in its bark (not that he tasted it, unless absently), and ah, so quiet and innocent a look. But it was rooted there, and the boulders were rooted, with a warm covering of grey or bluey-grey lichen. The lichen gave the boulders and rocky outcrops fantastic features, like the pictures of grotesque faces some folk say they can see in a fire. Out of sheer idleness, he would search for those faces to keep pictures of Janet out of his mind – and no more. On the verge of his mind, slipping in and, by a need for sudden action, pushed away by him.

And action would take him up to the heights, if only for a look at the mountains. And for a full half circle the peaks and broad shoulders of several mountain ranges stood against the distant sky. In winter they were mostly snow clad, even and white and smooth, with light taking them and their hollows of shadow into vast perspectives. A shiver and a solemnity of beauty, then. Yet in a moment they
were invigorating, like the sound of a sledge in boyhood, faraway cries in a white world. Standing against the remote blue-green sky of evening, frost in the air, and the blood itself a stilled cry.

That oncoming of frost from the sunken sun, with the horizon losing its outline, slowly, in pearl and then in rose, in a haze of rose more chill than the snow, foretelling a morrow of blue sky and sunlight and icicles in the shade.

Who created this world for him? Not God, but Janet. A demonstration would have presented little difficulty even to Hume, let alone the present-day psychologist!

Without Janet, would he have found it?

Janet. Janet. It was a lovely name. There was colour in it, somewhere between the yellow of peat flame and the red of a wild rose. The warmth of hands stretched to a fire; a yellow crocus in the snow. A Scots name. Janet. The syllables quick with life, moving over green grass to a little house on their own two feet.

He did not begin to think about that house, but that winter he began to plan.

He could not see Janet in a tenement stair in Glasgow. He did not try, for in these early days thought of marriage did not directly trouble him. Just as no protestations of love came from him. How could they, the solemnity of them, be pulled into the living moment, like an asking for something? What could words add to the living moment? What did they want to do but pin it down, pin it down in security? Doubtless a time would come in its own fullness for a profusion of protestations. Do you love me, ah, do you love me? But not yet, not now.

Some two months after Halloween, Jimmy Macdonald suddenly decided to get married. When Andie heard the news there came a certain look into his eye that made Tom turn away with a laugh and then reply, ‘Whatever happened, I don't believe you.'

‘Why so all of a sudden between them?'

‘Well, isn't that the best way? Why should a fellow tell till it's all settled?'

‘Did you know he was going with her?'

‘Yes.'

‘Oh, you did! If you think you can bamboozle me …'

Now he had once said to Jimmy as a joke, on some occasion or other, that when he got married he would give him a clock, and someone else had said that was a good idea because Tom would be able to mend the clock when the bairns swung on the pendulum.

A clock! As many wheels began to turn in his head as in a clock itself. The whole business between making and retailing went revolving in his mind. Why should he, who had been in the business, pay more than cost or wholesale price? All that was necessary was for him to be accepted as a genuine retailer. And to accomplish that all he had to do was to have some notepaper or stationery with a printed business heading. But naturally he must also have some sort of shop. The barn was not good enough. Unless he had a real shop, the shopkeepers in the village and even in the town would jeer at him, would say that he was trying to get things on the cheap, and might – and quite rightly – report him to the wholesalers as one who was interfering with their legitimate business by getting goods for himself and his friends at cost price.

No, he would not care to do that, even if he could. Besides, if he had a real shop he would sell to make a profit. And he knew scores of little things, neat new things, inexpensive, that would attract country folk. Even take this rather expensive matter of getting a clock, for example. In a country shop you could buy only what was for sale. Take it or leave it. But supposing he got the new catalogue from a clock-maker's which he had one day happened to see when a traveller had called at the Glasgow store? Take a country eye looking at the fascinating illustrations. No need to have clocks in stock …

Or take the country boys he knew and the fun on the Glen road of a summer evening with old Benjie's penny-farthing bicycle. Supposing he managed to buy a couple of second-hand bicycles, but of the latest type, the new safety bicycle – and hired them out at twopence or threepence a half-hour as Dougal had said? They could pay for themselves in a summer month. Beyond doubt.
He would sell new ones to farmers' sons, gillies home with their wages and tips. The lads would never be away from the shop. He would become a Cycle Agent!

It would be a new kind of business, a business to interest the young and energetic, and, along with it, his blowlamp and his tools.

In the country everything is behindhand, old-fashioned, but nowhere more than in the country do folk like what is gay in the new-fashioned, especially if it is serviceable, if it is sound. The real go-ahead country lads and girls were always like that. So few new things came their way that when they did come they held the fascination of the marvellous.

Tom had only got to look into his own mind to know all about it.

For many days and nights his inner excitement, while he went about his home and talked to the lads normally, was so great that he mistrusted himself. Country caution was part of him, as of the roots that took a good grip of the soil before they permitted a green adventure in the upper air. He drafted dozens of business headings in many styles. He even wrote out his name in full – Thomas Mathieson. But no, Tom Mathieson it would be, Tom, one of the lads themselves.

Then he wrote Dougal Robertson, saying he wanted a certain mantelpiece clock at a certain price, and wondered whether he couldn't get it wholesale because he was half-thinking of starting a little business, his father being ill, and not likely now to recover – and so on. No chance of a socialistic adventure here! It was a non-committal letter, which did, however, convey to Dougal a clear picture of his present position and condition of mind.

When he had posted it he felt a sense of relief, then a fear lest he had expressed his desire for the shop too strongly, followed by a doubt as to whether he had expressed it clearly enough. When eleven days passed and no word came from Dougal, his mounting impatience was invaded by a despair that relieved and quietened him like a smooth passing over his head of the hand of fate.

On the thirteenth day the clock arrived together with a
long letter from Dougal, and excitement was upon him again, but now like spring weather, in sun and wind.

This mixture of starting a new business and of love for Janet did breed in him through the stormy opening weeks of that year an extraordinary gaiety of happiness. Every muscle, every bone, every cell in his body took part in it. Against the things that countered him, like his father's face or a task held up by the weather, he was whole and cunning in himself. Nothing could get at him. What he couldn't flow over he could flow round, and when he could do neither he remained contained in himself like a well, a well-spring of life. Had he been thrown into an icy well to the neck and left there to perish, it is almost certain that he wouldn't even have caught a cold. No fanciful exaggeration, that. Just the plumb truth.

It was really a remarkable time. No need ever thereafter to tell him of the effect of the mind on the body. Though that is really a silly, sententious way of putting it. Where the body-cells sing or race they become mind itself. Mind is everywhere, and all is shaped and unique and of a piece, while yet it is fluent and everywhere. Anyway, that was how it felt; but then who can ever understand until he
has
felt? Who can know the singing in the busy fingertips? Who can know the busy-ness that is itself a state of song? The tune that sings out of the shaping wood?

Get away with you! he would have laughed at any questioning thought.

And behind all this, as the glow in the brazier, the white in the snow, the cry in the storm, wandering through landscapes inside him, the tune on his lips, the brightness in his sight – Janet.

There was only one thing for it – he would have to build, and the only place to build was against the upper gable-end of the house. That would not only provide him with one solid wall, but would place his shop just the right distance from the road for business and privacy.

One winter's day in the barn he spoke to his mother. At first the idea of a real shop quite overcame her, awed her in fact. He found himself, however, talking to his mother more naturally than ever before. For the first time in his
life he consciously treated her as an ally, though even then it was somehow impossible to be altogether friendly and natural. His manner of talk was still a little off-hand.

She was excited almost to the point of dumb stupidity. ‘I don't know what your father will say.'

‘I have got to think of myself. If I start this shop here, then I won't go back to Glasgow. It's got to be decided one way or the other.'

‘Yeth,' she said, sucking in the word, ‘yeth.' She was deeply moved. Plainly the thought of having him at home with her for good was overwhelming. He had known it would be. Though not using it as a threat, yet a threat it was. They could deal with it as they thought fit!

It was surprising to him how cunning his mother was, how absolutely she seemed to know his father's hidden mind and mood. ‘Don't say anything till we see.' And the following day, she got him alone again in the barn, in conspiracy, in undertones, with an ear hearkening for footsteps outside, though she knew her husband was in bed. How could it be done without a lot of money? Where was the money to come from?

If he got ten or twelve pounds, he could start with a small shop, he answered. But if he got nothing at all, he had enough to buy the wood, and he could build the little place himself. After that, he would see how things went. He would take the risk of that.

His mother moved about the croft with a lot of energy, as if she could think better when working hard.

One morning when he went in to breakfast, he knew at once that the subject had been discussed between them the night before. Nothing was said to him. The curious dull tension in the room, however, was enough to explain everything. His father's face was paler and more graven than ever, with a patriarchal solemnity that added the awful power of the other world to the forbidding dignity of this.

Tom could not look at that face, and went out with a dumb anger in him. Presently his mother joined him in the barn. She spoke in undertones. But hope was in her face. She nodded. ‘I spoke to him last night. At first he
was against it. But in the end he came round a little. If he won't help you, I don't think he'll stop you doing it. But we'll have to give him time. Don't do anything, and don't anger him, till we see. Just wait till we see. I'm hopeful it will be all right.'

‘Why was he against it?'

‘If the croft and the carting kept us and a decent house over our heads he thinks it should be good enough for you. Then he got on again about – about the other thing.'

Tom turned away.

‘Don't you be upset. It'll come all right. Just wait a bit. We'll manage it.' There was a curious hopefulness in her, an eager conspiracy, as if she were managing things against the fates. Her eyebrows arched into their two sets of concentric creases and her small dark eyes grew round and bright like a hen's after drinking. She bustled away from him, looked up towards the kitchen door, then came back for more talk. Her stout dumpy body was full of warmth and life. But she did not stay long, as though conscious that the face on the pillow would know she was there.