The Silver Bough (16 page)

I
t was late afternoon when he woke to a thrush singing in the garden. The thrush stopped and the world listened. He felt light as the listening and dwelt in it for a little time, then his eyes wandered about the bedroom and saw the teapot. The feeling of convalescence was distinctly pleasant until in a small snuggle of luxury he moved a leg. The leg not only pained him but had grown a shaggy hide, which turned out, however, to be no more than an unremoved stocking. Otherwise he was more or less undressed. He saw the face of a colleague who on occasion would admit: “I had a skinful last night.” He had never been quite sure whether the man had been ashamed or otherwise. He wasn't quite sure yet. Sheena began to chant and was abruptly stopped. Had Anna really seen what was wrong with him? His breath must have been eloquent!

She was really a fine girl, but removed from Martin by exactly another world. There was no point of contact. This had nothing to do with social differences at all. Martin was beyond any human contact of the kind. The fellow had reached the end of everything, where there was nothing. This might have been remediable if he hadn't possessed an intellect. Things can be done to the sick mind. Nothing can be done to the sick intellect, which at once and without effort analyses away the word “sick” and what is being done, exhibiting both elements as without meaning and futile, then waits for anything more to analyse away.

He tried to recollect one occasion during the night, even a passing moment, when Martin had shown a trace of real emotion, even argumentative emotion. He couldn't. Yet Martin had clearly wanted to speak, and would have gone on speaking or listening forever. Surely that was something, a
desire
? Moreover he had gone with his war cronies to that place to drink. He wouldn't have gone if he hadn't wanted to go, if drinking didn't give him
pleasure
?

And then, in this present rarefied condition of his mind, Grant made what seemed to him a subtle psychological discovery. Martin would speak, and Martin would go, and Martin would drink, purely and automatically to
do
those things, because once he stopped doing
them
there was nothing left but to die, to cut the throat, to slip down into deep sea-water.

This was so strong a thought that it pressed the bone inward between his eyes. He got up and light-headedly began to dress.

Mrs Cameron knocked and came into his sitting room, asking him if he would like his food now.

“Thank you, I would, if you don't mind.”

“Dear me, you've caught a cold!”

“No, no, just a trifle hoarse.” He cleared his throat. “The night air, you know!” He smiled.

“We were that anxious about you,” she murmured, “and the potatoes will take a while to boil. There's some nice soup——”

“The very thing! Never mind about the potatoes. And if Anna makes some of her strong coffee, we can have a cup of tea later. How's that?”

He often discussed the food position with her and knew, in considerable detail the idiosyncrasies of the butcher in Kinlochoscar. As she was hurrying away he said, “I hope you weren't too anxious?”

“No, it's just that we thought you might have fallen and hurt yourself. Anna—but it's all right.”

“Anna what?”

“Nothing—she just had a walk.” Anna was behind her. “Oh, there's this telegram; it came in about midday,” and the old lady took it from Anna and handed it to him. As the door closed, he burst the envelope:

“Hoping to arrive tomorrow Mackintosh.”

His face went bleak and a small throb was resurrected. Blair, the petrologist, would be driving him up in his old Bentley. Probably a whole carload of them!

Anna came in with the soup.

“Have you got today's paper?” he inquired, for he had asked her to get it.

She hesitated a moment. “Yes.”

“Will you fetch it, please?”

It was unlucky for the archaeologist that his striking discovery had happened in one of those rare brief intervals when international relations did not threaten immediate world disaster. A powerful foreign leader had actually used the words “not unhopeful” on the day Grant had uncovered the short cist, and in sheer relief there was nothing that the British public could hug more closely to its heart than a crock of gold. A prescient editor at his conference board had clearly, and gleefully, said “Feature the Fabulous.” The world was going young again. Even the fairies were popping out of their gestapos. Man might yet laugh once before he died. The careless journalistic rapture of the old piping days of peace then ensued.

There were two photographs. The first was of Mr Grant, Foolish Andie and Mrs Mackenzie, with the cairn itself as background. The archaeologist bore a hatchet-faced look of intolerant worry which contrasted oddly with the drunken tilt of his tweed hat; he was also holding at arm's length the wooden handle of a pickaxe as if he had but that moment grounded the sword Excalibur. Andie was grinning under his fringe in a manner that definitely, even astonishingly, looked the schoolbook picture of prehistoric man. Mrs Mackenzie, a yard or more in the rear, seemed folded slightly upon herself in a shrinking emotion. But it was the second photograph that knocked Grant's chin up, for it was a photograph of the interior of the cairn. It was moreover a very good photograph and showed not only the corbelled cell from which the immortal crock had been removed but also the row of skulls. The way in which one skull eerily stared from its pelvic girdle fascinated the eye. Clearly there was no fake about all this. Here was the real stuff. And that the crock should have been “secreted away”, allegedly by the gentleman in the first photograph who replied “Goo-goo” and again “Goo-gar-h-hh” when questioned by a correspondent, added that touch of genuine mystery which had become all too rare a commodity in these scientific days. The sub-editors (among whom were three young Scots poets) had so distinguished themselves in the matter of simple captions that . . . .

The door opened and Anna came in with kidneys on toast. “Oh,” she murmured, “I thought you would have finished your soup.”

Grant looked at her and at his soup. He dropped the paper on the floor, sat down, and began to sup his soup.

When Mrs Cameron came in later, he had his elbows on the table, and the fine point of his beard dipping into his coffee cup, as he stared out of the window.

“I hope the kidneys were tender,” said Mrs Cameron. “Archie was in a good mood today, maybe because he had more in his van.”

“Fine,” he answered, getting up.

“I'll just clear away, then. Anna had to go up the road.”

“Been talking to Mrs Mackenzie?” he asked.

“Yes, oh yes. I was there this morning when you came home.” She shook her head. “The poor woman is getting demented with them.”

“With whom?”

“The visitors, spying on her. Two of them—one was a girl, I'm sorry to say—got hold of Andie in the barn and gave him things, bonny things.”

He stared at her. “What for?”

“I don't know, unless it's to keep in with him.”

“Do you mean,” he asked, “that they are trying to tempt him to disclose where he has hidden the—the urn?”

“Maybe,” she answered. “Maybe too—it's only what I was fancying—they'll be thinking that he might go and hide the bonny things in the same place.”

His lips parted but no sound came. Then he turned away, walking over the paper.

Mrs Cameron picked it up. “I did not want Anna to bother you with this until you had enjoyed your food. It's a poor photograph of you, whatever else.”

“I suppose the policeman at Kinlochoscar is the only one in the whole district?”

“Yes. He was here today. And it's him that was important, too, for he had a busy time.”

His brows gathered.

“There was that many cars,” she explained. “Never before has so many been seen in Clachar, and as he was saying to myself, in these days of petrol restrictions it looked very suspicious. I heard just a few minutes ago that he has got two or three cases that he will be prosecuting.”

“What were they doing?”

“All to see the cairn and hunt for the crock of gold. And they made a fair mess of Alick Cruban's young corn and flattened Donald Willie's potatoes as flat as this door. I told the policeman——”

“Was he here?”

“He was. But I said you had been travelling all night and was not to be disturbed and he could see you tomorrow—or this evening itself if his business was very urgent. He said he had no formal business at the moment—that was his word, for he likes an important one.”

“I want to see him.”

“He'll be here tomorrow to direct the traffic,” he said. There came a distant roar of two or three cars starting up. “You should have heard it earlier,” she commented.

Quite silent he stood.

She stole a glance at him. “Not that you can believe everything you hear,” she said.

“Can there be anything else to hear?” he asked.

“Plenty,” she said, “for rumour has a tongue longer than next week.” She spoke cheerfully, as one amused. “But at least I made nonsense of the story about melting the gold, for I saw Tom Alan of old Fachie's myself, and he laughed and said ‘You never know', so I knew.”

“Melting the gold?”

“The gold in the crock. For they're saying that gold is now three times its own price; and they're saying that if someone found the gold and melted it down, then no one could know where it came from and you could make a fortune out of it. I'm only telling you this to prepare you for the lies that will be going about would make Beelzebub blush—and he's not the one for blushing.” She added the last words inconsequently out of her compassion.

“Who is Tom Alan?”

“Grandson to old Fachie. He happened to be one that Norman-at-the-Big-House ran into on that first night, so a yarn folk had to make. Just blethers. Don't you be bothering yourself about that.”

He had nothing to say.

“I'm very hopeful yet,” she added desperately.

He looked at her.

“For with all their spying they'll keep Andie from going to his hiding place. He's not so foolish as many of themselves, stravaiging about as if grown people had nothing better to do in this world. Donald Willie says he will have the law on them for his potatoes.”

A faint smile came to the archaeologist's face, but it faded as, a little later, he set out for the cairn. The finding, the melting and the selling of the gold would be the simplest matter in the world, particularly in these black-market days with advertisements for gold in every newspaper. The exhilarating feeling of the treasure hunt would wilt before the face of the money shark. The youth of the world had been eaten up by the sharks. The youth and the beauty and the fun. Devoured by the grey monsters.

He went on more firmly and didn't cast a glance at odd watching humans. The world was a sea of sharks' faces. The faces came up into the light and the teeth snapped.

They had even been poking about in the cairn, holes here and there and boulders rolled away. But the passage was still covered, intact. The ground itself was getting burned up by their feet. This was really going beyond the limit. For the photographs to have been in the paper today, they must have been taken two or three nights ago. He tried to think, but time was the one thing which seemed beyond fixing. Its fluidity came about him like invisible water. Ten yards away, her legs apart, stood the girl in the short shorts, a thumb about the strap of her slung camera, contemplating him. As his gaze steadied upon her, she smiled her unexpected melting smile.

Dizzied a trifle with wrath, he went straight to her. “Did you or your—your friends take the photographs inside that cairn?”

She looked at him and her expression caught a certain archness. “You would really like to know?”

“I would.”

“Well. I could tell you a whole lot,” she admitted. “But—what are your intentions?”

“Intentions? What do you mean?”

She pivoted perceptibly without moving her feet and glanced at him sideways. “Supposing I told you—what would you do about it?”

That momentarily stumped him, for clearly it would be witless to inform her that he would convey the intelligence to the police.

“You see,” she said, “your technique of handling the press has not proved very good. Has it?”

“Better than the press deserved.” He managed to stop himself abruptly.

“Perhaps,” she agreed. “But I have found it pays to speak nicely even to a wild dog.”

He could have spanked her. “I haven't,” he said. “And what pays you is no concern of mine.”

“Are you sure?” Her raillery was gentle.

“Dead certain!”

“Well—all right.” She gave a shrug that was a bodily pout. “I merely thought you wanted information.”

“Breaking into private property and photographing private belongings—it's actionable by the police, and I shall see that the proper action is taken. I don't need your information. Your newspaper will have to provide that. And you can tell your friends that; and you can tell them that if they don't make themselves scarce—” He stopped once more and tugged a lapel. Having to talk like this to a young woman made him angry beyond measure.

“I doubt if photographing distinguished men—or even an old cairn—is actionable,” she said. “I should hardly think it's even a moot point. But it's a wealthy paper. And at least, so far, you have been treated with the respect due to a distinguished archaeologist.”

The impertinence of her! The damned impertinence!

She smiled shyly and attractively. “If only—you would be nice, we would be so willing to help. And at the moment we
are
rather at a loss.” Then she looked at him with really intelligent reserve. “Would you be able to recognise certain articles of prehistoric make—if you saw them?”