The Silver Bough (21 page)

A
s he entered at the door, Mrs Cameron came to help him out of his wet oilskin, to hang it up to dry in the right place. “Wait you,” she said when she saw his hands at his face, “and Anna will get you a towel.” As he was turning to the stairs, protesting, Anna came with a towel and he began rubbing his beard vigorously. He refused to do anything about his feet and legs, and now he was in the kitchen, assured that they had just been on the verge of making themselves a cup. “I don't think I would swap a teapot for any bottle yet invented.” His back to the fire, he was stretching himself, warming his hands. “And what does Sheena think of this weather? Not much! Eh?”

But Sheena was shy, and Anna took the blind hand that reached towards her while the eyes remained on this mysterious stranger.

“Sheena, is it?” said Mrs Cameron, lifting the peats under the kettle until the flames flew up. “I have given her such bad lear that when she is tired of her own stories she will be at me for mine. Indeed she was wondering if you had any stories yourself!”

“Me! What stories could an old bachelor have to tell a little girl like Sheena?”

Sheena had now put one hand to her mouth and was looking up from under her brows as he continued to smile to her.

“If I may say so, it's not but that you have plenty of time left to learn.”

He glanced at the old lady and laughed. “You think I might come at it yet?”

“Indeed I sincerely hope so.”

This banter delighted him and he confessed that the only stories he knew had to do with old cairns and ruins, and they weren't real stories at all but a dry-as-dust which learned men made up for themselves, great rigmaroles in books. Sheena just wouldn't bother her head with them.

But apparently he was wrong, for Sheena, it seemed, had a consuming interest in archaeology, and particularly in that esoteric aspect of it which concerned the Man in the Stone. This had touched her much more closely even than the Man in the Moon, and she still remained unsatisfied despite the ingenious efforts at elucidation by both her great-grandmother and her mother.

When Grant was seated, with his cup of tea beside him, and Sheena at last almost by his knee, he was suddenly overcome by an extraordinary access of uncertainty, if not of shyness, for it was a literal fact that he had never told a story to a child. He now groped for a rag of that confidence with which he had addressed learned societies. “The truth is,” he said, in a flash of inspiration, “the story about the Man in the Stone isn't finished yet. But when it is, I'll tell it all to yourself.”

“Now!” said her granny. “Won't that be fine?”

But the small grave face lifted and asked, “Where is he?”

“Where is he?” repeated Grant, and when the cue didn't come from the void he added mysteriously, “Ah!”

As this deception was beneath consideration, a small thumb poked at his knee, and then the grave face regarded him again in silence.

“It's a long story,” he said. “It's so long a story that—that it begins with a dog.”

At once a living interest dawned in the small face.

“It was a wonderful dog,” said Simon Grant. “Indeed it was the first real dog that ever there was here. Before then, they were all wild dogs, wolves, and they wandered in the mountains and the woods, and they lived by killing beasts, and when they were very hungry they would kill men, too, and women, and even little children.”

“Was that long ago?”

“Yes, long, long ago, thousands of years ago. It was even before they put up the standing stones over there or made the cairn. And the people then they hadn't knives like our knives: they had only sharp stones. And they hadn't sheep, and they hadn't cattle, and they hadn't horses. What do you think of that?”

“What had they?”

“They had just their stone knives and their stone axes and their bows and arrows, and with them they went off hunting the deer. They were great hunters and could run as fast as fast could be. Well, one day there was a man and he had no food, and he had his mother and his granny and a little girl living with him, and he had to go off and find food for them.”

“Were they living here?”

“Yes, but not in this house, because this house wasn't built then. At that time the people would be living mostly in the caves by the sea. Anyway, one fine day off went the man from whatever house he had here then to see if he could catch a deer, and when he was away up behind in the mountains, going through a lonely glen, what should lump out on him but a great wolf with long white teeth. But if the wolf jumped out on him, he soon jumped to one side, and when the wolf jumped at him again, he swung his stone axe to hit the wolf, but he didn't hit him properly that time. So the wolf came at him again, and it was a terrible fight they had, the man and the wolf. But the man had one thing, which the wolf hadn't got and that was his stone axe, and with his stone axe he at last killed the wolf and so won the fight. But now the man was very tired, and when he went over to sit down—what should he see lying before him but a deer! For the wolf had just killed the deer. And now the man had a deer. Wasn't that lucky for him? And that wasn't everything, for now comes the strangest thing of all. For you wouldn't believe what the man saw next. Do you know what it was? It was a little puppy wolf!”

“What was it like?”

“Well, it was just like a puppy. For a wolf is only a wild dog. Do you understand?”

“Was it like old Fachie's puppy?”

“Exactly! The very one! So there it lay, where the old wolf had left it, in a nest of wild grass. And when the man saw it, he understood why the old wolf had fought so hard, because she had fought to save the puppy's life. So suddenly he thought he would take the poor puppy home with him. But when he came to lift it, it was not so easy.”

“How that?”

“How did he lift it? Like this.” And Grant lifted Sheena onto his knee.

But before Sheena could become self-conscious Mrs Cameron said, “That's as good a story as I have listened to and I hope you will go on with it.” He replied equally seriously that he would be happy to continue; and Sheena, not too pleased about these outside interruptions, pulled very slightly at the top button of his jacket. And so she learned how the puppy growled when robbers came one night and thus warned the man in good time, and learned moreover how the puppy grew up, and went off one day with the man, and pulled down a deer which the man had wounded with an arrow, and many other interesting and astonishing things.

When at last he found himself in his own room he could not sit down, much less attend to his long neglected correspondence. I have let myself in for it now! he thought, for he had promised to relate how primitive man tamed the horse and the cow and learned to grow crops, all on the lands of Clachar.

But he could not conceal from himself that he had enjoyed it. He had not dreamed he was so inventive. O lord, if the Colonel and Blair had overheard him! Sheer softening of the brain! With Blair rising to the comment, “You've found your true métier at last!” He shook with mirth. But at the same time his intelligence was suggesting seriously that it might be better to deal with the pig next because, after all, he had heard about the three little piggies that went to market. Was Sheena too old for the accompanying traditional action directed towards her toes? When his mirth found itself suspended in solemn questioning, it mounted in a higher wave than ever and drowned him completely. As he lay in his chair and lifted his heels, a last shred of sense tried to clack them noiselessly.

At fifty-two a man was no doubt growing senile, was reverting to his childhood. And a little child shall lead them . . . . Suddenly he saw Sheena, as he had seen her the other day, playing at “making a housie” by the peat stack. Her utter absorption (for she had not seen him) had kept him quite still. Only a creator, like an artist, was ever absorbed in the same way. Now he had a profound intuition of the meaning of what he had seen, of the self at once being lost in, and being part of, the very act of creation. He saw that that was precisely what the absorption meant. Whenever he had moved and Sheena had seen him, her self-consciousness—and his own—had destroyed creation.
And a little child shall lead them
. My God! he thought, feeling Sheena still on his knee, against his breast, under his chin.

After supper, the rain moderated into occasional showers, the wind into squalls. He grew more restless as the hours passed. The whole place had become a complex in which he was meshed and caught. After all, he was an archaeologist. His business was to find the crock of gold and detail its contents with scientific precision, not get entangled in human affairs. And even if his experience did in some measure deepen his understanding of his subject, still archaeology was an exact, and exacting, job of practical work. It was for poets to follow the gleam of the crock to the tune of the Silver Bough; their peculiar minds ran that way. That an idiot should have stolen the real crock from him was an ironic judgement on him. He would go to bed, have a good sleep, and get going early in the morning. It was early in the morning that the practical Arthur had seen Foolish Andie.

From his bedroom window he looked on the world. The light was fading. The house was very quiet. Suddenly he was afraid to turn round. So he forced his head over his shoulder. There was nothing on the mat, no one. With beating heart and quickening breath, he went to the small room and pulled the door open. Everything was motionless including the narrow box on the floor with the skeletons. Probably the wind had made a small noise on the roof, though he hadn't consciously heard a noise. He had the distinct feeling of a presence, something moving in the air about him. He closed the door without touching the box and went back to the window, but found he was facing the room.

He was definitely disturbed, far more so than he had ever been in a dream of the figures. For he had experienced no feeling of supernatural fear in the dream. He had been absorbed in watching them and only when the woman had turned round and seen him had something of inexplicable awareness drawn the air to such a tension between them that he had awakened. But it had been a tension of awareness, of inexplicable recognition, rather than of fear.

Now he was uncomfortable, and because it was all so intangible, so obviously psychic, he grew a bit annoyed, even angry, for dammit it was reducing things to a pretty low ebb if he was to lose his sleep over this sort of business. But “this sort of business” was merely a cover-up of what he actually felt—and almost saw, namely, that he was
between
the skeletons of the woman and child
and
the living Anna and Sheena (who were now asleep). He was between them, as between players at opposite ends of a court. It was not that the two women
played
him. But he was there. When a blatter of rain hit the window, he jumped. Look, he said to himself, fancy breeds this sort of idiocy; it's fresh air you need. He even remembered his illness. So strongly came this urge to go outside that he had to rationalise it by thinking: why not? This might be the very night for Andie! He turned to the window and saw that indeed it was the very night. The broken storm, the forming gargantuan cloud, the absence of every human from the landscape, the deepening dark and scurry of the wind: the elemental playground for the fellow. He listened, stole softly downstairs, got into boots and oilskin, and went out.

W
hen he had crossed the footbridge, he held down by the stream for a little way to avoid going over visible skylines. In a country place there was always someone about, some sleepless face at a window, but apart from a skyline it was dark enough for any outline to be little more than a blur at fifty yards. The pines about Clachar House were a black pool and he could see no light as he came round the slope and began the ascent towards the cairn. The sky was overcast, but the fierce rainsquall had passed and the wind had dropped to a moderate breeze. The roar of the sea seemed louder.

The brute cairn squatted, amorphous, the piled-up debris of an age. He circled it with a feeling of fragility, a lightness that could be crushed like a gourd. Inside, the skulls kept their “lidless eyes apart”. He needed a touch of macabre humour to steady him. But when he came by the covered-in passage and looked down towards the tall monolith, he could have sworn it moved. He broke out of the clutch of fear by walking slowly towards it. Again there was movement but now beyond the stone and he sidestepped to get a better view. It was a figure with lowered head, slanting away towards the sea, at once mysterious and uncouth. He fancied he saw the vague pallor of a face turned over a shoulder to look back, then the body began to merge with the dark. He quickened his steps and reached the monolith, caught a glimpse of something again, followed, lost it entirely and hurried. When he reached the steep slope to the sea, he paused and peered down, but could make out nothing. The sea thundered on the shore, for he was now above one of those narrow “faults” which broke the cliff line at irregular intervals. Through his mind flashed the thought: It's Andie, making for the caves!

There were distinct steps worn in the turf and he descended with care, pausing every now and then to stare. He knew be could dominate Andie and an eager cunning ousted fear. He had never tackled the caves from this end, for the approach from Clachar House was flat and easy. When he reached bottom a flick of spindrift from a breaking wave blinded him for a moment, but as he blinked he was certain he saw something move round the cliff. But the seas were running so high that before he could look round he had to step back, for the white froth came seething about his feet. It must surely be the very top of the tide. Anxiety swiftly got the better of him, for there were several caves and he might lose Andie. As he followed the retreating surf he saw a darkness some twenty yards along like a yawning mouth. After the next breaker had exploded he made a dash for it. But at a dozen paces the smooth stones gave on low broken rock; he stumbled; was soused to the knees by the next comber; jumped a narrow fissure; held on again; waded through a final gap to the thighs and had just got clear of it when a tremendous wave came piling in and swept him up the near cave wall; he had to cling to it against the sucking roaring recession before moving up the shingle.

Listening beyond his breath and his heartbeats, he stood against the rock, but no inner sound in the great sounds came to him. His mouth closed; his tongue between his lips was surprised by the salt and he was strengthened warily, even in the instant that he realised he was half-trapped. The inner darkness was more solid than the rock.

With one hand touching the wall he moved up the slope of shingle pausing at every other step to listen. His intense concentration increased the fearsomeness of the place until its reverberations opened up like dark petals of unearthly danger. The thought of Andie himself opened into nearer shapes until his foot was moving over the shingle like a hand before taking his weight. Amorphous bodies with smothering arms and invisible eyes . . . .

By its very excess his imagination steadied him and his features sharpened. When the rock suddenly left his hand, he stumbled but was swiftly upright again. He felt for the torch in his pocket, but still could not switch it on, as though to be safe he must come invisibly, stealthily, upon what he sought. He got down on his hands and knees and at once felt more secure. As he crawled, he stretched each hand in front of him like a feeler, but his oilskin impeded him by getting caught under his knees. As he lurched, his hand landed on a smooth wet surface: it gave; it moved; he heard its astonishment, the crunching of the shingle, a flurry and threshing. He yelled as he reared and stepped back, but his hands could not get at his torch, could not find the opening in his oilskin, then found it, miraculously caught the torch as it fumbled out of his hands, and switched it on. The dark beast was flapping down to the sea. A barking cough came from behind him. Two eyes gleamed against the swinging light.

The floor of the cave began to heave with monstrous life. His legs were suddenly shot from under him and he fell backwards on a body that threw him with a skelp against the stones. Presently he realised that the torch lay yards away but still burning. When at last he picked it up and shone it around, the whole nightmarish upheaval had vanished.

Seals, of course, only seals, he thought, but he was trembling and slightly sick. He staggered on drunkenly. This cave, like the Monster Cove, took a leftward bend. When he had flashed the beam around its walls, he sat down and lowered his head, then threw his head back and breathed heavily. The sickness would not come out of him. As its flushes ebbed, he shivered.

Andie could not have come in here. No one had come in here. He had better get home. His head drooped again and he closed his eyes, no longer afraid of the cave. If one of these brutes had passed over him . . . . The cliff wall trembled and he felt the solid rock and the earth beyond about to crumble and avalanche down upon him. He got up.

As he followed the seething roaring downrush of the water and shone the torch on the outward cliff walls he realised two things: that the tide was still coming in and that he could leave the cave only by the way he had entered it. Towards the Clachar shore the water smashed solid against the cliff foot.

At first attempt he retreated before the oncoming surge; at the second attempt he was caught in the gap and the wave broke clean over him. He took some salt spray into his lungs and the agony of this was sharper than anything he had ever experienced. Trying to draw breath so obsessed him that he did not retain any very clear memory of how he got back into the cave. Indeed there remained a sort of false memory of the sea helping him, lapping him up the shingly beach of the cave, to lie with his head on his arms. From there he crawled up, and, in a dim state of being, found the sheltered wall where he stretched himself full length and lay with closed eyes and stertorous mouth.

Long after that the tide was still coming in and his mind was obsessed by a new danger: at full tide would the cave be completely flooded out? He knew now that he had never before been in this cave and he was beginning to suspect that it could be reached only at low tide. Certainly when he had visited the caves on the Clachar side he had gone along the shore as far as the sea would let him. This cave had been shut off and Mrs Sidbury had presumably never thought of mentioning it to him. When his torch had been shot out of his hand he had found it still alight because it had landed amid old sea wrack. But now he realised that the wrack was up to the inner base of the wall.

He tried to keep himself warm by all kinds of exercises, including ploughing the shingle with a broken batten of timber. Between the gusts the wind died away and this was a little comfort, for its eddy got him searchingly even when he was crouching against the leftward wad. Time alone could answer the final question: how deep would the smashing seas swirl about him at high tide? At intervals he left his partial shelter to stare round the rock and flash his torch on the broken waters before they started their downward roar.

When the upper edging of froth was hissing on the stones before the inner bend of the cave, he had a short spell of horrible panic, struggled in the murky foredeath, yelled—not yet abjectly but in a blind self-piteous wrath, lifting his arms, staggering blindly.

This ebbed from him and he felt eased, more spent, as though he had actually vomited, and he became aware of a faint greying in the atmosphere as if the moon's dying crescent had suddenly risen over the hills—or, possibly, the morning itself was coming. As he stooped he even fancied he saw great shivering froth bubbles burst and vanish like bright mocking eyes. Very soon the water would be swirling about his feet. But his senses now were numbed and fear no longer physically active.

He squatted against the inner rock again, felt it tremble as the wave thundered, and his mind grew strangely passive in the darkness, and, he became aware of himself as a cowering primitive man, a Palaeolithic cave dweller. It was a condition quite different from anything he had imagined. Nothing wild, farouche, snarling—but squatting here by the rock, waiting, strangely passive, part of the roar and the reverberation, at once inside them and penetrated by them as his jaw quivered, penetrated by the cold, and aware of
something
that rode the elements and flashed through them and yet was behind them as the mover. When his teeth were clicking he got up, switched on his torch and dug another bit of the floor, searching, with no sense of irony, for the crock of gold.

As the greying of the light increased it had a curious almost supernatural effect upon him, as though some sort of translation to an extra dimension were involved. For still a little time he denied the urge to step out and look at the hurtling greybacks, but at last he did so and was surprised by the amount of light on the waters. Then his eyes were held and his breathing stopped. There was a boat on that tumultuous sea, a small boat, with one man in it.

The boat was quite close in, its prow on the cave, but the man was not pulling the boat, he was backing it away, backing its stern against the seas, but now suddenly he was pulling, the boat rose high, coggled over and was lost, and the wave came rushing on, toppled over in a smashing roar, and the seething water swept his feet. But the boat was there, the man on the oars, pulling, digging in, holding against some undertow that gripped the keel, shoulders heaved and twisting at oars fixed like iron bars, then perceptible movement of the oars as the boat straightened, stern to the next one, and the next one towered, and up she went and out of sight. And she was coming again, knifing the back swing, the oars lifting the body off its seat; gathering way, coming, the wave mounting behind, the body flattening in every last ounce of strength for the final run. On the crest she came and grounded on the shingle in a smother of sea into which the man leapt. Grant rushed after the retreating water and gripped the stem of the boat already sliding away, fatally away, until suddenly she slewed and stuck, with Martin's face rising above his knuckles on the gunnel, yelling “Take that!” pointing to the painter in the bow. Grant staggered up the shingle with the painter, twisted it round his waist, and lay back on it, heels dug in. As the next sea lifted the boat, he at once fell flat on his back, cursing his ineptitude, but in an instant had heaved himself forward, and, as the rope gripped him in a violent jerk, ploughed the shingle like a dragged anchor. Next time, he was better prepared; and the third time he belayed the painter round an edging of rock. The painter held.

In a little while Martin said, “She's all right there.” He stood looking back at the seas and Grant saw him smile, then he went in behind the boat which now acted as a windbreak to the inner part of the cave. “Put your torch on,” he said. Grant swung the beam around. Now there was a metal flask in Martin's hands. He held the light as Martin poured. “Some vodka?” “Thank you,” said Grant, down whose gullet the liquid went like cold fire. He gasped and coughed until warmth burst upon him. Martin helped himself and screwed on the cap. “We'll have a fire,” he said in a voice casual and friendly and from the boat heaved out a pile of sticks.

Martin moved naturally, at his ease, in no hurry. As he sat against the sheltered rock, he ran fine shavings four or five inches long with his knife from a piece of white wood, but did not break them off, merely tilting them over, one behind the other, until they bunched like a torch of feathers. When he had made five of these, he grouped them on the flattest stone he could find, and built smashed pieces of wood against them. They searched around for every extra bit of timber they could find. Then he put his petrol lighter to the wooden feathers and a tongue of flame ran up. With extraordinary care, as if it were an art or a ritual, he built the fire up. Grant's astonishment was complete when Martin leaned several whole peats against the crackling wood. “I thought you might be cold,” he said.

“I was cold,” said Grant. The boat seemed to lurch. “Is she all right?”

“Yes,” answered Martin, “it's the top of the tide.” He came back from the boat with a khaki haversack, which contained a flask of coffee and a brown loaf.