The Cone Gatherers Read online

  ‘It would be a mistake,’ she said, in such a low voice he could scarcely hear, ‘to let affection die in you altogether.’

  He stretched out his hand and laid it on hers.

  ‘Given the circumstances, Effie,’ he whispered, ‘I could blossom again like a gean-tree.’

  With a shudder, she withdrew her hand.

  ‘What was it you wanted to ask me?’ she murmured.

  ‘Oh, aye. You’re a Lendrick woman, Effie, and you know all that goes on there.’

  ‘I like to take an interest in folks’ affairs.’

  ‘Which is to your credit, surely. Maybe you know we’ve got a couple of men from Ardmore Forest working in our wood here.’

  ‘I heard about it. They’re gathering cones.’

  ‘That’s right. Cones are really seed, tree seed. Before the war this country got its supplies from abroad, from Norway and Canada and Corsica, I believe, among other places. You’ll appreciate better than most that our ships have more important cargoes to fetch these days. Yet if we’re to replace the multitude of trees being felled for the war, we must have seed. It’s the same with human beings: after a big war they’ve got to be replaced as well; but in their case the seed’s easily come by.’

  ‘I don’t think this is what you wanted to talk to me about, John.’

  ‘No, Effie. To tell you the truth, I’m as tongue-tied as a tree with everybody else; with you I talk, it seems, too much.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. I was thinking of the time.’

  ‘These two men from Ardmore, Effie. I wonder if you can tell me anything about them.’

  ‘Ardmore’s a good eight miles out of Lendrick,’ she said, ‘though most of the men there come in on Saturdays. But I know the two you mean.’

  ‘Brothers,’ he murmured, ‘one a hunchback, the other tall and dour.’

  She nodded. ‘Their name’s McPhie. They’re well enough known in Lendrick.’

  ‘I thought they would be.’

  Something in his tone made her glance up.

  ‘There’s nothing known to their discredit, if that’s what you mean, John. It’s true the small one’s not as God meant a man to be; but that’s God’s business, not ours.’

  ‘Maybe it is our business, Effie.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ She glanced at the clock. ‘I hope you’re watching your time.’

  ‘How long have they been at Ardmore?’

  ‘I couldn’t say for certain. About four or five years.’

  ‘They’re quartered in the wood yonder in a hut as small as a rabbit-hutch, and as filthy.’

  ‘Is that their fault? Simple men like them, John, aren’t asked where they’d like to live. But what’s all the mystery about? What have they done?’

  ‘I’ll tell you. But it’s what they might do that worries me.’

  She waited for him to explain. He paused, searching for words that would bind her and him and the imbecile dwarf together in common defilement.

  ‘The hunchback’s not right in the head,’ he said.

  ‘He’s a bit simple.’

  ‘More than that, Effie. Indecency’s not simple. The papers are often full of what such misbegotten beasts have done.’ He smiled, marvelling at the steadiness of his hand holding the tea cup; within him was a roaring, like a storm through a tree. ‘I’m referring, of course, to assaults on wee lassies. There was one reported just the other week.’ He began to describe it, calmly, in the coarsest terms he knew.

  She stopped him. ‘I understand well enough,’ she said. ‘I’m not a child. But it’s a serious charge to make against any man, stooped or straight, daft or wise.’

  ‘I’m making no charge, as yet. But I’ve got to remember that if anything of the kind was to happen here the responsibility would be mine. There’s Miss Sheila sometimes walks in the wood alone; and of course the mistress.’

  ‘You hinted they’d already done something. What?’

  He stood up, with a smile at the clock, now at a minute to the hour.

  ‘I saw that imbecile exposing himself,’ he said; ‘and worse.’ He described it briefly, enjoying her fascinated embarrassment. A lie, he saw, could cause as much distortion as the truth.

  ‘Where was this?’ she asked.

  ‘In the wood.’

  ‘And nobody saw it but you?’

  ‘There was a thrush, I think.’

  She would not smile. ‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ she said, ‘and surprised too. He’s been in and out of Lendrick dozens of times and there’s never been the slightest hint of anything like that. I thought that sort of abnormality liked an audience.’

  ‘Seed,’ he murmured, with quiet intense disgust; and then he smiled.

  The clock struck ten.

  ‘It’s a minute or so fast,’ she said. ‘They’ve been kicked about that pair, from what I’ve heard. Nobody can say life’s been generous to them. A thing like this if it got about would destroy them completely. The wee one would be dragged off to jail or the asylum, and the big one would break his heart. There’s affection between them.’

  ‘Likely enough, Effie. Even the murderer on the scaffold has a mother weeping for him.’

  She came close, panting.

  ‘Don’t become embittered, John,’ she said.

  Lightly he put his hand on her head, and then snatched it away again.

  ‘Will you help me to stay sweet, Effie?’ he murmured.

  She closed her eyes, as if not to see her own surrender; she nodded.

  ‘Thanks, Effie,’ he said, but he did not, as she evidently expected, embrace her. He walked over to the door. ‘That’s a promise I’d better give you time to consider.’

  ‘I’ve considered it, John, many a time.’

  For a moment, realising that her feeling for him was genuine, he saw another way, clear, like a sunlit ride in a thick wood.

  ‘You’re in danger too, John,’ she whispered, ‘of being destroyed completely. I couldn’t stand by and watch that happen, if there was anything I could do to stop it.’

  ‘I do need help, Effie,’ he said, and then, as he closed the door and set off respectfully through the large rich house, he thought, Did she think he could be saved by her offering him her fifty-year-old body in a dark room, with gasps of conscience mixed with any sounds of satisfaction?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Lady Runcie-Campbell was in the office at the front of the house writing letters. When he knocked, she bade him enter in her clear courteous musical voice.

  A stranger, hearing her, would have anticipated some kind of loveliness in so charming a speaker; he might not, however, have expected to find such outstanding beauty of face and form married to such earnestness of spirit; and he would assuredly have been both startled and impressed.

  Duror, who knew her well, had been afraid that in her presence he might be shamed or inspired into abandoning his scheme against the cone-gatherers. In spite of her clothes, expensive though simple, of her valuable adornments such as earrings, brooches, and rings, and of her sometimes almost mystical sense of responsibility as a representative of the ruling class, she had an ability to exalt people out of their humdrum selves. Indeed, Duror often associated religion not with the smell of pinewood pews or of damp Bibles, but rather with her perfume, so elusive to describe. Her father the judge had bequeathed to her a passion for justice, profound and intelligent; and a determination to see right done, even at the expense of rank or pride. Her husband Sir Colin was orthodox, instinctively preferring the way of a world that for many generations had allowed his family to enjoy position and wealth. Therefore he had grumbled at his wife’s conscientiousness, and was fond of pointing out, with affection but without sympathy, the contradiction between her emulation of Christ and her eminence as a baronet’s wife.

  She would have given the cone-gatherers the use of the beach hut, if Duror had not dissuaded her; and she had not forgotten to ask him afterwards what their hut was like. He had had to lie.

  Now when h
e was going to lie again, this time knowing it would implicate her in his chosen evil, he felt that he was about to commit before her eyes an obscene gesture, such as he had falsely accused the dwarf of making. In the sunny scented room therefore, where the happy voices of the cricket players on the lawn could be heard, he suddenly saw himself standing up to the neck in a black filth, like a stags’ wallowing pool deep in the wood. High above the trees shone the sun, and everywhere birds sang; but this filth, as he watched, crept up until it entered his mouth, covered his ears, blinded his eyes, and so annihilated him. So would he perish, he knew; and somewhere in the vision, as a presence, exciting him so that his heart beat fast, but never visible, was a hand outstretched to help him out of that mire, if he wished to be helped.

  He saw her hand with its glittering rings held out to invite him to sit down.

  ‘Good morning, Duror,’ she said, with a smile. ‘Isn’t it just splendid?’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’

  She looked at him frankly and sympathetically: it was obvious she attributed his subdued tone to sorrow over his wife. If at the same time she noticed with surprise that he hadn’t shaved, it did not diminish her sympathy, as it would have her husband’s.

  ‘How is Mrs Duror?’ she asked gently.

  ‘Not too well, I’m sorry to say, my lady. This spell of fine weather has upset her. She asked me to thank you for the flowers.’

  She was so slim, golden-haired, and vital, that her solicitude for Peggy gripped him like a fierce cramp in his belly.

  She noticed how pale he had turned, how ill he looked.

  ‘I often think of your poor wife, Duror,’ she said.

  She glanced at her husband’s portrait in uniform on the desk in front of her.

  Duror could not see the photograph from where he sat, but he could see clearly enough in his imagination the original, as gawky as she was beautiful, as glum as she was gay, and as matter-of-fact as she was compassionate.

  ‘This war,’ she went on quickly, ‘with its dreadful separations has shown me at least what she has missed all these years. Something has come between us and the things we love, the things on which our faith depends: flowers and dogs and trees and friends. She’s been cut off so much longer.’

  She glanced again at Sir Colin as if expecting to find him glummer than ever at this condescension. She was not mistaken. With a sigh she turned to business.

  ‘Mrs Lochie would explain what I wanted to see you about?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, my lady. I’ve been out having a look through the wood.’

  ‘You think we can manage all right?’

  ‘I think so, my lady.’

  ‘Good. Captain Forgan seems to have set his heart on it. He has a belief that nothing impresses the scenery on one’s mind like taking part in a deer shoot, especially if you get a kill.’

  ‘I understand what the captain means, my lady.’

  She laughed. ‘I’m not sure I do, Duror. Often it’s a long cold wait for nothing. And if you’re lucky and shoot a deer, well, I suppose it is sentimental of me to think that a living deer is much handsomer than a dead one.’

  He remembered that her son, as an infant of four, also a sentimentalist, had seen him with a dead roe deer, and for years afterwards had disliked him. Perhaps she too was remembering that.

  ‘They’re classified as vermin, my lady,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, no.’ She laughed and gestured. ‘I won’t have it, Duror. Whatever any government says, I refuse to call deer vermin. They’re far too beautiful.’

  ‘They’re enemies, my lady.’

  ‘Yes, call them that. Not all our enemies are ugly, cruel, savage, and beastly; some are beautiful and gentle.’

  He noticed how her hands involuntarily clasped, and her eyes avoided the portrait.

  ‘There’s a herd in the wood just now, my lady,’ he said, ‘between Runacraig and Lettermore Burn. It should be a fairly easy stretch to drive, which is important, for we’ll be short of drivers. How many guns will there be, my lady?’

  She became brisk.

  ‘I was thinking of that before you came,’ she said. ‘Not many, I’m afraid. It’s not like the old days.’

  ‘We might not need many, my lady. We’ll drive towards Runacraig. Three or four guns in the drive there should have a good chance.’

  ‘Well, there’s Captain Forgan for one. Oh, yes, Duror, here’s a problem for you to solve. Captain Forgan has one opinion, I have another. I’m going to abide by your decision.’

  He smiled. ‘I’ll do my best, my lady.’

  ‘It’s simply this: Master Roderick wants to be one of the guns. Now I know he’s handled one before: he’s shot a few rabbits. But naturally at his age he’s somewhat nervous. Is it safe to let him loose on a deer drive? What do you think, Duror, as the expert? I may say that Master Roderick will accept the decision as coming from me.’

  Was this, he thought, another opportunity? Say that it would be safe enough and hope for an accident? If the boy stumbled in excitement and shot himself, she would be inconsolable, for all her goodness and beauty. Why not therefore add this shade to the encompassing darkness?

  He could not afterwards say why he replied as he did.

  ‘If you’ll pardon me putting it in this way, my lady,’ he said: ‘if he was my son, I’d say no, not just yet.’

  For a moment he thought of that incommunicable phantom, his son; and he felt the treachery of regret.

  ‘Then that’s settled,’ she said firmly. ‘If Master Roderick wishes to be there, it’ll have to be as a spectator, like his sister. I’ll take a gun myself. Mr Baird has promised to come.’ (As the grieve in charge of the home farm he could scarcely have refused.) ‘And Mr Adamson of Ledaig is always keen; though of course,’ she added smiling, ‘Master Roderick is sure to tell me that if Mr Adamson can be trusted with a gun, so surely can he.’

  Will Adamson, over seventy, had once put a pellet into old Graham the estate handyman.

  ‘That gives us four,’ she said. ‘Five, counting yourself.’

  ‘I think, my lady, I ought to go with the drive. If I can, I’ll try to head the deer towards where the captain will be posted.’

  She was pleased. ‘Thank you, Duror.’

  Now, he thought, comes the lie; the obscene gesture; the spitting upon her lovely generous face.

  ‘The beaters are the trouble,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I know. Whom have we got? I suppose Graham, though he does complain so and gets stuck in brambles. Young Harry, who’s usually very useful: I mean, he can be depended upon to make a merry noise. Then Betty the landgirl, whom Mr Baird has said can be spared. Mr Adamson’s going to supply a man, but apparently he’s rather deaf and has a poor sense of direction. That makes four of a sort. Hardly enough.’

  ‘No, my lady. When the spaces are too wide between the beaters the deer get too good a chance to double back, and then all our labour’s been in vain.’

  ‘Yes, I know. But what are we to do? I suppose we could borrow men from neighbouring farms, but ought we to? After all, it is war time, and our drive is for pleasure.’

  ‘I’ve got a suggestion, my lady, that might help.’

  ‘What is it, Duror?’

  ‘I was wondering if we could have the use of the two men who are in the wood gathering cones. I’m sure Mr Tulloch wouldn’t mind if we borrowed them for a couple of hours.’

  She was delighted. ‘The very thing, Duror! Why couldn’t I have thought of that? Of course Mr Tulloch will oblige. He’s an admirable person, and he spoke very highly of these men.’

  She had her hand on the telephone ready to pick it up when a doubt occurred to her; she frowned.

  ‘Isn’t one of them a kind of cripple?’ she asked.

  ‘I wouldn’t call him that, my lady. He’s a hunchback, but he’s as agile as any monkey.’

  ‘Yes. So Roderick says. He has an immense admiration for him. I can’t for the life of me tell why. Climbing trees, I suppose, is a fairly commo
n accomplishment, and, though useful, is scarcely worthy of reverence.’ She noticed his surprise at her use of that last word. ‘Yes, reverence,’ she repeated, laughing. ‘He became embarrassed when I questioned him. It’s really very odd. I understand this hunchback has rather a striking face?’

  Duror nodded. ‘Yes, my lady.’

  ‘And fine black curls,’ she added.

  As she laughed at this odd but praiseworthy interest of her children in so insignificant a person, Duror wondered if this was a good time to repeat the lie he had told to Mrs Morton.

  He hesitated too long.

  ‘However,’ she said, still laughing, ‘I suppose I’d better telephone Mr Tulloch.’

  While she was speaking to the exchange, and then waiting to be put through to Ardmore, Duror saw all that he was doing with a strange clear neutrality: his ignoring of Peggy, his lying to Mrs Morton, and above all his resolution to torment the cone-gatherers and destroy them, if he could. Seated in this chair, with his cap respectfully on his knee, and his hands laid upon it so calmly, without a twitch, he thought it incredible that all that villainy should be schemed by him; but then, he did not wish to be there, the part of his life associated with this bright room and this beautiful woman was over, and if he was where he wished to be, close to the hut in the darkness, under the cypress tree, he would not only understand and approve of what he had done, but would find in it his only possible consolation and release.

  Lady Runcie-Campbell at last was talking to the forester.

  ‘No, no, there’s been no trouble, Mr Tulloch. On the contrary. Your men are being as discreet as squirrels. I haven’t set eyes on them myself, but I intend to soon, as my son assures me their climbing is really wizard. No, what I want to consult you about is this: we’re hoping to have a deer drive this afternoon in honour of my brother who’s been posted overseas. The trouble is, we’re desperately short of beaters, and I thought you might consider lending us your two men for the afternoon. We’ll pay them, of course.’

  She paused, and listened to what, from her expression, must have been fervent assurances.