The Cone Gatherers Page 9

  It was not Tulloch who protested. Her son Roderick cried from the car: ‘But that’s not fair, mother. You said yourself he didn’t want to take part in the deer drive.’

  ‘When I wish to have your advice, Roderick,’ she said coldly, ‘I shall ask for it.’

  His pale toothy rather spoiled face was as stubborn as her beautiful one; and there were other resemblances.

  ‘But it isn’t fair,’ he insisted. ‘He didn’t try it; he couldn’t help it. If he’d been left to climb the trees, there would have been no trouble.’

  ‘Will you hold your tongue?’ she cried.

  ‘You told me yourself,’ he muttered intensely, ‘never to be quiet if I saw injustice being done.’

  She started, and was painfully embarrassed by having that grandiloquent precept, that maternal counsel of perfection, repeated to her there, by him, in the open, in the presence of strangers, of inferiors.

  Tulloch intervened. He spoke with quiet sincerity. He knew that right was on his side, and against her such an ally must prevail, provided her pride as the grand lady, the representative of aristocracy, was not insulted.

  ‘I have questioned them, my lady,’ he said, ‘and I saw what happened; and I find no fault in them.’

  She gasped, and looked sharply at him, wondering whether his words were a deliberate quotation aimed against her faith, or whether their resemblance to Pilate’s was fortuitous. Her father had been fond of quoting those words.

  ‘If I am to take them away from the wood,’ added Tulloch, ‘what am I to tell them is the reason? They are simple men, easily discouraged. If they have done wrong, they will accept their punishment; but if they have done no wrong, and are punished, it will take away all their confidence.’

  ‘Is it not enough that I wish them to go?’ she asked haughtily.

  Tulloch did not answer.

  She turned towards Duror. ‘What do you think, Duror?’ she asked. ‘Since Black’s away the wood is your province. Surely you agree with me that their presence in it is now, to say the least, distasteful?’

  Duror felt tired, weak, hungry, and sick; yet he would not lean against the gate. He stood erect, giving the impression of aloofly but impartially considering the question. The truth was his thoughts were fragmentary and elusive. Yes, he wanted the cone-gatherers out of the wood. Had he not vowed to have them driven out? But the hunchback in some dreadful way had become associated with him, in fact had become necessary to him. If the crooked little imbecile was sent back now to the forest at Ardmore, he would live happily there whilst here in the wood Duror’s own torment continued. His going therefore must be a destruction, an agony, a crucifixion. A way to achieve that would be to spread the lie about his indecencies in the wood. But was this a suitable time to let it out, in the presence of the boy, and the brother, and Tulloch, who would deny it and might even be able to disprove it?

  ‘Don’t be afraid to speak,’ said his mistress, ‘even if you do not agree with me. Perhaps I am in a minority of one here. Mr Tulloch thinks I’m being unjust; Roderick has expressed his opinion most plainly; you hesitate to answer; and Captain Forgan remains neutral.’ Though she smiled it was evident she was agitated. ‘What do you think, Eric?’ she asked her brother. ‘It was your deer shoot he spoiled, your memories he polluted. I shall leave the decision to you.’

  ‘No,’ he said quietly, shaking his head. ‘The decision cannot be mine. If it’s any help, though, I may say that I bear the poor fellow no ill will; and my memories are not polluted.’

  She threw up her hand in surrender.

  ‘Very well then,’ she cried. ‘I am outnumbered. Let them stay. But please, for God’s sake,’ she added with trembling voice as she climbed into the car, ‘warn them to keep out of my way; and as for the silver firs near the house, those are forfeit.’ She tried to make a joke of this retaliation, and laughed; but they all saw she was deeply troubled.

  Tulloch’s salute to her, and his gratitude, were genuine. She was wealthy and influential enough to dispense with conscience, or at least to bribe it successfully; but she was too honest in her endeavour to be a Christian. She knew how hard it was for the rich and powerful to enter the kingdom of heaven.

  ‘I’ll close the gate after you, my lady,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Tulloch. You’d better get in then, Duror.’

  The gamekeeper hesitated. ‘What about the dogs, my lady?’ he muttered. ‘Maybe I should walk with them.’

  ‘You will do no such thing. I owe you an apology, Duror. I’m afraid I’ve been forgetting you’re not well.’

  ‘I’m well enough, my lady.’

  ‘You don’t look it. Get in. We’ve had dogs in the car before.’

  The Captain repeated the invitation and reached out to help Duror and the dogs in.

  As the car passed Tulloch, he was struck most of all by the boy’s face; for all its gawkiness it was so like his mother’s; and on it was a look of dedication, to what the forester could only guess.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  On Saturday the beneficent weather continued: frost at dawn, iridescence and gold at noon, and afterwards blue skies, warmth, and astonished singing of birds. That morning, however, Neil chose to work in a Douglas fir tree; the darkness amidst its evergreen branches suited his mood.

  Since the deer drive he had been bitter and rebellious. When Mr Tulloch, with much satisfaction at his own diplomacy and admiration of the lady’s sense of fairness, had told them they were to be allowed to stay on in the wood provided they kept out of everybody’s way, Neil had listened with eyes on the ground and lips tight: not for Calum’s sake even could he at that moment have admitted they owed the lady gratitude. Afterwards, in walking to the hut, he had burst out into a passionate denunciation of the lady and what she stood for. Seizing Calum fiercely, he had dragged him out of the way of a bush whose outermost twigs he might have brushed against in passing, and had shouted that surely he had heard what Mr Tulloch had said, they were to keep out of the way, they were to provoke nobody, they were to be like insects, not bees or ants which could sting and bite, but tiny flies which could do no harm since there was nothing in creation so feeble as not to be able to molest them. Calum, already bewildered and miserable, had not understood; into his sobs had come entreaty, but this time Neil had not yielded.

  Nor had he yielded by Saturday. When Calum accidentally tore off a spray of the Douglas fir and was smelling its fragrance, Neil caught sight of him.

  ‘Is that a cone?’ he shouted.

  Calum, puzzled, looked at the green spray in his hand.

  ‘I asked you, is that a cone?’

  Calum shook his head. He smiled. ‘No, Neil, it’s just a bit of branch. It came off. I couldn’t help it.’

  ‘You’re here to collect cones, that’s all,’ yelled Neil. ‘You’re to do nothing else. How often have I to tell you that? Didn’t you hear Mr Tulloch himself say it?’

  ‘But I couldn’t help it, Neil.’

  ‘The likes of you and me have just got to help it, when our betters tell us. You can’t even have an accident and fall from this tree. Do you ken why? Because the lady would get to hear about it, and she’d be annoyed; she’d be annoyed because you’d broken your neck and spilled your blood on her land.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s what Mr Tulloch said, Neil.’

  ‘No, but it’s what he meant. Didn’t he say we’d to keep out of everybody’s way? Didn’t he say we’re just here to gather cones?’

  ‘But that’s right, Neil.’

  ‘You’re a child, Calum. Though you’re past thirty, you’re still a child; and you’ll always be a child. But I’m a man, and I’ve got the intelligence and pride of a man. Do you ken what I’m going to do when we get to Lendrick today?’

  ‘No, Neil.’

  ‘I’m going into the bar yonder, and I’m going to get drunk. I’ve never been drunk before, though I’ve had many a cause. Why should I stay sober to suffer all their snash?’

 
Calum could never be sure how serious his brother was in these rages.

  ‘If you get drunk, Neil,’ he said, ‘the policeman will lock you up.’

  Neil swayed towards him, angrily triumphant. ‘And what if he did? I’ll tell you something: the cell he’d lock me up in would be bigger than our hut, aye, and cleaner.’

  Calum went on with his gathering. He did not want to ask what would he do if Neil was locked up; but the quéstion was in his every placating glance, in his plucking of every cone.

  Neil noticed the appeal, and though it crushed his heart he would not surrender to it. He could not have explained his obduracy: not only were all past humiliations, real and imagined, accumulated in him like the leaves of forty autumns, but the war itself contributed, though he could hardly have said why or how. He had read often in the newspapers and had heard on the wireless that the war was being fought so that ordinary humble people could live in peace without being bullied and enslaved by brutal men with power; but, living as he did in a lonely, unimportant part of the world, he had never consciously seen himself or Calum as in any way involved. They were not Jews being dragged to the concentration camp. Yet, without his being aware of it, the proud claims of honour and independence and courage made on behalf of his country at war affected him deeply in his own private attitude: it was necessary now for him to fight back against every injustice inflicted on him, and especially on his brother.

  On their way back to the hut they came upon a herd of deer, perhaps the same that had been the victims of the drive. One seemed wounded; it limped badly. All were particularly nervous, as if the death of their companion still haunted them.

  Calum pulled his brother behind the broad trunk of a Wellingtonia. Then, in a trance of love and reconciliation, he gazed at the deer and uttered little sighs.

  For about a minute Neil remained silent and motionless; in him an anger and terror mounted, not against the animals whom he pitied, nor against his brother whom he loved. Suddenly it burst out. Shouting wildly, he scrabbled among the leaves and grass for something to throw, found a stick, and hurled it in the direction of the deer. These had already fled, and the stick, being decayed, disintegrated in the air. As Calum seized his arm, and in a desperate shriek pleaded with him not to harm the deer or even to wish to harm them, Neil punched with his other fist against the soft cork-like bark of the great tree, shouting incoherently. Had it been any other tree his knuckles would have been broken and bloody.

  ‘What is the matter, Neil?’ wailed Calum. ‘Why did you chase them away?’

  ‘Because they were doing no harm, that’s why.’

  Calum did not understand.

  ‘I wanted to tell them I was sorry,’ he sobbed.

  Neil gripped him, and bending glared into his eyes.

  ‘They’re just animals,’ he cried, ‘wild animals. You can’t tell them anything.’

  Calum nodded eagerly. ‘You can, Neil.’

  Neil thought of Duror the gamekeeper and the lady who, though human beings, were incommunicable.

  ‘If you like them, you can, Neil,’ repeated Calum.

  ‘The lady says she likes them,’ muttered Neil, ‘and she shoots them for fun.’

  Calum cowered under that mystery: he believed the lady liked the deer, and also that she shot them for fun. Yet he could find no solution or solace in hating her for her strange inconsistency.

  Neil laughed.

  ‘She prefers them to us,’ he said. ‘They belong to her, they’ve got a right to be in her wood, eating her grass. Shooting them is something she can take a pleasure in. Just talking to us would make her grue.’

  ‘I don’t ken,’ whispered Calum.

  ‘No, Calum, you don’t ken. But how could you ken, when I don’t ken myself. We’re not on her side, and we’re not on the deer’s. No!’ he cried, as he saw the shy sure smile on his brother’s face. Again he punched the tree. ‘No, Calum, we’re not on any side.’

  Calum still smiled. ‘It’s all right, Neil,’ he murmured.

  ‘All right?’ Neil frowned as he swung round and walked on. ‘God help you, Calum. Everybody’s at everybody else’s throat, and you say it’s all right. Maybe,’ he added, in a whisper anguished in its disloyalty, ‘being soft in the wits has its advantages.’

  Lunch on Saturdays was always frugal. By that time the week’s provisions were exhausted, but even if there had been plenty of food they would have been too excited to prepare and eat it. Stripped to the waist, they washed the tree griminess off them in the burn that flowed past their hut. Neil would have complained at this having to wash out of doors like animals, had he not remembered that soldiers on the battlefield lacked baths and hot water, and had he not, amidst his truculence, been overwhelmingly moved to tenderness and stoicism by the sight of his brother’s misshapen body. Therefore as they crouched on stones in the glittering burn, passing the soap to each other, they chatted about what they would buy in Lendrick that afternoon, and what they would do. Calum was overjoyed that his brother’s sullen cantankerous mood seemed at last over; he planned, with chuckles into the chuckling water, to buy Neil a present as a surprise: a new pipe maybe, for Neil’s old one was mended with black tape; or even a poke of the mint sweeties that were Neil’s favourites.

  Dressed in their weekend outfits of blue serge suits, collars and ties, and polished boots, they hurried to the roadside to wait for the bus. As their alarm clock was unreliable, they weren’t sure of the time. Calum sat perched, smiling and patient, on a straining-post of the fence; Neil fidgeted and grumbled on the roadway, tugging at his collar and tie, which always for the first hour or so seemed to be choking him.

  The bus, which came from Glasgow, a hundred miles away, was late. As they had arrived by the roadside half an hour early, they had to wait such a long time that they began to be afraid they had missed it. There was no other. If they still wished to visit Lendrick they might have to walk. No private car would ever stop to offer them a lift, and since it was Saturday afternoon there would be few lorries. It was not fair, Neil shouted aloud, that for a little enjoyment they should have to suffer so much discomfort: at the big house there were at least three cars.

  Then as he stood with clenched fists in the middle of the road round the corner rushed the red bus. Calum bounced off the post. Neil held up his hand. The driver, with a grin, stopped; the conductress, also grinning, pulled open the door; and the passengers looked on in pleasure and sympathy as the two strange shy men climbed in and sat on a seat at the back. A child, bored by the long journey, made to exclaim in wonder at the sight of Calum, but his mother silenced him and whispered into his ear that it was very rude to remark upon another person’s appearance in public. Her son hardly listened, but continued to gaze at Calum in an interest so bright and so willingly committed there could be no mockery in it; so much so that Calum, seeing the boy’s smile, smiled back.

  As if to prove to Neil that the wood was the only place where unfriendliness flourished and kindness withered, everywhere that afternoon the brothers were received with courtesy, affability, and helpfulness. For instance, when they stepped off the bus at the Lendrick War Memorial, not only the swans in the harbour flapped their wings in welcome, but the big policeman there, outwardly as dour as any stot, touched his helmet in a sunny salute.

  ‘Well, boys,’ he said, ‘this is surely a strange direction for you to come from.’

  Neil explained they were gathering cones in the Lendrickmore estate.

  ‘Oh,’ laughed the policeman, ‘so it’s hobnobbing with the gentry you are, is it?’

  Neil frowned, as if his feelings were hurt, so that the policeman quickly added: ‘Is it an interesting sort of job at all?’

  ‘Calum likes it,’ said Neil. ‘But I’m getting a bit stiff to be climbing trees.’

  Glad then of his disguising dourness, the policeman glanced at Calum, thought first of his unsuitability as climber and a moment after of his queer sad suitability. Heartily he nodded.

  ‘
Just that,’ he said. ‘But if there’s no seed, there’s no trees. It’s useful work; aye, and dangerous enough. Just you take care.’

  It was the same with everybody they met. In the draper’s shop which they diffidently entered to buy Calum’s new shirt, the man didn’t need to have it explained to him why so small a man as Calum required a shirt so wide in the neck. He understood immediately, and attended to them with so much tact, patience, and geniality that they went out laughing and confident into the sunshine, with the parcel under Calum’s arm.

  In the grocer’s shop under-the-counter delicacies were produced for them, and extra rations. Other customers, themselves denied, looked on, smiling, without envy. When they left it was to the accompaniment of cordial nods, smiles, and good wishes. There seemed to Neil to be two sunshines: that shining all round, on the water, in the street, and even on the trees growing round the ancient ruined castle; and that radiating from people’s minds. The one warmed his face, the other his heart. As his rancour towards the lady and the gamekeeper disappeared, leaving his mind relieved, cleansed, and buoyant, he knew, with a pang of pride and amazement, that how he felt now Calum must feel nearly all the time. Strolling along the street, therefore, he thought it was not enough that he should keep affectionately close to his brother; he ought to be shouting out to people about this wonderful superiority of Calum, who to look at seemed so pitiful and stunted. Of course he did not shout; the secret lay in his mind sweetening and preserving it.

  Only a coastal steamer was at the quay. They went along to look at her. Ships of any kind delighted Neil. He had once confessed to Mr Tulloch that if he had not had Calum to look after he would have been a sailor. Sea-faring was in his blood, he had said; but when the forester had asked naturally enough if his father had been a seaman he had answered yes, with an abruptness by no means characteristic. The forester had been left with the suspicion that there was a mystery about that paternity: but as he had remarked later to his wife, mystifying her, what did it really matter after all, gulls were wild and white and bonny, and none of them knew their fathers.