A Field Full of Folk (14 page)

“For the last time,” he replied. “I'm all right. And for the last time you can take the books with no guilt complex.”

“All right then, dear. If you're sure you'll be all right.” She almost bit her tongue off. “I'll run down with them now.”

“You do that, dear,” he said. “Now go away and leave me to read the letter page of the
Scotsman
. I hadn't realised there were so many teachers in the world.”

She went out of the room to hunt for cardboard boxes. “Look, girl,” she told herself firmly. “You take yourself in hand. Just get the cardboard boxes, put the books in them and take them down to Mrs Berry's daughter. That is what
you have to do.” Sometimes her husband would call her Martha. “You are the dearest one,” he would say, “the one who keeps the world going. The one with the flour on her hands and face.” And he had once shown her a painting of a woman with big red arms and a big bosom pouring milk from a red jug into a red ewer. “Thank you,” he had said, “thank you.” She bent down to pack the books in the cardboard boxes which she had found in the attic among her children's discarded toys.

23

T
HE STATION CLOCK
said 6.05 when Chrissie Murray passed through the barrier showing her ticket to the grimily dressed ticket collector. She looked at the queue that was forming at platform seven but didn't recognise anyone. Her stomach was churning over and over and all she wanted was to sit in a corner of a carriage by herself, or hide behind the newspaper she had bought for that purpose. At 6.15 the train drew in and she made for a corner seat in a non-smoker. Immediately she sat down she put the newspaper in front of her face and pretended to read. Now and again from behind the newspaper she would see young men and girls with kitbags over their shoulders struggling along the corridor, hikers who would probably leave the train at Crianlarich. At 6.18 the train drew out of the station, rocking at first from side to side as if not quite sure whether it should go or not, and then finally settling down to a smooth rhythm. From behind the shelter of the newspaper she looked through the window at the cans and cartons and fragments of paper strewn along the track, at the slogans advertising gangs drawn in red war-paint on walls, at the evening sun that glanced off the rails. She felt numb and dull and the taste of lipstick was salt on her lips.

The train picked up speed and the stations passed in a blur. Sometimes she saw council houses uniformly standing beside each other and, once, a fire as if someone was burning rubbish. The train's motion generated in her mind words which said ‘Going Home, Going Home.' She rested her head on the dirty white cloth behind her and shut her eyes but when she did so she seemed to see Terry's face as he prepared to go to work that morning. She opened her eyes again and found that the train had stopped at Dumbarton. There, too, she saw the big gang slogans scrawled, the names immortalised here if nowhere else. The Gents had been boarded up and the bookstall was shut. What have I done? she asked herself. Am I a shuttlecock to move from place to place? The train started to move and again she closed her eyes.

Later she opened them again, for as they passed Dumbarton she saw cows grazing in a field in the evening light. They raised their heads as the train passed and then bent down again and began to graze. Now she saw water to the left of her and ships in a bay. The ships were big and grey and the water smooth and red with the light of the sun. Once she saw a large ship with a name on it that she couldn't make out: perhaps it was Russian or Dutch. I could jump out, she thought, if only I had the nerve. And she was seized by panic as she thought of her return. For the next weeks, months, she would have to live with what she had done. Chrissie Murray, they would say years hence, of course she was the one who ran away and then came back. She would carry that stigma with her forever.

The train was steadily climbing now and she could see the moors on her right hand side. Strangely enough in spite of her panic, she was beginning to feel more at home, as if some deep need in her nature were responding to those lands through which she was now passing. The fear was still there like the surface disturbance on water, but, below, the current was moving with confidence. Once she put her head out of the window and saw behind her the long curving rear of the train as if it were a snake winding in and out of the landscape. She hoped that it would be dark when she arrived home so that she might be able to walk from the station without anyone seeing her, pass through the gate in the field and rush into the safety of her house. If he didn't want her back that would be the end, and she winced as if the thought were unbearable.

There came into her mind without thinking about it the story of the Prodigal Son that the minister had once told the class in Sunday School. The Prodigal Son had left his house because he didn't want to work on the land and he had found everything around him boring. He had left, she imagined, on a fine spring day when the whole world was sparkling and then he had found himself derelict, feeding on the stuff that the pigs ate. She saw him crouched among the big grey stranded pigs which were like grey ships in the dung. She saw him sitting in a hovel, brooding. Then she saw him making a decisive movement and setting off home. He was carrying a stick and he was walking along an autumn road while the acorns fell from the oaks, landing on the ground. She saw him approaching his house. His father and his older brother were both working in the field picking potatoes. At first his father didn't know him for he looked like a tramp and the sun was in his father's eyes. Then his father ran towards him and gathered him in his arms. The minister's face was shining with triumph. Welcome to the one sinner who had returned, he was saying, and his pale face glowed. And in the field the older son was still standing, resting his arms on the spade, angry and bitter.

She glanced through the window. The train was approaching Crianlarich where it usually stopped for ten minutes or so. She saw the passengers leaving their carriages and reappearing with sausage rolls and cups of tea from the restaurant. She stayed where she was for she couldn't have eaten anything. Again she searched the faces to see if there was anyone she knew but there was no one. After a while the train moved again, and in a strange way she knew that she was going home. It wasn't anything that she could put into words. The feeling must have emanated from the familiarity of the landscape but she knew that it was deeper than that. In spite of her fear she felt a rightness in the place where she was. Along the road which ran parallel to the railway track she saw a tinker and his wife and children sitting in a cart.

Soon she would have to face what she would have to face. Soon she would have to get out at the station, hand over her ticket to Alex, and soon he would have told everyone that she had returned. Soon she would have to look at familiar faces and behind those faces there would be the thought, “She tried to live in the city but she failed.” She knew that they would feel joy at her failure, that her return would justify them in the way of life that they had chosen. Nevertheless she would have to go through with it, there was no alternative. Because she was who she was there was
no other choice. She raised the paper in front of her face as a woman passed along the corridor in the direction of the toilet.

The train toiled on. She could see the moors now on both sides of her. Now and again she would catch a glimpse of a loch shining in the sun which was setting beyond the hills. Day after day when she had been washing dishes at home she could see ahead of her the mountain with its engraved trenches through which in the spring the rivers poured joyously. It seemed to be beckoning to her and saying, ‘Why don't you take a chance?' And she had taken her chance and failed. Terry hadn't been after all the sort of person she had thought he had been. In the village he had appeared adventurous and animated and new, but in the city he had been as overwhelmed as everybody was. In the city he was nothing, he was a small man who lived in perpetual hope of a future that he would have to work for. Why, even taxi drivers talked contemptuously to him as if he were instantly transparent to them. And who were his friends? Drifters like himself. A hunchback who read space fiction and undressed her with his eyes. The untidiness of the flats she had seen appalled her. How could they live like that as if in the wake of a storm? She saw again in her mind's eye the corridor filled with cardboard boxes of books; the bedroom into which she had strayed and on the floor of which her feet left footprints. She saw the lamp that didn't work, the dusty papers.

Chug chug went the train, a brown worm travelling through the landscape. She put the newspaper down in her lap, having read none of it. She felt as if all that was happening had been fated. Even now she could go to the door and jump and that would be the end of it all. There would be no laughing mocking eyes to outstare. “West Virginia,” she thought, “Mountain mama, take me home.” The sun had now set and the dusk had fallen. At such a time in the village the birds would be faintly chirping and peace would descend over the earth. At such a time she and John would draw the curtains and watch TV and she would listen to the same words spoken over and over, “Did anything happen today?”

“No, nothing special.” At such a time the children would be sleeping in their beds.

Another half hour and she would be arriving at the station. She closed the buttons of her coat as if she were preparing for a meeting or a battle. She rose and went to the toilet. There she stood in front of the mirror swaying with the train, planting her feet firmly as if on a shifting deck, putting lipstick on her lips, and rouge on her pale cheeks. Then she adjusted the green scarf at her throat and returned to her seat. As she looked through the window she could see in the glass the face of a man who sat in the seat across from her and who was reading a paper. As if conscious of her stare he turned and looked at her and smiled. She noticed that one of his cheeks was red as if it had been burned, though it was probably a birthmark. She continued to stare out of the window. Chug chug went the train. She saw the petrol station flashing past, a cottage with lights in it, the river.

It wouldn't be long now. She stood up and took her small case down from the rack, and went to the door. Soon she would have to pull down the window, put her hand on the handle and open the door. She did pull the window down and saw the smoke curling away behind the train. She felt sick and hollow as the decisive moment approached. She felt the train slowing down from its headlong flight and then it had stopped at the station, steam gushing gently from it like white flowers. Case in hand she stepped down when it stopped. Thank God Alex was at the other end of the platform, his back towards her. She rushed past the office and turned right towards Mrs Berry's house in the half darkness. In the dusk she could see the calf to her right in the darkening field. She climbed the brae by the side of the house and then on an impulse and without quite knowing why she was doing it she turned off the path and knocked at Mrs Berry's door.

Mrs Berry was preparing to go to bed when she heard the doorbell ring. She had even taken her teeth out. Quickly she put them back in and prepared to answer the door. Who could it be at this time of night? Most of her visitors came during the day. Maybe she could draw the curtains and see who was there. But on the other hand that might look unmannerly if whoever was standing there saw her. She drew herself upright, turned the key in the lock, and at first didn't recognise the girl; partly because she was the very last person she expected to see at the door at ten o'clock at night.

“It's me, Mrs Berry. It's me. Chrissie Murray.”

What was this? Her mind grappled with this strange fact. Chrissie Murray had run away to Glasgow. What was she doing here?

For a moment she trembled as if she were seeing a ghost. Of course ghosts might appear to one. There were stories connected with the islands, and even with the village, though she had never seen one herself.

“May I come in, Mrs Berry?” and she pulled the door wide open and there indeed was Chrissie Murray, exhausted, a small case in her hand. So she had come back after all.

“Come in, come in,” she said. “I'll make a cup of tea. You just sit in the kitchen and I'll make a cup of tea.” She opened the kitchen door, switched on the light, and looked at the girl who was almost crying. How she had changed: surely she was much thinner. It was as if all the life had gone out of her. So once had Jessie MacCallum looked when she had done the very same thing. Only she hadn't been married when she ran away: how many years ago was that now? She was married in England somewhere. They all thought it was the end of the world. Suddenly without thinking she put her arms around the girl, feeling, as she did so, Chrissie's body trembling.

“There, there, everything's all right,” she said. “Everything will be all right. Everything will be all right.”

Her mind began to move with a power and precision that astonished herself. Of course the girl would have tea and then she would 'phone her husband. That was the most sensible thing. But the girl was still trembling in her arms as if she were cold.

“There, there, there,” she said patting her long hair. “There, there, I'll tell you what. I'm an old biddy now and maybe you could help me with the tea.”

Chrissie couldn't understand why she had come to see Mrs Berry. After all it was well known that Mrs Berry disapproved of her parents who had given Chrissie too much money. But she was straight and had told Chrissie's parents that directly to their faces. When Mrs Berry put the kettle on, Chrissie opened the door of the cupboard and took out some biscuits that she found there. Mrs Berry sat at the end of the long table looking at her. There was a long silence. It was as if each was thinking of something that she might say and then dismissing it because it was too raw and insensitive. Finally Mrs Berry said, “When you're as old as I am, lassie, you will know that these things don't matter much. There will be something new next week and then it will all be in the past. I know that John will want you back though it will be hard. Were there many on the train?”