The Key of the Chest (31 page)

Charlie paused for a little and stirred in his bed.

‘I heard him choking,' he said.

The horror of what he had heard was in his voice, more terribly in his low clear voice than if he had cried aloud.

When Charlie recovered from that sentence, his voice was weary, his strength spent.

‘I should have done something more. I am a seaman. Had I let him go, he would have drowned. I
hauled
him to me. Somehow I got ashore. I carried him. When I told you I felt his heart beat, I can only say that I thought I did. I may have been deluding myself. God knows. Hell, I'm weak.'

The doctor got up. Charlie's face was wet; he turned it away.

The doctor did not know what to say. It all came back upon him in a surge. The policeman. The Procurator-Fiscal. Himself. The questioning. The appalling suspicion. The photographs. Charlie's own knowledge of what had happened by the skerry. Charlie's face now, because of his bodily weakness, was quivering. All at once the doctor said. ‘My God, man, don't you realize that you acted like a hero? What more could you have done?' He gripped Charlie's hand, pressed it, and left the room.

An hour later he left the cottage. It was all but dark. Dougald and himself had made tea, and he had taken it with Charlie, who had recovered his calm. The doctor had felt full of optimism, his mind swept clean of the horrible
suspicions that had at odd moments spawned their murder pictures. He had felt perfectly confident he could deal with Charlie now, could ‘put him right', not only with himself, but, what was a more difficult business, with his people, the seamen, the women and children, the folk of his own place.

‘You can leave it to me,' he had said. ‘I'll see that everything is all right.'

And Charlie, his head lying back on the pillow, had looked at him distantly, and smiled that grey ironic smile.

But the doctor could afford to ignore it. In his mind he knew how he could place Charlie's heroism in its true light. For he knew, in that moment, how strong was his own influence over the people. The thing was certain. And easy, so pleasantly easy, and even good for the doctor's own mind. A proper cleansing all round, from which Charlie would emerge as the grand fellow he was – and more than that, having borne so much.

And Charlie said nothing, showed nothing except that withering smile in his eyes.

It began to shake the doctor, but he did not show it, felt still that Charlie was being pig-headed, so he came at the matter on another tack. A man owed his community something. Kenneth Grant had said that one or two men, like Norman and Charlie, could be leaders who would put the place once more on its feet. It was something like that was needed. Belief that they could do things for themselves had got lost. Not only lost here, but lost in every small place of the world like it. But here there was something worth finding again. A too rigid religion and what not may have helped to blot it out, but it was worth finding again, a whole way of life that had bred fine men and women, kind-hearted, strong, decent. Hang it all, a fellow just couldn't clear out when he was needed, not a fellow like Charlie who could think about these things. Least of all, the thinking
and
working kind, now.

The doctor had positively surprised himself with his own eloquence, which had come so easily that he had chuckled now and then at its pleasant obviousness, confidently. Had even been aware, somewhere at the back of his mind, of a professional exercise of mental healing.

Charlie just listened, the deepening twilight in his eyes.

The doctor had a warning instinct against mentioning it, but if it really was the only thing that was keeping Charlie obdurate –‘Of course,' he had said, ‘what you have told me is between us. Folk know now how you did your best to save the seaman. I'll make sure that they believe it. And that's merely making sure of the truth. Any extra detail that you may have given me here, that's between us.'

Charlie's eyes left the window and rested on his hands. The doctor saw the eyelashes flicker like the long legs of flies. Then the eyes lifted to his face.

‘Why?' asked Charlie.

‘Why?' repeated the doctor, as if suddenly hit over the heart, but smiling. ‘Well, there's no need to – to go into every detail.'

And Charlie switched his eyes away, forbearing to trouble the doctor with another Why? Indeed, as if he had known intimately the doctor's momentary embarrassment, he said in his quiet voice, ‘You see, Doctor, it's no good. Whatever you said, or anyone said, it's an end of me here. You've only got my story. Even if I had children, and grandchildren, they would still be known as coming from me, and beside me always, beside the picture of me, would be the strangled seaman and the money. That's fixed, for all time, in this community by the sea.'

The last words had dropped like an echo of something monstrous out of a horror poem by Edgar Allan Poe, and just because there was deliberately in the words themselves, in the echo, a subtle last something of easing humour, the dreadfulness was inexpressibly final.

Pursuing his way home, the doctor looked about him and saw the quiet lines of the Ros darkling under the descending night. And in that quietude, in the dead heather listening for the wind above its living roots, in the rocky outcrops, in the flying horizon lines and great flattened wings of the sea, he felt the tragedy which lay at the heart of beauty.

He rebelled against this at once. He had a mistrust of abstract words. There was nothing that man should not be able to put right. Nothing.

But suddenly it was as if Charlie smiled to him again from the air.

So the doctor came at it from another tack. And the final point was: What could be done? The problem was perfectly clear. Abstract words and feelings merely cluttered it up. People suffered from idiotic delusions. Irritating, very irritating, when you want something sensible and healthy done.

Charlie himself could do no more. That had to be accepted, like any other kind of illness. So the action had to be directed towards Charlie by others.

By men like Norman, his own sea companions, his fellow workers who respected him. The doctor would have a quiet talk with them. In an unobtrusive way Norman could first have an hour or two with Charlie alone. Kenneth Grant might in due course even be allowed to rub some common sense in. Would they do it? Of course they would. And only too gladly.

No need for him to enlarge on Charlie's vivid descriptions. No need even to mention to them the money in the chest.

Why
?

Well, hang it, I
can
mention it! Any of them might have done the same. They'll understand. They will go to Charlie. They'll do all they can. The doctor knew this quite certainly.

But his mind was beginning to slip. He was already feeling baffled, congested. They would go, they would do what they could, but Charlie's picture – that picture – would be in their minds. For ever in their minds. He knew it. He knew it. As profoundly in their minds as in Charlie's own, and Charlie would hardly have even to smile at them, would as far as necessary spare them his smile. And they would feel defeated, even sunk in misery, but they would
know
.

The question came crying silently out of the doctor in anger, but also in wonder:
What is this thing? this wordless
knowledge?

And suddenly, from the excess of his baffled mood, there flashed something like a vision, and he saw figures, figures
like Norman and the others, moving over a twilit landscape, a timeless landscape, and they were the people of the community, and they had their way of living, the right way and the wrong way, distilled out of numberless ages, so that the right way and the wrong way became native to the blood, like an instinct, an instinct protecting the community, and this instinct, known also to the very birds and animals that lived together, this conscience, this thing which needed no words, was – morality.

His vision – at least, this flashing penetration, in which figures like Norman did momentarily appear at a little distance – excited the doctor profoundly.

There might be other moralities, divine morality, but
this
was what affected Charlie and what Charlie knew affected the others.

And there was no getting beyond it or round it. There was no ‘putting it right'. Were he in Charlie's position, he, too, would go away. The fine spirit – the community's highest product – had to act so. It was inevitable. And with great clarity the doctor saw that tragedy lay only in the inevitable, in the thing that could not be ‘put right'.

It had a quietening effect on him, the wonder balancing the sadness. But soon he felt weary of it, angry at it, and cast it from him.

A certain rebelliousness surged up. It flung his reluctant thought against Flora and her father. Charlie had never mentioned Flora in all his talk. Such delicate reticence! But that way, too, had been tried – and had failed, most bitterly of all for Charlie's spirit. That had been the finish.

Well, he, the doctor, could approach them now. Speak to the minister and to Flora, tell them…. But the doctor's mind suddenly balked. No! Morality there might be, and tragedy, and all the rest of the strange gear the human animal had gathered in a million years, but at least there was a last dignity in man, and Charlie had won that. To go running around, like some social worker, trying to arrange things!… What an intolerable intrusion! What a betrayal of the dignity and the reticence!

Don't worry, Doctor
, came Charlie's voice again.
This time
I'll work my own passage abroad
.

All right, Charlie!

Something deeper, older, than that compelling vision of morality was needed now, and there was nothing deeper or older except death.

‘There's only a slim chance,' said Michael, drawing back from his camera. ‘And the shot I want, pure Victorian décor. They swing in round the shoulder off there and then come up against the light for the reeds exactly as I want them.'

‘They go flighting in the evening to the stubble fields on that flat stretch by the burn—'

‘Yes.'

‘It's a quiet world here,' murmured the doctor.

‘Isn't it?' agreed Michael. ‘These few days have really been lovely. When you have cursed the bloody weather and feel like packing up, these days come. Extraordinary country.'

Michael had his hide near the tip of the south-western arm of Loch Geal, which, in his own words (with their slant on Gwynn) ‘sprawled like a primordial starfish'. Occasionally a catspaw of wind darkened the surface away inward, but here the reeds were still and the water darkly transparent.

‘You get some marvellous effects, too, if you look closely enough. See this tiny pool, cut off. What colour would you say it is?'

The doctor thought for a moment. ‘It's dark, perhaps blueish – I don't know.'

‘Because the more you look at it, the more immaterial it gets? The other day I satisfied myself suddenly by thinking of it as liquid air. Does that convey anything?'

‘Liquid air… liquid sky… with a chill in it.'

‘Oh, good!' said Michael. ‘Damned good!' He laughed with restraint. ‘When the sun goes further down, the shadows come, the long shadows of the reeds, and the shadows of the smallest hummocks, and there is a glisten of
light on each reed. But you can do nothing with that. Absolutely nothing.'

‘It is a world cut off here,' said the doctor.

‘You feel that?'

‘I do. And I confess I wasn't too keen on coming.'

‘Oh, I know. You think you live amongst it all the time. So we do. And then – you enter it.' Michael looked at the doctor with a sidelong humour. ‘You need more of this. You do such a hell of an amount of work.'

‘No, not really. There are spells, of course.'

‘Anyway, you make me feel a slacker. I'll have to pack up one of these days. Your example has been too devastating. The communal good and all that.' He chuckled, but a slight touch of colour had come to his cheeks.

‘Thinking of going into your father's business?'

‘Business, hell. There's other business to be done. Think of an age that does not see the theatre, that does not see these reeds, this light, as business of the highest kind, that condescends to it! To hell with them! I
know
now.' There was a short pause.

‘What's Mr. Gwynn doing to-day?'

‘Writing!' Michael's body swayed. ‘Terrific pressure of inspiration. If you heard him last night! He thinks he's got it at last, all the pieces, the whole pattern.' He looked at the doctor with a sudden shrewd humour. ‘What made you think of him just now?'

‘Well,' said the doctor, ‘I suppose we are social beings.' Michael laughed at the answering glint of humour in the doctor's eye. The moment caught an elusive intimacy, like the quality of the light.

‘Extraordinary how he comes into all this,' said Michael, as if agreeing to unspoken words. ‘All his theory about – you know – the search back for imaginative wholeness in the primitive and all that—' But words were a bore. Here was the moment itself.

The doctor nodded. ‘I know. The theory can be so heady.'

Michael was delighted. ‘Lord, it's good,' he said. ‘It's rich.'

‘Does he fancy he has now brought the wholeness forward
into life to-day?' asked the doctor, giving the humour a dry speculative twist.

‘Hell, no – that's the whole lovely problem. But he fancies he knows now
how
it should be done. He's got the key pattern!'

‘I see,' said the doctor.

‘I wonder,' suggested Michael. ‘Because, you see,
now
, at this immortal moment, I have a premonition of – of the wholeness.' He kept his laughing eyes on the doctor.

The doctor looked into his eyes. ‘Do you think it will last?'

‘God, no. Does that matter?'

‘Not much – in that case,' said the doctor, the humour of the moment slowly invading all his face.

‘You're a subtle devil,' said Michael, moving with a restless laughing delight. ‘And Gwynn – he's had another pow-wow with the parson. All in the same boat!'

‘Has he?' said the doctor, his expression imperceptibly firming.

‘Yes. Nothing much eventuated – it wouldn't, of course – beyond Gwynn's feeling that there has been a remarkable change in the soul's weather.'

The doctor remained silent.

Michael looked at him in a sidelong measuring way. ‘Tell me, quite honestly, do you think we're just damned interlopers, moneyed rich, full of words and fury, signifying a witless condescension?'

‘No,' answered the doctor; ‘not altogether.'

Michael laughed. ‘That's pretty good from you.'

The doctor had half turned away, and as his face lifted across the loch, his look steadied. On the far side two boyish figures, Hamish and Norrie, had just reached the water's edge.

‘Damnation!' said Michael swiftly.

‘Wait.'

‘But, curse it, the incoming duck will see them!'

‘Steady,' said the doctor. ‘They don't mean anything. Hamish obviously wants to try the rod you gave him.'

‘But we can't wait—'

‘Leave it to me. It'll break his heart if he thought
you
saw
him. He knows it's the close season. Don't show yourself.'

‘Hurry up, then! The light – it's perfect light!'

Across the water came the cry of the fishing reel. The doctor got up and began walking away, his back to the boys. They saw him, and in a moment were flat in the heather.

Michael's impatience grew. What did the doctor think he was doing? Give them a shout or it would be too late!…

The doctor, without turning round, stood for an instant, then began to walk slowly out of sight. Immediately he had disappeared, the two boys got up, raced over the low ridge behind them and were gone. The doctor reappeared and strolled into the hide.

Michael was flushed, his eyes glistening. ‘I'll keep that one for Gwynn.'

‘He's a nice boy, Hamish,' said the doctor.‘But that rod has gone to his head. He would be wanting to see what it felt like, throwing a line from a real rod. He can't wait.'

‘But he couldn't get trout now?'

‘He knows that – knows they're no use anyway.'

Michael's cap was always well pulled down over his head with the snout tugged a little to one side. He gave it an extra tug and laughed. As he twisted round, his face above the fringe of sheltering heather, he stopped.

The ground behind the hide ran level for a little way, then tipped over into a descending valley. Topping the breast of the slope on its eastern side were two figures, a man and a woman. The distance was such that Michael asked, ‘Who are they?'

‘The minister and his daughter Flora,' answered the doctor.

‘They're not coming here now?'

‘No, I don't think so,' replied the doctor quietly.

Presently the two figures stopped. They stood together for several seconds, then they parted, the father going back and the girl going on.

‘Seems to have given her his blessing,' said Michael.

‘Looks like it.'

‘Must have been pretty grim without it. Gwynn will be glad they've made it up. Wholeness once more!' As Flora dipped out of sight, the doctor said lightly, ‘I'll
go and make sure she's not coming this way.' And he walked out of the hide but not over the flat ground, instead he took the slope to the right and disappeared over its crest.

Michael's brows gathered. What exactly was the doctor's idea? Where was she going?…

Flat in the heather, the doctor waited. Far at the point of the Ros, he could see Charlie's cottage in the sun.

In time Flora appeared over the western shoulder of the valley. When the valley was shut off, she paused and the doctor decided she could see the cottage. She stood quite still for a while, gazing in its direction, then slowly looked about her. All at once there were a few sharp eager yelps. They drew her attention. In a moment she was running, her skirt pulled up. He heard her rounded golden cries. She was stooping over Fraoch. She was on her back in the heather, Fraoch aloft and struggling in her hands. They frolicked wildly. Then she got up, straightened herself, raised an admonitory finger at Fraoch, and continued on her way with proper decorum.

He watched her as she went across the moor towards Charlie's cottage, space about her and a light that ran and lifted clear over the Ros and the sea beyond to the remote horizon line of the west.

There was a strange final certainty in her going. Behind the movement of her upright figure, he knew that words had been spoken between her father and herself, words and silences that swept the dark places, cleansing them, and so at last there she went, carrying her father's submission, his blessing, lightly, already forgetting it as one forgets the sunlight and the air, in the delicious turmoil of the adventure ahead.

But he also knew, in this moment of watching her, more than she knew or her father, for his mind brought Charlie into the wide design – and all Charlie's secret thoughts as he had learned and listened to them no later than last night. Now she would sit and listen to Charlie as the grey light came, and then, Charlie being unfit, Dougald would see her home.

The moor was translated to a distant land, to the African veldt, to a plain in Canada, and Charlie was by her side, and
they were walking along, golden and laughing…. That was the certain end.

She was going away. They were both going away. He felt something draining out of his heart, draining out of the land itself, leaving an imponderable shadow.

Leaving the shadow on the land. The shadow from the passing of the bright ones. Always… going away… driven away…. Leaving her shadow on his heart.

There, where she walked, he had had, in the ghost light from yesterday's dead day, his vision of morality. Now he realized there was one thing deeper and older than his vision, and it was walking over the vision on two light feet.

Out of the bright air, first like a silent singing and then with a whirr of wings, came the wild duck in a wide circle, heads out-thrust on long necks, eager, out of the heart of life, in a lovely swift sweep, downward, flattening out, wings pressing back the air, webbed feet thrusting forward, breaking the mirror of the loch into running dancing ripples and shaking the reeds.