The Serpent (8 page)

And this again did not embarrass him, but only increased his tenderness, so that the tenderness came into his own throat, and he was greatly moved to help her.

It was doubtful if she heard him, for a desperate weakness was upon her. She wanted to be left alone. But she could not be left alone. They both knew that. She never spoke. Then her unnatural control could not be borne any longer and her body, of its own accord, began taking great gulping breaths, as if it were being choked. Her hands stirred restlessly, aimlessly, and her body turned to this side and that in a futile effort at flight. Her face now shone tragic and wild. It could not be borne. As the cry came up into her throat, she made to get to her feet, but he held her, telling her not to hurry, to wait a minute. ‘Take your time, Janet. It's all right. I'll stick by you.' The words were practical and friendly, yet they broke in his throat.

As her cry came through, some of her strength came back. But he held her firmly, and her strength broke, and she collapsed against him, her mouth in his shoulder. Her whole body was swept by convulsive sobs, and as though ashamed of them in some final deep of her mind, she clung to him and gripped him tight and pressed her face hard against his shoulder. He felt her brow clammy and cold against his neck.

He spoke to her now with a final tenderness, encouraging little words, soothing words. ‘Hush, Janet. Hsh, it's all right.' His right hand patted her on the back, pressed into her back, pressed her against him. Never had he known such tenderness as this. It swept him in a warm living fire. There was nothing on earth or beyond earth, he would not have done for her, in the dim light on the lonely slope of the Glen. Never had his being known wholeness like this.

It not only felt competent, but full of an uncanny knowledge, of the night, of himself, but especially of the girl beside him. And his tenderness was directed in delicate
instinctive ways towards giving her back her confidence, so that once more she would be herself, whole and of a living piece, herself coming alive and whole, her lovely natural self coming back to life.

This had to be made easy for her.

And her hair was against his mouth, and the smell of it in his nostrils.

Her sobs subsided and she lay without stirring, so inert that her body would have fallen from him had he not continued to hold her.

She lay so still that she might have fallen asleep or died, like this he held her for a long time, until, half in fear, half in a searching urgency, he whispered her name. ‘Janet? Janet, are you all right?' He brought his face down to a level with hers, slowly, searchingly. The sweet madness of his quest for her lost spirit came upon him. ‘Janet?' The living fire bathed him. Her cheek came against his mouth. ‘Janet?' There was no life in her at all. A wild fear touched him, a hot urgency. He brought his mouth against hers. She gave a small shudder, her mouth drew back, and then, as if for the groping comfort of his mouth, it gave way to him.

There was no life in her mouth, but little by little life came back before the warmth of his life, and when her lips were warm they smothered away from his mouth, not hurriedly, and he had her still in his arms.

He spoke to her now only by the firm but gentle way he held her, not any more in words.

They lay like that for a long time, in the trance of youth, to which there seems no beginning and no end.

Then the strange nameless fear of this suspension touched him afresh, and he brought his mouth whisperingly against her cheek, and searched for her mouth against her reluctance, and found it.

When this had happened for the third time, he felt suddenly and for the first time the pressure of her lips, the living acknowledgement of her spirit and her body, a swift sweet gratitude, and now in an instant she was gone from him, and before he could do anything she was sitting up.

She did not speak, but lifted her hands to her hair. It
had become disordered and he sat watching her pinning it up. But it was beyond pinning up, and with a shake of her head, all her dark hair was released and fell over her shoulders.

This action had something in it purely feminine and necromantic, there on the hillside. He could not intrude, but his hand went up and into her hair. She held her head back, her face tilted to the sky waiting for him to take away his hand. But his hand went through her hair and, pressing against her cheek, drew her face towards him. Her face resisted but came, and as he kissed her, her long hair fell about his face.

For one wild moment he lost himself then, but she pressed him away with her hand on his breast, gently but firmly. ‘No!' she said, as if she had shaken her head at him, in understanding.

The sound of her voice and the firm quiet action of her body were an entrancement he had no desire to break down.

Her hair was thick and long and before she had got it all up, her arms grew so wearied that they fell limp on her lap, and she sighed, and blew out her breath, ‘Oh dear.' But as he stirred, her hands went up again.

In this display of her body, her uplifted hands and breasts and face against the sky, there was an intimacy that grew upon him. It was something that could not be avoided, and because of that he felt in her very attitude, in each quiet motion, a shyness that held a gentle humour and common sense, holding him away, because she had to hold him away, but doing all this before him because they were there together by the strange circumstances of the night.

At last her hands fell heavily and she sighed in relief, and her face turned towards him with a smile.

He did not know what to say or do, all direction in his mind dissipated by the enchantment of that smile as it hovered on the momentary verge of a laughter that he knew would not come. In that instant, she was the living embodiment of all grace.

‘I wonder where Tina is?' she said, and her face tilted to listen.

‘Oh, she'll be all right,' he answered at once, repelling the very thought of intrusion.

‘I must find her; we came up together.'

‘She'll probably be home by this time. There's no earthly use trying to look for her now.'

‘But I must. Perhaps she's looking for me.'

They argued for a little, until at last she agreed with him, and said she must go home.

As they went down the hillside, he took her arm.

‘I feel quite weak,' she said once, as her weight came heavily upon him. ‘And oh so cold.'

She did not seem to see very well.

‘Look here, let us sit down. There's no hurry.'

‘No. Please. I must get home. If I sat down I might never get up again.'

He caught her hands. They were very cold. Her teeth suddenly chittered.

He wished, he said, he could do something to warm her, and as this kept running in his head, he took the first opportunity of a stumble to hold her hard in his arms.

‘Please, Tom,' she murmured, ‘I am so tired.' But she did not break away from him and her mouth was kind.

‘You have been very good to me,' she said, and for the first time it was as if there was no smile in her voice.

This made him feel not only tender again but very chivalrous towards her. The tall night felt keen and sweet on his face.

When they came by the turf wall, she sat on it, with an outward explosion of breath like a humorous comment. He sat beside her, and talked at once in a friendly pleasant way, as if only now and suddenly he realised what she had been through. Since she had come to herself after the sickening horror, she had never let up again, she had kept control, with a feminine grace he had never previously encountered, something beyond courage.

He could not help putting his arm round her, for she was bound to feel how genuinely he was moved to assist her, and now, as if indeed she knew and could utterly trust his protectiveness, she leaned against him and her head rested for a little on his shoulder.

He sat like one in a divine trance until strength could not be kept from his arms. As the surge went through his body, her head stirred, but before it withdrew he felt her chin in his neck, then a cool quick kiss below his ear, and she jumped down.

Much he learned about woman that night, that unforgettable night, every slightest incident of which remained clear, with the clarity of incidents in an unusual dream. And not the incidents only, for the incidents were little more than embodied states of mind, states of grace, utterly incommunicable apprehensions of being.

More friendly they grew and companionable, until they drew near the village. Carefully, now, their ears open, her hand gripped in his.

‘I'll run,' she whispered at last.

He gripped her hand hard. He could not let her go. When she broke from him, she walked away, and his heart went with the discreet motion of her body until, little by little, and then suddenly, she disappeared.

The night was empty now and cool. A divine moonlit night full of silence and a wandering wind. He turned for his own home but could not go in. Nor could he go up the Glen road lest he meet someone who would rob him of Janet. So he took the path from his home towards the mountains.

As the Philosopher advanced a pace or two, the goat looked away indifferently, looked back, and then, reluctantly making up his mind about it, walked on his delicate nimble hoofs in between two junipers and on and in among yellow-flowered broom. But he was not done with the Philosopher yet for his head, rising above the fragrant broom, turned, so that there was the head alone looking at the Philosopher out of the long narrow pupils.

It had the stillness of stone, symmetric horns curving backward, outcurled beard, the carven head of an antique world.

The Philosopher's own face grew still as it held the stare of the agate eyes that saw him detachedly, without interest, yet saw him and was privy to him, in an expressionless prehistoric stillness which man could only flatter himself was derision.

The Philosopher moved on a couple of paces. The goat turned his head over his submerged shoulder and stared at the Philosopher across the yellow blossom.

The Philosopher removed his eyes and saw this withdrawn place of memory vivid with sunlight. Green leaves were translucent or glittered. The fragrance itself was colour. A small intimate world of close-cropped grass and winding alleyways, the yellow flowers, clustering like bees, glowing coolly in the sun's fire, a beauty that might have been too much, hanging still, now made light and playful in wandering eddies of wind.

Then
it had been without sunlight, a darkening of the green in a small rain. He had lain down to rest, to shelter, and there had come upon his love thoughts the cool luxury of the damp grass, of the mist-soft rain, until …

But the thought could scarcely be borne, as the nostrils can bear only for a moment the scent of a rose, the dark fume from the core of a dark-red rose.

How Janet had affected him! The experience had been altogether beyond anything that he had believed possible could happen to a man. Even though he was only twenty-one, that made no difference. Indeed he could clearly say, thinking out of his own experience, that at that young age he had had far more of a hard sceptical attitude towards life in general than he had now. Which, after all, was understandable enough, because then he had had the assurance that he knew the meaning of life, in the sense that nothing happened but one was ready with a reason for it. Tim Mahoney, Dave Black, any of the lads could have explained any social manifestation, have given the motive of any individual act.

‘Sex' explained that amusing manifestation which the romantics called ‘love'. Sex was necessary, of course, to keep humanity going. Quite. But the trick of wrapping it up in love was a dangerous trick because it was part of the romantic structure which tended to uphold the existing order of society. One felt the power of sex, naturally. But all the ‘mystery' about it was man-made, as was all the ‘mystery' about religion. And once you understood this thoroughly you were freed from the more sickly toils. It did not make you cynical about ‘love'. Anyone who became cynical was merely a romantic who had not freed himself properly. He still hankered after the romanticism he could no longer believe in. Poor fellow!

On that Halloween, his intellectual assurance had been dealt one of those invisible blows that scatter elements in a bewildering fashion. Dealt not by the known gods, whom anthropologists and the religious analyse with so omniscient or reverent a care, but by some dark fellow who simply lets out a wallop! As a boy gets a sudden wallop on the side of his head from his father and sits down among the ruins of his pride, yelling blue murder!

Not that he had noticed it as a wallop to begin with. He had been quite prepared to call it sex or anything else. Nothing mattered at all, except the thought of Janet.
She was in his head like a new tune. She was all through him like an obsession. And he remembered her so vividly, even more vividly than he had actually seen her in certain movements and graces, as though only now had he time to dwell upon these and appreciate them properly.

And the more he dwelt upon them the more unique they became, the more utterly part of Janet's unique self.

There was a gaiety in the thought of her, a curious burning gaiety. He kept by himself as far as he could, so that no-one would waste the time he could spend with his own thoughts, and, in particular, so that no-one would surprise him smiling. For a minute on end he would lean on his plane, staring out of the little window in the back wall of the barn. This window had been a hole in the old days through which the wind came to winnow the chaff from the grain. Winnowing of a kind still went on!

He could hardly believe it all on the day after Halloween.

With the dusk, some of the lads dropped in. They caught him just as he was about to get away by himself on the off chance that he might run into Janet on the other side of the village. He had wanted the darkness for that. Now he had no excuse for going that would not bring one or two of them with him.

He had little time for secret regret, however, because he was challenged by Andie straight away.

‘Me?' he replied. ‘You all left me quickly enough! So I cleared off home on my own.'

‘Took to your heels again!' cried Andie. ‘Well, you missed yourself. That's all I can say.'

‘How?'

‘Mark the date,' said Andie. ‘That's all I'll say. Just mark the date.'

‘What for?'

‘Eh?' Andie eyed him. ‘My God, you're innocent,' and he shook his head. ‘You may have seen strange ongoings in Glasgow, but och! och!'

‘Surely it wasn't as bad as that?'

‘I'm saying nothing,' said Andie with a sober waggish air. ‘I'm an innocent fellow, too. But ditch and ley could tell a story or two. It was a wild Halloween.'

Andie lit the brazier, his weathered face and hands and the twisting strings of his neck glowing in the blaze, a cattleman turned satyr.

Much of what he heard, Tom decided, was just talk. Whatever happened in the bothies of big farms, he knew that illegitimacy was a very rare occurrence in the crofting world, even in the days of the shielings, when girls were away from the paternal roof for weeks on end and the lads went courting them.

What happened then?

What happened with himself and Janet?

Girls and fellows in that pastoral world of immemorial custom knew whom they liked, and when fondness grew too strong they married.

Ditch and ley could tell a story all right! Many a story they could tell, thought Tom, with inward memory of Janet. Jimmy and Donnie did not tell what had happened to them, though their secrecy told more to Tom than it did to Andie.

And out of this secrecy they egged Andie on, or choked him off when he encroached too far. For when a lad has come near the tenderness of a girl he shies off the bawdy. The new wonder he will protect, in the girl and in himself.

What wisdom Tom had gathered in a night! Such new insight into the minds of those about him!

He accompanied Jimmy and Donnie up the glen until they came on the side road to the Heights. They decided that Halloween had been a devil of a night. The escapade with the goat, beyond redemption. Andie had said that the farmer of Taruv was going to the police. They shook softly with laughter. None of the girls would tell – unless for the two who had gone home alone. And what had they to tell? They laughed again, and cried good-night out of a happy companionship.

Quietly then through the dim darkness of the village, with some sort of excuse ready, for through the darkness a passing voice would call good-night out of friendliness and curiosity. Not to answer would raise doubt and mystery. Footsteps would stop. Who could that be? The silent one
was up to no good, or up to some game that might be worth finding out! But if the answer proclaimed the voice of one going home, then friendliness was in the night and the sound of footsteps dying away.

Subtle communal feelers in the dark!

The voice called from the corner of Dan Morrison's shop. ‘Hullo!' answered Tom at once and strolled over to the small group. All men, of course, for no woman would be abroad at this hour. Tom said he was out for a last breath of air and wondered if the whole village was deserted! He sounded happy to be among them, and the talk that had been going on about Halloween got a new impetus. Tom did not deny he had been at Margad's, nor on the other hand would he affirm it, and thus for the amusement of the moment he kept them on a string. They tried to get at him in all ways, but he was too clever for them.

Then one said: ‘I do believe it was Tom who engineered the whole thing!'

‘By George, I believe you're right!' said another.

This approach was meant to tease and draw him, yet somewhere in their voices, all in a moment, was the beginning of belief. It was the sort of thing an atheist out of Glasgow might do!

But Tom laughed.

Presently, when they broke up, with a certain grudge against him for his silence, Tom accompanied two of them along the road as far as the church. Then he merrily bade them good-night and turned back.

All in order to pass Janet's home! The night was full of secrecy and merriment.

The house still had a light in the living-room. She would be sitting with her mother, perhaps taking down her hair and combing it, before going to bed.

His whole body grew extremely sensitive to sounds lest they discover him, standing there. His mouth grew dry, listening.

Her mother was the widow of a merchant who had gone bankrupt in the village. The business was still called Dan Morrison's, though now run by Andrew Fraser. The bankruptcy had taken place while Tom was in Glasgow,
so he had missed the whole hub-bub and sensation. Dan had been a good-hearted, careless man, fond of a dram. All the children, with their odd pennies, had gone to him for their sweets and nuts.

There was no public-house in the village, and rumours about Dan's backshop had been rife for so many years that folk had latterly got used to them and paid little attention.

Besides, when a person suddenly got tied up with colic or other internal ill, Dan could be relied on not to fail a trusted messenger anxious for the only specific that would defeat the pains. Moreover, when folk were in temporary hardship – and who wasn't at times before money came from the cattle market, or when illness and death stretched a heavy and expensive hand? – Dan would allow them to run up book accounts. Many took advantage of Dan's softness. There were selfish, poor-mouthed people everywhere. But the unfortunate thing was that when the crash came and Dan's books were seized by the creditors, honest folk received statements of accounts which they had settled years ago. They were indignant, and no wonder, for they remembered so clearly the sacrifices that payment had entailed. Very well, replied the lawyers in the town, please produce your receipts.

In most cases they hadn't any receipts, and Dan could do nothing now. He had meant to write off their accounts, no doubt, but then the payment of a considerable debt would be so important an affair that Dan would have taken the man into the backshop. There they would have had one or two drinks in decency and congratulation. By the time they came out customers would be in the shop. Many a debtor could go over the whole circumstances in exact detail. But he had mislaid the receipt if he had ever got one, just as Dan had forgotten to write off the debt in his books. Dan's father had been a crofter, and Dan, being a bright boy, had got a grocer's training from his uncle in Dundee. But he had never been cut out for a moneymaker.

The sensation was tremendous, and this calling to account of decent folk, who were not in his debt, must have preyed on Dan's mind. He was a big man, quick on
his feet, full of life, yet more than once, in that last week, tears were in his eyes. Some said they were whisky tears. But he went all soft, collapsed after a heavy whisky bout, and died in two days.

His funeral was the biggest from the village in many years. Even those who had reason to be bitter remembered his kindnesses. In their hearts they knew the carelessness that had ridden him, as, in all writing matters, it rode themselves. They would not let a man's faults follow him to the grave. Dan Morrison had always had the kind heart. It was his undoing.

The women of the village were kind to his widow that day. And some of the older men, returning from the funeral, cast a humoured eye at the shuttered windows of the shop. They had their own memories, and in Dan's company they had stolen many a happy hour from the solemn faces that rode life. The censorious could say what they liked, but at the end of the day Dan had made no money out of anyone. There were more than a few, if the truth were known, who had got money's value out of Dan for nothing. And the names of some of them would astonish you.

Dan had taken his wife from the town. Her father had been a lawyer's clerk and so, to the countrywomen she came amongst, she was a woman of some position. But she had been a quick-witted bright girl, very nervous over the birth of her first child, which had appeared some little time before it might reasonably be considered due. Older women said that if she was highly strung she would get over it in time. She was dark, like her husband, but slim, and now at fifty was thin, with a fire in her eyes.

She had had three children. Janet was the youngest, the other two being boys, one of whom had died from ‘inflammation of the bowels' at the age of fourteen. This death had affected Dan very deeply for he had been greatly taken up with the lad. The eldest son was in a business in Dundee, came home for the funeral, said he would do what little he could to help his mother, though he couldn't do much, and then had gone back to Dundee.

Meantime Janet had been for a year at the High School in town, staying with a grand-aunt, and coming home by
bus for the weekends. She postponed her return to school after her father's death, because her mother needed looking after. She would miss the rest of the session. The new session started. She did not go back. Some day, when her mother grew stronger, she would go in for nursing, she said.