The Silver Bough (26 page)

A
fter that night, Grant enjoyed his days on the hills. The feeling of liberation spread to his heels and he was often astonished at the degree of tirelessness in his energy. Certainly he was slim and of no great weight; there wasn't much of him to carry! He often smiled to himself, and once he had the odd notion that if he shaved off his beard he would come up through like a boy. Why had he grown the beard at all? He decided it was sheer waywardness . . . or a nascent atavism!

He discovered nothing of any importance and on the fourth day found himself in the Robbers' Glen. The last thing he wanted to do was pry into Martin's affairs, but he could not resist an elaborate scouting and spying and a final advance on the underground wheel-house with the feelings of a man poaching on his host's ground. Not that he was altogether doing this. In the name of science . . . . He chuckled.

Where so much was mental, he had at least to establish the actual existence of the underground dwelling. But when half an hour had passed in a close search on what he deemed the very spot, he began to be worried. The notion of Martin's head pushing above a skyline complicated the worry. Then suddenly he found the opening. From the low dark tunnel came a thick pervasive smell he remembered. With the utmost care and no little effort, he replaced the flagstone, redressed its edges with the old hanging heather, and stepped away. He did not feel safe until he was nearly half a mile lower down, where he rested, had a plunge in a small pool, and ate his lunch.

Perhaps some day, some year, he might do the wheelhouse in style. It would keep! That made him think of Martin. As he stared into the small dark whirls in the pool and got lost in the sound from its throat, there came before him the cairn in the darkening night and the figure behind the monolith. Martin had been there! Then the astonishing thought came with an underbeat of excitement: Had Martin
called
Andie to that spot at that hour?

The significance of the question held him . . . . He was again in the cave and heard Martin say that he would probably have found the crock of gold if he, Grant, had not appeared.

At the time he had thought the remark no more than an acknowledgement of a chance meeting in the night—did not Martin often wander along the dark shore?—with no particular significance. But now . . . .

With a deep conviction he realised that Martin was the only man who could understand Andie, who could command him in his own unusual fashion, and who could therefore find the crock of gold. This was as near a certainty as anything on this earth could be.

Why not get in touch with Martin? Why not call after dinner, and, at the right moment, put it to him?

But at once he saw he could not do this, deliberately. He could not risk alienating Martin. When he found himself trying to understand this, a further astonishing question asked itself inside him: Supposing Martin had followed Andie and found the crock,
what would he have done about it
? And he found that he could not answer; he just did not know. He had no reason at all to suppose that Martin would in fact ever tell him anything about it. There was a dark place beyond the utmost reach of his intuition where Martin and the crock would be hidden.

There was an excitement in this, a penetration . . . and the possibility at least of a small extra discovery of oneself. And the more he penetrated, the more he discovered of himself,
the nearer he drew to the crock of gold
. That was no myth: it was simple fact. In a momentary wonder that it should be so, he laughed. He had never before seen, he declared, what myth meant. The sunlight danced on the dark swirls in the pool.

But he experienced quite a different kind of excitement the evening before Colonel Mackintosh and his party were due to arrive. It was his longest trip, and dropping into the Kinlochoscar Hotel for a glass of wine he found the manageress so pleasant, and the wine so pleasantly weakening, that he stopped for dinner. Yes, she told him, three rooms had been reserved for Colonel Mackintosh, a Mr Blair, and a Mr Scott—arriving tomorrow. These were the only rooms available and Colonel Mackintosh had booked them before he left. No, she didn't know of others. He explained that the Colonel was not a very good correspondent and a question of labour was involved. However, he hoped that at least there would not be so much publicity this time! . . .

On the way home he was in such good fettle that halfway along the road he left it to spy out some ground towards the sea. Every day there had been the possibility that he just might pick up with his field-glasses an unsuspecting Andie in some lonely place, and he approached the ridge, which should give a view of the valley in which Arthur had found the cist with the collar urn, more like a deerstalker than an innocent archaeologist. Then he saw the tents and his features so narrowed in wrath that his whole face, with its dipped pointed beard, gathered a tolerable resemblance to a Neolithic axe. The advance guard of the great British public had arrived! He could hardly take the binoculars from their leather case.

Four small triangular tents, a larger round one, and, at a little distance, a rectangular affair of brown sacking that was all too plainly a latrine. Seven young men were squatting like braves—round the cist.

As he approached the latrine, an eighth, with khaki shorts and bare legs, was shouldering a spade.

“What's all this about?” demanded Grant.

“All what?”

“Who gave you permission to camp here?”

“I thought permission . . . . Are you the landowner, sir?”

“No, I'm not. And if you haven't got permission to camp here, I'd advise you get it before you squat. You can't just dump your tents——”

“Good evening, Mr Grant.”

Grant wheeled. “What—you, Jim Dickson?”

“Yes, sir,” said Jim, a smiling hefty young man. “We are the labour battalion sent on by Uncle James in advance.” Uncle James was Colonel Mackintosh.

“Well I'm damned!”

“All budding field-workers, at your service.” Jim half bowed, half-hitched his pants.

Grant capitulated with a roar of laughter. He knew three of the lads well.

An hour later, he left them, smiling. From their apparently innocent questions, he could see that they had worked out a foolproof system of night-shifts and super-boy-scout stalking, with the crock of gold as their Holy Grail. The farther they had to crawl on their bellies the better! When he had done his best to warn them about Andie, one of them had replied negligently, “We have done some deer-stalking, sir. If you don't want him to see us—he won't.”

He glanced at his watch: it was nearly eleven o'clock. Anna would be coming out to look for him again!

He came round the slope and saw a movement at the base of the tall monolith. At first, with a swift uncanny feeling, he thought it was a black dog; but as he stopped and stared he saw a human being on all fours: it was Andie. His head was down, like an Eastern man in prayer. Or was he scraping, like a dog? Andie's head lifted and looked round the stone towards the cairn; then slowly he reared up and, one shoulder against the stone, kept on peering round at the cairn. All at once, as if something had touched him, he turned his head and saw Grant.

“Hullo, Andie,” said Grant as he approached. “What are you up to now?”

Andie's face was a mass of grinning creases, the eyes reduced to thin slits. The ground at his feet was unbroken.

Grant spoke to him again, humanly, smiling, ready to take part in the game.

Andie spoke thickly and his shoulders began to heave. He was excited about something; but his grinning held also a sort of baffling embarrassment. Suddenly Grant wondered if Martin was about and his eyes travelled carefully over the cairn.

Andie's arms began to flap slightly.

“Well, what is it?” asked Grant. “Want to go and find it? . . . Come on, then!” And he made a tentative but indefinite movement.

Andie, however, was equally indefinite, waiting for a lead, waiting to follow: clearly he had no notion if going to any specific place himself. He was looking at Grant now as a dog looks at a shepherd, but with something behind the eye that no dog has.

“Well, let us have a look,” said Grant in his friendly employer's voice and started for the cairn. At once Andie was striding alongside, muttering away. A complete circuit of the cairn revealed nothing.

“Doesn't seem to be anyone around, does there?”

“Gu—gu——” answered Andie, his eyes on Grant, waiting for the next move.

Grant was completely baffled. But he did not want to give in. He rested against the cairn. The daylight was shadowed, easy on the eyes, a still grey silence. An oystercatcher swerved suddenly above them, and was gone over the cliff. The sea-floor rose slowly in a grey glimmer to a remote horizon.

He must appear to Andie as a superior being, the mysterious one who has knowledge. He came, opened up cairns, found skeletons and pots of gold. Andie would at once expect
something more
when he saw him. Not what had been, but the new bright thing that would be.

How was it possible to reverse this? “What brought you here?” he asked, hoping that something in his easy attitude would shake or confuse Andie. “Does your mother know?”

A definite pause came into Andie's being as if he had perfectly understood. He began to mutter and hunch his shoulders, then his mouth opened in a stare. Grant turned his head and saw Andie's mother approaching. Her shawled head and shoulders gave her the appearance of a woman coming out of a remote place or remote time. Her skirt was down to the top of her boots, obscuring the movement of her legs, though she was plainly walking. Once or twice Grant had been touched by the legendary, by a feeling of something archetypal, larger and more enduring than the individual. He felt the strange shiver of this now, got up from the stones, spoke at once, “Good evening. Are you looking for Andie?” He smiled in his friendliest way, making the moment normal, preparing for his explanation of how he had come on Andie. “Don't blame me this time!”

“It's time he was home,” she said quietly.

“It's more than time we were all home,” he agreed. But somehow he could not begin his explanation, his excuse for himself. Andie anyhow was muttering, and Grant saw that his face was congested, angry, like a wilful boy's.

“Come, Andrew,” she said.

“Home, Andrew. Off you go!” said Grant cheerfully.

“Gu—gar—r—r.”

“But we must. Good night, Mrs Mackenzie.”

“Good night, sir.”

Grant found himself walking away. But once out of sight curiosity got the better of him. When he had rounded the shoulder of the slope, he held to his right for some distance and then lay flat. He saw them in the hollow, and mounting the next slope, on their direct way home. Andie was walking with his long uncouth stride behind her, bent, his hands behind his back. For a little while the sky held them in clear outline, then they slowly dropped beyond.

When he got home he found a telegram from Colonel Mackintosh: “Arrange camping ground for eight student helpers.” As he took off his boots in the sitting room, he heard Mrs Cameron stirring. He went to the kitchen door and called gently, “It's all right, Mrs Cameron. I was detained in Kinlochoscar and had my dinner there.”

“I have only just lain down. I'll make you a cup of tea.”

“No, no. Please. I'm sorry I could not let you know.”

She told him of the telegram which had come in the forenoon and of the young men who had called.

“That's all right,” he answered. “They saw Mrs Sidbury. I have been with them.”

“Oh then! That's fine! It was on my mind.”

“Good night.”

“Good night, Mr Grant. I hope you sleep well.”

L
ate the following afternoon Andie made a dramatic entrance into the whole company gathered at the cairn. The hour, five o'clock, had been fixed by the Colonel. Blair was in whipcord riding breeches, an open necked khaki shirt and new spectacles. Mr Scott carried flannel trousers of a remarkable slackness, a roll-topped seaman's blue jersey, a pipe and a rocking gait. Colonel Mackintosh wore plus fours that hung well and baggily, a collar and tie, and pre-war expensive hill boots. Grant had his tweed hat and the knickerbockers that appeared a trifle scraggy about the knees only by comparison with the Colonel's, so that young Armstrong, a student of such matters, wondered if he had borrowed the idea from Bernard Shaw or found them in the cairn.

The Colonel was establishing his leadership by making it clear that Mr Grant was the leader in this ploy. He used the words “ploy” and “foray”, and even got as far afield as “the Cattle Raid of Ulster”, thus setting the local simplicities of their present venture over against the classic cultures of the Mediterranean, but with a feel for the words in his mouth that to the discerning suggested he would tolerate nothing but the most careful and earnest work. “With a name like Grant, or even Mackintosh, one finds oneself on one's native heath, and though dubious names like Scott, or even Armstrong, may have a lower or at least more Lowland connotation, still, if history may be credited, their knowledge of the cattle-lifting foray was hardly less than the Highlander's and perhaps more thorough.”

With a decorous “Hear, hear!” Armstrong induced a round of applause. The Colonel blinked and blew through his moustache. The unrehearsed pleasantness of the moment—his simple if sudden intention had been to compliment Grant in a roundabout way—induced such friendly feelings that Colonel Mackintosh decided to cap the occasion with a yarn which might poke these young rascals in the place where it might do them most good.

“Talking of Highland forays,” he began, “let me illustrate with an example which I am sure you will all appreciate.”

But he had hardly cleared his throat when the screaming began. It was the high pitched terrified screaming of a young woman who was being murdered. It so shocked and bewildered them that even Scott of the Navy was staggered where he stood. Then the screaming head was seen coming round the bend, the torso, and finally the very short shorts and the flashing legs. A few yards behind came Andie, with bent body, and the springing strides a hillman is inclined to adopt when he is being beaten in a walking competition. Scott only managed five gallant strides before the young woman threw herself solidly upon his protection. From behind the tall monolith, Andie thrust a grinning head.

Grant was the first to react. His person began to work as though the tail of a long eel had stuck in his throat on the way down. But he was unobserved, for younger eyes were concerned with the Navy's expert handling of the occasion.

“What happened, young woman?” asked the Colonel.

She straightened herself from a reluctant mooring. “He—he attacked me.”

“What did he do?”

“He—he was going to——”

“But he didn't actually?” demanded the Colonel like a judge.

“Hang it, Colonel, you could see what was happening,” said Scott who was thirty-five and knowledgeable.

“We all observed that part of it, Mr Scott—right to the end,” remarked the Colonel with excellent asperity. Then he turned to the lady. “He didn't actually lay hands on you, did he?”

She was trembling but looked at him. “N-no.”

“Well, let that be a lesson to you,” he said sternly.

Her eyes opened to the full and a glint of anger shone. She had become aware of the male audience. “I didn't——”

“Naturally.” He nodded. “Where's Arthur?”

She had finally got some control of herself and with an intolerant mien turned her head as if Arthur might appear out of the blue; which he did.

“Come,” said the Colonel to her with a small bow, “and we shall hold converse with Arthur touching matters of publicity.” And she went with him like one striving to be unselfconscious in amateur theatricals.

Upon the watching silence, Armstrong murmured thoughtfully, “As a Highland foray, it had its points.”

“You pipe down,” said Scott. “Don't you think, Blair, the Colonel was a bit tough?”

“I rather suspect,” answered Blair, “that he thought you might have been unequal to dealing with hysterics.”

“By what warrant?”

But Grant was walking towards Andie.

Andie's embarrassment was that of a good-natured boy who cannot stop twisting and laughing at having been found out in something more unexpected than disreputable. His eyes glinted with light and his swayings and contentions were as remarkable as his laughter.

“Andie, I'm surprised at you!”

“He—he—he—e—e——”

“It's no laughing matter!”

“Whu—hu—hu—u——” And though the body doubled, the better to squeeze out the breath, the bright eyes were watching with a cuteness.

Suddenly a voice behind barked a laugh and Grant, swinging round, observed that three of the young men had come up and that the others were on the way. Jim Dickson had been unable to control himself, though he had had the grace to turn his back. Grant's eyes ran over the landscape, but there was no sign of the Colonel and the lady, whom happily the cairn concealed. But the other faces were also being affected by Andie's mirth. Scott stared at it, then he suddenly broke. “You d-dog!” he cried out of a rich fellow feeling, laughing from the diaphragm. He took paces away and paces back; threw his head up. The boys let themselves go.

“Here—stop it!” Grant yelled. “Sc-c-cott!” Then he gave way also.

Presently the Colonel came striding towards them. “That's a fine way to behave, I must say. I expected more from you, Grant.”

“Huh—he—e—e——” commented Andie, still enjoying the whole splendid performance.

“And you're the ringleader!” the Colonel shouted at him.

“Whu—ho—ha—he—e—e——” His face squeezed itself like a rubber ball at Christmas.

The Colonel's nostrils snorted, his stomach abruptly keeping time, then he laughed manfully where he stood.

Grant saw Andie home. To Mrs Mackenzie he explained that he might be able to engage Andie on the same work as before, the young men, who were from a University, having greatly taken to him.

Mrs Mackenzie thanked him, said it was very kind of them all, but there was work to do at the stone-breaking for the road and it was more suitable that this should be gone on with.

He saw that she was troubled and did not wish her son to have anything more to do with them. When he asked her to think it over, she said simply, “No, he is not fitted for your company.”

“I think you are wrong. We all understand him.”

“I am his mother,” she said. As though to make it easier for him, she added, “The stone-breaking is what we mostly rely on. We must keep up with it.”

“I quite understand,” he said. Then he had a helpful thought. “In that case we had better square up for last week.”

“But we have done nothing——”

“But that's not your fault. I didn't pay you off.” By good luck he had three pounds. in his pocket-book. He placed the money on the table.

“But I cannot——”

“And you consider yourself a business woman! I hope you are not so soft with the road surveyor.”

She was moved. “It's very kind of you.”

“Just business. And we'll be seeing you. So long just now.”

She did not answer and he was glad to get out.

When Andie appeared at the cairn the following morning, he received an ovation from the young men. The preliminary work of opening up the passage had just started and Andie, wading in, began to hurl the stones behind him with skilled ease.

Grant spoke to the Colonel of his interview with Mrs Mackenzie.

“Uhm,” replied the Colonel. “We don't need him.” His eye roved. “Though he might have earned his keep,” he suggested in a rather loud voice, “if only by keeping the young women away.”

It was clear, however, that Colonel Mackintosh did not really want him, that he was all set now to see the work go ahead in an intelligent way, without distractions. The whole affair must be a simple object lesson for these young fellows. When Mrs Mackenzie appeared the position grew complicated. Andie stubbornly refused to budge.

“Just wait a bit, Mrs Mackenzie,” Grant said to her. “We'll fix it all right.”

Meantime some of the young men had been murmuring together and Jim Dickson strolled up to his uncle, the Colonel. “Can I have a word with you and Mr Grant?” The three withdrew.

“We were talking it over in camp last night,” said Jim. “We understand from you, Uncle James, that the finding of the crock of gold would be of primary archaeological importance. Our feeling was that if we grew very friendly with Andie, then—anything might happen, naturally enough.”

The Colonel eyed his nephew. “Uhm,” he said. In his dispositions for the actual work, he had forgotten the crock.

“That is, if it is,” said Jim.

“If what is?” demanded the Colonel.

“If the crock of gold is,” said Jim with mild innocence.

“
If
is the operative word,” said the Colonel, easing his suspicions.

“Some of them did rather suggest it was like hunting a fairy story,” his nephew agreed.

“Hm! What do you say, Grant?”

“I think he's right,” said Grant shortly.

“Very well. Fix the woman—and let the Fool carry on for a bit anyhow. And you, young fellow—no nonsense!” Jim's face looked hurt, then it smiled.

A few happy days followed for both Andie and his mother. The lads were fond of him and treated him in a natural happy-go-lucky way. “Hullo, Andie, how goes it?” “Gu—gu——” “Fine!” They shared their sweet ration with him and when Mrs Mackenzie appreciated their astonishment at one basket of two dozen fresh eggs, she made arrangements with her neighbours for a daily collection. They also seemed to be able to drink immense quantities of milk, and did not appear repelled at the notion of a boiled fowl in a great iron pot of broth. They insisted on paying for everything and a price list was agreed upon. There were trials of strength over boulders or great slabs. Mrs Mackenzie had never known her son so happy. Once Grant caught her, with knitting needles arrested, looking over at three of the lads working on a new cutting. One of them had obviously made some sort of joke, for he dug Andie in the ribs with his elbow, as if he were a sly dog. Andie swayed with mirth. Grant knew, by the way Mrs Mackenzie's body moved upon itself, that she was touched in some deep maternal region where the line between happiness and tears is hardly definable.

But such extraordinary theories had been pushed upon them by Scott at dinner for four in Kinlochoscar Hotel the other evening that a car driver had had to be knocked out of bed to take Grant home and the Colonel was still suffering from a sort of general indigestion. Among those mentioned in the debate were Tylor, Schliemann, Valerius Maximus (who said the Gauls lent each other money repayable in the next world), Ra-Osiris and his god's liquid, Leucippus who founded the atom theory in the fifth century B.C., Pythagoras and the Orphic dogma of moral dualism, King Arthur, Robert Kirk, the Arab Avicenna who knew how the human mind could alter objects, and the Presbytery of Dingwall which took action against four Mackenzies for sacrificing a bull on an island in Loch Maree in 1678. And all this as a sort of general disposition of forces by Scott to confuse counsel while he made his main move on the tall monolith, for he had been more attracted by Grant's suggestion of a phallic symbolism than by his crock of gold. “The phallic has got more to it,” he said, “and to think of it—in these parts!”

“Why particularly in these parts,” asked the Colonel.

“Because they had more time for it—obviously,” replied Scott. “In the comparative absence of mere distractions like culture and its rituals, which still astonish any honest man——”

“But you can raise a culture on anything—”

“Exactly! That's my whole point. Here they had
something
to raise it on, something that still remains even more fundamental, thank God, than an ideology.”

At 1.30 a.m. Scott had put his helm over and headed for the main objective. “At least we can have a shot at this: let us dig down to the base of the monolith. Supposing we find, for example, that it has been shored up in order to cast its shadow at the given moment into the exact spot! Wouldn't that suggest something? Once we are certain of the levels, the original levels . . . . “

And now this afternoon, as Grant turned away from his vision of maternal emotion, he heard the Colonel say, “For God's sake, keep that thing still.”

Scott relaxed his grip on the handle of the pickaxe, which he had essayed to swing as a Highland athlete swings the sports hammer, and said, “Why not now? The chambers have been detailed and the levels taken. The boys are back at donkey work and——”

“I don't consider excavation donkey work. At least it should be supervised. Besides, as I said, when we have completely finished with the cairn——”

“But look, Colonel. I could get down to this thing myself in a couple of shakes. Blair is lost in the northern radial incision. You are both, Grant and yourself—aren't you, Grant? What do you think?”

“We believe in order,” said Grant.

“Exactly! But what's order without inspiration? Assuming we establish a phallic significance, the effect on these youngsters will be noticeable in an added zest. It will give them an eye for everything. I have always maintained that archaeology should be cheered on.”

Scott knew he could make the Colonel laugh in the end, even if he had to stand on his head, which he had already done on three separate days. He had even laid level half crowns with Blair that he could get Andie to manage it yet.