The Silver Darlings (20 page)

And though they both felt wide awake as sunlight, yet in a very short time they were in a deep sleep.

In the year, there were many particular seasons: the long festival of the New Year, when folk visited one another’s houses, the men with a snatch of song in their mouths as they advanced with their bottles and offered the strong product of the barley, which was tasted after a little speech of good wishes for health and happiness; the preparing of
the land for the spring sowing; the cutting of the peats in May; this new and overpowering excitement of the herring fishing in July and August; and, lastly, the harvesting of the crops, followed by the November market and the long winter nights of inside work, when women carded and spun and knitted, and men and boys sat round the fire
discussing
the world and telling stories.

Of these, harvest-time was still in some profound sense the most significant. When the last sheaf had been cut and stooked—or carried in as a trophy—a man’s eyes going over his land were satisfied. Whatever befell now, there would be meal in the girnel and straw for the beasts. It cleansed the mind, satisfied manhood, and released care. The rest was in the hands of God.

Then a man might look at a woman in the gloaming, in the dim light of a barn, under the great harvest moon, and see her hair like the ripened corn or dark as sleep.

The harvesting that followed Finn’s struggle with the eel and the quarrel with his mother, brought with it an incident that worked deeply in Finn’s mind. It was the
custom
for friendly neighbours to assist one another, and when the grain had been stooked at Roddie’s home, Roddie and Shiela and Duncan had come down to Kirsty’s. They were a happy party and the work had gone ahead in great style. Kirsty had appeared with bread and cheese, whisky and barley-water, to celebrate the beginning, and the proper words had been spoken and the right blessings invoked, for Kirsty knew how a thing should be done decently. Sandy Ware might talk of pagan practices: that did not worry Kirsty. The last sheaf was cut on the edge of the dark, and though there were folk who feared Kirsty’s tongue and thought she was hard, yet a few dropped in in the passing, for it does the heart good to see a harvest gathered
anywhere
at any time. Moreover, if Kirsty offered a dram, one could rely on its being “special”! So faces were smiling in the kitchen and every taste of the liquor was a speech.

Finn, who was always conscious of Roddie’s presence
anywhere, suddenly missed him and went out. The moon was rising and the new stooks were casting shadows. It was so lovely a night that it made him feel restless. The day’s labour lay warm and sluggish in his blood. Manhood was troubling his body with its premonitions of things to come, and the stooks were Kirsty’s, but they were also partly his, in the way that stooks were a man’s product, as articles made of wool were a woman’s. Roddie had said, “You have a good harvest here, Finn.” And he had looked it over and answered, “Not so bad.” The quiet, moonlit land and the peaked stooks like little folks’ houses: he gazed at them a moment as at something intimate and strange in his own mind, and wondered where Roddie had gone. Probably into the byre, where a man naturally goes now and then to be out of sight of womenkind. He went quickly, from the generous impulse the night put in his breast, and came on them just inside the byre door, Catrine with her face white and scared and Roddie, a yard from her, silent. They looked at him but did not speak, and in that queer, still moment Finn’s breast seemed to crush together and fall down inside him. A great awkwardness held his body so that he could not move.

Roddie greeted him, but there was no warmth in his voice; it was quiet and cool; not angry or annoyed, but quiet and distant, like something smooth and fatal.

Finn felt his body twisting. He wanted with all his heart to take it away, but it would not come. “Some more folk in,” his mouth muttered.

“In that case, I’m off,” Roddie said.

“You’d better come in and say good night to Kirsty,” Catrine suggested in a curious withdrawn voice.

Finn got out of the door, but before he had managed a couple of clear steps Roddie called, “Good night.” Finn felt his mother coming behind him, but did not turn round, nor did he go into the house, passing the door as if he had something to see to.

But he walked without seeing the ground he trod on,
though his feet took him down into the hidden alleyways among the gorse bushes. He stood and gazed over the burn, silver-bright under the moon, but could not gaze long, so restless he felt, with a flutter in his mind, like the flutter of a tumbled bird.

Roddie and his mother.

He had never dreamt of anything between them. He knew all about flesh relations. He could not think, and chewed stalks of grass, and did not know what to do. A tremulous feeling began to beat up in his chest and made him feel sick.

Roddie was thirty-eight and Catrine thirty-three. In Finn’s thought they were fixed in their courses like the sun and the moon. They were old people.

His mother’s face had been white and scared and
somehow
extraordinarily pitiful.

Suddenly he hated what he had seen‚ hated it in dumb, frightened anger, hated its bodily crush, its tragic pallor, and moved swiftly on to the moor, as if the ghost of his father had come up behind him.

After that night Finn cunningly hid things inside
himself
, yet at the same time found a greater release in life. Not only did the croft work occupy his mind in a more
man-like
way, but he also looked for companionship outside the home. Increasingly his evenings were spent in other houses with lads of his own age and older, gay evenings, with songs and story-telling, and, above all, with talk of the sea. The great rendezvous for sea-talk was the kitchen of Meg, the net-maker. And one Monday evening Finn scored a triumph there—and took into himself a new and haunting disquiet.

It was a memorable Monday from the first entrance of “the professor” into the long, low thatched building that was his school. Education was a voluntary affair, but
respect
for learning was deep in the minds of the folk, because it came out of a very ancient tradition, the tradition of the bards with their classic poetry, in epic and in song, and
their extensive knowledge of history, particularly the real and legendary history of their own race. While each scholar took a peat with him every morning, on Monday he also took a penny.

The long plank seats were crowded with boys and men, smooth-faced and heavily bearded, when “the professor” strode in and, whisking off his bonnet, dumped it upon a wooden peg, completely unaware that he had also removed his wig. Eyes gleamed and young bodies squirmed to
repress
their mirth at sight of the wigless head. But prayer first. Then a chapter of the Bible. Mr. Gordon went for his hat to collect the pennies and discovered his wig. “Ha,” he said, “ha, now I understand! Hm!” He put on his wig and with his hat held out in front of him moved along the back seat collecting his pennies. While he turned to the next seat, two boys slipped from the off end of it into the back seat. The bulk of the school saw the manœuvre and waited. Along came Mr. Gordon and saw nothing. The two young rascals had saved their pennies. Beards shook at them, but the eyes above were merry. For the professor had obviously got some sort of bee in his wig this morning.

The reading was perfunctory; the writing, as always, strictly supervised, but no more; so it must be the
arithmetic
. It was.

“Most of you here are interested in the industry that is concerned with catching white herrings. Very well. Instead of directing our attention to the consideration of number in an abstract way, I propose to-day to apply it to this particular industry. As a people you may be in danger, as you have been in the past, of being taken advantage of by governing forces superior in possessions, in craft, and in knowledge—particularly in knowledge of arithmetic. I should not like it to rest at my door that, in this matter of preparing you to judge your own respective positions, I had failed in so elementary a duty as providing you with the necessary knowledge.”

They liked this sort of talk for its difficult words and the fine rhythm of the sentences rather than for its
meaning
. Moreover, Mr. Gordon was inclined to be a rebel against “authority”, as his ambition to enter the ministry had been balked several years before by “governing forces”.

He was a tall, lean, drooping man, with a manner often absent-minded but occasionally extremely pointed and alive. Obviously he had been thinking over the questions which he now proceeded to put to them:

“How many women are there in a gutting crew, and what do they do?”

“Three. Two gutters and one packer.”

“What do they jointly earn for gutting and packing one barrel of herring? You!”

“Fourpence,” said the fisherman.

“How many herring are there in a barrel?”

All were very interested now, and as the number varied according to the size and quality of the herring, Mr. Gordon agreed: “There can be 800. So let us call it 800. Now what I want you to tell me is: What does a woman get for gutting 100 herrings?”

He turned away to give them time. “Well? You, Donald.”

But they were troubled.

“Take it home with you and bring me the answer
tomorrow
,” said Mr. Gordon, before they had proper time to work it out. “Now,” he continued briskly, “we have in our midst a lady who is a distinguished craftswoman in net-making. I assume you know to whom I refer?”

“Meg,” said one of the boys who had saved his penny, and the school laughed.

“How much is paid to this lady for the making of a net?”

“One pound.”

“What is the length of a net? You.”

“Twenty-five fathom,” answered a skipper.

When Mr. Gordon had this translated into fifty yards and had discovered that the depth of the net was fourteen yards and that the mesh from knot to knot must be one inch, he asked for the number of meshes in the net, and in due course was given the correct answer.

“Now,” said Mr. Gordon, “each mesh is contained by—how many knots?”

“Four.”

“Four. Agreed. Well now, how many knots are there in the net?” He dusted the chalk from his palms and was turning away when he said, “What! Already?”

The answer given was four times the number of meshes.

“You all appear to be agreed?” And then it was that Finn made the impatient movement with his hand. “
Someone
seems to be troubled,” remarked Mr. Gordon, giving Finn time.

He walked up and down the floor, with a dry smile.

They all got troubled. They began to make dots on their slates and saw at once that four times the number of meshes was absurd.

“Well?”

Finn raised his head. “The number of knots along the top is 1,801. The number down from that 504. So there are 505 lines of 1,801 in each. The total”—he paused to add on his slate—“is 909,505 knots.”

“Very good, indeed. I compliment you. Excellent.” He was so delighted that he drew a small net on the blackboard and illustrated the problem at length.

“Finally,” said Mr. Gordon, “how many knots does Meg—I mean the lady who makes the net—how many knots has she to tie to earn one penny, ignoring fractions?”

This time there was no catch. Meg had to tie 3,789 knots for one penny.

The number was so large that it made them twinkle with mirth. She fairly earned her penny!

At home that evening Finn got up to go out.

“Where are you off to now?” asked Kirsty.

“Over to Meg’s.”

“It’s no business of mine,” said Kirsty, pressing spiritedly on the treadle of her spinning-wheel.

Catrine looked up at him from her carding-combs and smiled. “Don’t be late.”

He walked out without answering. The dumb mood was on him as he entered at Meg’s door, and he was taken aback when greeted with, “Here comes the professor!” There was laughter. “Tell Meg about her knots!” cried Wull. Then Finn understood and flushed.

George, the foreman, paused in his measurement of the meshes with a yard stick. Meg, seated at her new net, turned her head and welcomed Finn: “Come away,
laddie
.” She spoke the word in English. She often used an English word, and her voice had the south-side accent, for her mother had come from Macduff. Sometimes when they were in a good mood they would mimic her accent and English words. She was a little woman, tidy as a provident hen, her head sleek with dark hair that showed no grey though she was over sixty. Her house was astonishingly clean, with plates and bowls gleaming from high dresser shelves in the light that leapt and winked from the fire and burned more steadily from the cruisie-lamp near her shoulder. This lamp was no more than an iron saucer, filled with clear fish oil, from which a wick burned. The wick was the white pith of a bulrush looped where it lay in the oil, the lighted end leaning against a shallow spout in the rim of the saucer. This was the common lamp, but folk did not use it unless at labour, because oil was dear. Meg made her own oil, keeping all the livers she could get from the fishermen in a little barrel. In the last few years since cured herring had become plentiful, Meg had found it much easier to get white-fish livers.

There were nearly a score of persons in the room, and often it was packed to the door. Bearded young fishermen, a few of the older men like Wull, lads crushed together, and two or three married women and unmarried girls,
apparently anxious to study Meg’s art, but otherwise
intent
on keeping the fun going.

Finn’s entrance created a great hubbub, and while he was having his leg pulled, George resumed his
measurement
and counting. Then he clapped Meg on the shoulder. “Very good,” he said, quietly for him.

But Wull was watching. “Big enough to let whales through, George?” he called.

“They are right,” said George, “according to law.”

There was laughter at that, for sometimes, behind his back, George was called “According-to-law”. Wull’s eyes twinkled, for he liked to be the author of merriment. “They may be right according to law, but are they right according to the herring?” he asked.