A History Maker (13 page)

“Have you another object to fight for in mind?”

“None. Not the faintest. But in six months — not more than six months — we'll be commanding whole new companies of troops just raring to go. I dare say we'll have thought of something better by then.”

“Would you mind saying a word about the manoeuvring of large new armies on common land for whole fortnights?” said a public eye chairman, “Won't that play havoc with the migration of gangrels? Not with all of them everywhere, of course, but many of them
sometimes?”

“Some havoc, no doubt,” said Hinchinbrook with a pleasant smile, “But we are many and they are few. I'm sure they'll manage to adapt. Besides, they stink. There is nothing to be alarmed about as long as our houses are safe.”

Wat blanked the screen and gloomily pondered the fact that every general in the world would soon command a new army of beginners, most of them bigger than his because they lived in more peopled places. He had another fit of wanting Delilah Puddock. He wanted to tie her up and torture her until she told him exactly what she was trying to do; he was also disgusted with himself because he knew she must have foreseen that reaction. He kicked his shoes off, lay on the bed and tried not to want her by remembering other women he had passionately wanted. Their only similarity was that none had passionately wanted him.

He had staggered after the henwife as soon as he learned to walk because she was small, aloof,
and unlike the comforting big-bosomed grannies and thin energetic ones. She only visited the house for the morning service, always ordering two sacks of grain and a book. She had a pocket for the book but he insisted on carrying it, trotting beside her when she crossed the garden to the poultry yard with a sack under each arm. After feeding the geese, hens and chickens she firmly took the book back, entered the ancient tower and shut him out. No other granny had a door which could be locked from inside. It was the only wooden door in Dryhope and he hated it, kicked and screamed at it, pounded it with his fists, threw stones at it and occasionally butted it with his head until the Dryhope mother came and carried him home. After what seemed years but was maybe less than a month the upper half of the door opened inward. Kittock leaned her folded arms on top of the lower half, looked down on him with interest and said, “Will you keep doing that till I let ye in?”

“Aye.”

“Even if I never let ye in?”

“Aye.”

“If you hold on to me you'll have a lonely life, Wattie. I don't like weans.”

“I don't care.”

“O, if you understand that cheeriness is not
man's chief end, come in.”

The tower wall was so thick that the doorway seemed a tunnel. It led to the living-room, a cavernous vault with a plank floor, a big flat-topped stove in the middle, several chairs and a table. The stove was called the Aga. Above it stood a giant bed whose leg-posts were seven feet high and nine inches square. It had a ladder to climb in by and a low plank wall to prevent rolling out. From floor to ceiling the walls were hidden by shelves packed with every size of book, some in good condition but most appearing to have been often read by people with dirty hands. She led him across this chamber and up a dank spiral stair. They reached to a vault shaped like the one below. It was loud with croodling pigeons and had a thick carpet of feathers and bird shit.

“The doocot,” she said, leading him higher.

They emerged between broken walls on an open space where brambles, birks and an osier bush sprouted. Wat, looking out across the sunlit loch, had never been so high. He felt as high as the hills. After a moment Kittock said,

“I am the henwife because I'm too selfish to be a housewife, too feart to be a gangrel. We should all be gangrels. Will I make ye one Wattie? I know their ways.”

“No.”

“Their lives are short but never dreich because they see more than settled folk — they can only feed and keep warm by seeing more. They have added reading to their old skills of song and story-telling. Some are still Christians — it adds zest to their swearing. Most are fiercely monogamous and often unfaithful. They need no powerplants and telecoms because the world is their house. Would you not like the world for your house Wattie?”

“It's too big, Kittock.”

“Gangrels don't think so. Do you promise never to try and stop me doing what I enjoy?”

“Aye.”

“Do you promise not to ask more than two questions a day?”

“Aye.”

“Do you promise to go on playing in the garden with your nephews and nieces?”

“Aye.”

“Then stay for a while and I'll teach ye to read.”

She had taught him to read very fast, he thought, remembering how shocked he had been when the lessons stopped. She had promised to cuddle him all night when he had read her a Rudyard Kipling story aloud from start to finish. In bed she always lay with her back to him;
he hated that so worked hard and read the story aloud perfectly.

“Good,” she said briskly, “My teaching days are over. Now you can teach yourself.”

“But you'll cuddle me all night?”

“Aye, for the first and last time. You should cuddle lassies of your own age.”

Because it was the first and last time he couldn't enjoy being cuddled by her that night. He told her so.

“Good!” she said pleasantly, “Neither of us is being used as a doll.”

“Are you my mother, Kittock?”

“Mibby. I had a wheen of bairns before I tired of housework. I was good at childbirth but never nursed the gets for more than a week because I didnae like small thoughtless animals. Luckily there are a lot of women who do. Folk who cannae talk bore me. I went to the stars to hear a brainier class of talker.”

“Why did ye come back?”

“The talkers up there are all specialists.”

“I hope you're my mother, Kittock.”

“It doesnae matter
who
is your mammy and daddy, you're the world's son, my man, born into the world's house, and if it's too big for you, leave it and crawl into a satellite or a crater with a roof over it on a dead world. Ask the grannies who your mammy is. They told you
about your daddy because boys are supposed to feel safer with a manly pattern ahead of them, just as girls are supposed to feel safer with a mother. Mibby they do feel safer but it's idol-worship or doll-cuddling just the same. The only pattern we should learn to follow is the one that grows inside us. You have to look in, not out to find that.”

“I don't know what ye mean Kittock.”

“Then forget it.”

He had never asked the grannies who his mother was in case she was not Kittock at all.

There was every kind of book on Kittock's shelves, many with pictures. He found one with tiny engravings of many naked women and a few men wearing curly wigs, knee breeches, embroidered dressing-gowns and buckled shoes. The men seemed to own a vast palace where they used the women as furniture and ornaments. The text was in words he could not read.

“What does
play-sir dam-our
mean, Kittock?”

“Pleasure of love, in French.”

“Will you teach me French?”

“No. Learn it through a telecom in the big house. Contact a French boy who wants to learn English. Show him that book and ask him to explain.”

“I wish you had a telecom.”

“I don't want to learn another language.”

“You could watch films.”

“It would waste my mind.”

He wanted to ask why, but it would have been his third question that day. He watched her hard and expectantly instead. She sighed and said, “When a lot of folk watch something on a screen they all see the same thing. What a damnable waste of mind! Readers bring books to life by filling the stories with voices, faces, scenery, ideas the author never dreamed of, things from their
own
minds. Every reader does it differently.”

“So when you and me read
The Cat That
Walked by Itself
we read a different story?” said Wat, disliking the idea.

“Exactly!” said Kittock with great satisfaction.

“Can a man say a sensible word?” said a fat, thickly bearded gangrel sitting in a chair near the Aga where he had been examining a book, “You undervalue intercourse between
people
, Kitty my love. Yes, in Hegelian terms every book is a thesis to which each and every reader's reaction — no matter how enthusiastic! — is antithesis and uniquely private. This would turn us into Babylonian chaos or a swarm of solipsistic monads if natural garrulity did not make us chorally symphonic. We mingle our
private and divergent responses to what delights or exasperates us, thus instigating a plurality of new syntheses. Glory be to God, you're a lovely woman, Kitty. Let a man tip another drop of real stuff into your glass.”

“Ignore him, Wat,” said Kittock amiably, “None of his words are sensible except a few at the end.”

Gangrels visited the tower to return and borrow books, usually bringing a hare or salmon for the larder, sometimes a load of peats or logs for the Aga. Wat hated them because he wanted Kittock to himself. He hated the fat man most because he had come early, seemed perfectly at home and showed no sign of going away. Kittock had produced two glasses which the fat man kept filling from a labelless bottle of clear liquid. At one point he asked Kittock,

“Should a man offer a drop of real stuff to your solemn young husband here?”

“Aye, but he'll refuse. He hates you.” The man asked Wat politely, “Is she telling the truth?”

“Aye.”

“Ah well, here's a health to you anyway.”

Later they were joined by another gangrel just as bad: a small thin one with a deeply wrinkled brow, moustache so bushy that it hid his mouth, a sack from which he removed another
bottle of real stuff, a copy of
Catch 22
, rabbits, birds, potatoes, onions and a turnip which he suggested would make a good game stew. Kittock started preparing it. The men exchanged tobacco pouches, filled their pipes, filled their glasses again and discussed whether ten thousand years of civilization should be called The Dark Ages because of their greed and cruelty, or The Middle Ages because they had achieved some splendid things. The discussion lasted throughout the afternoon, through a meal of game stew, through the evening until long after nightfall. During it Wat heard so many people confidently quoted that he thought the gangrels had recently met Socrates, Pericles, Voltaire, Frederick of Prussia, Pushkin, Czar Nicholas, James Kelman and Margaret Thatcher in remote cities. In Dryhope house he sometimes saw films of people living in cities, so did not know they had disappeared. And all the time Kittock listened closely to the men with quiet amusement which infuriated Wat because
he
could not amuse her that way. Without bidding anyone goodnight at last he climbed the ladder to bed and, despite the loud voices below, fell asleep without undressing.

And was shaken awake by Kittock saying,
“Home to your aunties, Wat! Home to your aunts!”

There was a smile on her face giving it a youthful beauty he had never seen before. When he understood what she meant he yelled, “No!” and clung to the side of the bed.

“Help me men!” she cried gaily, “Up here, Tiger Tim. Stay below and catch him, Desperate Dan.”

She and the small man lifted him and dropped him screaming into the arms of the fat man who carried Wat to the door, pushed him out, slammed and locked and bolted it behind him. The night was warm, a full moon in the sky. He rushed at the door, banged it uselessly with his shoulder, kicked it, hammered with his fists and yelled furiously for minutes on end till he was suddenly drenched by a big cold lump of water. It had been tipped from a pail by the fat man who, looking down from the broken tower top, said, “Moderate your transports you misfortunate wee bastard! It's a big bed but there's only room for two men when Kitty goes wild.”

Then he was being led back to his first home by a mother who said softly, “Poor Wat, poor Wat, why did ye attach yourself to
her?
Tonight you'll sleep with me.”

“No!”

“Well I'll put you in with Joe — he likes you.”

“No!”

“Then where can I put ye, Wattie? Who in this great big house do you want to sleep with? I can arrange it with anyone for tonight, maybe for longer. Peggy is loving. She's ten and plump and likes wee lads.”

Snatching his hand from hers he hardened every muscle till his body vibrated with tension and roared, “
Can a man not have a bed of his own?
” “O yes,” she said, smiling sadly down on him, “A man can have a bed of his own.”

A day later he saw Kittock at the morning service and glared at her. She smiled and shrugged back. His feelings then were exactly what he felt now for Delilah Puddock. Before returning from the stars he could not think of Kittock without pain; afterward he was as glad to see her as any of the rest.