And the Land Lay Still
Read And the Land Lay Still Online
Authors: James Robertson
By the same author
The Ragged Man’s Complaint
The Fanatic
Joseph Knight
The Testament of Gideon Mack
JAMES ROBERTSON
HAMISH HAMILTON
an imprint of
PENGUIN BOOKS
HAMISH HAMILTON
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published 2010
Copyright © James Robertson, 2010
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-14-195939-9
This book is dedicated to the memory of two other Anguses and one other Jean. All three were, and continue to be, influences in subtle and special ways.
Angus Matheson 1926–2007
Angus Calder 1942–2008
Jean Bonnar 1923–2008
PART TWO:
The Persistence of Memory
PART THREE:
The Original Mr Bond
PART FOUR:
Scenes from Olden Days
PART FIVE:
Questions of Loyalties
PART SIX:
The Gift of the Moment
The year was ending, and the land lay still.
Despite our countdown, we were loath to go,
kept padding along the ridge, the broad glow
of the city beneath us, and the hill
swirling with a little mist. Stars were right,
plans, power; only now this unforeseen
reluctance, like a slate we could not clean
of characters, yet could not read, or write
our answers on, or smash, or take with us.
Not a hedgehog stirred. We sighed, climbed in, locked.
If it was love we felt, would it not keep,
and travel where we travelled? Without fuss
we lifted off, but as we checked and talked
a far horn grew to break that people’s sleep.
– Edwin Morgan (from
Sonnets from Scotland
)
Sometimes it felt like walking, sometimes it felt like flying. Or it felt like floating, or drifting, or like nothing at all. No motion. Just, there you were – in, on – and there it was – below, around – a splash of land on the ocean, a splatter of stone soil grass forest road town city, and broken-off bits scattered across the great wet belly of the world. And over it splashed lochs and rivers and burns, so much cold, clear water you’d think the land would drown in it, but it didn’t, it lay there still, breathing – sodden and bogged down in some parts, rock-hard and ragged in others, but still breathing. And the sea breathing its endless breaths around it, in out in out in out, great white waves crashing on black rocks, exhausted waves flopping flatly on deserted beaches, weed washing back and forth in bays and inlets, and fish eels lobsters seals ebbing and flowing in the tidal inhalations, exhalations, and sometimes a seal watching you, ten twenty thirty minutes an hour, submerging then resurfacing, always watching you, coming closer, keeping a distance, and you watching the seal, pacing it along the shore, connected but never connected, always apart. The source of stories and legends was in those long mutual observations, those reachings for the unreachable, yearnings for the unobtainable. But that was what they were, unobtainable, and so you turned and came away from the edge, and there was the land again, the earth – rich poor red black brown – and grass flowers trees crops grew from the earth and were nourished by it. And farmers broke the earth and turned it, and that was humankind’s relationship with the land, to need it and love it and break it into giving. When you first set out there were still heavy horses pulling the ploughs but before long they were all but gone, and chugging tractors slogged their way across the patterned fields, between drystane dykes and hedgerows and fences and stands of trees, and white plumes of gulls followed the tractors by day, and black parliaments of crows convened in the trees as night fell. And in the days of early summer you might walk on through the empty hours if there was enough light and you weren’t tired. So you walked and you were alone, and later you’d lie down to rest, to sleep in the sun you’d once toiled and starved below. At other seasons, or if it was cold or wet, you found a barn or a byre
or a shed or some other shelter and you bielded there and you were alone; but if the night was dry and looked like staying that way you wrapped yourself in your many layers and your big coat above them all and found a place to lie among trees, or in the lee of a wall or a hedge, you could make your bed anywhere if you were away from people, if you were in the country, and even in the wettest weather you could find shelter in caves and crannies, in empty structures made and left by men, or deep in under the thickest, lowest trees. You could lie for days if days of lying were required, measuring out what food you had, closing down your energy. Nothing was more comfortable to you than the hard roughness of the ground beneath you, nothing more comforting than darkness and utter silence or the cry of owls hunting in the moonlight and the sudden scuffling of their prey among leaves, the strange and familiar signals of night creatures going about their business. Small living things that crept near you, around you, sometimes over you. They did not frighten you, they reassured you. You could sleep like a bairn in such circumstances, hours and hours of dreamless sleep, then waking in the early light, grass heavy with dew and your breath white in the air. You’d stretch and get to your feet, stamp them, warm yourself with violent self-embraces of the arms, you’d reach into your pocket for a bit of bread or something else you had there, or if there was nothing there was nothing, you’d be off anyway, walking again. You were safe then, you were alone, you could breathe easy, and you did.
PART ONE
Mike is at the bedroom window, taking in the view of the water, the road and the scattering of cottages along it, when he sees Murdo’s red van come round the end of the kyle. The van disappears for a few seconds, then begins to climb the hill. It slows, and pulls in at the gate. After a minute, as if he’s been plucking up courage or maybe just thinking something over, Murdo gets out and starts up the track. By the time he arrives at the back door Mike is there waiting for him. With a shy, almost sly grin Murdo proffers a plastic bag. Mike unwraps the newspaper bundle it contains and there are two rainbow trout shining in the morning sun.
‘They’re beautiful,’ Mike says.
‘Fresh from the loch last night,’ Murdo says. ‘Can you make use of them?’
‘Of course. I’ll cook them tonight. Will you come for your tea?’
‘Och, they’ll just do yourself nicely.’
‘Nonsense. There’s one each.’
‘They’re not that big.’
‘They’re fine. I’ll make plenty of tatties. Will you come?’
‘I might at that. I have a few things to do first.’
‘Well, it’s only ten o’clock. You have all day. But come any time you like. I’m not going anywhere.’
‘I will then.’
The necessary negotiations over, they stand enjoying the sun, of which there has not been too much lately. Mike says, ‘Do you have a moment just now?’
Murdo looks down at the van and shrugs. ‘There’s nothing that won’t keep.’
‘I want to show you something.’
‘Aye, do you?’
Inside, Mike puts the fish in the kitchen sink. They go into the hallway, past the front door that’s never used, through the sitting
room and into the sun lounge that Murdo’s uncle built at the side of the house thirty-five years ago for Mike’s father.
‘I was at my father’s archive again yesterday,’ Mike says, ‘trying to impose a bit more order on it. And going through the photographs for this exhibition, yet again.’
‘The one in … Edinburgh?’ Murdo makes it sound not just two hundred and fifty miles away but as if it’s on another continent.
‘Yes. I keep thinking I’ve made the final selection, and then I find I haven’t.’
‘And there’s to be a book as well?’
‘To go with the exhibition, yes. I’m trying to write the introduction, but it’s not going too well. Anyway, I was sorting through some boxes and I came across this photograph.’
He hands over the print. Murdo holds it by the edges with his calloused fingers and looks at it thoughtfully, as he might at a diagram of how to assemble a new tool.
‘I’d never seen it before last night,’ Mike says, ‘but as soon as I did I remembered everything about it. You’re looking at probably the only photograph in existence of the three of us together. My father, my mother and myself, I mean. Maybe my mother has some others secreted away, but I doubt it.’
‘It’s your father right enough,’ Murdo says. ‘A good-looking man. And is that your mother? She’s a bonnie woman. She doesn’t look very pleased though.’
‘She wasn’t very pleased,’ Mike says, thinking that being pleased hasn’t ever been one of Isobel’s strong points, not that he can remember. ‘That was the first time I was ever in these parts. July, 1964. We were on holiday. That’s Dounreay, of course, in the background.’
‘Aye. Awful-looking place, isn’t it?’
‘At the time we didn’t think so. It seemed clean and bright and modern.’
‘I never liked it, right from the start. They only put it there in case it blew up. Who’d care if it blew up there? It employed a lot of people over the years, I suppose, but what are they all meant to do now?’ He reins himself in. ‘But you surely didn’t spend your holiday at Dounreay?’
‘No, it was just a stop on the way. We had a week and we drove
over to the west, then round the north coast, down to Inverness and home again.’
‘That’s a fair distance in a week.’
‘It certainly was then. There were no bridges. It was all ferries and some of them only took a couple of cars at a time.’
‘There wouldn’t have been so many cars though.’
‘No, not many. Anyway, I just wanted to show you. My family, such as it was. My father moved out later that year and they got divorced not long after that.’
‘And this is yourself. How old are you?’
‘I was nine.’
‘You have very thin legs,’ Murdo says. ‘In the picture, I mean.’
‘I look a bit delicate, don’t I?’
‘If you’d lived here we’d have toughened you up.’
‘Oh?’
‘We’d have been at the school together. I’d have beaten you up regularly.’
‘There’s three years between us. You wouldn’t even have noticed me.’
‘Believe me, boy, there was no way you could not be noticed. Everybody noticed everything about everybody.’
‘And do they still?’
‘Not so much. You incomers guard your privacy well. But people around here have always been pretty discreet, you know, whatever they notice.’