The Big Music (20 page)

He looks away.

And for a minute, though she’s crying now and I must go to her, I want to stay. Tell him everything, tell it all. For it’s true, she is my daughter, Callum – and nothing to do with you – my child who was picked up from her basket yesterday morning when she was sleeping and taken off to the hills …

Your baby.

My child, who I thought, yesterday morning, I might never see again.

My baby.

My child.

My daughter.

And nothing to do with you at all.

But not as simple as that either. And part of me wants to explain that to him, to Callum …

Your baby.

About the way she was taken – because otherwise how could he ever understand? About why his father would steal my daughter away as he did, to have her with him up there in the hills? Because if I don’t tell him, none of it makes any sense to him – why would it? And part of me wants to tell him now, everything, the story of us together, how his father is wrought in with us here, so twisted into the makings of this place, to me and Margaret and my child, our lives here and Iain, too … That nothing’s as simple as:
Your baby.

Though, God knows, I wasn’t happy that John took her off the way he did. God knows that it was a terrible thing, to take a baby away like that, a terrible thing and it’s right that Callum would be horrified by his father when he heard about it, and ashamed … But if I could just explain to Callum, too. How his father’s carrying away of my daughter,
my
daughter, and my mother’s daughter’s daughter …

If I could just explain:

‘It’s not as simple as you might think.’

Not as simple – as though his taking her were a crime or confusion or bad intent – when:

I want to say to him:

‘
Your baby
, my Katherine Anna …

‘She’s your father’s granddaughter, too.’

And from the moment she was born all she’s heard is the sound of the pipes playing on our father’s recordings, Callum. Our father. So she knows them like you and I know them, all the notes, all the semibreves and
embellishments
of that strange mismatched scale of his. Our father. You know how he sounds, Callum – and for her, too, he is also familiar. Her hands forming little fists up at the side of her head as she slept those first days but still hearing that particular music of our father through her dreams … 

If I could say all of these things, but of course I don’t say them.

So that Callum will never know, any more than his father will know … That none of this could ever be as simple as:
Your baby
. That although, yes, it was unknown to me that my daughter would be taken by an old man, and so early in the morning that he could get far, far away … And, yes, terrible for me to be blank and powerless with the fear of what might happen, then, what he might do … Yet it’s also not strange that my daughter would be so taken.

‘When it was her grandfather who took her, Callum’, if I could say that. ‘My father. Your father. So she’s part of him, my Katherine Anna. That’s why he wanted her out on the hills, now he’s old and dying and can hear only silence in the air. That’s why he wanted to keep her with him, to hold her in his arms.’

But I can’t say any of it. I have to go to my baby now. And he knows nothing, Callum. Nothing. He doesn’t live here. He wasn’t here yesterday when it happened, when his father stole my child away. He hasn’t seen his father, not for ten years, more. He doesn’t know him, the reasons for what he did, why he might have done it. Though he may go on talking about it, saying now, ‘I don’t know what I can do to make up for my father, Helen. If only I’d been here. I could have stopped it. Could have stopped him. I could have helped you.’

Callum.

And starting to be distraught now, like he used to get upset when we were children, worrying about something, something to do with his father, what he should be doing, what he’s not doing. Something wrong.

‘It’s okay’ I say to him. Quietly, gently.

I have to go.

‘Shhh …’ I say, ‘There’s no need …’ for I’m calming him down. ‘Shhh …’ – like I used to when we were young.
You don’t have to say anything, Callum. You don’t have to do anything at all.

Because there’s nothing he can do. As there was nothing he could do then, either, when he was a boy – to feel better about his father. He doesn’t know him. He was never there to know. So just leave it at that, Callum. Let him go. Forget about your father. We can take care of him
here. We’ve taken care of him for a long time. Just go in and say goodnight like you have to.

I must go. My daughter is crying. All I can do is go to her – so I’ve turned to leave but Callum says then, ‘Tell your father I won’t be needing him tomorrow.’

And for a second I stop.

‘I saw him before’ he says, ‘with the guns, he was cleaning the guns but tell him –’

He means Iain.

Though for a second I had thought –

Your father. My father.

Then I say, ‘I don’t think –’ I start to reply, but …

What are you saying, Callum?

That you would talk to me like this?

Who are you trying to be? Who are you?

That you would act this way?

‘I don’t think that he’s expecting it’ I say. ‘Iain. To take you out, I mean. He’s not expecting to do that. With your father so ill.’

And I look at him again, the poor man. He’s drunk. That’s all. The whisky bottle is there on the sideboard half done. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. Doing. He’s drunk and he’s scared.

‘But yes’ I say. ‘I will tell him.’

Because I must go to my baby now, before my mother gets there before me. To pick her up in my arms, feel the pang of milk coming,
unbuttoning
my shirt for her as I go up the stairs.

And poor Callum …

He doesn’t know. Anything. Can’t say.

He’s let everything be gone. Let himself down before me, be lost, be scared. Weak and with no father, as though he’s never had a father.

Callum.

For who were you trying to be just then?

That you would talk to me that way?

‘Goodnight’ I say.

Yet, as I turn, finally, to leave the room – the piece of light is still
there. Left from before with the two of us together. From this man who’s come to us from where he was, come back up the long road that’s behind him and I don’t know what will happen with us now. For I can’t talk to Callum about any of it, what happened yesterday, why it happened, what we’re going to do. That his father has stopped taking the medicine, doesn’t sleep, not really, any more. That for weeks before now he’s been going off on his own, for hours sometimes – and we don’t know what he’s been thinking, how to help him. We can’t help him, not really, not at all.

I can’t say.

None of it would make sense to him now. It’s too much, and it’s also not enough.

So I say nothing. I leave the room.

Yet still I sense the broken piece of light behind me as I go down the hall. It’s there at my back as I hear Callum call out, ‘Please tell your mother, Helen, I need her! To talk about what we’re going to do here! What I should do! Please, tell your mother –’

Even in those words, drunk words, half meaning and undone, light.

As he slumps back into his father’s chair. Slumped down, eyes closed, with his father on his way by now, way up into the far hills, he’s already there, and staying. There where the music is and he’ll not be back, Callum.

Come up over the top of the hill and to the other side.

It’s late now, outside the night drawn into itself with darkness, and this man, this Callum Innes Sutherland who’s driven north today, a man who is acting out of duty here, or so he thinks, so he’ll believe …

Who is he, really?

For he hasn’t gone through there, has he, to say goodnight? Just as frightened of his father as he ever was.

With number 23 playing in the room.
42

Just as frightened.

The sound of his father is all around him by now, and loud, coming in on him, holding him down. And with the sound of his father’s pacing in the music, too, the tread of his footsteps heavy, beating out the rhythm beneath the notes …

‘The Return’

And where do you go with that? How to proceed? How enter into the man’s bedroom at all when there’s nothing but the sound of him here and the thought of him and the memory of him. The sound and the pacing and the notes of him and the beat of his tread …

Though his father, Margaret said before, is light as a leaf.

A leaf. That’s how she put it, such a light, pretty way of talking about
something that could take Callum’s breath from him. For when there’s ‘The Return’ or ‘Retreat from the Hills’ or ‘The North Ascent’ or ‘On Going into Battle at Lochinver’ or ‘The March to the Western Side’ or ‘Tune for Murray, Son of John Murray’ or ‘The Birds’ or ‘The Capture of the MacKays’ … Or … Or … Or … Any of them … Any of the tunes … Numbers 23 or 15 or 7 or 2 … All the CDs and cassettes lined up in their places in the cupboard below the sideboard, each with its title, its number, each carrying in its depths the sound of his father, of his heavy tread … To say that what’s imprisoned in the dark room through there is light as a leaf, as light and delicate and frail … Still he is his father! He’s Callum’s father! And this – Callum may indicate around the room, the firelight, the black panes of glass, and the huge expanse of the emptiness beyond – this … ‘Home’, he might say …

Is his father’s House.

With his number 23 and his music everywhere in it.
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And it’s his father in that bed through there now, not a little thing – not a light and delicate thing, a leaf, Margaret – it’s his
father
, and God knows how he could have made it out to the hill yesterday for there’s nothing to him, Margaret says, just nothing …

But listen to the sound he makes! John Callum MacKay! Even the night is listening, pressed in at the glass.

To the Ceol Mor. The Big Music.

To all of it, its ground and mountain and hill and its stepping off the edge into air.

Its variations and embellishments and lovely, dazzling crown.
44

It’s here. Listen! As Callum stands, drinking his father’s whisky from a glass that’s his father’s glass, and hearing the Urlar and Taorluath and the Crunluath and the Crunluath A Mach.
45

A tune imagined for somewhere much larger than this room can contain.

All playing in this one small room.

So that, yes, his father may not be here with him but so he is also here. With his music, his CD case open and his dark writing, No. 23, inked on the paper flap. With the sideboard and the shelf where his father keeps the recordings of all his other tunes, the cases with his father’s marks, his hand, his signature, the numbers marked from No. 1 to No. 30, with No. 4 and 17 and 27 and 11. Recordings of all the piobaireachds he has ever made, the strathspeys and the marches and the songs and the laments. All of this … And this … And this …

All music that plays back to …

The secret place.

Where the tunes were written.

That hidden, secret place.
46

And not you,
Callum thinks, of his mother, of his wife, of his sons, of his father, or Margaret or Iain,
or you or you … Not one of you know.

His father doesn’t even know.

That he and Helen went there, that they found it, his father’s secret place where the tunes came from, and that they went in.

It was always Margaret used to take Callum through. He would be too scared to go in on his own, first too young and then later, when he was a man, too aware of the absences between his visits, those long months passed into ugly gaps of time that made it difficult to return then and so he felt ashamed and, as though he were still the little boy, afraid.

Yet there were reasons for his staying away. His father telling him increasingly not to bother coming up, so why would he? Arrive just to stand and wait? With his father there in his chair, gone deeper and deeper into himself and not caring about anyone else. Sipping at his whisky and not even answering for a time his son’s
Hello, Daddy.
His
How are you?
Not answering that question even.

Back then Margaret was the one who had always taken care of things between himself and his father. Just as she was the one, long ago, used to bring Callum into this room where he is now, holding him by the hand: ‘Best come and say goodnight to your father.’

All the time, back then, it was Margaret taking care. Callum would be through in the kitchen with her and Helen for his breakfast and his tea, a sandwich in his pocket and then off with Helen for the whole day, away at the hills or the river. Margaret looking out for him as well as looking after his father – because, always, she’s been looking after him and hadn’t it always been that way?

Margaret.

His father would say her name and the air around him went soft.

Just –
Margaret.

Just so.

For she did everything for his father. Everything. And maybe that was why it was easier, later, when Helen was gone and Callum himself finished at university and working and away … To stay away. Knowing Margaret was there. For, after all, what need to come back when his father had Margaret and her family in the House, when Margaret herself had been part of the House for so long and knew everything about it, how best to take care of his father over the years, what best to do? And, anyway, Callum always thought – with the old man not speaking, not caring whether anyone came to see him, any member of his family, his wife, or his son – what reason would there ever have been anyway for him to make the journey back here? So that, over the years, the visits became fewer, and more years passed between them, and by the time Callum was married, had a family of his own, sons of his own … How often did he come here then? Not often. Ten years ago the last time. Maybe more.