The Key of the Chest (24 page)

‘No,' said Peter nodding. ‘I suppose there's nothing wrong.'

‘You know what I mean,' added the policeman quickly, for Kenneth had turned away with a hunch to his shoulders.

‘Yes, we know,' said Peter quietly. He nodded slowly. ‘We thought the minister would not want to preach tomorrow, and we thought we could make simple arrangements among us.'

As he paused, Kenneth asked sharply, ‘He's not going to preach?'

‘Yes, he's going to take the service as usual,' answered Peter, and his face steadied in a thoughtful way.

Kenneth kept looking at Peter. ‘I see,' he said ironically.

‘What?' Peter lifted up his bearded face.

‘Oh, it's all right,' said Kenneth. ‘He wouldn't give in.'

‘You sound a bit bitter, Kenneth.'

‘No,' answered Kenneth bitterly. ‘Merely the fact. He doesn't give in. That sort of power never does. It goes on. It's as strong as death.'

‘Would you have it give in?'

‘No,' answered Kenneth with sharper irony. ‘Why should I?'

‘You judge harshly. And from one point.'

‘It's a good point,' answered Kenneth.

‘You're a young man, Kenneth,' said Peter. ‘There's more than one thing in the world.'

‘Maybe,' replied Kenneth, who was thirty-five, ‘but there's death in it – all the time.'

‘Yes,' said Peter, looking at him. ‘There's death.'

‘Will you have another dram?' asked Kenneth politely.

‘No, I'll have no more. Thank you for it. I'll be going now, for they may be anxious at home.'

‘It's time I was home myself,' said the policeman.

Peter got up. Kenneth put the two glasses in an outside pocket and the bottle in an inside pocket. Then he opened the door.

The roar of the night came at them.

The policeman went one way and Peter MacInnes the other. The gloom enveloped them with the good night on their lips.

Kenneth locked the door and stood for a moment in its shelter, looking far in the direction of the roaring sea. The hounds of power on the hunt of death. Power – and death.

He shuddered from the cold and his own bitterness, and the high cry that was in him came out in a bitter curse.

From that cold, the boy Hamish snuggled in his bed beside his elder brother. They had spoken together in low voices for a long time, but now Neil, who was fifteen, had suddenly fallen asleep, for he had fought the wind that day for many hours along the southern shores of Loch Ros.

Hamish's mind always came back to the white hare. They said a witch could change into a hare. Maybe that had been in John-the-roadman's eye! But that was silly, too, because if so, why then would the gamekeepers, like Andrew Mackinnon – and Kenneth Grant getting a day, and others besides – why would they go on a great shoot of the white hares if they were witches? And everyone liked thick dark hare soup, with the meat broken up in it, and eating it with bursting hot potatoes on a cold day. Saliva made a small trickle on its own into Hamish's mouth. But the whiteness was beyond his mouth. And the figures in the dark of the Ros.

The way the minister had walked off blindly into the Ros, saying no word to Uncle Norman who had spoken calmly to him on the cliff-top…

And Dougald's cottage, where they had rested a little while, though the doctor had not stayed long, for Norman had said there was no need for the doctor to come back with
them. It would be out of his way and they could manage fine. And while they were talking like that, there was Dougald, silent, pouring the water in the teapot and spreading the cups like a woman. And all the time there were thoughts and things behind the surface. And Hamish knew fine that the doctor left to follow the minister lest something queer happened on that road.

And another thing – the way Dougald stuck the kitchen knife in the big jam-pot, and pulled the knife out laden, and tilted the jam on the thick slices of bread, and they had to eat fast and keep licking the jam back from the edge. What would Hamish's mother have said to that way of doing? It was good, though! Strawberry jam. There was no jam in all the world like strawberry jam.

The colour red went back into white. For now they were on the moor. (And it was a strange thing, wasn't it? that on that moor grown men were not against them seeing them as bad boys, but were tall full men, and even Dougald himself had been a silent man, spreading no fear, but spreading strawberry jam thick as though he wanted to empty the pot.)

And there they were going on and on, Uncle Norman taking the storm on his left side and sheltering them, little thinking! And then they passed Loch Geal, and then they must be coming near ‘the place'. Near and nearer. And then they saw the white thing.

‘God bless me,' said Uncle Norman to himself. ‘What's that?'

And Hamish had taken the two quick steps forward. And it was the white hare, stretched full out, dead in the snare.

The wonder that had come on him then! Without thinking, he cried in triumph that it was their hare! They had set the snare and it was their own hare!

‘Boys,' said Uncle Norman, and his voice was quiet and friendly, ‘do you think it's right doing this?'

It was terrible, terrible, and Hamish wanted to cry. For there was the hare, the white hare, and they had caught it. They were all on their knees above the hare. And a great feeling came over Hamish and he wanted to go away.

But Uncle Norman put his heavy hand on his shoulder.

‘I know,' he said.‘I was once a boy myself. But you see what can happen, and your mothers nearly out of their minds?'

Hamish could not speak for he saw everything through the kind tone of Uncle Norman's words.

And then a great blatter of wind came and nearly flattened them and Uncle Norman groaned, and looked over his shoulder far away where the sea was, and the earth quivered under them.

It was a terrible instant, for Uncle Norman gave a low cry out of his throat as though he was seeing someone being struck.

After that he said no more about the hare. He took the noose off the head, and pulled out the stake, and handed the snare to Hamish.

‘It's food. We cannot leave that,' said Uncle Norman and he carried the hare in one hand.

But Hamish knew now why Uncle Norman had cried out. He had cried out because maybe yon was the very blow that sank the boat and drowned Charlie and Flora.

Drowned them.

Perhaps because the only human bodies Hamish had ever seen in the sea were bodies swimming and diving, he now thought of the drowned bodies as a whiteness in the sea, each a whiteness sinking far down.

He did not feel grief for the bodies, but drew away from them, drew away swiftly so that they would not touch him, and the whiteness became the whiter whiteness of the hare, and then it began to float away, ever more distantly and dimly like a banner.

The morning broke with the storm raging fiercely as ever. Though late for breakfast, Michael and Mr. Gwynn found the light dim and the room raw and cold despite the bright fire. The roar of the wind in the pines was incessant, like a sea for ever threatening to flatten wall and roof.

They scarcely spoke. Even Mr. Gwynn, who was used to Michael's moods, made no particular effort at social behaviour. They had sat up a little too late, had drunk a little too much, and had been further intoxicated by an outpouring of talk.

They had turned the ‘story' into magnificent ‘theatre'. They had discovered the vivifying ‘life influence'. Their enthusiasm, as the pines bent and the wind-devils shrieked, had found expression in an exalted vision. Everything was seen against eternity now, man and woman, cliff and bird, sea and air. The alcohol, sipped at the excited moment, heightened the intensity. Man must for ever renew himself in the primeval elements. Man must for ever move, like a liberator, through his own unconscious. Otherwise power dies, dignity perishes, and ‘theatre' becomes ‘a show'.

‘This bloody light!' said Michael, as he wiped his mouth, dropped his napkin unfolded on the table, and got up.

Mr. Gwynn helped himself to a spoonful of marmalade.

‘Not a damned thing can a man do in this light.' Michael turned his back to the fire and blew a first long mouthful of cigarette smoke.

‘It's Sunday,' suggested Mr. Gwynn. ‘What did you think of doing?'

‘What do you think I want light for?'

‘Want to take the sea, do you?'

Michael shot him a glance. ‘Yes, I want to take the sea.'

Mr. Gwynn ignored the challenge in Michael's voice.

‘Not thinking of going to church?' Mr. Gwynn folded his napkin and stuck it in a silver ring.

‘Why, are you?'

‘Yes.'

‘Good God! I suppose the whole place will turn out to gloat.'

‘The community meets.'

Michael gave a sarcastic grunt.

‘All the same,' said Mr. Gwynn, ‘that's what it does. A living community always meets.'

‘I thought you thought it was a dead community, searching back for what it once did spontaneously.'

‘Even so.'

‘Religion?'

‘And ceremonial.'

‘And the parson using the occasion to exploit his power? Standing upon his dead daughter? Exhibiting himself?'

Mr. Gwynn got up. ‘No,' he said. ‘Not quite.'

‘You positively find my tone offensive?'

Mr. Gwynn ignored his look. ‘Not quite.'

Michael laughed shortly. ‘By God, if you don't watch out you'll be getting old.'

‘I am getting old.'

‘If you feel like that, why not?' said Michael moving away, and, being on the move, he left the room.

Mr. Gwynn went up through the pines and sat for a little in the shelter of the ravine, watching the waterfall boil in the whirlpool, which was contained in a round rock pot five yards across. He felt a strange need upon him to discuss things with men of his own age, men who had experienced and winnowed. He felt it would only be decent to say a few words to the minister. The man was lonely.

Pride and arrogance could come out of a loneliness of power. They were the fuel that kept the power going. Backed by divine power, the affair was complicated, the issue uncertain. But fuel, wildly blown upon, ate itself up. Nothing then left but the structure of loneliness – and ashes.

The man could not speak to his elders. Not as a man. The structure had to be maintained.

There was an ashen look in the minister's face as he towered over them. The elevated box of the pulpit shut him in. His voice was drained clear.

The manse pew was empty.

Mr. Gwynn listened. The congregation was much smaller than usual. Many of the old folk, the regular attendants, could not come because of the storm. But there was someone from nearly every house, out of respect.

The sense of harmony in the worship grew. Such curiosity as may have moved many to come and see how the minister would bear up, to hear what he would say and what judgment deliver, was quite certainly consumed.

The sympathy, born out of community, reached the minister. Mr. Gwynn saw him, not becoming aware of it, but being unconsciously touched by it. His voice, which had been hard and automatic, though quiet and clear out of – and here Mr. Gwynn reckoned he knew – a public man's response, which is an actor's response, to the dramatic need of a situation, that most subtle need charged with a unifying if invisible force, now caught a softer note as the personal, the dangerous personal, touched the universal.

But this again could be contained, and acted upon, thus producing an ever deeper unity, the state where the concept is all but lost in the thing itself.

Mr. Gwynn waited, with astonishingly little sense of discomfort, for the inevitable moment when the logos would lose itself and the Book close.

It came in a context which Mr. Gwynn had only half followed for his mind was moving in places beyond the spoken word. An ancient – was it Abraham? – how could Abraham have wandered into the Sermon on the Mount? – an ancient calling: ‘My son!' Mr. Gwynn, caught by something in the voice, looked swiftly at the minister. The minister lifted his head. He tried again. ‘My son!' But there were no words beyond these. Suddenly there were no words. In the silence an old woman sobbed. The Book was closed. The sermon had lasted barely twenty minutes.

Mr. Gwynn sat on in his seat until the church emptied. Then he went round towards the vestry. Peter MacInnes looked for a long moment: ‘You would like to see the
minister?' Then he stood aside, and closed the vestry door.

It was a Sunday of shifts, of odds and ends, of grey wind-driven gloom, of cold brown tangle writhing on seething shores. Young men found escape into it, escape from the Sabbath, from the gloom, hunting along cliffs, their hearts in their mouths as they adventured dangerous descents to booming caves, shouting exultantly above the sea.

Michael cursed the day, for the waves fascinated him. The exquisitely lovely curves – with the incredible power. He wanted sunlight, flashing sunlight, and his camera. He had crossed the Ros to get into the storm's face. To reach the cliff-edge he had to crawl flat. There were sucking back-eddies that were quite extraordinarily dangerous. Once he felt himself being lifted. His heart stopped and his nails dug in. Backing away, feet first, he began to laugh.

The power of the wild day came upon him. He grew a little mad, wiping out Gwynn and his endless theorizings. ‘All that bloody gabble!' cried Michael at Gwynn and himself.

Like a seaman, he wore no overcoat. Thick woollen pants under tough blue serge trousers; a thick blue fisherman's jersey under a tweed jacket; a cap pulled well down, the light from dark-brown eyes shooting under its snout. If he fell, he would bounce!

Then he saw the gull. Perhaps, driven here, it had been resting in a nook, perhaps he had startled it, but suddenly there it was, heeling over, and in an instant the wind had it.

Little Hamish had been watching Michael through a spyglass. His brother Neil, who had borrowed it from old Daniel-the-sailor, had miraculously gone off without it. Hamish had shoved the glass up under his jersey and drifted out of the house when his mother wasn't looking. Keeping the end of his home between him and all harm, he came ultimately to a sheltered nook, with the sea before him and the whole north coast of the Ros. When he had pulled out the cylinders and got the telescope focused, he searched everywhere for his brother, who was bound to miss the glass and come running back. Then there would be ructions! And the boys of his age were not allowed to
wander even along the shore on the Sabbath day… There was Mr. Sandeman from the Lodge, plain as though he was before your very nose! Hamish steadied the telescope on a boulder. The wind blew Mr. Sandeman about. It was funny! And fancy him looking for them there! As if Charlie would have sailed
into
the storm! It's little they knew, the people from the South!

All at once the end of the telescope shot up. Hamish stared as if he might see better with his unaided eyes. His face had gone white and now he was running for his home, the extended telescope gripped against his body. ‘Is Father in?'

‘What's that?' answered his mother sharply. ‘He's not in, and if he was—'

Hamish ran on. Uncle Norman was coming up from the beach.

‘What is it, boy?'

‘It's – Mr. Sandeman. He fell over.'

‘Fell over what?'

‘The cliff – yonder!'

Norman saw the boy's wild distress and the telescope.

Within a minute, he had the glass on the spot, searching the cliff-foot, the cliff-face.

Hamish could see his uncle was finding nothing. ‘I saw him!' he cried. ‘He was trying the edge – and then he went.'

The glass was now steady. It wasn't moving.

Hamish watched it without breathing.

Uncle Norman turned over on his side. ‘He's there,' he said in a curiously quiet voice. ‘On the blackstone ledge.' His eyes crinkled thoughtfully, then he was up and off, Hamish trotting after him. ‘I'll get a length of rope,' Norman called, for William and old Sandy had been watching the curious proceedings. Hamish gasped forth his news to them. Women's voices rose shrilly even though it was the Sabbath day. Men buttoned their jackets and pulled their caps down. Norman, with a light mooring rope over his shoulder, led the way. Sandy had taken the telescope from Hamish. In the lee of William's cottage, he got ready to follow what might happen. Other old men and women and
children gathered round him.

‘He's still alive,' said Norman to those going with him. ‘If only he lies quiet!'

They knew the blackstone ledge. It was, in fact, a seamark, a bite in the cliff, very noticeable from the water. It was no more than fifteen feet from the top. Beneath it there was a sheer drop of at least eighty feet.

They had to make a considerable detour to get round the beach, but soon they were on the Ros, and, of the streaming tail, Hamish was not last.

When at last they reached the spot, Norman called to everyone to stand back. Crawling to the edge, he looked over.

Michael Sandeman was on his feet studying the cliff directly in front of him. His shoulder was to the back of the bite, which was straight rock, and his eyes were trying to find a possible way up the edge of the bite which was broken and began to fall back from above his head. Even on a calm day, the climb would be very difficult. Now, when to stand, as he was doing, gripping a rock-crack at his hip and with both feet braced against a slight boss, was taking a grave risk with the wind's inexhaustible resource in ferocity, he knew it was utterly and absolutely impossible. Yet his eyes, implacable as the forces that had trapped him, studied the rock, and rose with it, hold by possible hold – until they steadied on Norman's face.

Norman yelled to him not to move, then he backed away.

The arranging of the rope took only a minute. Squatting men, with heels dug in, paid the rope out between their knees.

Norman's arm was helping his voice in directing Michael how to fix the noose of rope round him. Then the arm directed those behind.

Lying back against the rope, Michael walked up the rock. When he stood among them, they could see, however, that he was not without pain. The right leg of his trousers was ripped, the back of his jacket split, there was blood trickling down both hands and down his right temple. His face was very white and his smile had a curiously writhen sharpness. Taking his left arm, Norman led him back into a sheltered

hollow.

To Norman and some of the others, who had often gone into real danger in rescuing a sheep, the incident was of the slightest. Had it happened to one of themselves, such a one would have been mercilessly chaffed.

Meantime Michael became aware that eyes were concentrating in a fascinated way on his chest. He looked down and saw the movement of his jacket. Pushing a hand carefully under it, he brought forth a gull.

No magic could have held them as did that gull. They gaped at it, at the strange white deadness which is sometimes caught in a living gull's head. The head moved this way and that.

‘Its wing is broken,' said Michael.

Norman's brows drew down. ‘Do you mean you risked your life to save that?' Michael saw the cold disapproval in the face. He kept looking at it in a detached way. ‘Not exactly,' he answered.

‘I wondered if I could get down. It was decided for me.' The wry humour was about to be appreciated when suddenly the gull shot its beak into Michael's wrist.

In an instant the bird was flapping and tumbling among them. Hamish was third in the dive but he caught it. He brought it back to Michael.

‘Thanks,' said Michael. Then he looked at Hamish a second time. ‘I think I have seen you before.'

Hamish retired beside William, who nudged him secretly. Michael smiled with his eyes as Hamish's head disappeared.

‘It was him who saw you first to-day anyway,' said William.

‘Was it?' Michael looked at William.

‘Yes,' answered William. ‘Otherwise no one would have seen you.' There was silence.

‘I am his uncle,' said Norman. ‘If the boy has sometimes gone to the Ros, after a trout or whatever it may be, it's not with our consent.'

The words came with a simple gravity. Astonished laughter, his natural reaction, was furthest of any emotion from
Michael. He looked upon their waiting faces, with their reticent understanding of the moment. He was feeling little pain, hardly anything at all except a very odd sensation of disembodiment.

‘What's his name?' he asked Norman.

‘Hamish,' answered Norman. ‘Hamish Macleod.'

‘Then I wish publicly to declare,' said Michael, ‘that so long as I am landlord of the Ros, Hamish Macleod will have free access to the Ros and to all its sporting rights.'