The Cone Gatherers (12 page)

Once, as he was about to cross a ride, and as he was gazing with fascinated eyes down the great aisle towards the loch, he heard from that direction a series of hootings, rising and falling in forlorn undulations. In a minute they were answered by another reiterated cry, shriller and not so melancholy. Harry and Betty, searching for nuts in different copses, were calling to each other.

Here was his last chance of regaining human companionship, and so of escaping from the invisible enticements lurking in the wood between him and his goal – the hut. He hesitated, and even had his hand at his mouth to halloo back, to make contact even by sound. But if he were to go down to the beach and join Harry and Betty, and offer them a share of his cake, he would feel that he had failed in something which he could not name, but which seemed important as life itself. The cone-gatherers
in their tiny hut did not expect him, and would never know that he had failed to come; but for many years, perhaps always, they would in his imagination sit there waiting for him, and he would never come. They would then never be redeemed; they would never eat his cake of friendship, which would protect them from the spite of Duror; and all the sinister presences of the wood would remain to terrify and defeat him. To save himself as well as the cone-gatherers he must go on.

By the time the hut came in sight he was exhausted, in body and spirit; sweat of exertion and of fear drenched him. Near some yew trees whose branches reached the ground, forming dark caverns, he halted, to look into his bag to make sure that the cake, the symbol of reconciliation, had not been made to vanish by the evil presences he had just defied. Reassured, he stood breathing in the woodsmoke drifting up so peacefully out of the rusted chimney.

If his senses had not been so preternaturally alert, and if from the dirty hut had not irradiated a light illuminating every leaf on all the trees about it, he would never have noticed the lurker under the cypress, entangled in the thin green bony arms that curled out like an octopus's. No sunshine struck there, and even the luminance from the hut seemed to fail. At first he could not tell who it was, although he was sure it was not one of the cone-gatherers. He felt cold, and frightened, and sick at heart. Here at the very hut was the most evil presence of all, and it was visible.

When he realised that the motionless figure under the cypress was Duror, he crept in dismay into a cave of yew. It was his first retreat, and it was cowardly. Yet he could not force himself to complete the pilgrimage and knock on the door. Duror was a barrier he could not pass.

As he crouched in the earthy darkness like an animal, he wondered what Duror's purpose could be in lurking there. The gamekeeper hated the men in the hut and wished to have them expelled from the wood. Was he now spying on them in the hope that he would find them engaged in some wrong-doing, such as working today,
which was Sunday? By their agreement with his mother they were not to work on Sundays. But Duror himself shot deer on Sundays; he did not often go to church, and when he did he sat with his arms folded and a smile of misery on his lips. Why then did he hate the cone-gatherers and wish to drive them away? Was it because they represented goodness, and himself evil? Coached by his grandfather, Roderick knew that the struggle between good and evil never rested: in the world, and in every human being, it went on. The war was an enormous example. Good did not always win. So many times had Christian been overcome and humiliated; so long had Sir Galahad searched and suffered. In the end, aye, in the bitter end, the old judge had said, with a chuckle, good would remain alone in the field, victorious.

The minutes passed. Nothing had changed. The blue smoke still rose from the chimney. Duror had not moved. In his den of yew Roderick grew cramped; and in an even darker, narrower den of disillusionment his mind whimpered.

Half an hour, at insect's pace, crept by. Only a leaf or two had fallen from a tree, as a breeze stirred. Far away, over the loch, a gull had screamed.

Had Duror gone mad? Was this the change his mother had asked Mrs Morton about? Again Roderick recalled the scene at the deer drive with Duror embracing as if in love the screaming deer and hacking at its throat with his knife. Mrs Morton, who was Duror's friend, had talked about the perils of the wood; she had mentioned the cone-gatherers, but perhaps in her heart she had been meaning Duror. If he was mad then, was he now waiting with a gun to commit murder?

Peeping through the yew needles, Roderick saw in imagination the door of the hut open, and the cone-gatherers come out, the tall one who slightly limped and always frowned, and the small one who stooped and smiled. Then in the cypress the gun cracked, and the two men lay dead on the grass.

It was while he was imagining Duror come stalking out to gloat over the corpses that the idea took root in
the boy's mind that perhaps it was Duror himself who was dead. That idea sprouted. Duror had been strolling through the wood, had felt a pain at his heart, and had clutched at the cypress to keep from falling; there he had died, and the green bony arms were propping him up.

To Roderick, growing in a time of universal war, distant human death was a commonplace: he had listened to many wireless estimates of enemies killed and had loyally been pleased. Only once, when his grandfather died, had death appeared to him as a tyrant, snatching ruthlessly away what he loved, putting darkness and terror in its place, and at random moments, even in the middle of the night when the rest of the house slept, creating fragments of joy only to annihilate them thereafter. Now the thought of Duror standing dead among the branches of the evergreen brought no hope, but rather began to infect the whole visible world with a sense of loss and desolation and fear. Every single leaf was polluted; even a tiny black beetle close to his head represented the vast tyranny. It was as if all the far off deaths he had rejoiced at were now gathering here around the yew trees to be revenged. Yet was not Duror evil, and if evil died did not goodness triumph? Why then were all the birds not singing, and why did the sun not begin to shine again with morning splendour, and why, above all, was the hut now in shadow? Unable to answer those questions, the boy knelt in an unhappiness too profound and violent for tears or prayer; its only outward signs were paleness and the extra prominence of his teeth.

When at last, in the gloaming, Duror moved, it was to the stricken boy like a resurrection, darkening incomprehension and deepening despair. From the arms of the tree Duror stepped forth, and stood for a minute in the clearing in front of the hut. It was a minute of cessation. Incalculable in thought or feeling, gigantic in horror, as if indeed newly come from the dead, Duror merely stood. Then, without any interpretable gesture, and without a sound, he turned and vanished among the trees, as if this time forever.

Roderick waited, on his knees, cramped and cold, his
eyes closed, his mind stunned by a disappointment intolerable and permanent. He knew that he could never now take the cake and bag to the cone-gatherers, and that, with each darkening minute, the journey back through the wood grew more and more formidable. At the end of it, too, his own house, with his mother and sister, would no longer exist in its old way.

At last, leaving the cake under the yew to be devoured by beetles and ants, he crawled out, sobbing, and made for home.

In the tip of the tall larch they were in a good position to watch the approach of the storm. At the sea end of the loch for the past half hour indigo clouds had been mustering, with rumbles of thunder still distant and halfhearted. More ominous was the river of radiance pouring straight down into the orange mass of the tree. After long excited consultations, the finches had whisked away. The two men were the only living creatures left in the tree tops.

At the very crest, Calum was frightened and exhilarated. He chattered involuntarily, making no sense. Instead of dropping the golden cones safely into his bag he let them dribble out of his hands so that, in the expectancy before the violence of the storm, the tiny stots from one transfigured branch to another could be clearly heard. Several times he reached up and raised his hand, so that it was higher than the tree.

Neil, a little lower down, was fastened by a safety belt. His rheumatism had heralded the rain, so that the climb to the top had been for him a long slow agony which he did not wish to repeat. That was why he did not give the order to go down; he hoped the storm would pass over without striking them. He too was agitated, finding the cones exasperatingly small and his bag insatiable. The belt chafed his waist, and his arms and legs ached. Above all, Calum's meaningless chatters distressed him. He shouted to him several times to stop. Calum only screamed back, not in defiance, but in uncontrollable excitement.

Then that cascade of light streaming into the larch ceased, leaving it dark and cold. Black clouds were now overhead. Thunder snarled. Colour faded from the wood. A sough of wind shook the gloomy host of trees. Over
the sea flashed lightning. Yet, far to the east, islands of peace and brightness persisted in the sky.

The first few drops of rain fell, as large as cones.

‘We'd better get down,' shouted Neil, and he tugged frantically at the buckle of his belt with his stiff sticky blackened fingers.

Calum slithered down and helped to loose him. He was giggling.

‘Whether we go down or not,' said Neil, ‘we'll get soaked to the skin. But up here the lightning might be dangerous.'

‘I don't like the lightning, Neil.'

‘Nobody does. What's been the matter with you? You're not a child. You've been in a storm before.'

‘Did you see the light, Neil?'

‘How could I miss seeing it? It was in my eyes, blinding me.'

‘Was it from heaven, Neil?'

‘Heaven?' Neil's shout was astonished and angry. ‘What are you talking about?'

Calum pressed close to him eagerly.

‘Do you mind what you said yon time, Neil? We were in the shed together, with the horse. You said it was always as bright as that in heaven.'

‘In the shed, with the horse? What shed and what horse?'

‘It was called Peggy, Neil.'

Neil remembered. ‘But that was more than twenty years ago,' he cried.

‘Aye, but you said it, Neil. You said heaven was always as bright as that.'

His face wet with rain and tears, Neil clung to the tree and shut his eyes.

‘Maybe I did, Calum,' he said.

‘And mind what else you said, Neil? You said that was where our mither was. You said that, Neil, in the shed.'

‘Maybe I did.'

‘I saw her, Neil.'

‘What are you talking about, Calum?'

‘I saw her up there, Neil.' He pointed to the sky above the tree.

Neil opened his eyes. It was now as dark as twilight. The rain still plopped down in single large drops. As yet there seemed no enmity or hatred in its falling, only a kind of sadness and pity; but in five minutes, or less, it would come roaring down mercilessly. He would be soaked; his rheumatism would be so aggravated it might cripple him for ever. If he was unable to walk, far less to climb, who would look after Calum with his derided body and his mind as foolish as a child's? Wherever that light had shone from, it had not been from heaven. There was no such place. There was no merciful God. There was nowhere their dead mother could be.

Calum was waiting to have his vision accepted.

Neil shook his head.

‘You couldn't see her, Calum.'

‘But I did, Neil.'

‘You just thought you did. People that are dead can never be seen again.' He tried to control his voice. ‘It's not your fault, Calum. I told you lies. I don't think there's any heaven at all. It's just a name to please children. But we'd better start getting down. You go first, Calum. I'm depending on you. Take it easy, whether it rains or not. My legs and arms are stiff.'

Calum nodded, and prepared to start the descent.

‘Maybe I did see her, Neil,' he said shyly.

Neil just shook his head.

Then lightning flashed straight at them, followed instantly by a crashing of thunder which seemed to be caused by the tree itself, and all the trees around, splitting apart.

Rain rushed into the tree.

The brothers crept slowly downward. Every time lightning flashed and thunder crashed they thought their tree had been shattered, and clung, helpless as woodlice, waiting to be hurled to the ground with the fragments. The tree itself seemed to be terrified; every branch, every twig, heaved and slithered. At times it seemed to have torn its roots in its terror and to be dangling in the air.

At last they reached the ground. At once Neil flung
his bag of cones down and snatched up his knapsack. He shouted to Calum to do likewise.

‘We'd never get to the hut alive,' he gasped. ‘We'd get killed among the trees. Forby, it's too far away. We're going to the beach hut.'

‘But we're not allowed, Neil.'

Neil clutched his brother and spoke to him as calmly as he could.

‘I ken it's not allowed, Calum,' he said. ‘I ken we gave our promise to Mr Tulloch not to get into any more trouble. But look at the rain. We're soaked already. I've got rheumatics, and you ken your chest is weak. If we shelter under a tree it might get struck by lightning and we'd be killed. In three minutes we can reach the beach hut.'

‘But we promised, Neil. The lady will be angry again.'

‘Do you want me then to be a useless cripple for the rest of my days? What if she is angry? All she can do is to tell us to leave her wood, and I'll be glad to go. I don't want you to do what you think is wrong, Calum; but sometimes we've got to choose between two things, neither of them to our liking. We'll do no harm. We'll leave the place as we find it. Nobody will ever ken we've been in it. What do you say then?'

Calum nodded unhappily.

‘I think maybe we should go,' he said.

‘All right then. We'd better run for it. But didn't I tell you to drop your cone bag?'

‘They'll get all wet, Neil.'

Neil stood gaping; he saw the rain streaming down the green grime on his brother's face; beyond Calum was the wood shrouded in wet.

‘They'll get wet,' he heard himself repeating.

‘Aye, that's right, Neil. Mind what Mr Tulloch said, if they get wet they're spoiled.'

It was no use being bitter or angry or sarcastic.

‘Is there never to be any sun again then,' cried Neil, ‘to dry them?'

Calum looked up at the sky.

‘I think so, Neil,' he murmured.

‘All right, take them if you want to,' shouted Neil, moving on, ‘if it'll put your mind at rest. Keep them dry. They're as precious as diamonds.' He sobbed now to the storm as he ran through it, for he knew that this saving of the cones was his brother's act of atonement for entering the forbidden beach hut. ‘They laughed at you in the pub, Calum, and I was angry at you for giving them the chance to laugh. But don't change. Keep being yourself. You're better than all of us.'

Where the beach hut stood was, in fine weather, a delightful spot for a picnic, with a small sandy bay and a sea-meadow of smooth turf. Now in the hissing rain, with the sky black and the lightning frequent, it would have been even more desolate than the wood itself but for the beach hut. This represented not only dryness and warmth, but also humanity.

It was built in imitation of a log cabin, with one gable of brick. On the side facing the loch was a verandah; here, too, was the door. It was locked.

Neil pushed against it furiously.

‘She must have locked it for spite,' he cried.

Calum stood shivering beside him. ‘We don't need to go in, Neil,' he said. ‘We're in shelter here.'

Neil glanced out at the rain so heavy it obscured the loch.

‘I'm cold,' he said. ‘My clothes are soaked. So are yours. If we get in we can light a fire. Haven't we got a right to keep ourselves alive? Is the lady like the rain, and the thunder and lightning, that we should be forced to flee from her as well? This hut's never used. When the war's over they're going to pull it down and build a new one. What harm will we be doing if we just sit in it for half an hour drying our clothes?'

He left his brother and tried one window; it was fastened. He tried another at the back; it slid up at his first heave.

He rushed round to fetch Calum, and found him crouched on his bag of cones. He had to help him to his feet and then to pick up the bag, which he still refused to leave.

‘We can forget the storm now, Calum,' he said.

In another five minutes they were both inside, and Neil had lit a fire with some sticks and coal from a scuttle. For paper he had used some children's comics taken from a box full of them. When it was blazing he had leisure to join his brother in admiring the furnishings.

There were some pink basket chairs with a sofa to match, a table stained with different colours of paint, a carpet, a large hamper, and pictures on the walls.

Looking at this luxury, Neil felt his rheumatism particularly painful.

‘This is where we should be quartered,' he said dourly, ‘even if we are just labourers. It's war-time, isn't it? Didn't somebody say on the wireless that in war-time everybody's equal? If it wasn't for the war, do you think I'd have agreed to come and do this job, at my age?'

Calum wasn't listening. He was examining the pictures in delight. In every one were trees, weird yet recognisable. They seemed to have been painted by children.

Neil opened the hamper and rummaged among the contents. These were children's toys of every kind: guns, yachts, dolls, pails, spades, balls, bats, and others.

‘They're lying here rotting,' he said, ‘and many a child in Lendrick would be glad to have them.' He laughed. ‘I ken two would have been glad of them at one time. Eh, Calum?'

But Calum's pleasure in the toys could not be adulterated by such regret. When he reached in and picked one up, Neil laughed.

‘I was just saying to myself that's the one you'd pick,' he said. ‘Trust you.'

It was a small wooden doll, naked, with a comical red-cheeked face; one leg was missing. Calum held it tenderly.

‘It's broken,' he murmured.

‘They're nearly all broken,' said Neil. He lifted a small rifle, aimed it, and pulled the trigger. There was no report. ‘Broken. There wouldn't be any need for those children to take care of them. Anything broken would be replaced at once.' He was about to go on and make some remark about the children being therefore spoiled when he
remembered how friendly the boy had been in Lendrick. It had been genuine friendliness too; to deny that would be wrong.

He returned the gun gently.

‘Put it back, Calum,' he said.

‘Would it be all right if I took it away and put a leg on it?' asked Calum eagerly. ‘I would bring it back.'

‘No, it would not. It would be stealing. Put it back. In any case, it's just a doll, fit for a wee lassie. Put it back.'

Neil went over to attend to the fire.

‘Get your jacket off, Calum,' he said, ‘and hold it in front of the fire.'

As he spoke he was cautiously taking his own off. His shoulder joints were very stiff and sore.

‘Do you know what I'm going to do?' he asked, as he was helping to take off his brother's jacket. ‘I'm going to have a puff at that pipe you bought me in Lendrick.'

Calum was delighted. ‘Is it a good pipe, Neil?'

‘The best I ever had. It must have cost you a fortune.'

Calum laughed and shook his head. ‘I'm not telling,' he said.

Neil was feeling in his pocket for the pipe when other noises outside were added to the drumming of the rain on the roof: a dog's bark, and voices.

As they stared towards the door, there came a scratching on it as of paws, and a whining. A minute later they heard the lady cry out ‘Thank God!' and then a key rattled in the lock. The door was flung open to the accompaniment of the loudest peal of thunder since the start of the storm.

From a safe distance the little dog barked at the trespassers. The lady had only a silken handkerchief over her head; her green tweed costume was black in places with damp. In the midst of the thunder she shouted: ‘What is the meaning of this?' Though astonishment, and perhaps dampness, made her voice hoarse, it nevertheless was far more appalling to the two men than any thunder. They could not meet the anger in her face. They gazed at her feet; her stockings were splashed with mud and her shoes had sand on them.

Neil did not know what to do or say. Every second of silent abjectness was a betrayal of himself, and especially of his brother who was innocent. All his vows of never again being ashamed of Calum were being broken. His rheumatism tortured him, as if coals from the stolen fire had been pressed into his shoulders and knees; but he wished that the pain was twenty times greater to punish him as he deserved. He could not lift his head; he tried, so that he could meet the lady's gaze at least once, no matter how scornful and contemptuous it was; but he could not. A lifetime of frightened submissiveness held it down.

Suddenly he realised that Calum was speaking.