The Key of the Chest (22 page)

‘Back to the classical,' suggested Mr. Gwynn

Michael smiled wearily. ‘How you feed on words! I am thinking of the woman who generates. Have you lost your feeling for – for texture?'

‘No,' answered Mr. Gwynn, and all at once his voice had a simple earnestness. Unknowingly, his right thumb kept feeling along the finger-tips. ‘I agree with you. She would be superb.'

Michael removed the smiling photograph and set up the first one.

‘You see?' said Mr. Gwynn at once.

Michael stood looking at it.

‘It's more than flesh,' continued Mr. Gwynn. ‘There is a strange passivity. A pure state of being. Non-intellectual, in the sense that there is no curiosity. That's what I mean by innocence. And primordial – because you get the feeling of something timeless.'

‘Walter Pater,' murmured Michael, in good-natured mockery.

Mr. Gwynn shook his head. ‘No. The very opposite. There is no smile there, no knowingness. She does not sit amid us, with a woman's knowledge of our sins, sins she has helped to create and secretly knows as her own children. Here is woman a little remote from us. She does not sit, but goes wandering.'

‘I suppose all that that means,' said Michael, in a quiet voice, still looking at the photograph, ‘is that she hasn't had the Lady Lisa's experience.'

‘No,' answered Mr. Gwynn. ‘However complete her experience, however devastating, even tragic – finally, alone, she would sit like that, and a man thinking of her, and therefore inevitably thinking of her
like that
, would break his heart.'

‘And actually she is a very conventional creature,' said Michael.

‘Very,' said Mr. Gwynn.

Michael turned his face to him and smiled. ‘We know how conventional she was – wandering on that bare hillside.'

‘Wandering,' said Mr. Gwynn, and held Michael's look.

Michael turned his head. ‘What do you think, Doctor?' There was now nothing provocative in his voice. It was friendly.

‘I'm afraid it is all a bit beyond me,' answered the doctor.

‘You don't like giving anything away, do you?'

‘Afraid I have nothing to give.'

‘Not even your photograph?' Michael turned to Mr. Gwynn. ‘Do you know what I think? I think the doctor refuses his photograph because he feels, in the purely primitive way, that it might take some virtue out of him. It might steal away his likeness.'

‘Well, it might,' answered Mr. Gwynn. ‘Is a person who has been painted – or even photographed – ever the same? Is not some magic taken from him? If you turn me into a caricature of a Buddha, how can I ever be whole again?'

Michael almost broke into a laugh.

‘You may smile,' said Mr. Gwynn, ‘but there it is. At some moment when I try to achieve a harmony within me, the tail of my inner eye will see that Buddha, and harmony will be split. When this occurs more than once, I shall become ‘disillusioned”, my hidden mind, to protect itself, will adopt a certain cynicism, very cultured no doubt' – Mr. Gwynn's shoulders and hands acknowledged the point for him –‘but there I'll be, back in our modern disease – the split mind. The doctor and I will form a trade union against you. Do you agree, Doctor?'

The doctor, who was taking a cigarette from his case, paused to hand one to Mr. Gwynn and to Michael. They lit up.

‘I think it mightn't be a bad idea,' agreed the doctor. ‘It isn't good for anyone to get too much of his own way.'

‘A bunch of toughs,' said Michael. ‘You prattle about your science and your metaphysical or analytical processes or whatever they are, but whenever you come up against the
artist, the one man who sees a thing whole, you instinctively fight him. You're afraid of him, and that's the truth.'

‘Saving your presence,' said Mr. Gwynn, ‘sure an' why should we be afraid of him?'

But Michael refused Mr. Gwynn's lead to let the conversation slide away. Mr. Gwynn had realized that their guest may have had to bear a lot.

‘Dammit all,' said Michael with just a touch of spirit, ‘here I am in a place like this. And here you come to meditate on your profound – so profound – theories. We used to talk in grandiloquent terms of Balzac's Human Comedy. But always it was away in the world, in France. Somewhere or something big and vast. But when I try to bring it down to a god-haunted forgotten country place like this – why, then, it is provincial. Ah, to hell with you!' concluded Michael, suddenly tired of talking. ‘By the way, Doctor,' he added,‘I don't think you have seen one other member of our human comedy.' He removed Flora, and, going over to a stack of enlargements, selected one and set it on the easel.

It was a photograph, almost in profile, of the policeman with his notebook in his left hand and a stub of pencil in his right. The figure was slightly out of focus, but just beyond it, seen between the bent head and the recording hand, was the picture of Charlie, standing up from his boat, against the black skerries, and upon him the lens had clearly been deliberately focused. The slight indistinctness swelled the figure of the policeman in a menacing way.

Michael looked at his work for a moment, but he no longer seemed vitally interested. ‘That's the lot – so far,' he said. ‘Come along, let us have a drink.' He turned to the electric switche

The two boys laughed in husky glee as they peered back over a heathery knoll in the direction of Cruime and the highway. They had come by different routes without being seen, especially by other children who might have followed them – or told at home.

It was delightful to be free, it was full of the greatest fun, of hidden glee – which could now come out and frolic around. The wind suddenly blew Hamish's jacket up off his back and onto his head. They both laughed.

‘I think it's going to be a dirty night,' said Hamish with a change of tone.

At once they got up and started forward, and their voices grew friendly in a low and marvelling way.

‘It's funny John-the-roadman said they were yellow when the one we saw was white,' said Norrie.

‘I asked old Peter if he ever saw a yellow hare. And he said to me Who told you that? So I said it was John-the-roadman. Then he said that when a hare was changing it sometimes got a sort of yellowish look. He had seen that sometimes himself, he said, specially about the hind quarters. Then he told me that there are two kinds of hares and they are both quite different.'

‘Our one is the white hare.'

‘Yes,' said Hamish, ‘but it's also called the blue hare and it's also called the mountain hare. And it's just the same hare.'

‘I didn't know all that,' Norrie admitted.

‘And the other one is called the brown hare and it never changes its hair at all and that's the difference.'

‘And where does it stay?' asked Norrie.

‘It stays on big farms on the east side of the country and it's nearly as big as a young calf.'

‘How do they catch him? They would need a big snare for that fellow!'

‘Have you got your snare on you?' asked Hamish suddenly.

‘I have. Have you?'

After each had grabbed the bulge in his pocket, Hamish proceeded with his description of how the mountain hare – which was the one that concerned them – changed his coat from heather colour in the summer to snow white in the winter. Norrie wanted to know if the hare knew how to change its coat or what happened, and in this way their conversation took a very interesting turn.

The sky was an angry grey and they could hear the sea in the cliffs. It was blowing hard.

‘The wind is well into the north,' said Hamish in a seaman's voice. Every now and then they looked over their shoulders, but as they came near ‘the place' they forgot to look. ‘The place' was where they had seen the white hare.

By the time they came to it they decided the light was just right, for it was already going fast. No hare would go into a snare in daylight, for though a hare might be many a mysterious thing it was no fool.

They now began looking about for ‘traces'. But they found none, and as the idea of finding them had been Norrie's, Hamish suggested that a running hare would not drop his ‘traces' and him running.

‘No,' said Norrie, ‘but we saw him sitting once.'

‘But he wouldn't do it every time he sat,' said Hamish.

‘No, but he must do it some time,' said Norrie with inexorable logic.

So, doubled over, they made another search, and when Norrie cried in excitement, Hamish was with him in a moment. But Hamish shook his head. ‘They're too black. That's sheeps',' he said.

‘Yes,' said Norrie. But he was disappointed. ‘Have you ever seen a hare's?' he asked.

In the end, they agreed that the hare had been running on the narrow sheep track. He wasn't such a fool as to go leaping through long heather if there was a track handy. Trust him!

So they searched for a patch of old unburnt heather, where the track narrowed to little more than a hand's length, and agreed with a profound feeling of certainty that this was the very spot.

First a stone and the driving home of the stake. Next the setting up of the thin hazel stick notched on top to hold the golden wire. Finally the smoothing out of the noose, the difficult tricky job, and the argument over its height above the ground. On hands and knees they worked like two beavers, and then drew back and flattened themselves to the ground, seeing themselves as a hare charging along, and decided that their handiwork was good. And then they heard the whistle.

One wild look at each other and they were up and racing on.

From behind a bluff they peered and waited. First the sheep, then a dog, and finally the unmistakable head and shoulders of Dougald MacIan rising against the sea.

Without a word, as birds have no word, they were up and off.

If a sheep went into the snare by a leg! If Dougald himself tripped headlong in it!

They fled inland towards Loch Geal.

Presently, through the deepening dusk, they saw the dread figure and his wide flock and his rushing collie not going towards Sgeir but coming straight for them.

Deeper into the tumbled land about Loch Geal they went.

Like something terrible and inexorable, the shepherd and his flock and his dog still advanced upon them.

Deeper and farther they went, into places which they had never seen before and which looked queerly at them but made neither move nor sign.

‘Did you hear yon?' breathed Norrie.

Listening, they heard the pounding of their hearts.

‘Come on,' said Hamish.

A wild quacking and whirring of ducks withered their hearts.

They stood, stricken, seeing the corner of dim water and the dark reeds.

‘Come on,' whispered Hamish in the terrible instinctive fear that the quacking would betray them.

They ran down, and now with trembling muscles they stumbled headlong in boggy ground, and swarmed about, pulling their feet out, uttering choked swift cries.

Through the place they got, tearing themselves out on hands and knees, grabbing at the heather, up and off, pursued by their own cries and the memory of the quacking duck.

Exhausted, they fell at last, and lay, panting so fiercely that it induced a darkness in the head and the fear that can no more run from that which comes behind, leaving nothing but a last cry for the thing when it jumps.

Nothing jumped, however, and soon their breathing could be held to let their ears listen.

Whispering is the darkness in the heart of the wind. It hears itself under the night. The wind passes. The whisper listens.

In a paralysis of the throat, the whisper becomes a grip of the hand.

Hamish, with Norrie's fingers in his flesh, followed Norrie's upward look.

Neither of them stirred or whispered.

‘Where?' whispered Hamish.

‘Up there.'

Nothing happened.

‘What?' whispered Hamish.

‘That tuft of heather – it moved.'

It was now almost quite dark, but Hamish could see the tuft against the grey-dark sky. Their mouths, open for silence, grew dry again.

‘It's only the wind,' whispered Hamish.

They watched it.

Hamish brought his mouth to Norrie's ear. ‘Come on,' he breathed, and slowly he got into a stooping position and slid away. When Norrie made up on him they started running. A cockgrouse split the night:
Err, kek, kek, kek,
go-back, go-back!
Norrie pitched by the shoulder and rolled over, choking, after the first scream or two had ripped out.

Hamish crouched by him. ‘Hsh! Shut up!'

Norrie was crying, whimpering, his head down, gripping his leg, slowly rolling.

‘Let's go on a bit,' whispered Hamish and he began to lift Norrie to his feet.

But Norrie's right leg would not take his weight.

‘Get on my back,' said Hamish.

When he could carry Norrie no farther, he stopped. They sat and listened. Then they began to examine the knee, where the pain was.

‘If you're able to work it at all, it can't be broken,' said Hamish encouragingly.

‘I don't know,' mumbled Norrie. ‘I can't feel it.'

‘It just got stunned. The best plan is to rub it. Will I rub it for you?'

Hamish's warm friendliness was a comfort to Norrie. The night covered them over.

When at last they got up, they continued in the same direction. Hamish had the idea that if they kept circling to the right they must eventually get round Loch Geal and so in time reach the sheep track which they had abandoned when they first saw Dougald.

Norrie was hirpling. He said his leg felt very queer.

Soon, however, it was so dark that they had to go very slowly, swerving away to right or left before high obstacles.

The idea that they knew the way was very strong in them, especially in Hamish, who led.

An hour after that they were still going, but Loch Geal had vanished.

In another hour, Hamish said he thought it must be the sea in front of them, because the blackness looked less black and it seemed ‘away down'. But it couldn't be the sea, because if it was the sea they would hear it. Besides, it was in the wrong place!

This feeling that it couldn't be the sea conflicted, however, with a sensation of empty space. It was very dark now. They had to stick close together. This sensation of empty space below them was frightening. It brought a special emptiness into their empty stomachs.

‘Here, lean on me,' said Hamish, ‘and we'll go together to a sheltered spot and rest for a while.' His voice was low
and earnest in Norrie's ear, for the wind was buffeting them, blowing into their ears, making them tired and stupid, stealing their senses, and Hamish knew that tears, the awful slow soft-sobbing tears of despair, were near Norrie now.

He took Norrie's left arm round his neck and put his own right round Norrie's back. His foot, landing on a rounded stone, nearly upset him. And then a very strange thing happened. It was not altogether anger against the stone that made him heave it forward with his boot, nor yet the moment's relief which springs from such a diversion, but also, down in him where the pure sensation of empty space had been born, an unconscious desire to test that sensation. No sooner, however, had the stone rolled away, than he gripped Norrie and said with a renewed confidence: ‘Come on!' The ground, which was always going up or down, was now going down. They had taken two short steps forward when up from what seemed the cavernous bottom of the world came the startled shrieking of sea-birds, as the stone exploded on skerries two hundred feet below them. They stopped on the edge of the cliff.

They stopped, and they shrank in on themselves and back, and they turned, and the cliffs of the world rose against their faces.

As they crawled away, chasms yawned on every side and blinded them. But they gripped the earth, and their hands were feelers. They lay and panted in dizzy weakness, but only for a moment, only for a second or two, because they felt the earth itself was treacherous, was heaving up to throw them back, throw them over, empty them away.

After that – the endlessness of time having come upon them – the two boys were curled up in a sheltering hag, their skin a pale rime, their teeth chittering.

Presently Norrie said in a queer calm voice: ‘They'll be searching for us. They'll think we're dead.' Even his teeth had stopped chittering while he said that. It was like the voice of a child.

They had been dogged by the fear of the awful retribution awaiting them at home. Now Hamish saw the matter
solemnly and distant a little from him. Death made a great difference.

They wanted to discuss the effect that their death would create on certain persons, but they could not speak of it, so they thought about it in silence. Death would have its revenge on many a hand and tongue which had in times past been lifted against them.

Hamish lifted his head and looked about him.

‘Do you know,' he said,‘I think it's getting lighter!' He stood up. ‘It is! There must be a moon rising somewhere.' He scanned the dark starless sky and saw in the east a distinct lightening of grey-dark cloud.

He stooped and gripped Norrie. ‘Come and look!'

Norrie got up but in a moment gave a horrid choking gasp.

A figure, like a condensation of the dark night, was coming towards them, without outline, enormous. It strode on two feet. When about to bear down upon them, it strode past. In no time it had gone out of sight down into a hollow.

Without a thought, without a word, the boys started off the opposite way and Norrie forgot the pain in his knee. But after a few yards they drew up, casting wild glances about them, and backing a little as if about to be hit.

‘Wait!' gasped Hamish. He had realized they were on a path. ‘This way!' And he struck inland off the path, and they threw themselves down in the lee of a small knoll, listening in so horrible a fear that the ears had to strain beyond the blood stream.

After a time, Hamish said in a low voice, ‘It was a man.'

They listened again. Nothing was coming at them. But the wind, the dark wind, was searching. Round the knoll it came and licked them. Over there, it whined. High above streamed the riders of the night, invisible eager heads shot forward like the heads of wild duck.

‘I think,' breathed Hamish in low valiance, ‘it was Charlie.'

Norrie could not speak. But something like a tiny eye, far in Hamish, remained watchful and wary. And at last it lifted itself on its thin stalk and looked about its primeval shore.

But Norrie was curled in the back end of his burrow,
where the weasel of life could gnaw at him.

Hamish, with his voice, began drawing the weasel away, pulling it off from behind, and the pain of renewed hope was worse than the pain of the weasel's teeth. The figures of the night and the ghosts of all the stories, the murdered men and the drowned women, were coming back to life, outside in the night, beyond the covered head.

Suddenly, as if waiting for this extreme moment, the night began to speak. Far off they heard its voice, so far that when it was gone it was like a cry damned in its own forlorn death.

The boys got up in terror and stumbled away from it. They fell and crawled once more into the hag from which the dark figure had driven them. In this hag, the wind shot clean over them. They pressed against its inner bank.