A Field Full of Folk (2 page)

Peter said, “Do you want to hear my song, granny?” And so he sang in front of her a verse from ‘Old Macdonald had a Farm' while his sister Helen giggled as she listened and she herself heard in the accents of the boy the voice of her own son who had left long ago and was now in Africa. Finally Helen couldn't stand it any longer. “Not like that,” she said and she herself began to sing, and Mrs Berry knew perfectly well that they were trying to outdo each other, as her own children had also done, that they were striving for her attention.

“That's very good,” she said. “That's very good. Both of you,” she added carefully.

A thought suddenly landed on the branch of her mind. It belonged to her school-days. She could see Malcolm Currie standing up in his desk with his red knobbly knees, and the schoolmaster, brisk and fiery, was saying to him, “Say ‘is'. The third person singular of the present tense of the verb ‘to be'. Say ‘is' .”

And poor Malcolm had repeated after him “Say ‘is' “ instead of saying “is” on its own while the other boys and girls sniggered uncontrollably and the teacher had flown into a furious rage so that his cinders fell among them. She could see them all so clearly sitting in their desks in that small school-room, in their pigtails and clean flowery dresses while their schoolbags sat at their sides on the floor. And then they had left the school-room shouting “Say ‘is' “ and they were running down the white road among the larks and the linnets and the clouds turned over and over in the sky,
and the trees, loaded with berries, stood burningly by the side of the road along which later her husband would drive his newly bought car, a banger which they had got for practically nothing. And in what a stately manner they had driven along the road, while he stood upright in the seat, and they had sat behind him, herself and her son and her daughters, all away from home now except for Patricia whose children she was now talking to.

“Does the sun wear pyjamas when he goes to bed?” Peter had once asked her seriously. Of course he does, she had said, of course he does. And she had told them a story about a white horse which they would meet only when they went to sleep and dreamed.

“Only then will you see the white horse,” she had told them.

And then for no reason that she could think of she remembered Chrissie who had run away with her radio. What a fool she had been! What a silly fool! She could have told anyone that Chrissie would come to that, ever since she had first seen her going on the train to Glasgow with that scandalously short skirt she wore. Leaving her husband there, and carrying a radio! What a ridiculous thing to do. The girl must be insane. Why, she wouldn't have left Angus for a million pounds.

“I'll help you,” Peter was shouting as he ran after her who was carrying the bucket in her hand.

There was nothing like little children. They kept you alive, there was no doubt about it. She waved to Mr Drummond who was passing and who was an elder of the church, upright as ever but some said … Well, what didn't they say? And the minister wasn't looking too well, and that was a fact.

She washed the cup and saucer, and threw the water from the basin in an almost transparent curve over the grass. The food she had put out for the birds had been eaten by the seagulls again. She must break it up into smaller pieces.

The train was turning back now and she could see Peter and Helen shouting excitedly as the driver waved to them. The world was good, it was a fine morning, the haze would soon lift.

3

D
AVID
C
OLLINS SAID
, “And an ounce of tobacco, please.”

“That's right,” said Kate who served in the local tobacco and sweet shop.

The old man thought for a moment that she seemed to be talking to him as if he were a child but decided not to make an issue of it. After all, Kate was always bright and kind which was not invariably the case especially with those girls you got nowadays in supermarkets and who were always sitting clicking their machines, and handed you a long strip of paper when they were finished, all the time staring past you to the next person in the queue.

They reminded him of … No, better not think about it.

All those sweets that he could eat but didn't have the money to buy. The black balls, the wine gums, the liquorice all-sorts, above all the liquorice all-sorts. His mouth brimmed with saliva.

Kate was so like her mother, the same black hair, the same red cheeks, but that had been so long ago before she married Andrew Lang, the farmer. Why, at the dances she had been the most lively of the bunch, with her head held high, her slim waist, always throwing her legs into the air, while the moon shone down on the corn which was yellow and ripe. And now she had the rheumatics like everyone else and walked with a stick.

And Kate herself was married to a Catholic, wasn't that right, and the priest had come along and told her that she must raise her children in the Catholic faith. Who would have thought that the priest could be so adamant, considering how good he always was to the old folk, always stopping and giving them lifts. But you never knew anyone till he was put to the test and that was a fact.

He placed the change carefully in his purse and tilted his cap as he always did, as he had always done in the past. Be polite, salute, where necessary: after all, there are degrees in this world, not everyone is equal to everyone else.

He left the shop and stood for a moment looking along the little street. Calum, the butcher, was standing outside his shop in his smock striped in white and blue with blood on it. His large red face turned towards David and he nodded.

“A fine day,” he said.

“It is that,” said David.

Now there was a man who was making a lot of money, who had started off as a gamekeeper on the big estate. A fine poacher more than likely. But there was always a demand for a good cut of meat, not that the sausages you got nowadays were as good as the ones he had eaten when he was growing up. And then, all those days he had spent as a shepherd before retiring, how long ago was it now? Fourteen years. Was it as long as that? His wife had always complained that there was never enough money to buy all the comforts that they needed. How often they had stood outside the window of a shop gazing in while his wife had sighed and he himself had gritted his teeth but said nothing. There must be no more quarrels, there must be no more. Still there had always been the fine spring days when the lambs had whitened the hills, when there was a green freshness in the air, when the skies were so blue that one could lie on the ground and stare into them forever. He had walked about the land like a man from the Bible with his staff in his hand.

“If the lamb is facing you,” his wife had said, “if the first lamb that you see is facing you then it will be good luck for the rest of the year.”

In those days it seemed that he was a giant who would never be slowed by old age or anything else. And now his son was in New South Wales in Australia and he had married an Australian woman and when he had been home, which was once only, he had looked at his father's sheep as if they were midgets and at his field as if it were a pocket handkerchief.

He turned away towards his house, hearing again, as he so often did, the words ‘Quick March' and seeing again that RSM—what had been his name again? Marshall? No, that had been the sergeant, he would get his name yet—that bull-necked RSM and the square on which they had marched with so many others. Then there was the front, the trenches, the wire, the frozen mud, the leap into the blinding sun, the shrapnel exploding around him, the grey shapes appearing in front of him. The straw German swung like a scarecrow when he jabbed at it.

“Harder, man, harder,” shouted RSM Morrison, yes, that was his name. “Harder. What would your dolly think of that?” Oh, he had been a foul-mouthed fellow right enough, that RSM.

And then Mons, that day never to be forgotten. What had they seen? The angels with their kindly faces blessing them, bending downwards out of the sun. Matthews was weeping beside him, the others were standing stockstill in amazement. The angels were winged like the Hosts of God. And then it seemed that the guns hit the angels themselves and blew them out of the sky.

Was that place better than where he was now? Better than this lovely village? The thought eeled among the dark stones of his mind.

He opened the door. The cat, grey and fat, came slowly to meet him, arching itself luxuriously round his legs.

Dammit, he thought, I should have got milk. I knew there was something. I'm getting awfully forgetful. And something will have to be done about that window before the winter comes.

He sat in his chair stretching out his legs. Would Murdo come over? He sometimes wished that he would stay away but when he did stay away he felt lonely and sad.

And then there's another thing, he told himself. My son in Australia isn't getting this house. I'll give it to Elizabeth. She is always visiting me, she is always bringing me scones, she is always tidying the house, she is like a daughter to me. And she's only twenty-one, spending the rest of the time working in the bank since her mother died.

I'll give her the house and by God they'd better like it. He stroked the cat which hummed on his lap.

“We could have done with you in the trenches,” he thought, “we could have done with you, old lad.”

His sharp shaved grey face relaxed again as he thought of Kate's mother. He had kissed her once behind the privy when they were in school together. He might have married her too if he had had the money. But, no, he had done what was right, money wasn't everything even if some people thought that nowadays. He took his ribbons from the drawer and stared at them again. They reminded him of liquorice. By God, he thought, I could show them something yet. I'm not like those old age pensioners you see on TV on Remembrance Day. What did they know of it? And those poppies streaming down from the roof like rain, what were they trying to prove with them? Once again he heard the pipes playing, saw the RSM with his big red face, a cockerel on a dung hill. And heard a knock at the door. Would that be Murdo or Elizabeth? And Kate's mother faded away from the cornfields of his imagination and waved to him as she went out the door, the stick in her hand pointed at him like a rifle.

4

A
NNIE, WHO WAS
eighty years old but still alert, stood in front of the man from the Jehovah's Witnesses, dressed in her long khaki-coloured coat which she wore at all times. She said,

“I should like you to tell me what is meant by the following passage from Revelations. I shall read it to you.

“‘There in heaven stood a throne and on the throne sat one whose appearance was like the gleam of jasper and cornelian: and round the throne were twenty-four other thrones and on them sat twenty-four elders robed in white and wearing crowns of gold. From the throne went out flashes of lightning and peals of thunder. Burning before the throne were seven flaming torches, the seven spirits of God, and in front of it stretched what seemed a sea of glass like a sheet of ice.

“‘In the centre round the throne itself were four living creatures covered with eyes, in front and behind. The first creature was like a lion, the second like an ox, the third had a human face, the fourth was like an eagle in flight.'

“Now,” she said, “tell me about that.”

“Well,” said Mr Wilson, peering at her earnestly through his pebbly glasses, “we are told that the Book of Revelations is the most difficult book in the Bible. We are told that this book is called the Apocalypse, which means ‘an unveiling'.”

“I know that,” said Annie. “What do you think I am? You are not talking to an ignorant child, you know. What I want you to tell me, first of all, is the meaning of jasper and cornelian.” She stared penetratingly at Mr Wilson who took off his glasses and wiped them with a red handkerchief which had white spots on it. For some reason Annie thought of her long-dead husband and the day he had bought her the ring which she was now wearing on her finger. It had been in Glasgow he had bought her the ring after she had spent an hour or so searching through the shop. Norman had worked on the railway and she had always despised his mentality. “No brain,” she would say to the other villagers, “absolutely no brain. How he can understand the signals is a mystery to me.” Her husband had been an extraordinarily quiet man who used to leave home and sit in other people's houses for hours in a sort of stunned silence as if he were seeking refuge there.

“Tell me,” she would say to the villagers, “if Norman had been alive during the time of the Christians would they have crucified him? He has done more to deserve crucifixion than Jesus did. And so has everyone in this village.”

“Jasper and cornelian,” she asked Mr Wilson again. “Do you know what they look like? Could you please tell me what they look like.”

“Well,” said Mr Wilson slowly, “as I was saying they are kinds of precious stones.”

“I know that they are kinds of precious stones,” said Annie contemptuously, at the same time watching through the window a rabbit racing around the grass. She thought, “If I had a gun I would shoot him and have him for my tea. Rabbits are pests, though I don't believe in myxomatosis. The children like rabbits, they will run after them for hours, spoiling my good grass.” Mr Wilson had deceived her, she could see that clearly now. She could see that he was a petty ignorant man with a very low-class handkerchief. He didn't have the faintest idea what cornelian was. He was a fake, she would be better with Buddhism. The idea had come to her recently when he had considered trying to get in touch with Norman who was probably holding up a red flag on a celestial platform in some insignificant corner of hell. “And another thing,” she persisted, “what about the twenty-four elders? I shall have to speak to Mr Murchison about it. I'm sure he doesn't know. Why doesn't he have twenty-four elders in his church? It says twenty-four elders clearly in Revelations. There is such a lot of ignorance about it all.” She thought that Mr Wilson probably had a wife who wore pebbly glasses, and innumerable pebbly-glassed children as well.