The Black Halo
Authors: Iain Crichton Smith
Iain Crichton Smith was born in Glasgow in 1928 and raised by his widowed mother on the Isle of Lewis before going to Aberdeen to attend university. As a sensitive and complex
poet in both English and Gaelic, he published more than twenty-five books of verse, from
The Long River
in 1955 to
A Country for Old Men
, posthumously published in 2000. In his
1986 collection,
A Life
, the poet looked back over his time in Lewis and Aberdeen, recalling a spell of National Service in the fifties, and then his years as an English teacher, working
first in Clydebank and Dumbarton and then at Oban High School, where he taught until his retirement in 1977. Shortly afterwards he married, and lived contentedly with his wife, Donalda, in Taynuilt
until his death in 1998. Crichton Smith was the recipient of many literary prizes, including Saltire and Scottish Arts Council Awards and fellowships, the Queen’s Jubilee Medal and, in 1980,
an OBE.
As well as a number of plays and stories in Gaelic, Iain Crichton Smith published several novels, including
Consider the Lilies
(1968),
In the Middle of the Wood
(1987) and
An Honourable Death
(1992). In total, he produced ten collections of stories, all of which feature in this two-volume collection, except the Murdo stories, which appear in a separate
volume,
Murdo: The Life and Works
(2001).
Kevin MacNeil was born and raised on the Isle of Lewis and educated at the Nicolson Institute and the University of Edinburgh. A widely published writer of poetry, prose and
drama, his Gaelic and English works have been translated into eleven languages. His books include
Love and Zen in the Outer Hebrides
(which won the prestigious Tivoli Europa Giovani
International Poetry Prize),
Be Wise Be Otherwise
,
Wish I Was Here
and
Baile Beag Gun Chrìochan
. He was the first recipient of the Iain Crichton Smith Writing
Fellowship (1999–2002).
This eBook edition published in 2013 by
Birlinn Limited
West Newington House
Newington Road
Edinburgh
EH9 1QS
www.birlinn.co.uk
First published in 2001 by Birlinn Limited
Stories copyright © The estate of Iain Crichton Smith, 1949–1976
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-84158-171-2
eBook ISBN: 978-0-85790-714-1
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Version 1.0
The True Story of Sir Hector Macdonald
The Old Woman, the Baby and Terry
First of all, I would like to thank Donalda Smith, whose support during my period of tenure as inaugural Iain Crichton Smith Writing Fellow has given me some idea as to why she
was such an inspiration to her late husband.
I want to express my most sincere thanks to the following for their many, many efforts on behalf of this book: Neville Moir, Stewart Conn, Helen Templeton, Andrew Simmons, Hugh Andrew, Gavin
Wallace, David Linton, David McClymont and Morna Maclaren.
Grant F. Wilson’s
A Bibliography of Iain Crichton Smith
has been indispensable.
I must also thank the staff of the National Museum of Scotland (Edinburgh), the Mitchell Library (Glasgow), and the Scottish Poetry Library (Edinburgh) for their helpfulness.
Every effort has been made to track down all of Iain Crichton Smith’s English-language stories, but, given how phenomenally prolific Iain was, I must accept the possibility that these
volumes are not quite complete. If any reader knows of a story by Iain Crichton Smith that is not included in these volumes (other than those stories in Stewart Conn’s recent edition of
Murdo: the Life and Works
) I would be most grateful if they would get in touch with me via the publisher, in order that any such story might be included in future editions.
Finally, I want to acknowledge that working on these volumes has been a genuine labour of love and I wish to dedicate my own efforts to the late Iain Crichton Smith.
from
THE HERMIT
and other stories
For Donalda
with love
One day a hermit came to live in or rather on the edge of our village. The first we knew about it was when we saw the smoke rising from one of the huts that the RAF had left
there after the war. (There is a cluster of them just outside the village, tin corrugated huts that had never been pulled down, though the war was long over and their inhabitants had returned to
their ordinary lives in England and other parts of Scotland.)
Shortly afterwards, Dougie who owns the only shop in the village told me about the hermit. The shop of course is the usual kind that you’ll find in any village in the Highlands and sells
anything from paraffin to bread, from newspapers to cheese. Dougie is one of the few people in the village that I visit. He served in Italy in the last war and has strange stories about the
Italians and the time when he was riding about in tanks. He’s married but drinks quite a lot: he doesn’t have a car but goes to town every Saturday night and enjoys himself in his own
way. However, he has a cheerful nature and his shop is always full: one might say it is the centre of gossip in the village.
‘He’s an odd looking fellow,’ he told me. ‘He wears a long coat which is almost black and there’s a belt of rope around him. You’d think in this warm weather
that he’d be wearing something lighter. And he rides a bicycle. He sits very upright on his bicycle. His coat comes down practically to his feet. He’s got a very long nose and very
bright blue eyes. Well, he came into the shop and of course I was at the counter but he didn’t ask for his messages at all. He gave me a piece of paper with the message written on it. I
thought at first he was dumb – sometimes you get dumb people though I’ve never seen one in the village – but he wasn’t at all dumb for I heard him speaking to himself. But
he didn’t speak to me. He just gave me the paper with the messages written on it. Cheese, bread, jam and so on but no newspapers. And when he got the messages and paid me he took them and put
them in a bag and then he put the bag over the handlebars and he went away again. Just like that. It was very funny.
‘At first I was offended – why, after all, shouldn’t he speak to me? – but then I thought about it and I considered, Well, as long as he can pay for the messages why
shouldn’t I give them to him? After all he’s not a Russian spy or a German.’ He laughed. ‘Though for all he said he might as well be. But I don’t think he is. He
wasn’t at all aggressive or anything like that. In fact I would say he looked a very mild gentle sort of man. The other people in the shop thought he was a bit funny. But I must say that
after you have travelled you see all sorts of people and you’re not surprised. Still, it was funny him giving me the paper. He wore this long coat almost down to his feet and a piece of rope
for a belt. I don’t know whether his coat was dirty or not. He looked a very contented sort of man. He didn’t ask for a newspaper at all, or whisky. Some people who are alone are always
asking for whisky but he didn’t ask for any. All he wanted was the food. He had a purse too and he took the money out of the purse and he gave it to me. And all this time he didn’t say
anything at all. That has never happened to me before but I wasn’t surprised. No, I’m telling a lie. I was surprised but I wasn’t angry. They say he’s living in one of the
RAF huts and he doesn’t bother anybody. But it’s strange really. No one knows where he’s come from. And when he had got his messages he got on to this old bicycle and he went away
again. He sits very upright on his bicycle and he rides along very slowly. I never saw anyone like him before. It’s as if he doesn’t want to speak. No, it’s as if he’s too
tired or too uninterested to speak. Most people in the shop speak all the time – especially the women – but he wasn’t like that at all. Still if he can pay for his messages he can
be a Russian for all I care.’ And he laughed again. ‘There are some people in the village who don’t pay for their messages but I can’t say that about him. He paid on the
nail. And after all, in my opinion, people talk too much anyway.’
2
That evening, a warm, fine evening, I was out at a moorland loch with my fishing rod, pretending to fish. I do this quite often, I mean I pretend to fish, so that I can get
away from the village which I often find claustrophobic. I don’t really like killing things, and all I do is hold the rod in my hand and leave it lying in the water while I think of other
things and enjoy the evening. Out on the moor it is very quiet and there is a fragrance of plants whose names I do not know. I might mention here that I was once the local headmaster till I retired
from school a few years ago, and I live alone since my wife died.