Читать книгу Land Of The Leal - James Barke - Страница 21

They were just about bedded in the Suie when John MacQuatters of Dundrone, a farm that lay below Kirkcolm, between Balwherrie and High Salquharrie, came riding a saddle horse to tell them the terrible news. Andrew Ramsay and his two fisher sons, Adam and Samuel, together with another Kirkcolm fisher-lad, Tom Blane, had been drowned almost opposite the Scar when the lug-sail, caught in a sudden squall, had capsized. A couple of boats had pushed out immediately; but the tide was flowing fast and there was not even a trace of a spar of wood.

David Ramsay could not speak nor cry. But he trembled so violently that he had to sit down to lace his boots.

The screeching and wailing of his mother was unbearable. Now and again she would become articulate and scream:

‘Them and their drinkin’! I knew they would come to a bad end.’

When he got outside, dusk was already falling. The sky was clear: there would be no real darkness. He took to the fields. He did not want to meet any one. He wanted to get down to the Salquharrie shore. The bodies might come in there …

There came to him a vision of his father’s face, cold and white and bleached with the sea, set in that calm melancholy repose as he remembered it most and as he would always remember it – despite the laughter that had lit it that very day in the eating-house.

The vision brought him to his knees on the grass. He fell forward in a fit of sobbing that racked and convulsed his body. He would never walk or speak with his father again. There had been a deep inarticulate bond of affection between them. His father had been wise and kind and tolerant. He had known that his father had suffered; that he had known sadness. From that terrible night of Richard’s death he had been drawn to him. Often he had felt when he saw him sitting by the fire that he would have liked to have held his hand or put his arm on his shoulder. He knew that when Richard died, something had died in his father: something deep and vital. He would have given him all the drink in the world if it would have softened the edge of that sorrow. His father did not drink like other men. He did not drink to curse and swear and boast with a loud mouth. It seemed he drank that the gnawing at his heart might be eased: that he might forget the awful loneliness that dwelt there.

The terrible convulsive sobbing eased: the iron band of constriction round David’s chest eased. But nothing mattered now. He could never go to sea: the sea was cruel and treacherous. Maybe he would go on working on the Achgammie fields – what did it matter? If only he could get away from the Suie and his mother. He could not live with his mother now: he did not want to sleep with Peter. Of all his brothers and sisters only Agnes meant anything to him. But he didn’t care: was beyond caring. He was alone: Richard was gone: his father was gone: the world was empty …

He rose and wandered towards the shore. He stood on the top of the heughs and looked across the Loch. The water was dark and calm; and yet it seemed to seethe with quick-flowing down-sucking treacherous currents. Never had it looked more evil: never had it looked, in its suggestion of hidden depths, more secretive and grave-like.

The tide was still ebbing. He climbed down the heughs seeking the water’s edge. The lip of the sea curved and curled contemptuously. Every wave seemed to express its own cynical indifference. A movement of fear spread through him: he shivered. He had never known the sea like this. He felt dwarfed, reduced to a pathetic inconsequence. He stepped back from the edge of the water. It seemed to be mocking him: challenging his approach. It seemed possible that wet hands might rise out from the sea and clasp him to its watery bosom …

What was that object floating on the water? Was there anything? There had been something: he was certain there had. What did a body look like floating on the water? Had he not heard that they did not float on the surface until the third day? No matter: there was something floating out there. It was floating outwards. But was it? No: it was coming in. Maybe his imagination was playing him tricks …

He followed the edge of the water, splashing into pools, stumbling against boulders and slipping on sea-weed: he dare not lift his gaze from the water. He staggered on for almost a mile till the heughs came down to the sea. But he could never be certain of what he saw. The object seemed to sink and reappear with a maddening irregularity.

He climbed on to the cliff face. But now he could distinguish nothing. His eyes grew weary and he sat down. The tide was on the turn. A chill breeze was blowing but he did not heed it. He was frozen and numb from the inside.

The sea advanced on long sleek-backed waves that broke on the rocks with an oily silence.

Maybe it was better that the sea should be his father’s grave. There was something pitiful and yet passionless about the finality of it. He doubted now if the body would ever come ashore: with the fast out-flowing tide it must have been washed out to sea.

He fell asleep where he sat, turning over into a hollow of the ground. His strength was exhausted: his emotions drained. Above his sleeping body, already stiffening with the chill of the morning, the sun broke over the Galloway hills and shimmered and shivered on the morning tide. There was a cold austerity about the dawn. Low mists lying on the brow of the heights above Cairn Ryan – and the mists seemed reluctant to leave their resting-place. But as the dawn broke life stirred and solitary gulls screamed harshly along the combing lip of the water’s edge.

It was William MacGeoch of Cortorfin who found him sleeping in the hollow of the heughs. Cortorfin was deeply moved. He swore to himself he would do something for the boy if it were the last thing he ever did.

God! there was no doubt. Life was more nor hard. Cortorfin raised his eyes and scanned the sea.

Andrew Ramsay and his sons might be washed ashore. But he had his doubts … Better if he never came in – for the boy’s sake. A corpse washed in by the sea and blown up like a harvest frog wasn’t the bonniest of sights. The laddie wouldn’t like to remember his father like that. Better to be washed out, carried out to sea and never found … Aye … but a dirty cauld bitch o ‘a death – drowning. A dirty cauld bitch o’ a death. But then death was a cauld bitch at the best of times. She would lay her hand on his brow – yet! The time was wearing near … And what was the meaning of life at the hinder-end? God alone knew: he’d be damned if he did. It wasn’t so long ago since he was a laddie running about wi’ Andra Ramsay. Yesterday-like … just yesterday … Money didn’t matter when you thought it out. It helped: no doubt about that. But it couldn’t keep the breath in you. That was one thing it couldn’t do, even if the barns were filled to the balks with golden sovereigns …

Cortorfin ruminated on the purpose of life and the signficance of death as he had ruminated many a time. But it was all mystery and darkness – there was no illumination: there was no answer to the riddle. A queer way it was for man and beast to be made and then to come into the world – damned queer – and not what anybody in their senses would call dignified. But there it was … and then death came and you were struck down – both man and beast. And the beast knew when death was coming – the beast knew even better than man …

Maybe when all was said and done God did know His own business best. Maybe there was a purpose and significance in everything that was beyond the understanding of man. Certainly it was beyond his. Andra Ramsay had been a decent God-fearing man. Maybe he did take a dram whiles – but what was the odds in that? He’d had a sore life. Nothing much of kindness or the world’s gear: and a bitch of a wife. But he had never done anybody in Kirkcolm an ill-turn where he could do them a good turn. And now …? It was hard to understand and harder to thole – but tholed it would need to be.

He turned his back on the sea and roused David Ramsay.

He would take him home and give him a drop of spirits and get the wife to make him a good hot gruel. He might have done more for Andra Ramsay when he was living – but he wouldn’t break faith with him now that he was dead. He would stand by the boy as he had promised.