Читать книгу The Wind that Shakes the Barley - James William Barke - Страница 20

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Ploughing and sowing, harrowing and harvesting came and went and three rounds of the seasons found Robin still slaving to the Mount Oliphant soil.

Then came the great adventure when he was sent to Kirkoswald, in the care of his uncle Samuel Broun, to sit under the far-famed dominie there. For three summer months he enjoyed a freedom such as he had never imagined could fall to his lot.

And when he came home, buoyant in spirit and nourished in body, he found that his father had made a bargain with David MacLure, the Ayr merchant, and was about to become tenant in the farm of Lochlea that lay in the low hills some ten miles to the west between the townships of Machlin and Tarbolton.

Eleven years they had laboured on Mount Oliphant: eleven of the best years of his boyhood and youth. It was hard to believe that at long, long last he was winning free, that they were all winning free. They were going up out of the wilderness into the promised land...

The exaltation was almost overbearing. There would be no more factor’s snash to thole; no more bitter weeping when rent day came round again leaving them bare of all comfort and hope...

And God grant there might be human company about Lochlea for the awful loneliness about the Mount had been a terrible price to pay for the seclusion of poverty.

There was but another winter to wear in and that could be borne gladly; for the spring would come and the grass would be green to welcome them to a new home and a fresh hope.

Elated and buoyed on a great wave of expectancy, Robin found the hunger to write gnawing incessantly; and he was fired to emulate the poets he read and studied. Sometimes he reviewed the lines on Nelly Kilpatrick and thought they were as good of their kind as any he had read. How often during those past years, when dull toil and monotonous food had almost corroded his will to live, had he been sustained by that achievement and the greater promise that lay there...

Up in the attic he went through his bundle of papers, weeding out what he didn’t need in preparation for the flitting to Lochlea; looking over half-forgotten efforts and mulling over old memories.

He had made attempts before now to keep some sort of record of his life, sometimes by way of an elaborate diary, sometimes by keeping copies of his letters with James MacCandlish and the friends he had made at Kirkoswald... Once he had attempted a play in stodgy and grandiloquent blank verse....

He sat up in the half-boarded loft with his copybook resting on the wooden chest that served for a table. He cast a critical eye over an early attempt at autobiography.

“I remember coming to Mount Oliphant at the age of seven. Nature wore a very pleasant aspect as the weather was good and the time was early summer. I remember thinking in my childish way that the farm buildings were much more substantial than those we had left behind at Alloway; but that by virtue of the secluded and generally retired position of the farm it was lonelier and in every way devoid of human company. This was to some extent set off by the general air of freedom that was all around the place.”

But Robin did not think as he wrote for he did not think in English; and he was never, to the end of his days, able to do so. He wrote English as he wrote French—only the degree differed. He had learned it from Murdoch who rightly, if unconsciously, treated it as a foreign tongue.

He thought, in so far as his thought process had relation to verbal images, in his native Ayrshire dialect, a strong heady dialect of the Scots language. More: the mood and tense, the contour and colour of all his thinking was Scottish. He could write poetry of a kind in the Scots language, reflecting his national characteristics. But he could only imitate the English poets in his conventional English rhymes.

So between his translated paragraphs, of which he was so inordinately proud, his mind spun a gorgeous web of imagery. But so far as his literary work of the moment was concerned, his mind worked in vain. How could it be otherwise when he had no literary model of native Scots to guide him?

He would picture clearly those far-off days when he had come first to the Mount. Glorious days there had been that summer, running about the braes of the Oliphant burn, paddling there with Gilbert and lying on the grassy banks pulling the gowans...

A year after that William had been born. That was the first time poor old Betty Davidson had come to the Mount. Poor Betty, God bless her! She had been kind to him, kind to all of them and especially to his mother. But for Betty how would his mother have fared? And the tales she used to tell them when they were children! She had died by the roadside coming to see them the summer before last. She had died alone with nobody about her and only a weasel maybe popping its head out of a hole in the turf dykes...

The summer months had been a great time for births. The summer after Murdoch had left Alloway, John had been born. Two summers after came Isabella. That had been a bitter year: the year Fergusson of Doonholm had died and that damned rascal of a factor had taken over.

He flushed and burned as he thought of the insolent threatening letters Elphinstone had written to his father; how his mother had wept...

And all for a paltry matter of a few pounds of ready cash run past the rent day! How they had toiled and sweated and starved themselves to pay that money.

He would not spoil his new Journal by writing about Elphinstone: he would settle accounts with him some other day and in some other way...

Dalrymple and James MacCandlish... Robin cut a fresh point on his goose quill. Ah, Dalrymple had been but a preparation for John Murdoch and Ayr; yet what did either mean when set beside Kirkoswald?

He must put down some record of that glorious time. The quill scratched rapidly on the rough grey paper...

“Another circumstance in my life which made very considerable alterations on my mind and manners was—I spent my seventeenth summer a good distance from home, at a noted school on a smuggling coast, to learn mensuration, surveying, dialling, etc. in which I made a pretty good progress. But I made a greater progress in the knowledge of mankind. The contraband trade was very successful: scenes of swaggering riot and roaring dissipation were as yet new to me, and I was no enemy to social life. Here, though I learnt to look unconcernedly on a large tavern-bill, and mix without fear in a drunken squabble, yet I went on with a high hand in my geometry. Then a charming girl who lived next door to the school overset my trigonometry, and set me off in a tangent from the spheres of my studies.

“It was vain to think of doing any more good at school. The remaining week I stayed I did nothing but craze the faculties of my soul about her, or steal out to meet with her; and the two last nights of my stay in the country, had sleep been a mortal sin, I was innocent.

“I returned home very considerably improved. My reading was enlarged with the very important addition of Thomson’s and Shenstone’s Works: I had seen mankind in a new phasis; and I engaged several of my schoolfellows to keep up a literary correspondence with me. I had met with a collection of letters by the Wits of Queen Anne’s reign, and I pored over them most devoutly. I kept copies of any of my own letters that pleased me, and a comparison of any of them and the composition of most of my correspondents flattered my vanity.”

No: that was too bald, conveyed little of what Kirkoswald had meant to him. He couldn’t put down all the details on paper. It would never do to breathe a word, now or ever, as to how he had helped his uncle with the smuggling trade; of the silver coins he had got for carrying the bundles of silk to the agent. His father would never forgive him if he knew.

Aye: Kirkoswald had been an adventure. And the drinking and singing and ribald laughter in Kirkton Jean’s public-house! Before going to Kirkoswald he wouldn’t have dreamed of spending twopence on a measure of ale. But there, with the clink of good money in his pocket, he had let the bill mount up...

And what talk there had been to listen to. Ah! the Kirkoswald men knew how to live. They knew how to jink the law, dodge the excisemen and escape the iniquitous imposts of the English parliament. They were the lads with a bold levelling creed who were not going to allow a parcel of rogues in a nation to do them out of their rights and their living.

If they did drink too much, were they to be blamed for that? Theirs was a hard and dangerous calling. And when a successful cargo had been run and the contraband disposed of at good prices, were they not entitled to have a night or two’s fun and merriment?

Maybe it was wrong. But if so, they had not started the wrong; and they would have been fools to have let themselves be singled out for poverty and hardship.

But there had been other sides to the Kirkoswald sojourn.

He had applied himself to his studies under Hugh Rodger. Dominie Hugh had seen to that. Rodger was not the man to be trifled with. If his pupils didn’t acquire knowledge by virtue of their native wit and industry he was not above lambasting it into them.

And there too he had made friends with Willie Niven, a fine lad not unlike James MacCandlish, but maybe not so fine in the grain, not so sensitive.

Willie and he had been boon companions, sharing not only their smuggling secrets but also the secrets of their hearts and minds. Great times they had had debating with each other, taking the pros and cons of their argument with formal seriousness, addressing each other as they imagined a public audience might be addressed.

Honest good-natured Willie Niven and Thomas Orr were his correspondents now: they would always engage in an epistolary commerce.

As he thought, his mind, brooding and drifting quietly and imperceptibly, stopped thinking; the boarded confines of the loft dissolved and vanished. He was back again in Kirkoswald. Against the inner eye the miraculous camera of his mind projected the scene.

The fug of the lunting pipes was thick in the air for it was a windless night and there was no draught blowing between the roof joists. There was a strong smell of spirits and a heavy odour of ale. A broad wooden seat ran round three sides of the room. The men sat there for it was much too warm to sit round the long table by the wide open fire. The sun had set beyond the stack of Ailsa so the lantern, swinging from its long chain hooked to the rafters, was lit; and there the great tallow candle burned with a bright and steady flame. A cargo of wine and spirit had been successfully run and disposed of: the men were happy and in a mood for relaxation.

Willie Robb, the mason, was singing Green Grow the Rashes. It wasn’t the first time Robin had heard the song; but he had never heard it sung in company and never with such open and unashamed gusto. Nearly every man joined in the chorus. Willie didn’t stop when the landlady came in and one of the men gave her a hearty smack across her broad buttocks and said:

“You’ll be glad you are no’ a widow, Jean?”

And Kirkton Jean laughed merrily and said that as far as she was concerned she was as tight a lass as they could find in the parish—and that was how she intended to remain.

Robin took a gulp at his caup of ale. God, but the folk here were different and didn’t stink with the sour smell of Auld Licht sanctimoniousness. Here were honest hearty men who knew life was not meant to be spent wearing long faces.

“By the Lord, Robin,” said his uncle, “if your father knew what was going on he would tan the hide off you—by God, he would ride post-haste down here and try tanning my own. But for all that, your father’s a grand man, Robin, even if he is a bit strict—a real God-fearing man; but a fool for himself. Na, na, Robin: he’ll never make a living in a damp dirty hole o’ a place like Mount Oliphant. I couldna make a living myself here if it wasna for a brig coming in now and again. But mind: never a word. There are men here would cut your throat without looking over their shoulders.”

But while he was listening to his uncle, burly Dugald Graham of Shanter farm called to Jean for the fiddle. When it was brought to him he screwed the pegs and rubbed rosin along the bow. He scraped the bow across the gut and finished his tuning.

“Come on, Shanter, and give us the Reel o’ Stumpie,” roared Jock Campbell, who was his neighbour in farming and in smuggling.

But the Shanter had been inspired by the singing of Green Grow the Rashes: it was this tune he now transformed into a wild strathspey. His great coarse fingers nipped down on the cat-gut with amazing dexterity. His bow swept about the fiddle bridge with ease and grace.

The Kirkton Inn went mad at his playing. Some of the sailor lads brought in their lasses and began to dance. A stranger who was representing one of the Glasgow smuggling agents came in with Bessie Richmond, the finest dancer and most desirable light o’ skirts in the parish. The stranger had plenty of money and he was something of a dandy. He sported a fine bottle-green coat with brass buttons and his breeches were of the best plush.

He stared round the room and his glance was supercilious. He ordered wine for himself and Bessie and, while Jean was bringing the drink, turned to the Shanter who had laid aside the fiddle.

He tossed a silver coin at the Shanter’s feet.

“Music, fiddler! Let’s see what you can do by way of a French measure!”

The Shanter did not appear to hear him. He quietly and unhurriedly finished his ale.

The room was silent. Robin sensed in the silence how the stranger had committed grave offence.

The Shanter rose unsteadily to his feet and grasped the fiddle. He faced the stranger.

“D’you think I’m some damned tinkler to be thrown money at?”

Without a word of warning he raised the fiddle, brought it down on the stranger’s head and hung the wreck of it round his neck.

Bessie screamed. Kirkton Jean gave a scraich that would have fleyed the Dutch. Someone doused the lantern.

In a split second the place was in an uproar. The sounds of blows, yells, curses and breaking glass filled the room.

Sam’l Broun gripped Robin’s arm.

“Don’t move, for Godsake, or you’ll get your brains knocked out. The Shanter’s raised and he’ll redd the place or tear the tripes out o’ that daft beggar o’ an agent.”

Then Jean appeared brandishing a great fiery faggot above her head.

“Out into the road, the lot of you. Out into the road! D’you want the excise on us?”

A sailor had his arms round Bessie. Someone drew a measure across the back of his head that felled him where he stood. The Shanter was worrying and guzzling the stranger on the floor. Jean’s sister, Anne, came in and started laying about the pair of them with a besom handle...

“Come on,” said Sam’l. “Let’s get to hell out o’ here afore somebody’s murdered.”

That had been a night ... standing with his uncle across the street in the soft gloaming watching the folk being hustled out of the Inn door by Jean and Anne, who finally dragged out the stranger, his green coat torn to shreds and his plush breeks ripped to tatters and hanging round his ankles...

Oh, Kirkoswald had been the place for life and fun. Would he ever enjoy a time like it again?

The camera of his memory changed its focus.

Peggy Thomson, dear charming Peggy! She had done more than upset his trigonometry. She had upset him more than ever Nelly Kilpatrick had done. Those autumn nights in the deeper shade of the lea rigs and the wind sighing across the burnished barley! Oh, damn the world and all its mean money-grubbing ways! What signified the life of man and it werena for the lasses? Women were made for love and men were made for women. This was the solid sense and true purpose of life. All else was but sham and illusion. Peggy had been as sweet a lass as he had ever known—maybe he would never know a sweeter...

His mind gyrated, spun in dizzy exaltation... Peggy dear, the evening’s clear: thick flies the skimming swallow.

Damn all books and all learning. Three months at Kirkoswald had taught him more than all the books he had ever read. He would write a book some day that would show what life really meant; what the joy and purpose and significance of it all meant.

Not a prose book. Prose would never capture, and set for all the world to see, the gay exaltation of the heart and mind.

He would sing as the lark sang. Sing as the wind sings when it shakes the barley and caresses the yellow corn. Sing as the lintwhite, the gowdspink and the mavis sing—without thought of fame or money or the cent per cent of the business world...

Some day he would gather his forces ... find an aim and a purpose in words and in music, and linking and blending the twain, climb to the crest of the world and chant to all the downtrodden suffering sons of toil what life really meant and what God’s will, translated to earth, really signified.

Oh Peggy dear ...

How was it that women moved him so; played on his heart-strings as the zephyrs drew sweet harmonies from the aeolian harp?

How was it that some of them could make him quiver and tremble like a spray on the thorn? How was it that they could send his blood leaping along his veins and set fire to his imagination so that his thoughts crackled ...?

What words had come unbidden to his lips as he had held Peggy in his arms in the deep shade of the lea rig while the sun had been going down in a great blaze of glory in the waters of the west; and the crows had wheeled and counter-wheeled, swelled on the perimeter by the tenor-billed jackdaws, while the swallow and the swift had lanced athwart the ripening grain?

What words? The why and wherefore of them? Words flashing across the contact of flesh and flesh...

Peggy dear... But he would never be Peggy’s. For many heart-throbbing nights there had been that possibility. But now he knew that Peggy was but another love, another experience, another enriching of the heart....

How was he, a poor clod-hopping rustic with no prospects and no money, ever to emerge by way of love into the state of married bliss?

Maybe at Lochlea ... maybe there he would find the new prosperity and the new affluence.

Maybe he would do well to give up his books and his reading and apply himself to agricultural studies and pursuits; learn about flax and flax-dressing and how to grow crops of potatoes and turnips. He had heard that some of the wealthier farmers were feeding turnips to their cattle beasts in the hard months of winter; and there was talk of a new grass seed that gave an excellent hay for fodder...

He gathered his papers together and locked them away in his chest. He could not see clearly the road ahead. There were too many turns and dips and twists. Forward he could not see. Backwards he could look over prospects of dreariness and toil, lit with occasional patches of sunshine and laughter. Out of the past a great hand held him to the plough-stilts and the threshing flail. The present claimed him for its daily toil...

That would be Gilbert’s foot on the wooden stair. He would continue his writing some other night. He reached for his bonnet. He did not want to talk to Gilbert now. He wouldn’t understand: maybe he would never understand...

That was another tragedy against the bog of Oliphant. It had sucked out the song that had once welled in Gilbert’s heart. Something of the sour Presbyterian bog-water had got into his blood...

When they first came to the Mount, Gilbert’s eyes had danced with childish glee and innocent wonder. His head was bowed to the yoke now and his spirit drooped.

Robin squeezed past his brother at the head of the stair: neither of them spoke a word.