A Field Full of Folk (20 page)

At that exact moment it was as if he heard very distinctly a bell ringing in his mind like a telephone in an empty house. The sound of the bell became faint, and he began to fill slowly as if with water, very gravely, very seriously. The baby's cry had something to do with it. It was the guarantee of humanity itself. It wasn't that he saw angels in the sky, not David Collins' angel at Mons, not Annie's blazing twenty-four elders, not any winged clear-eyed angels at all. No, it was something very different from that. As his eyes, free and hawklike, scanned the people in the field it was as if he was overwhelmed by the pathos of their existence. He saw them each as separately and clearly as the shadows that were cast like solid black metal on the ground and he was aware that each of them was alone, and yet at that moment they were joined to each other by the power and joy of the music.

“Go tell it on the mountain,” sang Elizabeth, bespectacled and pale. She too was a part of the proud humble company, which needed so much the happiness that the music created. “They are all like me, each one of them is like me,” he thought with a sudden rapture, “I am not in any way apart from them, different from them. Whatever they suffer I suffer. We are together on this supremely imperfect and perfect earth. We are not looking for miracles, for the miracles do not happen. We are enduring but more than enduring. At moments we are touched by the crown of grace. Envious, jealous, embittered as some of us are the message is for us. The kingdom of heaven is at hand, it is here, it is all around us.” And he had a vision of the people of the world, the fireman, the doctor, the lifeboatman, the minister. He saw tenement doors being broken down by axes, and the half dead receiving tea from extended hands. He saw at night the lifeboat heading out to sea in response to the call of those who were in danger of drowning. He saw the fire engine racing towards a fire, itself red as it, he saw stewardesses on 'planes walking confidently among the passengers. He saw the network which joined all those people, one to another, and he saw the village itself as a subtle structure like a spider's web on a summer's day, the spider existing on the justice of heaven.

All this he saw in a grave radiance illuminated by the sun, by the cry of the child. “We are united indissolubly,” he thought, “as if we are part of a divine marriage, as if in a church we had taken each other by the hand and placed the ring on the finger, the ancient scarred ring.” He was astonished by the water and light that poured through him as if he were pregnant with faith. Christ walked among the hedges, among the flowers of Galilee, beside a sea that was an illimitable expanse, meagre and haggard and yet joyful. That wood on which he had died was formed by some carpenter as ordinary as John Murray, proud of his handiwork. There was an ironical perfection about the world, it was overwhelmingly composed of complexity and simplicity.

“Go tell it on the mountain,” Elizabeth sang and he watched all. the people around.

“My love, my love,” he thought as he gazed at his wife in that vision of opening doors, “how much you have done for me. This love between us is part of the love that created the sun and the other stars.”

And he did not feel frightened at all when he saw Morag Bheag approaching with a piece of yellow paper in her hand, though he knew with amazing clarity what it was. It was curious how transparent his mind was; without being told he knew what the telegram signified and the telegram itself became part of the whole network that he was so sublimely aware of. It must be about her son, from Ireland, what else could explain that stumbling somnambulant walk? She was howling above the music for Elizabeth had not yet seen her. She was screaming and howling: she was
shrieking. And then Elizabeth turned round and the music stopped and he saw with inevitable finality the women moving towards her across the space which separated them from her and on which the shadows fell.

And then he himself was walking towards her. She was weeping and cursing, she was almost falling among the hollows of the field. The women were converging on her, they made a circle around her as if to protect her from the consequences of her own cries. And then he himself was there, he was in the sacred ring of pity and help, he was holding out his hands for the telegram, he was reading it, he was putting his hands on hers, he was saying, “We must take you home.” He was walking towards the car and his wife was by his side and Morag Bheag was between them. He knew that every movement he was making, every word that was said, would be analysed by the spectators for later conversation, but that did not prevent him from knowing that out of that gossip and watchfulness there was also emerging compassion and tears and indeed he noticed that Elizabeth was openly crying.

He and his wife had reached the car. He opened the door and Morag Bheag entered it. She was sitting beside his wife in the back seat, her face working but her voice silent. In her hand she clutched the crumpled telegram. He found that even as he eased the clutch he could pray. It was as if his whole body were gushing forth grief and happiness like a fruit whose taste was both sharp and sweet on his tongue.

He heard his wife talking to Morag Bheag, “You'll stay with us tonight. It will be all right. We'll look after you.” The car moved forward from the field on to the road. The village would be forgotten for a while. We are free, he thought, God made us free. It is natural that if there is freedom there should be pain. Endless joy would be impossible for man, could not be sustained. He saw ahead of him as he drove the two lovers returning from the wood, the girl clutching a radio in her hand.

In the back Morag Bheag was whimpering like a beaten dog. Invisible blows rained on her continually from the sky. The picture of her son sprang up in front of her eyes, absolutely mercilessly. His face was round and red cheeked, his hair was long, and he didn't wear a tie. He was sitting at the back of the Sunday class looking loutish and impudent. He was talking to another boy who was sitting beside him. Now and again his eyes would meet the minister's with a defiant stare and then would slowly drop.

“Sh, sh,” said his wife over and over again as if she were calming a child. The car drove through the deserted village and turned up towards the manse. To the right of him he could see the bramble berries like drops of blood on their tree.

He opened the car door and both of them helped Morag Bheag into the house. “I will make some tea,” his wife said in a whisper. He and Morag Bheag were together. He said in a strong voice, “There is no sadness such as you are suffering. But faith will make us whole. Faith will really make us whole. God Himself lost His only son.”

We are free, he thought, we are really free to live and to die. If it were not so we would have been told. Don't look for the kingdom of God elsewhere. The kingdom of God is all round you. Even in the eyes of this grieving woman, even in her helpless curses, the chain stretches to infinity.

“Let us pray,” he said and even as he knelt and prayed he saw the Spanish doll veiled in a black net, skirted in a scalloped pink, toe pointed and alert, a waterfall of hair streaming down her back.

“We are free,” he said, “we are each in the care of the other.”

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM POLYGON

BY IAIN CRICHTON SMITH

Consider the Lilies
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00VIGXTJO
‘Retrained, finely wrought … Mr Crichton Smith shows us isolation, perplexity, loneliness, a combination of blindness and indifference' –
New Statesman

‘Mr Crichton Smith has an acute feeling for places and atmosphere. The wind-blown heaths, the grey skies, the black dwellings, the narrow lives, the poverty – are all vividly depicted … one can linger over the sheer beauty of his phrases' –
Observer

The eviction of the crofters from their homes between 1792 and the 1850s was one of the cruellest episodes in Scotland's history. In this novel Iain Crichton Smith captures the impact of the Highland Clearances through the thoughts and memories of an old woman who has lived all her life within the narrow confines of her community.

Alone and bewildered by the demands of the factor, Mrs Scott approaches the minister for help, only to have her faith shattered by his hypocrisy. She finds comfort, however, from a surprising source: Donald Macleod, an imaginative and self-educated man who has been ostracised by his neighbours, not least by Mrs Scott herself, on account of his atheism. Through him and through the circumstances forced upon her, the old woman achieves new strength.

The Last Summer
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00VIGXSGI
A sensitively written and memorable novel of youth by one of Scotland's most distinguished twentieth century writers.

Malcolm, studious, imaginative, footballing, shy, sexually aware but uncomfortably innocent, is in his last term at school on a Hebridean island during the Second World War. His awkward relationship with his teachers, his widowed mother and younger brother, his friends – and with Janet whom he loves from a distance and the less comely and warmer, but to him still enigmatic, Sheila, are marvellously realised. Above all, this is the story of a boy, on his own, trying to discover himself and through himself to find his way in life.

My Last Duchess
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00VIGXRKA
Iain Crichton Smith's third novel is as different from his second,
The Last Summer,
as that was from his first,
Consider the Lillies
. Crichton Smith is at the height of his powers as poet and prose writer. This new work of fiction follows hard upon his Selected Poems and his volume of short stories, Survival Without Fear.

Mark Simmons, aged 42, is a teacher at a training college. His wife has just walked out on him because she has found him so much less interesting than she expected the man she married to be. This event, which he has by no means expected, has jolted him into a major reassessment of himself, of his place in the universe. He realises that he has become bitter, cynical and disillusioned: he is a failure intellectually – he wanted to be a writer, but for years he has striven at
one book, which he privately knows to be not very good. He is a failure as a teacher – he wasn't competent enough to obtain a post at a university. He is a failure as a husband, because his wife was daily moving away from him. He is a failure as a father, because he and his wife had had no children. Above all, he is a failure as a human being, because he despises everybody, not least himself. Mark Simmons hates himself for being more concerned with argument than happiness.

My Last Duchess
is a novel of great resourcefulness and energy.

An Honourable Death
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00VIGXQQU
‘Iain Crichton Smith writes like a poet, with strong natural rhythm and precise observation' –
The Times

In the summer of 1870, a seventeen-year-old crofter's son turned his back on his apprenticeship with the Royal Clan and Tartan Warehouse in Inverness and signed up as a private in Queen Victoria's army. He joined the Gordons – the 92nd Highlanders – whose reputation was second to none as the fearsome cutting-edge of the British Army. Posted to India, Afghanistan, South Africa and the Sudan, he became a formidable soldier, rising up through the ranks to become the glorified and much-decorated Major-General Sir Hector Macdonald or, more commonly, ‘Fighting Mac', the true hero of Omdurman.

Then, in 1903, at the peak of his remarkable career, he was accused of homosexuality. Ordered to face court martial and unable to bear the disgrace, he ended his life.

From this true story, with a poet's insight and precision, Iain Crichton Smith has crafted an exquisite novel: a tale of honour and elitism, equivocation and hierocracy, victory and despair.

The Dream
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00VIGXQIS
‘A superb novel … it must be accorded tremendous acclaim' –
Scotland on Sunday

‘Iain Crichton Smith writes like a poet, with strong natural rhythm and precise observation' –
The Times

In the grey streets of Glasgow, Martin is dreaming of the mist-shrouded islands of his youth. Behind her desk in the travel agency his wife Jean dreams of faraway places in the sun that beckon from the brochures.

Their marriage frays in the silence as Martin clings to the Gaelic he teaches at the university, the dwindling bedrock of the culture of the isles, while Jean refuses to speak a language that brings back memories of the bitter years of her childhood. While Jean chatters with her friends of relationships and resentments, Martin turns to Gloria who seems to share his dream of the islands of the Gael…

Iain Crichton Smith's The Dream explores the precarious survival of a modern marriage with a poet's lean, evocative precision and all the spellbinding authority of a master storyteller in the time-honoured Celtic tradition.

In the Middle of the Wood
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00VIGXQCE
Ralph Simmons, a writer, struggles to survive a nervous breakdown that leaves him anxious, suspicious, and frightened.

In the Middle of the Wood is considered by many to be Iain Crichton Smith's most remarkable achievement in prose. Like Waugh's The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, it derives directly from a phase of paranoia, which in Crichton Smith's case actually led to a spell in a mental hospital.

The Tenement
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00VIGXQDI
The tenement has its being, its almost independent being, in a small Scottish town. Built of grey granite, more than a century ago, it stands four-square in space and time, the one fixed point in the febrile lives of the transient human beings whom it shelters. At the time of which Iain Crichton Smith writes, there are married couples in three of the flat; two widows and a widower occupy the others. All of them are living anxious lives of quiet desperation, which Mr Smith anatomises with cool and delicate understanding.