On the Island (10 page)

18

“I'
VE COMBED MY
hair already,” said Iain.

“Well, it doesn't look combed. Come here and I'll comb it for you properly.”

Iain submitted himself to his mother's hands.

“And another thing. What about your shoes? Have you polished them?”

“I polished them last night.”

“Let me see them. Yes, they'll do. And where's your bag?”

“I've got it.”

Kenneth was still lying in bed for he was only going to the village school and didn't have to leave till later; Iain however had to catch the bus at quarter past eight for the journey to the town school. It was the 20th of August and this was going to be his first day at his new school.

He left his mother and went over to the window through which he would eventually see the red bus breasting the brae.

His mother said, “And make sure that you're polite and good mannered. Do what your teachers tell you. And look after yourself in the town. Keep away from the traffic.”

“All right, Mother.”

“And don't get in with bad boys. Remember that the town boys are different from the village boys. Some of them smoke and swear. Don't you learn to do that or you'll have me to answer to. Are you hearing me?”

“Yes, Mother.”

Why was the bus not coming? Trembling and feverish with anticipation he waited.

“And another thing. I'm making a great sacrifice for you. I hope you'll remember that. And do well at your lessons.”

It was as if she was never going to see him again and yet he would be home again that same evening at five o'clock or so.

“Sit quietly in the bus and don't play about. And no standing on the steps of the bus as I've seen other boys doing. Wait till the bus stops.”

“Yes, Mother.”

And Kenneth still slept open-mouthed and snoring in the bed which the two of them shared. Or at least he had been doing so when Iain had left it early on that bright and fragile autumn morning.

“Come here and I'll put your tie straight.” He went over to her obediently, squirming in her hands as if afraid that she would take it into her head to kiss him, but all she did was to pat him on the head silently.

He turned back to the window and saw the bus breasting the brae. He shouted “Here's the bus, mother,” and then he was running with his school bag over his shoulder to the door, hearing faintly as he passed Kenneth saying, “Good luck then.” In his brown suit he ran down the path to the plank and waited there till the bus finally came. He forgot to wave to his mother who was standing at the window watching him climb the steps.

When finally the bus had started again and moved forward carrying her small son to the town she turned back to the kitchen and after a while told Kenneth roughly that it was time for him to be getting up. Today, she thought, she would do a big washing to keep her mind occupied, and after that there would be the ironing. The day would eventually pass, somehow.

“Hurry up,” she shouted to Kenneth. “Are you going to lie there all day?”

As the bus was almost full the only seat Iain could find was one beside an oldish man who, he presumed, was from the next village, as he didn't know him. He sat in silence as the bus sped on, now and again stopping for passengers who were going to their daily work in the town; and he thought with trepidation of the day ahead of him.

Suddenly he heard a voice from beside him saying, “Are you going to the school then?”

He turned and saw a face with large black eyebrows and a very red nose.

“Yes,” he answered shyly.

“It won't be for long now, I can tell you. It won't be for long. We will be at war soon, did you know that? According to the wireless we'll be at war. It was saying that on the wireless this morning.” And the man nodded his head with great satisfaction. “Bombs and guns and aeroplanes, that's what we'll be having. Same as in the last war, only worse. Chamberlain didn't manage it after all.”

Iain remained silent as he didn't know what to say. But the man didn't seem to require that Iain should speak.

“It was the trenches in the last war, but it won't be trenches in this one. It will be tanks and aeroplanes. Look what they did already in Spain. You look at it for a minute and study it but they don't teach you that in school, do they? And the boys from the villages will be off to the Navy as before, and who will look after them when they come home? They told them after the last war, Homes for Heroes, that's what they said. But they didn't give them Homes for Heroes, did they?” And his eyes glittered with malice and anger. “Did they now? I'm telling you they didn't.”

A woman who was sitting in the seat behind patted the man on the shoulder and said, “Leave him alone, Rob. He's just a young boy.”

“And what were they but young boys, eh? Tell me that. They were all young boys. Huh,” and he turned away from Iain, muttering unintelligibly to himself.

“Don't you listen to him,” said the woman to Iain. “If it comes, it comes. You're too young to be worrying about things like that. You should be ashamed of yourself, Rob.”

“All right, all right, it was just that I was in that school myself. Anyway, boy, if Macleod is still there tell him I was asking for him. Tell him Rob MacMillan was asking for him. He'll remember me. I used to be good at arithmetic. You tell him that. Rob MacMillan.”

And he finally turned away leaving Iain alone, though now and again he would mutter to himself, and Iain thought that he could hear in the middle of the tirade swear-words as if the man was accusing himself of some strange wrong or sin that he had committed years ago, hating himself, bringing himself to an imaginary judgement.

When however the bus finally reached town the man suddenly shook him by the hand and said, “Good luck then, boy. And remember what I told you. Rob MacMillan is the name. You tell Macleod that Rob MacMillan was asking for him.” But as Iain stepped off the bus it was as if, because of the man's words and strange behaviour, he could hear above him the hum of enemy planes and see his friends from the village setting off into a war whose meaning he could not possibly understand.

There were hundreds of them in the big hall: Iain had never seen so many boys together in the one place in his whole life. Teachers in black gowns passed up and down the aisles, looking like buzzards, wings folded. Suddenly to the lectern far ahead of him there strode a very small man whom Iain could hardly make out even by craning his neck. The small man stood behind the lectern staring unmovingly ahead of him, and the noise gradually diminished till there could only be heard the man's voice.

“This is your first day in school,” said the small man in a distinct confident voice. “You will have difficulty in finding your way about at first but you'll learn as one has to learn everything in life eventually. You will be expected to be obedient and above all you will be expected to work hard. Remember, hard work is the greatest delight in life. You won't know that now but you will, you will. That's all I have to say for the moment. Good luck to you all.”

The small man left the lectern and the talking began again till silenced by another, this time taller, man, who climbed the steps and told them that now they would be divided into their classes. They were to listen very carefully, for he would not repeat what he had said.

Iain, like the other boys around him, listened carefully.

It seemed to him as if all the boys in the island were gathered there.

At the interval he was standing alone in the playground when an older boy came over to him, and said, “Have you got a meek?” Iain who didn't know what a meek was looked at him in astonishment.

“A meek, a meek,” the boy repeated. “You're not another of them. Do you not know what a meek is?”

“No,” said Iain who was beginning to get a little frightened.

“A meek is a halfpenny.”

“I haven't got any money,” said Iain.

Later Iain saw some of the older boys tossing halfpennies in the air and concealing them, when they descended, on the backs of their hands, after which they would guess which sides – heads or tails – had come down: and as a result of this one or other of the two competitors would claim both coins. Meeks: so that was what they were called. Maybe some day he would learn the language of the town boys.

At lunch time he went to the house of his aunt who was staying by herself in the town, and who measured out little pats of butter on to slices of very thin bread, while she poked about at a primus stove in the half-darkness of the room. Half-blind, she would now and then clap him on the shoulder calling him a clever boy and a credit to his family, and especially to his dead father whose only surviving sister she was. A bird in a cage gazed down at him dispassionately, its head cocked on one side, while Iain ate his lukewarm pie.

“And how is your mother?” she would ask him at intervals as if she had forgotten the answer he had given her before.

“Fine,” he would answer and she would say, “That's good, that's good,” poking about short-sightedly with a knife or a fork.

“I don't suppose you will remember your father,” she said to him at one point. “He was a fine man and he would have been very proud of you.”

And she would offer him another slice of him bread with butter on it. The room was very dark, its curtains half drawn, and there was a smell of grease and floor polish. Iain could hear the sound of traffic as it passed the house which jutted out on to the road with its low windows and its whitewashed wall.

When he had finished his food he left the house and ran all the way down to the quay where the motor boats and the drifters were lying, resting on their reflections. He walked up and down it, wishing that he could go for a sail on one of the boats, and now and again seeing a boy in wellingtons and thick white stockings swinging up the iron ladder from the depths of a drifter.

The castle in its green cloud of trees enticed him but he didn't go that day. “I am free,” he thought.” I can go anywhere I like except that I have to return to school at half-past one.” A road which he had not yet travelled curved past the last shop that he could see, following the flow of the river which was the only barrier between himself and the castle. He imagined that the river was swarming with trout and salmon and that across it were bridges which he would eventually cross. One day he would certainly walk among the woods which surrounded the castle, for he had never been among trees before. Nor had he ever been near a castle before, and he didn't know whether this one was inhabited or not, though it looked new with its white towers and white walls.

“ ‘Insula, insulam, insulae, insulae, insula,' ” chanted the fierce-looking man with the red almost vertical brush of hair above the intensely white face. And the class chorused the words after him.

“ ‘Insulae – of an island or to an island', depending on whether it is the genitive or the dative you are using,” said the fierce-looking man, poking with a pointer at a small hesitant boy whose name Iain did not as yet know. “Remember, boy, this is the language of the second greatest race the world has ever seen. Do you know the name of the first one?”

“The British, sir,” said the boy who sat beside Iain and whose hand had shot into the air like a spring bursting from a box.

“Rubbish, boy. The British invented the steamship and the Davy lamp and no doubt the lavatory pan” – and here an extraordinary expression, compound half of mirth and distaste, crossed his face – “but they did not invent the mind. Anyone else, anyone else?” The words were shooting out of the man's mouth like bullets and his pointer thrust here and there like a sword or a spear as if he were indulging in some sort of esoteric warfare.

“The mind, the mind, boy, who invented the mind?” and the teacher poked at a fat boy who looked as if he were to cry.

The class stared at this red-haired apparition in fear and amazement. What did he mean by asking, Who invented the mind? The question didn't make sense. But the teacher, undismayed by the silence, his long nose thrust out like the beak of a ship below his hair of startling red answered his own question, emphasising the answer by banging the desk nearest to him with his pointer.

“The Greeks. The Greeks invented the mind. The Romans invented roads but the Greeks invented the mind. And don't you forget it. Some day perhaps some of you will have the privilege of learning Greek but for the moment we are concerned only with ‘insula, insulam, insulae, insulae, insula',” and at the last stressed syllable he banged the desk again with his pointer as if he wished to smash it into smithereens.

“ ‘Insula' means ‘island', and remember that we are living on an island. This school we are standing on or sitting in, as is the case with some of us, is situated on an ‘insula'. It is surrounded by water. If it weren't surrounded by water we would call it ‘peninsula' from ‘paene insula' whihc is the Latin for ‘almost an island'. But as it is we are standing on an ‘insula' that is a complete island.”

And he glared fiercely at them as if daring them to deny the statement he had just made, but all they did was to sit in amazement, timorous and obedient, watching the drama being enacted in front of them, and trying to escape the lightning which writhed all round the room from the peculiar man's mind, while at that very moment though they did not know it a man who was not a Roman was pacing relentlessly up and down a room far from where they were, making plans to invade their island, sending out orders to Air Force and Navy, plotting their own overthrow and that of their mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and the very teacher who was striding so restlessly about the room in which they were sitting. But as yet they did not know about this and were too busy evading the dramatic onslaught that was being made on them to care, an onslaught being conducted by an odd extraordinary man whose overpowering force impressed even them though they did not understand half of what he was talking about.