The Big Music (6 page)

And now she’s come home again, the money spent.

With a child of her own. Her own daughter.

And still, even now, he could take care, Iain could. The three of them
together like they used to be together, inhabiting the House as though it is their own, with Iain at the table and passing out the plates. In the kitchen, seeing Margaret with a baby in her arms.

My family.

But that other one has been back amongst them now, and for a while he’s been and not leaving, so it seems, for he’s too ill to go. And that makes it – not the same. As it should be. Not the same as when he used to come for the summers but then he’d go away. Come back here maybe, and staying longer and longer – but then he’d go. And now he’s not going
anywhere
. Just sitting in his chair, or sleeping. And there’s work to be done around him like there was always work to be done for him, all work, work.

Like in the past –

‘Iain, we’ll be needing the rods’

‘Iain, some help here’

– and –

‘Tidy up the place a bit’

– and –

‘Tell Margaret, will you?’

All work. All his asking. And them all having to do his bidding.

And all right, maybe it’s not the same kind of work now as then, with him old and sick and frail, maybe – but still it’s changed here. The place become his, now he’s here all the time. This House his grandfather built, and his grandfather before him … His House. You feel it – Iain does – with him permanently in it. You feel his presence. His ownership. Though the land is everyone’s, is everyone’s – and you could say he has no right. That this lovely place belonged to old Himself
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no more than it belongs to them, to Iain, Iain Cowie or to Margaret MacKay or to Helen or Helen’s child. Belongs to them more in fact for they’re ones who stayed
here, not swanning up from London like the son used to do. Bringing up a party of his so-called friends …

‘Iain, I’m back!’

Well, are you, Johnnie?

‘So bring the Land Rover down for me, will you?’ ‘Get the dogs ready for the morning?’

To hell.

Is the one thing Iain can think about old Johnnie now, and smile.

As he turns his gun. And it’s his gun.

Slips the cleaning rod down deep into the barrel and takes another sip of whisky that’s his own.

For bring the Land Rover down nothing. He’ll see him dead before Iain Cowie does another thing for old Johnnie.

By now it’s as though all the hills can hear that song, and all the dark air. Can hear too, as Johnnie’s poor mind can hear, that of course it’s the voice of a woman singing, the whole lullaby is hers. The words of her song insist upon it.

It becomes higher and truer in the air, in the man’s mind, with that knowledge. High and fine like migraine and no amount of rain on his face will take the sting out of the tune, bring coolness to his skin.

You took her away.

And not just the one woman singing now, there in the chorus, but all of them. All of the mothers. As though all the women in the world are singing out to the dark hills, to the poor crying sky …

You took her away, young Katherine Anna,

Carried her off, tall Helen’s child.

And then the one woman’s song, coming in higher and finer above the rest of them, singing out on her own and ringing in his head like pain.

Her mother is me.

‘Hush’ Johnnie whispers at the baby, as though to quieten her. ‘Hush’ again, when she’s making no sound and there’s nothing he can do anyway, nothing, to take the crying away. For that is in the tune too by now, of course it is, the slanting tears, the weeping and the rain. As much as the theme, all this Urlar
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grey ground that’s around him, it’s there, and the
terrible octave drop, the ‘G’ to the Low ‘G’, for the thing he has done.

You took her away.

And he can’t leave any of it out of the music any more than loosen the bundle from his arms. So ‘Hush’ he may say but what’s the use in that, ‘Hush’? No use. No more than ‘You took her away’. There’s no comfort in it, no sense, how could there be? Of a calming or a peacefulness for the child out here on the open hills away from her mother? For an old man with a baby – it’s all wrong, it goes against nature. And somewhere deep in himself John Callum must know that, I believe he does know …
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Still he keeps saying to the baby, ‘Hush.’

Though she’s not crying.

‘Hush.’

It’s the hills that are.

The sky.

The mother’s song.

The weather now is fully down upon them. The fine’ness gone. Rain comes in long pieces and he has to keep strong, is what he’s trying to think, Johnnie is: how despite the mothers with their babies and their songs he must be fit and cunning and fast and strong. For they’ll be after him, down there somewhere on the flat, Iain and Margaret and the rest. They’ll be coming up behind and wanting her back, young Katherine Anna. They’ll be wanting her home with them and safe.

It would have taken them no time at all to fix it this morning that they’d be after her and fast. The minutes of that first hour would have ticked by rushed and livid from the very second they found out she was missing from her basket and that he, too, was gone. There’d be Helen
running outside, half dressed, in her bare feet, screaming his name into the bare hills, and ‘No!’, ‘No!’, Iain up from the table, clattering the things, and straight out to the hut for the Argocat and his gun. Unlocking the dogs from the kennels and setting them off across the grass, already with the binoculars’ glass casting across the distance …

And –

‘Steady, Johnnie. Steady.’

Cursing himself as he stumbles on a sharp rock.

‘Steady.’

For can he see him now? Iain? Can he see that speck who is himself against the grey green’ness of the hill? A scrap of movement on the
distant
stillness? Can he see him now, where he is? Standing here panting and a bundle in his arms mustn’t let fall?

‘Steady.’

With Helen running, screaming his name out from there on the grass for him to bring her baby home and only Margaret can catch her, hold her, holding her back. Saying ‘Iain will find him’ and that voice of hers low and steady, soothing her. Saying ‘Don’t worry, Helen. Be calm. For her, you must be. And babies are strong. So get her things now that you can take them, get some bottles, some blankets, milk. Some warm things for her’ she says, ‘Quickly, go!’ – but putting her hand up to shield her eyes against the sun the minute Helen’s gone, for she too, Margaret, is straining to see …

Him.

‘Johnnie. Steady.’

Where he is, where he’s gone. Iain with an old jersey held at the dogs, it’s Johnnie’s old fishing jersey and he’s giving it to the hounds to pick up a scent, so straight off they make a fast line to the right, towards the river – and …

‘Oh, John’ says Margaret to him then, looking out towards the hills where he may be. ‘What have you done?’

Well.

Margaret.

No point in thinking about Margaret now. What she might say. How she may consider him. What she may think.

For Margaret …

He can have no thoughts about her now. No thoughts. Of that low and lovely voice of hers. Of the things she might say.

For ‘Hush’ is all he must think now, against her voice, against all the voices, all of them. And –

Faster. Further. Up the way, the path. To step again, and another step. On, and on and up again –

‘For they’re coming, Johnnie.’

They’ll be close by.

Right up there behind him with the dogs and coming hard.

‘Coming after you.’

From the first thing this morning when they knew that he was gone. With the glasses played across the hill and Iain’s eye wanting, wanting to be upon him, and the gun at his side.

‘So be faster than they are. Be further away.’

With every footstep. Every breath.

Because it doesn’t matter, none of it, not to him.

‘Old Johnnie.’

It doesn’t matter.

Because they still don’t know, do they? About the boulder and the path that’s like a deer path going down into the crevice of the other hill, sitting in the lee of Mhorvaig and with a lost valley there and in it, tucked away, his secret. The private, private place.

‘They still don’t know about that, do they, Johnnie?’

And any minute, he thinks …

Any second …

Once the boulder’s there, once he sees it, that’ll be him. He’ll be up and over where no one could spy him or follow. Not a mother with a scent for her child. Not a man with the dogs and a gun.

He turns, and heads now towards this last part, up the fast steep way across the high side. Because fast and fleet he can make these last steps, for this last climb, up and hard … And so he stumbles, a slide of fresh wet
from the rain, and no coat on but just the thin shoes … And so outcrops of rock are jutting and with the wet they could be like knives – and they’re behind him now, behind him and they’re close …

The music’s still counting for him, after all. And it will carry the story along even if he stumbles on the path. It will keep him strong. Despite them all after him, Helen screaming in the air and that tune of hers
wanting
to take him over to pull him back – still he’s got his ‘B’ to ‘E’, that stubborn’ness of him and thrawn, and the ‘F’ to the ‘G’ and the ‘F’ to the ‘A’, that sequence too, he has that too, the music trying to release itself, to let something new come in, enter, one note, and another, and another, to climb back again into the theme as a lightness, a relief, but the theme he’s laid down won’t allow it, the scale won’t allow it.

And Iain …

Forget about Iain. He wasn’t born here. Was not a boy here. He has no knowledge of the hill. For all his gun and his shot he has nothing of this place in him while Johnnie … He’s everywhere upon it. There’s not a way or dent in the heather he doesn’t know or plan for and remember. The very stones are like a path. And he can put more distance between himself and the House by imagination if he needs to, more than footsteps can do, for he’s all-powerful here, he’s all strength and knowledge and he’s wise. So move on!

Though the dogs might be coming, because there’s the sound of them now …

Quick footsteps on the beaten, shiny path! And faster again! Further again! And as though to hasten him this second the weather clears a little, opens up. The sky lightens. He takes a big step up the path, and clears it. Another few seconds and here’s a patch of blue about him, a sudden bit of sun. The day thinning out, the weather, and it’s fair again, it will be, and he’ll look ahead and the boulder will be there and –

though the dogs are getting louder –

no one knows about his path, only him. Only Johnnie. It’s his own secret from a long time ago after his father had died and he came back to his father’s music then.

And so they’re louder …

The dogs …

Still he will bring her, this one in his arms, to that same place, to finish it, the tune.

And the dogs …

The dogs, anyway. They’re his dogs. His own and Callum’s dogs. They’re not Iain’s dogs. And so they’re coming for him, so he’ll whistle them in. He’ll take them with him if wants to. He’ll call them in for they’re his dogs, Callum’s dogs.

And he stops then. Just here, stopped, just now and he shouldn’t have, with the weather clearing, second by second it is thinning and
brightening
and a new clean’ness, clarity in the air so he should be moving on by now – but he’s stopped. With the sound of his own breathing, and the glass that’s upon him now in the sudden sun. Hearing the sound of his own breath beneath the glass, in this clearing of the air. Though he should have found by now the place with the big stone. Though they could catch him out now while he’s still out here and visible clear on the fresh hill. Though they could shoot him down.

He’s stopped.

Waiting.

For it’s Callum.

It is. It’s Callum.

‘Callum?’

And very close.

Up there with the dogs, for they’re his dogs, they’re Callum’s dogs.

Callum.

‘How are you, boy?’

And with him … He recognises who’s with Callum here. Even from over on the hill, with the light in his eyes he knows him by that way of standing, his father. So his father’s here, too.

Yes.

Come up with Callum, he must have, the two of them gone on up Mhorvaig ahead of him and now they’re both here together, just over there where he can see them, and quite near, after all this time …

His father.

His son.

And he didn’t think they were close at all, that they were just memories. For his father’s been dead forty years and a long, long time since he’s seen Callum by now but –

Here they are with him, just the same, and with the dogs, right here on the hill.

‘My father’ he says.

‘My boy.’

They’re together – and listen! You can hear it? How they have all come in? When first there was the one theme, and only Johnnie out here and on his own, but then the singling, and the doubling came in …
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