The Silver Bough (17 page)

In a flash her self-confidence, her superb bargaining position, was made plain. They had found the urn!

“I should,” he said, unable to say more, for a tremor had come to him.

“You would recognise certain ornaments—a bracelet, for example, or a necklace?”

“Yes,” he said, “I—certainly.”

“Anything else?” She looked away to give him time, for though she was a gentle girl she had to be reasonably certain in so important a matter.

“Gold discs,” he said, “with ornamentation inside concentric circles.”

She nodded. “Gold torcs?”

“I didn't examine all the contents of the urn. I hadn't time. It was nearly full and I—in the circumstances—I hadn't time.”

“Is there anything unusual in the make or—or—material of this cinerary urn?”

“Yes,” he answered, his excitement mounting intolerably, “it's made of soapstone, not of clay.”

“And in height about——”

“Eighteen inches.”

She nodded. Then she smiled to him in the friendliest, most helpful way. “How
did
you let your assistant make off with it?”

He was just about to tell her the whole story when there came an awful pause in the universe. He took a step nearer to her, his head lowered, shooting forward slightly, his eyes like blue-hazed steel. “Have you found the urn?”

“Well,” she pivoted again, “not exactly, not yet, but we shall, and when we do we'll—know it now.” Her eyes lifted. “Oh, there's Arthur. I must go.” She flashed the archaeologist her sweetest smile. “Thank you very much.” And she went.

Presently he became aware that there were faces quite close, looking at him as at one bereft of all inwardness. Automatic as wrath, he followed the direction the girl had taken. Presently he saw her running, the scanty shorts giving her bare legs a flashing ease. The dark-haired Arthur was running with her and she was shouting her news to him as she ran. He could hear the high pitch of their gleeful voices. Suddenly she fell and could not get up, but apparently she was overcome by no more than laughter. Arthur hauled her up and gripped her hand and they ran on. Their small racing two-seater went out of Clachar as a comet with a dusty tail though there was still ample time to get their full description of the urn and its contents, as conveyed to them in an exclusive interview by Mr Simon Grant, over the wires from Kinlochoscar for the early morning edition.

A
fter lunch the following day, Grant decided to escape. The policeman and himself had walked the lands of Clachar in high and purposeful striding during a forenoon that had looked like the prelude to some immense gala performance, charged with colourful humans and with motor cars which manoeuvred so expertly that up until 12.37 (policeman's time) only nine of them had got bogged in wayside ditches. The correspondents of five different newspapers had approached Grant before the reporting fraternity as a whole decided that the archaeologist was disinclined to be helpful. But the amount of material for comment of every kind was so great, and newspaper space so restricted, that the need for selection engendered the happiest devotion to their art, while the staffs of two weekly picture papers so manipulated their expensive cameras that they achieved for their wondering public a higher synthesis of a civilian rout in war-time, Miami Beach, and a nostalgic throw-back to the far-away innocence of Bali in the ancient days of peace.

Craning out of both sides of the rather small window in the thick wall, Grant got a crick in his neck, rubbed it in an anger which smouldered with guilt, went to the door, jammed his tweed hat on his head, and walked away uprightly but without haste towards Fachie's cottage. Within half an hour he had won out on the track which went beyond Clachar to no inhabited place. Twice he hid as research parties returned to Clachar, hurrying as though in their out-field work they might have missed something.

What peace it was to come on this tiny deserted beach, this break in the cliffs, this haven! But for some cigarette cartons, a scattered newspaper, thrown balls of lunch wrappings, five empty beer bottles, one lemonade bottle, two broken bottles on the edge of the tide, and similar artless evidence of the playfulness of a modern day, the haven might have lain in the hazed sunlight undisturbed since native feet had left the solitary crumbled ruin in its green fold of ground by the little stream that tumbled over ledges to meet the great sea.

Grant stood for a while looking on this scene and was so obscurely moved by conflicting reflections or emotions that he went to the stream and got down on his knees and drank. Then, without further thought, he left the place, climbed up the steep face beyond, and moved down towards the edge of the headland, from which he could not only see the haven itself but also the walls of cliff which stretched on either hand, the northmost point of one of the three islands off Clachar, and outward over the ocean to what seemed, low down on the distant horizon, either a purple band of cloud or a fabulous land. He stood like one who, having escaped from all behind him, might at last take off. And for a little while something in him did take off, so that presently when his eyes saw the cormorant sunning itself on a spit below and the calm sea turning snow-white on the spit's point, these objects appeared of so primordial a freshness that they might never have been seen before. Moreover the refluent movement of the brimming green water that lapped the cliff or broke in small thoughtfulness on the shore rose up towards him and he experienced the singular sensation of moving with it. So finely heady was it all that he sat down and, after further gazing, lay down, whereupon the peace and wonder of it rose upon the air itself and up to the sky.

The cleansing sea, the great sea that could cleanse forever the utmost human refuse. But even that thought was too thick or too sticky. The movement itself was so thoughtless and divine. He perceived, with an effect of astonishing discovery, astonishing not in a disturbing way but merely with a divine lucidity, what the philosophers were arguing about when they discussed the abstruse concept of subject and object, the knower and the thing known, being one. Only, unless he had ever been a blind fool, most of the philosophers whom he had read on the subject had themselves never achieved this wordless fusion, this momentary oneness of the seer and the thing seen. Doubtless that was why they had been so arid. How divine, in yet another moment, to let that thought go, and once more take the sea upon the air and float to the high blue that did not need to smile.

He was wakened by a shout. The sky stared down at him as he pulled the tweed hat from his face. He rolled over on his side and saw a man on the grassy slope above the shingle of the small beach. It was Norman, Martin's chauffeur. A little child ran out from under the slope and stood at gaze. The fair head and the tartan of the diminutive kilt told him it was Sheena. All at once she ran back out of sight again calling “Mammy!” Norman followed her slowly and as it were doubtfully. By crawling a few yards through the heather, Grant brought the small party into view.

Anna was sitting by the wall of the old ruin, pushing back her hair, while Sheena was gripping her off shoulder and peering round at Norman, who was now standing a few yards from them. He was asking her something and as her hands came away from her hair she answered him. He looked about him for a moment then clearly spoke again, but Grant could not hear their voices. They obviously had not much to say, and for the watcher the whole scene had something strangely static about it. Norman neither advanced any farther nor went away and Anna sat where she was, turning once to the child who was excited and inclined to climb up on her.

At last Sheena grew so restless that she left her mother, but spasmodically, inclined to walk sideways so that she could keep her eyes on Norman. As she tripped and fell headlong, he heard her scream. A few long strides, and Norman had picked her up. Anna was beside them at once. Sheena had clearly hit her head on a stone and Anna finally got to her knees to chase the hurt away.

“It was that nasty stone that did it,” said Anna in a raised voice.

Sheena looked at the stone and yelled, “Yes!”

Norman kicked the stone and heaved it away, an act of retribution and justice which so astonished Sheena that it silenced her. As she looked up at Norman, her eyes caught a stranger sight beyond him and she called, “Boat!” They followed her pointing hand. Rounding the small headland from Clachar came a rowboat with one man in it, his back to them as the oars dipped and rose in creaking rowlocks. When he realised he was in the tiny bay the man rested on his oars and turned his body round while the boat moved slowly on.

It was Martin. Anna got up from her knees. Norman still stood motionless a little while before walking down over the crunching shingle. Then he called in a voice which Grant heard very clearly, “Mrs Sidbury wants you. Visitors have arrived.”

Martin sat on, his forearms to the elbows flat on the oars, like one enchanted by the scene. Then he straightened up, nodded, and, dipping an oar, slowly pulled the boat round and gave way with both oars to the same easy rhythm as that with which he had appeared. Before he had gone far, Anna turned away with Sheena towards the ruin. Norman stood alone, watching Martin until he rounded the point; then he looked over at Anna and Sheena, went slowly towards them, said something, and took the path up the green slope. When he had gone over the crest, Anna stopped gathering her belongings and sat down.

She sat with her hands not on her lap, but abandoned to the grass, looking out to sea. Sheena, however, had not received enough attention and Anna took her on her lap, examining the sore spot on the fair head, soothed it, kissed it, put both arms round the small body, and rocked it gently, gazing over the head at the sea again as she quietly sang.

Perhaps because of his previous interest in the sea and of what he may have dreamed in his sleep, Grant had the feeling of having witnessed an act in a strange and enigmatic play. It had meanings beyond what he could formulate, beyond the players themselves as though he knew their story. He lay flat on his back with a suspense in his breast which stopped thought altogether.

He did not want to lose this curious sensation of pure suspended being, as if somewhere beyond it there was something which would explain it, not in words but in an enlightenment, like the light waiting on the sea. But all in a moment Norman was before him, kicking the stone and heaving it away, transferring the hurt from the child's head to the stone, and this contained within it so much of man's story, his ritual and magic, that the archaeologist heard the clear thought: That's the man for Anna. Their very grouping, while the other man rowed away, was the significant core of the whole little drama.

Sheena's cries made him turn over again. She was running about the small foreshore, picking up the cigarette cartons and other treasure trove which the visitors had abandoned. Anna was still sitting gazing out to sea, and with her green jumper and dark-red head looked like a creature that might have come up out of that element.

He lay flat once more and smiled, wondering if perhaps he was “escaping” too far. The word “visitors” (called by Norman) came into his mind and along with it the figures of Colonel Mackintosh and Blair. They must have arrived! The feeling of guilt, from which he had run away into such extraordinary dimensions of thought, stung him sharply. He should have been at home to receive them, to find accommodation, to help in every way he could.

Sheena saw him coming and ran to her mother. Anna arose and smiled. “Some visitors have arrived and are looking for you,” she said.

“Have you been hunting me?”

“Someone came and told me. They are at Clachar House.”

“That's all right. Been picnicking? And how are you, Sheena? What a lot of bonny things you have got!”

Sheena was shy, though her eyes never left him.

“Well, I suppose I had better go.” He stretched a hand towards Sheena. “Coming?”

Sheena looked at her mother.

“We won't go so fast as you,” Anna said.

As he went on his way, he thought about them. There was something in Anna, some deep secret life in her, that warmed him. A man could spend his whole life with a woman like that and grow richer in himself.

Mrs Cameron's eyes steadied on him for a moment, then her face cleared and she gave him the news of the last few hours not without a dry humour which he relished. After he had washed and combed his hair, he hunted for his special pair of scissors and trimmed his beard. He liked it very short. With the nervous excitement of one prepared for battle, he set out. For well he knew that at last the dread hour had come, the bitter hour of arraignment before his peers. There was only one thing to do and live: carry the war to them.

“
Y
ou're a fine fellow,” said Colonel Mackintosh, his deck chair creaking and staggering as he heaved himself up, “I must say.”

“Why, what's gone wrong now?” Grant asked, laughing, as he shook hands.

“Wrong? Good God!”

“Our great new publicist,” declared Blair. “Let me congratulate you.”

“Thanks very much,” replied Grant modestly.

“I'll get you a chair,” said Mrs Sidbury, and Grant went with her into the hall.

“Did you see Donald?” she asked him.

“Yes . . . well, at least—I saw someone in a boat, heading this way.”

“I sent Norman——”

“I think they made contact.”

She gave him a dark flash of understanding. “It would be so nice of you to help me entertain them. Colonel Mackintosh and my father were old friends.”

“I'll do everything I can,” he said, lifting the folded chair, and they returned to the gravel in front of the house, where the two visitors were waiting on their feet.

Colonel Mackintosh was a big, straight, thick-set man with so short a neck that his shoulders seemed permanently hunched. His face was fleshy and his brown moustache so thick and droopy that his voice would have sounded like a growl from ambush if it hadn't been husky. He wore a blue cap over a full head of faded brown hair, was sixty-six, and liked stories of a salty humour. His small eyes were now on Simon Grant.

“Do sit down,” said Mrs Sidbury, and as they sat down she added, “You'll stop for supper, Mr Grant?”

He got up again. “No, thanks. I know how difficult rations are and my supper will be under way.”

“I have warned them they'll only get fish, but there is plenty of that, fresh from the sea——”

“Thank you, but, if you wouldn't mind, I must not overdo my irregular appearance——”

“Huh!” interrupted the Colonel, and Mrs Sidbury withdrew, leaving Grant to change his mind.

“Irregular!” repeated the Colonel. “I should think so. What's all this menagerie about?”

Roger Blair, a lanky thin-haired man in his fifties, wearing gold rimmed spectacles, stretched out his legs with a laugh that threw his head back.

“What menagerie?” asked Grant.

Colonel Mackintosh waved an arm over hillsides on which humans moved. “That.”

“I can't help that.”

“No? Who then has produced this colossal spectacle?”

“Cnossal, you mean,” said Blair.

“My God, you would think it was,” agreed the Colonel. “Out with it! What's the big idea? I thought you had some notion of the—the amenities of archaeology, if not the dignity.”

“Are you trying to make some point?” inquired Grant.

“Do you think I have travelled up here
not
to make one?”

“That's for you to say. If I have given our normally arid subject some publicity, I should not have thought that altogether reprehensible in these days. But I may be wrong.”

“Normally arid!”

“From a public point of view. I have always maintained that there is a conception of archaeology which is not only scientific but also human. In a modest way, I have been trying to exemplify this.”

The Colonel's humoured sparring got a check. His chair creaked as he tried to focus Grant more clearly. “You don't mean the whole bloody thing is hocus-pocus?”

“You are referring, I presume, to the reports in the press?”

“What else would I be referring to?”

“I thought,” said Grant, smiling to his hat, “that I had managed those rather well.”

“Look here, Grant. For God's sake don't tell me that I shouldn't have let you loose alone. I meant it for your health's sake more than anything; a small-scale affair.” The Colonel, hitherto in holiday mood, had now let a note of real concern invade his thick voice.

“It may be a small affair but at least it's my own.”

“Right down to the crock of gold?”

“Even to the crock of gold.”

Blair laughed. “I was right,” he said. “I told you the whole thing was too fantastic.”

But the Colonel was still inspecting Grant. “Why?”

“Well,” replied Grant, “it happened that way. And for the rest—we fought pretty well in the last war, well enough anyhow to be weary of barkings and snarlings from India and Egypt, not to mention Russia and the Holy Land. Don't you think we were due some light relief?”

“A cnossal spoof to cheer up the great British public?” said Blair without a laugh, with almost a note of marvelling.

“Don't you think the great British public has earned some fun?” inquired Grant with a sharp glance at him.

“I didn't think you had it in you?” declared Blair.

“I beg your pardon?” Grant eyed him.

Blair laughed in a high echoing way, the throwback of his head being so sudden that his felt hat fell off.

“But——” said the Colonel and paused, and he didn't often pause when all set for the kind of elaborate inquiry or fooling that tied another man in knots. His blue eyes were small, shrewd, and penetrating.

“You think perhaps I have overdone it?” inquired Grant with open innocence. “I admit I have wondered myself. But then—people are dearly interested when the subject is presented to them in the right way. I think I may fairly say I have proved that. Now what I have been really wondering is this: why can't we get some experts to deal with various aspects of the whole matter, as it appertains to the cairn, in a truly human way? If we can show man's continuity on our own soil, in a human way, over thousands of years, his work, his arts, his ceremonies, his ornaments, show his thought and his courage, wouldn't it help us now? Our island story has its inspirations as well as its splendours.”

The Colonel was manifestly beyond speech and even Blair had an odd look in his eye.

“As for myself,” Grant continued, “I am prepared to take up the religious aspect.”

“Religious,” croaked the Colonel.

“Yes,” said Grant. “I have had time to give it considerable thought. We are inclined to think that the crock of gold in legend just meant a pot with gold in it. And so it did. But it also—and here we touch subtle duality—it also meant something more. The crock was at once, as it were, both real and symbolical. This raises the whole question of the meaning of the symbol, both in religion and art, not only
then
but now, in fact especially now: again a continuity which we should work out, and this time a spiritual continuity which might have a profoundly meliorating effect upon our present over-indulgence in materialism.”

“Phew!” blew Blair.

“I'm sorry if I have been monopolising the conversation,” said Grant with an apologetic smile, “and though there is much that I might usefully add, perhaps I have said enough to indicate my general attitude.”

“God it's warm,” said the Colonel on a gust of solemn breath and mopped his forehead with his handkerchief.

“The weather has been exceptionally fine,” Grant agreed as one who knew it had gone out of its way to favour his designs, but secretly.

Blair put a finger inside his collar and pulled it outward to let air pass to his chest. “Subtle duality,” he murmured.

“Schizophrenia,” muttered the Colonel; and added, “This is even more than we had bargained for.”

“Speaking for yourself,” said Blair, and then he began to laugh his high-pitched laugh.

The Colonel started with a wheeze, but his head went up and such surprisingly forceful gusts came from his shaken body that the old canvas of his chair burst and the wooden struts cracked like a gunshot as his posterior found the gravel. Then Grant began to laugh and Martin came out of the front door.

The chair clung so tightly to Colonel Mackintosh that in the end Grant had to pull it off him from behind as Martin and Blair heaved him to his feet.

“Ho,” said the Colonel, “hm. Is this the kind of crockery you keep nowadays, Martin?”

“Sorry it could not stand the test,” answered Martin, with a smile. “It's pre-war.”

“So long as Grant did not find it in the cairn,” said the Colonel, dusting his behind.

Amid the restored good humour Mrs Sidbury came out and the Colonel apologised for breaking her chair. It was decided, on examination, that the canvas had perished from old age.

“It's what we all perish from,” said the Colonel, “when we're supposed to be lucky,” and refused any of the other chairs. “Once bitten,” he explained, and added with a glance at Grant, “or should I say twice?”

“Do come inside,” invited Mrs Sidbury. “You'll find something firmer there.”

“You'll have to excuse me,” said Grant, “but we feed rather early at the cottage.”

“Oh.” She looked at him. “If I cannot persuade you, would you come round later for coffee?”

“Thank you very much.”

From a little distance, he heard Blair's laugh as they all moved into the house. But he did not mind. He was indeed quite pleased with himself, having led them up the garden path more successfully than he had thought possible. In the next bout, he could not expect to come off so well, but at least he would surprise them! Then he began to marvel a little at the words which had come to him, and as he went on they seemed to contain an inner truth. Otherwise, presumably, they would not have been effective! But he could not laugh the matter off entirely, and all at once, and with an effect of piercing sincerity, he said: It's true. There's Martin. He's suffering, not from materialism, but from the
end
of materialism. He is what it arrives at. And that means woman, child, and everything.

His footsteps quickened, his eyes flashed.