The Cone-Gatherers. Robin Jenkins

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      ‘Do you believe that, John?’

      ‘No.’

      She glanced away from him. ‘Even if I did,’ she muttered, ‘even if I had a guarantee in my hand this very minute, saying that Peggy in heaven would have it all made up to her, I still wouldn’t be satisfied. It seems to me a shameful thing, to torment the living unjustly and think to remedy it by pampering the dead.’

      ‘This pampering is supposed to last forever.’

      She spat out disgust. ‘I have my own religion,’ she said proudly. ‘I don’t think the Lord’s a wean, to be cruel one minute and all sugary kindness the next.’

      He wanted the conversation to end, but he could not resist asking, not for the first time: ‘Is there an explanation, in your religion?’

      Once she had retorted by saying that not Peggy’s sins were being punished, but his. It had seemed to him a subtle and convincing theology, but she had immediately retracted it: she would not insult God by crediting Him with less decency and intelligence than the creatures He had made.

      ‘You ken,’ she answered, still proudly, ‘I have never found that explanation.’

      Then they heard Peggy shouting. Instead of the dance music a man’s solemn voice issued from the radio: he was talking about the war. Peggy wanted something more cheerful. Would her mother come and switch to another programme?

      His mother-in-law hurried away. He went on with his meal, but suddenly he realised that he was envying the tranquillity and peace of mind in the cone-gatherers’ hut. He paused with his fork at his mouth: that he should envy so misbegotten and godforsaken an imbecile as the hunchback was surely the ultimate horror, madness itself? To hate the hunchback, and therefore to wish to cleanse the wood of his defiling presence, was reasonable; but to wish to change places with him, to covet his hump, his deformed body, his idiot’s mind, and his face with its hellish beauty, was, in fact, already to have begun the exchange. Was this why the hut fascinated him so much?

      A comedian was now joking on the wireless. The studio audience howled with laughter. He heard Peggy joining in.

      Mrs Lochie returned to the kitchen.

      ‘Did you remember to feed the dogs?’ he asked.

      ‘I remembered.’

      ‘Thanks. I’m sorry I was late.’

      ‘Are you really sorry, John? You’re late nearly every night now. This is the third time this week.’

      He thought, afterwards, he would go up the garden to the dogs’ house. Silence and peace of mind were there too; he wished he could share them. The handsome wise-eyed animals would be eager to welcome him in, but he would not be able to enter. All he would succeed in doing would be to destroy their contentment: they would whine and lick his hands and sorrow because they could not help him.

      ‘You think the world of those dogs,’ she said accusingly.

      ‘I need them for my work.’

      ‘You talk to them oftener than you talk to your wife.’

      It was true: the bond between him and the dogs still held.

      ‘You sit up in that shed for hours with them,’ she said. ‘Fine I ken why. It’s so that you don’t have to sit with your wife.’

      ‘I told Peggy I’d be in later.’

      ‘For five minutes.’

      He did not speak.

      ‘It’s what will happen to her when I’m gone that worries me,’ she said. ‘Who will toil after her as I have done? Nobody in this wide empty world.’

      He let her enjoy her sobs.

      ‘I can only hope she’s taken before I am,’ she went on, ‘though she is thirty years younger. If I went it would be an institution for incurables for her. I’m not blind. I see the way things are shaping.’

      Do you really, he thought, see this tree growing and spreading in my mind? And is its fruit madness?

      ‘Was there any message for me from the big house?’ he asked.

      ‘Aye. It seems the mistress’s brother has arrived for a day or two’s leave before he goes overseas. She sounded excited. He’s younger than she is. Anyway, she wants a deer hunt arranged for him tomorrow.’

      ‘But I’ve got no men for a deer drive.’

      ‘That’s none of my business. You’d better explain it to her when you see her. She wants you to be early: half-past nine. Are you finished here? Have you had enough?’

      ‘Aye, plenty, thanks.’ He rose up.

      She began to gather the plates and cutlery. Out of the window he caught sight of stars glittering above the dark tops of trees.

      ‘You’ll be going in to talk to Peggy?’

      The comedian was still cracking jokes, and the laughter of his audience surged like waves. Peggy would tell him about the jokes he had missed.

      ‘Later,’ he said. ‘I want to have a look at Prince’s paw. He got a thorn in it yesterday.’

      ‘I ken a heart with thorns in it.’

      For a moment he almost gave way and shouted, with fists outstretched towards those stars, that in his heart and brain were thorns bitterer than those that bled the brow of Christ. Instead, he merely nodded.

      ‘I’ll not be long,’ he murmured. ‘I’m frightened the paw might fester.’

      Quick though he had been in his restraint, she had caught another glimpse of his torment. It shocked her and yet it satisfied her too: she saw it, clear as the sun in the sky, as divine retribution.

      ‘A heart can fester too, John,’ she said, as he opened the door and went out.

      Going up the path to visit the dogs, he loitered and tried to light his pipe. It was such a night as ought to have enticed his head and shoulders amongst the stars. But he could not even enjoy his pipe. When he had it at last lit, after striking eight matches, he found that as usual he had been expecting too much from it; it seemed merely a device to exercise his agitation rather than to allay it.

      The air was keen with frost. Tomorrow would be another warm sunny day, ideal for a deer drive. An idea suddenly occurred to him, simple, obvious, likely to be approved by his mistress, yet to him a conscious surrender to evil. It would be easy for him to persuade Lady Runcie-Campbell to telephone Mr Tulloch to ask for the services of his men as beaters for the drive. The forester would not dare refuse. The cone-gatherers would have to obey; and surely the dwarf, who slobbered over a rabbit’s broken legs, must be driven by the sight of butchered deer into a drivelling obscenity. Lady Runcie-Campbell, in spite of her pity, would be disgusted. She would readily give him permission to dismiss them from the wood. That dismissal might be his own liberation.

      All the time that he was ministering to his three golden СКАЧАТЬ