Magnus Merriman (24 page)

Magnus's surviving relatives in Orkney, in near degree of blood, were only two in number. He had a younger brother, to whom he was not greatly attached, who was a schoolmaster in the island of South Ronaldsay, and a sister who was married to a farmer in the West Mainland. A score of cousins in the first degree, and many others at remoter stages of consanguinity, lived in different parishes of the Mainland;
a paternal uncle was a banker in Stromness; and a maternal aunt owned a small hotel in the island of Westray. But it was his sister Janet's house that he considered his home.

Janet was a woman of forty-two or forty-three years who had inherited her father's somewhat dry and executive disposition, and the deceased schoolmaster's not very distinguished collection of books. The latter she kept, carefully dusted, in the bedroom, and in the winter months occasionally selected one, quite impartially, and read it through without giving any indication as to whether she enjoyed it or not. Magnus's books—those that he had written—she kept by themselves in a glass-fronted cabinet that contained pieces of supposedly valuable china. She had no children.

Her husband, William Isbister, was a shrewd easy-going man with an eye for a good cow and a disinclination for hard work. He was one of the many peerie lairds in the West Mainland, and his farm of Midhouse was as good as any in the parish. He kept a married ploughman, whose son, a tall strong boy, also worked for him, and there was a servant-girl in the house. Though far from being wealthy, he had money in the bank and was in easy circumstances.

His half-brother, Peter Isbister, who owned the farm of the Bu in the same parish, was a more energetic, ambitious, and talkative man. He was constantly experimenting with new seed, with new kinds of potatoes, and buying cattle of a superior and usually unprofitable strain. But what he lost in breeding he recouped in dealing. He had a large family and his house was a lively place. On his last visit to Orkney, about seven years before this, Magnus had spent almost as much time at the Bu as he had at Midhouse.

His arrival now was unheralded. He hired a car in Kirkwall: his sister's home was some fourteen miles away. It happened that he came to Midhouse just as the cows were being driven in for the evening milking. There was a great deal of noise, for a young collie dog had entirely misunderstood his orders, and so far from shepherding the cows round to the back of the steading, and so to the byre, was vigorously opposing their progress and trying to turn them into the road. The collie, obviously enjoying himself, was barking; Johnny, the ploughman's boy, was shouting
to the collie; and Janet was shouting to Johnny. Two of the more determined cows menaced the dog with massive heads held low, but the rest of the small herd turned into the road at a lumbering trot, their full udders ponderously swinging, and Johnny running to overtake them. Magnus, getting out of the car, stood right in their path.

Janet saw him, recognized him at once, and immediately made use of him. ‘Turn the kye for me, Mansie!' she called. ‘Don't let that red one get by you, or they'll all be gone.'

Magnus shouted and waved his arms. The red cow shied and stopped. The others stood still, breathing heavily, their fat sides rising and falling, their huge dark eyes glaring in sombre suspicion.

‘Shoo!' he cried. ‘Get back there. Get back! Here, Glen, Glen!'

The other dog came to him. Magnus had never seen it before, but the dogs at Midhouse were always called either Glen or Boss.

‘See a haud, boy,' he cried. ‘Get on there. Here, Glen!
Glen!
Come in ahint, man.'

So, making more noise than Johnny and Janet put together, he drove the cows back to the steading and was greatly pleased with himself.

Janet said, ‘Well, Mansie, you've been long in coming, but you came at a good time after all.'

‘I meant to write to you,' he said, ‘but I've been very busy lately. I was so worried and uncertain about my plans that I couldn't decide, till just before leaving Edinburgh, whether I was going to leave it or not. I scarcely had time to catch the boat to Leith—we had a rotten crossing—and so…'

‘All right,' said Janet. ‘I suppose you're not going back tomorrow, so there'll be plenty of time to tell us why you came and how you came. Wait till I see to the kye, and then I'll listen to you.'

They followed after the cows to the farmyard. The steading was built on three sides of a square, the middle of which was almost filled by a rich and abundant midden. A few hens, their feathers shining in the sun, were pecking at the dark-stained yellow straw. All but two of the cows had disappeared into the byre: one showed its huge stern
in the doorway: the one behind it looked round, raised its head, and bellowed softly.

Willy Isbister came out of the stable with a bottle of Condy's Fluid and a roll of lint in his hand. He was a slow-moving, red-faced, round-shouldered man of about fifty. For a moment he looked hard at Magnus.

‘Mansie!' he said. ‘Welcome home. It's a denty while since we've seen you here. And now you're a famous man, they tell me.'

It was seven years since Magnus had been called by the Orkney diminutive of his name, with its soft sibilant [it rhymes with
fancy
] and homely sound; it was seven years since he had smelt this farmyard smell, the acid air mingled with perfume of sweet grass from the stable, the warm odour from the byres; it was seven years since he had turned, as now he turned, to look westward and see the shining loch that lay below Midhouse, two small fields away, and held in its vast mirror the brightness of the sky. But suddenly the interval of his absence was foreshortened, time closed in upon itself like a telescope, and to be in Orkney again seemed as natural, as proper to him, as though he had left it only the week before.

He pointed to the loch: ‘Is anyone catching any fish nowadays?'

‘There's no fish left to catch,' said Willy. ‘Man, I mind the time when there was that many they came ashore of their own free-will at the burn-mouth just below Waterha', and we took them away in cartloads. I was a boy at the time, but I was down there with a graip, and me and my father loaded two carts ourselves. Ay, there was fish in the loch then, but that time's past.'

Magnus had heard this famous story from his early youth, and to hear it again was like greeting an old comrade. Willy followed it, as he always had done, with a discussion of the various causes that had led to the decline of the trout population, and Magnus listened, still on familiar ground, to his division of the blame between eels, the killing of the otters that had fed upon the eels, and the widening of contributory burns to drain the neighbouring fields.

They looked into the stable: it's only occupant was a
filly, bright-skinned but dejected, showing a swelling like a tea-cup on her side that Willy had been dressing. ‘The other horses are lying out,' he said, and patted the filly who stood with her ears laid back.

They visited the byre. The ploughman's wife and Maggie Jean, the servant-girl, sat milking. Their heads were pressed against the flanks of their cows, and quick streams of milk shot hard into the resounding pails. The air was hot with the grass-fed smell of the animals, and two ginger-furred cats mewed in thin greedy tones for milk.

Willy stood regarding his beasts in silence. Then he said, ‘But you'll be tired, Mansie? Come into the house and rest you. Janet'll have the tea ready, but we'll have time for a dram first.'

Magnus went into the kitchen, the living-room, the dining-room of the house. The dog, lying under a horsehair sofa, barked, and then came out and wagged his tail. Janet had laid the table: there were a pile of white bannocks on it, a pile of bere bannocks, a mound of thin oatcakes, a great round cheese; there were boiled eggs, a grocer's cake, pancakes, shortbread, a huge square lump of yellow butter, dishes of jam, a gigantic tea-pot; and Janet was bending over a pot that hung on the open fire, skewering out of it a fat boiled hen.

Willy poured glasses of neat whisky for himself and Magnus. ‘Welcome home,' he said again. ‘By God, I'm glad to be back!' said Magnus. They drank, and then sat down to their tea.

‘So you're a politician now?' said Janet. ‘You'll be able to tell us how much of what we read in the papers is true, and how we all ought to behave, I suppose?'

Magnus told them at great length about the election in Kinluce, and explained exactly how he had lost it. They were greatly interested by Lady Mercy's part in it—her share in Mr Hammerson's candidature had become common gossip in Kinlawton—and though Janet was inclined to be angry with her, Willy chuckled and said she must be a fine clever woman with a good head on her. But they were both very sensibly shocked by Magnus's loss of the three hundred pounds, and Willy said he would like to have
Captain Smellie there, in the kitchen of Midhouse, for just five minutes.

Then the ploughman came in, to ask about the morrow's work, and he was introduced to Magnus, and sat down to listen to the conversation. The ploughman's boy Johnny, and the servant-girl Maggie Jean came in, and they sat down too. Presently a neighbour-man came in. He had seen Magnus's car arrive, and he wanted to know who had been in it. He remembered Magnus, and he also said, ‘Welcome home!' So they all sat in front of the peat-fire, and Magnus talked about India, and about Persia, and about America, and one after another of his audience asked sensible shrewd questions, or made sensible shrewd comments on the more notable and unexpected things that he had to say. And when it grew late the neighbour-man said, ‘Weel, man, thoo's seen a great part of the world, but I doot there's no piece of it would please thee better than Orkney.'

The great lands with their palaces and mountains vanished over the rim of the world, and Magnus said soberly, ‘I believe you're right.'

Then he and Willy walked part of the way home with the neighbour-man, and slowly came back to Midhouse. It was early June, and there was no darkness on that northern land. The sun had set, but the north-west sky was stained with a rich afterglow. A twilit veil hung over the still fields. The wind had gone, and there was no sound but the lazy booming, muted by distance, of waves on the Atlantic shore.

Magnus slept late into the morning. The kitchen was empty when he came downstairs, for Janet was busy with her hens, and he heard from the back-house a rhythmical
chunka-chunk
that told him Maggie Jean was churning. He made tea for himself and boiled a couple of eggs. Then, still without seeing anyone, he went out and walked through the calves' park and a long field of grass to the loch, and sat by its edge and contemplated the rippling water.

The loch stretched north and south, indenting the land with wide bays. A few small islands broke its surface. On the far side of it the land rose to a low ridge, a small hill or two with smoothly flowing lines. The island was treeless, and every contour showed clear and unbroken. The fields
were bright green or plough-land still naked brown, and the heather-brecks were dark. To the south-west rose the great hills of Hoy, twin domes, dark blue, and a stark barrier running south. Magnus lay on the lapping shore all morning, and was conscious of little but the changing sky, a placid and irrelevant current of minor thoughts, and a growing beatitude.

For several days he lived in idleness and hardly went out of the farm-lands of Midhouse. Janet said, ‘You'll be going to the Bu, to see Peter?' But Magnus answered, ‘Not yet. I've been seeing too many people and talking too much for the last few weeks. It's a relief to have no one but you and Willy to think about.' He walked through the fields with Willy: they would stand for an hour, leaning against a dyke, and discuss the grazing horses. Willy had a fine bay mare with great feet, proudly feathered, and a little sorrel foal running beside her waving his flax-fair mane and tail. There was another mare, an older one; a tall black gelding; and a young two-year-old horse that promised to be a champion. Or they would walk to other fields that bordered a small reedy loch, where the cattle grazed, and where black-headed gulls were nesting, and native snipe, and coots were noisy in the rushes.

There was not a great deal of work to be done on the farm at this time of year. The ploughman was sowing turnips. The early swedes were showing green lines of close-sprouting leaves, but they were not yet ready for singling. The cows had to be milked, the calves fed, the hens fed, and their eggs collected. One day Willy and Magnus, the ploughman and his boy, went in carts, a slow easy progress, to the peat-hills and set up the new-cut peats to dry. But all this could be done without hurry or bustle, and fine weather gave to their work an air of graciousness and ease.

Magnus found his old trout-rod, and took Willy's boat and went fishing on the big loch. Now as though he were in the middle of a saucer the country made a rim about him. The bare slope of the hills drew delicate lines against a clear pale sky, and the mild bright colours of June made a gay and pleasant pattern. In spite of Willy's pessimism he caught some good trout: and he caught something more important.

He caught a mood, clear-sighted and detached, and in the light of that mood he saw how to write his poem,
The Return
ing Sun
. The romantic vision that had first inspired him returned and was clarified; the indignation that had fired his conception of the early satirical part lost its extravagance and acquired form and discipline; and the bitterness he had felt in Kinluce was now transmuted to a bland ironical perception of politics' vulgar intrigue and perverted folly. That evening, in the swept and garnished ben-room at Midhouse, he returned to work, and for some days worked with happy concentration.

He destroyed much of what he had already written, and recast the harsh ebullience of other passages. He was still embarrassed by the abundance of matters meet for satire in modern life, but his new-found mood enabled him to review knavishness and stupidity from a distance and limn in bold outlines that which, in his earlier attempts, he had attacked in furious detail from too-close range.