Benbecula, page 5
MacGregor the priest is here. He calls on me once in a while. I’m not sure how often. Certainly less frequently than Mrs MacLeod and without any regularity or pattern. I do not know why he comes. I no longer attend Mass and he has long since given up trying to persuade me to return. Perhaps he wishes only to ascertain if I have expired. I cannot imagine it is for the pleasure of my company though I always give him a dram. MacGregor likes a dram. He keeps a pewter flask in the satchel he carries. Sometimes when he is passing along the shore path on his pony he pauses to rummage in his satchel for his flask and takes a swig before digging his heels into the animal’s ribs to urge it onwards. The pony is an ancient bent-backed thing that appears at every step to be on the point of collapse. I suppose it is beneath the dignity of a priest to convey himself by means of his own two feet.
MacGregor’s visits follow a certain routine. He tethers his pony and though the door is always open knocks on the jamb and calls my name.
It’s yourself, MacGregor, I reply.
He would prefer me to call him Father but does not insist. It sticks in my craw. One father was enough for me and Angus did for that one. He begins by taking a tour of the apartment. If he comes across something on the floor he will pick it up and put it in its proper place. I ask him if he will take a dram and set one on the table for him without waiting for an answer. He sits down and makes a few remarks about the weather or some other inconsequential matter. Then he passes comment on events in the parish. This he does in a manner that suggests I already have knowledge of these goings-on.
It’s a hard blow that has struck down MacKeever, he will say.
Aye, a hard blow indeed, I reply.
The Murchison lad is showing great promise, he says. Is that so? I say.
Very great promise, he repeats.
He then asks about my activities over the preceding days.
There is always something to attend to, I say.
He now, as he always does, enquires about what he calls my state of mind.
This is a question I have difficulty answering. I do not know what state my mind is in or even if it is in a state at all. If he asked about the state of the rig or the thatch on the roof, I would have no trouble answering. But the state of one’s mind? A man cannot describe the state of his own mind, for in order to do so he would have to step out of his mind to observe it, and a man cannot step outside his own mind because the man is the mind and the mind is the man. They are not like the white and yolk of an egg. They cannot be separated. But I fear that if I answer to this effect MacGregor will take this as a sign that I am already out of my mind, which I am not.
My state of mind? I reply. I thought you were concerned only with the state of my soul.
MacGregor gives a little laugh. I’ve long since given up on that, he says. But it is not easy to be alone with your thoughts, especially . . .
He does not finish his sentence but I know what he is alluding to. MacGregor is not in the habit of making reference to the events of the past, if indeed that is what he is doing now. He takes a wee drink as if to demonstrate that there is no special significance to his remark.
I do not think it wise to tell him that I am often not alone with my thoughts, that the deceased members of my family – for I do know them to be deceased – are often present in the house and on the rig. This too would be seen as evidence that my state of mind is not as it should be.
Instead of answering I stare at the surface of the table. It is grooved like the furrows of a rig. Within the grooves are solidified strands of porridge. Sometimes of an evening I amuse myself by running my fingernail along these grooves and turning up the harvest. There is a pleasure to be had in this. And a similar pleasure in afterwards dislodging the debris from beneath one fingernail with another and then rolling the yield between my tongue and the roof of my mouth.
I sometimes wonder if MacGregor knows something about me that he should not know. I mean about something I may or may not have done. It is not a question of whether I have actually done what he believes me to have done but simply that he believes that I have done it. A man of his vocation is not going to make an accusation. He is in the business not of accusations but of confessions. If a man admits to something he is accused of that is of no use to him. No, for a priest, a man has to come out with it off his own back. Of course MacGregor has no end of half-wits queuing up to confess their so-called sins. And the more grievous these sins, the more virtuous these arseholes make themselves in the confessing of them. It’s no use just coveting your neighbour’s ox. Something much more heinous is required than that. But I have long since given up on confession. I have no use for it, nor for the hollow absolution MacGregor metes out. But perhaps, after all, this is the purpose of his visits. He is waiting me out. He is awaiting my confession. He’s a patient one, MacGregor, and canny. But he will not have it. No amount of whisky will loosen my tongue. In any case, I am not saying there is anything to which I need confess. That would be a confession in itself, or an admission at least. But there will be neither. Neither confession nor admission will be forthcoming.
I drink my whisky and pour some more. MacGregor pushes his glass across the table and I fill it to the brim.
I do not entirely confine myself to the house. It ill behoves a man to be too much in the interior. A man who is too much in the interior is no better than a prisoner or an inmate of an asylum. So a man who is neither prisoner nor lunatic must now and then go at large. During the day I rarely venture further than the foot of the rig. The land here is common but even if it is not demarcated by dyke or fence – as mine is not – a rig constitutes a frontier around one’s house. Aside from the irksome schoolboys I have mentioned and those visitors I have named, few venture onto my rig and when I stand upon it I feel that I am in my own dominion and that no one can challenge or question me. If I journey further than the shore I am viewed with suspicion by my neighbours. Not for any sins of my own but because the stain of my brother’s crimes is not easily washed away. So if I wish to go further afield – to feel that I am not a prisoner confined by the walls of his cell – I do so under cover of darkness. On those nights when I choose to go at large it is for no other reason than to escape the fug that emanates from within. I say choose but that is not the correct word. I do not choose anything. A certain urge besets me and I do not resist. The brain must sometime leave the skullhouse. So I walk or perhaps, truth be told, I scuttle. I fear that in recent years I have developed a stoop. Perhaps this is nothing more than a consequence of age but the terrain here is flat and offers little by way of cover to those whose presence is not welcomed. So at least when in the vicinity of my neighbours I keep close to the ground. But still I take pleasure from the night air on my face. Night air is better than day air. Day air carries the stench of manure and bog. It clings to your skin. Night air is odourless and fresh. So I walk the moors and breathe the good night air. No matter how starless the night I know every bog and tussock and burn on these moors. I know the stones on which one can firmly set one’s boot and the spots where one might send a corncrake scuttling from its nest squawking an alarm. The parish of Liniclate is not densely populated. One need not encounter a dwelling if one does not wish to. I do not choose in which direction I go. I simply walk and at a certain point I retrace my steps or describe a loose circle. The dwellings in these parts look more or less alike and it has sometimes happened that at the end of one of my nocturnal excursions I have entered the house of one of my neighbours. It is a powerful thing to move around the apartment of a house while the occupants slumber. I have no ill motives. Aside from a few pieces of discarded food, I do not steal. Now and again for mischief I shift an object – some trinket or other – from one place to another so that the inhabitants might wonder when they wake if it got up in the night and moved of its own accord.
Once I found myself in the MacLeods’ house. There in the back chamber I came upon Mrs MacLeod and her husband asleep. It was a warm night and the blankets had been thrown asunder. Mrs MacLeod’s nightdress lay loosely around her bosom. I remained in the shadows in the corner of the room for as long as I dared and stole away only when the sky began to lighten. On another occasion I was in the MacIsaacs’. I drank some whisky from a bottle that had been left on the table. I then fell asleep in an armchair far more comfortable than any I had sat in before. When I awoke a small child was staring at me. Mrs MacIsaac was not best pleased and chased me out with a broom. I seem not to be wanted in my neighbours’ homes.
Some weeks after Angus’s return from Lochdhar, Marion, John and myself were on the shore at the seaware. Angus had been quite calm for some days and we had relaxed our oversight of him. I was perhaps even guilty of believing that whatever malady had afflicted him had run its course. It was a fine clear day. The gathering of seaware is an arduous business but on days such as this there can be a pleasure in it. We worked the three of us mostly in silence but with a certain rhythm, and there was a looseness in my limbs that I had not felt for weeks.
Sometime in the forenoon we heard the chapel bell from across the water at Lochdhar. I cannot say what day it was but as it was not the Sabbath there was no reason for the bell to be tolling. I stopped my work and leant on my pitchfork. The bell was not being rung in a regular fashion but in the lopsided manner of a drunk staggering home from the Creagorry Inn. I thought perhaps that an alarm was being raised for a boat that had run aground but such incidents do not occur on days without a breath of wind. Nor at any point on the horizon was smoke from a fire to be seen. I could not conceive of any other emergency that would precipitate the ringing of the bell and I felt a kind of dread that Angus must be involved. I looked at Marion and though we did not exchange a word I knew she had the same thought.
The tide was still low enough to ford the sound and a figure was making his way across the spit of land that most closely links our two islands. As he drew nearer I recognised him as a boy of about fifteen called Murdo MacAulay, who acted as altar boy to Father MacGregor and whose family lived in the vicinity of the chapel. When he saw us he waved his arms above his head to attract our attention. We watched as he approached along the shore. His breeches were soaked to the thighs from the crossing.
Young Murdo was quite breathless when he reached us and evidently excited by the mission that brought him to us.
Father MacGregor sent me to fetch you, he said. It’s your brother that is ringing the bell.
Angus? I said. For some reason I felt the need to feign surprise.
Father says he is out of his mind and you must come and bring him away, he said.
I breathed a heavy sigh. There was no alternative but to comply and as the tide was coming in there could be no delay. We set off the four us back across the sound, linking hands against the rising water, Murdo to the fore and myself at the rear. The water reached Marion’s waist but we gained the spit without mishap. As we approached the chapel the clanging of the bell grew louder and more frenetic.
A sizeable crowd of mostly womenfolk had gathered at the gates to the churchyard. MacGregor was waiting for us at the entrance with two other men. I did not recognise one of them, but the second was the father of Murdo MacAulay who was also called Murdo. He was known as Murdo Stone as he was rarely heard to speak. Certainly I had never heard him say a word. He was not dumb nor to my knowledge feeble-minded. He simply chose not to speak and for this reason I respected him. It is mostly through the nonsense they talk that men reveal their stupidity. In keeping with his character Murdo Stone said nothing by way of greeting, instead acknowledging our arrival with an upward motion of his head.
MacGregor said, It’s good that you are here.
Clearly he was not in a good temper.
I hear that it is Angus that is ringing the bell, I said.
He is quite possessed, said the priest. I have implored him to stop but he abused and threatened me in the most violent terms.
He spoke angrily as if the fault somehow lay with myself.
I entered the chapel with Marion, John and the rest of them in my wake.
Angus had wrapped the bell-pull around his chest and was pulling on it with such fervour that his feet left the ground. He seemed quite deranged. I stepped into his line of vision but he continued without pause.
What’s all this, Angus? I said in a gentle tone. It is not the Sabbath and you have no business ringing the bell in any case.
He ignored me and if anything became more frenzied. There was a wild look in his eye. I held out my hand towards him but he twisted away and lifted his feet from the flagstones so that he began to swing around. I was fearful that he might bring the bell, which was of considerable size, crashing down upon us.
I made the gentle sound with my lips that I might use when approaching a milch cow. He lashed out towards me with his legs and I retreated.
You see, said MacGregor. He is quite out of his mind.
I could not disagree.
Young Murdo and one of the other fellows were sent to fetch ropes and the rest of us stepped outside. The crowd outside had swelled in size and drawn closer to the door of the chapel.
It’s the lunatic MacPhee, the priest told them.
Aye, he’s a lunatic all right, said an ancient crone. And a menace.
He has not been well these last weeks, I said, feeling obliged to speak up on my brother’s behalf.
I would have smoked a pipe but my tobacco had been soaked in the crossing and I did not wish to ask the priest if he could spare some.
By and by the two men returned with a quantity of rope. We formulated a plan and went back inside. One of the men grabbed Angus round the legs while I put my arms around his shoulders. John attempted to wrap a length of rope around his ankles, taking a boot to the face for his trouble. MacGregor blethered about the desecration of the Lord’s house. Eventually Angus’s ankles were bound, leaving him suspended by the bell-pull. I pinned his arms behind his back and the rope was wrenched from him. At this point Angus fell to the stone floor cursing. Three of us sat on him and he was trussed up. We let him thrash about until he had spent his energy. A hand-cart was brought and we carried him to the door and threw him onto it, amid much laughter from the onlookers. We then trundled him to the shore, but the tide was now such that it was impossible to ford the sound. Murdo Stone went off to fetch a boat.
Angus was hauled once again to the boat, quieter now. Marion sat at the bow, John at the stern and I took the oars, my arse inches from my brother’s face which had been bloodied in the struggle. I do not know if anyone had purposefully struck him but I cannot say he would not have deserved it. The Lochdhar contingent pushed us off and I pulled some good strokes to put some distance between us and them. I then shipped the oars and let us drift for some minutes. If the weather had been less clement and the boat capsized, our troubles with Angus would have been swiftly over but the breeze barely rippled the surface of the water. It struck me as I took up the oars again that the entire issue of my mother’s womb was contained in that small vessel. It would take only a sudden swell to put an end to us all. Among families concerned with the fishing a whole generation could be lost like that, but we MacPhees were like limpets clinging stubbornly to the land. It crossed my mind as we neared the shore that were I to deliberately overturn the boat, the three of would likely make it to safety while Angus, shackled as he was, would perish. For a moment my eyes locked with Marion’s and I wondered if she was having the same thought. Perhaps she was even imploring me to act but there was no reason that it should not be she to capsize the boat. I gave her a look which was intended to convey this thought but neither of us acted.
Neither that evening nor at any later time did I ask Angus why he had gone to the chapel to ring the bell. It was not that I restrained myself from doing so. The question simply did not occur to me. We MacPhees had never concerned ourselves much with the why of things. We were folk who accepted things as they were. Most likely it made little sense for us to gather seaware to burn it for kelp but we did not question it.
But now, as I relate this incident, I have cause to wonder why Angus rang the bell. If he had tripped and cracked his skull on a rock I would not have wondered why he had done so. It would have been nothing more than an accident, an event without meaning. But this was not an accident. It was a purposeful act. In order to ring the bell Angus had first to ford the sound, make his way to the chapel and then secure the bell-pull around his chest. Even in his troubled state of mind, he must have had some reason for doing so. If any other person – even a dimwit like John – had rung the bell I would have asked him why he had done so. But because we viewed Angus as a lunatic, we saw his deed as no more than an act of madness and thus empty of meaning. But whether a bell is being rung by a lunatic or a person of sound mind, the act is the same. And the meaning of the act is the same. It can only be to raise an alarm. It may be that Angus’s act was nothing more than buffoonery, just as when as an infant he had run amok in the schoolroom. But when I think about it now years distant, I believe that Angus wanted to warn us of something – mostly likely of what he did not know himself – but we none of us paid any heed. My only thoughts at the time were of the humiliation that Angus was heaping upon our family and my increasing loathing of him.
A week must have passed as Mrs MacLeod is here. There will be no bath today as even if I am mistaken in my belief that she makes me bathe once a month I am certain that she has never made me bathe on two consecutive visits. Still I am glad she is here. She has brought me some broth which she heated over the fire and which I am now eating at the table while I watch her go about her chores. I keep the place in a mess so she has something to do while she is here. If she did not think me helpless, what reason would she have to come? Sometimes she chastises me for the boorach I live in but she does so in a cheerful way. Malcolm, she will say, I sometimes think you are no better than a pig in a sty. And I will oink like a pig to amuse her. She has her back to me now but she is talking about one of her sons. He has been kicked on the head by a horse and has lain abed this last week. The doctor had to be summoned from Lochmaddy but the boy is now recovering.
