Джозефина Тэй - The Singing Sands

He sat and watched the kitchen fire gradually lose heart as it became conscious of the bed of potato peelings on which it had been cast away. He did his best to rake out some of the damp black mass from underneath so as to provide an encouraging draught, but the thing merely settled down in a sad heap. He watched the glow fade until only little red worms of incandescence ran to and fro across the surface of the blackened coals as the passing wind sucked the air from the room into the chimney. He thought of putting on his waterproof and walking in the rain; walking in the rain could be a delightful thing. But the thought of hot tea held him where he was.

After nearly an hour of fire-watching, no tea had come. But ‘N. Todd, Prop.’ came back from the harbour, accompanied by a boy in a navy-blue jersey pushing a wheelbarrow laden with large cardboard cartons, and came in to welcome his guest. They did not expect guests at this time of the year, he said; he thought when he had seen him come off the boat that he would be staying with someone on the island. Gathering songs, or something.

There was something in the way he said ‘gathering songs’ – a detached tone bordering on comment – that made Grant sure that he was no native.

No, said Mr. Todd, when asked, he did not belong to the place. He had had a good little commercial hotel in the Lowlands, but this was more to his taste. And, seeing the surprise on his guest’s face he added: ‘To tell you the truth, Mr. Grant, I was tired of counter-rappers. You know: the kind of chap who can’t wait a minute. Out here no one ever thinks of rapping on a counter. Today, tomorrow, or next week is all the same to an islander. It’s a bit maddening now and then, when you want something done, but for most of the time it’s fine and restful. My blood pressure’s away down.’ He noticed the fire. ‘That’s a poor sort of fire Katie-Ann’s given you. You’d better come ben to my office and warm yourself.’

At this moment Katie-Ann put her head in at the door and said that it had taken all this time to boil the kettle because the kitchen fire had gone out on her, and would Mr. Grant now think it a good thing to have his tea and his high-tea at one and the same time. Grant did indeed think it a good thing, and as she went away to prepare this evening repast he asked his host for a drink.

‘The magistrates took away the licence from my predecessor, and I haven’t yet got it back. I’ll get it back at the next Licensing Court. So I can’t sell you a drink. There isn’t a licence on the island. But if you’ll come ben to my office I’ll be glad to stand you a whisky.’

The office was a tiny place, tropical in its breathless heat. Grant savoured the oven atmosphere gratefully, and drank the bad whisky neat, as it was proffered. He took the indicated chair and stretched out his feet to the blaze.

‘You’re not an authority on the island, then,’ he said.

Mr. Todd grinned. ‘In one way I am,’ he said wickedly. ‘But probably not the way you mean it.’

‘To whom should I go to learn about the place?’

‘Well, there’s two authorities. Father Heslop and the Reverend Mr. MacKay. On the whole perhaps Father Heslop would be better.’

‘You think he is the more knowledgeable?’

‘No; they’re about fifty-fifty as far as that goes. But two-thirds of the islanders are R.C. If you go to the priest you’ll only have a third of the population against you, instead of two-thirds. Of course the Presbyterian third are much nastier customers to be up against, but if numbers count with you then you’d better see Father Heslop. Better see Father Heslop anyway. I’m a heathen myself so I’m an outcast from both flocks, but Father Heslop is for a licence and Mr. MacKay dead against it.’ He grinned again and refilled Grant’s glass.

‘I take it the priest would rather see the stuff sold openly than drunk on the sly.’

‘That’s it.’

‘Did you ever have a visitor called Charles Martin staying here?’

‘Martin? No. Not in my time. But if you’d like to look through the visitors’ book it’s on the table in the lobby.’

‘If a visitor doesn’t stay at the hotel where would he be likely to stay? In rooms?’

‘No, no one lets rooms on the island. The houses are too small for that. They’d stay either with Father Heslop or at the manse.’

By the time that Katie-Ann came to say that his tea was waiting on him in the sitting room the blood was flowing freely again through Grant’s once-moribund body and he was hungry. He looked forward to his first meal in this ‘tiny oasis of civilization in a barbarous world’ (see Dream Islands by H. G. F. Pynche-Maxwell, Beal and Batter, 15/6). He rather hoped that it might not be either salmon or sea-trout, having had an elegant sufficiency of both in the last eight or nine days. He would not turn up his nose at a piece of grilled sea-trout if it happened to be that. Grilled with some local butter. But he hoped for lobster – the island was famous for its lobsters – and failing that some herring fresh from the sea, split, and fried after being dipped in oatmeal.

His first meal in the isles of delight consisted of a couple of bright orange kippers inadequately cured and liberally dyed in Aberdeen, bread made in Glasgow, oatcakes baked by a factory in Edinburgh and never toasted since, jam manufactured in Dundee, and butter made in Canada. The only local produce was a pallid, haggis-shaped mound of crowdie; a white crumbly byproduct without smell or taste.

The sitting room in unshaded lamplight was even less appetizing than it had been in the grey light of afternoon, and Grant fled to his freezing little bedroom. He demanded two hot-water bottles and suggested to Katie-Ann that since he was the sole guest she should filch the quilts from every other bedroom in the house and dedicate them to his use. She did this with all her native Celt pleasure in the irregular, heaping his bed with borrowed luxury and suffocating with giggles.

He lay under the five meagre bits of wadding, topped off with his own coat and Burberry, and pretended that the whole thing was one good English eiderdown. As he grew warm he became conscious of the cold stuffiness of the room. This was the last straw and quite suddenly he began to laugh. He lay there and laughed as he had not laughed for nearly a year. Laughed till the tears came, laughed until he was so exhausted that he could no more, and lay spent and purged and happy under his fine variety of bedclothes.

Laughter must do untold things for one’s endocrine glands, he thought, feeling the well-being flood through him in a life-giving tide. More especially, perhaps, when it is laughter at oneself. At the fine glorious absurdity of oneself in relation to the world. To set out for the threshold of Tir nan Og and fetch up at the Cladda Hotel had an exquisite ridiculousness. If the islands provided him with nothing but this he would consider himself well rewarded.

He ceased to care that the room was airless and the covers insecure. He lay looking at the rose-heavy wallpaper and wished that he could show it to Laura. He remembered that he had not yet been transferred into that newly-decorated bedroom at Clune which, up till now, had always been his. Was Laura expecting another visitor? Was it possible that her latest candidate for his affections was to be housed under the same roof? So far he had been happily free of female society; the evenings at Clune had been family evenings, peaceful and long-breathing. Had Laura been merely holding her hand until he was, so to speak, able to sit up and take notice? She had been suspiciously regretful that he was going to miss the opening of the new hall at Moymore. A ceremony that she would have in her normal mind not expected him to attend at all. Had she expected a guest for the opening? The bedroom could not be meant for Lady Kentallen, because she would come over from Angus and go back the same afternoon. Then for whom was that bedroom redecorated and kept empty?