The Sandstone Blog
Crumbs of comfort
Shand MacEwan, Scotland’s favourite old poet, looked up from his word processor and turned clumsily in his seat. A stroke had left him weak and barely mobile down the left side but something compelling had moved at the corner of his eye. He leaned back so he could see the Cromarty Firth more clearly through the bay window.
A big greylag, flying on its own, was coming in. This was its in-between time, it had been strong and graceful in the sky but now had gone all clumsy. Its wings were spread out and turned forward, its grey legs were down and it was running in the air, about to hit the water. When it struck it stretched its neck as though to avoid the spray and waggled its head from side to side. It turned in the water and was suddenly floating in the middle of an expanding bow wave, paddling towards the reeds at the far side of the river mouth. The mighty flyer had become a graceful swimmer.
‘Shand!’
He settled back in his seat and clasped his hands wearily on the desk. He was still absorbing the beauty, it was like a gift he had been given. He was not ready to speak to her.
‘Shand!’
It was in the movement, the way it had altered at the point of impact. The awkward, frantic movements and then suddenly such calm control. How to describe that?
‘Shand, what clothes do you want me to pack. The car for the airport will be here in an hour.’ Anthea entered the room from the kitchen and rested a hand on his shoulder. ‘I mean, the ceremony is easy, you’ll wear your kilt as usual. It’s later I’m worried about, at the party. I don’t want you looking like a tramp. I have people up in London I want to impress.’
‘People who have never read a line of poetry in their lives.’
‘Don’t say that. Jason has all your books.’
‘He’s thinking of his inheritance.’
‘Oh, Shand! You’re impossible.’
Shand looked over his shoulder as she removed her hand. ‘Even if he does, is that any reason to leave him my money. Which up until now, you should remember, has not amounted to all that much.’
‘Then why bring it up?’
Shand frowned. He’d lost it. This was happening more and more often.
‘Bring..?’
The hand tightened on his shoulder. ‘I’ll decide,’ Anthea said. ‘Just as I always do.’ There was a crash in the kitchen. The cleaner had dropped something. ‘Mrs Fee! Are you all right?’
Shand followed his wife out of the room with his eyes. Anthea was sixteen years his junior and at sixty-two still straight backed and elegant. He had lost his first wife to cancer when they had both been just that age. It would be hard to imagine a greater contrast. Kathy had been dumpy, large breasted and warm, constantly involved and everywhere at once. They had been together for more than thirty years.
‘But now there’s Jason,’ he said, as Anthea came back into the room.
‘It was nothing. She just dropped a pot. What?’
‘Jason, son of Kevin, son of Steve.’
‘What? No, Jason’s father is Trevor and Trevor’s father was Tom. He was nice.’
‘You haven’t got it! New names down the generations when I was still teaching. Steven, way back. Then Kevin. They were always trouble. Now it’s Jason.’
A cloud passed across Anthea’s face. ‘That’s just change, Shand. You can’t judge people by their names. Not even you. My son is doing very well in London. He and Susi have a lovely home and when they made me a grandmother with a little boy they called him Shand. Remember? I don’t go home nearly often enough. Sometimes I wonder why I left.’
Shand’s attention shifted to the tiny woodcut hanging on the wall by her shoulder. Slowly his eyes focused and he remembered again how lovely it was and how he admired its craftsmanship. It was one Anthea had bought and had cost a fortune. Art was her passion. Sometimes he felt he was part of her collection too.
‘You had more money than me,’ he said. ‘This house is rightly more than half yours. And you hate it here. Why do you stay?’
‘Because I love you, of course.’ She looked at him with troubled eyes. ‘Oh, you can’t be spoken to when you’re like this. Look, we’re leaving for the airport soon. Do you intend to travel dressed like that?’ He nodded and endured her disapproving glare. ‘Then I suppose you’ll just have to do.’
She loved him. Those hollow words again. I don’t contain that kind of love any more, he thought. Not since Kathy.
‘I’m thinking of not going,’ he said.
Anthea sat at the dining table and sighed. ‘What is it this time, Shand?’
‘I don’t want to die down there. When I die I want it to happen here, and I want my ashes scattered on the water out there.’
‘I know! With your close friends the geese. You had your regular checkup only a fortnight ago. Dr Black said you were good for another ten years and we’re only staying for a week. We can visit the National Gallery, the Opera. Think of it, Shand. All the wonderful things we can do together in London.’
‘What does Black know?’
‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’
Shand’s walking stick was hooked onto his desk. He twisted to take it with his right hand and, moving his body over it, pressed down with all his failing strength. Slowly he rose to his feet. Lead with the strong side.
Moving first of all the stick, then his strong right leg and finally the trailing left, he made his way to the bay window. He loved this view as he loved life.
‘You know I’ve always held that Scottish literature is a separate and single thing.’
‘I know you’re afraid the idea will die with you.’
He stopped in his tracks and banged his stick down on the floor. ‘No danger of that!’ he exclaimed. ‘Dunbar, Burns, MacDiarmid, MacCaig, that’s my tradition. This prize is from the Institute of English Letters. English letters, do you hear? To accept it is to accept that Scottish Literature is just a part, a sort of branch factory. Like so much in this damned, indecisive, subservient country.’
‘May I remind you that this damned whatever-you-said country doesn’t buy your books and never has. Whoever called you Scotland’s favourite old poet has a lot to answer for.’
‘It was the Herald. It’s a title I wouldn’t exchange…’
‘I know, for any prize from any world body. The People’s title. You’ve told me a thousand times. But it’s we English who buy your books in sufficient numbers to give you any kind of income. You never had any trouble accepting royalties. We adore you too, you know. It was your love poetry I fell for, before I ever met you.’
The love poetry! He knew what was coming, sooner or later.
‘And if I accept the money, that’s selling out - after all this time.’
‘You can’t refuse the money!’ Anthea almost shouted. ‘Why, it’s more than you’ve received for all your eighteen collections put together. We’ll be almost equal partners.’
She doesn’t care that my money came from teaching, and from my art. Hers is inheritance, and her divorce settlement. She sees no difference. ‘It’s for lifelong service to English Literature.’
‘Shand, it’s the next best thing to the Nobel. Don’t you remember the citation? You said it described your work better than you could yourself. It was all you ever wanted by way of recognition.’ She went to his desk and took the parchment from the top drawer. Shand turned painfully from the window as she read, looking down at his hand on top of the stick.
‘Over a period of more than half a century Shand MacEwan has been addressing his poetry to whatever is left of the humane in modern humanity. From the locale of his birth in the Highlands of Scotland, which he has hardly ever left, he observes and describes and, above all, evaluates, the world we still think of as civilised, and life as we live it now.
‘The contrasts in his poetry can be startling. MacEwan’s agnostic humanism does not allow for the existence of the soul but accepts the essential nature of a Jungian anima. His view of the Highland landscape and its ecology is that they are purely phenomenal and without spirit, yet he finds his greatest comforts in its beauty and it is in this direction he points us towards our ultimate salvation.
‘So much for the broad sweep of his life and work. Notwithstanding the great worth of all of this Shand MacEwan may well be remembered most for his tender love lyrics. The Institute is possessed now of the complete poetic record of nearly thirty years with his beloved wife, Katherine. It is our intention to extract these poems, none of them long, from his first sixteen collections and publish them as a cycle. Permission has already been received…’
Anthea’s voice trailed off and Shand leaned forward on his stick.
‘Say it,’ he demanded. ‘I’m waiting.’
‘The love poetry died with her,’ said Anthea. ‘It’s all right, Shand. I’ve learned to accept you can never write for me the way you did for her. I’m not jealous any more. It doesn’t mean you don’t love me.’
‘You can’t cross the same river twice.’
‘I did.’
‘It never ran so deep.’
Anthea returned the citation to the drawer, closed it in silence and left the room without looking at him. He stared down again at the hand on the walking stick. The skin was like thin paper, the veins thick and blue. How much time had he spent with that hand in front of his eyes? The poetry years. How it had changed! The strong, young hand it had been. How she had loved it on her body, right to the end. How it was confidante to all her secret places.
How do I continue? Why? Oh Kathy, why?
He turned and pushed the door by the bay window open, looking down at the three steps that led to the shoreside path. He reached down with his stick. When it hovered a few inches above the first step he took his courage in his hands and toppled forward. The rubber tip met the concrete and held. He followed slowly with the right, strong, leg and then the left, weak, one. After a pause for breath he repeated the process and eventually found his way onto the path. All thought of Anthea and the journey south was gone now. He made his way along the path toward the seat he had placed by the water’s edge so many years ago, knowing that he could not possibly make it back without rest.
Stick, right foot, left…
Across the water the town he had grown up in nestled amongst hills. It had grown; how it had grown. This place held so many memories. Stick, right foot, left… He was getting tired but the seat was waiting. At last! He turned and let himself collapse, breathed deeply and let the beauty of the landscape make him strong again.
Salt waves lapped close to his feet and across the Firth the foothills that surrounded the town grew almost vertically from the water. Behind them, along the Strath, he could see the end of Ben Wyvis brilliant with spring snow against a cloudless sky. Between blue and white the eye saw a black line, that foolish people think is imaginary, its beauty as saturating as fine rain. He opened himself and it entered.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, Anthea never tired of reminding him, talking about art, talking about buildings, talking about people. All his experience and thought cried out, No! Beauty was everywhere in nature. We participate in it by choice. Like freedom. Like responsibility. Like compassion. What we appreciate defines our limitations. All his work was an expression of this premise, along with a plea to the individual to stretch those limitations. What did the citation say? What was the word? Was it salvation?
‘Ha!’
Standing here before the house was built, when they were still choosing a location, he had tried to say this to Anthea. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, she had parroted. At that moment a fighter plane on a practice flight had come bulleting along the Firth.
‘Oh look,’ she had cried. ‘Oh God, look at that! Have you ever seen anything like it?’
He had felt the gulf between them then for sure. Just as surely he could not have told her this was where he and Kathy had come so often. It was where she had told him she was going to die and where she had made him strong enough to bear it. Here, in this beauty. One May.
This, he realised, was where he was in life. Hope was gone. His hope for his country had been a tenuous thing for long. Hope in any broader sense had died with Kathy. Often he thought, Better if I was alone. The life in Anthea had kept him alive but now even that was going. She had tried but he was old, old, old, and she was chronically young. Her thoughts had moved to where her heart had always been, with her son and grandson in London. But not, he knew, with Susi.
‘Ha!’
A pintail nosed out from the reeds, its eye peering at him from its velvet brown hood. It snapped at something that had been floating on the surface and paddled back into hiding. He warmed to the moment of delight and smiled. You had to be alert to them, those moments when beauty surprised you. As often as not…as not…
He’d lost it again. What was it? They came on you. What were they? He’d lost it. Crumbs of comfort. Falling, unasked for, from the table of…from the table of… He’d lost it. The title of his first collection, Crumbs of Comfort. Had he been repeating himself ever since? Kathy have I..?
‘Kathy,’ he said aloud.
No answer. He pressed down on the handle of his stick and rose. Making his slow way back to the house he was still looking for her. There was a stone on the path. He looked at it and remembered she was dead. Despair cut into his heart and he lifted the stick to hit the stone, to smite it with such force it would fly far out into the Firth, taking his grief with it. Before it was up to his hip, his left leg collapsed beneath him and he went down.
‘Shand!’
It was Anthea.
‘Shand! Are you all right. Oh please God, not today.’ He felt her arms round him, cradling his head, felt her hand on his cheek, wiping the tears with her palm. ‘Mrs Fee, will you hold him?’ He felt her hands running down his legs, over his arms and shoulders. ‘I don’t think anything’s broken. Shand, do you feel any pain?’
‘No pain.’ His head rolled on his shoulders. ‘Get me up. Just get me up.’ They helped him to his feet and into the house, their backs to the Firth.
Inside he took command of himself again. ‘I’m okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll sit down for a while.’
‘Mrs Fee, will you make a pot of tea, please?’ asked Anthea. ‘Shand, if you don’t want to go I’ll understand.’
‘No, I’ll go. You were right, this is something worth doing. In the usual upside down, retrograde way that applies in this country it might even be good for Scottish literature - acceptance by our English invigilators and assessors.’
‘I’ll never understand you, but you’re wonderful. Go the way you are, I’ll get Jason to put off whoever was coming tonight. You can rest and be as fresh as possible for the ceremony tomorrow afternoon. You’re very brave. I only hope you can deliver your fine speech.’
Mrs Fee delivered his tea and he lifted the cup to his mouth. ‘Ha!’ he growled, but when the women had left again he put the cup down and lowered his head into his hands. ‘How much longer?’ he asked.
Outside his window the greylag beat its wings and skipped along the surface of the Firth as it took off.
* * *
On the day after the presentation they visited the National Gallery. Shand sat impatiently in a wheelchair Jason had organised. He was surprised at how tired the travelling and the ceremony had made him. He had been unable to stay at the reception for long. Anthea had taken him home then returned with her son.
To represent me!
Now she was pushing him along, occasionally placing her hand on his shoulder. ‘Oh look, Shand,’ she would say. ‘Isn’t that beautiful.’
‘Ha!’ he replied, but she was inevitably correct. Her taste in art was, in her own word, impeccable, and her knowledge of technique of profound depth.
‘What’s wrong now?’
‘The setting. You can’t imprison beauty in this way.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘I mean you can’t imprison these moments and still expect them to present themselves freely. This is suitable only for analysis, reduction, and it’s typical of you English. You pin moths and expect them still to fly. You gut fish and expect them still to swim. You perpetuate all Scotland’s resentments and wonder when we reject you and try to grow up and individuate.’
‘Whatever are you talking about? Who expects a pinned moth to fly? And stop blaming me for all the problems you think your country has. Anyway, I don’t know what you’re complaining for. I brought us here for your benefit. Why can’t you just enjoy the paintings?’
‘Ha!’
He could hear the tension in her voice. She was doing her best for him after persuading him to come down, mostly against his will. He held her guilt feelings in his hand like his stick. They entered the next room in silence. When she saw a picture of a man in a kilt she put her hand on his shoulder. ‘You looked so handsome yesterday. You know I’m proud of you, don’t you?’ She leaned forward and kissed his head.
‘Yes, I know,’ he sighed. ‘Look, let’s go for coffee. There must be somewhere in here.’
Anthea pushed him to the lift and they went down to the ground floor. In the cafe she bought them both coffees. When she sat down again she looked at him but he said nothing. He knew she was waiting but still said nothing. This was how they were, he reflected. Words were superfluous; they just knew. How different from his life with Kathy. They had just known too, but words had been a game between them and never superfluous.
Eventually Anthea broke the silence. ‘You don’t want to stay here in London any longer, do you?’
He looked across his coffee cup. ‘I’ll stay, but this is the last time. I won’t be back.’
‘Shand, I don’t want to go home and just wait for death.’
He did. He hadn’t realised until she put it into words. ‘Then don’t. Come down sometimes by yourself. Wee Shandie would certainly be happy to see more of you, of course he would. Mrs Fee can look after me. If necessary I can afford a nurse.’
‘You know I won’t leave you.’
‘In case I die? Is that it? Is that an event you wouldn’t want to miss? Can I not even die alone?’
‘Sometimes, Shand MacEwan, there is no talking to you.’ There was a catch in her voice. ‘Don’t you know how you hurt me? After all this time, long after Jason has left and I’m still young and fit enough to live close to him, and to my grandson, I stay with you. God knows, you don’t make it easy.’ She took a tissue from her bag and put it to her eyes. ‘Have you ever asked yourself why? Don’t you know it’s because I love you?’ Her eyes were shining. What did he feel? What…?
Pity.
‘Okay, I give in,’ she said. ‘We’ll go back to Jason’s flat. But you’ll see the week out? Just this one last time for me?’
‘I don’t think I want to come out again. I get tired. All these people. We never used to stay long. We never…’ It was gone again. ‘We never…’
‘Who, Shand? ‘Who never? Was it you and I?’ Her face was filled with hope.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You and I. We…’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll get us home now.’
Anthea finished her coffee and tied his scarf for him. When they went outside the streets were filling. It was late afternoon. Shand’s head dropped forward onto his chest as she pushed through the crowds and into the tube station. So tired. He knew he should rest but he knew he would not. The prospect of the remainder of the week spent in Jason’s flat as his wife made up for lost time with her son and grandson oppressed him.
They were Anthea’s. They could never be his. For all he had played his part in Jason’s upbringing, for all they had named the new child after him, they were not of him or like him. What they held for him, and he for them, was a meagre respect.
‘Four days! It’s a big part of the rest of my life.’
‘What’s that, dear? Look, I’ll park you here and go phone Jason. He’ll pick us up at the other end.’ She stopped between the disabled lift and the escalator and flipped on the brake. ‘Will you be all right?’ she asked. He nodded. ‘I can get a signal at the entrance.’
Suddenly he was alone. People were flooding past him onto the escalator, slowing there and then flowing on down - and yet he was alone. This was the first time he had been so since they left the Highlands. Until now he had been with Anthea, with her family and at the ceremony. Between fatigue and his failing memory he had almost fluffed his speech. There had been such a cacophony of greetings he had no time to still himself.
He stilled himself now and, when he did, understood that he was sad. Sad. How can I..? His thoughts broke again. Where is this? Who..? He was lost to himself. Lost! He examined his surroundings. The tube crowd was a fluid thing, he noted, like deer streaming out of a corrie. Could individuality survive in that? A young woman passed and he was reminded of Kathy at the same age.
How? Kathy would never have dressed that way, in black boots and long black coat. She had loved colour.
What was it then? He followed her with his eyes as she slowed at the top of the escalator. It was the shape of her face and her long hair. Kathy had cut hers short in middle life, so this was earlier. Youth. There was something in the way she tossed her hair out of her eyes, the casual way she held her shoulder bag behind her hip.
Shand flicked the first of the foot rests up with his good foot and hooked the second with his stick. Slowly he rose and stepped into the stream of life. It was too quick for him.
‘D’you know what you’re doing, old man?’ someone asked as he was swept onto the escalator. He felt a hand grip his arm and a frightening dropping sensation as the stair descended.
‘What? Yes. Ye…’ She was three or four steps in front and on tiptoe, all her attention on the train waiting by the platform. When she moved off the escalator stepping aboard was a natural and easy manouvre. Not so for Shand. A black man took his arm.
‘What station do you want?’
‘Station?’
‘Yes, station. Are you all right?’
‘...have to sit down. Shouldn’t have…’ He was helped onto a seat just as the train started. Breathless and frightened, he clawed at his tie and undid his collar. He drew his stick close and leaned his head on its handle. I’m confused. Where is this?
When he looked up she was seated opposite. She had a book in her hand but she was looking over it at him. She cared! Kathy was gone and could never come back but the best of her lived on here and there. It was looking at him through this girl once again. All of the present was there, as well as most of his past, and all of the future was in her womb. He felt the tears spill over and, when she reached out in compassion, caught her hand in his.
The blue of his veins was like the sky behind Ben Wyvis, his skin almost as white as its snow and suddenly they were there together, holding hands and drinking in all the youthful beauty of May. Sheep were drifting across the foothills and the town was picked out in the low slanting spring light that only northern lands know. The moon stood like a spectral eye looking down on the Ben’s great whale back and Venus sparkled close by. Between the white and the blue that black line some think is imaginary widened and grew closer, commanding all their attention and emotion, eventually engulfing them, absorbing and accepting them into itself.