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17. Encounter
'I can feel the veins of green leaves, if I stroke with my finger tips.' Yes, and the rise and flow of the sap, the slow throb of the valley in the deeps of the wood.
Lengthening shadows reach quietly forward in clearings and openings : the sun still warm in pools of verdant light, through the pale green leaves. The woods close and enclosing, hushed and calm : soft push and swish of breeze on birch, the sway of creation in a lull of forgetfulness.
The girl steps gently, listening, breathing. Dream-like... the woods are dream-like, their light diffused, and shadows, darkness all around, imparting loveliness. She sees it in the trees ahead and, swinging round, it is there too. Dark loveliness.
A hidden pulse, a distant cry, like children in the woods, shouting, playing... 'Ah-Oh! Ah-Oh!' they call.
'They call to me, like an echo in my heart. It is very quiet.'
Just wandering, with vagrant thoughts. Threading a way through the ancient woods, along tenuous borders between light and dark, caught between gentle girl and savage woman. Feeling the sweat outside and sweat within - and the earth : the smell of earth and quiet leaves.
'I am getting lost again, you know. I am, I am getting lost again.' Then you are drawing nearer.
Walking gently, with a soft tread. Barely a mile from that bothy but out of earshot, out of sight, far gone in this secluded country. Nature all overgrown and overgrowing. The trees contorted, weathered by storm; and roots, coiled round the old half-buried rocks; the scrub and tangle, fallen boughs.
Nature overgrowing and encroaching.
'Stealing over me, behind my back.' Yes, it is true, dark heart.
The past enveloped in broken branches and fallen leaves. Again, lost children crying out 'Here we are, Here we are' in a strange sadness and innocent song. And people in hiding among stolen shadows... the Prince... his friends... crouch down, fall close to earth beside them.
They are very near. Light flashes through fissures in the green fabric, flickering in a vague penumbral vault of undergrowth; while, among the dappled shadows, there is a sense of being watched.
'I gaze vacantly, and feel you there. Feel your overshadowing, as you wait for me to come.' Then come now, come. We watch for you and wait.
The woods are full : invisible birds darting in silence between the leaves and branches; sourceless cracks and stirrings; lurking creatures watching, quiet, unseen. The woods are full.
There is something else behind them, an ever-presence, an otherness. You do not see it, but it is there, in everything.
'Does it belong to another creation?' No, not another.
You do not see it, but it imparts its presence, even in the still rocks.
The girl lies down and feels the crusty lichen on the rocks; a bank of moss, minute and multiform; droplets of water. And she is thirsty, panting. There is a dark and shadowy pool. She crouches down beside its murky silence.
Her face stares up at her from the still waters. Removing glasses, she sees herself, her world more naturally. Staring out at her in a distant gaze, all real, and all transcribed; a whole world resting on the fragile surface of the pool, yet out of reach... She places her hand through the look on her face and it shatters and everything fragments in ripples; it shudders in mottled light and commotion. The rock that her other self lies on feels real and rough but she seems, herself, to be called away. Dreamy, uncertain.
Images stir along the face of the wood; images in mind approach and recede. Each slips away to the shadows once more. In the growing quiet, awareness of movement and restless stirring comes and goes, comes, goes. The slight rock and groan of branches; the lurking insects in dark crevices; even the silent stirring of roots, part of the cycle, turning of seasons, out toward winter, in the ceaseless constant turning of the world.
'Something startles in the undergrowth. But I cannot see it.'
Only, feel this restlessness of being in countless forms, and greater being beyond. Advancing, luring : 'Over here, Over here.' And closer still. She feels wild nature drawing round her, rising in her, rising in her own soft body, with desire.
She longs for closer contact, and diverts a leafy spray across her face, between her fingers. Touches the flaking bark, that's warm and rough beneath her hands. Leans up against a tree, and feels - its curves, her own, as one. She smells the fragrant earth : it seems to beckon, seems to call. And, dropping to the soft floor of the wood, it has a coolness that relieves the heat of such a day. Overhead, dark trees close in towards her. She presses down upon the ground, face to the earth, and feels - much more aware, much more alert. The welcoming earth, with its warm smell, damp and sweet; awakening in herself her own cool sweetness : she stretches her hand, exploring with fumbling fingers in the soil. Feeling the earth close to her own nature.
'Come on, Roberta! Why don't you too?' the boys had jeered.
She sighs quietly. Yes, it feels good within her hands.
The earth, less-ordered, messy, soft to touch : she wipes it gladly on her cheeks, across her face, and down her arms. She smears her startled body with the soil. A gentle merging.
The Raven again, within, cries out. With its wild freedom and savage callings, circling and wheeling in the lonely retreats of her mind : inhabiting darker thought and feeling.
Nature invading her from within.
She explores the surge of its encroachment : the soft advance and savage overtaking. Her feelings instinctive, and thoughts set free from censure and control... disjointed thoughts, fragmented emotion breaking in waves across her mind...
Earth enfold, earth enliven, earth inhabit, earth empower.
'I can be myself, can claim my nature. I have the right. I have the right to my own body. Fuck. To my own feelings. Listen! I will shout again, if I like, as we did on the mountain. Maybe Wiggy will hear...'
'Aaah! Aaah!' Ringing in the woods, echoing in the quiet hollows of the hill. These hills can be so fearsome, savage, weird... but what wild loveliness! It feels good. It does. It feels so good.
The echoes and ripples fall away. She stirs and nestles, listens and hears, in quieter sympathy now, in closer contact, and somehow more subdued. Why not go deeper into these wilds, deeper into these lovely woods?
The girl gets up and goes in slowly, branches flicking and brushing against her.
'Show me' : her openness seems to appeal. 'Show me' : receptive and almost unmoving. Hushed now and still.
So still, a twig cracking under her foot reports like gunfire. Then silence again. A slower rhythm, a slower heartbeat. Just simple breath.
'And don't you fear to tread alone, along life's edge?' a whispered doubt.
'No, no...' her breathing quiet and calm.
'Then come : come dark heart, share - this, our rich secret...' they seem to say.
Her consciousness recedes like sleep or distant dreams, and she is lost.
Lost far, lost deep, the girl is falling, falling away in the deep unknown... gone, gone, and overshadowed. Lost in a strange and distant country, overshadowed and quite, quite gone.
A darkness of unknowing lifts. She finds herself aware again. She is only aware. Aware of a new and wondrous place. Her world drawn into greater beauty, greater being. Whole, complete and tangible. Waves of feeling break all over her, rippling and pulsing, convulsing. Tears on her cheeks. Moment of sudden and true discovery, caught up in beauty. Finding oneself, with joy. At last. Finding oneself, with joy.
She sobs.
'Berta!' a distant cry, impinging, rudely breaking in. Some time has passed. 'Roberta!'
Voices advancing, she throws herself back, her heart racing.
'Rob-er-ta! Rob-er-ta!' A whole world subsiding, retreating to shadows, in flight.
'Rob-er-ta! Ah-oh Ah-oh! Rob-er-ta...' echoing, like everything else.
And behind her, as she looks back, reluctant to rise : a vanishing glance; a sigh in the leaves; and the groaning earth. Hearing, as if in an aftershock, like a last echoing, words on the fringes of her subconscious, received unsought, just there, just there :
'Leave dead men's coins... Leave dead men's coins in the slumbering earth... He told me the hole was meant for the money... Meant for the money, he said... But... those people... Where did they come from... What do they mean...'
She yearned to remain, to linger, but the present seemed to hasten again. She was a young woman and being was more important than understanding. So she tossed back her hair and wound her way down through the trees, past the dip and sway of the summer branches. Near the edge of the wood, she collected herself and moved on slowly towards the sun : its light dancing among the leaves, descending in streamers, shimmering, liquid. She was quiet and subdued, her mind still and reflective.
Between the last trees, she could see her brother and Harry far in the distance, crossing the grassy slopes of ancient Gleann Taodhail. Beyond them, but out of sight, the bothy. It was time to return. The images of the day flashed past before her like sunlight on a long journey. She wondered when Wiggy would be coming back. She wanted to see him. She wanted to see him again.
In fact, the day had dawned prematurely for the man. He had been drinking freely the previous night and might well have felt inclined to turn over and sleep. But he had resolved to take himself off, alone, in the wilderness : and he was a determined, self-denying man when he had decided on a course of action which he thought was right.
He awoke to the smell of heather, and an indolent bee murmuring in the back room of his mind. He lumbered up and groped his way over sleeping bodies to the door. The daylight struck him, harsh and bright outside, and he shaded his bleary eyes as he stumbled half-awake towards the stream.
There he found Gordon, crouched by the trickling burn, cleaning the pans from the night before and smiling to him in the blue-skied morning.
'I didn't expect to see you up yet.'
'We mustn't waste such a brilliant day,' Wiggy muttered, looking around.
'Are the children stirring?'
'No-one's awake. Just you and me.'
He walked a yard or two upstream, and doused his head in the reduced waters. Surfacing, waking, the world seemed full of water and sparkle, splendour and light. Gordon had retrieved some oats from his pack, and was mixing water in each of their bowls.
'Breakfast?' asked Wiggy.
'About all we have. Oats and water.'
Wiggy yawned and gave a grin.
'Drammach, they called it.' Gordon smiled back. 'Prince Charlie resorted to the stuff on his travels. What do you think? Food fit for a king?'
'It'll do for me,' Wiggy replied.
He wandered off to relieve himself. The morning was still and already warm. By the time he returned, the bothy was echoing with voices and movement : more shambolic than ever. Alasdair was taking down the dried socks, Roberta inspecting the insides of her boots. In a corner, Harry was sorting his pack. The Dog appeared comatose, deep in the heather. Overhead, they heard Archie clumping about in the attic. Hughie looked up with a grin.
'Oh-ho!' he said, as Wiggy came in. 'And how are you feeling?'
'Fresh as a daisy.'
'Lying bastard!' Hughie laughed, picking up an empty bottle from the hearth. 'Ah tell ye who you need tae get in touch wi'...' he pointed. 'Alcoholics fuckin' Anonymous.'
Jock muttered incoherently and opened his eyes. Gordon was passing the drammach around, and the Dog gladly took his due portion, half of which spilt down his T-shirt and pants.
'The fuck!' he said gaily, and scratched his head.
Into the room, at this moment, came Archie in a floral dress which he'd found upstairs.
'Ah'm Bonnie Prince Charlie' he cried to them all, in a high-pitched voice from his massive form. 'The redcoats are tryin' tae capture me an' ah'm takin' a boat tae the Isle o' Skye.'
He put his thick arm round the slender girl. 'Ach! Flora, will ye no come over wi' me?'
'Not a chance,' she protested and kicked his shin.
'By Christ,' exclaimed Hughie. 'It'll nae be the redcoats that come tae arrest ye. What, are ye a fuckin' transvestite or something?'
'Some boy, some boy' muttered Jock to himself. Gordon looked on wryly.
'That dress -' said Roberta. 'Where did you find it?'
'Up in the attic,' Archie replied. 'But I dinnae ken who would hae left it up there...' His gruff voice returning.
The boys looked up at each other and replied: 'The Nudies!'
'The who?'
'The Nudies!' they chimed.
And they left it at that. Archie sat down with his bowlful of drammach and they chattered together in the heathery room. Wiggy sorted some things for his walk and looked through the window at the country beyond.
Archie was sitting outside on a rock with the Dog, when Wiggy set off on his own journey. They were smoking in the sunshine, content and relaxed. And watched as Wiggy wandered away, Harry accompanying the man for some time. Then the boy waved his arm, and Wiggy continued alone.
'There he goes' said Archie, smiling to his friend with pursed lips. 'Gaein' walkaboot ferra while.' 'Mind, ah dinnae blame him,' said Jock in a dream.
'Nah - but he'll no find Jenny Agutter, if that's hwat he's lookin' for.' Jock just grinned.
They called to the boys, when Harry returned, and talked about poaching in lowered tones. When they got down the mountain today would they come? Would they join them and learn to be poachers as well? Harry and Alasdair exchanged quiet glances, open-eyed, the excitement stirring within. And the men looked across at each other as well, enjoying the impression they made on the boys; the prestige, and the awed respect they were offered. Archie leaned over, his eyes aglint.
'Ha! If we want any supper tonight, we'll all of us have tae be poachers today! Are ye up ferrit?'
Both of them nodded their secret intent, and with dark resolve fetched Roberta as well. They ran off together in a world of their own. Fugitives, outlaws, restraint overthrown.
'Let's put on camouflage!' Alasdair cried.
Harry agreed. They scraped the dark peat from the ground with their hands.
'We'll do each other,' Harry proposed, wiping the black earth on his friend's fair cheeks. They laughed and giggled. They were poachers for sure.
'Your turn, Roberta!' her brother enjoined. 'Come on, Roberta. Why don't you, too?'
But the girl stepped back. Something within her made her move off. 'I'm going back to the bothy,' she said.
'Suit yourself,' Alasdair answered.
There was no malice in the boy's reply, but Roberta felt her cheeks burn as she left; felt she'd excluded herself from a ritual; felt cross with herself for her lack of release. Though the boys noticed none of her anger and shame. Their blood was stirred by the thought of the chase. Alasdair was gripped by the thrill of adventure; Harry, alert like a fox, and drawn in by the furtive instincts of his deeper nature. Outlaws. They were outlaws indeed : a primeval excitement stirring within.
Philip Gordon meanwhile was preparing a meagre lunch for them all : biscuits, the scraping of jam from old jars, and the hardened remnants of bread and cheese. Roberta helped him pack it all up.
'Now we'll make a rendezvous with that hero of yours.'
'Who do you mean?' the girl enquired.
'Glenaladale.'
'Ah.' She did up a rucksack. 'Did they really need to? I mean, meet up that mountain?'
'When Charlie came back from the Isle of Skye, the redcoats had cordoned off all of the glens. His only escape lay north by the high ground, crossing the valleys at the dead of night.'
`
'How did they know the way in the dark?'
'That's why he needed the brave Glenaladale : he knew the country, with Cameron of Pean. So they all met up there, on Sgurr nan Coireachan.'
'Well, we're a bit late to join them.'
'They made it without us. Got through to the north.'
'Was he young and handsome?'
'What? The Prince?'
'No! Not him! The other - '
'Glenaladale. Oh, very. Handsome and dashing and noble and brave.'
'We better go. The others are ready.'
They shut up the cottage and went on their way.
The morning joyful as they set off : water still cold from the night, the buzz of insects, the smell of scrub, and the occasional languid call of a bird. Everything smelling so fresh, so sweet. It was high summer, surely.
Above them, the mountain reached back in ancient unfrequented coires; around them the glen was all light and warm brightness. Light on hill, and light in the sky, light everywhere in the sun-filled morn.
The poachers would sing out brief snatches of song - songs of the past, of Charlie, Glenaladale - fragments of emotion on the quiet summer air.
The sun bore upon them as they moved up the glen; the two boys soon topless, the heat unrelenting. Roberta wore shorts and a light little top, her midriff exposed and her dark hair in bunches. The sweat was soon breaking on all of their backs.
Gordon, who brought up the rear of the party, was also in shorts; watching the mountain; alive and alert. And up at the front the three poachers were leading the way, slowly and steadily forging a trail : in time with the day, never rushing or hurrying, and frequently pausing in stillness to listen and feel - feel the wide sweep of the hillside, feel their own instincts, their closeness... keeping in touch and in tune. They belonged to this land.
Roberta recalled the long haul to the summit.
They had spent the morning, panting and heaving their way up the mountain : the three men ahead, then Roberta, following the hunter's feet in front of her; watching the strain, pull and release of his thighs; the sweat on his legs, moist and shining. She followed his footsteps as the slope became steeper : below her, the boys and their thoughtful teacher.
It was Archie ahead of her, kilt swaying in the swing of his steps, occasional groaning where the trail grew particularly strenuous.
At length they came to a vertical corner of heather and rock, with a few small toe-holds and clumps of heather to grip at the top.
'Aye, aye' intoned Hughie, at the front, surmounting it effortlessly. Jock was up in a scramble and tussle, without caring how, and without knowing why.
Archie tossed back his head and roared. 'By Christ! If ah'd kenned we'd huf tae dae this, ah'd huf brung ma mither's washin-line!' But he was up it in safety, his groans and grunting masking the physical power of the man.
The girl climbed easily until she neared the top, where there were just handfuls of heather to grasp. As she hesitated, the poacher took hold of her arm and - 'Hup!' - she was there, with the views opening out all around her. He smiled at her kindly with his curt, thin lips - and the eyes of an eternal dreaming youth. Then he turned his back and pissed in the heather. 'Aye, aye! It's a bonny day!' he said.
Friendship and trust : they felt it and knew it, in the strong handhold and the shared respect. When the others had safely overcome the corner, Hughie continued up the easier slopes, that rolled and reached to the summit ridge. He seemed to follow a way instinctively, alert and sensitive : and the day, ancient, lovely, mysterious, held them all in a closeness and calm.
Across the hillside, the heather was shimmering in the sunlight and heat. At their feet, it was thick and untrodden, and they waded its depths, disturbing occasional grouse, who took flight in the brilliant blue of the cloudless sky - almost lost in the light. Suddenly, the side of the hill seemed to move up ahead, as a herd of deer crossed in front of them all : forty or fifty, free and wild, in motion as one.
'Look!' shouted Alasdair, but the men had been watching them long before, and tracked their course to the skyline above.
'They'll be over in Coire Odhar by now.'
'Halfway tae Loch Lomond, more like' muttered Archie.
The Dog gave a yelp. He had found an antler embedded in peat and asked if any of the kids would like it.
'Harry might,' said Alasdair kindly but his friend shook his head.
'Nah - let Al have it. We'll probably find more.' Jock tossed it across, and Harry tucked it into the top of Alasdair's pack : their faces still scoured with earth and peat, dirty but not unclean, and matching the natural colours of the windswept land.
Normally windswept, but as they arrived on the ridge there was scarcely a stir. They picked their slow, broken course over boulder-fields, gaining a feeling of height, of lofty separation from the glens dropping away beneath them. Pressing the last determined yards to the summit then suddenly, looking around them, all around, and in every direction seeing... Scotland!
'Is it time for lunch now?' Alasdair pleaded, dropping his pack by the cairn at the top.
'Are ye hungry?' asked Sinclair, and of course he was. They had delayed lunch until they got up there.
'Wicked views!' said Harry as he joined them, the boy excited and stirred by the scene. Gordon arrived, mopping his brow, and passed round the tiny parcels that Roberta had packed. But she was miles and centuries away, dreaming of the bold Glenaladale and his reckless adventure.
They sat together in a group, each feeling glad and alive and fit : feeling good-will for the day, and each other. All drawn together by shared effort in a camaraderie of friends. They ate the simple food, and drank burn water from a flask that Jock passed round, and felt endowed to enjoy such views on such a matchless day as this.
'I wonder what Wiggy's doing?' Harry mused aloud. He had missed the man's quiet presence with them. He was alright, that one : yes, definitely alright, that Wig.
'Perhaps,' choked Archie with a mouthful, 'he's tumbled doon a rabbit-hole an' disappeared...'
'Dinnae stert a' that crap agin' laughed Jock. 'Ah didnae ken a word ye were gaein on aboot last nicht...'
Sinclair had moved to the edge of the rise with Gordon, and they looked across and surveyed Scotland : its ancient grandeur, deep, mysterious - the glens, the coires, the sea, the peaks. For a while they both stood silent, still. 'Nobody knows,' said Sinclair, gazing, 'until they come out here, live out here, survive out here. The dignity of the wilderness : it's on a different level. It ennobles...'
He turned to the teacher. 'This is education,' he said. 'This is fuckin' education.'
The children joined them and their gazes ranged across the highlands in all directions : row upon row of teetering ridges and distant looming coires. They surveyed it all. The wilderness seemed to enfold them too. They were part of it.
Harry was alive, coming out of himself. 'What's that mountain there?' 'Where are those islands?'
The poachers smiled benevolently. They liked the kid. He seemed wild and raw, like they felt themselves.
'See yonder,' Archie pointed for him, 'The Braes o' Morar.' Then swinging round, he could name them all, his homeland, his inheritance. 'Sgurr Mor, Sgurr Breac, and beyond, the rough bounds o' Knoydart... ye'd no come oot o' there alive...' he tousled the boy's shocked hair and laughed. 'The top o' Sgurr na Ciche, just peepin', and there - that's another Sgurr nan Coireachan. Arkaig of course, and Meall an Tarmachain; the ridge of Streap - that's a good scramble - and Beinn an t-Sneachda. Glenfinnan doon below and Sgurr un Utha, Coirc Bheinn and yonder,' he pointed, 'just past Beinn Garbh, ye can see the islands...'
Twinkling and peeping across the sea, and calling to them - 'Come away, come away...' Roberta imagined she could see the island, the Island of Glass, in the billowing sea... gleaming, beckoning, with its coloured light. She mindlessly played with a friendship bracelet, winding it round the thin bones of her wrist. But she dreamed of the handsome Glenaladale, sitting beside her, on this mountain-top.
Alasdair could have been reading her mind.
'To think, that Prince Charlie might have been here.'
'He was. And his friend. Glenaladale too.'
'But why do you always go on about him?'
'Dunno. Well - he never deserted the Prince, didn't count the cost, just threw himself into it all, I s'pose...'
They looked north where the loyal friend had led Prince Charlie, threading a way through the distant hills and desolate passes. You could see for miles : the views opening out to Kintail, to Affric, and the wild free country beyond. Ridge after ridge, and deep reclusive coires, reaching away...
'Who owns all this?' Alasdair asked, struggling to comprehend what he saw.
Hughie took his shoulder and pointed to the wilderness. 'See son, ye cannae own the land : if anything, the land owns you...' Money and ownership : what possible bearing could it have on all this? Ridiculous, meaningless. The only ownership, it seemed, was the ownership of the heart, and then - it was the land that owned the heart, and not the heart that owned the sovereign land.
'See this?' said Archie forcefully. 'This is free Scotland ye're lookin' at! It disnae belong tae no-one. It's a free kingdom...'
'And who's its king?' said Gordon awkwardly.
Archie wheezed and laughed to the sky. 'Probably yon fuckin' Charlie, mo bhalach! Probably yon fuckin' Charlie!'
It was a joyful prospect from the mountain top... a land, a beautiful land, stretched out before them, waiting to be entered, waiting to be claimed and yet... the ruins, the desolate glens, the emptiness and despoliation... a land awaiting restoration. What king would understand all that? Would understand the extent of loss, the exploitation, the spiritual need.
Sinclair was speaking aside to Gordon. 'In my time we will see it, my friend : the struggle to set this land free. Ah tell ye, it is time - time to see restoration, time for the heart o' Scotland tae find release, tae know itsel' again. See all this splendour, so settled, serene? But we live at a turning of history, a changing time. The people cannae be fooled any more.'
'But it happened before. The result was Culloden.'
'When Charlie came, the time was wrong, but now the wheel is turning full circle. It's time for us to determine our lives, not by the mental will of somebody else's remote diktat, but from the longing of the heart and the deep consciousness of who we are. Seasons turn, and there has to be change. There has to be, my friend.'
'Or else?' Gordon, as ever, the sceptic.
Hughie Sinclair looked at him gently, tolerantly. Then the chill blue glacier in his eyes took on a more distant focus and gaze : of one who knows the winter and its storms, endures all weathers, waits and endures. He looked steadfast and sombre.
'Or else?' echoed Gordon. 'If the change does not come?'
'You can only repress the heart for so long, you see, before it breaks loose and revolts.'
Gordon stared.
A raven cried out, in the lonely coire; its hoarse croak like some presage of winter; brooding and waiting in its barren retreat. They watched it wheeling on the summer thermals. But at the cold year's end it would still be there, wheeling and circling across the snowswept ways, with the freedom that rides on the icy wind; lurking against the dark towers of the winter mountain in this distant land at the back of the day.
Roberta was dreamily looking on, more fascinated by the foreboding bird than by the men's discussion.
'That bird plays on my mind,' she said. 'She seems so savage and so wild. Wiggy says she feeds on carnage, blood. He says when you strip everything away, that's what it all comes down to in the end.'
Sinclair looked at her, not for the first time surprised by this girl.
'Why do you call it she?' asked Gordon.
'Dunno,' she shrugged.
'The Celts,' said Sinclair. 'They saw the raven as a goddess of battle, a war-fury...'
'The Fithich Dubh' Archie intoned, with a dark smile. 'The Black Raven.' He looked at his friend.
'The presence that lurked behind unleashed terror and slaughter and blood. He's right,' said Hughie. 'When you strip aside the polite façade, the soft veneer, nature is not always quite so pretty. Out here, you encounter the elemental, a constant cycle of life and death.'
He turned to Gordon. 'The cycle may come round again to conflict which, once engaged, must be totally ruthless.'
Gordon smiled calmly. 'I think I begin to understand why they keep those ravens in the Tower in cages,' he said blithely. 'To protect sovereignty. It sounds a lot safer that way, at least...'
'But can nature be kept caged up for ever?'
The girl had broken away from the group and, on an impulse, ran to the edge, looking down on the coire below, and over the vast receding wilderness.
She released a piercing shout of delight, which surprised them all and, momentarily, sent chill shivers down their sweating spines.
As they all looked up, she bent herself and screamed again, yet louder still : fear, delight, and joy and pain all let loose in the frenzied 'Aaaaaarrrgh...'
Archie leapt up with his swirling kilt. 'By Christ, she can bellow as loud as a stirk.'
Then he roared to the corries in laughter and joy.
'Ye kin make as much noise as ye like up here,' smiled Jock to the boys, 'withoot naebody mindin'...' and he yapped and chuckled and yelped and laughed; then tripped across stones to the edge of the drop and shouted :
'Aaa-aa-ar-so-o-oles!' sniggering and dancing to himself in joy.
Roberta shouted 'Arseholes' too, her voice wild and glad and free. She looked back at her brother and her face was bright and rejoicing in the beautiful day. 'Come on!' she gasped.
'I can shout louder,' Harry exclaimed, and rattled his head, his body, his legs with an unleashed 'Aaaa-soles!' to the sky.
Alasdair joined him and soon all three children were shouting and yelling to the hills around.
The sun shone gaily, and Gordon shaded his eyes with his hands. He looked on uncertainly. Hughie appealed.
'If only we all had a fucking good scream from time to time, it would do no end of good for us all. Feelings well up within ourselves and need release - need release of tension, you see. Like this...' He stood up, breathed in, and shouted : 'Fuuuu-uuuu-uuuu-uck!!' and it echoed around on the sides of the hill.
'Try it,' he said, smiling gladly at Gordon.
'I don't know...' a laugh.
'Try it and see.'
Everyone else was happy and calling, calling in the wild, free wilderness, calling from deep within their hearts. He got up reluctantly, feeling excluded, apart from this freedom, apart from this joy.
'Aaah!' he shouted, suppressed and self-conscious. He felt disappointed, denying himself. 'Aaa-aah!' once again, but now laughing, unwinding. Feelings welled up from dark places within him, and he looked at the rapturous beauty around him, then - 'Aaa-aaa-aaargh!' he roared, and his head was all rocking, his little legs pumping and stamping and dancing. Beads of sweat trickled down from the brow of his face, and he panted for breath and felt well and at ease.
'After all,' said Roberta, as they were gathering their packs and preparing to go, 'what's wrong with just wanting to shout out your feelings?' Harry agreed.
'I always wanted to do that,' he said.
Hughie Sinclair felt relaxed and in tune, with the wilderness resting in peace all around him. The primeval shout for joy to creation. The primeval shout of creation itself. Maybe creation began with a shout of joy, and love, and such delight.
A slight breeze stirred and they set off down. Leaving the summit to its winter storms, the cycle of summer and returning winter; and, around them, the work of the glaciers through deep-cut corries, the cyclic world of recurring ice-ages, and precious life suspended and vibrant in the rocking rhythm of all the centuries.
Charlie, Glenaladale, made their own way to the north and their separate futures; and the children, below on the summer's hillside, descended in leaps and bobs, all hope; and rocked and held in the lull and pulse of the idyllic late afternoon.
Sinclair and Gordon watched as the children below them came down off the beautiful mountain, Harry pointing at something he'd seen, Alasdair calling, Roberta loping : the laughter of youth echoing out over the heather-filled coire in the warmth of the afternoon. These, the inheritors, and after them others, in the continuing cycle of passion and desire - all of them held in the eternal present.
The heather smelt sweet and warm; caressing, brushing against the legs of the walkers. The lowering sun cast slim shadows but the afternoon was hot and dreamy. In the hollow of the hill they stopped by a burn and slaked their thirst in its cool purity.
The day's languor was catching them up : Hughie and Archie reluctant to rise, sharing warm draughts of whisky from the forester's flask.
'Jock, ye take the kids on, an' we'll follow ye shortly!'
Hughie turned to Gordon and gave him a wink.
'Whatsa matter?' asked Jock gleefully. 'Can ye no keep up?'
'Och ye know the way, Dog!'
'Aye, the wains will be fine wi' me...' He chuckled and yapped.
'And will they?' said Gordon, as the Dog set off.
'Will they fuck!' answered Hughie. 'I've never known anyone like him for getting lost and going missing.'
'D'ye remember Ladhar Bheinn?' roared Archie. 'He went doon the opposite side o' the ridge an' we didnae get sight o' the bugger till four days after!'
But he was away down the hillside, with the children behind. The other three watched him descend far below, looking like some kind of dwarf-like guide, singing incoherently to himself, weaving a labyrinthine way round hummocks and debris to the distant valley bottom. They followed, relaxed, passing whisky around : and lost him in the lush rolling undergrowth - the poacher, the children quite lost from their sight. When they found him again, some time later, the children were crouched by a hesitant burn, while the Dog was sitting in a thicket of heather and fern; his face smiling; the sun glinting across the side of the hill. He sat there, chuckling by a sheltered rise, a mound of moraine, like a small grassy knoll.
'I thought ye'd got lost,' he laughed when they found him, which invited a pause in the logical process.
'Oh hup! Hoo-hoo!' cried Archie behind them, and beckoned the children to come and to look. 'Blaeberries! Masses o' beautiful blaeberries!'
'Wicked!' said Harry. 'Can you eat them?'
'Och aye. They'll dae fer oor puddin'...' he said, with a growl.
And soon the three children were gathering them up, from the bilberry fields that carpet the slopes. The berries felt sensuous, with their dark nestling beauty, hidden and alluring, crouched close to the earth. All around them the light shimmering on the surface, and the dark luscious fruit spreading far on the hill. The sense of abundance seemed a sad commentary on the desolate emptiness of the abandoned glen. The men rested, out of sight, by the rise in the land. Near its base, a dark hole tunnelled deep underground : maybe the burrow of a rabbit or hare. Gordon lay back and looked up at the sky, his tensions just slipping away. He relaxed in the sun, and felt drowsy. In the summer lull, he lost sense of the time... just moments, awareness, and a quiet letting go. There was something about the place where they'd stopped - a sense of a presence, perhaps - even Gordon could feel it. As for Jock and Archie, they were always conscious of a people close by : of their presence, their lurking, and their beckoning call. In the summer hush the tenuous border, between the natural and supernatural, shimmered and wavered but was not defined. Gordon looked up at the bloom of bell-heather : how tiny and fragile each flower appeared. Lying back in the deepness, the heather was almost enclosing him, hiding him : drawing him down into sweet-smelling earth. Jock ate and just listened, less-controlled, not afraid to go under : to let another world, underworld, come to the surface. He lay and dozed off, slowly lulled by the birdsong, the caress of a breeze, and yammered and dreamed. There were wonderful birds... he could hear them all round him... and the soothing sweetness of their music enticed... carried him away... for away in the hill. And those other folk, they were there once again... bonnie and happy... and eternally young... he could taste their delight as they danced and approached... as they whispered to him... in the deep of his dreams. The stream trickled and murmured softly; the occasional chatter of children nearby, and birdsong from deep in the heather, diluted by the drowsy languor that had settled upon them. Hughie nudged Jock, and shook his vacated body. He stirred and sat up, half-dreaming, half-waking; and scratched his curled locks, looking distant and vague. It seemed such a journey, such a long lovely sojourn; yet awake in a twinkling, he gazed back at the hill. And always the longing, the sense of lost being, like the glimpse of a fleeting shadow just passed : and we, ever borne in a mortal direction - the present, so fleeting, so suddenly gone.
He felt as if he'd been asleep for an age.
'Ye've been dreamin', Dog!'
'Nah, nah.'
'So ye have!
'
'Aye, Jocke in Wonderland,' Hughie aside. 'He's fey, d'ye ken... sees things that we don't.'
'But can ye no feel them?' Jock stammered, with laughter. 'Can ye no feel their music and movement just here?' He smiled, but expected no answer, or meaning.
The breeze hardly stirred. As they rose, the moorland behind them glinted and glistened in the slanting rays of the sun : the noble, eternal hills silent and present in the still calm. Gordon shook his head. Such irrational thoughts, such recalcitrant dreams. Yet something seemed near them. So close, close around them... Jock the Dog leaned over and let out a joyful, happy bark of carefree laughter. 'Ho-de-diddle-y-um-do! A-de-diddle-y-um-dee!' he sang. And fell back into a clump of heather, laughing, singing; he seemed away, away with those others, and Hughie laughed too, and there was an end to the reasoning, the argument, the logic.
The children returned, with sagging bags of ripe berries, their faces shining and fresh with delight.
'We'll boil them up an' haf them fer tea' Archie confided, with a kind approval.
The afternoon grew serenely beautiful, and they bobbed along homewards in the face of the sun : by the quietly flowing river, past the ruins of former years, all of them talking and laughing together, all of them held in the passage of dreams. And lagging behind them, Jock the Dog babbling along to himself, falling clumsily into every bog, tripping over unassuming stones, shambling homewards, all alive, all joy, all life a boyhood, a hope, a hope, a hope... She had come away. She had come away for a crap in peace. Away from the extraneous humour and joy to find, again, the peace in herself. Though she realised, when she was far gone, that she had brought no paper. This made her cross with herself at first, and then she thought 'Oh well' and let go of her inhibitions. She had left the boys with their poaching friends in search of trout : in their great adventure. The men had clearly fallen for Harry in whom, a luminescence stirred, a lambent shine in his eyes once more. Harry had been tickling a trout below a bank, and shouting 'I can feel it! I can feel it!' though nothing landed on the grassy surface when he had tried to pull it out. Just spray and the poachers' kindly derision. She had wandered off to be by herself. As she finished wiping her arse with some moss, she looked around for a rock to cover her excrement. There was one nearby. When she picked it up, she could see a nest of crawling insects, scurrying, writhing, blinded by light... she stared, appalled but fascinated, by this hidden world below the surface. Then she had gone into the woods, and time had seemed to slip away. Those words continued to knock and echo against the walls of her quiet mind, as the boys approached. She felt that she had received something, and the feeling was stronger, more vivid, than the words themselves : much as Hughie had talked, the previous night, about UFO's and being receptive. When the boys arrived, she was surprised to find Harry dripping and wet. He had joined the trout in the flowing burn, having fallen in. He claimed he was pushed. Conversely, they were surprised at her appearance - earth on her face, down her arms and legs.
'Blimey!' said Alasdair. 'You didn't have to go that far...'
She grinned fiercely. As they turned away, her brother whispered to Harry : 'Girls!'
The evening grew cool in the lengthening shadows, as they sauntered back to the bothy, losing themselves from time to time amidst the shade of trees. A bond of fondness had grown between the children. There was less contention, more harmony. The great mountains looked down. There was a strange sadness along the ancient shore, where Charlie had walked, yet so sweet, so sweet... Woodsmoke drifted on the evening air. At the cottage, Hughie was stewing the bilberries : pouring a packet of sugar into the cauldron through the rising steam. He was charring some fish on one side of the hearth. Archie and Jock appeared with the crossbows, and led the children out, wide-eyed and awed. By the lonely shore, they floated a small flotilla of makeshift boats, petrol-soaked. Archie carefully wrapped rough strips of cloth and cotton-wool around a bolt and set it alight. A burst of flame arced over the water, narrowly missing a miniature vessel. Jock fired his bolt, it veered haphazardly, and the next moment...
'Wow!' said Alasdair.
'Wicked!' yelled Harry, as the boat ignited with flame and black smoke. In the growing gloom, Gordon looked on - closely, benevolently, and unobtrusively : at this health and safety nightmare, like the hygiene of the trip. The children took their turns at it, the men just watching over them, affectionate and kind. Across the bay, Wiggy was returning in the fading light, though they could not see him. He looked rough, unkempt; was wearing a hat he'd picked up on the way. Yet he felt alive. He had found the place that he had been seeking, and been borne away, deep and far in the wilderness : much further than he could have dreamed. Nature all around, so alive with deeper being; with deeper being stirring in a multiplicity of forms. Each separate bloom possessed, perhaps, with what Scotus had called 'haeccitas' : the essential presence of being within each thing. He had encountered such a place of peace, in his own heart, in the deeper wilds. It left him feeling quieted and reflective. Feelings and thoughts softly traversed his mind.
If only we could become less cerebral. What one needed was the letting go of the controlling self, so that one could go deeper. He had escaped and retreated deep in the wilderness, deep in himself. Individuals needed it : so did communities. It seemed to him, that by periodically entering a ritual and mythic state - where normal time and reason and control were in suspension - the deeper and older societies had found the means to collectively regenerate and start again. He had seen it in Australia, and he had sensed it in these hills : skulking, going walkabout : an aboriginal return to elemental being and nature - walking and singing and breathing and feeling with the deeper subconscious all around - going back under to regain oneself at one's centre. Some music did it, he felt. It buried one with its mood and atmosphere : almost like travelling, dream-like, in a far country where everything is intensely precious and beautiful; and it makes the tears in your eyes tingle, and moves one towards acceptance and being.
It's the letting go, the burial, and something deeper passing over. Wiggy recalled how he reached the woods, so far from people, surrounded by wilds. He needed to do it : to seek burial in the landscape, where we are all destined. All life, after all, in its mortal direction, heading on outwards, to winter and death. Winter and death, he knew it too well. And burial in one's own subconscious : a going under, throwing oneself into the deep unknown, and letting go... to be oneself. Letting the repressed and the controlled come to the surface. Yes, letting one's inner nature flow into the empty space that's left behind by the 'false' self : really finding oneself, being true to oneself. And it also meant acknowledging the dark heart of your person, along with the beauty. Confronting one's own brutality as well, but letting nature fill one with all its life and vigour and joy. At the heart, was a surrender, almost a foetal humility, an acquiescence. An openness to the subconscious mind within and all around us. And the outcome, an awareness.
That was the outcome : becoming aware again, but somehow stronger, more whole, in greater harmony with the world around. It seemed to result in a release of vigour, a new resolve, a re-emergence of creative thought and action. How he longed for such renewal.
Not just escaping to nature, but returning equipped. In our encounters with other people, trying to be given over and lost, letting go : feeling, involving, merging and meeting. Sharing in a collective consciousness. Sharing with the person before us. No more dogmatism or domination. It was like a baptism, he concluded. A baptism into being - perhaps the great need of the age : going deeper, going deeper down to our feeling hearts, and finding ourselves there again. Finding each other again. Finding such treasure, in a world where people had become devalued. And it all began with the letting go of the taut controlling self.
At the end of Loch Morar, Wiggy could see the mountains of Rhum, resting in a pink twilight. Free from constraint and far from all others, he had sung his way around the bay, joined in the song of the hills : felt his way into sympathy with the slow deep rhythm that seemed to express and sustain the world on its rippling surface. The evening had settled into a sleepy stillness. He saw the bothy and crossed the river. He was immensely tired, but not weary... waves of physical exhaustion breaking across his body, yet not overwhelming his peace and his joy. Roberta ran out to greet him, and just stopped short, grinning and pleased to see him again. He took off his hat self-consciously, uncertain what to say.
'You've changed your parting,' she laughed.
'I haven't,' he said. 'It must be the hat.'
'Well it's different,' she argued. 'What hair you've got left.'
He smiled kindly. His eyes were warm and alight. He seemed strangely rested, somehow younger, Roberta thought.
'Come on,' he said gently. 'Let's see the others.' And they entered the dark and heathery bothy. Hughie looked up.
'Where the fuck have you been?'
'Oh, you know. Just here and there. Skulking about...'
'Christ!' roared Archie. 'It's Desperate Dan! D'ye want tae borra a razor...' then looking at the hat in his hand... 'and hwat on earth's that?'
Wiggy flung it across the room. 'You can have it. I came across it on my journey.'
'It looks like one o' they skier's hats,' said Archie trying it on. 'Ye ken, like yon Eddie Eagle wore at the Winter Olympics.'
'It suits you' was Wiggy's reply.
He looked around at the chaotic room, at Alasdair's face, and Roberta's smeared torso. They looked warlike in the light of the fire. Searching for Harry, he saw him asleep at the back, though he had tried to stay awake until Wiggy returned.
They had kept his supper, and he ate it with groans of pleasure, interspersed with yelps from the Dog, who was fielding sudden attacks of cramp, suffering with mirth. While Alasdair and Philip Gordon talked of the next day's plans, Wiggy devoured his food. How remarkably good it tasted after the day's exertions : the fish, firm and flaking, with such a flavour. And the bilberries - he extolled them... perhaps they could do with a bit more sugar... but...' 'I put four pounds in,' Hughie appealed. 'That's all we had!'
'The cave at Beoraid is a good day's walk,' Gordon was murmuring, 'through wild country, and we're virtually out of food.'
'We'll get there. Charlie did!' the boy said sleepily.
'But you'll not find the treasure there, I fear,' his sister warned.
'That's not the point.'
'You'd be disappointed.'
'Maybe, but the thing is...' he was yawning and drowsy '... the thing is to follow him... follow his footsteps... and we have, we are...'
Moments later the boy was asleep : his soft brown hair shaken and tangling with boughs of heather; his child's lips open, his fair skin glowing in the golden light.
'Look at him lying there,' Gordon smiled, 'like one of the Famous Five. Dreaming of mystery and adventure.'
'It would be a shame if we didn't' Wiggy replied.
The fire cracked and sparked a little. Archie stomped upstairs to a Hidey Hole, and came down with another bottle of whisky. Soon they were playing poker, gambling for the last remaining biscuits, which Gordon had portioned out for the following day. Roberta watched Wiggy from the shadows... he was on a losing streak. She watched as he lost, and laughed away his precious lunch, and she felt fond and sad for the gentle friend.
'Ye'd dae better tae stick tae the Gee-Gees!' Archie laughed.
'They usually come in late as well,' Wiggy replied with a doleful grin.
They dealt out more cards and Hughie exchanged snatches of Gaelic with his be-hatted friend... echoes of the old world...
'You wouldn't be cheating, by any chance?' said Gordon wryly.
Hughie smirked. 'Ye can hazard a guess aboot that,' he said, 'but we'd surely be loyal tae Wiggy! If ah'm lyin' then cut oot ma tongue!'
They played on, Gordon profoundly unconvinced. Archie let out a remonstrative fart. The Dog was talking to the drowsy fire.
'Ye ken talking tae yersel',' said Hughie. 'It's the first sign o' madness.'
But he didn't hear. He dreamed on blithely and none of them challenged his essential sanity in an insane world. He had already escaped and recovered himself.
'So ye found hwat ye were lookin' fer?' Hughie asked Wiggy.
'Yes,' he smiled, 'I guess that I did. Lost, far from anyone, like being buried in the wilderness and finding myself in another land...''The recurring theme...'
'I'm sorry?'
'Burial. All the great myths require it. Take the Bible : it's the main theme there, ye ken... Jonah, Noah, the fiery furnace, passing through the Red Sea, Baptism, Joseph - Joseph in the pit and Jesus in the Tomb... it's all about burial... and meeting with someone, something... a deeper reality.'
'I'd never thought of it like that.'
'The surrender of power, followed by true awakening and intensity...'
'And do you think we need yet more intensity?' Gordon asked.
'Need more intensity?' Sinclair exclaimed. 'It is the only way to live, I think. I believe that living in the present with joy, vitality, tears and zest : that's like a sacrament, like a gift of life.'
They looked at him, at his burning eyes of icy fire.
'If we do not live in the present, there is no place else to live. What I fear is indifference - a suspension of feeling : that's the great obscenity. The indifference and dullness of millions of unlived lives. Christ! That is an awful blasphemy.'
Wiggy bit his lip. 'But how easily we forget how to live like that : with immediacy and feeling. How easily our lives slip by...'
'Death is not what we have to fear, but indifference' Sinclair insisted. 'Indifference to ourselves, and indifference to others.'
'I believe that' said Wiggy. 'We have duty to others, providing we honour ourselves as well.' Then he faltered. 'But I... I have to go to the islands.'
'Aye, aye, over the sea tae Skye' said Archie.
'Why? Why must you go?'
'I don't know,' searched Wiggy. 'But I know that I must. Maybe because I promised the girl.'
Her eyes were watching him from her heathery retreat. She got up and stood behind him, wrapping her arms round his shoulders. 'For some things there aren't any answers,' she said. 'Just : you know in yourself it is right. That's why they had to follow Charlie...' She slipped through the door and went out for a pee. It was almost dark. She looked round once again at the silent hills, and sensed that otherness... she felt their presence as she crouched : Charlie, Lochiel, the hidden ones. 'Come dark heart, come' they called to her 'and share our lovely dreams with us.' It was cooler now : the little burn less truculent, the heather still, the ancient glen cradled and rocked in a timeless peace. Soon she would be asleep as well - sweet burial and going down - dreaming of islands on the waves, dreaming of brave Glenaladale.
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