WHEN I WAKENED this morning I half expected to see fresh snow on the tops. I think I should have been glad of snow, anything to break the monotony of this rain-swept week. The day was cold enough for winter.
‘Still raining, Hugh?’ Terry asked from amongst the blankets.
‘Oh get up and see for yourself,’ I answered in a rage.
‘Still raining then,’ she told herself with a sigh. ‘Still pelting rain.’
‘I wouldn’t care if it did pelt,’ I went on savagely. ‘It’s this cold drizzle that gets on my nerves.’
‘Are you coming back to bed?’ she inquired.,
‘What’s the use of that?’ I demanded. ‘What’s the use of anything. Damn these kindlings, won’t they ever catch! There’s not a dry peat nor a dry stick—I’m fed up! fed up! fed up!’
‘Poor boy,’ she murmured.
‘Don’t “Poor boy!” me!’ I raged. ‘Get up and see if you can make this fire burn. How do you expect me to move with that filthy hammock right across the place?’
She sat up and gazed at me with round sleepy eyes, and passed her hand abstractedly through her hair.
‘Are you in a rage with me, Hugh?’ she asked.
‘No I’m not,’ I retorted. ‘Why should I be in a rage with you?—I don’t know what I am—oh, can’t you leave me alone and not bother me?’
I got down on my knees before the fire to puff and blow into its black sodden heart. For all my breath and all the ashes that blew out into my face the sticks would not take.
Terry began to put on her clothes with the most sober expression.
‘Let me do it,’ she said, gently pushing me aside. I stood up to watch her. She whittled slivers of fir from a root and laid them in the fireplace and poured a little pike-oil on them. In a moment a tongue of flame came licking up, and as it grew she added splinters of wood until it was bright and strong. I bent down beside her to heap on roots. When the wet skin of the sticks dried they caught fire suddenly, and went up in a blaze which filled the chimney and lighted the cave to its farthest corner.
‘Now, Hugh,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry I was cross—’ I began in conscience-stricken tones; ‘you mustn’t pay any attention to me.’
‘But really, Hugh,’ she expostulated, ‘you can scarcely expect me to ignore you when you make such a loud noise.’
‘Was I making an awful noise?’ I murmured.
‘You’re very violent, my dear,’ she continued.
‘You mustn’t heed me—’ I began, and hesitated. ‘I was going to give you a cup of tea in bed,’ I said discontentedly.
‘Run and look at the weather and then we’ll have a cup by the fire instead,’ she encouraged me.
I went slowly to the door.
‘Terry!’ I cried when I looked outside. ‘Terry, the sun!’
She came running, half-clad as she was, to view the break in the mist through which the effulgent sun showed momentarily. We gazed at each other and laughed with delight and going outside we capered crazily amongst wet heather and slippery rocks until we were breathless. The cave and a few yards around lay in a pool of sunlight, but everywhere else there was thick mist. Our narrow corner, islanded in mist and that strange silence of a misty day, grew warm. Though many burns made a sound the world was silent.
‘We’ll have our breakfast outside,’ I declared. ‘As sure as death I thought the sun was gone away for good and all. Harken, did you hear a grouse?’
‘Och, leave it in peace,’ she said, arresting me with her hand. ‘We don’t need meat at the moment, Hugh. I wouldn’t like to shoot it—it’s like an envoy—a harbinger—’
‘Of better days?’
‘And better temper.’
‘Oh, it was the drizzle that got on my nerves!’ I said. ‘If rain comes down properly I like it. It’s fine to see the burns get up and hear them roar; I love to stand at the door watching the spates come over the rocks as white as snow. Something’s happening when it comes a flood and the wilder it is the surer you know that it’s got to end some time. If you stay inside how warm and dry and comfortable you are, and if you go out, then you get soaked and that’s all. But this drizzle, this mist, this clamminess that’s neither wet nor dry nor properly cold nor warm, it’s not enough to make you bide indoors, and when you go out it seeps and creeps until you’re wet and cold and miserable to the very marrow of your bones. You can’t see, you can’t think—I like wild weather—’
‘Yes,’ was all she said.
‘It’s terrible to let a little mist get the better of me,’ I went on ruefully.
‘We are very close to the weather here, Hugh,’ she said.
‘Imagine it, we were pleased to see the rain—’ I began.
‘I’m quite pleased it came,’ she interrupted. ‘It taught us lessons we were sadly needing.’
‘I suppose it did,’ I assented grudgingly, and then, suspicious of her meaning, I demanded, ‘What did it teach us, Terry?’
‘You know quite well,’ she returned. ‘The only way we learn things, Hugh, is by feeling them, suffering them. If we had all good weather and every day sunny until winter arrived we’d never discover how to keep our clothes dry, or make use of a fine interval—or avoid knocking against each other.’
‘A damned expensive way of learning,’ I grumbled. ‘My peats will be as wet as muck.’
‘Didn’t you make them into heaps?’
‘Yes, but that wouldn’t save them.’
‘You can’t tell until you’ve seen them. What’s the use of meeting trouble, Hugh? If they’re wet they’ll dry. We can cut more. A few hot days will cure all the harm that’s been done. But if we had no bad weather till winter, we’d see our stuff being spoilt then, without any hope of heat and sun to mend it.
‘And our cave is really fit for living in,’ she added.
When the hammock was erected we made a mantel-shelf over the fireplace by laying six rowan saplings side by side from one wall of the cave to the other. They made a fairly level shelf and I was pleased with it but Terry did not rest content until she sewed the relics of our car hood into a narrow strip long enough to cover the shelf. She went out furtively leaving me to arrange our teapot, my watch, the tin which served for a tea-caddy, and a variety of other small things on the mantelpiece. She returned in a few minutes with her arms full of bell-heather, rowan-blossom, a few sprays from a gean tree that we found growing in a sheltered corner by Loch Coulter, and crow-foot, buttercups, and wild clover from a grassy plot that had once been occupied by a house of which the ruins were still visible. Probably it had been a summer-shieling. We were very fond of that plot of green. We often wondered about the people who had lived there. Terry filled milk-tins with water to hold her flowers and arranged her vases on the shelf.
‘You should have fetched some nettles too,’ I said, half- mocking.
‘That’s cruel of you, Hugh,’ she said in a hurt voice.
‘We could eat them. People used them for a vegetable in the last war.’ We admired each other’s work for a little while. Then I made loops of wire to hang from the rafters and hold the rifles and our tools. While Terry was stowing away our tins of food on the wall-ends of the mantelshelf, and suspending dishes and pans and clothes from the rafters, I sawed the four posts we had taken from Ardverikie to equal lengths of a little less than three feet. Using these posts for legs and the straightest branches I could find for ends and sides I constructed the rough skeleton of a table. We were at a loss for a top to our table. I suggested a deer skin, but Terry doubted whether our curing was effective enough for such an important purpose. Eventually we found a broad thin slab of rock which I trimmed roughly and laid on the framework. Our table was ready.
Chairs were our next thought. We had the cushions from the car, two front cushions and a long seat from the back. They were comfortable but if they were laid on the ground they were much too low. When I proposed to make stools of turves Terry pointed out that they would make the place dirty and they could not be moved from place to place. I agreed very reluctantly, and in the end we contrived serviceable though shaky stools from birch saplings.
Our cave was gradually assuming the appearance of a dwelling. With a good fire burning and the milk-tin lamp shedding its light from the mantelshelf, it was both gay and snug. The floor was strewn with deer-skins; we sat down a hundred times a day, on our own chairs by the fire, to regard our achievements. When the door was closed with deer-skin curtains no draught entered, whatever the wind’s direction. The small wood violets that Terry gathered every day, even when rain fell and mist covered the land, made a faint perfume.
All the while we were busy with these improvements the rain kept falling, and mist drew closer every day. At first I was pleased with the weather. I had work indoors to occupy me. The wind and the rain came up so thunderously out of the west, the waters rose with such wild haste, I was exhilarated, I kept running from admiring the cave, which did not let in a drop of water, to the doorway whence I could watch the storm sweep down the gorge beneath me. Our little trickle of a stream was now a cascade that sprayed us with mist when we went near to fetch water. I loved to stand beside the loud fall, and when I was wet to strip my clothes from me and dry them in front of our fire.
I had made a basin of clay to catch the runnel of our stream and make it easy to lift water even in dry weather. It survived the first violent flood. The burn came down so full that it overleaped the trough to fall in gouts and thunder yards away from the foot of the cliff. Then the rain abated, yielding to a steady drizzle, and the burn went down; its force came directly on my cistern and washed it away in a few moments. I had no more work to do indoors. Terry was busy cooking, and cleaning and drying wet clothes. I was idle and miserable. When I ventured out to view my peats or to fetch in firewood my clothes were wetted but never soaked. They had to be taken off and dried as if they were thoroughly wet. The cave was perpetually festooned with my steaming clothes; their smell pervaded the place; we could not move without brushing our faces against dank cloth.
I was full of ambitious plans for a day or two.
‘We could easily make a water-wheel with one of the back-wheels of the car,’ I told Terry, ‘couple it up to the dynamo, and give ourselves electric light.’
‘We could do that later,’ she said in her most matter-of-fact voice. ‘Do you mind running out with this basin of dirty water?’
She was very careful that we should always throw out our slops a long way from the cave. I was tempted to fling down the dishwater at the very door of the cave but I was in the mood to nurse a grievance rather than air it. I walked out bare-headed. Terry came running after me with a coat.
‘Put this on, Hugh,’ she bade me.
‘I don’t want it,’ I told her, and walked a couple of hundred yards before I emptied the basin.
‘What were you saying about electric light?’ she asked brightly on my return. ‘Take off your jacket, boy, you’re wringing wet.’
‘I am not,’ I retorted.
‘Could we make a water-wheel?’ she asked after a pause.
‘What’s the good of talking about it?’ I wanted to know.
‘I would like to know, Hugh.’
All my resentment gathered itself against the plaintiveness of her voice.
‘And what’s the use of planning as if we were to be here for ever,’ I cried.
Christ, and if she died, what hell of trifles I’d inhabit, recalling such words.
‘That’s true,’ she agreed. ‘Is it still coming down?’
‘My peats will be washed away,’ I complained.
‘We can cut more.’
‘It’s easy for you to say that!’ I exclaimed. ‘It’s not your labour that’s wasting. If the rain came through the roof and messed up what you’ve done in the cave—’
‘The peats mayn’t be spoiled.’
‘How could they escape being spoiled? This weather may carry on for months. A pretty pickle we’ll be in then, without fuel for winter.’
All past and over, deep buried in the mind, ready to be remembered. Terry, I wish my heart would break and burst itself with grief for hurting you.
The weather faired this afternoon. We went out hoping to discover a cave or tented rocks near our own cave where our peats could be stowed in safety. The simplest course would be to build a stack either on the top of the rock near the moss or beside our cave but a stack large enough to outlast winter could not possibly be camouflaged with heathery turves; it is necessary to find a hiding-place.
The air, washed by the rain, was clear and fresh, and the farthest distances were bright in the sun; we looked through the limpid miles of air to the Cairngorms and the Monadhliahs; this air, like a sea of purifying waters, washed the green earth and the rocky hills. The ground was sopping wet; each shallow gully that we reached had its gurly torrent. We took off our shoes and stockings to splash barefoot through the burns and the velvet moss. I had never seen the country so verdant, under a bluer sky. The predominant yellows and browns of the moor seemed to have altered, as if the rain had changed them, or the air like glass altered their aspect.
We found no cave but Terry discovered an enormous boulder with a vertical face turned towards the cliff. We clambered to the top of the boulder where heather and grass had found root, to survey our realm. Our bare legs dangled over the edge. It was so still and clear that we could hear lambs bleating in the meadows of the Spey.
‘Perhaps they’re going to clip,’ I said to Terry.
‘Did you ever hear anything so clear and far away?’ she asked.
The noise of bleating came up to us from the distance like the imagined sounds of a story.
‘Like the goat in Daudet’s story,’ I said. ‘Do you remember when the wolf came, and every noise that the kid knew was quiet, and its master gave up blowing his horn. “Come home! come home!”’
‘I’ve heard rooks like that,’ she said, ‘in the trees in a valley.’
Our ears, which the noise of rain and streams and wind had dulled, began to listen for the birds and beasts, and like a wave the cry of whaups, the calling grouse, each sound that rose from the moor or descended from the lift, welled in upon us and we listened with all our souls; our hearts were freed from their discontent by the large harmony of freedom that our neighbours made around us in this place.
‘We talk quite casually now about spending winter here,’ Terry said after a long silence.
‘If we build our stack against the up side of this rock,’ I said, ‘it would be hidden from everywhere unless some one came right up to the cliff, and in that case we ourselves would be seen. It’s strange that we haven’t seen a shepherd amongst the sheep.’
‘I can’t worry or care about anything on a day like this,’ she answered.
‘I feel as if I had lived all my life here,’ I said.
‘I was never happier than I am just now—it’s wrong of me,’ she said, ‘it’s wicked to be so happy.’
‘What’s wrong in it?’ I asked fiercely. ‘Great God, what hell is in the world when happiness is a crime? There’s hope for the world that has happiness in it. If it was all hate and rage it would go like a heap of corruption mouldering itself to nothing with its own rottenness.’
‘Other people deserve happiness and haven’t it,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Hugh—you won’t be very angry with me—you won’t think I’m silly—’
I shook my head and answered, ‘Not this day, Terry.’
She smiled at that.
‘And other days?’ she inquired.
‘What were you going to say?’ I asked.
‘Hugh—I’d like to see our house. It’s a foolish whim—and we’ve so much to do—’
‘Why do you want to see the house?’ I demanded.
‘I can’t get things out of my head, somehow,’ she answered in a low voice. ‘I lie awake, many a night, wondering what has happened, wondering what grief’s abroad and us here, safe, us here, happy. It might be time for us to go back, Hugh. We might be able to do some good.’
‘It’s not the house you want to see,’ I said.
‘Yes, indeed I want to see our house, our own house, Hugh.’
‘It’s a long journey and there’s risk of danger, Terry,’ I told her. ‘If you like I’ll go and spy—’
‘And leave me here alone! No, no, you couldn’t do that. Why, it’s not so very far. When can we go, Hugh?’
‘When I’ve stacked my peats,’ I told her grimly. ‘I’m not taking any more risks with the weather.’
We sat for a space in silence, but it was with thoughts of our fellow-creatures, and the future, that our minds now engaged themselves; the singing birds in the birch wood sang their heedless song unheeded. We were mortal human folk, and all our work, all our home-making in the cave, all our happiness on this day of June, though it was sweet, did not divide us from our human fellows nor obliterate their woe.