“I hope Sheena did not disturb you last night?” said Anna as she removed his porridge plate.
“Me? No! Why, was she restless?”
“Yes. She must have been dreaming.”
“Do they dream so young?”
“I think so,” she answered smiling.
“Interesting. Did she tell you what she was dreaming about?”
“No. I think she just thought that I had left her. She was calling me so loud that I was afraid she might have wakened you.”
“Even if she had done—what of it? We were all that age once!” He liked Anna’s voice. “I suppose she just clung to you and explained nothing?”
“Yes,” said Anna.
In the afternoon, while he was directing a new opening into the cairn on the southwest side, Mrs Sidbury appeared. She moved with a wind-blown erratic lightness that had its grace, but in an instant he knew that he hated visitors on the site.
She greeted him, went and spoke to Mrs Mackenzie, and had a few words for Andie. There was obviously no slightest trace of snobbery in the woman. But he knew that already he was becoming over-sensitive to place and atmosphere, and so to people. She suddenly struck him as a gay woman who had once been nearly strangled.
“No, nothing much yet. It may take a little time,” he explained. The cist had been covered over.
She peered about the stones, balancing lightly. “We should like very much if you could come to dinner tomorrow night.”
“Thank you,” he replied, confused by his momentary hesitation. “I shall be very pleased.”
“Donald hasn’t been to see you?”
“No.”
“He was going to, I think.”
“At least we could show him we are trying to be tidy! All these stones out there will be put back.”
Her dark eyebrows arched. “But won’t that be a lot of extra trouble?”
After a little while, she left.
Later the schoolmaster appeared. Grant glanced at his watch. In half an hour they were due to stop work anyway; but he gave no order. Better bear it for half an hour.
He had been told that the schoolmaster was a clever man who knew all about everything in the place, including the olden days, and had spent an interesting evening with him, for the man had a considerable amount of Celtic scholarship of a kind. In fact it was made clear that he had come to the small Clachar school, which had but a handful of pupils and in which he was the only teacher, in order to pursue his studies along certain empirical lines. There were times when Grant thoroughly enjoyed theories, and to an enthusiasm he naturally responded, but this was not one of the times. Mr McCowan was tall, thin, dark, with spectacles and a deep impressive voice.
After five minutes, Grant was objecting: “But these Neolithic people were not Celtic. This cairn was already ancient before your Celts or Goidels appeared on the scene.”
“You are quite certain of that?” Mr McCowan had a way of holding his smile.
“Quite certain,” replied Grant without any smile.
When the discussion became involved, Grant swept the whole of Scotland clear of all humans in the last Ice Age in order to start from scratch. Then he introduced man as the ice receded, and in particular he brought Azilians to Oban who lived in caves, had barbed harpoons of red deer’s antler or bone for spearing fish, had hammer stones, bone fabricators, some flints; who hunted seals, boars, otters, wild cats and deer; who lived on crabs, oysters, winkles, limpets, and cockles and mussels alive alive-o, concluded Grant suddenly on a lighter note, for he had been growing earnest and lengthy.
“And these Azilians?”
“Come before the Neolithic Age. Fishing folk to the West Coast. It even sounds familiar!”
“And where did they come from originally?”
“Perhaps up from England,” answered Grant with a sly twinkle, refraining for the moment to bring them in slow stages from France. Ten minutes later, he said, “Upon this scene your Gaels were mere newcomers, parvenus—of whom I have the honour to be, perhaps, a somewhat mixed sample.” And his eyes considered Mr McCowan’s head.
Mr McCowan helped him home with his gear, still arguing, and they parted with smiling heat. It had been a dry day. They hadn’t even struck the peristalith on the southwest side. These silly racial arguments, said Grant to himself, were exactly like the cracking of cairn stones hurled by an idiot, not forgetting the diffused smell of brimstone.
But he grew calmer in the evening as on a square of plate glass he began to build up the necklace with the pieces of jet. Soon he was entirely lost in this fascinating jigsaw puzzle, of which, however, the final picture was clear in his mind. It was that of a crescent moon whose horns were pulled together to fasten in a point at the back of the neck. The shape was defined in the main by three circles: the outside circle of the crescent moon, the inside circle, and a circle that ran midway between; and all three circles were made up of these small barrel-shaped beads of jet strung together; the very smallest, for the inner circle, had looked to him in the cist like black oats, the largest were about an inch long. These circles were kept apart by beads of the same shape placed diagonally and spaced out. Four large lozenge-shaped pieces gave a stiffening and dignity to the whole, while two triangular pieces linked the circles together to meet in a catch behind the neck. It was not only a pretty pattern but, as he knew, for even these ancient days, a distinctively native one. A Scottish contribution to the Bronze Age. Again, the material was not true jet, but lignite such as would have been found among the Sutherland coal measures (coal-mine today at Brora; gold diggings yesterday at Kildonan). As he lifted one of the large lozenges and examined again its geometric pattern of lines picked out in dots, he suddenly remembered that it should have its electrical properties, like amber. After rubbing it quickly on his sleeve he brought it near a tiny piece of paper. The paper stuck.
What magic this power of attraction must have been to them of old!
As he stared through the window, wondering how they explained it to themselves, he quite suddenly became one with them. He had indeed a flashing memory from early boyhood of a piece of chaff being picked up by the amber mouthpiece of a pipe. Two boys’ faces and his own, in wonder, laughing. It had felt like some magical trick; and not until he had carried out a surreptitious experiment with his father’s expensive silver-mounted pipe was he convinced, with an even profounder wonder (for he was now alone), that it was not a trick. He had put the pipe (after a few empty sucks at it) back in the ornate smoker’s cabinet and stolen from the room, and the yellow transparency of the amber in the curved mouthpiece was still one of his clearest colour memories.
No doubt, he now thought, it was from this simple boyhood experience that he was able long afterwards to get some notion of primitive man’s apprehension of an invisible spirit. It was like the potency in the amber rather than any shaped thing. And, quite literally, it had power. Between the spirit in man and the potency in the amber there was an unsearchable communion; an attraction in wonder, a repulsion in fear.
And beyond attraction and repulsion, what did man know today? He might coin electrical names for the potency (though even then electron was merely the Greek word for amber) but the why? was hidden as ever. What he gained in names he lost in the old apprehension. Equations were the chambered cairns wherein the ancient magics were buried. He was nodding with pursed lips when Mrs Cameron knocked.
When he had her seated, he sat down himself, saying cheerfully, “Yes, I wanted to see you about—well, you know, my first week is up and we haven’t yet settled what I owe you.”
There were a few reluctant, friendly remarks, and then she said, “I’ll just tell you what happened with Mr McArthur, who was here two years ago. I asked him if twenty-five shillings would do and he insisted on paying me thirty. I hope—”
“That’s fine,” said Mr Grant. “That’s grand. Of course things have gone up a bit since then.” He turned to the mantelpiece and then placed his payment in her hand. “And I am very pleased here; delighted, in fact. So that’s all right.”
But she stared at the three pound notes and then at him.
“Not a word,” he said. “Shush! Wait till this tourist business gets properly going and then! . . . Oh, and by the way, I wanted to tell you, too, that I’m going out for dinner to-morrow night. But as it’s Saturday, I’ll be home for lunch. Must give my employees their half day!”
“It’s too much,” she said quietly, sitting still.
“If you’re satisfied I am. Could anything be more perfect than that?” He laughed and rallied her.
When at last she was going out, she said, “If you’re late tomorrow, or any night, you’ll always find the door open.”
“I do believe it’s that kind of door,” he replied. “But I shan’t be late. I’m only going to Clachar House.”
There was a perceptible arrestment, a momentary steadying of her eyes on his face, then “Good night, Mr Grant,” and she was gone.
He stood in thought for a little while, then turned to his beads.