The hillside, the glen, was vacant of life, had the frozen appearance of being on another planet. As he held his head still, this impression of otherness grew. Distance, distance itself up the glen, was a very remarkable thing, for it existed in a new strange time and yet had all the astonishing attributes of space. His head moved and a jeweller’s hammer hit the grey matter; the flush of pain went forward to the bone of his forehead, knocked, and sank to the pit of his stomach. The skin of his face was sweaty, greasy, and hot. He shivered suddenly and sneezed and was blinded. Then rearing himself with care, he looked at the hillside again.
When, quite close at hand, he saw a flat slab leaning against a bank, he approached it. The heave set the flushes to a dark reel, so that this time the slab did pin his leg as it fell over. He wriggled like a half-smashed snake till he got his leg free. The shinbone ran blood beneath the rent in his stocking. Where the slab had been, however, were no more than dark earth, a large hieroglyphic red worm, and one or two centipedes that fell as if his eyesight had suddenly hit them. There was no hole to a passage. He stared at the spot until he heard the gurgling laughter of the water in the small burn.
The water stung him then ran out of his beard and eyes; it sizzled in his mouth and astonished his stomach. Its innocence was, indeed, so cool and healthy that his stomach did not know what to do about it, then tried to heave up and couldn’t. The dark pain knocked on his forehead again, this time more firmly.
He lay back till the blood on his leg should stop running of its own accord, for it only ran all the faster when he tried to stop it. On this strange morning of the world things were apparently like that. But they could bamboozle him as they wished, he knew he had been in a wheelhouse. For if he hadn’t been, how could he be like this now? He failed to hit a horsefly that landed on his leg, hitting the wound instead. After he had wrung out his handkerchief in the burn, he tied it round the wound and got up.
It was the usual kind of tumbled ground, with more boulders and hummocks than could be seen from a hilltop. But he had no desire now to investigate further. It took him a little time even to hear the ticking of his watch, which registered seven hours thirteen minutes. Martin had no doubt hauled him out and away like a sack in order to defeat his curiosity. But perhaps—to leave him in the sun? Heaven alone knew. As he finished winding his watch, he started unfastening his collar, paused, looked towards heaven and found it bland and blue.
As there could be no question of climbing: he began to drift down the glen, with a stagger now and then and even an eye for a slab, but presently he was just going on “alone and palely loitering”. The words came to him from the poem with so peculiar an aptness that, for the first time, he smiled, if wanly. But it wasn’t exactly La Belle Dame sans merci that had had him in thrall! And yet for the life of him, by the dark gods for a moment, something flicked somewhere, and he realised that Keats was not only a great poet but a poet of many dimensions. Keats had rattled the Silver Bough!
This seemed so enlightening, so superb, a description of the poet that he had to stop; a private revelation which he hung on to through the blood gushes. The young magician had shaken the Silver Bough upon our earth and gone away.
He saw him going.
He went on himself again. Perhaps, he thought, with a sere humour, it’s that ancient and innocent cold water rousing the grey alcohol . . . .
I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew . . . .
The magician knew about it. Grant nodded carefully, the humour softening his eyes. Suddenly birds were singing; chirping at least: wheatears. They, too, were innocent as the cold burn water. Remarkable the amount of innocence there was on the earth, sheer innocence, bright grass, clear air, immemorial freshness, everywhere, except in this spot of meandering clay, for which he could feel pity were he not so profound, so obliterating, an ass. But he must have dreamed a lot of the stuff he had said. Surely! O Lord, surely! he hoped. For suddenly he remembered the lingual knot. Neolithic, Pictish, Gaelic, English. Then Martin and his infernal eyes had asked, “What language next?” and he had replied, “Vodka.” High Heaven!
Debouching from the Glen of the Robbers, he turned right and followed the gushing Clachar; rested and went on; then, pulling himself together, started on a slanting downhill stalk of his lodgings. When he found himself being tracked by what looked like the black journalist he got to his feet in a blinding anger.
Little Sheena saw him coming, backed a shy step or two, then turned for the front door and met her mother. After a moment, they both went into the house. Anna was standing in the kitchen, visible to him, if he wanted her.
“Anna?”
“Yes.” She came quickly forward.
“Tea,” he said. “Just tea. A whole potful.”
“At once,” she answered.
“And would you—and would you take it up to my bedroom?”
“Yes.”
He nodded and smiled, looked at the steep stairs, then began to mount them.