The Cone-Gatherers. Robin Jenkins

a way clear: the tree within was illuminated to its darkest depths. Next moment darkness returned, deeper than ever.

      ‘It was about Stalingrad,’ she said.

      ‘Has it fallen yet?’

      ‘No. It’s in the paper.’

      He glanced at the headlines. ‘Aye, so it is.’

      Lately she had taken thus to lingering in the kitchen while he ate. Neither of them enjoyed it.

      ‘Peggy’s getting difficult,’ she said.

      It was spoken as if she’d been saving it up for months; yet she’d already said it that morning.

      She laid her hand on her heart. ‘I’m finding it beyond my strength to lift and lay her when you’re not in.’

      ‘There’s Mrs Hendry,’ he murmured.

      Mrs Hendry was the wife of the gardener; she lived next door.

      ‘She’s not a young woman any longer, and she’s never been strong. I don’t like to ask her.’

      ‘There’s Mrs Black.’

      She was the wife of the forester, as devout as he.

      ‘She’s strong enough,’ he said.

      ‘But is she willing?’

      ‘I would say so.’ He thought she was jealous of Mrs Black, who was very patient, kind, and capable; besides, Peggy liked her.

      ‘Every time she’s asked,’ blurted out Mrs Lochie, ‘she comes running, but there’s always a sermon to listen to. My lassie was never wicked. You should ken that, John Duror.’

      He nodded.

      She sniffled grimly. ‘Peggy was not just happy herself,’ she said. ‘She made other folk happy too.’

      He had been one of the other folk.

      ‘What pleasure is it for me then,’ she asked fiercely, ‘to listen to Mary Black making out that what happened to Peggy was a punishment.’

      ‘You’ve misunderstood her.’

      ‘I ken it’s your opinion, John, that I’m just a stupid stubborn old woman; but I’m still able to understand what the likes of Mary Black has to say to me. A punishment inflicted by God, she says. And when I ask her to explain what she means, what does she say then? She just shakes her head and smiles and says it’s not for her, or for me, or for anybody, to question God or find fault with what He thinks fit to do. But I told her I’d question God to His very face; I’d ask Him what right had even He to punish the innocent.’

      He had kept on eating. Not even this impiety was original. God had been defied, threatened, denounced, reviled, so many times before.

      ‘Why argue with her?’ he asked. ‘You only vex yourself. Forby, she means well enough.’

      She pretended to be astonished.

      ‘How can she mean well enough,’ she demanded, ‘when she suggests your wife deserved a punishment worse than any given to bloodstained murderers.’

      ‘Does she not also say there’s to be a reward?’

      ‘If the punishment is suffered gratefully?’

      ‘Aye.’

      ‘After death?’

      He nodded.

      ‘Do you believe that, John?’

      ‘No.’

      She glanced away from him. ‘Even if I did,’ she muttered, ‘even if I had a guarantee in my hand this very minute, saying that Peggy in heaven would have it all made up to her, I still wouldn’t be satisfied. It seems to me a shameful thing, to torment the living unjustly and think to remedy it by pampering the dead.’

      ‘This pampering is supposed to last forever.’

      She spat out disgust. ‘I have my own religion,’ she said proudly. ‘I don’t think the Lord’s a wean, to be cruel one minute and all sugary kindness the next.’

      He wanted the conversation to end, but he could not resist asking, not for the first time: ‘Is there an explanation, in your religion?’

      Once she had retorted by saying that not Peggy’s sins were being punished, but his. It had seemed to him a subtle and convincing theology, but she had immediately retracted it: she would not insult God by crediting Him with less decency and intelligence than the creatures He had made.

      ‘You ken,’ she answered, still proudly, ‘I have never found that explanation.’

      Then they heard Peggy shouting. Instead of the dance music a man’s solemn voice issued from the radio: he was talking about the war. Peggy wanted something more cheerful. Would her mother come and switch to another programme?

      His mother-in-law hurried away. He went on with his meal, but suddenly he realised that he was envying the tranquillity and peace of mind in the cone-gatherers’ hut. He paused with his fork at his mouth: that he should envy so misbegotten and godforsaken an imbecile as the hunchback was surely the ultimate horror, madness itself? To hate the hunchback, and therefore to wish to cleanse the wood of his defiling presence, was reasonable; but to wish to change places with him, to covet his hump, his deformed body, his idiot’s mind, and his face with its hellish beauty, was, in fact, already to have begun the exchange. Was this why the hut fascinated him so much?

      A comedian was now joking on the wireless. The studio audience howled with laughter. He heard Peggy joining in.

      Mrs Lochie returned to the kitchen.

      ‘Did you remember to feed the dogs?’ he asked.

      ‘I remembered.’

      ‘Thanks. I’m sorry I was late.’

      ‘Are you really sorry, John? You’re late nearly every night now. This is the third time this week.’

      He thought, afterwards, he would go up the garden to the dogs’ house. Silence and peace of mind were there too; he wished he could share them. The handsome wise-eyed animals would be eager to welcome him in, but he would not be able to enter. All he would succeed in doing would be to destroy their contentment: they would whine and lick his hands and sorrow because they could not help him.

      ‘You think the world of those dogs,’ she said accusingly.

      ‘I need them for my work.’

      ‘You talk to them oftener than you talk to your wife.’

      It was true: the bond between him and the dogs still held.

      ‘You sit up in that shed for hours with them,’ she said. ‘Fine I ken why. It’s so that you don’t have to sit with your wife.’

      ‘I told Peggy I’d be in later.’

      ‘For five minutes.’

      He did not speak.

      ‘It’s what will happen to her when I’m gone that worries me,’ she said. ‘Who will toil after her as I have done? Nobody in this wide empty world.’

      He let her enjoy her sobs.

      ‘I can only hope she’s taken before I am,’ she went on, ‘though she is thirty years younger. If I went it would be an institution for incurables for her. I’m not blind. I see the way things are shaping.’

      Do you really, he thought, see this tree growing and spreading in my mind? And is its fruit madness?

      ‘Was there any message for me from the big house?’ he asked.

      ‘Aye. It seems the mistress’s brother has arrived for a day or two’s leave before he goes overseas. She sounded excited. He’s younger than she is. Anyway, she wants a deer hunt arranged for him tomorrow.’

      ‘But