The Keys of the Kingdom Read online

  Suddenly his father shouted. Try as he might Francis could never win first sight of the dipping cork: not that tidal bobbing which sometimes caused him foolishly to start, but the slow downward tug which to long experience denoted the thrusting of a fish. At the quick high shout there was an instant clatter as the crew jumped to the windlass which hauled the net. Usage never staled that moment: though the men drew a poundage bonus on their catch, the thought of money did not stir them; this deep excitement sprang from far primeval roots. In came the net, slowly, dripping, flaked with kelp, the guide ropes squeaking on the wooden drum. A final heave, then, in the purse of the billowing seine, a molten flash, powerful, exquisite – salmon.

  One memorable Saturday they had taken forty at a cast. The great shining things arched and fought, bursting through the net, slithering back to the river from the slippery butt. Francis flung himself forward with the others, desperately clutching at the precious escaping fish. They had picked him up, sequined with scales and soaked to the bone, a perfect monster locked in his embrace. Going home that evening, his hand inside his father’s, their footfalls echoing in the smoky twilight, they had stoppped, without comment, at Burley’s in the High Street, to buy a pennyworth of cockles, the peppermint ones that were his special choice.

  Their fellowship went further still. On Sundays, after mass, they took their rods and slipped secretly – lest they shock finer sensibilities – through the back ways of the Sabbath-stricken town, out into the verdant valley of the Whitadder. In his tin, packed with sawdust, were luscious maggots, picked the night before from Mealey’s boneyard. Thereafter the day was heady with the sound of the stream, the scent of meadowsweet, – his father showing him the likely eddies, – the crimson-speckled trout wriggling on bleached shingle – his father bent over a twig fire, – the crisp sweet goodness of the frizzled fish …

  At other seasons they would go to gather blueberries, wood strawberries, or the wild yellow rasps which made good jam. It was a gala day when his mother accompanied them. His father knew all the best places and would take them deep into devious woods, to untouched cane-breaks of the juicy fruit.

  When snow came and the ground was clamped by winter, they stalked between the frozen trees of Derham ‘policies’, his breath a rime before him, his skin pricking for the keeper’s whistle. He could hear his own heart beating as they cleared their snares, under the windows almost, of the great house itself – then home, home with the heavy gamebag, his eyes smiling, his marrow melting to the thought of rabbit pie. His mother was a grand cook, a woman who earned – with her thrift, her knack of management and homely skill – the grudging panegyric of a Scots community: ‘Elizabeth Chisholm is a well-doing woman!’

  Now, as he finished his brose, he became conscious that she was speaking, with a look across the breakfast table towards his father.

  ‘You’ll mind to be home early tonight, Alex, for the Burgess.’

  There was a pause. He could see that his father, preoccupied, – perhaps by the flooded river and the indifferent salmon season, – was caught unawares, recalled to the annual formality of the Burgess Concert which they must sustain that evening.

  ‘You’re set on going, woman?’ With a faint smile.

  She flushed slightly; Francis wondered why she should seem so queer. ‘It’s one of the few things I look forward to in the year. After all you are a Burgess of the town. It’s … it’s right for you to take your seat on the platform with your family and your friends.’

  His smile deepened, setting lines of kindness about his eyes – it was a smile Francis would have died to win. ‘Then it looks like we maun gang, Lisbeth.’ He had always disliked ‘ the Burgess’ as he disliked teacups, stiff collars, and his squeaky Sunday boots. But he did not dislike this woman who wanted him to go.

  ‘I’m relying on you. Alex. You see,’ her voice, striving to be casual, sounded an odd note of relief, ‘I have asked Polly and Nora up from Tynecastle – unfortunately it seems Ned cannot get away.’ She paused. ‘You’ll have to send someone else to Ettal with the tallies.’

  He straightened with a quick look which seemed to see through her, right to the bottom of her tender subterfuge. At first, in his delight, Francis noticed nothing. His father’s sister, now dead, had married Ned Bannon, proprietor of the Union Tavern in Tynecastle, a bustling city some sixty miles due South. Polly, Ned’s sister and Nora, his ten-year-old orphan niece, were not exactly close relations. Yet their visits could always be counted occasions of joy.

  Suddenly he heard his father say in a quiet voice: ‘I’ll have to go to Ettal all the same.’

  A sharp and throbbing silence. Francis saw that his mother had turned white.

  ‘It isn’t as if you had to … Sam Mirlees, any of the men, would be glad to row up for you.’

  He did not answer, still gazing at her quietly, touched on his pride, his proud exclusiveness of race. Her agitation increased. She dropped all pretence of concealment, bent forward, placed nervous fingers upon his sleeve.

  ‘To please me, Alex. You know what happened last time. Things are bad again there – awful bad, I hear.’

  He put his big hand over hers, warmly, reassuringly.

  ‘You wouldn’t have me run away, would you, woman?’ He smiled and rose abruptly. ‘I’ll go early and be back early … in plenty time for you, our daft friends, and your precious concert to the bargain.’

  Defeated, that strained look fixed upon her face, she watched him pull on his hip-boots. Francis, chilled and downcast, had a dreadful premonition of what must come. And indeed, when his father straightened it was towards him he turned, mildly, and with rare compunction.

  ‘Come to think of it, boy, you’d better bide home today. Your mother could do with you about the house. There’ll be plenty to see to before our visitors arrive.’

  Blind with disappointment, Francis made no protest. He felt his mother’s arm tensely, detainingly about his shoulders.

  His father stood a moment at the door, with that deep contained affection in his eyes, then he silently went out.

  Though the rain ceased at noon the hours dragged dismally for Francis. While pretending not to see his mother’s worried frown, he was racked by the full awareness of their situation. Here in this quiet burgh they were known for what they were – unmolested, even warily esteemed. But in Ettal, the market town four miles away where, at the Fisheries Head Office, his father, every month, was obliged to check the record of the catches, a different attitude prevailed. A hundred years before the Ettal moors had blossomed with the blood of Covenanters; and now the pendulum of oppression had relentlessly swung back. Under the leadership of the new Provost a furious religious persecution had recently arisen. Conventicles were formed, mass gatherings held in the Square, popular feelings whipped to frenzy. When the violence of the mob broke loose, the few Catholics in the town were hounded from their homes, while all others in the district received solemn warning not to show themselves upon the Ettal streets. His father’s calm disregard of this threat had singled him for special execration. Last month there had been a fight in which the sturdy salmon-watcher had given good account of himself. Now, despite renewed menaces, and the careful plan to stay him, he was going again … Francis flinched at his own thoughts and his small fists clenched violently. Why could not people let each other be? His father and his mother had not the same belief; yet they lived together, respecting each other, in perfect peace. His father was a good man, the best in the world … why should they want to do him harm? Like a blade thrust into the warmth of his life came a dread, a shrinking from that word ‘religion’, a chill bewilderment that men could hate each other for worshipping the same God with different words.

  Returning from the station at four o’clock, sombrely leaping the puddles to which Nora, his half-cousin, gaily dared him, – his mother walking with Aunt Polly, who came, dressed up and sedate, behind, – he felt the day oppressive with disaster. Nora’s friskiness, the neatness of her new brown braid
ed dress, her manifest delight in seeing him, proved but a wan diversion.

  Stoically, he approached his home, the low neat grey-stone cottage, fronting the Cannelgate, behind a trim little green where in summer his father grew asters and begonias. There was evidence of his mother’s passionate cleanliness in the shining brass knocker and the spotless doorstep. Behind the immaculately curtained window three potted geraniums made a scarlet splash.

  By this time, Nora was flushed, out of breath, her blue eyes sparkling with fun, in one of her moods of daring, impish gaiety. As they went round the side of the house to the back garden where, through his mother’s arrangements, they were to play with Anselm Mealey until teatime, she bent close to Francis’ ear so that her hair fell across her thin laughing face, and whispered in his ear. The puddles they had barely missed, the sappy moisture of the earth, prompted her ingenuity.

  At first Francis would not listen – strangely, for Nora’s presence stirred him usually to a shy swift eagerness. Standing small and reticent, he viewed her doubtfully.

  ‘I know he will,’ she urged. ‘He always wants to play at being holy. Come on Francis. Let’s do it. Let’s!’

  A slow smile barely touched his sombre lips. Half unwilling, he fetched a spade, a watering can, an old news-sheet from the little toolshed at the garden end. Led by Nora, he dug a two-foot hole between the laurel bushes, watered it, then spread the paper over it. Nora artistically sprinkled the sheet with a coating of dry soil. They had barely replaced the spade when Anselm Mealey arrived, wearing a beautiful white sailor suit. Nora threw Francis a look of terrible joy.

  ‘Hello, Anselm!’ she welcomed brilliantly. ‘ What a lovely new suit. We were waiting on you. What shall we play at?’

  Anselm Mealey considered the question with agreeable condescencion. He was a large boy for eleven, well-padded, with pink and white cheeks. His hair was fair and curly, his eyes were soulful. The only child of rich and devoted parents, – his father owned the profitable bone-meal works across the river, – he was already destined, by his own election and that of his pious mother, to enter Holywell, the famous Catholic college in Northern Scotland, to study for the priesthood. With Francis he served the altar at St Columba’s. Frequently he was to be found kneeling in church, his big eyes fervent with tears. Visiting nuns patted him on the head. He was acknowledged, with good reason, as a truly saintly boy.

  ‘We’ll have a procession,’ he said. ‘ In honour of St Julia. This is her feast day.’

  Nora clasped her hands. ‘Let’s pretend her shrine is by the laurel bushes. Shall we dress up?’

  ‘No.’ Anselm shook his head. ‘ We’re praying more than playing. But imagine I’m wearing a cope and bearing a jewelled monstrance. You’re a white Carthusian Sister. And Francis, you’re my acolyte. Now, are we all ready?’

  A sudden qualm swept over Francis. He was not of the age to analyse his relationships; he only knew that, though Anselm claimed him fervently as his best friend, the other’s gushing piety evoked in him a curious painful shame. Towards God he had a desperate reserve. It was a feeling he protected without knowing why, or what it was, like a tender nerve, deep within his body. When Anselm burningly declared in the Christian Doctrine class ‘I love and adore our Saviour from the bottom of my heart’, Francis, fingering the marbles in his pockets, flushed a deep dark red, went home sullenly from school and broke a window.

  Next morning when Anselm, already a seasoned sick-visitor, arrived at school with a cooked chicken, loftily proclaiming the object of his charity as Mother Paxton, – the old fishwife, sere with hypocrisy and cirrhosis of the liver, whose Saturday-night brawls made the Cannelgate a bedlam, – Francis, possessed, visited the cloakroom during class and opened the package, substituting for the delicious bird – which he consumed with his companions – the decayed head of a cod. Anselm’s tears, and the curses of Meg Paxton, had later stirred in him a deep dark satisfaction.

  Now, however, he hesitated, as if to offer the other boy an opportunity of escape. He said slowly: ‘Who’ll go first?’

  ‘Me, of course,’ Anselm gushed. He took up his position as leader. ‘Sing, Nora: Tantum Ergo.’

  In single file, at Nora’s shrill pipe, the procession moved off. As they neared the laurel bushes Anselm raised his clasped hands to heaven. The next instant he stepped through the paper and squelched full-length in the mud.

  For ten seconds no one moved. It was Anselm’s howl as he struggled to get up that set Nora off. While Mealey blubbered clammily, ‘It’s a sin, it’s a sin!’ she hopped about laughing, taunting wildly. ‘Fight, Anselm, fight. Why don’t you hit Francis?’

  ‘I won’t, I won’t,’ Anselm bawled. ‘I’ll turn the other cheek.’

  He started to run home. Nora clung deliriously to Francis – helpless, choking, tears of laughter running down her cheeks. But Francis did not laugh. He stared in moody silence at the ground. Why had he stooped to such inanity while his father walked those hostile Ettal causeways? He was still silent as they went in to tea.

  In the cosy front room, where the table was already set for the supreme rite of Scots hospitality, with best china and all the electroplate the little household could muster, Francis’ mother sat with Aunt Polly, her open rather earnest face a trifle flushed from the fire, her stocky figure showing an occasional stiffening towards the clock.

  Now, after an uneasy day, shot equally with doubt and reassurance, – when she told herself how stupid were her fears, – her ears were tuned acutely for her husband’s step: she was conscious of an overwhelming longing for him. The daughter of Daniel Glennie, a small and unsuccessful baker by profession, and by election an open-air preacher, leader of his own singular Christian brotherhood in Darrow, that shipbuilding town of incomparable drabness which lies some twenty miles from the city of Tynecastle, she had, at eighteen, during a week’s holiday from the parental cake counter, fallen wildly in love with the young Tweedside fisher, Alexander Chisholm, and promptly married him.

  In theory, the utter incompatibility of such a union fore-doomed it. Reality had proved it a rare success. Chisholm was no fanatic: a quiet, easy-going type, he had no desire to influence his wife’s belief. And she, on her side, sated with early piety, grounded by her peculiar father in a strange doctrine of universal tolerance, was not contentious.

  Even when the first transports had subsided she knew a glowing happiness. He was, in her phrase, such a comfort about the place; neat, willing, never at a loss when it came to mending her wringer, drawing a fowl, clearing the beeskeps of their honey. His asters were the best in Tweedside, his bantams never failed to take prizes at the show, the dovecot he had finished recently for Francis was a wonder of patient craftsmanship. There were moments, in the winter evenings when she sat knitting by the hearth, with Francis snug in bed, the wind whistling cosily around the little house, the kettle hissing on the hob, while her long raw-boned Alex padded the kitchen in his stockinged feet, silently intent upon some handiwork, when she would turn to him with an odd, tender smile: ‘Man, I’m fond of you.’

  Nervously she glanced at the clock: yes, it was late, well-past his usual time of homecoming. Outside a gathering of clouds was precipitating the darkness and again heavy raindrops splashed against the windowpanes. Almost immediately Nora and Francis came in. She found herself avoiding her son’s troubled eye.

  ‘Well, children!’ Aunt Polly summoned them to her chair and wisely apostrophized the air above their heads. ‘Did you have a good play? That’s right. Have you washed your hands, Nora? You’ll be looking forward to the concert tonight, Francis. I love a tune myself. God save us, girl, stand still. And don’t forget your company manners, either, my lady – we’re going to get our tea.’

  There was no disregarding this suggestion. With a hollow sensation of distress, intensified because she concealed it, Elizabeth rose.

  ‘We won’t wait on Alex any longer. We’ll just begin.’ She forced a justifying smile. ‘He’ll be in any moment now.’
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br />   The tea was delicious, the scones and bannocks homemade, the preserves jelled by Elizabeth’s own hands. But an air of strain lay heavily about the table. Aunt Polly made none of those dry remarks which usually gave Francis such secret joy, but sat erect, elbows drawn in, one finger crooked for her cup. A spinster, under forty, with a long, worn, agreeable face, somewhat odd in her attire, stately, composed, abstracted in her manner, she looked a model of conscious gentility, her lace handkerchief upon her lap, her nose humanly red from the hot tea; the bird in her hat brooding warmly over all.

  ‘Come to think, Elizabeth –’ she tactfully filled a pause. ‘ They might have brought in the Mealey boy – Ned knows his father. A wonderful vocation, Anselm has.’ Without moving her head she touched Francis with her kindly omniscient eye. ‘We’ll need to send you to Holywell too, young man. Elizabeth, you’d like to see your boy wag his head in a pulpit?’

  ‘Not my only one.’

  ‘The Almighty liked the only ones.’ Aunt Polly spoke profoundly.

  Elizabeth did not smile. Her son would be a great man, she was resolved, a famous lawyer, perhaps a surgeon; she could not bear to think of him as suffering the obscurity, the sorry hardships of the clerical life. Torn by her growing agitation she exclaimed: ‘I do wish Alex would come. It’s … it’s most inconsiderate. He’ll keep us all late if he doesn’t look sharp.’

  ‘Maybe he’s not through with the tallies,’ Aunt Polly reflected considerately.

  Elizabeth flushed painfully, out of all control. ‘He must be back at the bothy by now … he always goes there after Ettal.’ Desperately she tried to stem her fears. ‘ I wouldn’t wonder if he’d forgotten all about us. He’s the most heedless man.’ She paused. ‘We’ll give him five minutes. Another cup, Aunt Polly?’