One morning when she saw that the thread was about to snap she said to him, breaking the silence, ‘I think that button needs to be sewn again or you’ll lose it.’
He looked at her in surprise and then, like her, returned from the world of silence with regret and sorrow as if he had come home from a holiday in the unknown. After that they talked to each other as before. The button was sewn close to his woollen jacket. She no longer even noticed it, it had become part of the world of things. But they never again went back to their world of silence. They had come home again.
Murdo’s Application for a Bursary
Dear Sir,
I wish to apply for a bursary from you in order that I may complete my book Down the Mean Streets of Portree. This is a detective story in which the private eye is a member of the Free Church. His name is Sam Spaid, and he is a convinced Presbyterian. I do not see why the Catholics should have Father Brown and we Protestants nobody. I have written a few pages, which I enclose. These are only a first draft and I hope to complicate the cases further by introducing the idea of Predestination and the Elect, etc. This first case is called ‘The Mess of Pottage’.
I notice from your letter that you require a referee to substantiate my application. As you will understand, I live here in a very isolated situation, and referees who are competent to judge my work are thin on the ground. I thought at first of the headmaster and the minister, but the headmaster for various complicated reasons does not speak to me, and the minister would not approve of my novel. I have, however, a neighbour who is a simple crofter and whose name is Malcolm Campbell. He is an honest man, owner of a few acres of land, and he is quite willing to be my referee. Please excuse his writing as he is not one of these people who will put his signature to anything. He has a view of life which is unsophisticated and true. Thus though he does not understand the finer minutiae of my work, he knows me well enough to appreciate that I would not put in false claims. He is a regular reader of the Bible and Robert Burns and some selected parts of Spurgeon, and what better literary background could one have? Also he wishes me to get the grant as I owe him a trifling sum for certain repairs he made to my draughty house some time ago. I have tidied up this application a little as he left school at 15 years of age. It is good, as you will appreciate, to have such staunch friends in adversity.
I see also that you require a note of income. Last year I made £200 altogether. Most of this was the income from a Short Story Competition which I ran, in order to encourage Scottish Writing. The rest was in the form of a workshop on “In Memoriams” which was not as lucrative as I expected.
I have other projects as well. One of my stories requires that Sam Spaid go to Peru in order to capture a criminal who has been trying to undercut the Bible market. I hope to apply for a Travel Grant for that, as of course I would need to study the laws, the social mores, etc, for authentic detail. There is a scene where Sam Spaid confronts a Peruvian god which will require considerable research. I am at the moment trying to find out how much bed and breakfast costs in Lima. Another project of mine involves a visit by Sam Spaid to Israel. This has to do with a secret weapon a crazed member of the Free Church congregation is importing in stages from a fanatical Jewish sect. I will, however, keep in touch with you about this.
There is one other project I am working on as well. In past years some of the islanders when working with The Hudson Bay Company, married and brought home Cree women. Now, the psychology of these women when confronted by our island ways has not been sufficiently investigated. Was the Cree woman frightened, puzzled, enthralled? Did her thoughts return to tepees, pipes of peace, tomahawks, memories of buffalo, etc? There is much research to be done on this; indeed none at all has been done.
It is not enough to say that perhaps only two such women appeared on the island. Two is quite enough for my financial purposes, and if numbers were to be the final arbiter what would we say of the victory of the heavily outnumbered Athenians at Marathon. And furthermore on such a premise our ideas of democracy would be in dire jeopardy, as a moment’s thought is enough to show. How indeed are the thoughts, griefs, joys, etc, of one Cree woman any less important than our own? She too had her ambitions, melancholy, and elations. She too had her fears and her hopes. As she saw the sun rise in the morning
