She stood up, shaken. She hardly knew where she was. She left the theatre knowing that she couldn’t bear to watch. She walked out into the hurting daylight. She walked down the brae steadily till she came to the park again. There she sat down on a bench among all the people. Behind her she could hear the tolling of a church bell. Ahead of her she could see the glasshouse where all the flowers were – the wide red flowers – and the plants, the Mexican cacti which she had once seen and which could exist on so little water.
She sat on the bench and as she did so she thought to herself: I can’t bear this total freedom any more. I can’t, I can’t. I don’t know what to do. I cannot live like this. She got up restlessly and walked into the wood. She looked down at a stretch of water where the polluted river flowed past. There were some boys wearing towels round their waists who seemed to have just emerged from the dirty stream, which was not at all like the clean streams to which she herself had been accustomed and where you could see right down to the bottom where the white stones were.
As she stood there she saw a little girl in checked skirt and checked blouse walking into the wood by herself to pick flowers. Dazed she watched her. To her right she could hear the shouting of the boys. Without knowing precisely what she was doing she began to follow the little girl. As she did so she was amazed to discover that a transformation had taken place in her as if she had found a role which she could perform, as if the total freedom had narrowed and come to a focus. She didn’t know what she was going to do but it was as if she felt it right whatever it would turn out to be. She followed the little girl into the wood.
Murdo and Calvin
One day Murdo went into the police station.
‘I wish,’ he said, ‘to report something.’
‘And what is that, sir?’ said the sergeant, who was large, polite, and red-faced.
‘I wish to report,’ said Murdo feverishly, ‘a sighting of Calvin.’
He paused impressively.
‘And which Calvin is that, sir?’ said the sergeant quietly. ‘And why should you report him?’
‘Calvin, Sergeant, is a dangerous lunatic. He is responsible for the Free Church, for the state of Scottish literature, and for many other atrocities too numerous to mention. And especially the Kailyard,’ he added in a low voice.
‘Kailyard, sir?’
‘That’s right, Sergeant. One of his grossest inventions. I want him arrested.’
‘But, sir,’ said the sergeant, ‘I can’t . . . ’
‘I haven’t finished yet,’ said Murdo in a penetrating voice. ‘I believe him also to have committed the greatest sin of all. I can only tell you in a whisper. I believe him to have invented the Bible.’
‘Invented the Bible, sir?’
‘That’s right, sergeant. I have always suspected that the Bible was the invention of one man, a man with a colossal ego and a criminal mind. Let me ask you this. If the Bible had been invented by God would it contain all the mistakes that it contains. For instance,’ he said rapidly, ‘how is it that God is supposed to have created light before making the sun or the moon? You can read of that error in Genesis. That is only one example. Another example is this. What woman was supposed to have married Cain when there was no other woman alive on the face of the deep but his own mother Eve? They suggest to me the inventions of a man who was not naturally creative and, as we know, Calvin – like Francis Bacon, another treacherous man – was a lawyer.
‘Listen, in the Bible there’s a man called Amraphel, one called Ashteroth, and another one called Chedorlaomer. There are the names invented by a tired mind. Also, he made other slips in this gigantic enterprise. He said that Reu lived after he begat Serug two hundred and seven years. All this suggests a man engaged in the creation of a stupendous best-seller whose mind flickered at the typewriter. Have you any idea, Sergeant, how many copies of this vast book have been sold in the last thousand years? It is the most bizarre plot in human history.’
‘But, sir, I . . . ’ the sergeant tried to intervene.
‘And that is not all by any means,’ said Murdo, his eyes assuming a supernatural sharpness and directness. ‘If you will allow me to continue. There is also this fact which I think is almost conclusive. A book of such magnitude must have taxed even the greatest brain. And so we find whole chapters which are feverish outpourings making no sense at all, either that or these are space fillers pure and simple. How else can one explain whole chapters which run as follows?
‘And Shem lived after he begat Arphaxad five hundred years, and Arphaxad lived three and thirty years and begat Salah, and Arphaxad lived after he begat Salah four hundred and three years. And this, mark you, Sergeant, is the lowest limit of some of the ages. Think, Sergeant, of the huge amounts of money that would have to be paid in old age pensions if that were true. Think of
