‘Of course I do,’ he replied. ‘You’re Sarah.’
She shouted jovially as if into a high wind, ‘You’ll have to speak more loudly. I’m a little deaf.’ He shouted back, ‘Yes, I’m John Macleod,’ and it seemed to him as if at that moment he were trying to prove his identity. He shouted louder still, ‘And you’re Sarah.’ His face broke into a large smile.
‘Come in, come in,’ she shouted. ‘Come in and have a cup of milk.’
He followed her into the house and they entered the living room after passing through the scullery which had rows of cups and saucers and plates on top of a huge dresser. In a corner of the room sat a man who was probably her son trapped like a fly inside a net which he was repairing with a bone needle. He was wearing a fisherman’s jersey and his hands worked with great speed.
‘This is George,’ she shouted. ‘My son. This is John Macleod,’ she said to George. George looked up briefly from his work but said nothing. He was quite old, perhaps fifty or so, and there was an unmarried look about him.
‘He’s always fishing,’ she said, ‘always fishing. That’s all he does. And he’s very quiet. Just like his father. We’re going to give John a cup of milk,’ she said to her son. She went into the scullery for the milk and though he was alone with George the latter didn’t speak. He simply went on repairing his net. This room too was cool and there was no fire. The chairs looked old and cracked and there was an old brown radio in a corner. After a while she came back and gave him the milk. ‘Drink it up,’ she instructed him as if she were talking to a boy. It was very cold. He couldn’t remember when he had last drunk such fine milk.
‘You were twenty-four when you went away,’ she said, ‘and I had just married. Jock is dead. George is very like him.’ She shouted all this at the top of her voice and he himself didn’t reply as he didn’t want to shout.
‘And how’s that brother of yours?’ she shouted remorselessly. ‘He’s a cheat, that one. Two years ago I sold him a cow. He said that there was something wrong with her and he got her cheap. But there was nothing wrong with her. He’s a devil,’ she said approvingly. ‘But he was the same when he was young. After the penny. Always asking if he could run messages. You weren’t like that. You were more like a scholar. You’d be reading books sitting on the peat banks. I remember you very well. You had fair hair, very fair hair. Your father said that you looked like an angel. But your brother was the cunning one. He knew a thing or two. And how are you?’
‘I’m fine,’ he shouted back.
‘I hope you’ve come to stay,’ she shouted again. He didn’t answer.
‘You would be sorry to hear about your mother,’ she shouted again. ‘We were all fond of her. She was a good woman.’ By ‘good’ she meant that she attended church regularly. ‘That brother of yours is a devil. I wonder if your mother liked him.’ George looked at her quickly and then away again.
He himself shouted, ‘Why do you ask that?’ She pretended not to hear him and he had to shout the words again.
‘It was nothing,’ she said. ‘I suppose you have a big job in America.’
He was wondering what she had meant and felt uneasy, but he knew that he wouldn’t get anything more out of her.
‘They’ve all changed here,’ she shouted. ‘Everything’s changed. The girls go about showing their bottoms, not like in my day. The boys are off to the dances every night. George here should get married but I wouldn’t let him marry one of these trollops. And you can’t visit your neighbours any more. You have to wait for an invitation. Imagine that. In the old days the door would be always open. But not any more. Drink up your milk.’
He drank it obediently as if he were a child.
‘Jock died, you know. A stroke it was. It lasted for three years. But he never complained. You remember Jock.’
He didn’t remember him very well. Was he the one who used to play football or the one who played tricks on the villagers? He couldn’t summon up a picture of him at all. What had she meant by his mother and his brother? He had a strange feeling as if he were walking inside an illusion, as if things had happened here that he hadn’t known of, though he should have. But who would tell him? They would all keep their secrets. He even had the feeling that this large apparently frank woman was in fact treacherous and secretive and that behind her huge façade there was lurking a venomous thin woman whose head nodded up and down like a snake’s.
She laughed again. ‘That brother of yours is a businessman. He is the one who should have gone to America. He would have got round them all. There are no flies on him. Did you not think of coming home when your mother died?’
‘I was . . . I couldn’t at the time,’ he shouted.
George, entrapped in his corner, the net around his feet, plied his bone needle.
‘It’ll be good to come home again,’ she shouted. ‘Many of them come back. Donny Macdonald came back seven years ago and they hadn’t heard from him for twenty years. He used to drink but he goes to church regularly now. He’s a man of God. He’s much quieter than he used to be. He used to sing a lot when he was young and they made him the precentor. He’s got a beautiful voice but not as good as it was. Nobody knew he was coming home till he
