But I could go on for ever describing Murdo’s energy and innovative brilliance at the time of the Mod. It was as if he grew alive again, as if he vibrated with elan.
He was here, there and everywhere, organising dances, selling tickets, raffling salt herring, giving endless votes of thanks, singing songs, defending the Mod in midnight debates, pinpointing the virtues of Mod gold medallists of earlier years and interviewing them in a special geriatric studio which was fitted with bedpans, dressing up as a starving Campbell who needed sponsorship, writing short stories and sending them in under assumed names such as Iain MacRae Hemingway or Hector Maupassant. It was a week of glorious abandon for him, so much so that the rest of the year was an anticlimax, and he could hardly wait until the Mod was to be staged in Gatwick or Henley.
Murdo’s closely reasoned paper on why the Mod should be held in Paris was probably his masterpiece. He said first of all that many of the older slightly deafer people might think it was Harris, and before they knew where they were they would be strolling down the Champs Elysees rather than Tarbert. Also there were a number of Gaels in Paris who had been detained there after the last football international as well as some ancient followers of Bonnie Prince Charlie. Furthermore, it was probably from here that the original Celts had come before they had changed from ‘P’ to ‘Q’. Also the word ‘église’ was very like the Gaelic word ‘eaglais’ and there was a small French religious sect called L’Eglise Libre to which Pascal had belonged.
So it was that Murdo was busy as a bee when Mod time came, especially with his compilation of Mod medallists into leagues, headed by Morag MacCrimmon (aged 102), and by his selection of raffle prizes headed by his special editions of the Bible with a foreword by Nicholas Fairbairn, and a page three of aged schoolteachers from the Stornoway Gazette.
‘I envisage,’ he told the press recently, ‘that our next Mod will be in East Germany. As a goodwill gesture I have decided that there will be no communists on the committee. I hope to see you all there.’
I should like, but for pressure of time, to detail Murdo’s other astonishing achievements, e.g. the year he won the Mod Medal himself by an amazing margin of 90 points, and also his epic poem which won him the Bardic Crown and which was called ‘The Church and the Sound of the Sea’. However, I have said enough to demonstrate that Murdo was by far the most interesting President, Secretary, and Treasurer seen at the same time which the Mod is ever likely to have, and his creation of twenty fourth-equals out of a total entry of twenty-one was the most dazzling arithmetical feat ever seen and also the fairest.
His interview in Gaelic with President Mitterand was a sparkling performance when he countered the President’s ‘Tha e fluich’ with ‘C’est la guerre’.
Sweets to the Sweet
When I went into the shop next door that day, I heard them quarrelling, I mean Diane and her father, Mason, or the Lady, as we called him. Perhaps they hadn’t heard the tinkle of the bell or he had forgotten that I often came in at that time.
‘And I’m telling you that university is crap. I’m not going and that’s the end of it.’
That was beautiful baby-faced Diane with the peroxide, white hair and the heart-shaped ruthless face.
I heard him murmuring and she began again:
‘I’m telling you, you can shove these books. And all that stuff about sacrificing yourself for me is a lot of . . . ’
At that point I went back to the door, opened it and let it slam as if I had just come in. The voices ceased and the Lady came into the shop.
He looked tired and pale, but his sweet angelic smile was in evidence as usual. I heard a far door slam and judged that it must be his daughter leaving.
‘Marzipan?’ he said. I agreed. I like sweets and I eat a lot of them.
Mason is the kind of man who was born to serve, and not simply because it is his trade but because his whole nature is servile. I mean, one has seen shopkeepers who are brisk and obliging, but this is something else again, this is obsequiousness, an eagerness to please that is almost unpleasantly oriental. It makes one feel uncomfortable, but it must please a certain type since his shop does a good trade and, in fact, the rumour is that he is thinking of expanding.
I return to his servility. It isn’t that he is insincere or anything like that. It is as if deep in his soul he has decided that he really is the servant, that you are a different order of being, an aristocrat, and he lower than a peasant. He gives the impression of finding himself in you. If it weren’t for you he wouldn’t exist. Frankly, if you haven’t met that kind of person, it is difficult to explain it. I hope I won’t be accused of anti-Semitism if I say that he reminds me of a Jew, and yet he isn’t a Jew, he belongs to this small town and was born and bred here. I suppose there is something about that kind of person which brings out the fascist in one, a desire to kick him as if he were a dog, he looks so eager to please, hanging on your every word, on your every order, as if a few ounces of sweets is more important to him than anything else you can conceive of. (Some
