on the other hand, we could have played Scottish Dance Music each day. “The Hen’s March to the Midden” would not be unsuitable. I remember,’ he continued reflectively, keeping his arms hooked in his lapels, ‘I remember hearing that famous work or opus. It was many years ago. Ah, those happy days. When hens were hens and middens were middens. Not easy now to get a midden of quality. A genuine first class midden as midden.’
‘The midden in itself,’ said William. He continued, ‘The thing in itself is an interesting question. I visualise Hegel in a German plane dropping silver paper to confuse the radar of the British philosophical school, and flying past, unharmed, unshot, uncorrupted.’
‘I once read some Hegel,’ said Allan proudly, ‘and also Karl Marx.’
Donny made a face at a cow.
They made their way across the island and came to a pillbox used in the Second World War.
‘Sieg Heil,’ said William.
‘Ve vill destroy zese English svine,’ said Donny.
‘Up periscope,’ said Allan.
The island was very bare, no sign of habitation to be seen, just rocks and grass.
‘Boom, boom, boom,’ said Donny, imitating radio music. ‘The Hunting of the Bismarck. Boom, boom, boom. It was a cold blustery day, and the telegraphist was sitting at his telegraph thinking of his wife and four children back in Yorkshire. Tap, tap, tap. Sir, Bismarck has blown the Hood out of the water. Unfair, really, sir. Bismarck carries too strong plating. Boom, boom, boom. Calm voice: “I think it’ll have to be Force L, wouldn’t you say, commander?” And now the hunt is on, boom, boom, boom, grey mist, Atlantic approaches, Bismarck captain speaks: “I vill not return, herr lieutenant. And I vill not tolerate insubordination.” Boom, boom, boom.’
William looked at the pillbox, resting his right elbow on it.
‘I wonder what they were defending,’ he mused.
‘The undying right to insert Celtic footnotes,’ said Donny.
Allan said,
‘I was reading a book about Stalingrad. You’ve got to hand it to these slab-faced Russians.’
The wind patrolled the silence. The green grass leaned all one way. There were speedboats out in the water plunging and rising, prows high.
‘Oh well, let us proceed, let us explore,’ said William. As they were walking along they came to a seagull’s ravaged body, the skull delicate and fragile, lying among some yellow flowers. The carcass had been gnawed, probably by rats. Its white purity in the cold wind was startling. Its death was one kind of death, thought William with a shudder. Suddenly he placed the seagull’s fragile skull on top of a hillock, and they began to throw stones at it. Donny stood upright, one hand clutching a stone, the other still in his lapel.
‘Have I been successful?’ he asked, after he had thrown the stone.
Allan went over. ‘No,’ he said shortly and took up position. In a frenzy, William threw stone after stone, but missed. It was Allan who finally knocked the seagull’s skull from the knoll.
‘All these years, like David, watching the sheep,’ he admitted modestly.
They walked on and came to the edge of the water on the far side of the island. They were confronted by a seething waste, tumbled rocks, a long gloomy beach, a desert of blue and white ridged waves, a manic wilderness. As they stared into the hostile sea they saw a boat being rowed past by a man with a long white beard who sat in it very upright as if carved from stone. It was very strange and eerie because the man didn’t turn his head at all and didn’t seem to have noticed them. Donny broke the silence with,
‘Ossian, I presume.’
‘Or Columba,’ said Allan.
‘Once,’ said Allan, ‘I was entertaining two friends.’
‘Ladies,’ they both shouted.
‘Let that be as it may,’ said Allan, ‘and may it be as it may. I, after the fourth whisky, looked out the window and there, to my astonishment, was a blanket, white with a border of black stripes, waving about in the air. I need not say that I was alarmed; nor did I draw the attention of the two people I was entertaining to it; nor did they notice it. At first, naturally, I thought it was the D.Ts. But better counsels prevailed, and I thereupon came to the conclusion that it must be the woman above engaged in some domestic activity which entailed the hanging of a blanket out of her window.’
‘It was,’ said Donny, ‘the flag of the Scottish Republic, a blanket with …’ He stopped as the bearded man rowed back the way he had come. They watched the white hair stirred in the cold wind and the man with his upright stance.
‘The horrible man,’ said William suddenly.
‘The thing in itself,’ said Donny.
‘Scotland the Brave,’ said Allan, cleaning his glasses carefully. ‘I remember now,’ said Donny. ‘I saw these two green branches on a tree and, full of leaves, they were dancing about in a breeze just outside my window. I didn’t pay any attention to them at first and then I saw that they were like two duellists butting at each other and then withdrawing, like, say scorpions or snakes, upright, as if boxing. Such venom,’ he concluded, ‘in the green day.’
He added, ‘Another time I was coming home from a dance in a condition of advanced merriment and I was crossing the square, all yellow, as you will know. Thus I came upon a policeman whom I had often seen in sunny daylight. He asked me what I was doing, looking at the shop window, and I returned a short if suitable answer, whereupon he, and his buddy who materialised out of the yellow light like a fairy with a diced cap, rushed me expeditiously up a close and beat me furiously with what is known in the trade as a rubber truncheon. It was,’ he concluded, ‘an eye opener.’
‘Once,’ said William, ‘I saw a horse and it could think. It was looking at me in a calculating way. I got out of there. It was in a field on a cold day.’
They stared in silence at the spray, shivering.
‘There is a man who is supposed to live in a cave,’ said William at last. ‘It must be an odd existence.’
‘Mussels,’ said Donny.
‘Whelks,’ said Allan.
‘All locked up for the night,’ said William.
After a pause he said,
‘Nevertheless, it’s got to be faced.’
‘What?’ said the others.
‘This wilderness. Seas, rocks, animosity, ferocity. These waves all hating us, gnashing their white teeth.’
‘I think,’ said Allan, ‘we should do a Socrates.’
‘Meaning?’ said Donny.
‘Meaning nothing. Irony is not enough any more.’
‘It’s the inhumanness,’ said William, almost in a whisper, feeling what he could not say, that for the waves they themselves didn’t matter at all, any more than the whelks or the mussels.
Donny stood facing the water, his hands at his lapels. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began, ‘Mr Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, guests, hangers-on, attendants, servants, serfs, and tribesmen, I have a few words to say about a revered member of our banking profession: well-known bowler, bridge-player, account-keeper, not to mention the husband of a blushing bride who looks as good as new after clearing her fiftieth hurdle.’
‘You’re right,’ said Allan. ‘He’s right you know, Willie.’
‘Meaning?’
‘He faces it. He faces the chaos. Without dreams, without chaos. Only without chaos is it possible to survive. The plant does not fight itself, neither the tiger nor the platypus.’
‘You