Free Wild Geese Overhead by Neil M. Gunn Page A

when you lose that you lose the whole bag of tricks.
    Well, it was worth saying! he concluded, amused again. But with a lingering animosity against those who took life’s central purpose of delight and smothered it, out of fear and self-importance and egotism, and the devil’s thrill of power over others. Each manifestation a form of perversion of the impulse. Therein lay its blasted cunning and appeal. With a swift penetrating insight, he saw how it worked. Even his animosity felt like a snake-bite.
    Don’t talk about sobriety to me! he said. I know every tool in your kit-bag and every trick in your hat!
    But he smoothed his face gravely as he got into the bus. “Good morning,” he greeted his conductress in cold tones. She looked at his eyes as though they surprised her. His left eyelid quivered. “Nice morning, isn’t it?”
    â€œYes,” she said, turning half away to smother her amusement.
    â€œYou finish in the afternoon?”
    â€œOn this shift, yes.”
    â€œI thought you must.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause I don’t see you in the evening.”
    There was nothing she could say to that.
    â€œBit of a corker, isn’t it?”
    â€œWhat’s that?” She lowered her ear.
    â€œI said you had nothing to say to that.”
    â€œTo what?”
    â€œTo the fact that I don’t see you in the evening.”
    â€œOh go on!” she said.
    â€œGo on where? I mean is there a place where…?”
    â€œCome off it!”
    â€œYou ask me to go on and then you ask me to come off. You would have to provide me with a bus all to myself where I could practise.”
    She enjoyed this fooling. It was all in the flash of the eye, the sway of the body, the surprise of the blood in the skin. And the rumbling bus was a chariot.
    Soon he would tell her where he lived, and ask her where she lived, and they would talk simply in a friendly way. For they were simple ordinary folk, he felt, glad to be alive and to call the warmth out of each other, and particularly this strange exciting mirth that was more exhilarating than any wine.
    â€œSo long!” he said, swinging off the bus. She gave him a smile and his fingers went to his buttonhole as if he were going to wear the smile there.
    The streets had not quite the same freshness and wonder they had had yesterday, and in due course Mac paid no attention to him at all. He was aware of a hardening within himself, of a certain cool craftiness. He was not going to be robbed by any one of the jewel smothered in its box!
    He had a glass of beer with Don before lunch. There was a native warmth in that Highlander which he liked. It showed itself at odd moments, particularly when they were together talking.
    There was another international crisis on and Will asked him how he thought things were looking.
    â€œPretty bad,” said Don. “It’ll pass, of course, but it brings the débâcle just one step nearer.”
    â€œWould you be sorry?”
    â€œSometimes—personally—I think I shouldn’t mind. You get worn down by this eternal mess. You begin to feel it would be a change, to do something, anything. Oh, I don’t know. The only thing that sticks in my gizzard is the sheer illogicality of the business. It’s a sort of mass-hypnosis of all the people in the world, a belief that what they all loathe is yet inevitable. It’s a hell of a state.”
    â€œIsn’t it really implicit in the existing system?”
    â€œChange the system and we’ll all be nice fellows? If every country in the world was a true socialist state there would be no war? Quite. But first of all, our country isn’t a socialist state. And secondly, the countries likely to win the war will be the best organized countries militarily. The strongest iron hand will rule the peace. What chance do you see of a true socialism emerging from a war between the present alignment of the