Free On the Island by Iain Crichton Smith

are.” She subsided into silence again and there they stood, the four of them, Iain and his uncle and his mother and his aunt, in the living room of that house which was much better than that of Iain’s mother, and they were frozen momently in time as if the clock had stopped, and poison was running like rivulets from their mouths, while outside the window Iain could see the black bull raising its head, with spittle at its mouth and nostrils, solid in the day.
    His mother got to her feet. “Come on, Iain,” she said.
    â€œAre you going then?” said her brother, as if he were surprised that she was escaping.
    â€œI’m going and I’m not coming back,” said Iain’s mother. And she took Iain by the hand and led him past her brother who was standing in the doorway.
    â€œAll right then,” he shouted, the veins standing out on his forehead. “But I’m telling you he’s a crybaby. And it’s high time you made a man of him.”
    â€œA man like you?” she said, raising her head scornfully.
    â€œYes,” he shouted, “a man like me. I’ve got my own croft. I’m not a beggar.”
    As she was going out the door she raised her hand as if to slap him but then thought better of it and dropped it. Without a word she walked down the path to the gate, somehow succeeding in looking larger than her brother in her draggled clothes.
    â€œWell, now we know where we are,” she said to Iain. As she reached the gate she turned and shouted, “And you can keep your potatoes.” Then the two of them walked away together, her hand still clutching Iain’s hand. When Iain looked at her he saw her proud white face staring straight ahead of her, her back straight as a ruler, her lips clamped tightly together, and her boots, slightly cracked and clayey from the potato field, heavy on the road.

11
    â€œW HAT WAS MY father like?” said Iain one day to his mother as she sat in her chair knitting while Iain sat on the floor with a picture book open in front of him.
    â€œYour father? He was just like anyone else. He was a sailor.”
    â€œWhere did he sail to?”
    â€œHe sailed all over the world.”
    â€œI know, but what places?”
    â€œI can’t remember all the places. I think he was in Australia and New Zealand. But I don’t remember all the places.”
    â€œWas he always a sailor?”
    â€œNo, he wasn’t always a sailor. We lived in Glasgow for a while. He used to be in the gasworks.”
    â€œThe gasworks? What’s that?”
    â€œJust gasworks. Why do you want to know anyway?”
    â€œNothing. It just came into my head. Everyone else talks about their fathers. Petey’s father was in the Navy.”
    Her fingers stopped their knitting and she said, “It’s a long time since your father died. We were living in Glasgow at the time. He caught pneumonia and then he got TB and when they tried to keep the windows open he was always getting up and shutting them. I used to go and visit him. I would get the bus from Sauchiehall Street and I would take it to the hospital. He would sit up in bed and say to me, ‘Another week or two, eh, and I’ll be as good as new. I’ll be out of here. I think I’ll leave the gasworks and go back to the boats. The fresh air will do me good but I’m not having them keep the windows open all the time. All you get is a draught. You don’t get the proper benefit of the air.’ That’s what he used to say, your father.”
    â€œWas he an officer?”
    â€œHe was a bosun and that’s almost as good as an officer. He would bring things home, little presents, and I knew that …” She clamped her lips together as if she had decided not to say whatever she had been going to. “Anyway that was how he died.”
    After a while she said, “He was a good dancer. That was how we met, at a dance. He came up to me and he