Free On the Island by Iain Crichton Smith Page B

watching the boats sail up and down the loch. When he would come home at night he would start singing Loch Lomond , you know, the song.” And her lips suddenly softened as if she were hearing her husband’s voice as he stood in the kitchen in their tenement singing,

    â€œWhere me and my true love will never meet again
On the bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.”

    But of course she would never sing herself, she had never sung a song in her life and she wasn’t going to start now, at her age.
    Iain turned another page of his picture book and said, “Maybe he was in New York too.”
    â€œHe might have been,” said his mother, who after her moment of becalmment had gone back to her knitting. “Everyone liked your father. Only … But it doesn’t matter. And you tell your friends that he was a bosun. He was always a good seaman.”
    Iain sat happily on the floor thinking about his father. His image of him was that of a sailor shouting orders to his men while they rushed about all over the decks or hauled at sails as the breeze propelled the ship through the hissing water on its way to the East. “Come on then, lads,” his father would shout to them, “get a move on there.” Kindly but firm, but able to deal with any of them if they became cheeky. “You know, my lad, that you have to take your orders like anyone else. Five lashes for him. We must have discipline on board this ship.” Sometimes in a strange way his father’s face faded into that of his mother and then became itself again.
    â€œHe loved children,” said his mother. “He would tell them stories and when you were a baby he would take you on his shoulders and show you off to people. He would say, ‘This boy is going to be far better than me. He won’t waste his life as I did.’ And then he would laugh and …” She fell silent again and then began to speak in quite a different voice. “But it’s true just the same. He didn’t think about anything really, not about food or rent or furniture or anything like that. He left all that to me. He left you to me as well. What he said about you was true in a way.”
    â€œWhat did he say, Mother?”
    â€œOh, nothing. He didn’t say anything. He liked children, that was what I was saying.”
    I am Jim Hawkins and my father is captain of the good ship, the Hispaniola , and we are in search of treasure. My father can handle Long John Silver all right. To the hold with him and keep him there till he learns some sense. He’s got to be disciplined. Don’t give him food or water for three days. And then his father would shout, “Keep her going boys. Keep her on course. Steady as you go, you lubbers.”
    â€œHe died a brave death, they said,” his mother remarked, broodingly bent over her knitting. “The nurses told me that. His last words were, ‘Shut that window, will you?’ So they said. And the people in the tenement took a collection and gave me the money. That was a long time ago. They came into the house, six of them, and they pressed the money into my hand. They didn’t wait for tea or anything. That must be, oh nine years ago. You were two at the time and Kenneth was one. Oh well, this won’t do.”
    And she put the knitting away, got to her feet, and put the kettle on. “You’d better run to the shop and get some sugar.” She counted out the pennies to him, and he ran down to the plank and then at full speed along the road towards the shop. She stood at the window watching him and thinking, I hope he won’t turn out like his father. But while she was thinking that she was also thinking, I loved him and I miss him. She stared at Iain’s diminishing figure till eventually like a small boat he disappeared over the horizon of the brae.

12
    E VERY MORNING I AIN used to go to buy the milk from a woman called Big Dollag who lived with her two sons