The instructor nodded. “Yes, Olive will be leader today, everybody. Pansy will be her deputy. And you boys will be the troop. Is everybody happy with that?”

  “Yes,” said Olive quickly. “Everybody’s really happy, Miss Summers.”

  Miss Summers gave a benevolent smile. “That’s really nice, Olive. So, this is the plan: your group is going to go up a hill, and then come down again.”

  Bertie looked out towards the hill behind the camp. It was, he thought, very high, and already there were mists swirling about its summit. Was that almost as high as Everest? Would they have to set up a base camp? He looked at Miss Summers. “By ourselves, Miss Summers?” he asked, trying not to sound nervous.

  Miss Summers laughed. “No, Bertie. I wouldn’t dream of sending anybody up there by themselves. I’ll be coming with you.”

  “With an ice axe?” asked Ranald Braveheart Macpherson.

  Miss Summers seemed to find this most amusing. “No, Ranald. That won’t be necessary. I think that hill is probably barely a thousand feet high. There’s no ice up there. But don’t worry, I shall be with you every step of the way. Olive will be leader, but I’ll be with you just to make sure that everything is all right.”

  They were all told to go off to their tents to collect their sweaters and the water bottles with which they had been issued the previous evening. “Then we’ll all meet at the gate in ten minutes,” instructed Miss Summers. “Does everybody understand?”

  There were nods all round, and ten minutes later Bertie, Ranald Braveheart Macpherson, Olive, Pansy, and the two boys from Lanark were all waiting by the gate that marked the beginning of the hill track.

  Miss Summers, though, was not there. She had received a telephone call from her frail aunt in St Andrews and was busy making domestic arrangements. This took longer than anticipated, and after the children had been waiting for fifteen minutes, Olive clapped her hands and made an announcement.

  “We’re going to start all by ourselves,” she said. “I’ve got a map and I’m the leader. So, we’re going to start.”

  Bertie looked doubtful. “Do you think we should, Olive?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Olive. “I’ve made an executive decision, Bertie, and so you can just shut up. We’re going.”

  47

  Vigils

  Bruce had awoken shortly after four, when the first rays of the sun had penetrated the shutter-boards of his window. In those latitudes there is little darkness in the small hours of the morning, and claims that one might read the Inverness Courier outside at two in the morning are by no means apocryphal. The question of whether one might wish to read a newspaper at that time and in those conditions is another matter, but it is certainly possible. For Bruce, though, any thought of reading a newspaper, even in the cold light of day, seemed unattractive – even pointless. He had come to Pluscarden not to immerse himself in the world and its problems, but to abstract himself from them in order to find something that, until that point – or, to be precise, until the point that he was struck by lightning on Dundas Street – was lacking. His life, he realised, had been empty. He had tried to fill it with a social whirl – one in which young women vied with one another to be with him at the parties at Prestonfield House, in the fashionable bars of the Edinburgh New Town, on the three-day breaks to Reykjavik or Berlin – and he had succeeded in that project, in so far as what was really a complete failure can be regarded as a success. And it was all failure, he now felt – every moment of it was dust in his mouth, because it meant nothing. He had been diverted by it – yes, that was so – but he now knew that he had been chasing after an ignis fatuus – no more than that.

  As a guest in the abbey, he was under no obligation to attend the services that punctuated the monastic day – guests could, if they wished, sleep in while the monks began their devotions – but Bruce was there in the chapel for Vigils, technically a Night Office notwithstanding the first appearance of the sun. There was one other guest, another early riser, a young man from Aberdeen, a fisherman, whom Bruce had met the day before and with whom he had had a brief conversation. This young man was wearing a grey garment, a hoodie, that he had pulled up over his head, a street garment that here, in this particular setting, seemed like a monastic cowl. He had greeted Bruce with a nod of the head, but neither had spoken, as it had been impressed on them that silence was expected in most of the monastic areas of the abbey.

  The monks entered the chapel, white-clad figures taking their seats in the rows of stalls set aside for them. There was a calm timelessness about their movement: this was something that happened at the same fixed points of every day, no matter the season; something that required no practice, no choreography. It was like a tide that one might see on the shore: eternal, fixed.

  And then they began to chant, guided by a chord played on the organ. The psalmody followed its appointed musical intervals, rising and falling within a narrow compass, the sound of something that had been performed in such settings for centuries, unaltered by fashion, surviving all the uncertainties of human life: wars, oppression, and times when love and kindness had been threatened by the busy doings of Hate.

  Nobody who sat in that place could be unmoved, and Bruce now closed his eyes and let the Gregorian chant embrace him. He thought: how can I have been so wrong about everything? How can I have been so selfish, so absorbed in myself, so vain? How can I have believed that material things would make me, or anybody else for that matter, any happier?

  It was a moment of conversion, as radical and as complete as when an item of clothing is dipped into a vat of dye and comes out a completely different colour. He did not believe in anything that he had not believed in half an hour before this moment: Bruce wanted to be seized by faith, even if he was still unconvinced of the literal truth of what was on offer in this place – that story still seemed inherently unlikely to him – but he felt entirely different.

  He sat quite still throughout the saying of the Office. When the last notes of the chanting had died away and the monks had retreated from the chapel, he rose from his seat, nodded in the direction of the young fisherman, and made his way out into the field on the other side of the abbey. This was a paddock in which sheep were grazing – ewes with their growing lambs – and they now looked at him with the balefulness of animals disturbed at forage, before returning to their grazing. One or two bleated to reassure their offspring. “Don’t worry,” said Bruce. “I’m not going to harm you.”

  He walked across the grass, heading for the far side of the field, and then turned round to make his way back to the abbey. Just outside the purlieu of the main building, separated from the abbey by a line of trees, was a vegetable garden, at the end of which several lengthy growing tunnels marked the edge of the cultivated land.

  Bruce decided to explore the garden. Brother Gregory had spoken to him about the possibility of his working on the land, and Bruce had quickly accepted. He liked digging, and he thought that here, at last, he could put to use all those hours he had spent in the gym in Edinburgh. It had been vanity that had driven him to those long sessions with the weights and on the running machine, but now he would use the muscle built up to do something useful.

  He walked past neatly ordered beds of salad vegetables. Lettuces of various shapes and sizes stretched out in long lines, the soil around them weeded and finely raked. Then there were rows of peas and beans, supported by a scaffolding of canes; and cabbages, nibbled at by caterpillars but still generous in their profusion; and bed upon bed of herbs: rosemary, thyme, parsley, sage, chives in purple flower; and there were Jerusalem artichokes, too, proliferating like weeds.

  And then a long bed of what he thought were onions. He bent down to examine the legend on the stake that had been driven into the ground at the edge of the first bed of this crop. Garlic.

  48

  Rust on Garlic

  Bruce surveyed the garlic plants. He had never seen it growing before: garlic, in his experience, came wrapped in cellophane or worked into neatly-plaited strings. But of course it had to grow somehow, and this was it, these rather unexpected tall shoots that, had he not seen the label, he would have probably taken for large onions. The shoots were, for the most part, green, but here and there they had browned. One or two of the plants, those on the edge of the first bed, had yellowed, as if starved of water, even if the plants around them were still green.

  He had been unaware of the presence of anybody else in the garden, but now he heard a voice, and he turned round, startled. It was a man in a set of brown overalls, ripped at the knees. He was carrying a gardening fork.

  “I’m worried about that,” the man said, nodding in the direction of the garlic plants. “Some of them seem to have rust.”

  Bruce followed the man’s gaze. It was the yellowed plants that concerned him.

  “Rust?”

  The man nodded. “There’s not much you can do – other than to cut off the affected parts. Then you hope that you’ve nipped it in the bud. Otherwise…”

  Bruce waited.

  “Otherwise, it takes over, and the whole plant gets it. It’s not a complete disaster, of course. You still get a good enough crop, and the garlic will taste just as good. But the bulbs won’t be as large.”

  “I see.”

  The man stepped forward. “Let me show you.” He bent down to uproot one of the yellowed plants. It came away easily, the bulb surrounded by earth that he brushed away with his bare hands. “See?”

  He twisted the exposed bulb away from the shoots and showed it to Bruce. “Not bad,” he said. “But it would have been almost twice the size if it weren’t for the rust. Such a shame. The abbot likes his garlic. I don’t like giving him these smaller bulbs – not that he ever complains. They don’t, you know. These monks don’t complain about anything.”

  Bruce smiled. “I imagine that’s true.”

  The man gave him a quizzical look. “You’re on retreat?” he asked. “Or just visiting?”

  Bruce hesitated. He was not sure of his exact status, and so he said, “Visitor. Maybe more.”

  The man’s stare became more intense. “Maybe more? Thinking longer term, then?”

  Bruce did not want to presume. “Perhaps,” he said. “I wanted to experience it.”

  The man nodded. “I’m Jimmy, by the way.”

  Bruce introduced himself, and then asked, “You’re not one of the brothers, then?”

  Jimmy laughed. “Heavens, no. I have a wife down there.” He tossed his head in the direction of Elgin. “They don’t take you if you have a wife in the background. But they do let you help, which is what I do. I’ve been helping them in this garden for twelve years now – ever since I left the RAF.”

  Bruce raised an eyebrow. “You were a pilot?”

  Jimmy shook his head. “Military police. The RAF has people like me to look after their planes and keep order about the place. That’s what I did.” He paused. “And then I developed a bit of arthritis and they offered me ill-health retirement. I took it and decided to stay in the area – I was at Lossiemouth, you see – just up the road. There’s a base there.”

  “So now you help the brothers?”

  “Yes.” Jimmy smiled. “Are you a Catholic, Bruce?”

  Bruce shook his head. “No. But they don’t seem to mind. In fact, they didn’t ask me.”

  “They don’t,” said Jimmy. “They’re very…what’s the word? Ecumenical, I think. They’re very open. They have all sorts of people coming to stay here. People who don’t believe in anything. Everyone.”

  “It’s all the same, I suppose,” said Bruce. “It’s all about the same feeling, don’t you think? Even those who don’t believe in anything may still feel that there’s something…not to believe in.”

  Jimmy smiled. “I’ll have to think about that, but maybe you’re right. In my case, I just came round here one day – to see the place – and I found myself talking to one of the monks. He was a very nice man – he went down to England a few years ago, to a house they have there – and he showed me the gardens and said that they found it a bit hard to keep them going in the state they’d like them to be in, and one thing led to another. I offered to come and give them a hand, and I’ve been doing it since then. These are good men, Bruce, and I was glad that I was able to help them. They don’t ask for much.”

  “I don’t imagine they do,” agreed Bruce. He thought of the breakfast he was yet to have. It would be light, they said.

  Jimmy dusted the last traces of soil from the garlic bulb. He held it up and began to peel off the outer skin. “You’ll see that it’s healthy inside. Look. See? Beautiful.”

  He prised out a single clove, removing the papery skin surrounding it. “There. Inside. Isn’t it miraculous?”

  Bruce looked at the small bulb of ivory.

  “I never get over the miracle,” said Jimmy. “Each time I pick something. Beans. Apples. Chard. Garlic. Anything that grows is a miracle in its way. Or a mystery, perhaps.”

  “Plant genetics,” said Bruce.

  Jimmy shook his head. “Oh yes, plant genetics. But if you look at plant genetics, you’re only taking it back one level. And then can’t you find yourself saying exactly the same thing? Saying that it’s a miracle?”

  “I don’t know if that helps,” said Bruce.

  “Perhaps not,” said Jimmy. “But that’s what I still think. I look up at night – on a clear night – and I see stars that go on and on. And I think of how we’re a tiny, insignificant little dot in a universe that’s only one of millions of universes. And then I look down at the earth we stand upon and think how small it is, and how…how beautiful. And I think: how can we possibly be fighting one another, when we’re just so small and insignificant, and I can find no answer to that, and so I come back here and plant things and make them grow because…because that’s what you have to do if you don’t know any of the answers to the big questions.” He paused. “You ever read Albert Camus? He said something like that, you know. He put it better than I do, of course…” Jimmy laughed. “But then he was French, you see.” He paused again. “Il faut cultiver son jardin.”

  He looked at Bruce. “Of course, that was Voltaire.”

  Then he stopped, and looked at Bruce with sudden concern. “You’re crying.”

  Bruce wiped at his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s onions that make you cry, you know, not garlic.”

  “I know. I know.”

  49

  Lion-tamers, Change, Truth

  That morning, as Bruce stood in the vegetable garden at Pluscarden talking to Jimmy about garlic and growth and French philosophers, in the house at Nine Mile Burn Matthew was struggling to dress Tobermory, Rognvald and Fergus. It was an almost impossible task, as no sooner did he get one garment onto one of the boys and turn to clothe the next, than the first one would wander off, half-clad, to do something else, and would have to be hauled back for the donning of further clothes. And even when shirts and shorts had been located and put on, there would be the question of shoes, which were never in the right place, or were unevenly matched, with the result that three left shoes would be found with one right shoe, or vice versa. On the average day, preparing the triplets for any outing took at least twenty minutes, which was quite long enough for even the most patient of parents to lose his or her temper and end up shouting at a recalcitrant small boy.

  Fortunately, James was due to come on duty, and when he did, the whole business became much more efficient. Now he took over, and succeeded in getting the boys to co-operate without so much as raising his voice. Matthew watched in complete admiration.

  “I don’t know how on earth you do it,” he complimented James. “I imagine that lion-taming would be easier than getting these three to stand still for two minutes.”

  James laughed. “I went to a circus in France once,” he said. “I was just thirteen. They had two lions. You could have wild animals in French circuses until very recently. Now they’re illegal.”

  “And a good thing too,” said Matthew. “I don’t like the idea of forcing animals to perform for people. It’s humiliating. Cruel.”

  “I agree,” said James. “But at thirteen or whatever I didn’t think that. I just remember being thrilled by the sight of the lions. I remember the lion-tamer quite vividly. He had a superb French moustache – you know the sort – twirled up at the end. And one eye.”

  “And a whip?”

  “Yes. A whip. Top hat. The works.”

  “And the lions?”

  “They were very moth-eaten. They roared when he cracked his whip at them, but they seemed really bored with proceedings. And I noticed a really odd thing: one of the lions also only had one eye. I didn’t spot it at first, but then he jumped off a stool that he was being made to sit on and ran round the edge of the bars around the ring. I had a good view of him and I saw that on one side there was just an empty socket.”

  “What a poignant image,” said Matthew. “This lion-tamer…”

  James interrupted him. “He looked so sad. I noticed it and I felt so sorry for him. I remember thinking – even though, as I say, I was only thirteen – that he looked totally discouraged. At that age you think that most adults are happy with what they do, but I remember thinking this man is unhappy.”

  “Perhaps he knew that it was all coming to an end,” said Matthew. “Perhaps he knew that the writing was on the wall for lion-tamers and that his career was almost over. What do you do if you’ve trained as a lion-tamer and then, suddenly, thanks to—”

  “It was President Macron,” said James, “He was the one who brought about the ban.”

  “All right, so you think, Thanks to President Macron, it’s all coming to an end. You might be expected to feel sad.”