A Field Full of Folk Read Online Free PDF

hands lay helplessly on his knees, and the minister thought, “Here is a man who can make a chair or a table or a wardrobe and he does not know what is happening to him. Is the world run by the devil then? Is he joking with us?” And the devil appeared in his mind, inscrutable and suave as a travelling salesman.
    He rose from his chair and said, “I just wanted to see how you were. That was why I came. If you need any help …” And his voice trailed away but Murray had ceased to listen to him.
    â€œI’m very sorry,” said the minister again. In the old days he would have prayed aloud for the two of them but he didn’t feel like praying today.
    The two little girls were playing outside the door when he left, taking the path along the stream. Here he stood and watched two small boys fishing patiently for trout and bending down in the slant rays of the sun. That must be the … No, one of them was Flora’s son, Alisdair, and the other was Hugh, the butcher’s son. In the blaze of sun they were netted as if they themselves were the trout. Their voices echoed towards him like chimes from his own youth, We twa hae paiddlt i’ the burn, he thought radiantly and regretfully, frae morning sun til dine. Now and again as he watched them they would plunge their hands into the stream and raise them again empty. How can I not feel, he asked himself, how can I not feel anything? The rowan trees are behind them with their red berries and yet I cannot feel anything. I see the two of them only as the repetitions of their parents as if the world were being typed out on carbon paper by a God who wielded the machine with effortless ease. Their voices echoed back to him for they were completely lost in their own concerns. He did not wish to disturb them, they appeared so innocent. And then, as he watched them, they began suddenly to fight about some obscure business of their own. They threw water in each other’s faces which were suddenly swollen with rage and then as quickly as they had flared up they calmed down again and were fishing quietly in the stream once more. He raised his eyes to the hill above them whose sides were indented with the dry beds of streams. He was like a lost psalmist whose body was feeling the thorns. Then he saw one of the boys, Alisdair, holding up a small fish which glittered in the sun and the two of them were rushing away from the stream, their little legs flashing past the rowan trees which glowed in the autumn day. It was as if part of himself followed them but not with feeling, rather with conscious regret.
    â€œI cannot go on like this,” he thought, “I cannot. How can I live this lie? What should I have said to Murray the joiner? Should I not have wept with him rather than spoken. What Murray required was companionship, his grief to be shared by others.”
    The minister looked down at his feet where a small plump snail with tiny black aerials had come to a halt in the sun. What is your purpose, he asked it. What are you doing here? Would the world be any different if you did not exist? What for that matter difference would it make if either little Hugh or Alisdair did not exist? The stream was an intricacy of sun and it blazed and flashed at him like a loom, and the hill above it cast a perfect replica of itself into the water like a transparency which had once been imprinted on his wrist.
    He walked on. Mrs Berry was as usual working in her garden, bent over her flowers.
    â€œIt’s a fine day,” he said, raising his hat.
    â€œIt is that,” she replied. Now there was a woman he admired. She had lost her husband, she lived alone, and yet she showed absolute firmness in the face of eternity.
    â€œCoal is expensive now,” he remarked, looking at the pile of fuel she had outside the house.
    â€œThat’s right,” she said. There were mounds of sticks lying beside the coal as if she expected to live forever, and yet she