Crouched over, the canister strapped on his back, he swung the nozzle like the blade of a scythe. The spray hissed and stopped, restarted and hesitated like an asthmatic breathing. I had come round by the far end to find him. He was very methodical, making his way towards me as if the big farmer in the sky oversaw his efforts. In shop windows sometimes in Glasgow I would glimpse myself slow plodding as if mired in the glaur of a farm lane; then I would put back my shoulders and march away from the sight picking up my feet as I went.

‘Hold it! You’ll have me sprayed as well.’

He straightened, blinking in slow pleasure.

‘Aye, son.’

Easing the straps, he set the load down off his back. After a stretch luxurious as a yawn he fished with two fingers into his shirt pocket and fetched out a tattered pack of cigarettes.

‘Want one?’

‘You know I don’t.’

He grinned, pleased with himself. The blue smoke paled from his lips. It was warm in the shelter of the hedge watching the wind move through the barley. After a minute, he eased up one leg and let air go.

‘Pardon. I thought you’d have picked up some bad habits by this time.’

‘Like farting,’ I said.

He gave the unexpected laugh that took him sometimes like a giggle when you surprised him with a joke. He was a small man, not up to my shoulder – broad though, a good worker.

‘That wouldnae do, if your professors heard you saying that.’

‘All some of them are worth. It’s a great thought – yon big lecture hall and right at the climax, just when he makes a point – “Shakespeare’s father was fined for his dung heap” – a whole year, hundreds of us, up on one side and giving him a blast.’

‘No’ easy tae get the timing right,’ my father reflected and we laughed and fell into a comfortable silence.

‘A bit o an overlap, mind, wouldnae matter,’ he said and laughed again. He was fond of jokes like that.

‘Decent o that chap giving you a lift home.’

I looked at him thinking he was probing, but that was all he meant. Whoever had given me a lift home had been decent.

‘He was passing this way.’

‘Still . . . Some car. Cost a bob or two.’

‘It was a big car.’

‘I’m glad you’re making that kind of friend.’ He cleared his throat, and gazed intently at the patched blanket of fields thrown across the little hills in front of us. As always, he would never look at you when he was saying something serious. ‘It’s with you being at the University. In my day . . . See, in our day, you never had a chance. You’d no chance.’

I clapped my hands and flights of little birds bickered up into the air.

‘What was that about?’

‘Ach, I got tired o them bobbing up and down and stuffing their stupid faces.’

My father laughed.

‘Auld Robertson’ll never miss what they eat. He can afford it . . . It’s good to have you back. You’re needing the rest.’

‘I’m not staying.’ I didn’t know till that moment that I had decided. ‘I’ll really need to get back. I’ve work to do.’

He cleared his throat.

‘I’d think twice about that, son. It’s up to yourself, of course. You’ve been ill, remember. I mean if it’s the money . . .’

‘Not that kind of work. Nothing heavy. Not real work, just studying. Playing on my backside.’

Still without looking at me, he wondered, ‘Could you not do that at home?’

‘I wouldn’t have the books. They’re too dear to buy. I can work in the library – at the Mitchell or the University. It’s a good time to get the books, being quiet in the summer.’

He sighed out a breath.

‘Aye, well, the studying comes first. I can see you would need tae get back.’

Back. To my good friends with the big cars.

EIGHTEEN

The car rolled to a stop and he said, ‘I leave the main road across there, but you’ll have no bother getting another lift.’ I climbed out and, to prove his truthfulness, he signalled carefully right, turned across the three lanes and slipped out of sight under an arch of branches.

About it being easy to get another lift, he had made a mistake. Cars came fast and showed no inclination to stop. A cluster of three went by like that and then a big Ford trundled along sedately. The driver, an elderly man in glasses, leaned forward to hold my gaze until at the last moment he gave me two fingers and accelerated away.

After that, the entry under the arch of branches on the other side of the road seemed cool and secret. I looked at it while cars snarled past, and then crossed over. Beyond the arch there was a narrow lane sloping sharply down. Under the big intermingled screen of beeches, it would have been easy to miss. In the still air, under the dappled light, it was like going down a tunnel, except that fields showed between the trees on either side, unpleating over little hills. Half way down there was a patch of waste ground and a young couple beside a car making apologetic noises to a tall stooped man with the look of a farmer. As I walked down, they disappeared into the car and began to edge it back and forward trying to turn. I stood aside to give them room and at last they beat a retreat up towards the highway.

‘They didnae understand a word.’ The farmer shook his head at me.

‘They were German,’ I said. ‘At least that’s what the plate on the back said.’

‘Ah couldnae make them understand there’s a bit ground on the far side o the brae would’ve done them fine. They were settan up a tent here – but there’s nae water and God’s plenty o midges.’

Tumbled stones of a ruined but and ben cottage were almost buried among chickweed and dandelions.

‘I’ll sleep here,’ I said. ‘If it’s okay with you.’

‘Ye’ll be eaten alive.’

‘I’m immune to midges.’

The farmer laughed and as he walked away a black dog that had been crouched in the grass sprang up and followed him, looking back at me over its shoulder. When he had gone, I walked up the brae until I found a good site. I unrolled the sleeping bag and lay listening to the burn and eating the last of my chocolate; over and over in the trees behind me, a chaffinch did his run-up-and-bowl song; it sounded sweeter than the ones at home, but like people chaffinches have different dialects; I thought about that and then I thought about sleeping and then I told myself it didn’t matter as long as I rested. A fox barked. Waves kept running up the shore and I came properly awake and it was traffic on the main road and I was out of that night into another day.

‘Ye changed your mind then.’

It was the tall stooped farmer. His face was brown with deeply scored lines in the cheeks.

‘That’s right. I decided against the midges.’

He walked at my side back across the long field.

‘This is the life,’ I said, ‘We could be a million miles from anywhere. We could be on an island out in the middle of the Atlantic.’

‘An island . . .’ He spat into the grass. ‘Ah canna bear the sea. Ah’ve bided here all my days. Except the one time. And ah got all the travellan ah’d ever want oot o that. In a khaki uniform tae the other side o the world. The Japs took us the same day the auld “Prince o Wales” was sunk. This place does me fine – ah’ll no leave it a second time.’

At the top of the slope, we were ambushed by the main road. Container lorries in convoy shook the air and left an ache of silence. ‘Ah don’t regret going. It was a thing that had tae be done. Mind ye,’ he finished with a serious nod, ‘thae three years ruined me.’ I had no answer to that, and he walked back through the washed early morning light with the black dog at heel.

Later in the afternoon, I was going through a village when I heard my name called. ‘This is me at home,’ Donald Baxter said, picking seeds from the pouch of his lower lip. I had thought he lived in an armchair at the Men’s Union, the oldest student in captivity. Despite the plaid shirt open at the neck, his concession to countryside and summer, I suspected the woollen underwear would still be there and all the way down to his ankles. Clutching a bunch of black grapes, he had appeared from a dark little cave of a village store and stood blinking in the sunlight. ‘Back to the big city? Why not?’ he pondered. ‘Any excuse for a party.’ He came back in a clapped out Marina, one wing punched in and gaping from a past collision. As he braked to a violent stop, flakes of blue-daubed rust detached themselves from the injured part. ‘Auntie’s car,’ he said, and somehow that explained what ‘home’ meant and in getting away from there I knew he was doing himself a favour. It was nice not to have to feel grateful. A day-old copy of The Herald was lying on the front passenger seat; as I shifted it to make room for myself, I saw a banner headline telling of murder and a picture of the old politician who had died in the Riggs Lodge Hotel. Glancing, Donald Baxter said, ‘Full of years and dishonour. A treacherous old bastard from a long line of them going back to Flodden. In any decent country of self-respecting Christians, he would have been assassinated long ago.’ Driving one-handed, he groped on the shelf and produced as in a way of celebration a bottle of whisky. We passed the bottle back and forth.