The Big Music by Kirsty Gunn

out towards the hills where he may be. ‘What have you done?’

    Well.
    Margaret.
    No point in thinking about Margaret now. What she might say. How she may consider him. What she may think.
    For Margaret …
    He can have no thoughts about her now. No thoughts. Of that low and lovely voice of hers. Of the things she might say.
    For ‘Hush’ is all he must think now, against her voice, against all the voices, all of them. And –
    Faster. Further. Up the way, the path. To step again, and another step. On, and on and up again –
    ‘For they’re coming, Johnnie.’
    They’ll be close by.
    Right up there behind him with the dogs and coming hard.
    ‘Coming after you.’
    From the first thing this morning when they knew that he was gone. With the glasses played across the hill and Iain’s eye wanting, wanting to be upon him, and the gun at his side.
    ‘So be faster than they are. Be further away.’
    With every footstep. Every breath.
    Because it doesn’t matter, none of it, not to him.
    ‘Old Johnnie.’
    It doesn’t matter.
    Because they still don’t know, do they? About the boulder and the path that’s like a deer path going down into the crevice of the other hill, sitting in the lee of Mhorvaig and with a lost valley there and in it, tucked away, his secret. The private, private place.
    ‘They still don’t know about that, do they, Johnnie?’
    And any minute, he thinks …
    Any second …
    Once the boulder’s there, once he sees it, that’ll be him. He’ll be up and over where no one could spy him or follow. Not a mother with a scent for her child. Not a man with the dogs and a gun.
    He turns, and heads now towards this last part, up the fast steep way across the high side. Because fast and fleet he can make these last steps, for this last climb, up and hard … And so he stumbles, a slide of fresh wetfrom the rain, and no coat on but just the thin shoes … And so outcrops of rock are jutting and with the wet they could be like knives – and they’re behind him now, behind him and they’re close …
    The music’s still counting for him, after all. And it will carry the story along even if he stumbles on the path. It will keep him strong. Despite them all after him, Helen screaming in the air and that tune of hers wanting to take him over to pull him back – still he’s got his ‘B’ to ‘E’, that stubborn’ness of him and thrawn, and the ‘F’ to the ‘G’ and the ‘F’ to the ‘A’, that sequence too, he has that too, the music trying to release itself, to let something new come in, enter, one note, and another, and another, to climb back again into the theme as a lightness, a relief, but the theme he’s laid down won’t allow it, the scale won’t allow it.
    And Iain …
    Forget about Iain. He wasn’t born here. Was not a boy here. He has no knowledge of the hill. For all his gun and his shot he has nothing of this place in him while Johnnie … He’s everywhere upon it. There’s not a way or dent in the heather he doesn’t know or plan for and remember. The very stones are like a path. And he can put more distance between himself and the House by imagination if he needs to, more than footsteps can do, for he’s all-powerful here, he’s all strength and knowledge and he’s wise. So move on!
    Though the dogs might be coming, because there’s the sound of them now …
    Quick footsteps on the beaten, shiny path! And faster again! Further again! And as though to hasten him this second the weather clears a little, opens up. The sky lightens. He takes a big step up the path, and clears it. Another few seconds and here’s a patch of blue about him, a sudden bit of sun. The day thinning out, the weather, and it’s fair again, it will be, and he’ll look ahead and the boulder will be there and –
    though the dogs are getting louder –
    no one knows about his path, only him. Only Johnnie. It’s his own secret from a long time ago after his father had died and he came back to his