UNDERGRADUATE PAGE
Recuperation
By AUEfREY G. INSCH (Aberdeen University.)
BY five o'clock on Friday it was all over. I had sat my first degree exams. Strangely stupid I drifted out of the Elphinstone Hall. It was all over. A thunder- shower was falling in long, straight rods of rain, beating on the pathways and bouncing up into a grey haze. I leant against the doorway to watch it. Rain coming down—on the passed and on the failed. I buttoned up my blazer and dashed round to the bicycle-shed, rain splashing on my legs. As I cycled back to my digs, I kept my mouth open to catch the rain. I pedalled hard, droning some tune. It was all over. I went home on Saturday in time to unpack before packing once again to go away lot a short holiday on Monday. My father, mother and myself set off in the car along the Moray Firth, into the peaceful warmth of Moray. The Culbin Sands were sleeping beneath the pines, no longer shifting and moving, blown in mad whirls by the wind, forming sand-wreaths and - banks. The roots of the trees have dived deeply into the sand, grasping it greedily as a prospector would clutch at gold. The silence of the forest has replaced the eerie trickling of sand running into your footprints. Beside the River Findhom the yellow broom was growing in unbelievable profusion. The heavy scent filled the air, whilst the brilliant colour made the sunshine seem brighter than it was. Yellow flashed all around. The road twisted between high banks of grass and broom dwarfed by trees in their full June leaf—oaks still carrying a light almost yellow green, beeches with their first young leaves turning darker and copper beeches startling the eye with their unnatural beauty. As we went to Inverness we could see the hills across the Firth taking a definite shape—bluish hills which seem to have caught the lights of the sea and the sky, blended them and flung them back at you. We hurried impatiently through Inverness with its busy, crowded streets. On and on, past Beauly, Dingwall, TaM to Bonar Bridge, where we could say we were at last in Sutherland. Sutherland ! A county of hills, dominated, in the east, by Morven. These hills neither roll nor undulate, but flow and ebb as the waves, stretching on to the horizon, sometimes ruffled by wind into crests but usually advancing steadily. The idea of the sea is increased by the great amount of light pouring from the hills. They have absorbed the sun's rays for centuries, and now their hoard is overflowing. I climbed one of the lesser waves. The higher I went the more hills I saw. Wave upon wave of hills all dashing against Morven. In the midst of them is a green river-valley, almost deserted, but you can see the tumbled remains of crofts and their fields now covered with green grass cropped by unhurried sheep. In Sutherland I found complete peace and rest from exams. Yet even there I had a nervous rush in the morning to buy, borrow or steal a Press and Journal and scan the columns for results. Results, results. Day after day went by—nothing. Was it, perhaps, all a big joke ? For a change the lecturers had engineered a hoax. We had sat an exam for nothing, and the wide sleeves of their gowns were billowing with academic laughter. Or else it had been a bad dream, best forgotten in the freshness of a June morning. My holiday continued. The flat straightness of Caithness emphasised by the thin, flat stones used in building the houses. Wick, Thurso. In Thurso I was cut off from everything. The town has sat down beside the sea and concerned itself with the sea. A road stretches away to Melvich and the west, another to John o' Groats, another to Wick, but they did not intrude. Remote, forgotten, my dream-like existence was nourished by the late arrival of the Press and Journal and its consequent unreality.
Going over to the west coast, I seemed to leave behind all furtive attempts at anxiety. To go into a shop looking for a Press and Journal was like seeking the Scotsman in Vienna. What did it matter anyway ? The mountains held long dis- cussions about the question, their brows veiled by mist that we might not see their ironic expressions. The misty drizzle came down to us in waves, sometimes lifting to let us see a land of an enchanted beauty, lochs and -mountains, tarns and little rocky hillocks. It washed away all past anxiety, leaving me faced with the present one—a narrow, winding single- track road. It lay coiled over the hills, zig-zagging round lochs. lurching down to the sea and climbing giddily up hillsides. At every corner, at every hill—is there something coming ? Cattle ponderously swaying out of the mist, a blast on the horn, change down, chug on. From the top of a hill you might catch a glimpse of the road far below with a bus scram- bling along it.
Bus-drivers bringing tours to the Highlands over narrow, fearsome roads. Reverse into this passing-place, accelerate into that one, whilst the passengers exclaim on the beauty, wonder if they'll ever arrive at the next hotel, and tut-tut the driver if the bus jolts. Some fall asleep. It was worth it. I had my results in the midst of the test. Yet when we reached Garve and the double-track road again, I did feel happier. It was all over. We came back to the east to dream away some sunful days on the Moray Firth. Staying in Rosemarkie we could see a large sweep of coast dominated by high mountains, far away and remote. Sheltered by cliffs we wandered along the shore, seeming to live in some other world. I read detective stories. I revelled in mysterious murders and incriminated watchers; in secret poisons and terrifying ingenuity. French, history, English slipped to the back of my mind and stayed there, only to haunt in the shadows and give me fear in the night-time.
To end our holiday on a note of triumph we went to Rothiemurchus. The peculiar, almost indefinable charm of the place captured me; hills rising out of forests of old pine- trees, long stretches of delicate silver birches throwing their scent to the wind and curtseying their fine branches before the lochs, quickly-falling rivers and slowly-climbing paths, all this framed by massive hills, enormous lumps of rock piled up on every side. They have not the light of Sutherland hills, but can appear as a dark menace one minute, then, lit up by a burst of sunlight, they are soft, gentle hills dozing in the sunshine.
When I arrived home I'd completely set aside my exams, which had aroused too many emotions in me for any of them to last: fear, excitement, doubt and even desire—a longing to come to grips with this enemy, face up to it, shake it and leave it. If I had sat the exams (I was sometimes shot with doubt if I actually had), then that was that. Neither my piety nor my wit could do anything about it. The day after our return I was surprised to read in the paper that I had passed in French. How odd that a list of names should actually contain mine ! But the print was very small; there was prob- ably a mistake . . . . All through the day I kept coming back to the paper for another look, like a criminal to the scene of his crime. Each time panic held me until I found my name. To make doubly sure I checked it in the evening paper. No more French exams ! I could forget the curious antics of past participles conjugated with etre, and the capers of "preceding direct objects." Never again would I sit benumbed in an effort to remember genders. The exceptions, which seemed so exceptional as to qualify for rules, could now sink into nothingness. The irregular subjunctives, the preposi- tions with verbs—everything could go. Life became almost terrifyingly simple as I looked at my long months of holiday The history came out the next day. I had failed. Very few people are honestly content to reap what they have sown. Seed is so little and insignificant; we cannot envisage the harvest. Very regretfully, I had to leave my new history "theory." Always censured whenever my essays had lapsed from analysis into narrative (" Be analytical "), I had decided to steer clear of narrative with a simplicity which was so obvious as to be breath-taking. If I learned no facts, how could I write narrative ? There must be a mistake somewhere. It seems a pity.
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