A Son of the Rock

The Women’s Press, 1991, 267 p.

This is a collection of Elphinstone’s short prose works. As usual with Elphinstone the writing is accomplished.

The Green Man. An Art teacher with some romantic disappointments and reasonably unsuccessful exhibitions behind her is walking the disused Dumfries to Stranraer railway line when she comes across an unusual dome-shaped green tent at the lochside near Lochskerrow Halt. Its occupant is a green man, possibly from an alien planet (his tent is not a spaceship, but his culture is other-worldly) who seems able to read her thoughts. Nevertheless their conversation is at cross purposes and frustrating. However, she does not feel threatened by him and agrees to return the next day. She finds herself attracted to him and the inevitable happens. Yet she doesn’t go back again. Her experience feeds into her artwork and her paintings become desirable. When the Loch Skerrow location is identified by one viewer she realises she has put the green man in danger.

Islands of Sheep. A middle-aged academic who has seemingly been unable to sustain relationships with the various women in his life has moved into a bungalow on the Cambridgeshire fens with an ancient mulberry tree in the garden and a view towards a low ridge that was once an island. He takes in as a tenant a young attractive woman psychologist, whom he has difficulty in understanding. As the tale comes towards its end he experiences hallucinations, symptoms of a nervous breakdown.

Conditions of Employment delves into the Matter of Britain. A relatively young jobless woman despairing at her lot in life throws rocks into a stream in her anguish. A few days later she sees a post as a Well Guardian advertised at her local Job Centre. She goes along to the unusual location for the interview. As Well Guardian she finds herself giving advice to people with minor skin complaints or other medical requirements. She also encounters the Watcher of the Sleepers who wants to know if it is the time of danger enough to wake those asleep under Cairnsmore Hill.

The Cold Well features the permanent Guardian of the Well, Oddny, who, at her antlered folkloric counterpart’s request, travels across a stretch of sea to try to undo the source of the sickness affecting the local deer. Reading between the lines, that source is Sellafield.

An Apple From a Tree. The events of this are narrated by a woman to her lover some months after they supposedly took place.  She was in a stand of beech trees in the Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh when an apple fell on her. Biting into it she was suddenly transported to a grassy plain where stood a naked woman, who (later) gives her name as Nisola. Shortly her male companion arrived. Nisola was as discomfited by our narrator – especially her clothes – as she was herself. After some confused discussion Nisola bit the apple and they were transported to Edinburgh. Cue toing and froing trying to ameliorate Nisola’s nakedness, before they work out a solution that will serve both. There are irresistible echoes here of the tale of Adam and Eve.

A Life of Glory is narrated by a disembodied consciousness roaming the universe and looking down on the affair of a couple – one from Edinburgh the other from Colorado – with whom the narrator eventually becomes intimately entangled.

Pedant’s corner:- “Aren’t I allowed to have any secrets?” (She’s Scottish; she would say ‘Amn’t I?’) “would have been mowed smooth” (would have been mown smooth,) “with him arm around (with his arm around,) an unindented new paragraph, “supplicants” (previously the spelling suppliant had been used,) almanack (usually spelled ‘almanac’,) seelings (context suggests ‘seedlings’.) Plus points for die as the singular of dice.