Prick of Conscience by Ronald Mackay
Kathleen raised a plump hand. “Miss? How is it wrong to copy from your neighbour when you don’t know the right answer?”
Like most of us in Scotland, then, Kathleen used “How?” to ask “Why?”.
Some pupils giggled at her challenge to conventional wisdom.
“Your conscience, Kathleen! Your conscience tells you it’s wrong!” Miss Goodfellow was kind to the quick and the slow alike.
“Listen to me, class!” Dutifully, we straightened backs and clasped hands on desktops to signal our attention. “Inside here,” our primary school teacher tapped her head, “is your conscience and inside your conscience there’s a wee spiked marble.”
Eyes widened.
“When you are tempted to transgress, these tiny spikes prick your conscience. The discomfort tells you that what you are about to do is wrong.”
Kathleen frowned. Miss Goodfellow continued.
“If you ignore the pain once, if you make a habit of ignoring it, these tiny spikes wear out.” She paused to make eye contact with the most wayward. “Eventually the marble is worn smooth. Then there’s no spikes to tell you right from wrong.”
The pupils seated at the back, nodded obediently. Those in front, shifted uneasily. The middle rows nodded, hoping to win approval.
I shared Kathleen’s perplexity. If my conscience could prick me into doing the right thing, what was stopping it from telling me why the alternative was wrong? Wouldn’t it be easier to spell out the principle that makes an action wrong so I could apply a simple rule the next time I might be tempted? Less discomfort than having a prickly ball rattling around in my head!
The exasperation on Kathleen’s face reflected the complicated world we pre-adolescents were expected to thrive in.
**********
“What are we going to do?”
Sandy and I had taken half an hour to bicycle from Dundee to Barnhill on the north bank of the estuary of the River Tay. Barnhill was home to the great 19th century mansions built by bold entrepreneurs who had risked all to make fortunes shipping jute from the Ganges Delta and lumber from Archangel.
That Sandy looked to me for leadership was perhaps why we had been friends and cycling companions since we’d acquired bikes. He was no blind follower, however, and I no despot. If either of us came up with a proposal that strained our moral boundaries, one of us would object, then we’d discuss it and arrive at a solution guaranteed to protect our level of comfort.
“We’re going to scrump apples!” That preposterous proclamation was out of my mouth even before my brain had formulated the intention.
The previous day, I’d learned the verb ‘to scrump’. It meant to steal apples from others’ trees. Although we’d occasionally gathered pocketsful of windfalls from farm orchards, we’d never given that act of boyish bravado such a deliciously wicked name. The sonorous “Scrump!” raised a mere mischief to the stature of plundering the Spanish Main.
“What does ‘scrump’ mean?” Sandy’s ignorance justified my superior command. A middling student, he had left school at 15 two years previously, as the less academically-gifted did, and had articled as a management apprentice with the Eagle Jute Mills. Given my higher academic performance, I had opted to stay on at school for another three years with the expectation of ‘doing better’. His ignorance of the term ‘scrump’ and my ability to explain it seemed to confirm the fitness of the divergent paths directed by the educational system we shared.
“‘Scrump’ means to climb over the wall of a mansion and steal apples from the orchard.” I offered the explanation with as much bravado as I could muster, entirely confident of Sandy’s opposition to such villainy.
The great mansions of Barnhill attracted us every autumn but all we dared to do was to stand below the high walls surrounding secluded grounds and wait for ripe chestnuts to fall, splitting in shiny splendour on the quiet road. We’d pounce on the biggest, thread a dozen on a string, and take turns at attempting to smash each other’s ‘conquers’ as we called them. Each success added a score of one to the winner. As our remaining conquers dried and hardened, we’d increasingly prize the one that had destroyed the greatest number of opponents. Modern-day jousting, it was, sans horse, sans lance, sans physical injury and, most importantly in frugal Scotland’s post-War days, sans expense.
“We’ll do it. We’ll scrump apples!” Sandy’s enthusiastic approval took me by surprise.
We were the kind of boys who did not climb mansion walls to raid orchards. Other than pocketing a few rotting windfalls from a farm-yard – which didn’t really count as pilfering because of the danger of being stung by wasps – we were well-behaved. Now, I was in a predicament. Here was Sandy, a bank-manager’s son, suggesting we should breach the sacred security of the walled estates of the Barnhill mansions to engage in plunder!
“You have the best ideas, Ron!” Sandy beamed approval, worsening my quandary.
His words reminded me that the suggestion was mine alone; that he was merely responding to my initiative, following my leadership. Worse, he was praising me for suggesting an enterprise that was already beginning to prick my conscience.
How was I to handle this dilemma? I could retract my suggestion thereby admitting my foolhardiness or I could accept Sandy’s support and together, ride boldly into action. My moral predicament was all the more serious since he, by opting out of school at 15, had admitted academic defeat whereas I had shown myself equal to the challenge of performing better.
My reckless words and our contrasting circumstances had deposited onto my shoulders a leadership that I neither wanted nor warranted. Our relationship had suddenly become perilously lopsided. Sandy had formally acknowledged that I was now the leader, he merely the follower.
“You really want to?” I asked hoping that his laughing: “Of course not!” would give me an honourable way out.
“Scrump apples? Sure, I want to!” Sandy had been seduced by the sonorous word, just as I had.
The wee spiked ball inside my conscience was rattling about uncontrollably, causing me unbearable discomfort.
Sandy and I had taken half an hour to bicycle from Dundee to Barnhill on the north bank of the estuary of the River Tay. Barnhill was home to the great 19th century mansions built by bold entrepreneurs who had risked all to make fortunes shipping jute from the Ganges Delta and lumber from Archangel.
That Sandy looked to me for leadership was perhaps why we had been friends and cycling companions since we’d acquired bikes. He was no blind follower, however, and I no despot. If either of us came up with a proposal that strained our moral boundaries, one of us would object, then we’d discuss it and arrive at a solution guaranteed to protect our level of comfort.
“We’re going to scrump apples!” That preposterous proclamation was out of my mouth even before my brain had formulated the intention.
The previous day, I’d learned the verb ‘to scrump’. It meant to steal apples from others’ trees. Although we’d occasionally gathered pocketsful of windfalls from farm orchards, we’d never given that act of boyish bravado such a deliciously wicked name. The sonorous “Scrump!” raised a mere mischief to the stature of plundering the Spanish Main.
“What does ‘scrump’ mean?” Sandy’s ignorance justified my superior command. A middling student, he had left school at 15 two years previously, as the less academically-gifted did, and had articled as a management apprentice with the Eagle Jute Mills. Given my higher academic performance, I had opted to stay on at school for another three years with the expectation of ‘doing better’. His ignorance of the term ‘scrump’ and my ability to explain it seemed to confirm the fitness of the divergent paths directed by the educational system we shared.
“‘Scrump’ means to climb over the wall of a mansion and steal apples from the orchard.” I offered the explanation with as much bravado as I could muster, entirely confident of Sandy’s opposition to such villainy.
The great mansions of Barnhill attracted us every autumn but all we dared to do was to stand below the high walls surrounding secluded grounds and wait for ripe chestnuts to fall, splitting in shiny splendour on the quiet road. We’d pounce on the biggest, thread a dozen on a string, and take turns at attempting to smash each other’s ‘conquers’ as we called them. Each success added a score of one to the winner. As our remaining conquers dried and hardened, we’d increasingly prize the one that had destroyed the greatest number of opponents. Modern-day jousting, it was, sans horse, sans lance, sans physical injury and, most importantly in frugal Scotland’s post-War days, sans expense.
“We’ll do it. We’ll scrump apples!” Sandy’s enthusiastic approval took me by surprise.
We were the kind of boys who did not climb mansion walls to raid orchards. Other than pocketing a few rotting windfalls from a farm-yard – which didn’t really count as pilfering because of the danger of being stung by wasps – we were well-behaved. Now, I was in a predicament. Here was Sandy, a bank-manager’s son, suggesting we should breach the sacred security of the walled estates of the Barnhill mansions to engage in plunder!
“You have the best ideas, Ron!” Sandy beamed approval, worsening my quandary.
His words reminded me that the suggestion was mine alone; that he was merely responding to my initiative, following my leadership. Worse, he was praising me for suggesting an enterprise that was already beginning to prick my conscience.
How was I to handle this dilemma? I could retract my suggestion thereby admitting my foolhardiness or I could accept Sandy’s support and together, ride boldly into action. My moral predicament was all the more serious since he, by opting out of school at 15, had admitted academic defeat whereas I had shown myself equal to the challenge of performing better.
My reckless words and our contrasting circumstances had deposited onto my shoulders a leadership that I neither wanted nor warranted. Our relationship had suddenly become perilously lopsided. Sandy had formally acknowledged that I was now the leader, he merely the follower.
“You really want to?” I asked hoping that his laughing: “Of course not!” would give me an honourable way out.
“Scrump apples? Sure, I want to!” Sandy had been seduced by the sonorous word, just as I had.
The wee spiked ball inside my conscience was rattling about uncontrollably, causing me unbearable discomfort.
**********
“This is a good place.” We rested our bicycles against the 10-foot outer stone wall of the mansion we knew as Ravenscraig, beneath a chestnut tree that had loyally supplied us with conquers for years.
“Och, the wall’s far too high!” Was this a way out?
“Here, I’ll give you a hoisty-up.” Sandy stood with his back against the wall, his hands clasped together.
So, what could I do but step from his cupped hands onto his shoulders and then onto his head so that I could just reach the top? I pulled myself onto the cope-stone.
“What do you see?” Sandy’s enthusiasm was making him impatient.
I had somehow anticipated the beauty that awaited me. Almost two years after the War ended, I had lost the spiritual comfort of my grandmother’s stone-built Homebank in the village of Coupar Angus when my father was demobbed and we moved away into the city of Dundee. As soon as I could, I had acquired a bicycle and had become, by the age of seven or eight, free to roam at will. I cycled in pursuit of the contentment that had known in Homebank, and from time to time found consolation behind the protection of stately deciduous trees, in walled gardens whose potting-sheds smelled of warm moist soil and peat moss and in the contemplation of sun-warmed houses built from Arbroath’s smooth red sandstone or dappled yellow blocks from the quarries at Scone.
I was not, however, entirely prepared for the beauty before me. The mansion stood at the highest end of the secluded, six-acre property. Mature chestnut trees, oaks and sycamores protected the periphery. Visible from where I sat, down worn paths lined with autumn flowers, lay a fragrant orchard, branches heavy with apples and pears. Wasps tunnelled into sweet windfalls. Beyond the orchard, a striped lawn. Beyond the lawn and the flower gardens, the house. No, not merely a house; it had to be a much-loved home. It spoke of the standards of an age in decline but not quite over. It offered the peace I sought, the security of a time when elegance and authority embraced unashamedly. Someone had made a home of warm stone, mossy paths, rose-mantled arches, scented orchards and the soothing autumn colours of mature trees.
The scene conveyed a reassuring order still protected by love while much of the world was being torn asunder by the Wart and its aftermath. The mansion in its grounds offered the abiding dignity of serene confidence.
“What do you see?” Sandy’s impatient voice.
A thin spire of blue smoke arose from a pile of leaves that the gardener had burned before leaving. The scent choked me with memories of Homebank, more modest, but our childhood sanctuary against the mystifying uncertainties of lives during war. The ground on the inside was no more than five feet below the top of the wall. I could have easily hopped down and into the orchard. But the spiked marble of my conscience was pricking
What do you see?
“Not too much. A bonfire.” I knew Sandy could smell the scent.
“Apple trees?”
I obfuscated. “I can just make out a few but I think the gardener’s probably raking leaves to burn.”
“Can you get the apples without him seeing you?”
“How would I get back up onto the wall again all by myself?” I left it to Sandy to imagine that the drop into the garden was as deep as it was on the outside.
“Better not risk it then!”
With guilty relief, I took a last longing look at the changing leaves, the autumn flowers, the ripening fruit and the great home. I breathed in the scent of smouldering leaves. Then, turning away, I hung from my fingertips, let go, and dropped onto the roadside at Sandy’s feet.
“Let’s find another place. We might have better luck.” Sandy wasn’t going to let go his grip on apple-scrumping nor free me from my unsought role as Prince of Thieves.
We cycled into the road that would take us past the entrance to Ravenscraig and those of several others.
“Look!” Sandy pointed as we passed the widely-spaced stone pillars that guarded Ravenscraig.
Just inside the gates two beautiful espaliered apple trees stretched in trained parallel lines against the stone wall alongside the drive. The series of lateral branches offered leafy supports for eye-catching bright red-and-green fruit.
We pedalled past slowly, assessing the situation. It was one thing climbing over a wall to get to an isolated orchard, it was quite another to walk through a family’s gate, up their gravel drive and violate an obviously cared-for espalier.
“You could do it, Ron! Easy-peasy!”
I was busy wishing, wishing that I’d never learned the seductive verb ‘to scrump’; that Sandy had not, irrevocably now it seemed, ceded leadership to me; that Miss Goodfellow had never embedded the image of the prickly ball on my pained conscience.
Although there was no traffic in this exclusive part of Barnhill, we didn’t want to draw attention to ourselves by lingering.
“Let’s go round again.” I was playing for time.
“Och, the wall’s far too high!” Was this a way out?
“Here, I’ll give you a hoisty-up.” Sandy stood with his back against the wall, his hands clasped together.
So, what could I do but step from his cupped hands onto his shoulders and then onto his head so that I could just reach the top? I pulled myself onto the cope-stone.
“What do you see?” Sandy’s enthusiasm was making him impatient.
I had somehow anticipated the beauty that awaited me. Almost two years after the War ended, I had lost the spiritual comfort of my grandmother’s stone-built Homebank in the village of Coupar Angus when my father was demobbed and we moved away into the city of Dundee. As soon as I could, I had acquired a bicycle and had become, by the age of seven or eight, free to roam at will. I cycled in pursuit of the contentment that had known in Homebank, and from time to time found consolation behind the protection of stately deciduous trees, in walled gardens whose potting-sheds smelled of warm moist soil and peat moss and in the contemplation of sun-warmed houses built from Arbroath’s smooth red sandstone or dappled yellow blocks from the quarries at Scone.
I was not, however, entirely prepared for the beauty before me. The mansion stood at the highest end of the secluded, six-acre property. Mature chestnut trees, oaks and sycamores protected the periphery. Visible from where I sat, down worn paths lined with autumn flowers, lay a fragrant orchard, branches heavy with apples and pears. Wasps tunnelled into sweet windfalls. Beyond the orchard, a striped lawn. Beyond the lawn and the flower gardens, the house. No, not merely a house; it had to be a much-loved home. It spoke of the standards of an age in decline but not quite over. It offered the peace I sought, the security of a time when elegance and authority embraced unashamedly. Someone had made a home of warm stone, mossy paths, rose-mantled arches, scented orchards and the soothing autumn colours of mature trees.
The scene conveyed a reassuring order still protected by love while much of the world was being torn asunder by the Wart and its aftermath. The mansion in its grounds offered the abiding dignity of serene confidence.
“What do you see?” Sandy’s impatient voice.
A thin spire of blue smoke arose from a pile of leaves that the gardener had burned before leaving. The scent choked me with memories of Homebank, more modest, but our childhood sanctuary against the mystifying uncertainties of lives during war. The ground on the inside was no more than five feet below the top of the wall. I could have easily hopped down and into the orchard. But the spiked marble of my conscience was pricking
What do you see?
“Not too much. A bonfire.” I knew Sandy could smell the scent.
“Apple trees?”
I obfuscated. “I can just make out a few but I think the gardener’s probably raking leaves to burn.”
“Can you get the apples without him seeing you?”
“How would I get back up onto the wall again all by myself?” I left it to Sandy to imagine that the drop into the garden was as deep as it was on the outside.
“Better not risk it then!”
With guilty relief, I took a last longing look at the changing leaves, the autumn flowers, the ripening fruit and the great home. I breathed in the scent of smouldering leaves. Then, turning away, I hung from my fingertips, let go, and dropped onto the roadside at Sandy’s feet.
“Let’s find another place. We might have better luck.” Sandy wasn’t going to let go his grip on apple-scrumping nor free me from my unsought role as Prince of Thieves.
We cycled into the road that would take us past the entrance to Ravenscraig and those of several others.
“Look!” Sandy pointed as we passed the widely-spaced stone pillars that guarded Ravenscraig.
Just inside the gates two beautiful espaliered apple trees stretched in trained parallel lines against the stone wall alongside the drive. The series of lateral branches offered leafy supports for eye-catching bright red-and-green fruit.
We pedalled past slowly, assessing the situation. It was one thing climbing over a wall to get to an isolated orchard, it was quite another to walk through a family’s gate, up their gravel drive and violate an obviously cared-for espalier.
“You could do it, Ron! Easy-peasy!”
I was busy wishing, wishing that I’d never learned the seductive verb ‘to scrump’; that Sandy had not, irrevocably now it seemed, ceded leadership to me; that Miss Goodfellow had never embedded the image of the prickly ball on my pained conscience.
Although there was no traffic in this exclusive part of Barnhill, we didn’t want to draw attention to ourselves by lingering.
“Let’s go round again.” I was playing for time.
**********
Once more we approached the entrance to Ravenscraig. This time, two elderly ladies were standing comfortably between the pillars.
Sandy and I automatically prepared to increase our speed and give the impression we had another destination in mind. As we drew abreast of the gravel driveway where the two beautiful espaliers clung to the wall, one of the ladies stepped forward.
“Are you looking for apples?”
Alarmed, Sandy sped off. Surprised at her unaccountable ability to mind-read, my foot slipped and I hopped to a halt in front of the lady who had spoken. She and the timid one behind were similar in dress and looks suggesting they were sisters. The bolder one accepted my pause as encouragement.
“I’m asking, you see, because these espaliers,” she gestured past her sister to the identical, manicured trees that spread neat parallel branches against the warm stone, “are a late variety and although they look ripe, they have a few weeks to go.”
I knew from experience that apple varieties ripened at different times. She made perfect sense. But it was how she had uttered her words that disarmed me. They were not formulated as an accusation, more as a fact that might be of interest to a respected fellow-gardener.
“What school do you attend?” Her tone was even, honestly curious as if I were worthy of her interest.
I looked from her to her sister. Identical woolen twin-sets, brooches pinned to silk scarves, tweed skirts, worn brown lacing shoes, hair drawn into neat buns. They might have been my grandmother’s better-to-do neighbours in Coupar Angus. The ones she conversed with in Standard English, not in everyday Scots. I especially enjoyed my grandmother’s conversations with such neighbours because they were somehow conducted on a more significant, level and dealt with deeper matters than the price of eggs.
“What school?”
Our ‘Rector’ as we called our school principal, could punish us for a misdemeanour no matter where committed if he deemed it brought the Morgan Academy into disrepute. Common civility demanded I answer the lady’s question; the need for honesty demanded the truth.
“I’m in the fifth year at the Morgan.” Unaccountably, I was confident that she wouldn’t use that information to my detriment.
“Ah! Peter’s school!” She turned to her sister. “This nice young man is a pupil at Peter’s school.”
The timid sister smiled. Peter Robertson was our Rector. I’d never imagined anybody calling him by any other name than ‘Sir’ let alone in a tone that suggested anything but fear.
“Let me show you and your friend the espaliers you were admiring.” By ignoring Sandy’s flight, she was refusing to countenance our intention to steal.
Reassured, I leaned my bicycle against the entrance pillar and accompanied her to examine the green fruit flushed with orange.
“Cambusnethan Pippin. A dessert apple with a nutty taste.” She was offering me the gift of knowledge.
“We grafted them ourselves.” Timid sister said with pride. “Cuttings from our brother’s orchard in Stirling.”
“Twenty years ago.”
“Our 50th birthday gift one to the other.”
The twins regarded each other and their matching espaliers with love and pride. Together, we stood in admiring silence.
“We have Golden Pippins picked from the orchard.” Timid sister made the statement sound like a suggestion.
“So why don’t you bring some to this young man and his friend.” Bolder sister approved, keeping up the fiction of Sandy’s presence.
Timid twin disappeared and returned with a brown paper bag full of apples.
“For you both to share.” I strapped it carefully into my saddlebag.
“Come back early next month. We can let you have one Cambusnethan each.”
They had generously overlooked our original intention. Now we were being invited back to share.
Sandy and I automatically prepared to increase our speed and give the impression we had another destination in mind. As we drew abreast of the gravel driveway where the two beautiful espaliers clung to the wall, one of the ladies stepped forward.
“Are you looking for apples?”
Alarmed, Sandy sped off. Surprised at her unaccountable ability to mind-read, my foot slipped and I hopped to a halt in front of the lady who had spoken. She and the timid one behind were similar in dress and looks suggesting they were sisters. The bolder one accepted my pause as encouragement.
“I’m asking, you see, because these espaliers,” she gestured past her sister to the identical, manicured trees that spread neat parallel branches against the warm stone, “are a late variety and although they look ripe, they have a few weeks to go.”
I knew from experience that apple varieties ripened at different times. She made perfect sense. But it was how she had uttered her words that disarmed me. They were not formulated as an accusation, more as a fact that might be of interest to a respected fellow-gardener.
“What school do you attend?” Her tone was even, honestly curious as if I were worthy of her interest.
I looked from her to her sister. Identical woolen twin-sets, brooches pinned to silk scarves, tweed skirts, worn brown lacing shoes, hair drawn into neat buns. They might have been my grandmother’s better-to-do neighbours in Coupar Angus. The ones she conversed with in Standard English, not in everyday Scots. I especially enjoyed my grandmother’s conversations with such neighbours because they were somehow conducted on a more significant, level and dealt with deeper matters than the price of eggs.
“What school?”
Our ‘Rector’ as we called our school principal, could punish us for a misdemeanour no matter where committed if he deemed it brought the Morgan Academy into disrepute. Common civility demanded I answer the lady’s question; the need for honesty demanded the truth.
“I’m in the fifth year at the Morgan.” Unaccountably, I was confident that she wouldn’t use that information to my detriment.
“Ah! Peter’s school!” She turned to her sister. “This nice young man is a pupil at Peter’s school.”
The timid sister smiled. Peter Robertson was our Rector. I’d never imagined anybody calling him by any other name than ‘Sir’ let alone in a tone that suggested anything but fear.
“Let me show you and your friend the espaliers you were admiring.” By ignoring Sandy’s flight, she was refusing to countenance our intention to steal.
Reassured, I leaned my bicycle against the entrance pillar and accompanied her to examine the green fruit flushed with orange.
“Cambusnethan Pippin. A dessert apple with a nutty taste.” She was offering me the gift of knowledge.
“We grafted them ourselves.” Timid sister said with pride. “Cuttings from our brother’s orchard in Stirling.”
“Twenty years ago.”
“Our 50th birthday gift one to the other.”
The twins regarded each other and their matching espaliers with love and pride. Together, we stood in admiring silence.
“We have Golden Pippins picked from the orchard.” Timid sister made the statement sound like a suggestion.
“So why don’t you bring some to this young man and his friend.” Bolder sister approved, keeping up the fiction of Sandy’s presence.
Timid twin disappeared and returned with a brown paper bag full of apples.
“For you both to share.” I strapped it carefully into my saddlebag.
“Come back early next month. We can let you have one Cambusnethan each.”
They had generously overlooked our original intention. Now we were being invited back to share.
**********
Sandy was waiting for me outside his small house in the temporary post-War pre-fab development. He was relieved to see me return with a smile, an uplifting story to tell and a bag of apples.
“I can’t take them!” Sandy was adamant. “My Mum’ll think I stole them!”
“I’ll tell her how we came by them,”
“She’ll never believe it.”
“I can’t take them!” Sandy was adamant. “My Mum’ll think I stole them!”
“I’ll tell her how we came by them,”
“She’ll never believe it.”
**********
When I arrived home with a bag full of Golden Pippins, I told my mother the story -- the whole story including Miss Goodfellow’s answer to Kathleen’s question about how we know what is wrong. I admitted that I thought Kathleen’s question had some merit.
“How do we know?”
Pearl paused. Then she said:
“I’ve sometimes wondered myself, how we manage to get through life without an unending list of imperatives: Do this! Don’t do that! And after all this time, all I can tell you is what my mother told me when I asked her the same question at about the age you are now. Pearl closed her eyes and repeated the words of her mother, words that had guided her.
“Pearl, my lass,” she said, “the important thing in life is to do what feels right and keep from doing what feels wrong. Each one of us knows a right and a wrong that goes beyond what we are able to explain in words.”
I understood then that that some of the real truths in life, those that guide us as truly as the North Star, are not accessible to mere explanation. Miss Goodfellow’s metaphor was sound just as Kathleen’s amazement, or my own, in the face of this mystery was inevitable.
I understood too, that when we’re on the verge of giving in, others, like a wise parent or those shrewd twins standing erect at the entrance to their home can anticipate the frailty in us and with a nudge guide us onto the better path.
“How do we know?”
Pearl paused. Then she said:
“I’ve sometimes wondered myself, how we manage to get through life without an unending list of imperatives: Do this! Don’t do that! And after all this time, all I can tell you is what my mother told me when I asked her the same question at about the age you are now. Pearl closed her eyes and repeated the words of her mother, words that had guided her.
“Pearl, my lass,” she said, “the important thing in life is to do what feels right and keep from doing what feels wrong. Each one of us knows a right and a wrong that goes beyond what we are able to explain in words.”
I understood then that that some of the real truths in life, those that guide us as truly as the North Star, are not accessible to mere explanation. Miss Goodfellow’s metaphor was sound just as Kathleen’s amazement, or my own, in the face of this mystery was inevitable.
I understood too, that when we’re on the verge of giving in, others, like a wise parent or those shrewd twins standing erect at the entrance to their home can anticipate the frailty in us and with a nudge guide us onto the better path.
The term the Prick of Conscience was first used as the title of a popular English 14th century poem. The poet’s intention was to encourage the reader to attend to that internal voice we all possess where heart, mind, and memory intersect and, together, guide us towards a virtuous life.
A Scottish house not unlike Ravenscraig
Cambusnathan Pippin
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Espalier apple tree against a stone wall
Old Scottish Apples
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