BLOODHUNT

The final adventure consisted of three books: a novel which spoke entirely through story, and kept the exact balance that Gunn had long been seeking; a novel which assailed the impossible like one of those cliff climbs he describes so often; and an autobiography which isn't one.

Bloodhunt (1952) is on the face of it a story about a retired sailor living on an isolated croft, whose life is disrupted by a sudden call on all his mental and spiritual resources. But as usual it is a great deal more than that. Sandy is seen locally as a ‘character’ and accepts his semi-comic reputation without rancour, hoping to end his days in peace, even perhaps to discover before he goes whether ‘the spirit was immortal’.

A visit from the local policeman knocks his expectations sideways. Sandy finds himself protecting Allan, a young man who has killed the policeman's brother in a fight. He would prefer to evade responsibility, and dodges examination of his motives, but one intuitive action leads to another, and he is caught in the trap which his croft becomes as the search for the fugitive intensifies.

The old sailor is forced into taxing manoeuvres and stratagems as he tries to provision Allan, the young man who has helped him so often on the farm, but he injures himself in an accident and his formidable neighbour, the widow Macleay, insists on looking after him – ‘She moved about with remarkable energy as if life had been given a new meaning, and so great was her pleasure in its exercise that obstacles added an invigorating tang.’ (B 111). The widow is a commanding presence who gives to the book the freshness of vital comedy. Finally, Allan's girlfriend, made pregnant by the man Allan killed, arrives on the doorstep, turned out by her parents.

The novel is one of Gunn's best for several reasons: to tell the story even in bald outline would make its meaning clear, but, far from being a bald outline, it is presented with balanced economy and poetic precision. Everything depends on the reality of Sandy and it is often said that to portray a good man is the most difficult achievement in fiction. Sandy is proof that it can be done.