Whether it was trying on this and other ancient jackets to see if we had yet grown as tall as our ancestors, or launching cockerels—suitably fortified with whisky-soaked grain—off the top of the tower, to discover if their barnyard upbringing had deprived them of the ability to fly, there was always something to be interested in, some new thing to do. But we also did particularly pleasant things again and again. About once a year, for instance, we climbed the volcano-shaped mountain that dominated the whole estate. Riding the seven miles to the foot of the mountain, we left our ponies at a farm and, on foot, started the ascent. For the first two miles, the path wound through forests; then, coming out above the tree line, it continued over a section of grouse moor. Cartridges, their scarlet cardboard covers disintegrating among the brown heather roots, lay scattered around the abandoned turf butts, where the guns had been concealed during the previous shooting season, and far above us an eagle drifted silently, scanning the slopes for game. We stopped to drink at one of the small pools that, spring-fed, lay hidden in the gulleys scored down the side of the mountain, and the dogs, fended off until after we had drunk, plunged in and bathed as they lapped. Up and up we went, till the heather gave way to bare rocks; another couple of hundred feet and we were on the summit.
Here, in a circle around what had been, perhaps, the top of one of Europe’s last active volcanoes, lay the ruins of a prehistoric vitrified fort. Nobody knew how the builders had succeeded in fusing the stones together. One theory was that they had used alternate layers of wood and stone and then set fire to the wood, but this would hardly have generated enough heat to melt the granite. Who had built the fort, and why, and how they had done it was a mystery, but there in the sun, eating our picnic, we felt a close bond between ourselves and the vanished race that had shaped the stones on which we sat, as if we were part of them and they of us. When I grew up, I visited ancient ruins in other lands—Machu Picchu, the Pyramids, Angkor Wat—but I never felt this same sensation of kinship with the dead. The Incas and the ancient Egyptians and the Khmers were not my ancestors, and they had nothing to say to me. The Picts were, and had.
We dozed in the sun, brushing away the flies with wisps of bracken as idly we studied the view. From here, the entire estate was visible. Below and to the right lay the grouse moors, purple in the afternoon sun; a livid gash on the shoulder of one moor marked the granite quarry, and close to it a rectangular clearing showed the position of the sheep dips. Fields of every shape and size, from the rough enclosures of the upland crofts to the lush, spreading pastures of the big farms in the valley, lay with all their secrets exposed to us, as if drawn on a map. Around them, like giant mufflers, coiled the dark coniferous forests, broken here and there by rides and by the stump-studded clearings of the foresters.
There, far below, was the village, the square tower of the kirk, which looked so tall when one stood in the square, seeming hardly higher than the roof of the shop. Nearby, the bakery chimney was sending a thin wisp of smoke straight up into the still air. From this height, the distant loch seemed like a tiny looking glass, and the single track of the railway resembled a piece of fencing wire left lying carelessly across the fields. Were those the cows going in to be milked, those creeping dots down there by the granite smudge of the Home Farm? And what was that shiny black beetle scurrying—pursued by an attenuated cloud of dust—along the road that led away to the sea? Yes, it must be our car, with the chauffeur at the wheel, off to fetch my mother from her regular visit to a tenant who, falling ill, had been whisked away to the county-town hospital. We watched the car; it would, we knew, vanish from sight about the time it reached the far boundary of the estate, away on the horizon, where the river widened and grew sluggish as it entered the plain. Our eyes retraced the bright line of the river as far as the castle grounds.
There stood the castle—unchanging, protective. At that distance, it seemed like something remembered from a dream. From its slender flagpole, my father’s standard—three gold crowns on a scarlet field—floated over the tower and turrets, the spiral stairs and secret rooms, showing that he was at home, and very much in charge. Here at our feet was all our world; we belonged to it, and it to us.
* * *
My father died in 1931, when I was ten. He thought that he had arranged an income for my mother, should he die before her, but his lawyers had neglected to remind him to sign a vital document, and his two-page will resulted in my elder brother inheriting not only his title, the castle and the estate but also all his personal money. Hopelessly baffled by the complexities of the law, which might well—had her professional advisers been more diligent—have awarded her support, my mother resigned herself to providing for herself and her five other children out of the remnants of her dowry, itself greatly depleted by the sums that she had, with no thought for herself, spent on such things as restoring to the castle its missing heirlooms. Banished from the castle, she moved to London, where she rented a modest house in Chelsea, at that time unfashionable and cheap.
Overjoyed to find that in this small dwelling I was no longer either frightened or lonely—for I could call, from my tiny bedroom, to my mother in the drawing room—it never even occurred to me to regret the ending of my childhood in Scotland.
About the Author
A CHILDHOOD IN SCOTLAND
Christian Miller, the youngest of a family of six, was born in 1920. Brought up on her father’s estate in the highlands of Scotland, she was educated by governesses. After the death of her father, the estate was inherited by her elder brother, and the rest of the family moved to London, where—at eighteen—she became a debutante. During the Second World War, having started as an aircraft fitter working on heavy bombers, she became a technical adviser in the Ministry of Production.
She married during the war and had two daughters, and it was not until the 1960s that she started writing, beginning with short stories, which were widely translated. Her first novel The Champagne Sandwich was published in 1969, and was followed in 1980 by Daisy Daisy, which told the story of a bicycle ride across America that she did on her own when she was fifty-eight. A Childhood in Scotland (1981) first appeared in The New Yorker, and received a Scottish Arts Council Book Award in 1982.
Copyright
First published in 1981 by John Murray (Publishers) Ltd, part of this book appeared originally in The NewYorker
First published as a Canongate Classic in 1989,
reprinted in 1997 and 2000
by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1TE
This digital edition first published in 2009
by Canongate Books Ltd
Copyright © Christian Miller, 1981
Introduction copyright © Dorothy Porter, 1989
The publishers gratefully acknowledge general subsidy from the Scottish Arts Council towards the Canongate Classics series and a specific grant towards the publication of this title
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 84767 510 1
www.meetatthegate.com
A Childhood In Scotland Page 12
