The Camerons

by Robert Crichton

  “He can’t go down that way,” Gillon said, “not all the way to Cowdenbeath.”

  “They always have,” someone said, and Gillon looked at it, never having seen it before, the Pitmungo miner’s ambulance, a rolling death cart. How many must have died going down that way, he thought, and how many might have lived. One hour’s worth of coal from the mine would pay for a well-sprung, enclosed, rubber-tired ambulance, but somehow that hour’s coal was never forthcoming.

  “Oh, God, no, he can’t go down in that,” Rob Roy said, and began running. He came back several minutes later with Mr. Japp and his well-sprung van.

  “Who’s going to pay?” Mr. Japp, the van man said. “I’ve been down this road before. If they die the family never pays.”

  “I’ll pay, I’ll pay from my own day’s darg,” Rob Roy said. “I’ll pay double rates but get going.”

  They moved young Bone from the ambulance to the van and still the van didn’t start, and then one of the boy’s cousins got down from the wagon and came running for Gillon.

  “He wants you,” he said; “he wants you to go down with him.” Gillon thought of his own family and then climbed up on the van and in the back. He was certain the boy would die on the way down and he didn’t want to be with him when he did, but he had no choice in the matter now. Those who save are responsible for what they save.

  “Don’t tell my father and mother. It will spoil the Christmas,” the Bone boy said.

  “Aye. Yes.”

  “Tell them I got overtime. Tell them I broke an arm or some such.”

  “Aye, I will.”

  “Tell me a story, then. Any kind. Tell me about the Highlands away from here,” so Gillon knelt by the boy and held his hand, a thing he never did with his own boys, and began whispering any kind of thing that came into his head. He told him about his boyhood on the Cromarty croft and about the clearances, how the land was cleared to make way for the red deer and game birds, and then about the sea and his salmon. From time to time, the boy broke into tears and Gillon didn’t know if it was for pain or because of the sadness of his stories. They were all sad, he realized, except the saumont killing.

  “I’m going to die, aren’t I?” the boy suddenly said.

  “No,” Gillon said, “absolutely not. You beat death this time.”

  “But they’re going to take them off, are they no’?”

  “That’s for the doctors to say. They’re doing wonderful things these days.”

  “Oh, aye,” Sandy Bone said, “with a saw.”

  Gillon stayed with him at Cowdenbeath until it was over. They took off the boy’s legs and buried them in a graveyard for limbs outside the hospital. Gillon couldn’t help noticing how large the graveyard was as he headed homeward.

  It was gloamin tide then, and not for long. The warm day began to take on a chill, and his pit clothes, which everyone had stared at in Cowdenbeath as if he were part of a Christmas mummer’s show, were still wet. He took the Low Road back along the river and when he got too cold, as tired as he was, he forced himself to run a hundred steps and walk a hundred until he began to sweat again. It was black when he came through the brickworks and the foundry in the lower part of the town. Up on Brumbie Hill the houses were all lit and looked warm and cheery. Someone must have had a window open despite the evening, someone who could afford a lot of coal, because he could hear a family singing some old Scotch Christmas song. He went past the pit he had come up out of so long ago and up Colliers Walk. He thought of going into the Coaledge for a dram to see him up the hill but decided not to. He had come this far without it. Once off the Walk into Miners Row he stopped to collect his feelings before facing the family. He knew she would be angry with him. They had not waited for him, as he had expected, but had eaten their Christmas Eve dinner—beef-and-kidney pies, by the look of it—and now they were all in different parts of the but reading and playing cards and the girls cleaning up after dinner.

  He was right about it; she was deeply angry with him.

  “Don’t tell me about it. I heard it all,” Maggie said. “That was an irresponsible thing for a man to do. Worse than that, it was dumb.”

  “The boy was trapped under the stone. He was dying.”

  “Aye, he begged to die, I hear.”

  Gillon nodded yes.

  “But Gillon Forbes Cameron steps to the front. Step aside for the vaunty Highland lad, only seven children of his own to support.”

  “He was under the stone.” It sounded weak.

  “Does he have a wife? Does she have any bairn? No, but what he had is brothers and cousins and uncles in the pit. Where in the name of God were they?”

  Gillon didn’t know. He had never thought of it.

  “They say he’ll never walk again.”

  “No, he’ll never walk.”

  “Then tell me this. What sense did it make to risk your life for damaged goods?”

  She didn’t really expect an answer.

  “And tell me this. The boy begged to be left to die…”

  He was astonished to look and find that she was crying, not much, but actual tears. If it was from concern for him, she had an odd way of showing it, but even at that the tears made him feel a little better about the day.

  “… then who the hell are you to play the Savior?”

  * * *

  There was little beef-and-kidney pie left, but there was water for the tub. He felt foolish, having his wash in a room smelling of pies and black pudding, but the tub was good, as it always was for him, and despite everything he began to feel better. Thank God for the restoring virtues of good hot water, Gillon thought; it, at least, never failed him. The house smelled of beef and fresh soap and scones, and they were satisfying smells—even the pit duds when you got used to them. Maggie took her load of wash out of the kettle, steaming and dripping water, and went out the back way of the but-and-ben up to the washhouse to rinse them before hanging them by the fire. When she left, the house was totally silent.

  “I don’t care what she says,” Jemmie finally said, “that was a braw thing you done in pit, Daddie.”

  “Och, it’s what you have to do,” Gillon said.

  “No, you dared it and you did it, Dad,” Sam said.

  “I’m proud of my dad,” Jem said, and the door swung open and there she was, the clothes still steaming in her hands.

  “Aye, proud,” their mother said. “It might be brave, but remember this. Smart comes before brave. Smairt, can you ken that, Jemmie? Your father could well be in the pit right now and you digging for him with your picks. Very brave. Very dead. Very dumb.”

  And she slammed the door. They were silent again. That was the word in the house. Dumb. Do anything but don’t be dumb about it. Gillon got out of the tub and dried and dressed. He felt foolish when he thought of it. Bravery, if that is what it was—and the more he thought of it, the more he thought that maybe Maggie was right—it was only a vaunty thing, a middle-aged man showing off to get the approval of his fellows. Bravery belonged to the young and to those with nothing to lose. It had been a dumb thing to do. He didn’t feel like any warmed-over kidney pie and thought that maybe the Coaledge Tavern would be the place to be on Christmas Eve. He stood in the doorway, not sure what he wanted to do.

  “Where are you off to, then, Daddie?” Sarah said. He shrugged his shoulders and went for his hat. The fine hat, the soft brown gentleman’s hat that he didn’t wear often any more but which still got attention when he wore it.

  “The Coaledge.” He wouldn’t dignify it with the name College. “I thought I would treat myself to a dram or two.”

  “Aye, I understand,” his daughter said. “Go on, then,” she said. but he heard the unhappiness in her voice.

  “What is it?”

  “Oh, I was hoping we might have … you know, Father, a wee bit of singing and music the night.”

  She was shy with her father; she was shy with everyone, although beneath the shyness she was stubborn, which led her into troubl
esome contradictions at times, Gillon had begun to notice. But she played the flute well and there were times when she played and he sang—“My Heart’s in the Highlands,” “The Collier’s Bonnie Lassie,” “Green Grow the Rashes”—when even Maggie was touched by the sweetness of it and didn’t resent the money they had spent for the flute.

  “Christmas Eve and all.”

  There it was, the shy persistence.

  “I’m going down,” he said, with an anger that surprised him. She made him feel guilty, and he decided he wanted the Coaledge more than ever.

  “I understand, Daddie.”

  He slammed the door on her. It was cold going down the row. He could hear a family singing in one of the houses, several young boys and girls, very clear and simple, and it made him sad. He thought of the young Bone boy lying legless in Cowdenbeath. That was a hansel for Christmas. If there was a God, God was unfair, he thought, and then felt ashamed of his thoughts. He started down Colliers Walk toward the Coaledge but turned back up toward the Sportin Moor and walked out on it. It was very cold on the moor; the wind had been coming down from the north since his return from Cowdenbeath. The grass was stiff; winter was back. He could see the little orange lights from the Gypsies’ caravans far across the moor. The lights seemed miles away and warm, earth stars in comparison with the cold stars overhead. They reminded Gillon of something he couldn’t at first place, and when he turned away from them, he realized it was the lights of the herring fleet out at sea, and that made him feel sad also. He decided to go down to the Coaledge for his whisky.

  The windows of the tavern were fogged from the heat of the bodies inside. He could hear them inside, boisterous and loud, some singing the old old songs that surface from the past on nights like this one, some joking in that sly way of the Fife miner, always a barb and a challenge to the fun, some already glazed with drink. He would like to be like that, Gillon thought, just an edge beyond feeling.

  He put his hand on the door handle—the metal was warm despite the cold outside—and took it away. They should be home with their families, he thought, and felt guilty once more. Sarah sitting there with her flute, no one to sing with her because they always waited for him. She had been practicing for days. She understood, she said.

  The men would only ridicule him for the heroics of the day. That sly—slee; that was better—cutting wit. They’d give him their hail-the-Highland-hero routine, the mock toast, the mock raising of glasses; he didn’t want any of that. The light was still on outside the new room next to the Pitmungo Coal and Iron Company School. Probably a mistake, Gillon thought, but he went down to look at it and make up his mind about going into the tavern because he wanted some whisky inside him. He read the sign over the door:

  THE INDUSTRIAL WORKERS’ READING ROOM.

  ESTABLISHED WITH A GRANT FROM

  THE ANDREW CARNEGIE WORKINGMAN’S EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION,

  DUNFERMLINE, FIFE, SCOTLAND.

  Books on mine engineering and mine equipment so the colliers could learn the latest ways to bring up more coal at less cost to the master, Gillon thought. The door was open. There was a lighted stairway leading up a flight of stairs. Gillon hesitated and then went up. The light at the top blinded him so that he couldn’t make the man out clearly, but he could hear him, because the voice was like metal being scraped across metal.

  “Well? What do you want?”

  Gillon didn’t know what he wanted.

  “Certainly not to read.”

  Silence was best, Gillon decided.

  “Hundreds of books here, not one taken out yet.”

  Gillon could see him then. Short and heavy, going bald, with a face as red as the exit lamp in the pit. His eyes were blue and cold, but watery. He smelled of whisky.

  “It’s Christmas Evening,” Gillon said. “They don’t know you’re open.”

  “They never have.” He swept his arm around the room. “My virgin. She’s never been touched.”

  “People are shy, sir. The men are shy when it comes to men of books.”

  “Because they’re stupid and they’re stupid because they know nothing. They’re afraid of everything they can’t hit with a pick.”

  The disgust in the man’s voice, the quality of despising, was so strong and sour in his mouth that it made Gillon afraid of him and angry with him at the same time.

  “Well, which comes first? Perhaps if people like you would help…”

  The man held up his hand for Gillon to stop.

  “I’ve heard all that,” he said flatly. “Well-meaning blether. You can’t teach a man who doesn’t come to be taught, and it doesn’t do any good if you do. Now, what is it you want?”

  I want to be home with my family, enjoying what’s left of my Christmas, Gillon thought, but something held him. There were hundreds of books on the shelves, more than he had ever seen anywhere together before.

  “Well, come on, what is it?”

  It was the thing that had bothered him ever since the day on the sea with Mr. Drysdale.

  “Macbeth,” Gillon said, and reddened. The man didn’t seem to notice. “I want to know about a man named Macbeth.”

  “Macbeth.” The man fixed Gillon with a look that made him want to turn away or run down the stairs. “There are thousands of Macbeths. The Highlands are crammed with them. You can’t part a bush without finding a Macbeth there.”

  It was odd, Gillon thought, he had never met one there, but then he had probably grown up in the wrong place.

  “This Macbeth is more famous than your ordinary Macbeth, I think,” Gillon said.

  “Oh, you think. You think.” Gillon blushed. The librarian looked at the miner for a long, sardonic moment. “Was this Macbeth a king by any wild chance?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know. You come in here asking about a man and you don’t even know if he was a king of Scotland?” Gillon lowered his head and mumbled no.

  “Not know if he was a king?” Gillon could not raise his head. “What is your name?”

  For a moment, he thought of lying. “Cameron,” he said, finally. “G. Cameron.”

  “Well, Cameron. Turn around so I can see you.” Gillon turned in to the light of the coal-oil lamp. “When you were talking, I thought, Here is a man I might be able to converse with, not a beast from the pit. Then you ask about a man and don’t even know if he was a king or not. You make me sad.”

  “Aye. I’m sorry to have bothered you.” There was nothing to do but go. He went downstairs and into the safe cold darkness of Colliers Walk. Chuffie-faced bastard, Gillon thought, watery blue eyes, and realized that his hat was still upstairs in the Reading Room.

  The hell with the hat, he can have the hat, Gillon told himself, and as he said it, he knew he would have to go back and face the wet-eyed man and get his hat. The Coaledge seemed easy to face, compared to the library man. When he went back into the library, the man was sitting at his desk, staring at the doorway drinking from a small brown bottle.

  “My hat.”

  “The man you are talking about is Lord Macbeth, who is the central figure of a great play by a man called Shakespeare. The Tragedy of Macbeth. What do you want with it?”

  “To read it.”

  The librarian looked at him closely. “Who put this in your head?”

  “Something. A long time ago. When I used to catch fish and not mine coal.”

  The little man got up and went across the room to the row of books. Gillon read his name on a cardboard sign on the desk. “Mr. Henry Selkirk: Librarian.” He came back with a large, dusty book. The print was very small.

  “You’ll not read it,” Mr. Selkirk said. He took out a card for Gillon to sign. “It will murder sleep,” he said, and began to chuckle in a way that made Gillon angry.

  “I’ll read it.”

  “Oh, aye. In the but-and-ben, with the bairn all about and the childer shouting for food, you will read it.”

  The card was numbered ONE. He was the first in Pi
tmungo to take out a book. That was something, anyway. He put his hat on his head and went to the stairway.

  “Cameron?”

  “Sir?”

  “I was a wee bit hard on you. Screw your courage to the sticking point and you might make it.” He laughed again for reasons Gillon couldn’t understand.

  As he left, the librarian was uncapping the brown bottle and staring across the desk. For all his wisdom, the enormous sum of his knowledge, he must be very lonely, Gillon thought, even lonelier than me.

  3

  When he came through the door of his house, it was the same thing again: the eyes couldn’t adjust to the light and he was blinded for several minutes. He was developing some form of miner’s eye and it worried him. Everyone was there, they were all about him, talking in his ear, and finally he could see her, sitting on the cutty by the fire, handsome in a full-length shawl that was bright and yet subtle at the same moment, looking beautiful in a way she hadn’t looked in a long time.

  “Where were you? We looked all over Pitmungo for you,” Maggie said. She didn’t sound unhappy.

  “On the moor, walking.”

  He held the book behind him and put it on a table in the dark part of the room.

  “I ran down to the College for you, Daddie,” Sam said. “They wanted to stand you a drink.”

  “Who wanted?”

  “The men in the College,” Sam said. “All of them.”

  “The Bones. The Bone family, Gillon,” Tom Drum said. “Och, you should have seen that, Gillon.” His voice was proud, although Gillon still couldn’t make out his face. “The whole bunch of them, brothers and sisters, his mother and dad, of course, coming down over the moor on a night like this. Never such a thing as that before.”

  He was beginning to put all the pieces in the room in place. Some of the neighbors on the row were in the house, the first time ever, the Hodges from next door, some of the Beggs, Willie Hope on his way to getting drunk, Tom Mengies and his young wife and his concertina. Tom Drum had come up from his house down the row. The Drums had been moved out long ago, so long that they had forgotten this was their house. It was the Cameron house now.