The Camerons

by Robert Crichton

  “But, ah … but…” Gillon, turning red again, began nodding at the girl.

  “Oh, good God, man,” Mr. MacDonald said. “Miss Tweed’s seen many a man, I assure you. Haven’t you, Miss Tweed?” She smiled ever so mildly. It was strange, Gillon thought; that kind of thing would not be allowed in a coal town and here it was all right. He didn’t understand these people.

  The cast was intact, covering a good part of the right side of Gillon’s chest, but part of it was stained a dull red from seepage. Underneath the cast something in the wound had opened, and blood had worked through the gauze and plaster. It embarrassed Gillon because it seemed so personal and vile.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Sorry? This is a blessing,” Calder said.

  “Unless, of course, he dies of it.”

  It struck them as amusing, and Selkirk roared with laughter. They asked him to turn around several times.

  “If you dressed him up properly he could pass for a toff,” Mr. MacDonald said. “Selkirk?”

  Selkirk seemed to materialize from the drapes on the window overlooking Princes Street.

  “He’s as good as you wrote. I think we have our find.”

  They stood and looked at him. MacDonald had his hands folded before him, the tips of his fingers touching.

  “But what are those two lumps on his back?” Miss Tweed asked.

  “These, Miss?” Selkirk said. She nodded. “Muscles, Miss, they’re called muscles.”

  There was that laughter again, so light and airy, not the way miners laughed, and the lawyer asked him where he was educated, because he spoke so well.

  “Nowhere,” Gillon said.

  “Remarkable. Did you know you were a remarkable man?”

  Gillon shook his head.

  “So far,” Calder said. “The pressure hasn’t come yet.”

  “Once the summons is cleared through the court, it doesn’t matter about pressure, it’s out of what’s-his-name—Cameron’s hands. If he can go that far, we can go the rest. Now, tell us how it happened.”

  He told it as clearly as he could and was angry to see the two lawyers begin to laugh and finally begin to roar with laughter. Tears were actually running down Calder’s face.

  “I’m sorry,” MacDonald said, “I truly am sorry. It’s just Elphinstone. You’d have to know him. Such a fool. Such a complete idiot. It’s what makes the case so perfect, you see.”

  Gillon was given his instructions then. Under the rules of the Compensation Act the workman first had to make formal application to the company for compensation for injuries received.

  “How much are you asking for?” Miss Tweed asked. Gillon knew the demand was exaggerated; for a moment he considered cutting it in half but didn’t.

  “Four hundred pounds.”

  It was met with silence. Even to the law agents it seemed a large sum.

  “For a workingman,” Calder said.

  “It’s all right, it doesn’t matter,” MacDonald said. “The judge will set the final sum. We just want the case in court.”

  When the application was rejected, as they knew it would be, Angus MacDonald, on behalf of his client, Mr. G. Cameron, Esq., would then ask the Writer to the Signet to draw up a summons ordering one C. P. S. Farquhar, better known as the Earl of Fyffe, to appear in the Sheriff’s Court in Cowdenbeath on such-and-such a date and answer to the judge why he didn’t choose to pay Mr. Cameron ample money for injuries received in his employ.

  When approved by the court the summons would be impressed with the signet of the Keeper of the Signet and then delivered to a messenger-at-arms for personal service on Lord Fyffe at Brumbie Hall.

  And following that, Mr. MacDonald said, all hell was going to break loose.

  For the first time Gillon felt his stomach flutter.

  “How much is all this going to cost us?”

  “Oh, a few pounds.”

  How easily the words came out. A few pounds, and how much sweat lay behind them. Yet the Cameron Defense Fund could cover the costs without anyone feeling any hurt at all and for the first time Gillon sensed what it meant to be organized. A dark, strong-looking young man put his head inside the door to the office.

  “Is this the man then?”

  He came in and took Gillon’s hand, not noticing Gillon wince.

  “It’s not going to be easy. I want to warn you of that.” Gillon said that he knew.

  “They’re not going to like it. You know what you’re up against? You know who’s stacked against you?”

  “I have most of my life.” The handsome, dark man laughed. He looked at Gillon in a different way from the way the lawyers had.

  “You’re going to do, you know that?” He turned to the others. “He’s going to do, by God,” and opened a side door and stepped into the hallway.

  “Just don’t let us doon,” Gillon heard him say down the hall. The “doon” was hollow and had the sound of death about it. “No matter what they do, don’t you let us doon.”

  * * *

  It was time to go. Gillon could see the little tea cart standing in the doorway, a signal for the miners to be on their way.

  “Would you care to take some tea?” MacDonald said in a weak way.

  “I’m sorry, we can’t,” Gillon said, and saw the look of relief pass over their eyes as swiftly as shadows at sea. He didn’t understand them but he understood this much: it was one thing to help a man in trouble and quite another to take tea with him.

  “Why do you do this for us?” Gillon suddenly asked. It surprised them.

  “Why, for the cause,” Calder said.

  “What cause?”

  They looked at one another. It was very bad manners—Gillon sensed that—like asking someone the price of the gift he had given you.

  “The … ah, cause. Justice, rights, all that.”

  The serving girl was making discreet little tinkling sounds in a teacup with her spoon, warning them that their tea was getting cold.

  “I do it from guilt if you want to know,” Mr. MacDonald suddenly said. “I saw what my father did to get me here. I’m not about to give it up but I want to pay part of the price for it.”

  It was an embarrassing moment, but Gillon could sense that MacDonald was happy to have said it.

  “Since we’re all being so honest, I’ll tell you why I do it. I do it for love,” Calder said.

  “Oh, come, now,” Miss Tweed said.

  “No, it’s true. I want to say it. Do you know the poem that goes, ‘For a’ that, an’ a’ that’?”

  “For a’ that, an’ a’ that,

  It’s comin’ yet for a’ that,

  That man to man the world o’er

  Shall brithers be for a’ that.”

  “We’re all brothers, all on the same little boat, all traveling to the same end. Not all equal, of course, but we are brothers. Just try a flood or a fire sometime. When a hand reaches out you don’t look at the hand, you grab for it.”

  It was hard to imagine Mr. Calder in a fire or a flood, somehow, but even so Gillon was inspired by his concept of brotherhood. He wanted to tell them of the feeling he had sometimes coming out of the pit, all the backs ahead of him bent, hunching their way to the shaft head, all black with sweat and coal dust and the wonderful sense of love that would suddenly possess him for these men, asking for so little out of the world, asking for a little bread and salt to put on their tables, asking only for a little respect and to be treated like the men they were. But he decided against it, and the tea cart was pushed into the room. Mr. MacDonald, with a sudden enthusiasm, took Gillon by the hand.

  “Oh, you’re going to do fine. How I wish I had had you to throw up against my father.”

  * * *

  As hungry as they were, they decided not to eat in Edinburgh, where they felt out of place, and to take the train back out to Cowdenbeath, where, they assured each other, the food would be better and cheaper. Selkirk was himself again.

  “Love, for Christ’s sa
ke. Did you hear him? ‘Love is what it’s all about,’” he said, imitating Calder, although, as Gillon tried to point out, Calder had never said it. “Ah, well, at least we have them working for us.”

  “Us?”

  “The movement. As soon as we win, they go. The price of victory. New problems, new tools, as simple as that.” He made a sign with his finger over his throat. Gillon was glad the compartment was empty. Mr. Selkirk always made Gillon ill at ease in public.

  “Love,” the librarian said sarcastically. “Organization is what it’s all about. Organization is the only thing that sticks. Love doesn’t last. And love doesn’t win battles, my friend; battalions do. Love, my wounded miner, is bourgeois bullshit and should be dumped back in the cow barn where it was invented. Do you want me to go on?”

  The librarian could see that he was turning a good trip into something sour for Gillon, and to his credit he stopped.

  “No, no, Gillon, love has its place. Even Marx admits that, in case you didn’t know.”

  “No, I didn’t know.”

  “It’s just that hunger is the dominant fact in life, and the fear of hunger is what drives men, my friend, and not love.”

  “‘Hunger is a good master,’ my wife always says.”

  “And since Mr. Calder has never been hungry an afternoon in his life, he doesn’t know what in hell he’s talking about.”

  They were coming to the Forth Bridge, and the gigantic reach of the cantilevered towers across the firth commanded their attention. It had been dark when they had come over it. Gillon had never seen anything as remarkable before.

  “Think of the number of men who must have died building it,” Selkirk said.

  “Yes, but maybe it was worth it?”

  “Nothing can justify the taking of a workingman’s life.”

  “I don’t know.” Gillon smiled rather sadly. “I think I’m about to give mine for a hell of a lot less than this.”

  Even Selkirk was obliged to smile.

  “But think of the plaque we’ll be putting up on the wall of Number One Tosh-Mungo Terrace,” he said.

  The firth was rough and Gillon could see a little fishing boat trying to beat its way to the shelter of Inchgarvie. The wind was very hard and the current strong. The seaman was in serious trouble. It was strange to sit up there, far above the sea, head propped on hand, and casually watch a man struggling for his life down below you. It occurred to Gillon that that was what they were doing to him in Edinburgh. They would be in the position of being in the train, and he would be alone in the sea.

  All right, Gillon thought, if that was the way it was going to have to be, so be it.

  The boat had overturned. The seaman had failed to make his turn and now he was in the water, holding on to a rope tied to the gunwale.

  “They don’t understand that down there, you see. Hunger,” Selkirk said. “No man who has a full stomach can ever quite understand hunger and the things it can make men do.”

  He wouldn’t last long in that water: the roughness, the current, and the cold. He was in over his depth, beyond his abilities. Out there alone and foundering. It made Gillon shiver.

  A whaleboat was starting out from Inchgarvie. There were people on the shore, women helping the men get the boat in the water. He could see the white spume flying as the water slapped the prow; touch and go and then he saw the oars flashing. Good brave men. That’s it, what I mean by love, Gillon thought. What reason had they to take that little boat into that rough sea, what right, even, to chance their own lives, but they were doing it, oars digging in and lifting out, going to the help of some man they might never have seen in their lives.

  “The thing of hunger,” Selkirk said, “is that when it’s around you don’t have an appetite for love.”

  Gillon hoped the man could see the whaleboat, because it would fire him, in that freezing water, with the will to hang on.

  “Love, in everyday life, is a luxury.”

  “What you are saying then,” Gillon said, “is that hunger is a good master but a poor lover.”

  “Aye.” He smiled.

  “Or love is too good for the poor. Who was that man who came into the office?”

  “Who was that man?”

  A man in the bow of the whaleship was on his feet and had a line in his hand. It was a good sign. The smaller boat had washed up against a great black stone off the island and the rush of surf against it was handing man and boat a terrible beating.

  “That was Keir Hardie, man.”

  “Keir Hardie? That man? Why didn’t anyone tell me?” Gillon turned back to the window. They were across the bridge. The boat was gone, the stone was gone, the island was gone.

  “Now I’ll never know.”

  “Never know what?”

  “Nothing,” Gillon said. “It’s nothing at all.”

  He couldn’t account for it but it made him feel better about the thing he was doing. Life was like what he had just seen when you were able to see it from afar, one life, one little boat in a broiling sea, and in the end, if you made it through the gap in the firth, who really knew and who really cared, and if you didn’t, what did it really matter? The trip was what mattered and you did that as well as you could and no one could ask for more of you. So Gillon felt better, despite knowing that a fellow man very possibly had just died for his bread beneath his eyes.

  But he wondered if the man had made it after all, because it was an omen, of that he was sure. If the man made it, Gillon felt certain, he was going to make it, and if the man went under, Gillon was going to go under also.

  “Do you know one thing?” Gillon said, surprised at his own discovery. “You’re the real romantic. I just want a little better world while I’m alive and a little better world for my children but you want a workingman’s paradise. No wonder you’re bitter, it’s so hard to see paradise in Pitmungo.”

  Mr. Selkirk sulked. He didn’t like being criticized by coal miners and, worse, he recognized a certain amount of truth in what Gillon said. “The final goal, that’s what counts, and all the rest is nothing,” he said when they got off the train in Cowdenbeath, and it occurred to Gillon that in the most improbable of ways, Selkirk was much like Maggie. They just arrived at the same final belief by two different roads.

  They stopped in the Miners’ Arms for late breakfast. It was dark there and quiet. They had baps and tea and, on second thought, a rasher of bacon—it was an outing; they had been to Edinburgh and seen their capital and the castle, had met their law agents and Keir Hardie—and then Mr. Selkirk allowed as he would have just one or two Newhaven gills of whisky to see him the final jog home. It was a nice way to put it, Gillon thought. Since a gill was four ounces and a Newhaven gill was double that and since when Mr. Selkirk said one or two he meant two or three, Gillon left him after the first Newhaven gill went down and began the long walk home. Mr. Selkirk was searching for paradise in the bottom of a bottle again. When the shift was over that afternoon Gillon sent Sandy Bone and Sam to Cowdenbeath to bring Mr. Selkirk home in the wagon.

  4

  They went down the next morning—Gillon and Walter Bone as witness—to see Mr. Brothcock. Gillon knocked on the pay-shed door and when there was no answer went quietly along one side of the building, trying not to crunch the slate and coal, until he was able to see the superintendent at his desk. He came back and knocked again, and when there still was no answer Gillon pushed the door open and stood in the doorway. Brothcock didn’t look up.

  “Sir? I have come to file…” The superintendent looked up.

  “Who asked you to push my door open?”

  “I knocked and when there was no answer—”

  “You knocked! If I knocked on the door of your house … You’re Cameron, aren’t you?”

  “Aye.”

  “Christ, you’d know, wouldn’t you? Would you expect me to walk in your house?”

  “I thought, sir…”

  “Answer that!”

  Gillon stood and tried to
keep looking him in the face.

  “You can’t, can you?”

  “… this being a place of business, a public place…”

  “All right, enough of the shit.” Brothcock swung his chair around so that Gillon would be talking to the back of his head. “What do you want?”

  Gillon read from his paper, swiftly but clearly.

  “Having been gravely injured while about my duties in Lord Fyffe Number One of the Pitmungo Coal and Iron Company—”

  “Get on with it.”

  “I hereby make formal request for ample and fair compensation by the Company for the injury received, expenses incurred, the loss of past and future wages because of the aforementioned injury—to wit, a coal pick stuck into claimant’s shoulder by a visitor to the mine, namely one Elphinstone. Under the rules of the Crown governing the operation of mines…”

  “Rules?” The back of Brothcock’s neck was red. “We make the rules here.” He was beginning to swivel his chair around.

  “… and the matter of compensation for men injured in the mines through negligence on the part of the owners of said mine, complainant asks fair and just recompense of four hundred pounds.”

  The superintendent had fully turned around by then and as he did Gillon put the paper he had read to him in his hand. Brothcock pretended not to notice it.

  “One hundred pounds I might have laughed at, do you understand that? Something to bargain with, something to fool with. But four hundred pounds.” He got up from his chair and it wasn’t until he was up and angry that one realized how powerful a man Brothcock was. He was fat, but beneath the fat the residue of a violent body still lurked, waiting to be summoned. “Four hundred pounds annoys me. Four hundred pounds makes me angry. Now, I am going to tell you what I plan to do. Since you entered my office unlawfully I’m going to throw you out of it and when I do I want to know if you want to go with a kick in the doup or a kick in the gowls—which one do you want, Mr. Cameron, take your choice,” he said and began to move toward Gillon. Gillon backed away.

  “You have my paper, it’s in your hand.”

  Brothcock rolled the paper into a ball, opened the lid to his coal stove, and threw the paper in and watched it burn.