The Camerons

by Robert Crichton

  “But it’s to be a guarantee, man, a response to a demand, not the Laird’s whim. Think of that, Cameron. That’s where his pride takes the strapping. Think of that, man, keep your eye on that.”

  I did, Gillon thought, I really did. What in the name of God did they think he was here for?

  The meeting was over. They were all around him after that, offering advice and encouragement and suggestions.

  “Now remember,” a man was saying to him, “when the sarving girl asks what you want in your tea you say, ‘A little dash of lemon, if you please.’” It was John Trotter. “Something loose and easy, to show you know your way around a tea service. ‘I wouldn’t care if I had a little slap of lemon, Miss.’ Like that. Nooo milk, nooo sugar. Miners have milk.”

  “But I’m a miner.”

  “You’re our representative. Lemon, got it?”

  “Aye.”

  “Lemon.”

  Gillon wondered what Karl Marx would take in his tea. Then they were all gone except for Gillon and Andrew and Walter Bone.

  “Taking tea with the Earl and Countess of Fyffe at Brumbie Hall,” Walter Bone said. “Who would ever have believed that the day you came through Gaffer’s Gate? I know you’ll stand us proud, Gillon.”

  “I know I’ll try.”

  “Then that should be enough.” Gillon felt shards of ice in his stomach.

  “Luck go with you, Mr. Cameron,” Alyson Bone said from the shadows of the doorway. “You’re the best one to do it.” Her voice, to Andrew, was like a soft wind running in dry reeds.

  9

  “What time is it now?”

  “Noon, Daddie,” Sam said. “Few minutes after.”

  “It can’t be.”

  “Do you want it to be sooner or later?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes I wish it would be now and sometimes never come.”

  “It doesn’t matter, anyway. Time is its own master.”

  Master. Everything was master in this place. Coal master, Earls and Countesses, Walter Bone, hunger: none of them any good.

  “This is madness,” Maggie said. She was resewing the lining of Gillon’s borrowed tweed jacket so that it had a brisker look to it. “Wasting my morning making some other man’s jacket look good.”

  “Your husband will be in it.”

  Ian came into the house. He had been making a polish for the shoes—a little of the salt pork that had been used on Jem boiled with a little vinegar and lampblack added to it.

  “What time is it?”

  No one answered him. Time was too unnerving now.

  “The pot stinks. I hope the shoes won’t stink that way,” Sam said.

  “I asked what time it was.”

  Sarah finally told him. “Five hours, that’s all, five more hours. He’ll have to leave here in four and a half.”

  Gillon felt his stomach tighten again. It was the word “have” that got him. He looked up suddenly with a fresh excitement in his face. He didn’t have to go, he didn’t have to go anywhere. He didn’t get a summons, he got an invitation. There was no law in the world that said he, G. Cameron, free citizen, had to go down that hill and take tea with Lord Fyffe.

  “I don’t have to…” Gillon began, but the boys were fighting. He would wait.

  “Jesus, the shoes are going to stink, man.”

  “The shoes will not stink,” Ian said. “When I get through with them, they’ll smell like heather and shine like a collier’s nose.”

  “There’s no law that says…” Gillon began again.

  “I wonder what it’s going to be like in there?” Andy Begg said. Well-wishers had begun dropping by the house, shoring up their representative.

  “Hot as hell,” Ian said, looking up from his shoes. “He keeps it hot to boast how much coal he’s got.”

  “Nonsense. A man like that doesn’t have to boast of having coal.”

  “That’s what he does, though.”

  “Who says?”

  “They,” Ian said. “The people who know.”

  You could never win with Ian, Gillon thought. He always got it around to his own territory, where there was no answer. He suspected it would prove to be that way with the Earl and he felt the clench in his stomach. How many times could his stomach tighten and release that way before something gave, Gillon thought. Emily came in with the sporran. The leather had been washed with sweet saddle soap and lightly oiled and the fur of the wallet’s cover dry-cleaned by the cobbler.

  “He charged a bob for it,” Emily said. “Can you imagine it?” No one could.

  “Five hours to go,” Ian said.

  “Christ,” Gillon suddenly shouted, “it’s not an execution! I’m not going there to die.”

  The room fell silent. It was a reluctant, nervous silence. They wanted to talk but they respected what the man was going through; to speak would seem to be to invade his privacy and destroy the delicate balance he was working to achieve in his mind. At one moment he could see himself moving easily through the room, talking to the assembled guests, if there were any, and he felt elated, and not a minute later he could imagine the opposite, his tongue twisted in his mouth, stumbling, people not understanding him, people laughing at him, not being able to make out what he was trying to say.

  The thing was that either one was possible. It all depended on his mood the moment the door was opened. That would set the pattern. If he caught the right attitude, the right mood now, he wanted to nurse it, to keep it alive in him until he reached that front door and tinkled the bell.

  “Does anyone know about a man who might have drowned in the Firth of Forth a few weeks ago?”

  He saw them looking at one another, as if the man who was going to represent them was taking leave of his senses.

  “I’m all right,” Gillon said. “I assure you, I’m all right.”

  The silence descended again, a sullen silence, hard to keep and hard to break.

  “Strange they didn’t invite me,” Maggie finally said. “You don’t invite the husband to tea and not invite the wife.” It had never occurred to Gillon that the Countess could be in bad taste and it made him feel better, a little nugget to cherish.

  “Maybe they found out you were a Drum,” Sam said.

  “That isn’t nice,” Sarah said.

  “It isn’t very funny,” his mother said.

  “Maybe Lady Jane has designs,” Mr. Selkirk said.

  “And that isn’t nice.”

  “Strapping aristocratic-looking young specimen in full flower of life. They say that she and Lord Fyffe, well … best left unsaid.”

  “And that isn’t very funny.”

  They ought to know about me and Mrs. Cameron, Gillon thought.

  “The truth is never funny,” Selkirk said.

  “You really fancy yourself some kind of wit,” Maggie said.

  “No. But those I tell my jokes to, do.”

  And silence again, Sam’s voice droning on, reading Walden to Jem, adding to the heaviness of the silence, and now wind was moaning in the pine outside. It was a gray day, a down day, but there had been no rain. That was good, Gillon thought. Wind before rain, soon to your ale. It was important that it not rain, that he not arrive at Brumbie Hall with his hair plastered down, his kilt dripping water on the polished wood floors, or whatever they would be made of.

  “They say he has a cruel temper,” Ian said. “They say Brothcock is afraid to look him in the eyes.”

  “Aye, but Brothcock’s a thief, that’s why. Our dad is no thief. He’s not trying to steal something; he’s just trying to get what belongs to him,” Andrew said.

  Trying to make him feel good in a situation in which he could not feel good. He picked up his soft tweed tie and noticed that his hand was trembling. He put the tie around his neck to see what it would look like. Too much tweed, he thought, altogether too much, and realized he had forgotten how to knot a tie.

  “I don’t think they’re still wearing ties like this,” Gillon said. “Time has passed i
t by.”

  “They were wearing them last year at the matches,” Sam said. “The toffs, the gents. There are ties and ties, and then there are ties.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” his father shouted. Sam wasn’t alarmed.

  “It means that there are some ties like there are kilts. You don’t see a new fashion in kilts come along much more than every other century or so, do you?”

  Then came the tub. Because he hadn’t come from the pit the women felt it was indecent to be in the room and went into the ben. That strange blindness when it came to the pit and coal dirt—Gillon had never gotten over it although he had learned to live with it. Now he was sorry that he wasn’t going to see Lord Fyffe after work, his face safely masked in coal dust, clothed in honest sweat, his credentials of good faith. The scar on his arm was ugly. Some of the coal dust had never been cleaned out and the jagged wound in his shoulder was an angry red rimmed with blue and blackness.

  “You should go down without your shirt,” Selkirk said. “Lady Jane would keel over. ‘Pay him the money and get the bloody bastard out of here,’ she’d say.”

  “Remember, Daddie, don’t use your right hand for anything,” Andrew said.

  “I’ll do exactly as much as I can with it. I’m not going down there to lie to the man.”

  “But you can’t use your hand, not really. You can’t work. It isn’t lying to let the man see the arm is no good at all.”

  “It only dramatizes the truth, you might say,” Sam said. Where did they get this, this using of truth as if it were a starting point, not an end, a means to be used, not something to strive toward? He didn’t understand the people he had raised. He didn’t understand anyone, he thought.

  “Now, when they hand you the tea,” Maggie called in from the ben, “you take it in your left hand and you say, very loud, ‘Excuse me, but I have no use of the proper limb.’”

  On any other day, Gillon would have smiled. He didn’t smile, but he understood a little better.

  Andrew got up then to go up on the High Moor to take the last count of the ships in the harbor, to know how much pressure Lord Fyffe would be working under. Jem had found six. If there were eight or ten coal bottoms sitting there waiting to be loaded with coal, the pressure on the Earl to end his lockout would be enormous, and the knowledge of that could be Gillon’s secret wild card that he could win the pot with.

  * * *

  An hour and a half up to take the count, forty minutes back down at the most. There would be plenty of time. Even so, Andrew decided to jog part of the way, at least until it got steep. It was good to be out of the house, filled with people coming and going since the night before. Too much advice pouring in on his father, everyone coming up with some smashing idea of how to handle Lord Fyffe, not just stand with him as an equal, but put the Earl of Fyffe in his place. He felt good running, the afternoon was clearing and there was a charge of excitement in him and the house, the family and the town. When he reached the end of the Terrace, before it runs up toward the White Coo plantation above it, Alyson Bone was standing where the Terrace and Colliers Walk meet, as if she had been waiting for him. He slowed down, imperceptibly he hoped, because he didn’t want to seem to be stopping just for her. They had something in common now: his father and he had been in her house; he had spoken up in her house, he had seen the very bed she slept in. When he neared her he stopped running altogether, as if he were tired, although he didn’t look at her. It would give her a chance to say something if she wanted to.

  “That was a good idea you had,” Alyson said. He turned toward her in surprise, as if he hadn’t seen her.

  “Oh.” He blinked. What a fraud, he thought, and said: “What idea?”

  “The kilt. It makes all the difference.”

  “I hope it does.” He still stood there, pointing himself upward toward the High Moor, and couldn’t think of another thing to say. She was so beautiful, and so strange for Pitmungo. Pitmungo girls always chided the boys or insulted them; it was the style of the town. It grew boring after a while but it made talk easy.

  “How is your father today?” Andrew could smile at that.

  “Och, nervous. What you would expect.”

  “I can’t blame him.”

  “Stravaigin up and down the house like a man possessed. In the but and then the ben, smiling and then angry, you know.”

  “Aye, I can imagine it.”

  He didn’t know why he had used the Pitmungo word; to show he was like everyone else, he supposed. She was like his mother—she hardly used the dialect, as if it had passed her by without her ever hearing it. She was easy to talk to, easy, Andrew thought, and it filled him with confidence.

  “Can you imagine going down to Brumbie Hall yourself?”

  “No,” Andrew said.

  “My father says it’s a very brave thing.”

  “Well, it is.”

  “I can’t imagine doing it. I don’t know what I’d do.”

  “Oh, you wouldn’t have any trouble there.” She looked surprised.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, you’re so … so. You wouldn’t have to…” He stopped, furious with himself. What he wanted to say he couldn’t say, that people as beautiful as she was didn’t have to do anything, the way she didn’t have to work like others, but just stand there and be beautiful. Her family wouldn’t let her be soiled around the pithead and everyone accepted that. It was a fact of life: Alyson Bone was too pretty for the pithead.

  “So what? Wouldn’t have to what?”

  “Beautiful,” Andrew blurted out and started heading up toward the moor because he was blushing too strongly to face her. She was following him.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Did she really not know, he wondered, and finally decided to face her. If his father could go down to Brumbie Hall he could look at a girl.

  “Because you’re so pretty, you just stand there and everyone is pleased, you see.”

  “Och, that means nothing.”

  “Oh, no. It does. People like pretty people, that’s all. It’s true. Pretty people are apart.”

  “Then he’d ask me something, Lord Fyffe or Lady Jane, and I’d stand there and not know what to say to them.”

  “And they wouldn’t care.”

  He was still walking, it was the best way to talk, and she was still coming along with him. He was thrilled by it; he realized he must have wanted this to happen for two years, no, much more, five or six. He was a little dizzy about it all. As long as he had gone that far he decided to dare it all. It was a day for it.

  “Would you care to go up to the High Moor with me? It’s clearing.”

  He was afraid to look at her. He didn’t want to seem to be asking and he didn’t want to seem to be pressuring her and he didn’t want to see her or her to see him in case he revealed something if she said no. She didn’t answer for a long time.

  “Aye, I’ll go on the moor with you.” His heart thumped.

  “Aye, well. Come then,” he said, and started up the path through the orchard ahead of her. Now that he had her with him he didn’t know exactly what to do with her. She was slow, he usually walked up the moor all out to get it over with, and he couldn’t have her be too slow. After a time the silence between them grew too heavy for him to bear, but she saved him.

  “How’s your brother Jem the now?”

  “Oh. Jem.” He turned to look at her. The climb had put color into her face. She was so beautiful that he was surprised every time he turned and saw her, and amazed that she was going up on the moor with him. Ordinarily only pithead girls and green gowns went up on the moor with boys they barely knew. They both were conscious of that.

  “Jem is good now, I think. Over the worst. My sister’s nursing him and she’s the best there is.”

  “She’s a wonderful woman. She’s my sister too now.”

  That bothered him. He didn’t want it to be just that way, sisterly and brotherly. When he got through
the plantation he waited for her. There were little green apples on the trees, which meant the fruit pinchers, like Ian and Emily, couldn’t be far behind. She had tried to keep up but she was forced to stop and rest.

  “If I ask you something, will you tell me?”

  “Oh, aye, I guess. I think so.”

  “Why are you Camerons always going up on the High Moor?”

  He was stunned by the question because he knew he couldn’t answer it honestly. Sam had a way to turn it aside and Jem had his way but Andrew had never been asked it. He always knew, before, when the question would be asked and managed to avoid it.

  “To look for grouse eggs.” It was the standard answer, the one the family always used, the one Sam got away with. “But you never find any,” they always said to Sam and he would say, “But that’s the fun of it, you see, imagine the day we do,” and it was over with. But Andrew couldn’t carry it off that way.

  “I know that one,” Alyson said. “I’m asking you why.”

  He began to walk upward again.

  “I can’t tell you,” he said.

  “Because you don’t trust me.”

  “Oh, I do.” He turned around to her. He would trust her with anything, he thought then.

  “Then tell me.”

  He wanted to, more than anything he could remember.

  “I can’t,” Andrew said.

  “It’s not a matter of can’t. You can if you trust me.” When she looked at him he didn’t know how he could not tell her. But it was the secret of the family, it didn’t belong to him. It was the Camerons’ secret.

  “It doesn’t belong to me.”

  “What doesn’t belong to you?”

  “Oh, God. What we do.” He held out his hands, knowing he looked pathetic. “Can you understand that I can’t tell you?”

  She looked at him with those eyes that were so knowing and yet so young, even innocent, unlike most knowing eyes.

  “No.”

  He stood there, helpless to go on or go back and conscious of time passing. “It’s clouding over. It’s going to rain again.”