The Camerons

by Robert Crichton

  “Don’t kiss him,” Sarah said.

  “Aye, I’ll kiss my son,” and he did, and then walked out of the ben through the but, seeing nothing really, and out into the crowd of men and women waiting for him there. Their cheer—a roar it was—on seeing him rattled the new glass in the front windows.

  “What is it, what’s happening?” Jemmie suddenly cried out.

  “Easy. It’s Daddie going down to see the Laird.”

  “Sam?” Jem whispered. “Did he look good?”

  “Jesus, Jem, you would have been so proud. He looks like a Highland chief going to take charge of his regiment.”

  “Oh. And Sam?”

  “Aye?”

  “I think I’m going to die.”

  11

  Gillon never clearly remembered the walk down Tosh-Mungo Terrace and Colliers Walk. Pieces of a dream he was playing a part in. He saw the faces but he couldn’t make them out; he heard the people calling to him, but the words made no sense, and all the while the fliskie sensation of his kilt flinging left and right with each click of his almost new leather heels tacking against the stones of the walk. And then for a time he was alone, passing from Uppietoon across Sportin Moor and Lord Fyffe No. 1, the newly shined shoes picking up coal sludge on the way, and then Doonietoon and the uproar all over again. The children in Doonie ran along beside him, wanting to touch the kilt, trying to imitate the swirl of it. Down past Miners Row and Rotten and Wet, down past the College, where the few men who still had pennies to drink with gave him another rousing send along, and then alone again, except for a few children behind him, down past the Reading Room, and through the works, past Lady Jane No. 2, where he had first gone underground so long ago, and then onto the Low Road to Cowdenbeath, which would take him out to Brumbie Hall. His feet kept marching him along, the way the legs of soldiers must move, Gillon thought, when headed for the front. Something more powerful than his own desire was moving him ahead. He didn’t want to go ahead, and there was no turning back.

  A few drops of rain caused him to look up, but it was a mizzle of rain, nothing more. He was getting used to the feel of the kilt now. He liked the lift and fall of the streamers from his glengarry on his neck and then there it was, as suddenly as that, the great house among the oak trees, with the little houses huddled behind it as if they were kneeling at prayer. Gillon felt his heart muscle squeeze and release, a spasm of some sort.

  Before the gate, which was not guarded, Gillon stepped into deep grass and, hoping he was out of sight of the main house, bent down and worked the pit glaur and wet coal dust off the sides and soles of his shoes. “A man’s a man for a’ that an’ a’ that,” he kept saying to himself, wiping the mine muck off him, shoring himself up with the words, wanting to believe in them the way a man in a small boat wants to believe in the seaworthiness of it, all the while knowing that Burns was a hopeless romantic and that some men, for all kinds of reasons, were superior to other men.

  He went through the gate thinking he would be stopped before he reached the door, and crunched his way up the gravel drive. The door was enormous, studded with iron like an ancient shield, and Gillon stopped to settle himself. Did he walk in with the hat on or did you have it in hand and give it to the girl? What if there was no girl? What if Lady Jane herself answered the door? Did a collier hand a countess his hat? And that suddenly made him feel better. What was he but a miner and how else did they expect him to act? But then why was he here in this costume? He was at the door, looking for a bell to pull or something to push, a knocker or a place where people knocked, and he suddenly turned to run when the door opened.

  “Yes?”

  “Well … I … ah…”

  He felt his face redden. He didn’t want any of that this day.

  “What do you want?”

  Irish by the sound of her. He saw her looking him up and down, a little Irish kind of smile, impudent, around the edge of her lips and nose.

  “Want? I don’t want … I mean, I was, after all…”

  “Who shall I say is calling?”

  “Why … ah. Cameron. Yes. Mister Cameron. Mister G. Cameron.”

  “Which of the three d’ya want?”

  There were other girls behind her, Irish too, sarcastic little smiles, dressed in crisp black full skirts and enormous starched white fronts like nuns in the Roman Catholic church.

  “Mr. G. Cameron to see Lord Fyffe.”

  She left him at the door. He could hear the serving girls snickering out of sight behind it. They must have known he was coming. So typical of the Irish working class, Gillon thought, to snirtle at one of their own. No wonder they had never managed to organize a decent labor movement, always falling apart in the face of the masters and the English and their own priests. She was back, smiling openly now, a sly pawky smile all over her face, the kind of smile children in school give other children as they are on their way up to get whipped.

  “Come in, Jock,” she whispered. “It’s not exactly the pit in here, is it?”

  He turned to her, furious, and then saw by her eyes that she hadn’t meant it that way at all.

  “You’ll go to the left and down to the Great Hall.” She touched his arm and he winced. “They’re not bad people. A little stiff and Scotchy…” She put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, what did I say?”

  Gillon was forced to laugh.

  “You be yourself and you’ll get by down there,” she said.

  He turned down the long dim corridor, feeling better, feeling almost at ease. He may use a lot of coal, but he took it easy on the gas, Gillon was thinking when he heard her coming after him, clattering over the wooden parquet floor.

  “Mister?” He stopped. “Your hat.”

  He didn’t understand her.

  “Give me your hat, in the name of God.”

  “I think I’ll leave it on.”

  “I never saw a man wear a hat in this house before.”

  “You ever see a miner in this house before?” She shook her head. She was young and pretty, too young to be sent so far away from home.

  “Aye, well. Miners wear their hats in house and I’m a miner.”

  “Fine by me, Sandy,” and she winked at him. Fresh, he thought, fresh as grass, but nice.

  When he turned away from her he was sorry to see that several of the people from inside the Great Hall had been watching and he knew it took him down a few notches, as if he were on a par with the Irish serving girl, and one could hardly get lower than that in Scotland except by taking up with an African.

  He came into the room and no one noticed him. There were eight or nine people there, moving about the room, clinking cups and talking to one another, and no one seemed to see him. The faces were as remote and blank to him as the faces along the Colliers Walk. It was brighter than in the corridor, and he had trouble adjusting to the change in light, as he always did now, his eyes blinking against his will.

  “What have we here?” a voice said. He couldn’t see the man. “I say, what have we here?”

  Gillon turned toward the voice but the head was against a bank of guttering candles and he couldn’t make it out.

  “It’s Cameron, my Lord.” He recognized that voice: Brothcock. “The collier, sir.”

  He could see some of them and sense the others putting down their teacups and cakes and turning to see him better.

  “Here,” someone said. A lady. “Let me take your cap.”

  “Yes, my hat,” Gillon said, and took off the glengarry, sorry now he hadn’t left it behind.

  “Collier?” The voice was not unkind. “He looks like he’s come in from stalkin’.”

  “No, I…” Gillon started to speak, but he realized they didn’t want to hear him.

  “Here, now. Come around here so we can get a better look at you.”

  Gillon went around to the other side of a large, high-backed chair in which the Earl of Fyffe was slumped.

  “Brothcock here assures me you’re one of my colliers but I don’t believe
him. I say you’ve just come off the moor from a good long hunt and are about to present us with a brace or two of grouse.” Gillon didn’t know why people laughed. He was still blinded and that helped, the way a layer of coal dust helped, the way a mask will allow people to do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do.

  “I wouldn’t like to say Mr. Brothcock was more correct than Lord Fyffe, but if you’d care to study my hands, sir.”

  It was rewarded by a nice little laugh.

  “Well put,” Lord Fyffe said. “The man has tact. Give the man some tea.”

  Someone put a teacup in his hand and said, “Cream and sugar?”

  “Lemon, please. A little dash of lemon will do.”

  “Lemon?” the voice said. He guessed it was Lady Jane. “Did you hear him ask for lemon? What elaborate tastes. I’m afraid we have no lemon. I’m afraid we’re a cream and sugar family.” She spoke very slowly, accenting all kinds of odd words, and Gillon supposed that that was what made the young men in the room laugh so often.

  “Tell me,” Lord Fyffe said. “What is his name again?” he said to someone at his side. They told him. “Tell me, Cameron, what are you doing in that … that getup?”

  The voice was more pointed now.

  “It’s my special-occasion suit, sir. Marriages and funerals and such,” Gillon said. “I considered this a special occasion.”

  “I’d say that it was, I’d say that much,” a young voice said. “You’re the first collier ever to see the inside of this house.”

  Gillon wondered if he was supposed to say something. He didn’t seem to know when to talk.

  “And the kilt. The army, of course.”

  “My family. My clan.” There was a laugh following that.

  “Fancy,” the same young voice said. “The collier has a clan.”

  Gillon flushed at that, but it passed and he wasn’t blushing any longer.

  “There have got to be those in a clan who aren’t chiefs or there couldn’t be any chieftains,” Gillon said. He hadn’t known he was going to say that.

  “Got you, Warrick. Stung you,” another young voice said. He sounded so much like Lord Fyffe that Gillon assumed it was his son.

  “You’re very agile with your mouth,” Lord Fyffe said.

  “You learn that down pit, sir. The give-and-take.”

  “That isn’t all you learn there,” the Earl said, and Gillon didn’t know what he meant.

  “You don’t talk Scotch,” a young voice said. “What’s the matter you don’t talk Scotch? I promised this young man some Scotch.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I’m from the Highlands.”

  “And how did that come about?”

  “I married a Pitmungo girl. She brought me here to be a miner.”

  “But how did you meet her?” Lady Jane asked.

  “She came and got me, Ma’am.”

  “That was enterprising of her. What was her name?”

  “Drum, Ma’am. Margaret Drum.”

  Lady Jane shook her head. The name meant nothing to her. Two hundred years of service to the family and she had never heard of the name. Tom Drum would have been hurt to know it. Someone had handed the Earl a card and he studied it. Gillon wondered if it would be forward of him to take a sip of his tea. He did and it tasted like no tea he had ever had before.

  “Gillon Forbes Cameron,” the Earl read. “That’s a fine name for a collier.”

  There was an edge to the voice that made Gillon feel uncomfortable. He took the teacup from his lips and stood in the attitude of a soldier at attention.

  “One of my grandmothers was a Forbes,” Lord Fyffe said. “Did you know that?”

  “No, sir.”

  “So you might say in some small way we’re related. Kith and kin, you might say.”

  “In a way, yes, sir. Different levels.”

  “Kinsmen. Clansmen. What is the first virtue of a clan member, Cameron?” He said it very swiftly.

  Gillon didn’t have an answer.

  “What does one member of a clan expect of another member of the clan above all else? You know the answer, Cameron. Make a try.”

  Gillon felt himself turning red, not too badly red, but they were all watching him. If only they all didn’t watch.

  “Help one another in hard times, sir?”

  “Don’t ask me the question. Answer the question.”

  “Loyalty, I suppose.”

  The Earl made a sudden move as if to get out of the chair. For a moment Gillon wondered if he should lean down and help the man up but he was only straightening in his chair. Everyone waited, watching Gillon, the way men watch a fish in clear water nudging about the hook.

  “You hurt me,” Lord Fyffe said. His voice was very loud and in that great, quiet room there was a quality to it that caused it to echo from the walls. Gillon could feel it inside him.

  “You hurt me more than any man has ever hurt me.”

  Gillon was frozen, his cup halfway to the saucer, rigid in his stiff right hand.

  “Disloyalty!” It was shouted. “Lack of faith. And you come down here looking like that, wearing the clothes of loyal men. You have no right to wear such a thing.”

  The last words were almost sobbed.

  “You could have come to me, to your Laird, to someone who knows you and respects you, but you turned on me and went to them.”

  He tapped the paper.

  “I know who they are. I know who you went to. Crept to. Sold your self to.”

  “I—”

  “Shut your mouth,” Brothcock said, “when his Lordship is speaking.”

  “You would have me summoned into court like a common criminal. You couldn’t come to me like a man, you had to sneak to Edinburgh and fall into strangers’ arms for the sake of money. Then you come down here in the dress of a clansman and expect to get money from my purse.”

  Gillon was looking at his feet. It was odd to look down and see someone else’s shoes on your feet, flopping black tongues against the grain of waxed wood.

  “Do you take me for a common criminal?” Gillon said nothing. “I asked a question. Answer it.”

  “Answer your master,” Brothcock said.

  “No.”

  There was much doing with teacups then. They were passing the cakes. He looked up and found one of the serving girls pouring more tea in his cup.

  “No, I won’t…” But she filled it, and he was frightened he was going to spill it on the beautiful floor and on his shoes because his hand was trembling. He tried to drink but it was too dangerous, the trembling too pronounced to take the cup safely to his lips, and so he was condemned to stand where he was with the tea tipping at the lip of his cup.

  “And what did you do in the Highlands before going down pit?” a young voice asked. “It must have been a bit of a jolt.”

  “Seaman.” Pause. “Sir.”

  “You don’t have to sir me, Mr. Cameron. You’re old enough to be my father.”

  Someone fingered his kilt from behind. Gillon started to turn around but didn’t.

  “It’s the genuine article, all right,” the voice said.

  “From top of the sea to bottom of the pit. An odyssey, wouldn’t you say? It must have been horrible.”

  “A what?” Gillon asked.

  “Odyssey. A journey. Do you follow me at all?”

  “Aye, I follow.”

  “These bleeding liberals.”

  “It’s not all that bad, is it?” someone asked.

  “No picnic. Sir.”

  “Do you think any of us have a picnic in this world? It’s all relative.”

  “Seriously now. How do you find it in the pit?”

  “Good enough.”

  “Good enough,” the young man said sarcastically. “Very rotten, you mean. Why did you ever go down?”

  “I had no choice. Hunger is a good master, sir.”

  “Oh, very good that.” He repeated it around Gillon’s shoulder as if he weren’t there. “You’d better get that one down,
Teddy. Your authentic folk wisdom at work.”

  Gillon continued to stand at attention, tea cup poised as if ready for teacup inspection.

  “I wasn’t always a seaman. My family were driven from their croft during the Clearances, you see, and—”

  “Yes, we know. Into the sna’ at Christmastime. And they burned the roof over your head and put you out into the blast with three small bairn and a mither with pneumonia and fed your grain to the deer? That was it, wasn’t it?”

  “Easy, Warrick, just because he stung you.”

  “I just don’t like their lies is all. I can’t stand their proletariat lies.”

  The room was quiet. There was some signal, some movement that took place in the room which Gillon couldn’t discover, that let them know Lord Fyffe wished to talk and that the clattering of the cups and the chattering should cease. They all watched Gillon again.

  “Loyalty.” His voice had changed. He was reasonable now, a man of the world talking to another from a lesser world, but a man for all that. “I don’t think you have a deficiency in that virtue. I have a feeling that somewhere down in you lies a seam of decency waiting to be mined out.”

  “Very good, Father,” a young voice said. It was sarcastic.

  “I also feel you are a sensible man, as most men who care about money tend to be.”

  “But I … it’s not the money…” He was silenced. They were getting him all wrong.

  “What are the two main concerns of your miner?” He didn’t wait for Gillon to answer.

  “Protection from injury and protection of his job so that with the help of his coal masters he can maintain his family in simple decency. Now, I ask you this. Who do you seriously think can better offer you both, the labor agitators or the Christian gentlemen God has seen fit to put in control of property, upon the successful management of which so much depends for us both? Answer that.”

  Gillon couldn’t.

  “What do you throw your lot in with? God’s sensible order, tested by time, or the anarchy of the have-nothings who will stop at nothing if it will get them what they want for themselves? Answer that.”

  Gillon stood, looking blankly around him, vaguely aware that his teacup was tilting and drops of tea were dripping on the floor and his shoes.