The Camerons

by Robert Crichton

  “You know what that marker stands for, don’t you?” Sandy Bone called down. “We’re legally in Cowdenbeath country now. And you know what that means, man? We’re free. We are free.” He was the happiest of them all.

  19

  The trip to Glasgow was a hard one, rain part of every day, their clothes constantly wet, and once they were forced to crawl under the wagon to hide from the stinging ice shot of a savage hailstorm that left them chilled. But they made it to the city, looking more like a band of Gypsies every day, and out to Clydebank two days ahead of sailing time, and were allowed to go on board if they didn’t ask to eat. It was a large ship, the Clunie Castle, a grain hauler that fit in a few passengers as if they were extra sacks of barley.

  Gillon felt re-born being on water again; it was, he thought, where he was meant to be. All the months before he had felt like a stranger, but now he was back in the world. And he was in command of his family once more because this world was his world and he knew his way around in it.

  “America, is it?” a sailor said. “I wouldn’t be doing any dances about it if I was you. Why do you think I’m here? They got as much hunger over there as we got over here.”

  But they wouldn’t let it discourage them. A new feeling of excitement was beginning to seize them. All that was holding it in check was the knowledge that the only one of them who had yearned to make the journey was lying in the coal and clay of Pitmungo.

  It wasn’t fair, Andrew thought. God wasn’t fair. He didn’t know if he wanted to go on believing in Him. And he kept watching Sam, and streets leading to the wharf and the harbor area, for police. But even with that fear always with him, he began to feel the excitement, too. He had gotten good money for the horse and the wagon, enough to pay the extra two passages, and that made it easier for his mother to take, although she was taking it well as it was.

  By the rising of the tide and the movement of the currents in the harbor Gillon knew when they would go.

  “They’ll be hauling anchor in an hour, we’ll be going then,” he told the family and when they did, the great anchor crawling up from the muck of the harbor on schedule, they were impressed with their father. The anchor up, and then the Clunie Castle backing out of her berth, deep-throated horn bellowing the news to the city, sliding out into the oily Clyde, slipping slowly down past Clydeside headed toward the sea.

  They all were excited then, even Maggie, out on the deck, waving to strangers they would never meet, crowded on a small deck behind the seamen’s work area, watching the river towns approach and fade from view. The ship was burning cheap coal and sulfurous fumes drifted down on them from the stack overhead.

  “How do you stand it out there?” a seaman asked. “No one comes out here until we hit the open sea.”

  “We mined the crap, man. We ate it for breakfast,” Sam told him.

  “It’s our fate,” Rob Roy said. “We’re taking Pitmungo with us.”

  By midday they were out in the Firth of Clyde and they had their first intimations of the open seas to come. That excited them too, and put a little fear in them. There were moments when they couldn’t see the shore. The wind was stronger in the firth and the fumes spewed backward over their heads and it was better after that.

  “You’d better start looking hard now,” Gillon warned the family, “because this is the last look you’re ever going to have of old Scotland.”

  It still hadn’t reached them, the completeness of the cutting off. As long as there was Scotland out there, little towns with people in them that they could understand and be understood by, the cord had not been cut. For a time there was no land in sight and they thought it was the end of it all and they were sad about it because it had come too fast. But then in the afternoon the Island of Arran rose on their right, all moorland and timber, enormous sweeps of green grazing lands and clabbers of clouds bumping their way along the sides like pregnant cows and they let up a cheer because they had their Scotland again.

  “You’ll never see country like that again,” Gillon told them. They heard the pride in it. “That’s Highland country.”

  “Is that what it’s like where you came from?” Sandy Bone asked and Gillon nodded.

  “Whatever made you leave?” Rob Roy said. “How could you ever leave that for Pitmungo?”

  Gillon waited until they were looking toward land and looked down at Maggie. She was smiling. For a time the clouds covered the sun and turned the sea a dark jade green the way the sea around Strathnairn had so often been.

  “That’s about the last of Scotland,” Gillon said to Emily.

  “I don’t care,” she said.

  “You’re not sad?” Emily troubled him.

  “I just hope it’s better where we go. I want to go to school. Can I go to school in America?”

  Gillon wasn’t sure what the children did in America. But he said, “Aye, Emily, you can go to school.”

  When they came on deck after eating their lamb stew, the worst lamb stew ever served at sea according to Rob Roy, an expert at matters like that, Arran was gone and there was only the sea.

  “All right, Scotland’s behind us,” Andrew said to Sam. “What did you do down in Lord Fyffe?”

  “I told you.”

  “I don’t believe you. I saw you come home. It was fire, wasn’t it. Some device you left in the mine.”

  Sam didn’t answer him.

  “One of those acid things that eats through the container and touches off some black powder. The mine’s on fire now, isn’t it?” Still he said nothing. “Christ, man, I saw the books you had.”

  Sam finally turned on Andrew.

  “Aye, it was fire. That’s what I wanted but I couldn’t do it, you see that? I failed us. I failed Jem. Oh, Christ, what a mess of it I made.”

  Andrew was excited then.

  “You didn’t leave the box then?” Sam shook his head. Andrew had never seen his brother look sadder, not even after the death of Jem.

  “I wanted to leave it. Something wouldn’t let me.”

  “Yes, but that’s just it, don’t you see it, Sam? A Cameron couldn’t do that. Set fire to the mine. You could have killed men down there, Sam. Hundreds of men out of work. Families broken apart. You couldn’t do that, Sam.”

  “Jem would have done it,” Sam said. “He would have gone down and seen justice done,” but Andrew kept shaking his head and gradually Sam became quiet because he began to understand that Andrew was right.

  “Do you know what I am? I’m sick to death of being a Cameron. Can you understand that?”

  “Aye. And you know another thing? There’s not a thing in the world you can do about it.”

  * * *

  If the weather held Gillon knew they would see the shores of Scotland a last time, and in the gloaming, the late evening sun touching its steep walls, the foot of Kintyre came out of the sea like an enormous ship bearing down on them.

  “Last call for Scotland,” Gillon called down into the sleeping quarters and all the family came back up on deck. There wasn’t much to see but it was the last of it, the very last, and so it was important. A fishing village huddled under high cliffs and the captain loosed a blast from his steam horn. It probably was a ritual, a salute to the last of Scotland before heading out beyond. It sent a shiver down his back.

  “Did you know your family has a slogan,” Gillon told the family. They kept looking at Scotland dropping away from them but they were listening.

  He said it in Gaelic first, pleased with himself for still being able to say it, remembering the fight with his father when he had made him memorize it. They never told him what each word meant, only that he had to say the slogan by rote the way a parrot might.

  Chlanna nan con thigibh a so’s gheibh sibh féoil

  They were impressed with their father again.

  “Sons of the hounds, come here and get flesh.”

  It meant nothing to them and yet something at the same time. They had had their flesh and lost it and now they were o
n their way, trying to win it again.

  “Why didn’t you ever say that before?” Maggie asked him.

  “I never saw any reason to.”

  But she seemed moved by it and said the words several times and Sandy Bone seemed the most moved.

  “I want to become a Cameron,” he said. They didn’t understand him. “I want to change my name. My children will be half Cameron anyway.”

  It was embarrassing and flattering at the same time. How can a man go about denying another man the use of his name?

  “You want to be a son of the hounds then?” Sam said.

  “Aye, that’s what I want.”

  “Then you are one,” Gillon said.

  * * *

  Kintyre was all but lost to them then, a black shadow to the east but still there. They were leaving the North Channel, entering open sea, and the water off the Mull of Kintyre was rough. Gillon could feel the sweep of open water under the hull and the cargo of grain was shifting lightly with it, causing the ship to roll.

  “So you’re not going to be sick?” Gillon said to Maggie. “This is as rough as it ever was at Strathnairn.”

  The boys and girls had all taken their turns at being sick. Ian had been curled up like a little animal since the morning.

  “Getting sick is for the young and spirited. When they’re still alive inside for that. I’m too old for it. I’ve outgrown it.”

  At first he was sympathetic and said nothing and finally was surprised to find he was angry with her. He pulled her away from the rest of the family.

  “You haven’t outgrown anything,” Gillon said to her. “You’re dying too soon. Don’t start dying on me before your time. You’re only forty—you’re not even forty. You have no right to say that. Now you owe me some years.”

  The lighthouse at the point of the mull had been lit and while they couldn’t see Scotland they could still see a glimmer from it.

  “Oh, I was frightened that night,” Maggie suddenly said. “When Drysdale’s light swept over us.” Gillon was amazed.

  “You were? Frightened then? You never told me.”

  “I thought I was going to drown.”

  “You never told me.”

  “No, I never told you.”

  They knew they were touching on something very deep to them that they would probably never find the words for.

  “I should have told you,” Maggie said. “I see that now. But I don’t know if I knew.”

  “I was frightened too.”

  “I know.”

  “We could have helped each other.”

  “I know.”

  The light was more powerful than they first had suspected and during its sweep the beams passed over the ship like light through the wings of a moth, seeming to dust it with a soft eerie glow. It was deep into gloaming tide then.

  “About that not being alive. You owe a lot more living than that,” Gillon said.

  “To who?” Gillon pointed to their children lined along the railing of the deck, all of them staring back at the light.

  “They can fend for themselves now.” He was angry with her again, for making himself reveal himself this way. He seized her wrist and hurt her.

  “Ah, Maggie. To me. To me.”

  Some of the children turned to look at their father and turned back to the sea, but Rob Roy came across the deck toward them.

  “Well, it’s gone,” Rob said. “Farewell to Scotland, land of poortith and porritch. It better be better beyond.” He took a bottle from his jacket pocket. “And farewell to usquebaugh too.” He dropped the bottle over the side into the sea and looked at his parents.

  “It makes a nice gesture, Rob, it makes a beautiful act.”

  “It’s no act.”

  “Time will tell,” his mother said.

  “Aye, time always tells.”

  The others came along the rail. The water ahead was black, it was true night now, and time to go down. It had been a long day. They said good night. Sarah had been crying but none of the others showed any special emotion at leaving their homeland behind them. They went down to the dining room to play cards before getting into their hammocks. He wanted to hold Maggie’s hand and when he reached for it on the railing he didn’t feel it, and when he turned he found she had left him and he felt a sadness that was touched with bitterness. He wouldn’t go down to her then and so he stayed at the rail and watched the phosphorescent waves wash up against the sides of the ship and explode in stars. Then he heard her come back up the stairs, it was hard to see, there were no lanterns lit and he thought he saw the movement and then was certain he saw the splash in the sparkles of the wave and the swift creaming of the water before the sea closed over again.

  “What was that you did?” Gillon said. “What was that you threw?”

  “You know.”

  He tried to think but nothing came to his mind.

  “Oh, God, Gillon. The kist, man. The kist.”

  The way it was the day he had met her, he had nothing at all to say. Her sacrifice had gone beyond any words he had.

  “Now, this is what I think,” Maggie finally said. Gillon looked out to sea. It was better, he had come to think, not to look at a person trying to tell you something.

  “I’ve thought about it. I think I could be happy but I don’t know,” Maggie said. “I’ve never tried before.”

  Ahead of them, Gillon knew, the Hebrides lay but he would never see them now and that was a shame because he had always wanted to see them.

  “Then you can try.”

  “Yes, that’s what I can do.” She made him, with the force of herself, look at her. “But, I can’t change all that much, you know. Can you understand that, Gillon.”

  “Aye, I can understand.”

  They were out beyond the protection of Kintyre by then, nothing but the sweep of the Atlantic Ocean ahead of them, and America at the end of it. Scotland was over; Scotland was behind them.

  “But I can try,” Maggie said, and ran a finger along the back of Gillon’s hand and went down the steps to sleep.

  THE CAMERONS. Copyright © 2013 by Robert Crichton

  All rights reserved.

  For information, address Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  eISBN 9781466851078

  First eBook edition: July 2013