Pearl Fishers

by Robin Jenkins

  Then, when Mrs Williamson, and Effie herself, were expecting Hamilton to go off in disgust, he took Effie in his arms and held her tight. ‘Dear Effie.’

  ‘I felt dirty then and I still feel dirty. No decent man will even want to marry me.’ With a cry of despair and anguish she struggled out of his arms and rushed out of the room.

  ‘She’s always been too sensitive for her own good. Anyway, Daniel’s not coming to marry her. He’s coming to marry me. He just doesn’t know it yet.’

  Seventeen

  HE THOUGHT he would find her hiding somewhere, breaking her heart and being sorry for herself. He wouldn’t blame her.

  It showed how much he had to learn about her. She had to be courageous not only for her own sake but for the children’s too. If she ever gave in God knew what would happen to them.

  There she was, at the burn, helping Eddie to catch minnows in a tin saucepan. He was not having much success.

  Hamilton went over. ‘You’ll never catch them that way.’

  ‘Show us how,’ said Effie.

  ‘Yes, show us,’ cried Eddie.

  There were still marks of tears on her face but she was smiling.

  ‘We’ll need two jam jars, clear glass, a piece of string, and a long stick. I’ve some jam jars in the cupboard under the sink and string in a drawer in the kitchen. I’ll go and get them.’

  ‘No, I’ll get them.’ Effie ran off.

  There were plenty of sticks lying around. Eddie gathered at least six.

  Morag came up to Hamilton. ‘Why was Effie crying? Eddie and me don’t like it when she cries. We get frightened. Nobody wants us, except her.’

  ‘Your mother wants you.’

  ‘She thinks we’re nuisances.’

  ‘Well, I want you.’

  She looked at him doubtfully. She meant, you’re very nice, but you’re a stranger, you don’t come into it, you have no say.

  Whatever happens, he thought, I can’t let this little girl down.

  Effie came back, with the jam jars and the string.

  They watched as Hamilton tied the string round the neck of one of the jars. Then he lowered it cautiously into a pool, so that it lay on its side, with the mouth facing upstream. Soon minnows came to have a look.

  With the stick he gently steered a minnow into the jar. It went in but darted out again. He tried again, and again.

  Eddie was impatient to try.

  They were talking in whispers, so as not to alarm the tiny fish.

  A minnow ventured into the jar. Hamilton instantly lifted the jar by the string. There was the captive, looking disgusted with itself.

  It was Eddie’s turn.

  At first he was in too big a hurry and the minnows all escaped but soon, with Effie’s tactful assistance, he got one. ‘It’s the biggest,’ he cried. Soon he had caught four more.

  All the captives were put in the second jar.

  ‘What do we do with them now?’ asked Eddie. ‘They’re too wee to eat.’

  ‘And they’ll die if they’re kept in the jar,’ said Hamilton. ‘Why not put them back in the burn? It’s catching them that’s the fun.’

  At first Eddie was shocked at the very idea.

  ‘You could always catch more.’

  ‘Do you want me to let them go?’

  ‘Yes. They’re happier in the burn with their friends.’

  ‘All right.’

  With the air of one making a painful but noble sacrifice Eddie emptied the jar into the burn. The minnows darted off.

  ‘Well done, Eddie,’ said Hamilton. ‘Look, they’re telling one another about the little boy who set them free.’

  Eddie grinned. ‘They can’t speak.’

  Hamilton noticed Effie giving him a curious look.

  ‘He would never have done that for anyone but you.’

  ‘Can we go now and gather roses?’ asked Morag.

  They went off to gather roses.

  Eighteen

  THAT NIGHT Mrs Williamson came again into Effie’s room. She sat on the bed where Morag was sound asleep.

  In her nightgown Effie was at the window, looking at the moon shining on the loch. It was shining in the room too.

  They whispered in Gaelic.

  ‘I’ve seen the moon shining on water hundreds of times,’ said Effie, ‘but this is the first time I’ve realised how beautiful it is.’

  ‘You’ve had a great weight taken off your mind, and you couldn’t say, could you, that beautiful things have come into our lives very much?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have said that about your father. But I was bonny too when I was young and I had to have my own ways of finding enjoyment.’

  ‘I’m not judging you, mother.’

  ‘The last thing I want is to spoil things for you. He likes you, Effie.’

  ‘He’s sorry for me, that’s all.’

  ‘It’s a lot more than that, and it will grow. If you were to stay here for a month or two, who knows what might happen? Aren’t there stories of traveller girls marrying rich men, men with titles even?’

  There were such stories.

  ‘He’s not the kind who after he’d talked you into his bed would throw you away like a dirty clout.’

  ‘He would never try to talk me into his bed.’

  ‘Maybe not. Maybe he’s like you, the whole thing or nothing. You could break each other’s hearts. The trouble is, Effie, if he married you you’d get everything, he’d get nothing.’

  When her mother was gone Effie went and looked at herself in a mirror on the wall. Last night she had seen a self-piteous, woebegone face. Now she was seeing a girl with an unflinching gaze and her head held high.

  ‘He wouldn’t be getting nothing,’ she said. ‘He’d be getting me, Effie Williamson.’

  Nineteen

  BACK TO her role of younger sister, Effie did not go down to the kitchen to help him prepare his sandwiches and fill his thermos flask with tea.

  He had told her that on work days he left the house at half-past seven in the morning and came home at six in the evening. She lay and listened. She did not hear much for he was being deliberately quiet so as not to disturb anyone.

  She smelled reek, peat reek. He must have lit a fire in the big room.

  Rain pattered against the window.

  It was incredible enough that he had let them into his house, now he was giving himself a great deal of trouble making it comfortable for them.

  Why was he doing it? Again she hurried away from that question.

  All the same, even if it was the most unlikely thing in the world that he would ever ask her to marry him, she would still try to make herself worthy of him.

  When she was sure, from the silence below, that he had gone she got up and took a shower, using scented soap. Her period was almost over. She washed herself thoroughly. She brushed her hair until it shone. She put on clean underclothes and the fawn slacks that Mrs McTeague had given her; they went well with her blue blouse.

  In Towellan she had daringly bought lipstick. Now she put a little on.

  Morag was gazing at her solemnly from the bed. Now and then she coughed.

  ‘How do I look?’ asked Effie, turning round and round.

  ‘You look very nice.’

  ‘So will you, pet, when you put on the dress with white dots.’

  ‘I’m too thin.’

  ‘You’ll have to eat more and become fat.’

  ‘Are you happy, Effie?’

  ‘Yes, but I’ll be a lot happier when you’ve got rid of that cough. The doctor will give you something for it.’

  ‘Mother said we’d have to leave the house when grandfather died. I saw him yesterday and I thought he was dead already.’

  ‘Maybe Mr Hamilton will let us stay a bit longer.’

  ‘When we leave where will we go? I don’t want to sleep in a tent again.’

  ‘You won’t have to. We’ll find a place.’

  ‘Eddie says he’ll run away and
hide in the trees.’

  Hamilton had said that he would arrange for the doctor to call that morning.

  In the big room the fire was blazing. There was a brass scuttle full of coal and a wicker basket with peats in it. The room was pleasantly warm.

  She remembered many mornings when she had crawled out of the tent into the rain, shivering and miserable, having to make a great effort to get a fire going.

  No wonder Morag was not well.

  On the table was a box containing children’s games, like ludo and snakes-and-ladders. He must have looked them out for Morag and Eddie.

  For years she had had to carry so many burdens. Now they had been removed, as if by magic, even if it was only for a little while. Someone else was carrying them for her. It was too wonderful to be true, and yet it was true.

  Would he have done all this out of pity? Yes, he would. He was that kind of man.

  Suddenly she felt a great fear, not on her own account but his. In her experience she had found that goodness and generosity were often not rewarded as they should be. Suppose, that morning, at his work, there was an accident, a tree fell and killed him.

  To drive that awful vision from her mind she embraced Eddie, to his astonishment. He had asked for another slice of toast and was being kissed.

  ‘Is anything the matter, Effie?’ asked Morag.

  ‘No, pet, nothing’s the matter. Finish your porridge.’

  Effie took some breakfast up to her mother.

  She found her in grandfather’s room. He seemed to be asleep. He looked dead.

  ‘It won’t be long now,’ said her mother. ‘Do you know what he wants? He wants to die in a tent. God knows why.’

  But Effie knew. He had been a tent-dweller all his long life, and his ancestors before him, for hundreds of years. They had never been ashamed of it, and now, when he was dying, his life coming to an end, he wished to honour it.

  ‘What are we going to do, Effie?’

  ‘We’ll put up a tent and try to be ready.’

  ‘You’re a good girl, Effie.’

  Effie stood looking down at the old man’s face, ravaged by age and pain, but still with traces of dignity and authority clinging to it. A university professor had said that if he had been born into another sphere of life he would have been a great and famous man.

  She had good reason to distrust him. If she had obeyed him she would have been very unhappily married to Daniel Stewart and her life ruined, but she was grateful to him too. It must have been from him that she had inherited the unshakeable conviction that she was somehow special.

  Twenty

  THEY WERE in the big room, Effie in an armchair trying to read a book, with the aid of a dictionary, and Morag and Eddie lying on the carpet playing ludo, when they heard a car arriving. It did not go round to the back of the house as other cars did but stopped outside the front door.

  Effie thought it was the doctor but when she went to the window she saw that it was a woman, smartly dressed in a dark-blue outfit with hat to match, and carrying what looked like a book.

  The doorbell rang. Effie hurried to answer it, but before she got there the door, or rather the two doors, the outer and the inner, burst open and the visitor came stamping angrily into the hall.

  She glared haughtily at Effie. ‘Who are you? What were you doing in that room?’

  While Effie was wondering how to react to this uncalled-for rudeness the visitor gave another exhibition of it.

  ‘I hope you realise you’ve no right to be in this house?’

  The reason why Miss Fiona was so rude, she who had been brought up to be civil, even to servants, was because she was in a state of shock. She had come expecting to see a coarse, slovenly girl, and here she was confronted by a scrupulously clean, politely smiling, obviously intelligent, young woman – very good-looking too – with an enviable figure.

  Miss Fiona felt that she was the victim of some trickery.

  ‘Do you know who I am?’ she cried. Even to herself it sounded petty.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t,’ said Effie.

  ‘I’m a very close friend of Mr Hamilton.’ She almost added that they were engaged, but it would have been too blatant a lie.

  ‘Mr Hamilton’s at work,’ said Effie. ‘He won’t be home till six o’clock. Would you like me to tell him you called?’

  Miss Fiona then remembered that she had come armed. It wasn’t a book she was holding but a magazine. It contained pictures of travellers, showing them to be miserable, dirty, ragged subhuman creatures. How then to see this elegant young woman as one of them? Again Miss Fiona suspected trickery.

  ‘Would you please see that Mr Hamilton gets this?’

  She handed the magazine to Effie.

  ‘You may find it interesting yourself, particularly pages 26, 27 and 28.’

  As Effie turned the glossy pages she had already guessed what it was she was being asked to look at. This was a magazine that catered for well-to-do people who lived in the country in big houses and who were prepared to tolerate the travellers as a quaint feature of the countryside as long as their encampments were too far off to be seen, heard, or smelled. They brought their guests in big expensive cars or on horseback to have a look at them.

  ‘Do you recognise any of your friends?’ asked Miss McDonald.

  Her expectation had been that Effie would cringe in shame, but the result could not have been more different.

  Effie could hardly feel proud of these unfortunate tribes-people of hers, so utterly poor, so unavoidably squalid, but she felt what was more important, what gave her the strength of mind to reject this stupid woman’s scorn and contempt. She felt affection, and thought that if she had to go back and live among them again she would do it with resolution and spend the rest of her life trying to improve their conditions.

  Yes, she did recognise one or two. She had been a guest in those shabby, leaking, smelly tents. She had sat in sunshine outside them drinking tea and gossiping. She had held those babies in her arms. She had given swimming lessons to those ragged children. She had nursed those old women with their seamed, pain-stricken faces.

  If they could have seen her now, so well-dressed, so comfortable in this fine big house they would have been amazed but they would also have been pleased for her. They had often assured her that she would not remain a traveller all her days, she was too clever, too brave, too beautiful.

  ‘Why do you want Mr Hamilton to see these pictures?’ she asked. ‘Is it so that he will think badly of me?’

  Miss McDonald was disappointed with herself. She had come intending to show an example of civilised behaviour, sympathetic but frank and firm. Instead she was being mean and unfair. The reason was humiliating; she was jealous of this young woman.

  ‘You really shouldn’t be in this house,’ she said, trying to sound reasonable.

  ‘Mr Hamilton invited us.’

  Miss McDonald looked into the big room, expecting to find mess and damage. What she saw were two children lying on the floor, their game of ludo suspended. They were watching her with curiosity, as if puzzled that someone so well-dressed should behave so poorly.

  The little girl looked to be in the early stages of consumption. It was rife in the camps. It had said so in the magazine.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Miss McDonald, and hurried out to her car.

  She did not immediately drive off.

  She had meant well but bringing the magazine had been a bad mistake. Seeing those pictures Gavin might well be disgusted, but not with the people in them.

  Twenty-one

  THE DOCTOR’S car passed Miss McDonald’s on the drive. He gave her a smile and a wave but she was too preoccupied with her thoughts to notice. Had she come, as the minister’s sister, to offer her help to these outcasts who had come into the parish? He hoped so but doubted it.

  He was met at the back door by as attractive a young woman as he had seen in a long time; not just attractive, but intelligent and mannerly.

 
‘I’m Effie,’ she said, ‘Effie Williamson. Morag’s sister.’

  ‘I’m Doctor Baxter.’

  He had noticed immediately that in spite of her brave smiles she was under a great strain, and had been for years. You didn’t come from origins like hers, and lead the kind of life she had, without having had to endure a great deal. He felt moved by her lack of self-pity; she had plenty of self-respect, but not a trace of self-pity. He was greatly taken with Miss Effie Williamson.

  She took him through to the big room.

  The two children got to their feet. Not only was she well-mannered herself, she was training the children to be well-mannered too.

  ‘Hello, children,’ he said, ‘I see you’ve been playing ludo. Who won?’

  ‘It’s not finished yet,’ said the little girl, earnestly. ‘But Eddie’s got more men home.’

  ‘I threw lots of sixes,’ said Eddie, modestly.

  Dr Baxter had played ludo often when his own children were young.

  ‘Well, young lady, let me have a look at you.’

  He lifted Morag onto a chair and sounded her with his stethoscope.

  Effie watched anxiously. ‘She’s got a bad cough, doctor.’

  He had been afraid of tuberculosis. ‘We’ll soon get rid of that.’

  What he wanted to prescribe not only for her but for the little boy too, and for the young woman, was at least a month in this comfortable house, with a proper bed to sleep in, good food to eat, and plenty of fresh air.

  He would have a word with Gavin.

  ‘It’s not TB, is it?’ whispered Effie.

  ‘No, but we’ll have to be careful. How are you keeping yourself, Effie?’

  ‘Oh, I’m fine. I’m never ill.’

  If she was she’d never admit it. The children depended on her. That was a good part of the trouble.

  ‘I hear you’re pearl-fishers.’

  ‘Not any longer, I think. The mussels are getting very scarce.’