The Changeling

by Robin Jenkins

  ‘What in heaven’s name kept you?’ she whispered.

  ‘No hurry, dear,’ he said, beaming. ‘Look, there’s the train just started.’

  The compartment was stuffy and overcrowded.

  ‘We should,’ said Mrs Storrocks loudly, ‘have travelled first- class. I’m willing to pay for a little comfort.’

  The strangers might have felt insulted; instead, they tried to make a little more room for her.

  ‘A’ the same,’ said one of them, a pleasant-faced woman, ‘the difference in price is ridiculous.’

  ‘There should be only one class nowadays,’ said a thin man with a moustache.

  ‘Third-class folk,’ said another woman shyly, ‘are far cheerier.’

  Forbes was still beaming. But his mother-in-law had not intended to provoke friendliness.

  ‘I like room to breathe,’ she said.

  ‘You’ll get it doon the watter,’ said a fat woman in a corner, and she began to laugh so jollily that Forbes pictured her paddling in the sea, with her skirts held gallusly high, revealing legs as thick and barnacled as the legs of Towellan pier.

  Kindness prevailed. A man took Tom Curdie on his knee. Forbes dandled Alistair. Most of the room gained was given to Mrs Storrocks, who was satisfied.

  In time they passed Dumbarton Rock, serene in sunshine. Forbes pointed to it.

  ‘A famous chunk of Scotland,’ he said, and next minute, with greater enthusiasm, was pointing to a more distant still huger chunk: Ben Lomond.

  ‘You’ll be a teacher, maybe,’ said the shy woman.

  He admitted what he knew others would have falsely denied. Todd on holiday always pretended he was the owner of a flourishing butcher’s business. To live in a hotel, he said, and be known as a teacher, was to suffer the worst humiliation known to man. Even the beer bottles in the bar leered at you.

  ‘Yes, he’s a teacher,’ said Mrs Storrocks, ‘and this poor lad here is one of his pupils. He’s from a slum home, and wouldn’t be getting a holiday at all if it wasn’t for my son-in-law’s kindness.’

  As she spoke she gazed with insinuation at those members of the Glasgow public, those ratepayers and voters, those choosers of councillors. Mary’s nudge she ignored. As for her son-in-law’s little moan, she didn’t hear it.

  The ratepayers extolled Forbes and pitied Tom. One woman took a half-crown from her purse and handed it to the boy.

  He glanced towards his benefactor for guidance; none was there.

  ‘Go on, son,’ said the woman, ‘take it. A holiday at the seaside is gey expensive these days.’

  He took it, with politest thanks.

  Two other gifts were made. These he similarly accepted.

  They were passing Port Glasgow. In a breakers’ yard lay the skeleton of a great ship. At this, rather than at the spacious Firth, Forbes gazed.

  ‘Well, it’s a grand morning for the sail,’ said Mrs Storrocks.

  There were murmurs of agreement from all, with one exception. Forbes saw what they did: the children splashing in Cardwell Bay; the many yachts, with sails of different colours; the steamers at the pier; and across the Firth the craggy Argyll hills pierced by sea-lochs; but disenchanting all that, was his own unworthiness.

  Malice, as well as honesty, could uncover truth. What Mrs Storrocks had hinted others already had hinted; Todd had bluntly stated it; and it was partly true. Without doubt, at the very back of his mind from the very beginning had been the hope that his befriending of this slum delinquent child might reach the ears of authority. He had dreamed that at some future promotion interview some favourable councillor, briefed beforehand, would ask: ‘Is it the case, Mr Forbes, that you have taken a slum pupil with you during your holidays, with your own family? Now why did you?’ His answer would be modest but effective. These considerations had been in his mind, camouflaged like grouse in heather; now Mrs Storrocks had set them flying.

  The danger lay in falling into resentment against Tom Curdie, in seeing the boy’s admirable reticence as some kind of sinister senile composure, such as was shown by the changeling of Highland legend, that creature introduced by the malevolent folk of the other world into a man’s home, to pollute the joy and faith of family.

  As he walked out of the station on to the pier, with the Firth sparkling before him, and saw on the steamers’ destination boards those magical names, Kilcreggan, Craigendoran, Tighnabruaich, Largs, Millport, and Rothesay, he knew that if he was a charlatan the magic would not work for him.

  The St Columba had left the pier and was heading across for Argyll when Forbes, in the breezy bow, where he always preferred to stand (being protected by his fat, was Mary’s joke), found Tom suddenly by his side. He should, he knew, have rejoiced at this first opportunity to introduce the boy from the squalid slum to all this cleansing and liberating beauty: the Holy Loch, so called, it was said, because many hundreds of years ago a ship carrying earth from the Holy Land had been wrecked in it; Loch Long, at the head of which was the famous hill called The Cobbler; Hunter’s Quay, haven of yachts; the Cloch Lighthouse; Dunroth, steepled and smoking below its green hills; the islands, Bute, the two Cumbraes, and Arran, with its wonderful skyline. ‘Here it is,’ he should have been able to cry, ‘our heritage, Tom, yours and mine, because we are Scottish; and what we see now is only the promise of vaster riches. In no other country in the world, not even in fabled Greece, is there loveliness so various and so inspiring in so small a space. Here is the antidote to Donaldson’s Court; here is the guarantee of that splendid and courageous manhood to which every Scots boy is entitled by birth.’ All this should he have spoken as the spray swept up from the bows with the exhilaration of singing, and the seagulls glided overhead with their feet tucked so delicately under their tails, and their golden eyes questing. But a voice, like Todd’s, as insistent as the engines, kept shouting: ‘Guff, Charlie; admit it’s a lot of guff.’

  ‘Mr Forbes, sir,’ said Tom.

  ‘Well?’

  The boy paused and gazed over the water in which sun- sparkles swam like fabulous swans. He seemed to be making a final decision. Then he held out his right hand, closed. Slowly he opened it to reveal, like the eggs of those birds of glory, three silver coins. They were the gifts from the people in the train.

  ‘What will I do with these, sir?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I shouldn’t have taken them. That’s why you’re angry with me, isn’t it?’

  Luckily, there at the forefront of the steamer, even on such a sunny morning, was too cool for most passengers. The only others near were a party from Lancashire, who were enjoying themselves too loudly to want to overhear anybody else’s conversation.

  Forbes therefore was able to concentrate on finding some adequate way to apologise.

  ‘I am not angry with you, Tom,’ he said.

  ‘I thought you were, sir, in the train.’

  ‘Not with you, Tom.’

  ‘But I took these.’

  ‘Why not? They were offered in kindness, with no thought of any return. Never snub true kindness.’

  ‘I want you to take them, sir.’

  ‘Do you mean, to keep for you?’

  Tom hesitated, touching his new jerkin. ‘No, sir. To help to pay for these clothes.’

  Then hilarity burst out around them. A seagull had dropped its dirt upon the hat of a small, shrill, light-hearted, large-nosed woman among the Lancashire folk. In pretended rage she besought her uproarious friends to point out to her the culprit among the dozen or so flying above; she would report it to the captain. They informed her with hearty humour; many fingers pointed to many gulls.

  Forbes felt then not only glad but shriven; he was able to love gulls and people again.

  ‘Thanks all the same, Tom,’ he said. ‘It’s a fine thing to pay one’s debts. But what you owe me is no debt. At any rate let us keep money out of it. We are inclined, I’m afraid, to be rather a mercenary people.’

  As he spoke the steamer was drawi
ng in to Dunroth pier, where loudspeakers were blaring out ‘Ye Banks and Braes o’ Bonnie Doon’.

  ‘Enrich your mind, Tom,’ he went on. ‘Never let yourself be stampeded into the great grab for money.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Mind you, don’t agree just because I’m your teacher. I’m afraid in many things we teachers are fallible.’ Then he heard Todd’s voice again: ‘Don’t be a bloody traitor, Charlie. They find us out soon enough. For God’s sake don’t help them.’

  He watched the people streaming happily down the gangways on to the pier. Their pockets would be laden with hoarded money; most of their happiness would consist in spending it. Glasgow folk, a coast landlady had once told him, were the ones to splash the siller; East Coasters and the English were far cannier. A Glasgow man himself, he had felt proud of that holiday liberality; but now, from his eyrie of truth, he saw that it was perhaps another aspect of their worship of money: earning and spending, they served their deity well.

  But that black belief could not possess his mind forever; out it had to go, or rather into some deep dark hole in his subconscious it had to plunge, when the steamer began to leave Dunroth pier, with Towellan next stop. Bells clanged, hawsers were slipped off iron capstans and heaved into water that bubbled like lemonade, people waved, children cheered, gulls wailed, and the loudspeakers bawled ‘The Road to the Isles’. Still in his eyrie, Forbes gazed ahead towards Towellan, now drawing close. Yonder was the little pier, with the lighthouse beyond, and beyond that again the magnificent skyline of the Arran hills, forming the Sleeping Warrior.

  He put his hand on Tom’s shoulder and pressed so hard it hurt; it somehow had to hurt, for it was a kind of initiation.

  ‘Look, Tom,’ he said, ‘the hills of Arran!’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  But that was too cautious, too subdued a reply.

  ‘The hills of Arran!’ repeated Forbes, in exaltation. ‘Can you see the “Sleeping Warrior”?’

  Tom shook his head.

  This was indeed initiation; once it had been Gillian, then Alistair, and now Tom Curdie.

  ‘It’s the jagged skyline, Tom. It looks like a helmeted warrior lying on his back. Can you make him out?’

  ‘I think so, sir.’

  ‘Cherish that vision, Tom; it will sustain you in times of trouble.’

  A gull flew past; its eye gleamed like Todd’s.

  Then Gillian and Alistair, who had been running all over the steamer, arrived panting to say their mother and grandmother were waiting below.

  Forbes put his arm round Tom’s neck.

  ‘This is Towellan, Tom,’ he said. ‘We have arrived. You cannot see our cottage yet, for it’s round the point, but this is the place where you will be living for the next week or two. As you can see, it is very beautiful. You will fish, like those boys; you will row a boat, like those others; you will roam over those green hills.’

  ‘Mummy said you’d to hurry,’ said Gillian.

  He held Tom’s hand as they went down the stairs; but he let it go when he saw Mary gaze oddly at that clasp.

  The two ladies had had a cup of tea in peace; they were refreshed and in good humour.

  ‘Where have you two been all the time?’ asked Mary.

  ‘On the bridge, like captains. Weren’t we, Tom?’

  Tom nodded and smiled. Mary thought she detected in the smile amusement at her husband’s extravagance; she pardoned it for she also thought she saw affection, rather touching on so guarded and precocious a face.

  Forbes took out his tickets and publicly tore them in half: it was a symbolical act; the journey was completed, the haven reached.

  Mary stretched forward to look at the halves he was holding.

  ‘I hope you’ve got the right halves ready.’

  ‘Now, Mary!’

  ‘Well, last year didn’t the man have to shout you back?’

  He grinned and scratched his ear with those half-tickets before he risked looking at them. They were, he saw triumphantly, the right ones: it was a good omen.

  Chapter Eight

  He was like an exile returning: not one who had made a vulgar fortune during his stay abroad, but one who had come back rich only in love. Bob Moodie, the pierman, was slow, canny, but cordial in taking the hand Charlie offered so enthusiastically. Bob’s own hand, sunburnt and leathery, had to be brought out of the money satchel in which he gathered the twopenny tolls. That he still took from Charlie the full amount was of course no reflection on the sincerity of his welcome. It was not his pier, he could not confer the freedom of it upon his friends; but as he had been living in Towellan for over fifty years the village in a profound way did belong to him, and its freedom he conferred, with characteristic canniness. Aye, the fishing wasn’t at all bad this year; the clegs, though, were wicked, the worst he could mind; and the rabbits just weren’t rabbits any more, they were now ‘myxes’, creatures with bulging eyes and heads.

  Despite his sympathy for rabbits, Bob was as inquisitive as any hungry weasel.

  ‘That’s a stranger, surely,’ he said, nodding towards Tom.

  ‘Yes, Bob. A pupil.’ Then he added what he should not, though it was evoked by the trust of friendship. ‘Comes from a slum district. I thought he needed a tonic like Towellan. Very clever boy.’

  ‘He looks it. Not much’ll go past that one. But is that your guid-mither giving you the wave? She’s getting impatient.’

  Bob grinned at his understatement: Mrs Storrocks he considered an impudent old bitch. Once, with the pier crowded, she had upbraided him because of his twopence toll on and off.

  Charlie hurried off the pier.

  ‘I hope you don’t think, Charles,’ said Mrs Storrocks, ‘that because you talk to them here they’re your friends.’

  ‘That’s Charlie’s business, Mother,’ said Mary.

  ‘The people here are all small-minded,’ went on Mrs Storrocks. ‘They spend their time running each other down. They’ve got little else to do. Don’t trust them. I hope you said nothing to that loudmouth about the boy there?’

  ‘Of course he didn’t,’ snapped Mary. ‘Why should he?’

  Charlie thought it better not to tell: they did not seem to understand.

  Outside the pier a tinker was swaggering up and down playing the bagpipe, while his wife, tanned and taciturn as an Indian squaw, padded about with his cap held out. Mrs Storrocks, who disapproved of tinkers, dropped nothing in; Mary put in two pennies; the three children a penny each; and Charlie a shilling, causing his mother-in-law to snort and mutter about a fool and his money being easily parted.

  There was another extravagance she did not condemn. In the space outside the pier stood Towellan’s last landau, black and polished, with high, red-spoked wheels and red upholstery. In her heart Mrs Storrocks loved travelling in it; up there, rolling along in dignity, she felt what she knew she was, a lady.

  Its owner was old Willie McPhunn. In the days when motor-cars were scarce here in inaccessible Argyll, he had plied between Towellan and Dunroth, four miles along the coast. Nowadays he was content to drive visitors to and from the pier, and to take them drives along the sea-road. In his hey-day he had had tall fine-legged well-matched horses; now he was reduced to two sturdy ponies that worked on a farm.

  Willie wasn’t to be seen. The ponies cropped the warm grass, as if a whole day’s leisure was in front of them. They were in the charge of a small fair-haired boy in a kilt.

  ‘Well,’ said Charlie, ‘why don’t we get aboard? It’s as cheap sitting as standing.’

  ‘I’ll hold the horses, mister,’ said the kilted ostler.

  ‘Yes, you do that, sonny.’

  Gillian and Alistair had to be restrained from leaping up immediately.

  ‘What if they bolt?’ asked Mary.

  ‘Och, I think I can handle ’em,’ said Charlie, laughing.

  ‘Maybe it’d be better if you went and looked for Willie.’

  ‘I’ll tell you where to find him,’ said Mrs
Storrocks, scowling in the direction of the hotel bar.

  ‘He’ll be here in a minute,’ said Charlie. ‘Right, Tom, we’ll give you the honour of being first.’

  Tom ascended with a grin that made Mary feel he was not after all going to be as awkward a guest as she had feared. Gillian and Alistair came next, squabbling for precedence; then Mary, helped by her husband; and then Mrs Storrocks, insisting on managing unaided, and giving a fine imitation of a drunk duchess whose every failure made her next attempt still more dignified.

  ‘All aboard?’ cried Charlie. ‘Good.’ And with lucky agility he sprang into the driver’s seat.

  There he saw at his feet Willie’s top-hat and trumpet; the former he wore, the latter he blew, if his passengers were intelligent enough to wish it.

  Charlie picked up the hat.

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ whispered Mary, laughing.

  ‘Why not?’ Suddenly he clapped on the hat, and snatching up the trumpet put it to his lips and blew, not very musically but loudly enough to startle gulls and people down on the shore, and to make the two ponies raise their heads in doubt. Thus, with the St Columba’s three red funnels disappearing round the lighthouse promontory, Charlie sounded his defiance: here he was arrived in his kingdom, where regret, humiliation, mercenariness, and failure did not exist.

  When he turned round he saw Tom Curdie gazing at him with a wonder like a transparence, through which could surely be glimpsed, fugitive as minnows in a pool, gleams of astonished affection.

  ‘Have you taken leave of your senses, Charles?’ gasped his mother-in-law.

  His wife’s rebuke was mild. ‘We’re conspicuous enough, Charlie.’

  It was true, several people were watching and laughing. With a flourish Charlie took off the hat.

  ‘Let me blow it, pop,’ asked Alistair, reaching out for the trumpet.

  ‘If you do, Alistair Forbes,’ said his grandmother, ‘not a penny do you get from me all this holiday. I don’t pay people to make a fool of me.’ She turned on her son-in-law. ‘Remember who we’ve got with us,’ she whispered. ‘What’s he going to tell the others when he goes back? What respect are you going to get? You’ll not be able to show your face.’