Fergus Lamont

by Robin Jenkins

  ‘I hear your wife’s going to speak for Dunsyre.’

  ‘Betty knows nothing about politics.’

  ‘Maybe not, but I wouldn’t mind if it was me she was speaking for. Those women you heard wishing me luck think very highly of Betty T. Shields or anyway of her books.’

  ‘But, Mary, those books are all romantic humbug, and nobody knows it better than Betty herself.’

  ‘They’ve given pleasure to a lot of hard-working women.’

  And therein lay the mystery.

  ‘Do you keep in touch with Gantock?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course. My people are still there.’

  ‘Do you see John Calderwood very often?’

  ‘Fairly often. He thinks your poetry’s wonderful.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘No, I mean it. He can recite most of it by heart.’

  The woman bringing us our tea and biscuits, a stout Glaswegian with fat forearms, was transfigured. In their gold and red wrappings the biscuits were gifts from the gods. Such was the effect on me of hearing that someone besides myself thought my poems were wonderful.

  ‘Why don’t you go and see him?’ said Mary. ‘It’s not far.’

  ‘Far enough.’

  ‘I see.’

  I wondered what it was she saw. Very fond of her own mother, did she think that it was my mother’s unbearable death which made Gantock further than the moon for me?

  ‘They’d get the pipe-band out for you,’ she said.

  ‘Do you think so, Mary?’

  ‘Especially if your wife was with you. They’d hang out of their windows in Lomond Street and cheer you as you drove past.’

  ‘Do you ever hear anything of the Lamonts?’

  ‘My mother keeps me well informed. She knows everything that’s going on. She’s a real Gantockian. John Lamont’s doing well, in Stewart’s: one of the lucky ones. Sammy’s a lawyer here in Glasgow. And Agnes teaches in the primary department of the Academy.’

  ‘And Bessie?’

  ‘Leading light in the kirk guild.’

  ‘The Auld Kirk?’

  ‘Where else? Terrible Tories all of them.’

  She glanced at her watch again.

  ‘I visited Cathie once,’ I said. ‘In the asylum.’

  ‘So I heard.’

  ‘I never went again. I couldn’t bear it. Do you still go regularly?’

  ‘She’s dead.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘About two years ago.’

  ‘Dear Christ.’

  ‘Just as well really.’

  ‘I was very fond of Cathie.’

  ‘We all were. She’d have been proud of you, Fergus, looking and talking so grand. The old Cathie, I mean.’

  ‘With the meat stains on her dress?’

  ‘And on her chin.’

  We smiled at each other. For a few moments we came very close, remembering Cathie.

  ‘Tell me about your children, Fergus.’

  ‘Torquil’s seven: he wants to be a painter. Dorcas is eleven: she’s got red hair like mine.’

  ‘I was told she’s the image of your mother at the same age.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘An old enemy of yours. Mrs Grier. She saw a picture in a magazine and cut it out.’

  ‘Is she still to the fore?’

  ‘Very much so. Well, Fergus, I’m sorry but I’ll have to go. It’s been nice talking to you.’

  Out on the street she was again surrounded by well-wishers.

  ‘I’d like to see you again,’ I said.

  She frowned and shook her head. ‘What’s the good? We might not be so friendly next time. You’ve gone your way and I’ve gone mine. We’re really a million miles apart. Goodbye.’

  She left me then and went into the shop to join her friends and comrades.

  I felt abandoned. I thought I would never get safely back to Gantock without her help; and though I could see her through the shop window she was already a million miles away.

  FOURTEEN

  Next morning Sir Jock joined Betty and me at breakfast. In a smart light-grey suit with a sky-blue cravat he looked dressed for a race meeting. He gazed wistfully at Betty as if she might have a good tip that would help him recoup his losses. Things weren’t going well. According to the latest from the course it was going to be a damn close thing.

  ‘She must be a fraud,’ he muttered, as he chewed his kipper, ‘because, in the last analysis, we all are. Question is, how do we nobble her? She dresses like a charwoman off-duty. She lives in a ghastly working-class tenement. She’s paid less for working on that damned socialist rag than I spend in a week on cigars. She’s too bloody good to be true. Now it’s possible that she’s the one incorruptible socialist. I’ve watched them all succumb, you know. I’ve laid bets on them and won. Good luck to them. Not, mind you, that her showing herself to be incorruptible would do her much good. Nobody likes anybody to have higher moral standards. Still, that’s all very well. If she wins I’ll be out in the cold.’

  ‘Couldn’t you find a safer seat somewhere else?’ I asked.

  ‘The fact is, Fergus, it might not be so easy. There’s a whisper going round that I’m the wrong sort of Tory for a Scottish constituency. Christ, my people have been Scotch for hundreds of years. We helped to knacker Bonnie Prince Charlie. The sort that’s going to be wanted in the future, they’re saying, is some fucking bank manager or grocer with Tory views but a Scotch accent: educated too at some dreary Scotch school absurdly called an Academy.’

  ‘Mind your language, my dear,’ whispered Betty.

  Heads were turning and eyes blinking.

  ‘Sorry. But it’s a bloody awful prospect. Sorry, again.’

  ‘All is not yet lost,’ she said. ‘I have still my contribution to make, and Fergus has his.’

  He looked at me and shook his head. I was a faithful hack, without any turn of speed. Then hope lit up his face, like the sun shining on a plate of mince.

  ‘You’re from Gantock, Fergus, and so is she. I forgot that. Are you telling me you once…?’ He winked lewdly. But the sun then went behind a cloud and the mince looked dull and fatty. ‘It wouldn’t help much if you had. That’s not the kind of thing we want. After all, there’s me and you, Bess.’ He laughed like a horse with a cold. ‘If we raked up that kind of mud about Holmscroft what’s to stop her raking it up about us? No, it’s got to be about money.’

  ‘I can tell you something about her and money,’ I said.

  He didn’t look hopeful. In his view I was too tame, my wind and spirit both broken.

  ‘She was born and brought up in a hideous slum.’

  ‘Christ, that’s no secret. She mentions it in every speech.’

  ‘One day there was no food in the house.’

  ‘Not even a mouldy crust? For Christ’s sake, no mealy-mouthed exaggerations.’

  ‘Their usual grocer refused to give them a penny more credit.’

  ‘You know, I believe I’ve heard this story before.’

  ‘So young Mary, aged seven or thereabouts, volunteered to go round all the other grocers with a basket.’

  ‘This sounds familiar.’

  ‘Her father wanted her to ask for cigarettes for him but she refused. Only for food would she degrade herself.’

  ‘Bloody little prig. And she came back with her basket empty? Yes, I’ve heard it before. It’s a good laugh, nothing more. It wasn’t exactly to her discredit, was it? Showed guts. And after all she was just a kid. It won’t do. Christ, it might even get her a few votes from some sentimental old hags. What do you think, Bess?’

  ‘I think Fergus can do better than that.’

  I nodded. ‘When she was thirteen she went to live in the West End of the town with a well-to-do schoolteacher and his sister.’

  ‘She’d have been a damned fool not to jump at the chance,’ said Sir Jock. ‘I take it there was nothing indecent about this schoolteacher’s motives? Anyway, we’ve decided that that kind of m
uck won’t do.’

  ‘It meant her enjoying bourgeois comforts while her family continued to rot in their slum.’

  ‘Yes, that’s nearer the bone. That might do. I mean if she let her side down once she could do it again. What do you say, Bess?’

  Betty smiled at me with fond contempt. She could not help liking me for being so abjectly in her power.

  ‘Dorcas once had a little dog that attacked people with brown shoes,’ she said. ‘Fergus is a bit like that with people professing principles. Yes, I think we can turn him loose on Holmscroft.’

  ‘Can’t say I blame you, old man,’ said Sir Jock. ‘Show me a man or a woman—especially a woman—that makes a fuss over principles and I’ll show you a damned nuisance.’

  So it was agreed that at a big rally in his constituency that night I would speak a few words. Betty would help me prepare my speech.

  FIFTEEN

  There was an audience of over four hundred, most of them lower middle-class women. In their homes loving mothers and submissive wives they were in that hall draped with Union Jacks rabid imperialists. They clapped ecstatically when I was introduced as Captain Fergus Corse-Lamont, MC, husband of Betty T. Shields the famous authoress.

  In the front row reporters sneered. They expected from me a braying of the usual Tory twaddle.

  ‘As an aristocrat,’ I began, in my most aristocratic manner, ‘I share with Plato the philosopher a contempt for democracy.’

  I paused, while the audience applauded, a little hesitantly; the reporters gaped at one another in astonishment; Betty behind me hissed ‘Stick to the speech’; and I myself remembered the bust on the staircase in Cathie’s madhouse.

  ‘Plato believed in excellence, as I do. He advocated that the State should be governed by a body of men recruited from the aristocracy and selected for their wisdom, ability, impartiality, and discretion. He called them Guardians. We call them Members of Parliament.’

  Again I paused, not to let the clapping die down for there was not much clapping, but to let suspense build up and bewilderment increase.

  ‘Let us consider each of the candidates in respect of his or her suitability to be a Guardian of the State. Take Mr Keith, Liberal. I do not know Mr Keith personally, but I understand he is the owner of an engineering firm specialising in making valves. Judging from reports of his speeches, and from his photograph in his electoral address, he appears to be well-intentioned but naive. He thinks that the ills of society would be cured if its members were all less selfish. In my opinion any maker of valves with such simplistic views is not fit to be a Guardian.’

  Another pause. The frowns of the audience showed that they would have preferred Keith to be dismissed with less fancy palaver, but their hands approved of his dismissal nevertheless.

  ‘I come to Mr Alisdair Donaldson, Scottish Nationalist and novelist. Leaving aside the mediocrity of those novels, let us consider Mr Donaldson’s belief that the Scottish nation is no longer supine but is on its feet ready to throw off the English connection and take control of its own affairs. Would it were so. But it is not so, and anyone capable of so egregious a mis judgment must be ruled out.’

  They were beginning to catch on. Idiosyncratically perhaps but decisively enough for all that, I had rejected two of Sir Jock’s opponents as not worth voting for. Since they had already come to that decision themselves they approved of it. They applauded therefore, but not wholeheartedly: my approach was just a shade too eccentric, possibly as a consequence of my being an aristocrat.

  A glance round showed me that Betty, though displeased, was far from suspecting that her kilted worm was about to turn. Sir Jock’s huge grin suggested that he thought me a pompous bugger but I was doing all right so far.

  ‘As for Sir Jock Dunsyre—’ I had to wait then, but I did not mind: the pause would make all the more dramatic what I was about to say— ‘I do not have to waste any words on him. He is more fit to be an ostler than a Guardian.’

  There was some applause because not all of the audience were sure what an ostler was. Those that knew the usual meaning of the word smiled uncertainly, wondering if I had used it in some peculiarly aristocratic, obscurely complimentary way.

  I went on. There remains Miss Holmscroft. She was born in a slum but you will recall that Plato made provision for gifted individuals, however lowly born, to be promoted into the aristocracy and chosen as Guardians, provided they had the requisite moral and intellectual superiority. Miss Holmscroft is such an individual. I recommend therefore that you all vote for her.’

  I bowed to show that I had finished and then sat down beside Sir Jock.

  Probably I had not lost him a single vote. Betty had jumped to her feet to mend any damage that I might have done. She explained that her husband had a whimsical sense of humour. Those women understood at once and smiled at me in fond forgiveness. Their own husbands often said whimsical things too.

  Sir Jock was more puzzled than angry.

  ‘What the hell d’you mean, an ostler?’

  More mutters followed at intervals.

  ‘An election’s a serious matter, you know.’

  ‘First time in my life I ever heard anybody mention Plato at an election meeting.’

  ‘Can’t make you out, Corse-Lamont, simply can’t.’

  ‘Holmscroft’s been in jail for making seditious speeches, for Christ’s sake.’

  At last, smiling and waving like a queen, Betty was done. She sat down to tremendous cheering. She was even more queen like, with a threat of execution or banishment in her voice, when she hissed: ‘No one shows off at my expense. No one makes me look a fool. Especially not you, Fergus.’

  Sir Jock lost his seat. The majority was tiny, but the shock considerable. Mary was immediately famous and he demoralised. He sobbed in Betty’s arms: he had nothing left to live for except his estate, his racehorses, his income of ten thousand a year, his other mistresses, and her.

  It was possible that I contributed a little to his defeat. One newspaper had carried the headline: NOT FIT TO BE AN OSTLER. Glasgow, city of few ostlers, had enjoyed the joke. Some transient interest was shown in me. It was remembered that I had published a few years ago some unconventional poems about the War.

  The day after our return to Pennvalla Betty summoned me to her study. On the desk in front of her lay an open cheque-book. She looked baleful.

  ‘No woman has ever been more tolerant and patient than I,’ she said. ‘But there is a limit. That limit has been reached. You have acted in collusion with a dreadful woman to make me look a fool in public. That I cannot tolerate.’

  I remained cool. I was ready for her.

  ‘May I sit down?’ I asked.

  She would have preferred to keep me standing or to order me to kneel.

  I sat down and arranged my kilt modestly over my knees.

  ‘May I smoke?’ I asked.

  ‘You certainly may not.’

  I took out a cigar but did not light it. I just let her see it. It was one of a boxful that Sir Jock had given me.

  ‘You have often expressed a wish to travel,’ she said.

  ‘I do not recollect ever expressing such a wish. I am a happy stay-at-home, my dear.’

  ‘I have decided that you are to go to Australia, or some place as far away. For not less than three years. Here is a cheque for three hundred pounds. Requests for additional funds will be ignored. If you need more money work for it. This decision is final. Dorcas fully supports it.’

  ‘Does Torquil also support it?’

  ‘He is too young to be consulted.’

  ‘Has Sir Jock been consulted?’

  ‘I shall expect you to leave Pennvalla within three days.’

  As an ex-soldier I felt sorry for her, making so puny an attack on a position so strongly held.

  ‘I’m afraid you have it wrong, my dear.’ I said.

  Her neck swelled with rage. I noticed how fat she was all over. She must have loosened her corsets and girdle for the fray.
/>
  ‘If anyone is leaving Pennvalla I’m afraid it will have to be you, Betty.’

  ‘There are times when I am convinced you are not right in the head. Why on earth should I leave my own home?’

  ‘Because you would be afraid of my making certain matters public.’

  ‘What matters?’

  ‘Your various adulteries.’

  ‘No one would believe you.’

  ‘That would make no difference. The accusation itself coming from your gallant husband would be enough. The champion of purity and chastity must be far removed from the merest whiff of scandal.’

  ‘Would you stoop so low?’

  ‘Lower, if it was necessary.’

  ‘So your low-bred nature and origins have come uppermost?’

  ‘On the contrary. My low-bred connections would be shocked by my setting up as a blackmailer.’

  ‘So you admit it is blackmail?’

  ‘What else? Great estates have been acquired, and illustrious families founded, by even less savoury means. It is the aristocrat in me that you are dealing with.’

  ‘What if I were to make public the fact that your mother ran off with a man three times her age?’

  ‘I should simply sneer like Lord Wolfelee.’

  He, it may be remembered, is a depraved nobleman in The Heirs of Crailzie.

  ‘If I was to let it be known that she took her own life?’

  Even against that despicable threat I was proof.

  ‘Aren’t you forgetting what such a disclosure would do to our sensitive daughter?’

  ‘You are a villain, Fergus.’

  ‘I am a gentleman determined to hold on to his privileges.’

  ‘You have not heard the last of this.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d like us to continue the discussion in bed tonight?’

  ‘You would not dare!’

  But dare I did. So did she, by leaving her door unlocked. We were more tender to each other than we had ever been before. There were no nuts and bolts, no awarding of percentage marks. We were as loving and loyal as we could: all the more so because we knew that next day she would despise me as an unscrupulous blackmailer and I her as a would-be evictor. Suspended animosity, we proved, could make for more tenderness in the act of love than love itself.