Fergus Lamont

by Robin Jenkins

  She thought that I was in pain with my leg, and offered to carry me instead of the bicycle. She meant it too. I declined.

  ‘If we had a child,’ she said, after another quarter of a mile, ‘I would throw away my pipe.’

  The funeral would be held in Gantock. I could not go back there, not for a long time yet. In any case the telegram had contained no invitation.

  ‘If I had a child,’ said Kirstie, when we were within sight of our house, ‘I would feel like a woman.’

  ‘He would grow up and break your heart, Kirstie.’

  ‘It would be a little girl, like Ailie, but with red hair like yours.’

  ‘She would be ashamed of you.’

  ‘When I was an old woman she would look after me.’

  ‘She would go away and leave you to starve.’

  As a conversation it was futile: she in her innocence expected from a child love and lifelong loyalty, I in my guilt only dislike and betrayal.

  She knew that I was married. I had asked her never to speir about my wife and children. Unique among women, she had never speired.

  I did not attend John Lamont’s funeral. Nor did I send any black-edged note of condolence.

  TEN

  One of the few letters I received in East Gerinish was from Mary Holmscroft. It came from Barcelona, where she had gone to lend support to the Republicans.

  It was brought to me by Hector and Ailie on their way home from school. Every weekday morning the school bus picked them up at the road-end at half-past eight, and set them down again there at half-past four. In winter therefore their long walks to and from the road-end had to be done in thickening darkness. Sometimes one of us adults accompanied them in the morning, and went part of the way to meet them in the afternoon. After Hector was nine he decided that they did not need an escort. He lit and carried his own hurricane lamp. His mother, with daily apprehensions, had to let him have his way. The alternative would have been to board them out during the week with some crofter near the school at Cullipool, but this neither she nor they wanted. The education authorities were not sympathetic. In their view East Gerinish was no longer a fit place in which to bring up children.

  These then were the weary, indomitable, and rosy-faced bringers of Mary’s letter. Hector proudly pointed out the foreign stamp. I recognised the handwriting, but I did not open the envelope until they were gone with Kirstie. Either she or I always went with them that last half mile to their house on the sea’s edge. Poor Ailie was always glad of a carry then.

  I mused about Mary for a minute or two. In its early days I had tried to keep myself informed about her Parliamentary career. It had been, alas, too predictable. She had made a name for herself as the most rabid of the Clydeside revolutionaries. The theme of her every speech was always the same: the immorality of a society in which the rich had more than they needed and the poor less. Since that was the criticism that wounded them most the Christians among her Conservative opponents, and they all called themselves Christians, abused and derided her at every opportunity. When she claimed that there could be no honest laws of property in a society where a few owned a great deal and many owned very little, she was yelled at as an instigator to theft and pillage. Once in the House of Commons she had read out, with all the wrong inflections, parts of my poem ‘The Stairhead Lavatory’, to shrieks of sarcastic merriment. Cartoonists had taken to depicting her with a comically humourless face and bandy legs that steadily grew bandier. She quickly became far better known than I ever was.

  Nevertheless it was fondness and not envy that I felt as I began to read her letter. I still thought of her as a sister.

  Dear Fergus,

  You’ll be wondering why I should want to write to you of all people, in your skulking-place in the Hebrides. It occurred to me the other day that the war here represents the kind of conflict that has gone on in your mind since you came under the delusion that your grandfather was an earl. On one side are the Republicans dedicated to do away with stairhead lavatories or their Spanish equivalents, and on the other the Royalists determined to preserve those refinements of body and mind which generations of ease and privilege have brought about, and which of course the materialistic multitudes wish to destroy out of envy and spite. Am I being fair to you, Fergus? If I am, and these two loyalties really have been in opposition in your mind, and you haven’t just been striking attitudes, which side would you fight for, if you were here in Spain?

  Yesterday I watched a church being burned down and two priests being stoned. Of course I was horrified, but do you know what I imagined? I imagined it was the Auld Kirk of Gantock, and whom did I see first up the steps with the matches and the can of paraffin? Yes, Fergus, you. ‘The murderers of your mother you used to call the pious hypocrites who worship there. Do you remember your own poem ʻMcSnob on the Kirk Steps’? No one has ever put it better, John Calderwood said. But we know, don’t we, that our own home-grown capitalists and exploiters have never been as flagrantly cruel as their Spanish counterparts? Our Cargills and Kirkhopes and Kelsos in their big villas have been known, haven’t they, to murmur a word or two of regret that squalid places like the Vennel, and Lomond Street, happened to exist? If you ask me if I would like to see them run squealing like rats down the steps of the Auld Kirk the answer is Yes, yes I would.

  Nothing in my life has given me more pleasure than being in this great and beautiful city, and knowing that it is at long last in the hands of those who built it, the workers. It is the first time in history that this has happened and my fists clench with joy to see it.

  Do not remind me that on the other side are many workers. Do not remind me that in this war, as in all wars, workers are killing workers. I have seen Fascist corpses, with their hands rougher with toil than either yours or mine. I know they should have been my brothers, not my enemies. Yet I was glad that they were dead, and I hope that many more of them will be killed, for in this war there is a side whose cause is good, and that side must win at all costs.

  I have met a very interesting man here, Enrique Carbonell, a professor at the university. I was surprised, I must say, to see among his books a copy of your Lomond Street poems. He said something that I am having a hard job trying to believe, though John Calderwood has said it too. He said that in those poems you give the poor their victory, that you celebrate their refusal to be cowed by centuries of poverty and degradation. I read some of them several times, and I think I saw what he meant, but all the same, Fergus, I wonder what would happen if they were read out to the sort of people they deal with, at a closemouth say in Lomond Street? You should try it some day. After all, you do call their young ‘wolves’, without any irony that I can see.

  I shall be returning to London soon. I can best help there. Letters from you are as rare as butterflies in winter, but if you were to write me, and miscall me as I have been miscalling you, I would be very pleased. I still remember, you see, those penny pea-brees in Pacitti’s in Morton Street.

  When Kirstie returned I read this letter out to her while she was preparing our supper. In her place other women would have been jealous and aggressively inquisitive. All she said was: ‘I saw a butterfly in the winter-time once.’

  As we supped our broth, ate our salty beef, potatoes and turnips, and drank our sour milk, all of it home-produced, I held forth on a subject that I had brooded over often out on the Minch fishing or on the hill digging or in the byre milking cows or on the moor cutting peats, to the disgust of Dugald who liked his workmates to think only of fish, drains, milk, or peats.

  It seemed to me that since Scotland was small, proud, poor, and intelligent, with a long history, she, better than any country I could think of, certainly better than backward Spain or class-ridden England, had an opportunity to create a society in which poverty and all its humiliations had been abolished, without refinement and spirituality being sacrificed. It would be a help that the Scots had never regarded themselves as particularly refined or spiritual.

  ‘Would you l
ike more soup?’ was all that Kirstie said.

  In the Scotland of my dreams her kind would be needed too. In the past the Scots had lost too many battles because, while waiting for the fighting to begin, they had been given prayers instead of second helpings.

  I did not reply to Mary’s letter: not even after the war was ended, with victory going to the Fascists.

  ELEVEN

  One warm sunny afternoon in September we were working at the hay, in the high field at the edge of the sea. Mown hay made Hector, then aged ten, sneeze incontrollably, so it was his job to fetch us water from a spring and sprinkle oatmeal in it. In his sister’s opinion he ought also to have been guarding her against clegs, but he preferred to scan the sea like Columbus, through his toy telescope. Following my example, he wore a kilt.

  It was he who first saw the big white yacht coming round the headland.

  He let out a whoop and waved his pirate’s cutlass, a flag leaf.

  We all stopped to look, except Dugald who, with a scythe in his hands, went non-stop like Father Time.

  To our surprise, instead of steaming on past, making for Lochboisdale or Castlebay, the yacht turned into our bay and anchored, still well out, for the shore was rocky, but close enough for us to make out on the deck people gazing through binoculars in our direction.

  Because of our efforts to keep East Gerinish alive we had attracted some attention. One or two pessimistic agriculturists had come to inspect what we were up to. In summer a few tourists or holiday-makers not afraid of a long walk had ventured in to have a look.

  It was hardly likely we had ever been heard of by the owners of so princely a yacht.

  Even Dugald turned to look when Hector shouted that a boat was being lowered and two men and two women were climbing down into it. In the clear air we could hear their laughter, mixed with the singing of larks and piping of oyster-catchers.

  Mairi tucked her blouse inside her skirt, and adjusted the white hankie over her hair. The least vain of women, she was still not going to look too much like a peasant.

  Kirstie wore a man’s singlet that revealed her fine breasts but also the sweaty hair under her oxters. Her trousers were held up by galluses, and her hair was covered by the usual cap.

  ‘Friends of yours, do you think, Fergus?’ asked Mairi, coming up to me.

  She knew I was of aristocratic origin. She knew that I had been an officer in the War and had won the MC. She knew who my wife was. I had told her because I had needed someone to help me keep my secrets.

  ‘They might be, Mairi,’ I replied.

  Perhaps Grizel Mutt-Simpson had given up being a conquistador and was now a buccaneer. More likely, this grand yacht belonged to Betty’s latest and richest paramour. If so, she would be one of the ladies now being ferried ashore.

  ‘Kirstie,’ I cried. ‘Go home and wash and put on a dress. Would you go and help her, Mairi?’

  Like every other woman I had ever met, Mairi was an admirer of Betty’s. She was convinced that I must have been the cause of our estrangement. A quietly fanatical believer in marriage as a necessary and sensible institution, she would have rejoiced if Betty and I had been reconciled, even if it meant poor Kirstie’s heart being broken, and the end of East Gerinish.

  ‘Come on, Kirstie,’ she said, rather tartly. ‘Let’s go and make ourselves presentable.’

  With his green sword at the ready Hector had gone down to the jetty, as if to defend it against these invaders. Ailie, fascinated by this opportunity to see richly dressed ladies, raced after him, slapping her legs to knock off clegs. Fair-skinned, she was their favourite victim.

  Dugald wiped his face with a towel. He reeked of sweat. So did I. Luckily, the scent of hay and meadow-sweet was stronger.

  I felt tempted to make for the hill and hide there till our visitors, whoever they were, had gone.

  The boat reached the jetty. Hector stood his ground, but Ailie hid behind a rock.

  The ladies were helped out. They laughed gaily. They put up white parasols. They spoke to Hector. One would have patted his head if he hadn’t stepped back. We heard the refined voices but could not make out the words.

  None of them was Betty, thank God. Nor Dorcas. Nor Grizel.

  Dugald’s thoughts were simpler. ‘Now where would any man get the money to buy a boat like that?’ he murmured.

  He was not envious, but he couldn’t help being struck by the contrast between the paltry rewards his own Herculean efforts had brought him, and the great wealth of the man who owned that splendid yacht, without having so much as hammered a nail into it. Dugald and his kind have always been the despair of revolutionaries. They are well aware of the enormous injustices of society, but these, they believe, are caused by a combination of luck and base human nature, and so are irremediable.

  Hector came puffing up to us, red-faced and excited.

  ‘They’re looking for you, Fergus,’ he shouted. ‘They asked me if this was where you lived. I said it was. They gave Ailie a brooch.’

  ‘Did they say who they are?’ I asked.

  ‘One of the men said his name was Donaldson. He said you knew him.’

  They were now out of sight on the path below that led up from the shore. I could not therefore see yet the knock-knee’d gait, or the shine of the domed bald head. Nor could I hear the deep self-satisfied voice showing off his knowledge of the sea-shore flora and fauna. Much of it would be spurious.

  Though I had made no effort to keep in touch with what was happening in the literary world I knew that year after year, like a cow calving, he had been turning out best-selling novels, two or three of which had been made into popular films. As a consequence he was well-known and well-off.

  Long ago, in a pub in Edinburgh, after the literary success and financial failure of his two earliest novels, he had declared, with passion, that if the great British public, and the greater American public, wanted trash dressed up in pretty ribbons and were prepared to pay for it, then by God that was what he was going to give them. Campbell Aird had pointed out that lucrative trash could only be produced if the producer was convinced that it was not trash at all but powerful and exciting stuff, as good as Shakespeare’s, better even, for it lacked the dull and contorted bits that made Hamlet and Lear such hard going. Trash, if it was going to be bought and enjoyed by trash-lovers, had to be genuine and not artfully synthetic. Its author had to have his whole heart and soul in it.

  (There was only one exception, Campbell had added: this was Betty T. Shields. She knew that the honey she was purveying was really kach, but then her powers of transmutation were unique.)

  It had been by demonstrating how essentially commonplace and shallow his heart and soul really were that Alisdair had won his reputation and fortune. He had also been awarded a cbe for his services to literature.

  ‘This Donaldson,’ asked Dugald, ‘does he really know you?’

  ‘He used to.’

  ‘Is the yacht his?’

  That wasn’t likely. Alisdair had married the youngest daughter of Lord Fountainbridge, the Edinburgh beer baron. Remunerative though literary trash was, beer was much more so.

  They were in sight again. A stile in a dry stone dyke presented an obstacle that caused laughter. Dugald looked away when one of the ladies lifted her skirts and climbed over, waving away help offered by the two men.

  The other woman, who seemed older, would not have got over at all without help. Nor, indeed, would the other man, who, even from a distance, looked fat and unathletic. Donaldson, in his characteristic way, tried to show off by vaulting over nimbly, and banged his leg against the sharp stone. Or so I deduced from the way he crouched in pain, holding his knee.

  His companions were more amused than concerned. I suspected they had all wined copiously at lunch.

  Inhospitably I felt sorry that there had been two weeks of sunshine, with the result that the track along which they were now ambling (in Donaldson’s case limping) was not muddy. Still, there were hard ruts, likely to be sor
e on feet elegantly shod.

  A long way behind came two members of the crew carrying picnic baskets.

  The lady who had lifted her skirts was now chasing butterflies. Her playfulness made all the more noticeable the somewhat assertive dignity of her companions. Donaldson himself, in spite of his sore knee, was the most pompous of the lot. Look at me, his every limping step said, I am the famous and wealthy novelist about to greet the obscure and penniless poet.

  Our two dogs had scampered to fawn on the visitors, who patted their heads.

  In the distance, across the vista of purple heather, Mairi and Kirstie could be seen returning. Kirstie seemed to have on a white dress.

  ‘Bless my soul, Fergus,’ cried Donaldson, when he was still some thirty yards away, ‘I would never have recognised you. You look so magnificently rustic.’

  Usually a man wearing a kilt is at an advantage over any other man wearing trousers, but, alas, the one I was wearing I had worked in for years and its original tartan was overlaid by another that consisted of the stains of peat, sharn, dung, ink, fish, tar, kelp, blaeberry juice, and several other local substances.

  ‘How do you do, Alisdair?’ I said, calmly.

  ‘In Lochmaddy, Fergus, we were bombarded with tales of how you and your intrepid companions have so doughtily reclaimed the wilderness. So we thought it would be unforgivable if we didn’t drop in and offer our congratulations. I would like you to meet Lady Margaret Whitehope, her sister Lady Cynthia, my wife, and Sir James Whitehope, my brother-in-law.’

  His wife was the skirt-lifter and butterfly chaser. She looked at least twenty years younger than he.

  She came up to me, softly clapping her hands. ‘Mr Corse-Lamont,’ she cried cheerfully, ‘we were told that your helpmeet—is that a suitable term?—is a most remarkable woman called Kirstie McDonald.’

  Her sister and Sir James were indulgently amused by her amusement.

  Donaldson was proud of his young wife’s high spirits. ‘Indeed yes, Fergus, we have heard tales of this extraordinary Kirstie of yours. Where is she? I hope you are not going to hide her away from us.’