Fergus Lamont

by Robin Jenkins

  On the whole I was encouraged by its reception. Eyes blinked, eyebrows crept up like mice, noses whitened with strain, and groans were suppressed. It amounted to a judgment not immediately unfavourable. If these people, mostly from Paisley, a town with an abbey, were inclined to pay tribute, so too would be Gantockians.

  ‘You’ve been in Africa or India, that’s whaur,’ said the grey-haired woman. ‘You talk like somebody that’s been a long time among blacks.’

  Some of the others nodded, as if they too had been thinking the same thing.

  I let it pass. I had not been lying when I had said that my tan, which was really a weather-beaten ruddiness, had not been acquired in Scotland. My companions, abhorring fresh air and calling it draughts, would have preferred the Belgian Congo, where it was as hot as in this compartment, to windy East Gerinish.

  On the platform at Gantock Central I stood looking at scenes still familiar though dismal. The glass roof was painted black, and the people all looked sulky and suspicious (as notices on the walls exhorted them to be.)

  The grey-haired woman approached me.

  ‘Excuse me again,’ she said, ‘but do you ken whaur you’re gaun? You look loast.’

  ‘Thank you, madam,’ I replied, with a smile. ‘I am not lost. I was born in Gantock.’

  ‘Aye, in the West End nae doot. That’s whit I was thinking. They’re a’ generals that come frae there. Weel, you’ll hae to walk or tak a bus. A number 9 would do. There never were ony taxis to be had here, but there are even less noo. It’s the war, you see. Maybe if you were to phone Ferguson the undertaker he micht send a caur, but I wouldnae coont on it. They say he’s saving his petrol for the hundreds o’ funerals when the bombing starts.’

  She hurried away, to her room and kitchen, or, if she was one of the better-off ones, her two rooms and kitchen, which, more likely than not, would be clean and, considering how low in the social scale she was, trimly furnished.

  I was home at last.

  I went into a telephone kiosk and rang up, not Ferguson the undertaker, but John Calderwood. I did not know whether he was alive or dead. If alive, he would be an old man of seventy.

  ‘Gantock 4545. John Calderwood speaking.’

  I recognised his voice at once. Though he had not taught for many years, it still had a trace of pedagogical irritable-ness in it.

  ‘Who is this?’ he asked, sharply. ‘Have you got the wrong number?’

  ‘It’s Fergus Lamont,’ I said.

  ‘Fergus Lamont? Fergus Lamont the poet?’

  Whatever he had become, I would love him. He could have said Fergus Lamont the failed aristocrat, Fergus Lamont the rejected husband and despised father, Fergus Lamont the unlucky lover, Fergus Lamont the fool. But he had said Fergus Lamont the poet.

  ‘Yes, John, the same.’

  ‘But I thought you were in the Hebrides. In fact, that you had died there, some months ago. I saw something in the newspaper about it.’

  Had Betty, informed by her spies of Kirstie’s death, been sowing hints that it was I who had died?

  ‘I assure you I’m still alive, and back in Gantock.’

  ‘Yes, I think I recognise your voice, in spite of the accent. How long have you been here?’

  ‘About ten minutes. I’ve just come off the train.’

  ‘I suppose you’ll be staying with your relatives, the Lamonts?’

  ‘I don’t think so. John Lamont’s dead.’

  ‘Yes, I heard. Look, why not come and stay with me? You used to look on Ravenscraig as another home.’

  Not because of him, though: because of Cathie.

  ‘I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you, or anyone else.’

  ‘There’s no one else. I live here on my own. A 9 bus will take you to the gate.’

  ‘Thank you. I would like to pay someone a visit first.’

  He appeared to laugh. ‘May I ask who?’

  ‘Someone I treated very badly.’

  I did not have anyone in particular in mind. There were so many to choose from.

  ‘What about your luggage?’

  ‘I have only one suitcase.’

  ‘It’s raining. You’ll get wet.’

  ‘I’m used to rain. I’d like to have a look at the town, too.’

  ‘You’ll find it as much in want of grace as ever before.’

  He hung up then, after that strange remark for a lifelong atheist. Had he, in his old age, undergone some bitter conversion? The Christ of the sheep and goats would suit him well.

  I walked along towards Auchmountain Square. There, at the heart of the town, where once flower-beds had been, were air-raid shelters of brick, ugly as tumours. Above in the grey sky, like gigantic kidneys, floated barrage balloons, protecting the shipyards and docks. Shop windows were boarded up; so, it seemed to me, were the faces of most passers-by, with resignation. One old man, carrying his gas-mask like a schoolchild its satchel, saw me looking at him with friendly interest, and scowled. I did not blame him. At his age he deserved ease among flowers, not terror in brick tumours.

  There were still one or two benches in the Square. In spite of the rain two old men were seated on one. They were talking to pigeons. One of these came and pecked at my shoe, in the myopic hope that it was a lump of bread. It reminded me of Uncle Tam, who had gone blind and was now probably dead. He was one of those I had behaved badly towards.

  Still carrying my case, I went up the steps of the Auld Kirk. They did not seem so spacious now, nor were the pillars so imposing. I tried the massive door, knowing it would be locked. It was locked. Vandals and desecrators must be kept out, as well as those wishing to pray for private peace or public victory. These would have to wait till Sunday.

  I noticed that I was being watched from the pavement by the two old men who had been seated on the bench. Evidently I was more interesting than pigeons.

  ‘Are you selling Bibles, mister?’ cried the one wearing the blue scarf.

  They both wheezed with laughter at the joke.

  They were as old as Uncle Tam would have been had he lived.

  I descended to them.

  Tell me, gentlemen,’ I said, ’did you ever know a citizen of this town called Thomas Pringle? He used to keep pigeons. I believe he went blind some years before he died.’

  ‘If Tam Pringle’s deid,’ said the one wearing a green scarf, ‘it must hae happened damn sudden. We were talking to him no’ less than a week ago. Isn’t that right, Bert?’

  ‘We telt him he’d better get a lick o’ fresh paint on his stick,’ said Bert. ‘Because o’ the blackoot, you ken.’

  This was the best of news.

  ‘Does he still live in Kirn Street?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s lived naewhere else that we can mind o’. His first wife died there.’

  ‘Has he married again then?’

  ‘Aboot a couple o’ years back. A flat-chested woman this time.’

  That was another joke. They laughed again. Tears were in their eyes. Life was bloody awful, but it was funny too.

  ‘But she looks efter him weel.’

  Suddenly they had to hurry off, towards the nearest public lavatory. The need came on, grumbled Bert, like the stab of a bayonet.

  I headed for Kirn Street.

  Girrs had once bounded down those steep braes like gazelles. Burdened with my suitcase, I trudged up.

  At the corner of Murray Street was a little shop I remembered well. It had been the only one in the district that sold a kind of sweet I had a passion for, called Purple Aniseed Balls. Often, with mouth watering and with a penny clutched in my fist, I had opened that door, and thereby rung a bell. The shopkeeper then had been a wizened old woman called Sadie McParlane. If you said thanks as if you meant it she sometimes gave you a sweetie extra.

  I opened the door. A bell rang. Was it the same bell of forty-odd years ago? For a few moments I was seven years old again. There among the jars on the shelf was the one containing my purple aniseed balls.

  The wo
man behind the counter was not so old as Sadie, and she was far from wizened. Chins propped on plump hands, she was leaning over the counter, chatting to a customer. She threw me a sedate glance, as if the entry into her shop of a gentleman in a kilt was a daily occurrence.

  Her customer, though, a small woman of about my own age, gave me a stare that might have been justified had I been stark naked.

  She reminded me of someone I had once known: Alec Munro, simpleton of Limpy’s class in Kidd Street. Surely no two families in the town could have that combination of up jutting chin and down jutting nose. In her case the resultant uncomeliness was exaggerated by her having left out her false teeth; that was to say, if she had any to leave out. Her jaws champed as if used to chewing toothlessly.

  She must be one of Alec’s sisters.

  I asked for a quarter pound of purple aniseed balls.

  Had they been my own balls, shrunken and dyed purple, Alec’s sister couldn’t have gazed at them with greater fascination as they went rattling into the brass pan to be weighed.

  ‘They mak your tongue purple,’ she observed.

  How well I knew that. Many times had I studied my empurpled tongue in a mirror.

  I wonder,’ I said, to the shopkeeper, that fat, placid, and, as I mistakenly thought, humourless lady, ’if you would be so kind as to allow me to leave my suitcase in your shop, for an hour or so. I’m visiting some friends higher up, and as you know it’s a sair climb.’

  In other places the shopkeeper would have either curtly refused or consented, and the customer would have minded her own business. That was never the East End of Gantock way.

  They looked at my suitcase as if it might contain the proceeds of a bank robbery or a dismembered body.

  ‘Whit’s in it?’ asked the shopkeeper. ‘I’m asking, just in case you never come back to claim it. They’re wild folk higher up. Aren’t they, Mrs Paterson?’

  Had Archie Paterson, my classmate in Kidd Street school, managed to avoid the embraces of Elsie Tweedie, only to fall into those of one of Alec Munro’s sisters?

  ‘You can see it’s been a very guid case in its day,’ said Mrs Paterson. ‘Real leather. Wha is it you’re visiting, mister? Maybe Mrs Livingstone and me can show you a short-cut.’

  ‘The only ither time I’ve been asked to look efter somebody’s case,’ said Mrs Livingstone, ‘was when an auld Indian peddler came into the shop. He was desperate to run and find a public lavatory. He looked green through his black. I would hae offered to let him use mine, but he’s forbidden by his religion, isn’t he, to be beholden to women, especially foreigners?’

  ‘That hot food they eat must be bad for their insides,’ said Mrs Paterson.

  ‘Will it be all right if I leave it here in the corner?’ I asked.

  ‘I close at eight sharp, mind. But haven’t you forgotten something?’

  I couldn’t think what she meant. I was sure it wasn’t payment for the service.

  ‘Coupons. You need sweetie coupons for sweeties.’

  ‘Oh. I’m afraid I haven’t any.’

  ‘Noo where d’you think, Mrs Paterson, he must hae come frae no’ to ken that coupons are needed?’

  ‘Across the seas shairly.’

  ‘Do I have to hand the sweets back then?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, keep them. Even if it gets me the jail.’

  ‘Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies.’

  As I went out I heard Mrs Livingstone say, in her staid voice: ‘I think, Mrs Paterson, we’re safe in thinking nae German spy would hae the nerve to come in wearing a kilt and ask for purple aniseed balls.’

  ‘Without coupons tae.’

  How much of their laughter was satirical, at the expense of the toff in the kilt who used a body’s shop as if it was the left-luggage at the station, who’d asked for sweeties without coupons, and who had tried to make them think he was Scottish because he’d said ‘sair’ instead of ‘sore’, and how much was plain and straightforward at an amusing little interlude, would have been hard to say. It always was in the East End.

  More than thirty years had passed since I was last in Kirn Street. Mary Holmscroft, whose chief fault was trying to make complex things simple, had said I had given up the Pringles because I had become a snob. That was true, but there had been other reasons: aesthetic repugnance, for instance; moral anguish at seeing people I liked having to endure conditions that grew more squalid every year; and (though this was a secret Mary could not have known about) fear of Aunt Bella’s celebrated breasts.

  I entered by the bottom of the street, which meant I had a good hundred yards to walk to reach Uncle Tam’s close. Since it was now after four the schools had skailed. Some little boys, none older than nine, caught sight of me. ‘Jesus Christ,’ yelled one, ‘look at the fuckin’ big kiltie!’ In their young faces was not a trace of humour or amiability. One lifted a stone.

  Some women at a closemouth were shocked. They shrieked to the boys to stop it. One, whose son was among the young savages, threatened to ‘skite the erse aff him’ when she got him home.

  In spite of their uncivilised surroundings these women had with unconscionable effort achieved some idea of civilised conduct; but they had not yet been able to communicate it to their offspring.

  Children in the West End never threw stones at strangers.

  Did Mary still think that redemption was simple? Replace these dreary crowded tenements with spacious villas in streets with trees, and lo, the savagery would vanish. Challenged as to the cost and effort needed, she could point, fairly enough, to the stupendous cost and effort of this present war, so willingly and resolutely borne.

  As I approached the women they gaped in amazement, but also with appreciation. They were pleased that so braw a gentleman should be walking along their street. They expected a show of fine manners.

  I did not let them down.

  ‘Thank you, ladies,’ I said, doffing my balmoral and giving a little bow. ’Good afternoon.’

  What could I have added that would have honoured them for their determination to be decent and civilised, however coarse their way of showing it, and however degrading the conditions they lived in? I would have had to recite to them my poem ‘Wolves in the Vennel’, written twenty years ago but more than ever relevant. Unfortunately, they might have misunderstood it, and instead of feeling grateful would have felt insulted.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ they chorused.

  Always when Gantock women were gathered together, particularly at a closemouth, one at least was an insuppress-ible humorist. It was so here. She was a small woman with a grey coat and a ferrety quickness. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed her dropping a curtsey and whispering something. Her companions laughed, but in moderation. One shrieked, but the others hushed her. This street was their home: any stranger, however comic his dress, gait, or face, must be allowed to walk along it without molestation or affront. If they had known me though, how boisterous their mirth, how bawdy their proposals, and how warm their affection.

  THREE

  As I entered Uncle Tam’s close I felt surrounded by danger. My enemies were all within me. If I did not now show more courage and less selfishness than ever in my life before I might do great harm to a blind old man who had once loved me.

  On the door was the same brass name-plate, polished as bright as in Aunt Bella’s day. ‘Thos Pringle’ it said, in the plainest of letters. Uncle Tam had whispered to me once that he would have preferred something a wee bit fancier, but Bella had reminded him that it was a room-and-kitchen he lived in, not a mansion. One of her favourite sayings had been: ‘Be whit you are, and naebody can ever put you up or doon.’

  She would never have approved of the doormat. Oval in shape, it was of green coir with little white and yellow daisies woven into it. Evidently the second Mrs Pringle for all her flat chest had romantic ideas. I did not think she would have the same implacable pride as her predecessor, who would have promptly told me that after staying away for more than thirty years I
had forfeited any right I might once have had to be sorry for her husband.

  The door opened. A surprisingly small, white-haired, sweet-faced, clean-looking, and flat-chested woman, in a blue dress and white apron, blinked at me through steel-rimmed spectacles. She had an orange cat clasped in her arms. Before I had opened my mouth she put a finger to her lips.

  I could not recall any girl of my acquaintance who might have grown up into this diminutive, pleasantly dotty housewife. She must have played her peaver in some street outwith my territory.

  Even with spectacles her own sight seemed weak. She stooped to peer at my sporran. Her cat was beginning to take an interest in the badger’s head when she straightened up again. It miaowed, and she patted it on the nose with her finger.

  ‘Hush, Marmalade,’ she whispered. ‘Maister’s sleeping.’

  I wondered if I had come to the right door. It was hard to think of Uncle Tam as Master. I had never heard him bossing anyone in my life. Nor had I ever known him to take a siesta.

  ‘Is Mr Pringle all right?’ I asked. ‘I mean, is he keeping well?’

  ‘He’s fine. A bit lost at times, but you would expect that, wouldn’t you? He and Marmalade spend maist o’ their lives sleeping.’

  She spoke as if she’d known me all her life. It would have been the same with Jack the Ripper. Her friendliness was instant, absolute, and universal. It was the nicest kind of daftness I had ever seen.

  ‘I wouldn’t want to disturb him,’ I said.

  ‘He’s just sitting in front of the fire, you ken: no’ in bed. He’ll wake up when he smells the sausages frying. It’s sausages we’re having for tea. Drummond’s sausages. I always think Drummond’s are the best. Mind you, you’ve to queue up for them.’

  ‘I’ll come back tomorrow,’ I said. ‘What would be a suitable time?’

  ‘Weel, he rises early. Up wi’ the lark at six every morning, Sundays and a’. He sits and looks oot o’ the windae at the river. He cannae see it, but he can mind it.’