The Camerons

by Robert Crichton

  * * *

  It became an afternoon ritual with them, the tea and the search for field salad to go with the loaf of bread she brought out from the town each day. She liked to hunt for the greens—the Pitmungo in her, she realized, getting something for nothing. Every time she filled her basket with watercress from one of the golf courses, it was like finding money in the brook.

  And he was hooked, her fish, but he was such a shy one, swimming about at the bottom of the pool, not really knowing the gaff was out for him, that she despaired of ever landing him before Rodney Bel Geddes put her out of her room. There were things she could do, she knew, and all of them dangerous. She could invite Rodney up the narrow stairs in exchange for her room; that she was certain of now. He wet his lips every time she passed him, not knowing that he did it.

  Or she could go down to Herringtoon and pay a call on Mr. Cherry MacAdams, who, her Pitmungo instincts told her, would know some way a pretty, canny young girl might earn her salt without losing her soul in the bargain.

  Or she could ask Mr. Gillon Forbes Cameron to marry her straight out, but that, she knew, would never do. Even with the hook in his mouth he’d break the line and run.

  They were picking fiddleheads, the beggars’ asparagus, the little tight-rolled, fuzzy heads of the bracken ferns, for their tea.

  “Pick every other one, so there’ll be ferns when I come back next year,” Gillon said.

  “Aye,” Maggie said, but she didn’t bother, because there wasn’t going to be any next year in Strathnairn.

  “Gillon?”

  “Yes?”

  He looked up, surprised and a little pleased. It was the first time she had called him by name.

  “If you were to catch a very big salmon or two, would you be able to sell them?”

  “It isn’t the selling, it’s the killing. All my life I have wanted a saumont for my own.”

  “But if you got it, could you sell it?”

  She snapped the heads off the little burgeoning ferns. She liked that, neat and precise and final.

  “Oh, there are those in Herringtoon that deal in that, I think. They pay the water bailiff, I think. But it’s very dangerous work.”

  “And does it pay well?”

  He stood up and studied her.

  “If they’re big enough, yes. Very well.”

  “How well?”

  “I don’t know, but very well. They want them for their tables back there.” He nodded south, meaning England. “But it’s bad business.”

  “Aye, I see that, but at least the saumont wouldn’t go to them.” She pointed to the Fiddich House and the Royal Golf and the others across the links. She let that settle with him for a while.

  “Gillon?”

  “Aye.”

  “If I were to arrange some way so you could get your salmon—your saumont—and sell it, too, would you do it?”

  He didn’t answer her for a long time.

  “You arrange it?”

  “Yes, me.”

  They went on with their work. The creel was almost full.

  “You know where the biggest saumont in all of Scotland hide, don’t you?”

  “Aye.” He stood up and looked out at the sea. There was no telling by his face.

  “Would you, Gillon?”

  The lamps were being lit all across the windswept links. It was her favorite time of day here; the wind died down in the early evening before picking up again and the sky never seemed so high and stretched out, and the lamps were the world being turned on.

  “Yes,” he said, “I would.”

  It was time to go back to the cairn. He came to help her hoist her basket.

  “But look what you’ve done,” he said. He was shocked at her.

  “What have I done?”

  “You’ve killed the whole patch.”

  She wanted to say, What does it matter, what in the world does it matter now? but she didn’t. She bowed her head and said, “I’m sorry, Gillon, I am truly sorry,” and he accepted it.

  5

  She woke him as the sun was rising. She entered the cairn and looked down at him. He never stirred, although his face looked troubled. The fishing lines were spread all across the floor, and she realized he must have been up for most of the night, just as she had been. She was sorry to wake him. She ran her hand through his hair—it was finer and silkier than she had thought it would be—and he drew away from her but then allowed the hand to stay.

  “What did Mr. Drysdale say?” Gillon asked. He didn’t open his eyes.

  “He said you were a capable fellow with a propensity for stealing a few shellfish now and then, but a good seaman and someone I could trust.”

  “Propensity.” But Gillon smiled.

  “A Highland beach beggar, I believe he said.”

  “Why, the bastard!” He sat up then. “Where the hell does he think he came from?”

  “Oxford? St. Andrews?”

  “Mr. Angus Drysdale, the high and mighty water bailiff. I’ve seen the croft where he comes from. The family used to share the privy with the cattle.” He got up. “Turn around, please.”

  He didn’t like to have her see him arrange his dress and wash his face, it was too personal a thing. “Oxford,” he mumbled. “Oxford, indeed.” It was so easy to get his goat, she thought.

  He picked up a bobbin of fishing line and headed with it for the door of the cairn. “You can put water on for tea; we have time for that.” And then, “Well, the line’s all greased and set,” rather sadly, she thought. At the door, he turned back toward her. “I don’t like this, Meg.”

  “Ooh,” she said softly, almost breathed it, “the unco guid Mr. Cameron. Put on your Free Kirk face, so the world will know how good you are.”

  He knew he had on the face his mother used to wear when she pretended to put money in the collection plate and only rattled the coins. Maggie was on to him and it made him smile.

  “When the ‘sportsmen’ want a fish, they get a fish even if they have to get the torches out at night; didn’t you tell me that?” she said. Gillon nodded. “Then today we’re ‘sportsmen.’”

  She wondered if she was always going to have to provide the finishing force for whatever it was they started. It wasn’t too high a price to pay, she thought.

  He had beached the boat, and once in it Maggie began to wrap the greased line around her legs. What astonished him was that she had gone right at it, not asking him to turn away, and it was hard for him not to look. He had seen those legs once before, helping her over a stile, and he had not been able to forget them. Gillon felt ashamed of himself; she so trusting, his mind so rampant with thoughts.

  “And what did Mr. Drysdale say?”

  “He believed it all. He wanted to take me over himself.”

  “He would. The man is a notorious lecher, you understand.”

  “Aye, I know that,” Maggie said. What did she mean by that, he wondered, but said nothing.

  It was an acceptable story, they both felt, a credible cover for the day’s work. She was a student of Gaelic-Celtic heritage and had gone to Mr. Drysdale, the senior water bailiff in Strathnairn, for advice about Holydeen Island, which she was led to believe was a treasure house of Celtic lore and artifacts, much of it not even catalogued. He bent her ear over a half-dozen shandygaffs. The Druidical circle of standing stones at Stornish, not to be missed, the bailiff said. Then the celebrated broch at Dugg. Pictish, of course, which Maggie promised herself not to see, the chambered burial cairn, and, of course, the Witches’ Rock, on which the last witches burned alive in Scotland had blazed.

  “And would a Mr. Gillon Cameron be an acceptable boatman to take me across?” she had said. The bailiff was startled.

  “Why him? Why that Highland beach beggar?”

  “I’m on a tight budget, Mr. Drysdale.”

  “But let me take you over. For nothing.”

  “I have given my word to Mr. Cameron and my word with me is my word,” Maggie said. Mr. Drysdale respecte
d that. Now when they were seen together in the salmon waters not only did they have a story, they had the bailiff’s blessing. It was, indeed, acceptable.

  “You’ll have to help me with this,” Maggie said. The net had to be wound around the upper part of her body and then hidden beneath a blouse and jacket. Gillon wrapped the knotted twine softly around her and despite every effort on his part he felt the weight of her breasts and found that his hands were trembling. His lips were nearly touching her neck. Once around again, he went as fast as he could safely go, and once again he touched her and experienced a shock of pleasure that became an embarrassment so profound he could barely force his arms to continue. What astonished him was the softness of the breasts, the sense of weight about them, and the fact that they felt exactly as he knew they would feel.

  “The question is…” He had nothing to say. “The question is…”

  “How long it will take.”

  Gillon was spared. “Four hours out and four hours back if the wind is right and the tides are right and if we don’t—don’t—”

  “Drown.”

  In half an hour they were out of the inlet and in the open sea. The fetch between the swells was deep and long, a product of the weeks of wind, and the rise and dip of the boat was pleasurable for her. With the small sail up and Gillon hard at the oars they made very good time. At the top of every swell she could see Holydeen off to her right and then hear the rushing, hissing of the swells running under them. From the sea, the Highlands seemed enormous. For all of Gillon’s slenderness, Maggie could feel the boat leap each time he pulled on the oars, and she was impressed with his wiry strength.

  “Shouldn’t you pace yourself, Gillon?”

  “I can do this from sunup to sundown and never stop,” Gillon said, and she was impressed again. He would do; he would do very well. After an hour, despite the wind off the water, he was sweating but he didn’t stop.

  “Oh, God,” he suddenly said. Maggie was alarmed.

  “What is it?”

  “Drysdale. His boat’s at sea and he’s coming our way.”

  She relaxed then. It was the sea she worried about.

  “Let him come.”

  “You don’t understand,” Gillon said. “On the water, Mr. Drysdale is God.”

  The cutter was bobbing above them a few minutes later. The crew leaned over the side to check the contents of Gillon’s boat. There was nothing to see but a gaff, which was allowable landing equipment.

  “Boy taking good care of you?” Mr. Drysdale called.

  “The boy is doing well.”

  “Cameron?”

  “Sir?” He hadn’t meant to say that.

  “See that you look after Miss Drum, Cameron, the way you would your own mother.”

  He nodded. Mr. Drysdale wanted a “Yes, sir,” out of him.

  “Did you hear that?”

  He nodded again and when he did, he saw with cold horror that part of the line wound around one of Maggie’s legs had become unwound and was trailing from beneath her dress along the bottom of the boat.

  “Yes, sir!” he shouted.

  “Miss Drum?” Maggie smiled up at him. “I came out to tell you something I neglected last night. Cameron?”

  “Sir.” He shouted again.

  “Make sure she sees the wonderful statue to wee Bobbie Bartle. The lad was lost in the forest, you see, when a wee white birdie flew down and showed him the way to safety. Very moving, very touching. You know it, Cameron.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “I’m sure you do,” he said archly. It was an accusation of poaching for grouse on the island and all the seamen were smiling.

  “Miss Drum, if you will look behind you, you will see Hardmuir rising from the sea. Where Macbeth and Banquo met with the witches, of course.”

  “Oh, indeed.”

  “Don’t stand up,” Gillon whispered.

  “I didn’t think the boy would know,” Mr. Drysdale said.

  “No, I doubt the boy would know.”

  The line had unraveled further, and Gillon knew there was nothing to do now, as absurd as it was going to look, but to pick up his oars and row away from the cutter while they were still talking.

  “Don’t forget our drink, Miss Drum. Pretty manners, Cameron, pretty.”

  When they were several hundred feet away, Maggie turned on him.

  “That was childish of you,” she said. “An old man makes a few little winks and nods at a girl and you pull up your oars in a sulk.…” He had been pointing at her feet and she finally looked down.

  “Oh, dear God.”

  “Aye, dear God.”

  He rowed in a kind of sullen silence, taking his anger out on the oars and the sea.

  “The boy. The boy wouldn’t know,” he said. She let him mumble. He looked her in the face at last. “What is this Macbeth and Banquo I’m not supposed to know about?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Then he was furious. “And you sat there and let him think you knew and I didn’t, just as cool as that?”

  “Yes.”

  And, finally, he began to smile because the laugh was on Mr. Drysdale.

  “What is all this about a drink?”

  “He wants me to have a drink with him at Highland Lodge and tell him all the secrets I found on Holydeen Island.”

  “But, my God, the man must be forty.”

  “Aye.”

  She felt the boat leap out from beneath her again.

  “Are you going?” he asked.

  “Aye. Is there any reason you should care?”

  Her words fell like a dry fly on fast deep water, as light and dangerous as that.

  * * *

  He didn’t rise to the bait. A mile or so from the island, the sea becomes unprotected and rough. Gillon rowed until the veins stood out in his forehead, and he was happy for the work. The wind shifted and the canvas moved around, hiding her from him for a moment. He was happy for the privacy, he needed to be alone with himself, but when the sail slapped back he was startled to see that her face was greenish yellow.

  “My God,” Gillon said. He felt his heart thump. “You’re the color of sea lettuce.”

  “Well, turn away, then.”

  He felt helpless watching her narrow shoulders rise and fall with the effort of vomiting. She was so brave about it, he thought, and it was all done so swiftly and neatly. She leaned over the side and washed her mouth with cold sea water and it was all over.

  “Any other woman—” he began, but she held up her hand to stop him. It had been very easy. She had merely thought of the words “hot kelp soup” several times and the deed was done.

  Gillon was on his feet. “They’re all around us now!” he shouted. “This is their nest before they go into the streams.”

  She thought she could almost feel them nudge the bottom of the boat. She was afraid of the water but she looked over the side of the boat and when she did, she saw them, enormous shadows, gliding, magnified by the sea, sudden dark shadows that seemed as large as the boat itself, the largest fish she had ever seen, fish large enough to feed a village, and she let out a cry of fear and excitement when one shadow broke the surface of the water in front of them, and for an astonishing moment she witnessed the arched silver thrust of sprung muscle.

  “Hurry, give me the line!” Gillon shouted. He stood up in the boat, the gaff already at hand. “Give me the line,” but she knew better. It was too early in the day for fish. When she wouldn’t move, he sat down and looked at her bright brown knowing face and wondered how she had gotten so wise at her age.

  Because she had been right. Mr. Drysdale had done his advance work well. They beached the boat down from Holydeen harbor so that Maggie could unwind the fishing lines from her legs and Gillon could hide the gear in the brush up from the beach, and when they walked down the shore to the town, a cluster of three or four squat stone houses topped with grass-sprouting thatched roofs, a man in a gig was waiting for them.

  “You would be
Miss Drum and this would be your caddie, Cameron,” he said. “I am Mr. Comyn, your guide, compliments of Mr. Drysdale.”

  “I am no caddie,” Gillon said. The old man had eyes cut from gray granite.

  “Were you hired to row this young lady across from Strathnairn?”

  “Aye.”

  “Then you are her caddie.”

  Gillon was furious when he saw the foxy teeth flash in a quick grin. She had no right to do that.

  “There is only room for one besides me in the gig,” Mr. Comyn said, helping Maggie up into it, “but we’ll go slow and your boy can trot along behind,” and cracked his whip over the pony’s ears. Maggie didn’t dare to look back into Gillon’s face.

  They covered all of it that morning, the famous vitrified fort, the Pictish broch, a cunning piece of stonework that looked to Maggie like nothing more than a stone roof pack for a mine, fitting monument to a race of miners, then along a trout stream in which Gillon could see trout lolling in their pools, and down through a pine-studded glen to Bothwell Cross, a Celtic shrine in the middle of a small clearing. She could hear him, all that time, choking for air, his feet pounding the rough path, kicking loose stones, hanging on.

  “You will be especially interested in the runic inscriptions on the base,” Mr. Comyn said.

  “That I shall.”

  Gillon whispered something in her ear when she was handed down from the gig, which it was just as well Mr. Comyn did not quite hear. It was, “Liar.”

  “And aren’t you glad of it?” Maggie said.

  “What was that?” Mr. Comyn said.

  “Nothing, it was meant for the boy.” The foxy teeth again.

  The cross was an impressive piece of stone, beautifully carved, at once rough and delicate, a curious combination of the qualities of the people who made it.