‘Are you a musician, Miss Howard?’ He was not affirming or denying what I had said.
‘No ‒ not at all. One hears little but drawing-room ballads in China. Not very well sung or played. It was the merest chance I had heard the Bach before, and remembered it. It was Bach, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘But why was that all? I would have stayed here all afternoon if only you had gone on. Why did you stop?’
‘It was the end, really. I’d finished, and I was just sorting through some music, getting hymns ready for next Sunday. But before I left I suddenly felt like flexing … well, perhaps your father might have said flexing my soul. No one in this place is supposed to hear that sort of thing ‒ hardly anyone ever does. It would be a trifle suspect. This is a very stern God they worship here. But I play the organ for the few hymns they sing on Sundays ‒ I find that duty easier and less hypocritical than reading the Lesson. The laird is expected to do something. If it weren’t for the fact that people around here know I can manage a horse and a gun about as well as the next man, they might think that playing the organ was a rather odd occupation. The hymns are elementary. The village schoolmistress could do very well with them. I sometimes think I cheat her of a pleasurable task.’
‘But the organ ‒ that wasn’t built just for simple hymns. Even I know that.’
He leaned against one of the Campbell stones and looked back at the church. ‘No ‒ the organ is far better than a church of this size should have. It’s an absurdity, really, to have it here. It is too big for the space, for one thing. But it was paid for by my father-in-law, and he doesn’t know how to deal on a small scale ‒ with anything. The whole church was restored by him. The roof leaked, the tower was tottering, the choir loft was about to crash down. The congregation is so small the minister only comes over to hold a service every third Sunday. It could have been left to its final ruin, and hardly anyone would have noticed. But now you see what it is ‒ with an organ far better than it warrants, and a large brass plate to make sure the Almighty knows who paid for it all.’
‘You’re rather unkind to your father-in-law.’
He shrugged. ‘It would be difficult to be unkind to him. He wouldn’t notice. You see, when the restoration was carried out he thought that his daughter would be buried here with all the other Campbells of this branch of the family. Now he couldn’t have her lying beside a ruined church with the sheep and cattle grazing her grave, could he?’
‘You’re asking my opinion? I think you talk entirely too much, Sir Gavin. I’m a stranger ‒ I don’t know your father-in-law. You may play the organ like an angel, but your tongue is sharpened with more than a little malice.’
He looked at me, and actually laughed. ‘Bless you, girl. Do I hear your father talking? Don’t worry, I beg you. You’ll hear at least that much of my father-in-law ‒ and far more, probably ‒ before you’ve been here very long. My father-in-law is James Ferguson.’
‘Who?’
‘Oh, yes ‒ I’d forgotten the name wouldn’t mean anything to you. You haven’t been in whisky long enough. He is one of the whisky magnates ‒ blended whisky, which I’m sure is never permitted near Cluain. He has as many blends as there are letters to his name, and if the way he spends money is anything to go by, he has a fortune made from all of them. He has ‒ like all shrewd merchants ‒ all qualities, all prices. All things to all tastes. I imagine your grandfather would disapprove of him utterly, and yet he sells to him. All the malt distillers sell to Ferguson. He needs the leavening of a whisky as fine as Cluain’s to give something to some of the rubbish he buys elsewhere, or distils himself. A good malt can be cut very thin, you know, and made to go very far in blending. Ferguson was one of the first to invest heavily in patent-still grain whisky. He let the others make the expensive stuff, and merely bought their product. But whatever he touches, whatever he does, everything turns to gold, and the public have come to know it. They rush to invest with him, and he’s in a great hurry to spend the profits. Witness the church and the organ ‒ and Ballochtorra itself.’
‘He couldn’t have built Ballochtorra!’
‘No ‒ he restored the old tower, and added the rest. A suitable home for his only child. Mind you ‒ if he had been quite so famous eleven years ago, or had known he was going to be quite so rich, he might have looked higher than a mere baronet for her. But still … I believe she wanted to marry me, and that’s always a help.’
‘And you?’ I asked coldly. It was outrageous, what he was saying, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to break away from him, as I should have done.
‘Me? Good God! I was madly in love. She was eighteen, and so beautiful I could hardly believe that she would even look in my direction. Now, eleven years later, and a mother, she is matured, and London society is beginning to say she is the most beautiful woman in the kingdom. Myself, I’m not much accustomed to London society, so I’m no arbiter ‒ but to me she is beautiful. You will see, though ‒ you will meet her very soon.’
I felt ashamed; he had loved her, he most probably still loved her. If a man chose to deride his father-in-law, then it might be just that this place ‒ this lonely graveyard and playing an organ that is a gift from such a man ‒ had brought out more than he meant to say.
‘It was even a good laugh in those days. I could still make a joke of being poor.’ He seemed determined to go on. ‘You see, I had fallen into the baronetcy simply because my father was a distant cousin unexpectedly next in line. I hadn’t grown up with that in prospect. My father had scraped to send me to Cambridge, and from there I had thought I might be lucky enough to get an organist’s post in some cathedral. I loved horses, as well as the organ. I couldn’t afford either, really ‒ except that the organ could be made to pay my way in life. And then, my father was suddenly Sir Bruce Campbell, because a young, unmarried second cousin had tumbled into the river ‒ dead drunk, they say ‒ and two months later my father died, and I was Sir Gavin. I’d visited Ballochtorra once in my life, and I didn’t want either it or the title. It was almost in ruins even when I was a child. All at once I had a title, a castle, and no money. And a position as an organist was going to be much harder to find. Deans usually don’t engage young men whom they think the congregation might suspect of looking down on them. I went back to Edinburgh, where my father had his law practice, hoping for some recommendation for a post ‒ and almost at once I met Margaret ‒ my wife.’
‘The meeting turned out well.’ I wished my tone hadn’t been so tart.
He looked back at the church. ‘Yes, you could say it turned out well. I hardly remember those days clearly. When you are so much in love, nothing has any sequence. I can hardly sort out what happened. I just know Margaret’s father was suddenly present ‒ and in charge. I suppose I was young for my age ‒ we were both very young. And we were married.’
‘And went to Ballochtorra and rebuilt it?’
‘Before any of the rebuilding could begin we had our time there ‒ just Margaret and I. The architects and James Ferguson were planning, and we were enjoying ourselves. We had one wonderful summer almost camping under open roofs. When you are young, and the fire is warm, and the wine is good, you barely notice such things. I suppose I should have thought about who was paying for the fire and the wine, but I didn’t. It didn’t seem to matter, then. It matters, though. In the end, it matters.
‘You haven’t met James Ferguson, but you undoubtedly will. He is a man who makes it his business to meet people. That you are a bishop’s daughter will recommend you as much as the fact that you are Angus Macdonald’s granddaughter. Though a Chinese bishopric doesn’t count in the House of Lords.’
‘You’re very bitter.’
‘Am I? Perhaps it’s simply that I am no longer so young. I know now who pays for the fire, and the wine.’
‘Should you be saying this to me?’
‘Why not? You came from China all alone. You don’t act like a miss just out of school ‒ you’re William’s
sister, and if I’m not mistaken, you’re just as knowing as he was. You’ll see it for yourself. Is it so terrible that I should speak it? I don’t run about crying it to the earth.’
‘You play the organ ‒ when you think no one hears. It speaks for itself.’
‘Only to those who know already. So I’m talking to you. I’m giving the words to what you will guess ‒ and perhaps come to understand. Without James Ferguson there would be no Ballochtorra now ‒ just a vine-covered ruin. There would be no church, no organ, nor horses in the stables. There would be no gamekeepers, and no game preserved on the moors. Gavin Campbell would be scratching for a living somewhere, and the sheep would be clipping the graveyard now.’
‘You said Mr Ferguson had expected his daughter to be buried here. Why wouldn’t she?’
He looked at me with a sideways glance, and then at the neat row of graves. ‘You don’t miss much. Yes, we had thought that we both would lie here ‒ and hence the restoration. But since then ‒ I hope I haven’t some dark genius for bringing such things on my relations ‒ two cousins have died. One with his regiment in India, the other of typhoid in the Congo ‒ that one was a mercenary of Leopold of the Belgians. It happens that they both in turn were next in line to the Marquis of Rossmuir. The solicitors have had to scramble about to find the heir, and it seems I am the one.’ He made a gesture of dismissal. ‘Oh, there’s no riches with it. Rossmuir is an ancient title, but there’s nothing left of the family lands but a few hundred acres of overgrazed grass up in Ross, and a much smaller castle than Ballochtorra was, even in the beginning, and which no one has lived in for more than a hundred years. The present Marquis is nearly ninety, bedridden, living in a few rooms in Edinburgh on the small income the land brings in. There doesn’t seem any possibility that he will beget an heir to prevent my assuming the title. So you see, my father-in-law is torn between leaving things as they are here ‒ or taking on the really challenging task of restoring an ancient ruin, and the traditional burial place of the Marquises of Rossmuir. What prevents him beginning now is that it’s not in good taste until I have actually inherited the title ‒ and the old man could stop him. And then, it’s so far away in the wilderness up North, who would ever see it? No use splashing money about if it’s only to be seen by a few crofters and sheep, now is it?’
I turned on him angrily. ‘I think you’re despicable! Why do you take this man’s money when you so despise him? And if you do, haven’t you the good taste to keep quiet about it!’
He sighed. ‘You’re right. I’m behaving like a vulgarian. And a smug one, into the bargain. I can’t stop a father spending money on his daughter and grandson ‒ it does give him pleasure. But for myself ‒ as you say, the least I might do is accept it with grace. But what is it about you? ‒ have you inherited a gift from your father of making people spill out their souls? I’ve said things that should decently be left unsaid. And yet I know if I don’t say them, they’ll be said to you by others ‒ your grandfather for one. Perhaps I care that you hear my version of it ‒ though why I should I don’t know. Perhaps it’s just that a man has a need to talk, sometimes ‒ and I have the conviction that you don’t repeat gossip.’
‘The children of clergymen are brought up not to. We learn very early on never to notice who comes to our father’s study for counsel or advice, and never to repeat any little piece of information a tired man lets slip. No ‒ I don’t think I gossip very much. And I’ll be interested to meet Mr James Ferguson. We weren’t wrapped in a silkworm’s cocoon in China, you know. After all, the great powers were in there for trade ‒ and the biggest part of it was to sell opium. Whisky seems infinitely preferable. If a man makes a fortune out of whisky ‒ well, it’s only what my grandfather would like to do.’
‘Your grandfather’s a different breed. He’s a stubborn, prejudiced, rather narrow-minded old man, but his heart and soul is in making the best whisky this country can produce. He cares more for the quality of his product than for money ‒ and always has. If you could choose your ancestors, then Angus Macdonald might not be a bad choice. Nor is the ancestor we have in common.’
‘You said we were cousins ‒ distant cousins. Who was the ancestor?’ But I was still thinking of what he had said about my grandfather. It pleased me that he did not appear to begrudge the respect that Angus Macdonald himself had claimed as his due. It made up for some of the things he had said about James Ferguson.
‘She was Angus Macdonald’s mother and a Campbell of Ballochtorra. She lies there.’ He was nodding to the ground beyond me.
It was an overgrown grave beside William’s with the same rough granite marker, though smaller and worn with the weather of the years. I thought it significant that my grandfather had buried William in the plot where one would have expected he himself would lie. The ground beside William was empty, and unmarked, as though waiting. Beyond that was another similar marker, probably Angus Macdonald’s wife, my grandmother. The long grass waved about the stones obscuring the names. I swept aside the grass near the marker Gavin Campbell had indicated and read the name lettered there ‒ CHRISTINA CAMPBELL MACDONALD. My eyes went back to him, questioning.
‘Why not over there? ‒ with all the other Campbells?’
‘Her father forbade her to marry John Macdonald, Angus’s father. He had other ambitions for his daughter and Ballochtorra than the son of the laird of a small, poor island in the Hebrides ‒ and a Macdonald into the bargain. Ballochtorra had fallen on hard times even then, and it needed a good marriage to restore it. She met her Macdonald in Glasgow, I believe, and came back to Ballochtorra for permission to marry him. When it was refused, she simply took off for that far island with her man, and never came back. Not that she was welcome at Ballochtorra. She was all that her father had left, the youngest child, his only hope. Both sons had been killed in the Napoleonic wars. His other daughter married a Grant, and went to Canada; there were no male children of that marriage. Christina’s father had inherited a place in debt, and he got it further into debt. Gambling was his vice, not drink. He never forgave Christina for not saving him. That, at least, is how they tell me the story.’
‘But she is here ‒ buried at the church of Ballochtorra. So she did return.’
‘She returned because Angus Macdonald insisted on it. They say that mother and son were very close ‒ she lost her other sons in infancy. So her pride and ambition rested in Angus. We’re an unlucky family, on both sides, when it comes to offspring. To lose one’s children is not such an unfamiliar thing to the Scots ‒ it’s a poor country, and made poorer by bad landlords, and the breaking of the clans. Sons leave ‒ go into the British Army to earn their keep, emigrate because they’ve been driven from their ancient clans’ homes to make room for sheep. But usually there are enough of them ‒ the women have been strong and prolific breeders ‒ for a father to have sons and daughters about him in his old age. But Ballochtorra has not been lucky. There have been too few sons. For the Macdonalds it has been the same. Angus was Christina’s only surviving child. He brought her to Ballochtorra when she died ‒ it must have been a fearful journey for a young man to arrange in those days, with no help and no money. He came to Ballochtorra, and he insisted that this was where his mother would be buried. He had some notion, they say, that she had been homesick all her life for these glens and burns ‒ that the Western Isles had never been her home, although she gave her husband and family and her new kinsmen her whole devotion. Her father, as laird of Ballochtorra, tried to refuse the right of burial here, and just as strongly Angus Macdonald insisted, pointing to the fact that she had been a member of the kirk when she was a girl. In the end even Sir Graeme Campbell’s tame minister had to agree. But still Sir Graeme refused her a place in the family plots. In the kirkyard she might lie, but not beside her family. That is why she is there ‒ with the path between them. But at least she had been spared the fate of being nicely cleaned and polished up like all the other Campbells. I sometimes wonder if some of these shiny headst
ones mightn’t hide a darker reputation.’
‘Then how does my grandfather come to be on Ballochtorra’s land ‒ at Cluain? If Sir Graeme would not forgive his daughter, how does the grandson come to be here?’
‘He hasn’t told you that part yet? I would have imagined his old triumph would have been one of the first subjects he would have talked of.’
‘We had other things …’
‘Yes ‒ I expect so. As they tell it, Sir Graeme was old at the time, and sick. He had quarrelled with every member of his family, distant as they were. There were none who would have anything to do with him. Angus asked nothing of him but that his mother should be buried there, and insisted over his objections. Somehow, it got into the old man’s head, after Angus had gone back to his island, that the young man had shown a proper filial respect, and a sense of duty, even if he was a Macdonald. This was something Sir Graeme hadn’t experienced from his own family. He couldn’t break the entail on the title or on Ballochtorra’s lands, but Cluain had been split from it by some legal quirk a hundred years before. He had let the farm run down, but he had held off enough of his creditors to save it from them. Cluain was still in his gift. In a fit of what the Campbells called sheer perversity, but what I like to think of as a late attempt at making amends to his daughter and to a grandson he should have been proud of, he left Cluain to Angus Macdonald. And he lived only six months longer than his daughter. So Angus Macdonald left his island, from which his own people had already dispersed, mostly to emigrate, and he came to Cluain to claim it. There was a fierce legal fight. The Campbells claimed undue influence over a man they said was senile ‒ and yet, of course, the row that everyone knew about over Christina’s burial proved there could have been no influence from Angus ‒ quite the opposite. Angus had no money for lawyers ‒ just the merit of his case. The story goes that he marched into Samuel Lachlan’s office in Inverness one day, told him why he had come, asked him to take the case, and if he won he would be paid from the profits of Cluain, and if he lost ‒ well, Samuel Lachlan might wait a long time for that debt to be settled. You’ll be meeting Samuel Lachlan ‒ he’s a part of Cluain’s history now. Even in those days when he was still quite a young man, he was becoming known as one of the cleverest solicitors in Scotland, and very near with money ‒ not the kind to take a case with so little prospect of payment at the end. And yet he did take it ‒ who knows why? Perhaps he was tired of ordinary sorts of lawsuits. They say he came down to inspect Cluain before he would agree. Well, for whatever reason, he took it, and he won. It took almost a year before the appeals were through. In that time Angus Macdonald lived in a crofter’s cottage on Cluain’s property ‒ the Campbells claimed he was in illegal possession, but no one cared to face Angus and his gun. In the end Samuel Lachlan persuaded the Campbells it was useless to carry the claim to the High Court in Edinburgh. They gave in. There is a famous local story of the day the top-hatted Campbell solicitor came down from Inverness in his carriage ‒ the railway wasn’t there in those days ‒ followed closely by Samuel Lachlan in a dirty hackney cab, wearing the shiny black suit which was the only one he possessed ‒ myself, I think he’s still wearing the same suit. The deeds and keys to Cluain were handed over to Angus Macdonald. Cluain, in quite good repair, and fully furnished, with the best lands in the strath, was his. Ballochtorra, with the roof starting to fall in, and only grouse moors and mountain bog to its name, belonged to the Campbells. It must have been a bitter sight for the new baronet in those days ‒ he was the one my father inherited from ‒ to look down from Ballochtorra at Cluain. Most especially when Angus Macdonald began to build his distillery. The story has it that the very day the deeds were handed over, Angus mortgaged Cluain, house and lands, to Samuel Lachlan for the capital to build his distillery. And even the distillery was almost an inheritance from Christina.’
A Falcon for a Queen Page 11