Andrew said, ‘Andrew Stewart, ma’am. I won’t sit.’
‘Andrew, of course. What do you want, Andrew?’
‘It’s your farm manager. I’ve just hit him.’
Her blue eyes fixed on his face. ‘You say you hit Mr Hamilton? Why?’
‘He refused to pay Shuggie’s wages. Sorry, Hugh’s wages. I – we call him Shuggie. Hugh’s worked all week. He’s a hard worker even though he’s a simpleton. He has to be paid.’
‘Can you send Hugh to me? I can deal with the wages.’
‘And I’ve been given my books.’
‘Oh dear. And you want me to explain to my husband that it was done in the heat of the moment? It won’t happen again?’
It would happen again if Mike Hamilton bullied Shuggie again, but Andrew could not tell this to Lady Campbell. He said, ‘We need the jobs. I don’t want Ma to suffer,’ and he left her to the attentions of Nanny Taylor.
Chapter Two
Gordon drove the Armstrong Siddeley hard, picking up the coast road three miles from Haddington. He glanced sideways at the sea, rammed his foot down on the accelerator and wound the window down so the salt-laden air blew on to his face and through his sandy hair. Seven miles across the dazzling blue water the coast of Fife seemed to beckon, clear and bright as a painted backdrop – and try as he might to divert his thoughts from what he had done when he dealt with her, he heard the sound of the girl’s voice singing in the waiting room of the county court: ‘Speed, bonny boat, like a bird on the wing. Onward! The sailors cry. Carry the lad that’s born to be King …’ Her song was echoing in his ears as he covered the last few miles home.
Ingersley House, built in the seventeenth century and set in the middle of five hundred acres of East Lothian’s fertile, rolling country, was once one of the finest houses in the district. Not any more, Gordon mused, as he drove in at the South Lodge entrance. In the old days a gatekeeper-cum-locksmith would have looked after the gates. Now the cook and her son occupied the South Gate Lodge and the great wrought-iron gates were fastened back against the high stone wall. For the quarter-mile drive to the house the car rumbled slowly uphill over weed-infested gravel until the sandstone edifice came into view at the top of the rise. It was imposing, symmetrical, five storeys high and, as Gordon used to say when he was a boy, eight windows wide. His mouth made a wry smile in spite of himself. Most of those windows needed urgent attention. Some were not in such a bad state of repair, but the Campbells’ money was gone, as was the old way of life for families like his.
War was coming and old feudal systems all over Europe were being challenged and torn down; and rightly so. Gordon was not a man to cry over an unfair system of privilege and patronage.
He left the car parked awkwardly at the foot of the twenty stone steps that led up to the massive front door in the centre of the house. It was barely two o’clock. He would be out again by four, driving the half-mile from the South Gate to the harbour at North Berwick. First he wanted an hour alone with Elizabeth. They would make love and the tensions of this morning would be eased. Their marriage was a perfect union. Elizabeth’s ardour was undimmed even after five miscarriages and still-births. Excitement built in him as he ran up the crumbling steps two at a time. He went through the oak doors and into the square, panelled hall from where he could hear the chatter of the few servants they employed wafting up from their quarters on the lower floor. He crossed the hall and went up the flight of stairs to the drawing room. Elizabeth was not there.
He went to his study. She was not there either but there was a letter from the Admiralty. He pocketed it and went back to the drawing room to press the button that would jangle a bell in the servants’ hall.
Within a couple of minutes a housemaid was summoned. He said, ‘Please tell Cook to make up my hamper.’
‘Yes, sir.’ The girl bobbed a little curtsey.
Gordon was momentarily irritated by her action. He had told the staff that neither he nor Elizabeth wanted this kind of ceremony from servants. Then he realised that it would be Ruth’s doing. He would talk to her about it, tactfully. He would not upset Ruth, whose presence was making Elizabeth’s life so much easier. He was enormously grateful to her. And as if in answer to his thoughts, at that moment the door opened and Ruth came in.
Gordon smiled, but she came close and offered her cheek for him to peck. He was unused to what he thought of as cocktail-party manners but it pleased Ruth, so he bent and kissed her cheek, then said, ‘Elizabeth? Is she resting?’
‘Yes. I – we expected you home earlier, Nanny and I.’
‘I told Elizabeth that I would see her before I went to the boat.’ Gordon looked at his watch, then quickly at the clock over the fireplace, which showed the time as half past three. ‘Who has put the clock on? I wound it last evening.’
‘Oh dear! It must be Elizabeth. She has to touch the hands.’ Ruth looked at him, alarmed. ‘Nanny and I told her to lie down. She needs to rest to preserve her sight for as long as possible.’ Ruth’s own eyes suddenly brimmed with tears. ‘You want me to disturb her?’
He could not bear to see a woman in tears. He was at a loss, just as he had been when young Flora Macdonald had cried in front of him just an hour ago. He said hastily, ‘No. Of course not. Will you tell her when she’s rested that I’m taking the boat out? I’ll be home before dark.’ He was relieved to see that she had control of herself again.
Ruth really was a remarkable girl – practical and capable. He said, ‘There’s nothing the matter? Nothing I need attend to?’ She dropped her eyes and he heard her catch her breath, as if she were perhaps a little afraid of him. He repeated, ‘Is anything the matter, Ruth?’
‘I don’t like to trouble you,’ she began, then after a few seconds she looked directly at him. ‘But I’m afraid it isn’t something I can deal with.’
‘What?’
‘It’s the cook’s boy. He’ll have to go.’
‘Young Andrew Stewart?’ Gordon was surprised. ‘He’s one of our best.’ He and Elizabeth had taken a special interest in Andrew, seeing in him a boy whose intelligence would take him far and who would be an asset to the family. He said, ‘What has he done?’
‘Struck the farm manager. We dismissed him instantly. His mother, the cook, wants to plead for him.’ She began to rush her words. ‘I told them that you could not intervene. The matter will be dealt with by us.’
‘What do you mean … us?’
‘The problem is Mr Hamilton. I can’t persuade him to take the boy back.’
He might be hopeless at dealing with women but Gordon knew what to do about a boy. He would not see his own estate workers – boys whom he had watched growing up – brought low like this; fighting, beyond control. He said sharply, ‘No, I’ll do it. I will speak to Hamilton. Where is Andrew?’
Ruth lifted her pretty, arched eyebrows and said, ‘There’s no need. I’ll attend to it. Move the boy from the fields to the house if you wish.’
‘I do not wish.’ Since she was trying to be helpful he did not add that it was no concern of hers. He said brusquely, ‘I’ll deal with it.’
Downstairs in the stone-flagged kitchen, Andrew followed his mother from table to deep white sink, explaining. ‘He wouldn’t pay Shuggie.’
Ma elbowed him aside. ‘We could lose our house and our jobs over this. You can’t carry on like you did at school, aye gettin’ into fights. Sticking up for them as won’t fight their ain battles. You read too much. Grow up. Learn to take orders!’
He followed Ma back to the table, saying hotly, ‘Not from Hamilton!’ knowing Ma was going to say, ‘If your father were alive you’d have known your place.’ Ma reminded him daily of a fisherman’s need to obey orders without question.
Ma went to the dresser to gather the plates and tin mugs for the hamper. Then she stood by the table, her little hands on her wide hips, dark hair coming loose from the white cotton cap she wore in the kitchen. ‘What will happen to us if we get thrown out? We were lucky to be
kept on when the old master died.’
‘Shot himself, you mean!’
‘Hush! Don’t,’ Ma said quickly, looking towards the door.
‘Well, it’s true. He shot himself because he’d lost all his money.’
‘It was accidental death, the coroner said.’ Ma was defending them again. ‘They had to sell two hundred acres of their best farmland to the barley barons. Landed gentry never sell land. Nearly all the servants for the house and grounds, and their families, had to go. We were lucky. Now you do this! What’s to become of you? You’ve had a good education. You got your school leaving certificate. But you don’t use your brain when your fists will do.’ Her dark eyes flashed and her round bosom heaved. ‘You knocked his front teeth loose.’
‘That should shut him up, then.’ Andrew was not going to back down. He looked at his angry ma, wanting to pick her up and hug her – and not daring to. ‘I saw Lady Campbell. She knew nothing about it.’
Ma would not think twice about his having gone to see Lady Campbell. The Commander had called the servants to a ‘conference’ when they lost everything. He said that he and Lady Campbell would give and be given respect but the old master–servant ways were gone. The servants would now be called the staff and every one of them had the right to a fair wage and a hearing.
Ma said, ‘I hope you’re ashamed.’ Then she began expertly to wrap cold chicken and roasted ham in sheets of greaseproof paper, folding linen napkins about them, slicing her thick crusty bread, packing that too with a little parcel of butter and a knife. She took small jars from a drawer and filled one with home-made mustard and another with her strawberry jam. ‘If they won’t keep you on here, there’s no other work round here. Millions on the dole. You’ll have to work on the fishing boats. They’ll take you on.’ Then she took from the dresser a large jar with a screw-on lid, which she filled from the barrel of nettle beer that stood under the table. ‘But I don’t think they’ll get rid of me.’
Now Andrew knew she was going to say what she always did. ‘The Commander says I must never leave him. Who else could make nettle beer like this?’ She dipped in the scoop and ladled a measure of the clear amber drink into a pint glass for Andrew. ‘Here. Have a drink. He won’t mind.’
Andrew smiled apologetically between gulps of the beer, then they both jumped in guilty surprise, for at that moment Sir Gordon appeared in the doorway.
The new master was admired by young and old but nobody ever forgot his rank. And though there was no bowing and scraping, everyone behaved towards him, as he did to them, with the utmost respect. Ma’s face went fiery and Andrew knew that his own neck was reddening in embarrassment when the Commander came into the kitchen.
‘Aha! My hamper is ready.’ Sir Gordon looked steadily at Andrew. ‘Put on canvas shoes and a warm jersey and meet me at the harbour in twenty minutes. We must have a serious talk.’
Andrew’s spirits were low as he ran down the hill to the harbour. Sir Gordon would have to sack him and there would be nothing for him but the boats, though it was typical of his hero that the Commander would do it kindly, not in front of everyone at Ingersley. There was a boathouse under the cliffs above the Ingersley private beach, with a wooden slipway to the launching place. It was all but derelict now. The Commander had abandoned it in favour of the good, small harbour of North Berwick.
The harbour was busy, though the granary that ran along one side was closed. A Danish grain boat, tied up at the quay, would be ready to sail in an hour’s time, judging by the activity on board. Half a dozen noisy fishwives were seated near the harbour entrance with their backs to the sparkling water of the Firth of Forth. They were baiting herring drift lines, their hands quick and deft as they reached into the baskets for pieces of fish bait and hooked them on to the lengths of line that would be trailed through the water. ‘Andrew! Are ye goin’ out wi’ the men?’ one of them called out.
He waved to them and to the men who, while the engines turned, were making ready the heavy wooden fishing boats that sat like two broad-beamed ducks in the brown water below. ‘I’m helping Sir Gordon,’ he called and ran around to the far side of the quay where, under the red sandstone harbour wall, the Lizzie, twenty-seven feet, a sloop-rigged yacht with a two-berth cabin, sat high in the water, her sails ready to hoist, Sir Gordon aboard.
He saw Andrew and said, ‘Good. Here on time. Have you any experience?’
‘I’ve put up a mizzen on a fishing boat to keep it from rolling when the engine stops. But I’ve never been under sail in anything fast,’ Andrew said. He knew the Lizzie, of course, and had often stood over by the harbourmaster’s place and watched the Commander take her out.
So, he was going to be sacked and taken for a sail at the same time. That was all right by Andrew. He’d always wanted to feel the power of the wind taking a boat fast across the water. He’d been down to Leith Docks a couple of times, to see the great windjammers that occasionally came in, their many masts and the complicated rigging and clouds of canvas sails a marvel to him.
Sir Gordon tossed a line that landed at Andrew’s feet. ‘Give me a pull.’
The Commander used a boat hook to push her away from the harbour wall. Andrew pulled. The boat heaved a little and inched slowly along the quay. ‘She’s moving,’ he called.
‘Keep going. Jump aboard when you reach the harbour entrance.’
A few moments later Andrew leapt into the boat and now there was no time to worry about getting the sack, for he had to pull the fenders on board. The deck was rocking gently, the loose sails were flapping and the boom was swinging as if the Lizzie herself were impatient to be off. Andrew was eager to do everything right. He had watched the procedure time and again so he knew what to do. With a mighty heave Sir Gordon hauled in the mainsail with the rope halyards, telling Andrew, ‘Haul in the jib sheets!’ and the boat began to pull away. They were moving under sail. Out of the shelter of the harbour, the boat rolled gently. Sir Gordon said, ‘We’re going close-hauled on starboard tack. Slacken off the leeward back stay.’ The wind filled the sails. They were under way.
‘Well done.’ The Commander was at the helm, Andrew at the lee side of the cockpit, the wind on the starboard quarter as the Lizzie picked up speed. ‘What do you want to do, Andrew?’
‘You mean – do I want to go on working for the estate?’
‘No. Mr Hamilton won’t have you. No matter the rights and wrongs of the other boy’s treatment, we can’t have insubordination.’
The Lizzie was beating out towards the Fife coast. Andrew gripped the edge of the seat and placed his feet wide apart to steady himself. ‘I’m not asking to be kept on, sir. I’ll go on the boats.’
‘You don’t want to be a fisherman?’
‘Not really. I’ll do it if I have to. It’s my duty to look after Ma.’
‘You didn’t think of that when you struck your superior?’ the Commander said as the Lizzie went slicing through the water.
‘No. I didn’t. I’m sorry I let Ma down. Ingersley is her home. But I’m not sorry I hit Hamilton.’
‘Mr Hamilton is a man of the land. A good farmer. He has an uncanny way with animals.’
He has an uncanny way with people, Andrew thought, but he would not sneak and repeat what he had heard this morning. The Commander would find out for himself, sooner or later.
‘Get ready to move across.’ Sir Gordon was at the helm, pushing the tiller. ‘We’re going on to the port tack.’
Andrew quickly changed over, tightening the port back stay, loosening the starboard as the Commander said, ‘I asked what you wanted.’
Working together like this, it was too much to expect that Andrew would be able to keep up the bravado – the pretence of indifference. The sea and wind were in his blood now. It looked as if they were going to be out for a few hours. He’d speak his mind. He said, ‘Farming’s all right but I don’t want to work on someone else’s land. There’s no future in being an estate worker.’
Sir Gordon Campbell,
though apparently concentrating on holding the boat on a steady course, said, ‘I agree. The days of a paternal system are over. The old ways are gone. We must adapt. But we all have to set individual courses. What is your aim in life? What do you want? Riches and fame?’
‘I suppose I’m like everyone else, sir. Boys my age. First I want adventure. Then I’ll need to make a bit of money to buy a few acres of land, find a wife and have half a dozen fine sons.’
‘We can’t get everything we want.’ Sir Gordon’s jaw tightened as his eyes grew wistful. ‘I expect you think that a man in my position would not want the same blessings in life that you do.’
‘No, sir. I didn’t say I expect them. These are only my hopes.’
‘I see. So you enjoy farming?’
‘I do. But I want adventure first.’
Sir Gordon Campbell smiled. ‘You are being vague, Andrew, saying, “I want adventure”.’
‘I do want adventure. But who will look after Ma?’ he said. Ma could not apply for a better job, for, to her mortal shame, she could barely read and write and went to elaborate lengths to hide her semi-literacy.
‘Your mother will always have a home with us. When she retires she will be given a cottage on the estate. Have no fears for her.’ Sir Gordon’s eyes narrowed as he looked from Andrew to the coast ahead. ‘Ease the jib sheet,’ he ordered, and when Andrew had control, ‘Once we’re on a steady course, you can take the helm. You know the drill. The helmsman gives the orders. The crew obeys them promptly and efficiently. They must be “going about”, not “messing about”.’
The wind was blowing steadily. Andrew felt the pull of it in the jib. It was a thrill, sailing the Lizzie. The wind whipped through his hair, tasted salt on his tongue and brushed cool over his strong arms. They were heading towards the great Bass Rock; the basalt island that was home to one of the world’s biggest colonies of gannets. Sir Gordon appeared to have come to a decision. He said, ‘Have you considered the navy?’
Flora's War Page 4