Don was aware of all of this. Sometimes he tried to sort it out, but it was exhausting. He vaguely resented that Liz didn’t manage it better. She argued that Billy had to stand up for himself. He was three years older than Charlie, even if he was slighter and softer. She couldn’t fight his battles for him, and neither should Don.
§
One day Billy came home from a demo in Dunoon and said, coyly, ‘Guess who else was there? Barbara.’ For a moment Don didn’t know who he meant, then he did. Jack’s daughter. ‘Barbara Gordon?’ he said. ‘Aye,’ Billy said, ‘she was on the march tae.’ ‘Is that right?’ Don said. ‘Young Barbara. And how has she turned oot?’ He glanced at Liz and found her looking at him as if it was his fault. A chill went through him, remembering the quiet, strange, intense wee girl of years before.
Billy said, ‘She’s in CND tae, she’s a youth organiser in Fife, she’s much mair involved than I am. I’m gaun across there some time. It’s no just CND, she’s in aw kinds o things.’
In fact he went the following Saturday, and the one after that, off on the bus early and not home till late. Then came the request, at tea one evening, to stay away overnight, for a dance at a youth club in Glenrothes. ‘Barbara’s mother said I could.’
‘Barbara’s mother said I could,’ Charlie mimicked.
‘Cut it oot, Charlie,’ Don said. His big hand landed palm down on the table. Charlie shut up. Don had to look away. The expression on the boy’s face made him want to thump him, the churn in his belly made him not want to. He’d done it often enough, though not recently. But Charlie was growing fast. In a few years he’d be able to fight back.
Liz regarded Billy steadily. ‘She did, did she?’
‘Aye,’ Billy said.
‘And when’s that supposed tae happen?’
‘Next Saturday.’
‘How is she?’ Don asked.
‘Her mother? She’s all right. She made me my tea. She says I’ve tae call her Sarah. So can I stay there?’
‘I don’t see why no,’ Don said, and Liz fixed that look on him again. ‘If ye’re sure Sarah – Mrs Gordon – disna mind.’
‘She disna,’ Billy said.
‘She must really like ye,’ Charlie said, ‘if she made your tea.’ From anybody else this might have been an innocent-enough remark, but the cold, snake-like way it was said was designed to wind somebody up, Billy or his father. Don turned on Charlie and snapped, ‘Oot. Now.’ Charlie went, with contempt for his father and brother in his eyes.
‘Well?’ Billy said.
‘Don’t well me,’ Liz said.
For all his anti-war activism Billy hated confrontation at an individual level, but Don could see him steeling himself, determined not to be overruled, and decided to intervene.
‘There’s nae harm in it, surely?’ he said, just as Billy said, ‘Look, ye can telephone her if ye don’t believe me. I’ve got the number.’
‘Oh, they’ve a telephone, have they?’ Liz said.
‘Aye, it’s because of Mrs Gordon’s job in the post office, I think.’
‘It’s no that we dinna believe ye, son,’ Don said. ‘It’s just …’ But he couldn’t think what it was. Because it was nothing.
‘It’s difficult,’ Liz said.
‘What’s difficult aboot it?’ Billy demanded. He took his diary from his pocket, opened it near the back and was about to hand it over when he changed his mind. He turned some more pages, found a blank one and carefully tore part of it out. He slid the wee pencil from the spine of the diary and copied the number down. ‘There ye are. Would one of you telephone her, please?’
Liz lifted the piece of paper. ‘I don’t like tae,’ she said. ‘I’d be better writing.’
‘It’s for Saturday,’ Billy said. ‘Could ye no just phone her?’
‘I could dae it, I suppose,’ Don said, ‘if your mother really disna want tae.’
‘If onybody’s tae telephone her, it’ll be me,’ Liz said.
‘Well, could ye dae it soon?’ Billy said. ‘So I ken.’ Don had never heard him so impatient.
Billy left them alone. Even with his emotions roused he didn’t slam the door. A few minutes later they heard him slipping out of the house.
‘I’m no wanting him seeing that Barbara,’ Liz said. ‘Ye could have supported me, Don.’
‘Supported ye? What did ye want me tae say? He’s been tae Aldermaston and the Holy Loch. We canna stop him gaun tae Glenrothes tae see a lassie.’
‘I don’t mind him seeing lassies. I just dinna want him seeing that lassie.’
‘He’s fifteen,’ Don said. ‘Nearly sixteen. What were we daein at his age? I’d started my apprenticeship and you were working on the farm. Just because he hasna left the school yet disna mean he’s no growing up.’
‘There’s ony number o lassies here he could be gaun wi. His friends’ sisters. Lassies at the school. Why does he have tae pick her?’
‘It’s how things happen, Liz.’
‘It’s no just her. It’s her faither and everything.’
A space lay between them. Billy would be sitting the new ‘Ordinary’ level certificate exams in a few months. Decisions about what would happen after that would have to be made soon.
Liz said, ‘He should be studying mair at weekends onywey.’
‘He studies plenty,’ Don said. ‘Every night here at the kitchen table. Look, we canna stop him making choices. Making mistakes if need be. It’s the only way ony o us ever learn.’
‘God help him if he makes a mistake wi Barbara Gordon.’
‘Barbara Gordon’ sounded to Don like the title of an old ballad with a tragic ending.
‘It’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘They’ll go marching and dancing thegither for a while, then they’ll go their ain ways. But if we try tae stop it, it’ll make them mair determined tae see each other. Is that what ye want?’
‘I dinna want it at aw.’
‘Would ye rather I spoke tae Sarah?’
‘No! I’ll dae it.’
‘Well, ye’d better wait till Billy comes back or he’ll see ye in the queue, and get embarrassed.’
‘What d’ye mean?’
‘That’s where he’ll be away tae, the phone box. He’ll be doon there speaking tae Barbara. Why dae ye think he’s got the number?’
Neither of them thought of a telephone as anything other than an instrument for communicating necessary information or for use in an emergency. The idea that you might phone somebody just to talk to them seemed absurd, extravagant.
‘It’s serious, isn’t it?’ Liz said.
‘Naw,’ Don said. ‘Not at all.’ But he was thinking of Billy’s determination. Maybe it was serious. And could Billy really look after himself?
They sat in silence. Gunshots sounded from the front room. Charlie was in there with the newly acquired rented television. Slouching, no doubt. Charlie watched the TV in a slouch that said he was neither awed nor puzzled by it, as everybody else was. It was as if there’d never been a time when he didn’t watch television. Don thought of Billy with his anxious permission-seeking, his diary, the neatly torn page, his clap-along songs. Charlie despised his brother for these things, and Liz was disappointed by them, that was what Don thought. For all that she wanted to control Billy, for all that he was more controllable, she’d have preferred him to be more like Charlie, to walk a little closer to the edge.
§
Sir Malcolm Eddelstane, after a prolonged argument with Lady Patricia, succumbed to her advice and stood down prior to the 1964 General Election. The Profumo affair, the general disarray of Macmillan’s government and a wider change of mood in the country, she said, signalled not only that the Conservatives were due for a spell in opposition but also that a more modern type of candidate would increasingly be required to counter the appeal of Labour. Sir Malcolm was only fifty-five, but looked much older, and was definitely on the traditional wing of the party. ‘Choose the time and manner of your departure,’ Lady Patricia said. �
��Don’t be the victim of a plot.’ ‘I’m not a coward,’ Sir Malcolm said. ‘I’m not going to cut and run.’ ‘Make a dignified exit,’ she replied. ‘That’s a better way of putting it.’ He blustered and sulked for a few weeks, but saw what she meant. Then, fortuitously, he had some heart trouble. Nothing too serious, a touch of angina, but it gave him an excuse, enabled him to announce that he wanted to spend more time at home, in the bosom of his devoted family. Of course he’d be damned if he was going to give up London entirely, and Lady Patricia didn’t insist on this. She did, however, require the sale of the flat, which she suspected as the scene of infidelities, in order to release some capital. Now whenever he left Ochiltree House for London he put up at his club.
Roderick Braco, QC, an Edinburgh lawyer with a house in Glenallan, stepped into his political shoes. Sir Malcolm, not wishing to seem entirely washed up, eased himself into the chairmanship of the constituency association. He was loath to admit it, but Lady Patricia’s assessment of the way things were going politically was pretty astute. It was time to get himself out of the direct line of fire.
As it turned out, Glenallan and West Mills stayed Unionist at the election but the margin of victory was much reduced. You could blame the times, or you could blame Braco for not having put in enough effort, or you could say his face wasn’t yet well known enough but everything would be all right next time round. You could argue, as Sir Malcolm did loudly and repeatedly, that there had been a substantial personal vote for himself, and that Roderick Braco would have to work hard in the future to earn the equivalent. But after you’d said all that, nobody could afford to be complacent, not even Sir Malcolm. Something would have to be done.
Perhaps the Boundary Commission could be persuaded to redraw the electoral map, someone suggested, at an association meeting called to inspect the damage. The constituency could do with a bit more Glenallan and a bit less West Mills. Somebody else thought that would be tantamount to gerrymandering, and a third person said that it was gerrymandering, an observation that was greeted with wounded looks. Sir Malcolm said he’d see if he could have a word with somebody. It was perfectly obvious that the constituency was an odd shape, an unnatural shape, with the two parts having little in common with one another. One could rely on farmers, he said, apart from the Liberal ones. And professional people, the middle class, by and large, one could be sure of them too. But the traditional working-class Unionist vote, where was that these days? And he eyed the room and didn’t find any of it present.
He did have a word, but whether or not it was with the right somebody the Boundary Commission took no notice. The constituency shape remained unnatural, and two years later Sir Malcolm had to revise his analysis. It seemed one couldn’t be sure of the middle class either. People who ought to have known better were switching in droves to other parties. In the mid-1950s the Unionists had managed to win half of the Scottish vote and thirty-six seats. In 1966 they were down to twenty seats and it was Labour who polled nearly 50 per cent of the Scottish vote. Roderick Braco survived, but what on earth was going on? There was an undercurrent of growing support for the Scottish National Party, but that – surely – was just a temporary protest, an annoying but understandable reaction to the government’s obsession with central planning. (At a performance of The Mikado put on by the Glenallan Amateur Operatic Society, how the audience had hooted at the inclusion, on the Lord High Executioner’s little list, of both a Red-Hot Socialist and a Scottish Nationalist!) Sir Malcolm found himself lamenting the prominence given to the word ‘Conservative’ in the new formulation Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party. The Conservatives were an English party. What the hell was wrong with the old terminology? Three horrible thoughts occurred to him almost simultaneously: one, that he was becoming a bit of a Scot Nat himself; two, that perhaps religion didn’t matter much to the working class any more; and three, that even the middle class might be thinking they were better served by socialists than by men with names like Sir Malcolm Eddelstane, Roderick Braco, QC, and, in the next-door constituency, Sir Alec Douglas-Home.
The Glenallan Eddelstanes were at the upper end of the social scale but financially they had peaked a generation before. Somewhat thin and frayed bloodlines connected them to the heroic military Eddelstanes, the renowned engineering Eddelstanes, the revered theological Eddelstanes and the brilliant mathematical Eddelstanes; but, lacking the inventiveness and dynamism of these kinsfolk, Sir Malcolm’s forebears had invested money in other people’s enterprises rather than establish their own. Over the decades they had done very well. But they were money-made, these lesser Eddelstanes, not land-made, and so they stood slightly apart from, and rather less firmly rooted than, the lairds and aristocrats at the core of Scottish Toryism. They were not law-made either, that other, Edinburgh-centred strand of which Roderick Braco was a fine representative. And now the Eddelstane money was draining away fast. Sir Malcolm’s father had lost vast amounts of it in 1929, and Sir Malcolm himself kept buying shares in ventures that promptly bellied: an oil-exploration company in Burma (collapsed when oil production was nationalised by the bloody Burmese socialist government in 1963); the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company on the Clyde (filed for bankruptcy in 1965, bailed out by the bloody British socialist government but too late for Sir Malcolm’s cash). Ochiltree House might be a substantial pile in the Scotch Baronial style, with a vast garden, including tennis court, maintained by the full-time if ageing McLeish; Sir Malcolm and Lady Patricia might be able to employ Mrs Thomson five days a week to cook, clean and generally keep them functioning somewhere in the second half of the twentieth century; they might be able to bring in catering companies to manage their various parties; they might be able to dispatch their sons to semi-respectable boarding schools, and they might have the wherewithal to send their daughter away too, in order to knock some sense into her airy little skull; but despite all this, there were cracks in the Ochiltree House walls and a certain desperation in the amount Sir Malcolm and Lady Patricia drank and the way they endlessly socialised and the volume at which they raged and railed at each other and their offspring. And their oldest child, David, from his bedroom window at home, or from the distant perspective of his boarding school, could see that by the time he inherited whatever assets his mother and father had left, they would not amount to very much at all.
Boarding school was Kilsmeddum Castle, where Sir Malcolm himself had been in another age, acquiring the grace and dignity of his later years. It was the kind of place, in other words, that might – and did – destroy many a more sensitive soul. David was sensitive but he was saved by sport. A modest performer in the classroom, he excelled at rugby, cricket, running, jumping, swimming and skiing, and this made him reasonably popular with other boys who, if they’d thought about it, would have been hard-pressed to identify any particular thing about him they liked. That was the point, he was one of the crowd, he didn’t threaten and he didn’t invite attack. He was safe.
The unsafest thing he did was skiing. You had to be a little bit mad to ski in Scotland in the 1960s: you had to climb to the top of a mountain with your skis on your back and then ski down again, no pistes, no fences to keep you away from hidden precipices, just you and snow, ice and rock. Or you went to Glen Shee for weekends – a long, slow, twisting journey from Kilsmeddum – you and a bunch of other slightly mad boys and a partially crazed master or two, to indulge in the steamy camaraderie of wet boots, porridge and sleeping bags. There were only a few tows in Glen Shee then, and such intrusions seemed dwarfed by nature, mere blemishes, not the scars that development would later bring. David loved the different textures of the winter glen, the glide and rasp of ski over snow, over ice, the wind and the sun, the fog and occasionally the blizzards. You were in a group, but you were also apart, yourself. You could be yourself. Everything was rough and unpredictable, including the weather, but this, so the masters claimed, would stand you in good stead for whatever the future might fling at you. As if life were a Highland hil
lside. And maybe it was. You pointed your skis and off you went.
§
Liz wanted a job. The boys didn’t need so much looking after. She was bored. The extra money wouldn’t hurt either. But what kind of work? She had no qualifications and felt it was too late to get any. Maybe she could be a cleaner. The folk in the big houses at the top end of the village were always wanting cleaners. Betty, her neighbour, had done two mornings a week in one of those houses for years. Liz had never fancied clearing up other people’s mess just because they could afford not to have to do it themselves, it went against the grain somehow, and Don, she was sure, would object. Betty told her not to be so daft. It was no worse than any other kind of work. Better than slaving away in a factory with some gaffer cracking the whip. The woman she worked for was dead posh but nice, wouldn’t dream of criticising Betty’s standards (which were higher than her own) and was so embarrassed by dirt that she usually tidied up before Betty arrived anyway. There was another house up there that had changed hands a few weeks before, a surgeon at the infirmary had bought it, he had a wife and they had three kids, all away at boarding school, and Betty had been asked if she knew anyone reliable who might clean for them. Why didn’t Liz apply?
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