Poverty Castle

by John Robin Jenkins

  It was a sunny morning with blue skies and birds singing. But for stupid school they would have gone swimming or climbing trees or gathering mushrooms or exploring the grounds of the Big House. Whatever it was they would have done it together. Again and again the pain of separation struck them: it was worse than toothache. They dreaded the coming of the bus that would take Diana away. What if she never came back? They stared at one another in terror.

  Diana read their faces. ‘Things have to change, you know.’

  ‘We don’t want them to change,’ said Jeanie.

  ‘Of course you do. You don’t want to remain little girls all your lives, do you?’

  ‘We’re not little girls,’ said Effie.

  Just then the bus roared round the corner. Effie and Jeanie made sure it stopped by standing out on the road and holding up their arms. Diana climbed aboard. Boys and girls grinned down. They were friendly, but it was to them and others like them that a part of Diana had to be surrendered.

  After the bus was gone they were silent. Rebecca sobbed.

  ‘Do you remember,’ said Effie, ‘Sir Bedivere, after the barge took Arthur away?’

  Papa had read the poem to them not long ago.

  They remembered.

  ‘Well, that’s how I feel.’

  It was how they all felt.

  An hour later it was their turn to go to school. In the back seat of the Daimler they were quiet, with resigned but martyred faces. Their parents glanced at each other and sighed. Evidently a conference had taken place and it had been decided that, though it was a terrible injustice to send them to one school and Diana to another, they would endure it without complaint but would speak only if spoken to and even then as little as possible.

  Miss McGill might or might not welcome untalkative pupils, but if she suspected that their taciturnity was deliberate, a protest against the school, she would be cross.

  There was too the tinker girl. Probably she would not show up but if she did and was hostilely received this Trappist quartet would be no help.

  Not for the first time Papa found himself wishing they were boys. He would not have loved them more but he might have understood them better.

  Several cars were parked outside the school. Almost at once the Daimler was approached by a group of young women, their faces bitter with grievance and their voices harsh with it. One of them carried a baby.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Sempill,’ they said.

  ‘Good morning, ladies.’

  Mrs Sempill said good morning too.

  The four Misses Sempill pretended they weren’t there.

  ‘Have you heard?’ asked the woman with the baby.

  He smiled. ‘Heard what?’

  ‘A child from the tinkers’ camp is being admitted to the school this morning.’

  ‘Miss McGill did mention it. I thought it was splendid news. What’s the trouble?’

  ‘That’s the trouble.’

  ‘We’re amazed to hear you call it splendid news.’

  ‘We think it’s abominable news.’

  ‘Would you like your girls to sit beside her and catch some awful disease.’

  ‘We’re getting up a petition. Miss McGill says she’s obliged by law to take this child. Well, if she does we’re taking ours out.’

  He gave them his most winning smile. ‘Have you seen the little girl in question?’

  ‘No we haven’t and we don’t want to.’

  ‘They’re all the same. They live like animals, so they’ve got habits like animals.’

  Still he smiled. ‘According to Miss McGill this particular child from the point of view of cleanliness could take her place in any school in the country.’

  ‘How could she be clean, living in those conditions?’

  ‘It must be difficult but it seems this little girl’s mother has achieved it. Surely she is to be commended. She wishes her daughter to receive an education. Is that not commendable too?’

  Like most women they found it hard to be angry with him. Like most women too they blamed his foolishness on his wife. They were not deceived by her false smiles. It must be because she domineered him in private that he uttered such nonsense in public. Look how her girls were afraid to open their mouths!

  In the playground children screamed, and on the shore seagulls. A battered blue van drove up and stopped behind the Daimler. If it had contained the devil, horns and all, the village women couldn’t have stared at it with greater revulsion. It contained a loutish young man with a freckled face, a small thin-faced black-haired woman, and between them a small dark-skinned girl in a white dress with a white ribbon in her hair.

  The Sempill girls refused to turn and look out of the rear window.

  The woman and the girl got out. The woman smiled at the village women who scowled back. The girl glanced up at the Sempills. They went through the gate into the playground, behind the high stone wall.

  ‘Does she look such an ogress?’ asked Sempill.

  ‘You don’t understand, Mr Sempill. If we let one in they’ll all want in.’

  ‘I doubt that, but even if it was true we could not deny children, any children, the right to an education.’

  ‘They pay no rates, so why should they get an education?’

  ‘Everything for nothing, that’s their way of life.’

  ‘Let them live like pigs if they want but we shouldn’t be made to associate with them.’

  ‘Just look at that clown, he’s fairly enjoying this.’

  It seemed to Sempill that the tinker fellow’s grin was one of great unease.

  ‘Here she comes, bold as brass.’

  Though she did not cringe the tinker woman looked anxious, having left her lamb among wolves. Sempill gave her a friendly wave.

  Suddenly his daughters scrambled out of the car and into the playground.

  A chant arose. ‘Tinker trash, tinker trash.’

  ‘Good God,’ muttered Sempill.

  His wife held on to his jacket. ‘Don’t interfere, Edward.’

  ‘What are our girls doing, Meg?’

  ‘Minding their own business, I hope.’

  Suddenly they heard a furious scream: ‘Shut up, you stupid bullies!’ It was Effie’s voice, followed by Jeanie’s equally impassioned: ‘You should be ashamed of yourselves.’

  Sempill’s heart rose. ‘Thank God.’

  ‘Rebecca might get hurt. You’d better go and stop it.’

  Before he could get out of the car a whistle blew. Silence fell in the playground. Miss McGill had arrived. Her voice was scornful. ‘There will be no bullying in my school.’

  The village women were indignant. ‘She’s got no right to speak to them like that.’

  They blamed Mrs Sempill. ‘We knew your girls ran wild, Mrs Sempill. Now we learn they’ve never been taught manners.’

  ‘They have been taught to abhor injustice,’ said Mr Sempill grandly.

  Still they could not bring themselves to blame the big handsome simple soul. He had been trained to say what his wife was too shy to say herself.

  Sempill walked along to the tinkers’ van. He stood by the window on the woman’s side.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘My name’s Sempill. My girls too started school this morning.’

  The man grinned servilely but the woman was wary. ‘Oor name’s McPhee, Mr and Mrs.’

  ‘What is your little girl’s name?’

  ‘Annie.’

  ‘She’s a very pretty and very brave little girl. You should be proud of her.’

  ‘She’s maybe no’ as braw as some but there’s no many wi’ mair hert.’

  ‘I’m sorry some of the children were rude to her. They didn’t really mean it, you know. Left to themselves children have no prejudices.’

  ‘I don’t ken aboot that, they mean it a’ right. There was hate in their voices. Was it your lassies took her part?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Annie’s like me, no’ easily feart. I warned her there micht be trouble
but she still wanted to come.’

  ‘Good for her.’

  ‘She’ll stick it as long as she can.’

  ‘It will be all right, Mrs McPhee. The children will soon come round. Besides, Miss McGill is a fair-minded woman.’

  ‘It’s not just here, it’s back at the camp as weel.’

  He should have realised that there would be jealousy and resentment among her own kind. Mrs McPhee and Annie were even braver than he had thought. McPhee too, to be fair. He did not look too bright. Education meant nothing to him. He would want to be at accord with his boozing companions. Yet he was standing by his wife and child.

  ‘We could be forced to leave,’ said Mrs McPhee, ‘though we like it here weel enough.’

  For a few mad moments he was on the point of offering them space for their caravan at Poverty Castle, though it wasn’t really his to offer.

  The children had all gone into school.

  No rejected little girl crept through the gate.

  ‘We can go noo, Jimmy,’ said Mrs McPhee. ‘Thanks, Mister.’

  The van drove off.

  Sempill went back to the Daimler. The village women had gone.

  ‘They think I put you up to it, Edward,’ said his wife.

  ‘Put me up to what, Meg?’

  ‘Taking the side of the tinkers. Encouraging our girls. They like you, Edward, but they do not approve of me.’

  ‘They’re jealous, my love. You are so much more beautiful.’

  ‘Didn’t you find that girl with the baby attractive?’

  ‘In an immature kind of way. There are no depths in her or in any of them.’

  ‘The baby’s a boy. She wouldn’t let me hold it. I was on the point of telling her I would have my own one day.’

  She had read recently that conception could be helped if some unusual place was chosen for love-making. Such places were not plentiful in Bell Heather Cottage. Edward took cramp so easily and was quick to grumble about discomfort. There was that patch of grass in the garden that the girls called the bower, a sun-trap, surrounded by rhododendrons and overlooked only by crows. Was it not likely that if they made love there like Adam and Eve, sung to by birds, Edward’s sperm count would even be increased sufficiently for her to conceive again?

  Conception was a mystery wrapped in other mysteries.

  She put her hand on his knee and squeezed.

  Gallantly he smiled. He knew what was on her mind. Seeing a baby boy always had this effect. She never gave up hope.

  Thirteen

  THE GIRLS had lunch at school with the other children. They had said they would walk home unless it was raining heavily. So it was half past four before their parents saw them again.

  To Mama and Papa’s many questions they were not forthcoming. Their taciturnity this time was noticeably different from that of the morning. It had deeper reasons not so easily diagnosed. Even Rebecca was affected. Exhausted by the day’s events she consented to lie down for a little while before Diana’s bus was due. When Mama at her bedside asked how she had got on at school she pretended to be sleepier than she really was. Mama was upset. She knew that Rebecca loved and needed her, and yet here she was, not yet five, keeping secrets from her: not secrets really, but discoveries that she and her sisters had made that day, about themselves and other people, which they would want to examine closely before revealing, if they ever did reveal them. Mama’s own mother had warned her: ‘They’ll form a society of which you’ll never be a member, Margaret. Weans instinctively gang up against adults as soon as they’re old enough to know that adults are not always to be trusted.’

  Meanwhile in the living-room Papa questioned the twins and Rowena. ‘What happened after Miss McGill got you all into the school?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Effie.

  ‘Surely she said something to the children who chanted “tinker trash”?’

  ‘She said they weren’t to do it again,’ said Jeanie.

  ‘Did they do it again?’

  ‘Yes, but she didn’t notice.’

  ‘She didn’t notice lots of things,’ said Rowena.

  ‘What about the other teacher; Miss McKay?’

  ‘She didn’t notice lots of things either,’ said Jeanie.

  ‘Are you telling me that this campaign of hostility towards that little girl continued, behind the teachers’ backs?’

  ‘Not just behind their backs,’ said Effie.

  ‘In front of them sometimes,’ said Jeanie.

  ‘I am astonished. I would have thought Miss McGill would miss very little that went on in her school-room.’

  ‘Well, she missed a lot,’ said Effie.

  ‘Miss McKay was always looking at herself in the mirror,’ said Jeanie. ‘She thinks she’s good-looking.’

  ‘Is she good-looking?’

  ‘She’s got big bosoms,’ said Effie.

  ‘What about the village children? Surely some of them are nice.’

  ‘John McLeish is a beast,’ said Rowena. ‘He’s worse than Nigel.’ Her face changed, became fat and ugly, as she muttered, ‘Tinker trash.’

  ‘Is he the ringleader?’

  ‘His father’s got a farm,’ said Effie. ‘He boasted that he wasn’t afraid of bulls.’

  ‘And what of little Annie McPhee, at the centre of it all, tell me about her.’

  Their faces went blank.

  ‘I had a chat with her mother. She’s a very brave little girl, you know. It’s not just children at the school who are unkind to her. So are the children at the camp, and the grown-ups too.’

  ‘She didn’t cry,’ said Rowena.

  ‘She didn’t say anything,’ said Jeanie.

  ‘That’s why she’s at school, to learn to read and write. Everyone should help her.’

  ‘We helped her,’ said Rowena.

  ‘She doesn’t like to be pitied,’ said Jeanie.

  ‘Poor child, did she appear very unhappy?’

  They looked at one another and shrugged their shoulders.

  ‘Did the van come for her at four o’clock?’

  ‘The man said he’d give us a lift if we wanted but we said we’d walk.’ That was Effie, speaking dourly.

  ‘Do you think she’ll go to school again tomorrow?’

  Jeanie looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘It’s time for us to go and wait for Diana’s bus.’

  ‘It’s not due till five. Will she come back tomorrow, or has she been frightened away?’

  ‘What she’s not going to do,’ said Effie, ‘is take Diana’s place.’

  So that was it.

  ‘I don’t think you need to worry about that. In any case her mother thinks they may have to leave Kilcalmonell.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Jeanie.

  ‘Because too many people are unkind. That’s why I want you to be her friends.’

  ‘She doesn’t want anybody to be her friend,’ said Effie.

  ‘She spoke to nobody,’ said Rowena. ‘Except Rebecca. She spoke to Rebecca.’

  ‘Rebecca asked her if she knew how to skin rabbits,’ said Effie. ‘She said she didn’t.’

  ‘I think we should go and wait for the bus,’ said Jeanie.

  ‘What about Rebecca?’ asked Rowena.

  Mama came in then. ‘She’s asleep, the little darling.’

  ‘She wanted to be with us when we went to meet Diana’s bus,’ said Effie.

  ‘She’ll be awfully disappointed,’ said Jeanie. ‘She kept saying all day how she was looking forward to seeing Diana again.’

  ‘She’ll see her when she wakes up,’ said Papa.

  ‘She wanted to see her coming off the bus.’

  He understood. It would be one of the happiest and most memorable moments of their lives. Rebecca would never forgive herself for being asleep or them for letting her sleep.

  The problem was solved by Rebecca appearing at the door, sleepy-eyed but eager.

  They all hurried out to wait under the lime tree.

  ‘If we have a little boy, Ed
ward,’ said Mama, ‘how fortunate he will be, with such loving sisters to look after him.’

  There still clung to him the remnants of the foolishness he had felt when making love in the bower that morning. The pain of ant bites lingered too. He had had to wait, with cramp in his legs and ants biting and a wasp buzzing dangerously near his exposed rump until Meg was satisfied that she had received the last precious magical drip. Earlier she had let fall a remark that had chilled him from heart to scrotum. Wine, she had read, could have a deleterious effect on spermatozoa, making them lazy and unventuresome. Perhaps, if the present lovemaking failed, he might abstain from wine for a few weeks. Consider, she had said, what compensation and reward a beautiful little boy would be.

  Though Tarbeg was less than twenty miles away the school bus took over an hour to reach Kilcalmonell, because of the many stops it had to make to put down pupils who lived along the way. Several times the Sempill girls’ hearts almost stopped with joy, but it was a private car that came rushing round the corner. At last though it was the bus, red and yellow, more glorious than any other bus in the world. They stood back in the shadow of the tree. Effie held Rebecca’s hand. The bus halted. A girl climbed down wearing a black blazer, grey skirt, and silly hat. She was the same size and age as Diana. She waved to other girls on the bus. Then she turned and said, coolly: ‘How long have you foolish creatures been waiting?’

  She was Diana, their sister, and yet somehow she wasn’t. One day in the alien country had changed her. This Diana did not seem to be aware, as the old Diana certainly would have been, that their waiting for her return had been a joy as hard to bear as pain and their meeting of her again should have been joyful too, with happy cries and kisses and even tears. Instead on her part it was affectionate but cool, in the way that grown-ups were cool. She did crouch down and hug Rebecca, who clung to her. She did, in her old way, pinch Effie’s nose, tweak Jeanie’s ear, and stroke Rowena’s hair, but she seemed to be doing it because she had done it before and knew that they would be expecting her to do it, and not because there was nothing else she would rather have done.