So Diana was the only one who wrote to him from then on.
Nineteen
THERE CAME a time when Mama’s prolonged disappointment at not having conceived a male child began to affect her health and her mind. She grew quite gaunt and her dwams lasted for hours instead of minutes. She became bad-tempered, even with Rebecca, then ten, but especially with Papa, at whom, suddenly, for no reason, she would shout incoherent accusations.
At first it seemed to the girls that the death of Granny Ruthven a few months previously might be the cause, but they could not see why she should blame poor Papa for that. He had taken them all to Edinburgh for the funeral.
One evening he stealthily invited Diana, then seventeen, and the twins who were fifteen, to his study. Rowena and Rebecca, he muttered, were too young to hear what he had to say.
As usual he had drunk more wine than he should. Now that they were no longer children the evening meal was dinner instead of high tea. This suited Papa’s wine-drinking. Potato scones and wine had never gone well together.
‘I want to talk to you about your mother,’ he said, hoarsely, as if he’d been crying. ‘She has been acting very strangely of late.’
‘We’ve noticed, Papa,’ said Effie.
‘She’s not got cancer, has she?’ asked Jeanie, in a terrified whisper.
‘It’s nothing like that, thank God.’
‘Do you know the reason, Papa?’ asked Diana, sternly. She did not have as much patience as her sisters with his vinous ramblings.
He stared at the paperweight made famous by John McLeish. ‘You’ve heard your mother express a wish for a baby boy?’
‘Hundreds of times,’ said Effie.
‘It has become an obsession that could, I’m afraid, destroy her reason. She has got it into her head that she has let me down. I have assured her that it is not so. How could I, with five beautiful and talented daughters, feel ill-done by? Few fathers are as fortunate as I. Alas, she has continued to have this delusion that my life has been blighted.’
Something had, if not blighted his life, at any rate kept it from blooming. They did not think that it was the want of a son.
He had tears in his eyes. Excessive wine did that to him but to be fair so did affection. ‘I love you all,’ he said.
‘She’s not too old to have a child, is she?’ asked Effie. ‘She’s only forty-four. Lots of women have children at that age, don’t they?’
Papa moaned, as if in pain.
‘Aren’t there fertility pills she could take?’ asked Jeanie.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Jeanie,’ said Diana. ‘If Mama took those she could have five at a time, like a cat.’
‘And we couldn’t give four away and just keep one,’ said Effie.
‘It’s not a joke, Effie,’ said Diana.
‘I’m not laughing, am I?’
‘According to three doctors who have been consulted,’ said Papa, ‘having only one child could kill your mother. She had a difficult time with Rebecca.’
They remembered.
‘If she wants a boy so much why doesn’t she adopt one?’ asked Jeanie.
‘The child has to be mine.’ Papa closed his eyes. ‘You’re not children any longer, you are young women. You know what causes pregnancy and what can prevent it. Your mother would never allow it to be prevented. So, in the light of the doctors’ advice I had no alternative but to, in a sense, live apart from her. She has never forgiven me.’
‘Oh!’ That was Effie’s exclamation but it also expressed her sisters’ reaction. They had wondered, six years ago, why, on moving into Poverty Castle, Papa had insisted on having a bedroom of his own.
Papa opened his eyes and looked at them. ‘I need your help in getting your mother to accept the situation. It has not been your fault, as you’ve inevitably looked outwards more and more, but your mother feels you have neglected her, all of you but Rebecca.’
They nodded. Comparing their own attitude to Mama with their youngest sister’s they had to admit that they had neglected her or at least had let their love for her be taken for granted.
‘It has been our fault,’ said Effie. ‘We’ve been selfish.’
‘Is it really out of the question her having a baby?’ asked Jeanie. ‘The doctors could be wrong. She’d be so happy. I mean, wouldn’t it be worth the risk?’
‘No, it wouldn’t,’ said Diana, sharply. ‘Papa’s right. We must help Mama get over this crisis. She’ll become reconciled once she’s past child-bearing age.’
‘That’s what Dr Grant thinks,’ said Papa.
During the weeks that followed, though they all lavished their love on Mama, she got worse. She took to carrying about one of Rebecca’s dolls and calling it Roderick. They wondered if she was aware that it was a doll and was being provocative, in a not very sane way; or if she really believed it was a live baby, in which case she was dangerously deranged. Then one day the doll disappeared. It was not returned to Rebecca’s collection but at any rate Mama no longer nursed it. They were all relieved. Until one evening she rushed into the living-room, screaming that they had killed her baby.
Papa tried to comfort her and got his face pummelled.
Rebecca ran upstairs for Diana.
Diana quickly came, taller than her mother, and put her arms round her tenderly but firmly. Her voice that could be so sharp was soft and persuasive. Mama soon grew quiet and let Diana take her up to her room.
None of them said anything till Diana returned half an hour later. Mama had taken a pill and was asleep.
Late that night Diana went to the twins’ room. They were in bed. Effie switched on a bed-lamp. ‘What’s wrong,’ she asked. ‘Is it Mama?’
Diana sat on Effie’s bed. ‘Not so loud. We don’t want to waken the others. Yes, it’s Mama. I know what’s the matter with her. She told me.’
‘But I thought we knew what was the matter with her?’ said Jeanie.
‘Yes, but there’s something else. She thinks Papa has been unfaithful to her for years.’
‘You mean, has had other women?’ asked Effie, incredulously.
‘Yes, though that’s rather a crude way of putting it. She says that when he goes into Tarbeg for his Arts Club meetings and stays so late he’s seeing another woman.’
What had worried them about Papa’s belated returns from Tarbeg was the likelihood of his being stopped by the police and breathalysed or his landing upside down in the loch. They had certainly never suspected illicit amours.
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Effie.
‘I don’t believe it either,’ said Jeanie, ‘but if it was true could the other woman be Mrs Grierson? She’s got a reputation, hasn’t she?’
Mrs Grierson owned a small art gallery in Tarbeg. She was a painter whose pictures were bold and gaudy like herself. Papa had bought two. They were hanging in his study.
‘What could Papa see in her?’ asked Effie.
Mrs Grierson was small and squat, so unlike their tall and graceful mother.
‘Do you believe it, Diana?’ asked Effie.
‘Mama believes it, that’s what matters,’ replied Diana.
‘What are we going to do?’ asked Jeanie. ‘We can’t very well tell Papa.’
‘We’ll have to,’ said Diana, grimly.
Effie groaned. ‘Yes, we’ll have to.’
‘What if it’s true?’ asked Jeanie. ‘He might say it’s none of our business.’
‘Mama’s health is our business,’ said Diana. She stood up. ‘He’s in his study. Let’s go and talk to him.’
‘Shouldn’t we wait till tomorrow?’ asked Jeanie.
‘The sooner the better.’
‘Yes, but at this time of night, it must be nearly midnight, everything always seems worse than it is.’
‘Are you coming?’
Sighing, they got out of their beds and put on dressing-gowns and slippers.
Wallace, the golden-haired Labrador, came yawning out of the living-room when he heard them coming down
the stairs. He had never recovered from Bruce’s death, from poisoning, two years ago. They patted his head and he went back to the living-room carpet where he had chosen to sleep. He no longer sought company.
Papa was seated at his desk. In front of him was one of his aborted manuscripts.
The girls realised then as never before how lonely he looked and must feel. Yet for them the house had always been crowded and busy, with footsteps and shouts and laughter and banging doors and loud music and barking dogs and mewing cats.
He looked up and smiled. ‘Another meeting of the conspirators?’
They sat down. Books and prints had to be lifted off chairs. Two of the paintings on the walls were by Mrs Grierson. They were of fishing boats in Tarbeg harbour.
The twins were glad to leave the talking to Diana. She would shirk nothing. It was no wonder that Edwin’s parents were inclined to look on her as a suitable wife for him. He was too shy, too timid, and too nice for the position he would have to occupy one day. He would need someone like Diana to make him live up to his responsibilities.
‘Papa, when I took her up to her room, Mama said something that we think you should be told.’
He looked anxious, but, thought the twins, in the way a husband should whose wife was ill.
‘She thinks you are having an affair with another woman.’ How like Diana, they thought. No easing off the Elastoplast bit by bit, but altogether, in one quick cruel-to-be-kind movement.
Papa frowned, not taking it in.
‘She thinks that when you return home late from Tarbeg you have been with this woman.’
‘Poor Meg. Is that what she told you?’
‘Yes.’
‘What woman?’
‘She doesn’t know.’
‘That’s not surprising, considering that she doesn’t exist. I may have been unfaithful, to your mother, to you and to myself many times, but never in that way.’
The twins looked at each other. Here was a hint of a life that had gone on in his mind, in their midst, and yet remote from them.
He misread their dismay. ‘You don’t believe me?’
‘Yes, Papa, of course we believe you,’ said Diana.
‘She never will. Even if I went down on my knees and swore it. If we were believers I could swear it on the Bible. Not that everything sworn on the Bible is necessarily true.’
‘There’s something you could do, Papa, that might convince her.’
The twins stared at Diana in astonishment. They had no idea what she was going to say.
‘Share the same room with her again. Sleep with her.’
Here, thought the twins, is the future lady of the manor in action. They had heard that patrician note in her voice before. They had been its victims then, now it was Papa’s turn.
‘But, Diana,’ he said, with remarkable meekness, ‘I have explained why I cannot do that.’
The twins held their breath. What in heaven’s name would Diana say next?
They could never in a lifetime have guessed. Indeed, many times afterwards they were to talk about it, with awe.
‘Isn’t there an operation you could have, Papa, which would prevent pregnancy, without Mama knowing?’
Papa was not as shocked as the twins. ‘I’ve thought of that, but would it not be the most despicable of deceptions?’
‘What would that matter, if Mama was happy again?’
Papa covered his face with his hands. Was it to hide tears or a smile or both?
‘I think you should go to bed now, girls. Goodnight.’
Effie and Jeanie grabbed hold of Diana and took her with them. ‘Goodnight, Papa.’
Outside the room Diana was angry with them. ‘Do you think I don’t love him too? And honour him? I had to say what I did.’
‘All right,’ said Effie. ‘You had to say it and you said it. Let’s go to bed.’
When they were back in their room the twins were silent until they were in their beds and the light was out.
‘What’s going to happen now, do you think?’ asked Jeanie.
‘He’ll have the operation but he won’t tell us. He’ll tell nobody. To save us from being part of the “despicable deception”.’
‘Yes, I think you’re right. Poor Papa. Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight.’
A minute later Effie said: ‘You know, if Diana wasn’t my sister I could hate her.’
‘That’s a terrible thing to say.’
‘So it is. I’m sorry.’
THE NOVELIST’S wife writing to her daughter: ‘Your father still goes for his daily walk, or stagger I should say, rain or shine. Yesterday young Willie McDonald, the son of the farmer who’s our nearest neighbour, brought him home in his trailer, on top of empty fertiliser bags. He’d found him collapsed on a bank. “Among foxgloves and campion” your father had the nerve to say when he had got his breath back. Talking of flowers, his face was as white as daisies and his lips blue as scabious. What amazes me is where he finds the mental energy to keep working at his novel and put life into his characters, most of whom are lively young girls. It’s mean of me but I refuse to praise it. In fact I tell lies and say that it’s not very interesting and the characters aren’t convincing. I do it for his sake. If he keeps on the way he’s doing, hours and hours on end, sometimes till well after midnight, he’ll kill himself, nothing’s surer. He’s desperate to get it finished. He doesn’t want to leave his characters lost in limbo, he says. As if they existed! I have to admit though that I sometimes find myself wondering what’s going to happen to them, because to tell the truth I seem to know them, better than I do Mrs McDonald for instance, the farmer’s wife, though her house is only three minutes’ walk from mine. The annoying thing is that if I ask what’s going to happen to them he still insists that he doesn’t know.
Behind his back I telephoned the doctor who said that I shouldn’t worry about him working so hard, it was probably that which was giving him the will to live. The dangerous time would be when the book was finished. That would be all right, I thought with a bitterness I was ashamed of afterwards, he wouldn’t mind dying then, even if it meant leaving me in limbo.
He wants to pay a visit to Kilmory, the village where he was born. In his book he calls it Kilcalmonell. I suppose I would enjoy a short break, though for him it would be work, connected with his book. God forgive me, I have this grievance against him and yet what existence could be more harmless than his, sitting at a desk for hours and then going for a walk among cows and sheep and then back to the desk again?’
PART TWO
One
ONE EVENING in May, in Mrs Brownlee’s boarding-house for women students, not far from Glasgow University, word spread that room-mates Diana and Peggy were having another of their disagreements. It was worth leaving off washing one’s hair or telephoning one’s boyfriend to go and listen, not so much because of what they would say but because of who they were.
Diana Sempill, aged twenty, came from Kilcalmonell in the West Highlands, where she lived in a fourteen-roomed house quaintly called Poverty Castle, with her father, a well-to-do retired architect, her mother, and her four younger sisters, two of whom were twins. Judging by the photographs in her room they were all, like Diana herself, not only good-looking but superior-looking too. She was tall, with a fine figure, held herself straight, and had dark hair, though all the others in her family were blond. She had recently become engaged to the son and heir of a wealthy English baronet. Her accent was a marvel, in that it would not be out of place among her fiancé’s relatives and friends and yet in a Glasgow bus, where affectation was instantly detected and abhorred, it would draw smiles of appreciation and goodwill. Everyone, including herself, expected her to take a first-class honours degree in political economy, which was the rather surprising subject she had chosen to specialise in. No one could have been less of a socialist, and yet, on behalf of the poor, she was more passionate than Peggy, who always stayed cool. Some of the girls in the boarding-house had at first
resented her coming among them. Unlike them she could easily have afforded more comfortable and commodious lodgings. But she seemed content to live as frugally as they, except that her clothes, though never showy, were always of the best quality: no bargain basement acrylics for her, but lambswool and cashmere.
Peggy Gilchrist, also twenty, came from Carron where she lived in a council flat with her father, an unemployed labourer, and her mother, who worked in a supermarket. She had a married brother who drove a coal lorry. She was small, thin, and flat-chested, and walked with a swagger, caused, she said, not by gallousness but loose bones. Her hair was the colour and texture of mouldy hay; her own description. She had dingy teeth and wore spectacles. She had no boyfriend, which surprised no one. She wore cheap clothes, from necessity, but did not make a virtue of it: she would have preferred better ones. In any case she would rather spend what money she had on books. As befitted an honours student she spoke articulately and grammatically but made no attempt to modify her working-class accent. It disconcerted many that so common-looking and common-sounding a girl should have such a quick sharp clear mind. Her specialist subject, history, was as unexpected as Diana’s. Her interest, however, was not in the achievements of kings and queens but of the working class. She would say, with an irony so subtle that most people were deceived by it, that Sir Christopher Wren did not build St Paul’s Cathedral single-handed, he had needed the help of hundreds of unknown masons, joiners and plasterers. Nor had the Duke of Marlborough won his famous battles by himself: many thousands of nameless, ill-recompensed, and frequently maimed soldiers had assisted. Would she, her fellow students wondered, with some malice, remain faithful to her class and marry some plumber or mechanic when she had got her degree, or would she marry some other brainy deserter from the working class, with a doctorate perhaps, and have children who would attend private schools and be ashamed of their check-out grannie?
It was not an accident that she and Diana were room-mates.
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