‘What do I call them?’ asked Peggy. ‘My host and hostess, I mean.’
‘Lady Campton and Sir Edwin, I suppose,’ said Jeanie.
‘Yes, but you see I’m a member of a society at the University, whose members are pledged never to acknowledge titles, which they consider to be anachronistic.’
Effie, who was driving, turned her head. ‘Are you serious?’ She sounded not only astonished but disapproving.
‘Yes. The founder is a friend of mine.’ He wasn’t really, though he had once tried to seduce her, saying that he wanted to do her a good turn. ‘I’ll tell you something, wee Gilchrist. You know a hell of a lot about the lives of other people, most of them dead, but your own life’s empty.’
‘Are titles bad things?’ asked Rebecca.
‘Other countries think so, for they don’t have them. In a democracy they’re ridiculous.’
Effie and Jeanie exchanged glances. The little bolshy was at last showing her colours.
‘How many are in your society?’ asked Jeanie.
‘Seven, so far.’
‘Seven!’
They laughed.
‘Many great and noble enterprises have small beginnings,’ said Peggy.
‘But, Peggy, we can’t be rude to our host and hostess, can we?’ asked Jeanie.
‘That’s why I asked. It wouldn’t do to be rude.’
Again Jeanie and Effie looked at each other. Listen to her, those looks said, coming from a ghastly housing scheme, and having the cheek to be ironical at the expense of people who, whatever they were personally, were rich, owned two large estates, and were acquainted with members of the Royal Family. They liked her but, not knowing her well, could they trust her not to disgrace them? It wasn’t her fault, it was the way she had been brought up. She was intelligent, which made it worse, for a stupid person’s gaffes wouldn’t matter, whereas a clever person’s, being not altogether unintentional, could cause offence.
Peggy smiled. Effie the revolutionary was as naive as Diana had said. She was prepared to champion the poor, provided they behaved themselves and were respectful to their betters.
The house was now in sight, through the trees. Cortes would have been escorted by a picked bodyguard of cavalry. She was on her own. The Sempills were really on the other side. Besides, it was Mama they would rally round to protect.
As the car drew up at the front door Peggy heard in her mind Sonia’s awed voice: ‘Jeez, Peggy, it’s as big as a church.’
Edwin was waiting on the steps, dressed in evening clothes. He ran down to open the door for Mrs Sempill and then for Diana.
Peggy had once paid to see through a stately home outside Edinburgh, but this time she was here as a guest, she would be on the privileged side of the silken ropes.
The moon could be seen though it was not yet shining. It wasn’t all that far away. All you needed to reach it were powerful enough rockets. For Peggy to reach the level of the Camptons a far greater distance would have to be traversed. The whole system of society, perhaps human nature itself, would have to be changed. Since this hadn’t happened in the past four or five thousand years it wasn’t likely to happen in the next two or three minutes.
The Sempills were about to enter the house.
‘Coming, Peggy?’ called Effie.
For a few moments Peggy felt like running away.
She went up the steps slowly, past a stone nymph green with moss. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I was looking at the moon.’
The hall really was a hall, you could have played badminton in it; in Peggy’s at home you couldn’t have swung a cat, far less a racket. It had a parquet floor and a lofty ornate ceiling. On the walls were animals’ heads. A bear had tears in its eyes. There were two suits of armour and some murky paintings.
A stony-faced middle-aged maid took their stoles. She was at her stoniest when attending Peggy. She had served the gentry long enough not to be taken in by an impostor.
Peggy remembered her father saying: ‘The working class don’t grudge the rich being rich. Whit they hate is for one of themselves to rise in the world. You should ken, Peggy.’ Yes, she knew. Many people in Netherlee Park thought she should be working in the supermarket. They would have been more outraged than the maid if they had seen her here, pretending to be upsides with toffs.
The twins were unaware of the servant’s contempt. Why not, since she was treating them most respectfully. Only Rebecca noticed. She gave Peggy a smile that was sympathetic and uneasy.
Few women could have come into a room with the Sempill girls and taken the limelight. Peggy wasn’t one. She kept behind them, thankfully, ready to creep to a chair in a corner.
The drawing-room was huge, not very warm, smelling faintly of woodsmoke, and, thank goodness, not very well lit. In the big fireplace logs smouldered. On her tour of the stately home near Edinburgh, Peggy had thought that aristocrats seemed to go in for style rather than comfort, but she had been judging by the staterooms, not the living quarters. She had been told that the Camptons had bought the furnishings with the house. Nothing was new or very valuable. If there were any rare pieces of antique furniture in the house they were kept in a statelier part. The loose covers were faded, the carpet was worn in places, the once white ceiling with its elaborate cornices was darkened with smoke; but there was plenty of comfort. It was not unlike, though on a grander scale, the sitting-room in Peggy’s home, but there was a noticeable difference, in that everything here, from the fire-irons to the pictures, from the vases to the curtains, was solider, better designed, and composed of superior materials.
Did that also apply to the owners? Yes, it did. The reading of history had trained Peggy to accept truths abhorrent to her. She had to admit therefore that these people did have a distinction, or style, or class, or polish, or quality – none of these words really described it – that was never to be found among the denizens of Netherlee Park. Could it be that, overawed by the size of the house, and conditioned by her own upbringing in much humbler and coarser circumstances, she was imagining what did not exist? Was she tamely attributing to these not very clever and not very handsome people something they did not really possess? She would have liked to think so but honesty prevented her. From birth they had enjoyed the best of everything, had never known the degradations and humiliations of poverty, and had taken for granted that they were the elite. All that was bound to have had an effect. Who, asked to tell between two dogs which one was owned by a rich man in a mansion and which by a poor man in a room-and-kitchen, would choose wrongly?
The Sempills had this distinction too, to a lesser degree. They more than made up for it by being handsomer, cleverer, and more mannerly.
For, paradoxically, the Camptons were by no means goodlooking or courteous. Lady Campton had a big nose as well as big feet, and a loud unpleasant voice. Sir Edwin was bald and fat, with an amiable but obtuse face. Lady Angela was bluehaired, raddle-faced, and scraggy-necked. Edwin was gawky. That left Nigel. Seen closer, his slimness was still to Peggy’s taste but his superciliousness wasn’t.
They showed their lack of courtesy when Diana stood beside Peggy and announced: ‘This is Peggy.’
Lady Campton gave an incredulous stare: could this insignificant little creature be the girl Diana had praised? Lady Angela, who was nursing a small rat-faced dog she called Horatio, whispered into his ear. He showed his agreement by snarling. Nigel, on his stomach reading a book, didn’t look up. Sir Edwin, however, came forward and shook Peggy’s hand. ‘So you’re the brainy young lady from Glasgow.’
It would have made a good opening for a limerick, she thought, and indeed that was how he had sung it out, but she liked him. He wasn’t trying to make amends for the churlishness of his family, he was too used to this to notice it, he was just being himself, cheerful, decent, and hospitable.
Peggy crept off to the chair in the corner. It was going to be an ordeal but if she said nothing and kept out of the way she could thole it. She had discovered though that she had
a great deal more pride than she had thought. She might have difficulty in subduing it, if any of them, Nigel most likely, tried deliberately to humiliate her.
She should have avoided alcohol lest it made her talkative, but when Edwin brought her a sherry she took it, encouraged by his friendly grin.
Sir Edwin proposed a toast. ‘To the Sempill ladies, as bonny a bunch of gals as a man could ever wish to see in his house. Especially you, my dear.’ That was said to Mrs Sempill. ‘I am sure none of your daughters will be offended if I say you are the bonniest of all.’
His wife was offended. What she was drinking couldn’t have been vinegar, though her expression couldn’t have been sourer if it had.
The compliment, alas, caused Mama to forget her promise to be discreet.
‘Thank you, Sir Edwin,’ she cried. ‘If I am blooming it is because, as you know, I am going to have another child, a boy this time.’
The Sempills waited apprehensively, not knowing what Mama might say next. None of them, not even Diana, looked cross with her. They loved her too much.
The Camptons reacted more individually. Sir Edwin was delighted, though he might not have been able to say why, for if his own wife had just said she was pregnant he would have been appalled, especially as, Peggy suspected, they had long ago given up what produced pregnancy. Lady Campton sulked, though she too couldn’t have said why, for the only time she looked happy was when she was gazing at Nigel, her baby. Lady Angela was lewdly amused and told Horatio so. Nigel showed himself to be a prude as well as a prig, by scowling in disgust. Evidently like Sir Thomas Browne he would have preferred human beings to propagate like trees, without any messy contact.
‘I would have thought,’ said Lady Angela, ‘that you were a bit too old for the breeding game. Like darling Horatio. He used to sire champions, you know.’
‘I am the happiest woman in the world,’ said Mrs Sempill.
‘May I say you look it, dear lady?’ cried Sir Edwin.
‘Thank you, Sir Edwin. I feel young again. It is as if my whole body is being renewed. Look, Lady Angela, hardly a wrinkle.’ She stroked her cheek and neck.
Her daughters who knew she was being brave as well as proud smiled at her with love and then frowned at Lady Angela with indignation. Even gentle Rebecca was indignant.
The dining-room was worse-lit and not much warmer. The table could have accommodated twenty with room to spare, so fourteen, Horatio being allowed to avoid unlucky thirteen, had either to be crowded cosily at one end or spaced out. Lady Campton had opted for the latter arrangement, for some reason of her own. The guests were not permitted to sit where they wished. Lady Angela was placed between Edwin and Diana, to the former’s chagrin. Peggy herself had Nigel as her nearest neighbour. She wondered why, never guessing that it had been his suggestion. She didn’t mind. It wasn’t every day she had dinner with, at her elbow, a baronet’s son. She might want to boast about it to her children one day, pointing out to them that it outdid walking on the moon.
The stony-faced maid and a footman attended the table. Had the butler been left in England or couldn’t the rich afford butlers any more?
It was no banquet. The food reminded Peggy of that served at Sonia’s wedding: meagre portions, fancily dressed-up, and tepid. There was, however, plenty of wine.
At the outset Nigel called to his mother. ‘Shouldn’t we say grace, Mother?’
‘Don’t be silly, Nigel. You know we never say grace.’
‘Neither do we,’ said Mr Sempill.
‘But perhaps Miss Gilchrist’s people do?’
‘They don’t,’ said Peggy.
He lowered his voice: ‘I was under the impression that Scots of the lower orders were all Calvinists.’
She lowered hers: ‘Just as I was under the impression that the English of the higher orders were well mannered.’
First goal to me, she thought.
She let her wine glass be filled. She needed all the help she could get.
Horatio was eating off Lady Angela’s plate. Peggy’s mother would have been horrified.
‘What’s so amusing?’ asked Nigel.
‘It’s private.’
‘It’s not the done thing, you know, to indulge in private thoughts on a public occasion.’
She looked about her and saw that others too were having private thoughts. Lady Campton’s seemed to involve Peggy, judging from the looks she was giving her. The Sempill girls were unusually quiet: they still hadn’t forgiven Lady Angela, who didn’t give a damn. Mrs Sempill seemed to be in a dwam. She didn’t look all that young.
Sir Edwin and Mr Sempill at opposite ends of the table had begun a conversation or rather an argument about the names of their houses. Sir Edwin contended that if Ardmore could be changed to Poverty Castle then Kilcalmonell House could be changed to Kilcalmonell Castle. There already was a Kilcalmonell Castle, said Mr Sempill. Just a heap of old stones, said Sir Edwin. They were both quite tipsy.
‘Isn’t it extraordinary,’ whispered Nigel, ‘that a girl from your background should be at University, even if it is red brick?’
‘What do you mean, my background?’
‘Are you not from the working class? Proud of it too, I’ve been told.’
‘Glasgow University is not red brick. It was founded in 1451. It isn’t extraordinary. Not in Scotland. It’s a tradition here for clever young men and nowadays clever young girls to go to University, whatever their position in society. As a nation the Scots have always been more democratic that the English. At school we laughed at Look Back In Anger. All that fuss about a working-class man with a degree. In Scotland they’ve always been ten-a-penny.’
Lady Campton was looking puzzled. Nigel seemed to be quite interested in that awful little girl.
Edwin was casting lovelorn glances at Diana, past snarling Horatio.
‘Isn’t my brother an ass?’ asked Nigel.
‘Yes, but a nice ass. Is that oxymoron?’ The wine was beginning to talk. ‘I had a teacher once who was daft about figures of speech. He made us learn them all. Oxymoron, synecdoche, paronomasia, metonymy, and the rest. I bet you couldn’t give me an example of synecdoche.’
‘Are you trying to pull my leg?’
‘Succeeding too.’
During dessert – ice-cream and tinned peaches – he leaned towards her. ‘Tell me, Miss Gilchrist, are you a virgin?’
She giggled. ‘To tell the truth Mr Campton, I’m not sure.’
She had gone one Sunday afternoon with Tom Moncrieff, founder of the Anti-Titles Society, in a borrowed car to Loch Lomond. All she had wanted was to admire the bonny banks but he was determined to fill her empty life, not to mention her womb. She had kept remembering her mother’s admonition: ‘Time enough for that nonsense when you’re married.’ Tom had complained about her lack of co-operation. He had got her tights and panties down and was poking at her when an old woman wearing a white woolly hat had knocked on the car window with her stick.
Meanwhile, Sir Edwin and Mr Sempill were having another argument. Sir Edwin had been informed by a member of his club – ‘fellow in a responsible position in the Government’ – that if the distances were properly measured it would be found that most of the North Sea oil fields were in English, not Scottish, waters. Like most people Sempill made the mistake of forgetting that the world was round not flat. After dinner, if Sempill was game, they could go to the library where there was a globe.
Peggy and no one else could tell if Sir Edwin was joking. Perhaps he didn’t know himself. That dubious jocularity, she thought, so peculiar to the English ruling class had brought them an Empire. So often they had proclaimed jovially to the citizens of this or that country that they would be much better off under English rule. While they were laughing at the joke they were taken over. It had happened to the Scots in 1707, with some help from the venal Scots’ nobility.
She turned round. Nigel was staring at her. ‘Do you know,’ he whispered, ‘you and I are alike.’
S
he was astonished. Given a minute she could have named a dozen differences. The wine wasn’t just talking in him, it was havering. ‘How do you make that out?’ she asked.
‘You are always on your own. So am I.’
She was about to say, speak for yourself, and point out that she had her parents, her brother, her sister-in-law, her neighbours, and her University acquaintances, but of course he was right. The private and ambitious Peggy Gilchrist had been alone since birth.
She would have thought though that he had plenty of friends. Surely he wasn’t awful to everybody? If he was he deserved some credit for consistency.
After dinner Edwin offered to show the Sempill girls and Peggy round the house, but just when they were about to set off Mrs Sempill felt ill. Mr Sempill had to be summoned from the library.
Edwin was the only one who came out to wave them off. Peggy felt sorry that Nigel hadn’t appeared to say goodbye. It wasn’t likely she would ever see or hear from him again.
When they got back to Poverty Castle, Mama fainted when being helped out of the car and had to be carried into the house. An outsider might have suspected that she had had too much to drink and found it rather funny, but her family and Peggy, who had been made one of them, knew differently and were very upset.
AN EXTRACT from a letter from the novelist’s wife to her daughter. ‘He’s absolutely worn out but refuses to rest. When I tell him that it doesn’t matter a button whether or not he finishes his book – all his previous ones having been more or less ignored – do you know what he says? That it isn’t simply a matter of finishing a book, it has to do with not leaving his characters in the lurch. No doubt he’s being ironical as he often is, but he’s serious too. He really does think he has a responsibility to those people who don’t exist. It’s useless telling him they don’t exist. He just says I give them existence by denying their existence. I haven’t looked at his manuscript for some time, so God knows what’s happening to his precious Sempills.
Another thing, he now wants to be buried in Kilmory cemetery; Kilcalmonell in his book. You know how he’s always said he wanted to be cremated, with as little fuss as possible. Yet he now asks to be buried in a place at least a hundred miles from here, at the back of beyond, when there’s a perfectly suitable cemetery in Dunoon just eight miles away, not to mention another very picturesque one at Inverchaolin even nearer, though it’s a kirkyard and the minister might have objections to an atheist being buried in it. I suppose I could promise for the sake of peace, and then do the sensible thing and have him buried locally or cremated. How could it matter to him? He believes there’s nothing at all after death. But I couldn’t do that, so if he doesn’t change his mind again he’ll get his wish and be buried in Kilcalmonell or Kilmory I should say. After all, that’s where his parents are buried. Would you come, Morag? I’d very much like you to but considering the distance and expense I would understand if you didn’t. So would he. He doesn’t want anyone else to be there. If I’m alone, except for the gravediggers and undertaker I don’t think I could stand it. It would be like a scene in one of his books. Only he would have made it in some way funny! After forty years of marriage I still don’t know him. I can’t forgive him either for during his last weeks giving far more time to these characters of his, these Sempills, than to me. You never thought your mother was such a crybaby, did you?’
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