SIXTEEN
Three days later a letter found its way to me from a Mr Malcolm McPherson, a lawyer in Lochmaddy. In it he informed me that my great-uncle, Mr Angus McGilvray, had recently died at East Gerinish, on the island of Oronsay in the Outer Hebrides. By law his croft should descend to me as his nearest male relative. It consisted of a dwelling-house with a tin roof, its furnishings, two and a half acres of semi-cultivatable land, and grazing rights over some hundred acres of hill. There was also a small sum of money.
I felt tempted to go to Betty, take the cheque, and hurry off, not to Australia but to my ancestral home in the Hebrides. What deterred me was not only the difference between twenty-roomed Pennvalla set in pleasant parkland and the hovel with the tin roof up to its window-sills in drenched bog, it was also the fear that if Betty and Dorcas ever got me out they would never let me in again.
The very next day after getting that letter about my inheritance I was walking in the cool sunshine among the mossy stones of the old ruined abbey, smoking the last of Dunsyre’s cigars, when Buchanan, the chauffeur who was also the gardener, came running frosty-breathed to tell me that I was wanted on the telephone.
I did not hurry, few urgent calls ever came for me.
‘Very good. Thank you, Buchanan.’
As I strolled slowly back to the house I felt reasonably content. It did not matter that my wife and daughter were scheming to get rid of me, that the small stir created by my two books of poems had long ago passed and I had been able to write no worthwhile poetry since, and that I seemed to have no close friends. The small boy creeping past all the lavatory doors had come almost as far as his mother would have wished. I now had the choice of three lavatories, all private and all inside. Servants obeyed me: not perhaps with happy zeal but smartly enough. This fine large red-stoned house was as good as mine: not by virtue of my name on the title deeds but for other reasons quite as cogent.
Betty was in her study, writing. Dorcas and Torquil were at school in Edinburgh. Mrs Shields was lurking in her own quarters. I had the morning-room to myself as I picked up the telephone.
‘Hello. Captain Corse-Lamont speaking.’
‘Hello, Fergus. This is Sammy Lamont.’
I frowned. It had been agreed that he would never make a direct approach to Pennvalla.
‘I’m sorry to bother you, Fergus. I’m telephoning on my own responsibility. Mum and Agnes don’t know.’
‘Well, what is it?’
‘Dad’s ill. In fact, he’s dying. He might be dead now. A stroke. He’s in the infirmary. Gantock Infirmary. He can’t speak but he can write or scrawl anyway. He scrawled F-E-R-G on the bedsheet. I saw him. He meant you, I’m sure. He wants to see you. If you came Mum and Agnes might try to stop you seeing him. I’m warning you. Anyway, I thought I ought to let you know. It’s up to you now. The number’s Gantock 3497.’
Then he hung up.
Long ago in the peerie season John Lamont had made me one, bigger and better than any sold in the shops, and a whip to keep it spinning. Acquiring skill, I had been able to keep it going for half an hour at a time until my arm tired. When I had stopped plying the whip the peerie had spun slower and slower until it had begun to stagger, as if dying. I had felt weak and dizzy in sympathy.
After that telephone call from Sammy my thoughts were like that peerie reeling to a stop.
As a child I had loved John Lamont, and he had loved me. I should be weeping and getting ready to rush to him to beg his forgiveness before he died. But going to him meant going to Gantock and I was not yet ready for that. What distinctions I had, my medal, my poems, my famous wife, and my ascension into the ranks of landed gentlemen, were not enough, though Mary Holmscroft had seemed to think so. I needed to take back with me much more. I would not feel at peace by my mother’s grave. I would not feel at home in Lomond Street, nor in the Auld Kirk. At the War Memorial Smout McTavish and Jim Blanie would not remember me as their friend. I would need all my arrogance to protect me from my own unworthiness.
With these anxieties whirling in my mind I went to Betty’s study though the rule was she must not be disturbed before twelve.
She went on writing.
‘I’ve just had a telephone call,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid it means I have to go to Gantock. John Lamont’s dying. He’s in the infirmary.’
Still she did not look up, but her pen travelled more slowly across the page.
‘I’d like Buchanan to run me into Edinburgh, to the station.’
I asked meekly enough. Blackmail could only be honourably used to safeguard my right to remain at Pennvalla. All lesser rights had to be requested.
She dropped her pen. She looked sympathetic.
‘I’m sorry to hear this, Fergus. Who telephoned?’
‘Samuel Lamont.’
‘But I thought you had vowed never to go to Gantock again.’
‘I never made any such vow. I just wanted to wait until I was ready.’
‘Are you ready now?’
‘I want to see him before he dies. I owed him a great deal once.’
‘Far be it from me, Fergus, to discourage filial gratitude in you. How long do you expect to be away?’
‘I don’t know. Two or three days.’
‘So short a time! Won’t you have to wait to see if he gets well, or to attend his funeral if he doesn’t? And aren’t there many old friends to look up, many old haunts to revisit?’
I did not answer.
‘Where will you stay?’
‘There’s a hotel.’
‘I see. What about money?’
‘Perhaps I could do with a little.’
‘Of course.’ She got out her cheque-book and wrote me a cheque for twenty pounds. I was surprised. I had expected five at most. I thanked her.
‘Do you want me to go with you?’
I could not help looking aghast.
‘Why not? It’s not an unusual thing for a man to have his wife with him when he goes to see his dying father.’
‘He is my foster father.’
‘So he is. Are you leaving immediately?’
‘Yes.’
‘You may tell Buchanan I said he has to take you. No. Wait. I’ll tell him myself. He can do some shopping for me and then pick up Dorcas and Torquil. You go and pack. And good luck.’
She gave me her cheek to kiss. I felt grateful, but I did not trust her. Gantock would be a hard enough battle to win without treachery in my rear.
According to our arrangement of meeting twice a year Samuel Lamont and I met yesterday 15th June at eleven o’clock in the usual place, the Glasgow Art Galleries, in front of Rembrandt’s ‘Man in Armour’.
As a well-known QC Samuel is the kind of man for whom policemen, hotel commissionaires, and Art Gallery attendants make concessions. We were not likely to raise our voices but if we did there would be no requests to be quiet.
His hat and coat were dry, though outside the rain was heavy. He had been brought to the door all the way from Edinburgh in his big black car.
He has a way of pressing his lips tightly together that reminds me of his mother long since dead.
‘You look tired, Fergus,’ he said.
I am seventy-one, he ten years younger. Long ago I pushed him in a pram along Lomond Street. He still hopes to be made a judge.
‘Some months ago,’ I said, ‘a fellow, an American, a professor of literature he called himself, came to see me. How did he find out where I live?’
‘Yes. I’m sorry, Fergus. It was a mistake. No harm done, though. If he writes anything about you it will be for some esoteric magazine that no one ever reads. Your secrets safe. I hope he wasn’t too much of a nuisance.’
‘I threw him out. Please make sure it does not happen again.’
‘I already have. But—let me say it once again—are you being fair? To yourself most of all, but to your son Torquil too. He admires your poetry. He keeps telling me how much he wishes he had known you.’
‘He knew me on
ce.’
‘He was just a child then.’
‘Does he still live in Paris?’
‘Yes. You know, Fergus, you could live somewhere in the sun just as cheaply as here. You’d soon get rid of that cough.’
He gives me this advice every time we meet. He seems to have some vague idea of my becoming reconciled with Betty, now an old half-crazy woman of seventy-five.
I stood up. In Rembrandt’s painting the man in the helmet gravely smiled. I liked that smile. It gave me courage. It reminded me of Kirstie.
He followed me out. We passed through the hall of statues. Laocoon wrestled with serpents.
‘Can’t we go somewhere for lunch, Fergus? I’ve an hour or so to spare.’
‘No, thank you.’
It was still raining. His car was waiting. The chauffeur was reading a newspaper.
‘Can I give you a lift home then?’
‘The bus is convenient.’
‘At least let me drop you at a bus-stop.’
‘There’s one not a minute’s walk away.’
‘So it’s goodbye again?’
‘Goodbye, Sammy.’
At the bus-stop in the pouring rain with the roar of traffic about me I thought of Kirstie and East Gerinish and waves breaking on a rocky shore.
Part Four
ONE
I had spent so much time in acquiring authentic aristocratic attitudes that I had necessarily been dilatory in the cultivation of cordial feelings, particularly towards those beneath me socially. In Gantock the people who mattered most to me, the Lamonts and the denizens of Lomond Street, would, I felt sure, be flattered if I condescended to them, provided I could make it clear how fond I was of them. Suppose I met Mrs Grier, say, and treated her as any officer and gentleman must any seventy-seven-year-old crone of the lower orders, she would not feel insulted, for she had lived long enough near the bottom of the social scale to be realistic about such things; but if I could also convey, by unspoken subtleties, a reminder or rather a suggestion that once as six-year-old children her weak-witted granddaughter and I had inspected each other’s private parts in a coal cellar by the light of a defective torch, she would be secretly but sufficiently gratified.
I felt I could manage the condescension confidently enough, but not the implicit kinship. There would be scope unfortunately for all sorts of contretemps.
In Glasgow Central Station since there was some time to wait before the next train to Gantock I telephoned the number Samuel Lamont had given me. He had been uncharacteristically vague, but I had supposed it was the number of the infirmary. Therefore I was disconcerted when, instead of a stranger’s voice, I heard Bessie Lamont’s, not quite the old Bessie who had lived in the room-and-kitchen in Lomond Street, she was too primly bourgeois for that, but still immediately recognisable as the woman who had tried, so conscientiously, to take the place of my mother.
‘Mr John Lamont’s residence,’ she said, with an attempt at haughtiness that I, expert and connoisseur, knew instantly to be the consequence not of snobbishness but of fear and anxiety. She was not trying now to hide the fact that she had never got beyond elementary school. What she was trying to make clear was that her husband’s dangerous illness was her and her children’s business, though any outsider who showed the right kind of sympathy would be properly thanked.
‘Who is this calling, please?’ she asked.
I hesitated. Important things were involved. I was about to speak to a woman who at a time when I needed love and encouragement more than I ever would in my life again had given them generously. I had repaid her by ignoring her existence for many years. If I said the wrong things now, or even if I said the right things in the wrong way, I would stop the stars in their courses: just as my grandfather had done, all those years ago, when he had refused to go into the garden to speak to my mother.
‘It’s me, Bessie,’ I said.
God knew I tried as hard as I could to sound affectionate, letting hauteur speak for itself.
It spoke too strangely. She did not at once recognise me.
‘You? Who are you, please?’
‘Fergus, Bessie. Fergus Corse-Lamont.’
‘Oh!’
It was more like a cry of pain than a sign of recognition.
‘I hear John Lamont’s seriously ill,’ I said, as gently as I could.
‘If you’re the person you say you are, you’re talking about your own father.’
‘Yes, Bessie. I’m speaking from Glasgow. On my way to Gantock. How is he?’
‘It’s late in the day to be concerned, is it no’?’
‘Yes, Bessie. But not too late, I hope.’
‘I think it is. Yes, I think it is.’ She was weeping. ‘Not because he’s dead and past all caring, but because shame between the living grows too great, if you see what I mean.’
I thought she meant that he was dead. A man passing glanced into the kiosk. He looked unhappy. I was to remember his face for the rest of my life.
I listened to her weeping. I remembered her rushing out into the garden at Siloam to take in her washing, before the sudden rain soaked it.
‘When did he die?’ I asked, humbly.
‘Don’t be in such a hurry to hae him dead. As far as you’re concerned we’ve a’ been dead for years.’
‘I’m sorry, Bessie. I misunderstood.’
‘He’s still critical, they say, but he’s no’ dead. I don’t ken how he is. They don’t seem to ken themselves. They tell me nothing.’
All I could say was, ‘I’m sorry.’
It was inadequate, yet it seemed to mollify her. Whereas if I had been eloquent and passionate she would have been further offended.
‘How did you know?’ she asked. ‘Was it Sammy?’
‘Yes. He telephoned.’
‘He wasn’t supposed to. But he’s always taken your part. Is your wife with you?’
‘No.’
‘I see.’
I thought I knew what she was thinking. If I had intended this to be a permanent reconciliation I would have brought my family.
‘I would have liked to meet your wife,’ she said. ‘She writes beautiful books. You’ve been very lucky. I hope you appreciate that.’
I let it pass.
‘I’ll have to go, Bessie. My train leaves in three minutes. Could I have a quick word with Sammy?’
‘He’s not here at the moment. I’ll let him ken you telephoned. If he kens you’re coming I expect he’ll be at the station to meet you. Goodbye.’
She hung up before I could say goodbye to her. I was left not sure whether or not she would be willing to meet me when I got to Gantock.
TWO
In the train, smoking a cigar, and looking out at scenes that grew more and more familiar, I reviewed that preliminary skirmish with Bessie and decided on future tactics. No matter whose feelings were hurt, including my own, and no matter what last ties of loyalty were strained or broken, I must use my landed-gentry manners and accent, even in Lomond Street itself. Surely the last thing anyone in Gantock wanted was for me to return humdrum and humble. Any distinction I brought would be shared by all. It was therefore for everybody’s sake that I should speak as lord to serfs, hero to cravens, and poet to groundlings, though always with undercurrents of affection.
Consequently, when the train arrived in Gantock station, though many memories immediately assailed me, I was not overwhelmed. There was the stone pillar where Smout McTavish, Sammy Jackson, and I had scratched our names with a rusty nail. There was a barrow very like the one I had helped to push. There was the advertisement for Haig’s whisky under which I had said goodbye to Smout and he had kissed Jessie McFadyen, that tender silly girl. I saw those things and was moved by them, but outwardly I appeared to be gazing disdainfully at nothing in particular: in contrast to the Gantockians in the station who gaped at me in aboriginal disbelief.
Sammy Lamont, or a solemn-faced young man in a dark suit that I took to be he, came gliding—he had a peculiarly smoo
th walk, as if on wheels—up to where I stood with my suitcase at my feet.
I had already demeaned myself, and in the circumstances taken a risk, by lifting it down from the rack on to the platform. The one porter in the distance, chatting to a friend, had heard my shout and turned round incredulously, as if expecting to see a hippopotamus dancing, and not simply a gentleman asking for his suitcase to be carried.
‘Sammy Lamont,’ said Sammy. ‘Hello, Fergus.’
We shook hands.
He picked up my suitcase. ‘Porters don’t carry them here,’ he said.
‘So Gantock is still as uncouth as ever?’
‘You could call it that.’
As we walked through the chilly station people did not come rushing up to me to wish me well, as they had done to Mary in Glasgow. I regretted this, but perhaps it was just as well, for I would have had to snub them, as grandly as I could.
‘Do they know who I am?’ I asked.
‘They’re working it out.’
He had explained that his father appeared to be a little better. There was still hope.
He had a small motor car outside. We set off for the infirmary through streets that, if I had not like the Lord hardened my heart, might have had me shedding premature tears.
If you’d brought your wife,’ he said, ʻthey’d have been cheering.’
That was a loaded remark best ignored.
‘Mum and Agnes think she’s wonderful.’
I remembered his sister Agnes as a greeting-faced little girl who was always catching colds: just the kind who’d grow up to admire Betty’s preposterous romances.
‘She’s a schoolteacher,’ he added.
We passed through Auchmountain Square. Pigeons strutted up and down the steps of the Auld Kirk, as if mocking the pompous burghers seen there every Sunday.
I asked if Thomas Pringle still kept pigeons.
‘Uncle Tam? No, he gave them up after he became blind.’
‘Blind? Did you say “blind”?’
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