Fergus Lamont

by Robin Jenkins

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why that trollop, for heaven’s sake? Of all the people from Lomond Street to pick on the McFadyens, and especially Jessie. There were a lot of respectable folk living there at that time, Fergus. The Colquhouns, for instance; and the Ritchies.’

  She had mentioned none of my closest friends’ families.

  ‘If you remember, Mr Colquhoun worked for Williamson, the plumber. Well, he went into business for himself and has done very well. They have a nice flat in Menteith Terrace where that teacher you were fond of, Major Holmes, lived. And the Ritchies, they went off to America, to Milwaukee, soon after the War. I believe they were getting on very well there before this depression. The McFadyens, I’m sorry to say, were scruff then and are scruff still; and the McTavishes too, though I admit that wee Willie was the best of the bunch.’

  ‘What happened to Jessie?’

  ‘She’s the worst disgrace of all. Maybe it wasn’t altogether her fault, her being so soft in the head, and I expect if she had come from a more respectable and responsible family she’d have got the help and protection she needed. If you remember, Mrs Grier was her grandmother. By the way, she’s gone; died an hour or so after we left. Anyway, Jessie, after she left school, was nothing but a trollop; before she left, some said. My goodness, the things they said that silly little thing was up to in coal cellars with boys still in short trousers; and with men too. Some said she didn’t know that what she was doing was wrong, that she was just being kind, but in my opinion she knew very well; every woman knows that. Of course, that doesn’t excuse the boys and the men. If anything, they were worse than her. Do you know that when she was 15 she had a wean by a man of 55? It was put out to adopt. There were rumours that old Dr McBride—he’s dead now, so it can safely be said—had her sterilised; otherwise she’d have flooded the parish with illegitimate weans.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you, for it’s not likely you’ll be rushing off to pay her a visit. You’ll not remember old Mr and Mrs Strathglass who lived next door to us in Lomond Street.’

  ‘I remember them well.’

  He had smoked in the lavatory for hours. She had sent me to the shops for such small quantities of things that I had been ashamed. ‘An ounce o’ tea, son. Tuppence worth o’ butter. Twa tatties, medium-size.’

  ‘Well, Jessie McFadyen, now Jessie McCreadie if you please, lives there now, in the Strathglasses’ house. They’re both dead. Of course the whole place, Lomond Street I mean, is a slum. All that part of Gantock has gone down the brae. It’s mostly scruff that live there now. All the decent folk have moved out.’

  ‘Who was this McCreadie that Jessie married?’

  Was he a man of wisdom and compassion who valued tenderness above all else?

  ‘I don’t really like to talk about this, Fergus. It’s sordid, that’s what it is. Well, McCreadie was a widower who used to live in Kirn Street, next close to the Pringles, as a matter of fact. A caulker in Stewart’s. After the War, when wee Willie McTavish was killed, McCreadie bought Jessie from the McFadyens. I know what I’m saying: bought her. They say the sum that changed hands was a hundred pounds. During the War he made good money. He was a lot older than her.’

  ‘Was it out of kindness, to give her the help and protection you said she needed and never got?’

  ‘Are you joking? It was for a very different reason altogether. Her brain might never have developed but her body certainly did. That’s what McCreadie was buying: her body. He’d hardly let her out of the house in case other men as much as looked at her. He’d have put a padlock on her if he could. That was years ago, of course. He’s well over seventy now and still as jealous as ever, but she can manage him now. She pleases herself now.’

  ‘Poor Jessie.’

  ‘Well, maybe.’

  ‘She used to take my hand in playground games of ring-o-roses.’

  ‘I’m surprised a man in your position would want to remember a thing like that. But that’s enough of Jessie McFadyen.

  ‘Listen, Fergus, why don’t you ask your wife and children to join you now that you’re here in Gantock? My goodness, if she were to come tonight or early tomorrow, in time to go to church with us, why, you know, it’d make up for all the years you’ve kept away, it really would. Betty T. Shields in our pew in the Auld Kirk! I’d be the proudest woman in Scotland. Telephone her, and ask her. Will you do that, Fergus? For me? And for John?’

  She was suddenly weeping. To calm her I promised I would try and coax Betty to come to Gantock, with the children. It was a lie. If Betty came it would not be to bring reconcilement; it would be to investigate and expose all my lies, evasions, and deceptions, and so leave me helpless in her power.

  Sammy spoke. ‘Mum’s been under a strain this past week.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘If you explained I’m sure your wife would come. I mean, she’s used to doing good deeds, isn’t she?’

  That sounded ironical, but it was hardly likely that a provincial lawyer had heard of Betty’s infidelities with noblemen.

  As I put the telephone down I realised the danger I was in, especially now that I had been shut out of Ravenscraig. All my married life I had been careful never to let Betty inveigle or bully me into taking her to my native town. If she were to descend upon it now I would be caught like a rat in a corner. All my pretensions would have their backs broken, their heads snapped off.

  Thank Christ there was no likelihood of her coming. Dorcas would not allow it. Dorcas had an instinctive fear of Gantock. Though she had never heard of people like Jessie McFadyen and Smout McTavish she had smelled them off me. I had seen and heard that horrified sniffing. To Dorcas Gantock was not merely a sleeping dog to be let lie, it was a dead dog with many maggots: it was the maggots that had to be let lie.

  Just in case, however, I decided to leave Gantock next morning by the first train, even if it meant not seeing John Lamont or keeping my promise to Smout’s ghost.

  I was at dinner in the sepulchral dining-room when there appeared in the doorway, wearing a long fur coat and looking red-cheeked and vigorous as if she had just come across snowy wastes on a sledge pulled by horses, my redoubtable wife. In my imagination I heard wolves baying.

  I was not surprised to learn that she had wielded the whip herself, in other words that she had left Buchanan at Pennvalla and driven herself.

  She had also left Dorcas and Torquil at home.

  ‘They didn’t want to come.’

  What she meant was they had preferred not to be in at the kill.

  FIVE

  We did not share the same room that night. We met at breakfast, at half-past eight. This was her arrangement. I came prepared to discuss terms of surrender, she to receive my unconditional capitulation. Therefore over the porridge and kippers it was I who did most of the talking. I noticed she ate well. It was a bad sign.

  Piteously, I told her I was going to visit poor John Lamont in hospital that morning, and begged her to come with me. Not only he, but all the other patients, would be comforted and cheered up by a visit from the well-loved Betty T. Shields.

  Her response was to order more toast.

  I mentioned how eager Bessie was for her to go to the Auld Kirk. All the people in Gantock who mattered would be there. She would have the profoundest satisfaction of demonstrating that her prestige and popularity far outshone mine even among my own people.

  Inwardly I was convulsed with rage, fear, and frustration. If only my poetry had received the praise it deserved; if only the Earl of Darndaff had publicly recognised me as a member of his family. As a famous poet or an acknowledged aristocrat, or better still as both, I could have challenged her to go anywhere in Gantock with me, yes even to Puddock Loch or Lomond Street itself.

  I was not nearly famous enough. Therefore I was not panoplied against insult and shame.

  We had just finished eating when I was summoned to the telephone.

  ‘It’ll be Bessie Lamo
nt,’ I said.

  ‘So?’

  ‘She’ll want to know if you’re coming to church with us.’

  ‘I am not.’

  ‘She’s sure to invite us to lunch.’

  ‘I intend to lunch at Pennvalla.’

  ‘That’s not fair, Betty.’

  ‘Fair?’

  What an enormous amount of sarcasm and disgust she put into that whispered little word.

  ‘I shall be ready in ten minutes,’ she said. ‘I want you to be ready too.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘You will find out.’

  Now was my last chance to resist.

  Instead I bowed my head and crawled away.

  It was Bessie on the telephone.

  ‘Hello, Fergus. So she did come!’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I asked Mr Kirkwood, the manager. How wonderful! Did you invite her to come to church with us?’

  ‘I’m afraid, Bessie, she isn’t staying. She has to hurry back to Pennvalla.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Dorcas, our daughter, isn’t very well.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Nothing serious, I hope?’

  I nearly whispered: ‘She hates me: that’s all that’s the matter with her.’ What I did say was: ‘A touch of flu, Betty thinks.’

  ‘What a shame! But couldn’t you and she call in at Cowal View for a few minutes? It would be an awful pity, Fergus, if we didn’t meet your wife, after all these years.’

  ‘I’ll mention it.’

  ‘If she had been anybody but a wonderful woman like Betty T. Shields I’d have been inclined to think it was just a way of putting us off.’

  She laughed, nervously. ‘You must have some influence, Fergus. After all, she is your wife.’

  Again I was silent.

  ‘Did she come in her own car?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I expect you’ll be going back with her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, we’ll be waiting in hope,’ she said.

  Betty too was waiting, in the entrance-hall, with so relentless a face that I decided not to mention Bessie’s invitation to call in at Cowal View.

  I picked up my balmoral from the hallstand and followed her down the steps into her car.

  She did not immediately drive off.

  ‘You know, Betty,’ I said, ‘you have a reputation to keep up. Like thousands of other women Bessie Lamont believes you are the soul of goodness, kindness, and wisdom. To disillusion just one admirer could be dangerous. It might spread.’

  She started the engine and drove off.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

  ‘You’ll find out.’

  SIX

  Luckily it was a cold, bright, sunny morning. Washed by recent rains, Gantock was looking at its best. There was still the feeblest chance I might yet survive.

  Driving through these wide avenues with the limes and sycamores, past the well-kept villas, she was bound to be impressed by the town’s substantiality and dignity. The shipyards themselves, from a distance, would be impressive too, with their gantries, cranes, and half-built ships. In this charitable sunshine the tenements of the East End would seem much less dreary and degraded than in dull weather or pouring rain, especially as this Sabbath morning few people would be about and all the closemouths would be deserted.

  She drove as if she knew where she was going.

  Soon, out of the West End, we were bumping along the cobbled Main Street, past closed shops and empty pavements. The one tramcar we passed had few people in it; probably they were Catholics on their way to early Mass. Since they had only one church they had to worship in shifts. That thought made me realise how many Protestant churches Gantock had, twenty at least. In an hour or two all their bells would be ringing. As children once, gathering mushrooms in the fields above the town, we had listened to those bells, and looking at one another had wondered if, when we went back down, we would find Jesus and His disciples in the streets, performing miracles. Now, as we arrived in Auchmountain Square, the heart of the town, I found myself, childish again, being amazed that the piety issuing from all those churches, over many years, had not so impregnated the air that malevolence, such as Betty’s towards me, was not immediately converted into goodwill.

  In the Square late roses bloomed. Outcasts sat on benches, looking as if they had been there all night. Not welcome at home, they probably crept out early every morning, sunshine or rain, to where the pigeons, gulls, sparrows, and stray cats did not make them feel that they were holding on to life too long.

  The grey stone of the Auld Kirk had recently been cleaned. With its six thick pillars, its spacious steps, and its square tower with the four golden-handed clocks, all telling the same time, it seemed to be putting forth a massive effort, on behalf of the whole town, to make substantiality, dignity, and permanence, amount to holiness.

  I could not hide my pride.

  The Auld Kirk of Gantock,’ I said. There was a church on this site before the battle of Bannockburn.’

  She stopped the car at the kirk steps.

  ‘Is it your intention to return to Pennvalla?’ she asked.

  ‘Where else? It’s my home. It’s where my children live.’

  ‘Your children do not want you.’

  ‘That’s a very cruel thing to say.’

  ‘What is more, you do not really want your children.’

  ‘That’s crueller still.’

  Two old men had got up from their bench to come over and inspect the big purple car. They paid no heed to its occupants.

  ‘Look, Wullie,’ said one, ‘it’s the colour o’ the feathers on that pouter’s neck.’

  ‘I had a muffler once that very colour,’ said the other. ‘Mollie knitted it.’

  ‘You don’t seem to realise, though to everyone else it has been obvious, that for years you have been a parasite.’

  ‘Proving me a true aristocrat, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Whit wad you say a caur like that cost, Wullie?’

  ‘This nauseating pretence of being an aristocrat! You have the manners of a navvy. Ask Grizel Mutt-Simpson.’

  ‘A thousand quid at least, Erchie.’

  ‘That anointer of stallions’ genitals!’

  ‘Exactly what I mean. No person of breeding would utter such obscenities.’

  ‘Mair than that, Wullie. The only time you and me will travel in a caur like that will be on the way to the boneyard.’

  ‘A man of pride would not stay where he wasn’t wanted.’

  ‘Why am I not wanted?’

  ‘Because you yourself want no one. I don’t think you ever have. Go to Australia, where it will not matter to the kangaroos that you are so flagrant a fraud.’

  This was the tar-boiler calling the pot black.

  Wullie rapped on the window at Betty’s side. She nodded graciously.

  ‘Yes, Fergus, a fraud. What does the old fool want?’ Wullie was rapping again. She rolled down the window. ‘Is there anything wrong?’ she asked, sweetly.

  ‘It’s juist that a big dug’s juist lifted his leg against your shiny back wheel.’

  ‘Oh, thank you so much for telling me.’ She rolled up the window again. ‘Filthy old brute. Your sort, Fergus, vulgar to the core.’

  She went on: ‘Campbell Aird used to say a poet with no interest in literature or in people must be a fraud.’

  ‘He admired my poetry.’

  ‘He thought you must have produced it fraudulently. Otherwise, he used to ask, how could you, without a spark of sympathy for anyone and with no sense of humour to speak of, have written sympathetic and humorous poems? And I’ve spoken to officers who served beside you in the War. They said your men hated you, you never showed pity, your only concern was to build up a reputation for efficiency. So your poems about the War were fraudulent too.’

  Wullie and Erchie, weak with laughter, returned to their bench, hand-in-hand. If I went and sat beside them, and chatt
ed about Gantock, would they pronounce me a fraud? It was very likely. But they had a right.

  ‘And of course the Corses have always thought you a fraud.’

  I knew well enough why she and Dorcas wished to get rid of me. By themselves they would be invited to houses where I would never be welcome: it could well be Corse Castle itself was one. Dorcas would bloom in society if I with my dubious origins was not there to cast a blight. At first it would be enough for them to let it be known that I had gone to Australia, or to Oronsay, which was just as far away. Soon, since few would enquire, they would not have to mention me at all. Within a year I would be forgotten.

  ‘Let me show you proof,’ she said.

  SEVEN

  Even if I had been blindfolded I would have known that she was making for Lomond Street. Into her voice had come a note of pity, without which cruelty cannot be complete.

  She and I both knew, like her old paramour Sir Jock Dunsyre, that every human being practised fraudulence at one time or another, from the baby in its cot pretending pain so that it would be lifted and made a fuss of, to the white-haired statesman knowing in his heart that the fine words applauded by his countrymen were mostly lies. Every man excused himself with the plea that he would be honest and truthful always, if only he could depend on all other men to be honest and truthful too, otherwise he would be shamefully taken advantage of.

  Was I not being persecuted by one who had made a reputation and a fortune by the most fraudulent or hypocritical of performances?

  Why though was she so confident that by driving along Lomond Street she would bring me to heel, whimpering? Even if the place had gone down the brae, as Bessie had said, and all the respectable and semi-respectable families had left, it would still be short of squalid or bestial. In the sunshine and Sabbath quiet it might even have a quality of grimness, of the same kind that Corse Castle had, and therefore be suitable enough, in an ironical way, as the birth-place of a poet who was also a mislaid aristocrat.

  The trouble was—I was driven back to this time and again—I was not famous or rich or successful or dead enough.