‘If I came about mid-day would that be convenient?’
‘Every morning, rain or sun, he taks a walk. That’s at ten.’
‘Perhaps if I came then I could accompany him?’
‘No, he wouldnae like that. He likes to walk by his lane.’
‘What time does he usually get back from his walk?’
‘Aboot eleven. He brings in a paper, you see. I read bits oot to him. Aboot the War. He likes hearing about the War.’
‘I’ll come about eleven then. Would you please tell him that Fergus Lamont called and will be back tomorrow at eleven?’
My name meant nothing to her. ‘If I mind I’ll tell him.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Pringle.’
‘Thank you yourself. Say goodbye to the gentleman, Marmalade.’ She lifted the cat’s paw and waved it.
It was far from her intention to indicate to me that my visit did not deserve to be taken seriously, but that certainly was the effect of her waving the cat’s paw at me.
I felt most condignly rebuked.
Going down the stairs, I remembered that of all the creatures in the world Uncle Tam had disliked only cats. He always imagined them with their mouths full of pigeons’ feathers.
That he slept so much and yet got up so early did not necessarily mean that he found life tedious or unbearable. It could be a delayed consequence of the damage to his brain. He had always been easily interested.
I could not help smiling as I pictured her reading out to him news of the War. Her thoughts would never be on the sinking of ships or the burning of cities, however sensationally these were described. She would be thinking about her cat washing its face, or about standing in a queue for Drummond’s sausages.
FOUR
I had been hurrying along, thinking of Uncle Tam and his fey little wife, and not paying much attention to where I was going, when some instinct told me I had wandered into Lomond Street itself. I stopped, afraid. Alarm bells rang in my mind. I wanted to turn and flee. Then I thought to walk along it would be a test. If I felt humiliated and defeated all over again, and hated everyone I saw, it would mean that the years in East Gerinish and Kirstie’s love had been wasted.
I set off on that momentous traverse. Because the rain was heavier now there were few people about. Two boys were playing with gas-masks on. A dog was barking mournfully. I had never realised before how narrow and dismal the street really was, subterranean almost, with the high stone tenements closing it in like cliffs.
The closemouths were deserted. There was too strong and chilly a wind blowing straight through them.
Old landmarks were gone. The window-sill where the Kennies had lived, a family as fanatically Orange as the Jeffries, had always been painted red, white, and blue. Now it was indistinguishable from all the other grey, sooty, undefiant window-sills.
I could see no sign of air-raid shelters. If bombs fell most people would probably congregate in their closes, with blankets and hot-water bottles; others would stay in their houses and sleep under beds or tables; others again might take to the hills above the town.
Near my own close I passed two little girls of eight or nine. They were neatly dressed, one in a red raincoat, the other in a blue, with hats to match. They spoke to each other primly and properly, as if to their schoolteacher, saying ‘not’ instead of ‘no’. Their kind were always to be found in the meanest streets. They had mothers resolved to save them from being coarsened by the squalor in which they were obliged to live. Those women would perform prodigies of economy in order to be able to afford their daughters every chance to become better than the daughters of women not so self-sacrificing and indomitable.
A middle-aged woman, burdened with a heavy shopping-bag, and muttering to herself, approached me. If I offered to carry her bag or relieve whatever anxiety she had, she would no doubt regard me with hostility, convinced that my purpose must be either to steal her purse and ration-books, or to rape and murder her. What if, though, she smiled, thanked me, and let me carry her bag to her door, where I would take leave of her with a bow or, why not, a kiss of her hand?
In the event she didn’t even notice me as we passed.
Another woman approached, also middle-aged, under an umbrella. Dressed in a blue coat with white buttons, she would have been more in place in a street of red sandstone tenements with tiled closes and inside lavatories. Perhaps she was the mother of one of the little girls.
It was ungentlemanly to stare, so I passed with a quick glance at her face. This was pale, and her mouth had an ugly twist that looked permanent, possibly the result of a stroke.
The stare she gave me was longer and more curious. This was only to be expected. It did not necessarily mean that she was bad-mannered.
I had passed, and was about to dismiss her from my mind with a measure of pity, when she called what sounded like my name, although her twisted mouth blurred her speech, reminding me a little of Mrs Sneuch-Sneuch, long since dead.
I had once been well known in that part of the street. So it was perhaps no cause for wonder that I was now being recognised, even thirty-odd years later.
She had stopped and was staring at me. The wind tugged at her umbrella.
‘Excuse me if I’m wrong,’ she said, ‘but weren’t you once Fergus Lamont, that lived in this street?’
In spite of its distortion, I recognised her voice, and also the hint of good-natured, bantering laughter in it. Thus had she once, in McSherry’s Wood, when we were both seventeen, asked me if I didn’t think that my hand, wandering up inside her skirt, wasn’t being just a bit too common for an earl’s grandson’s.
For she was my old sweetheart Meg Jeffries, who had so rashly become Meg McHaffie.
As I walked back to her, slowly, my legs felt weak. After Kirstie, and Cathie Calderwood, this was the woman I had loved most. If I had married her I might not have become an officer and gentleman, and I would not have lived in a fine big house like Pennvalla, and I would never have gone to East Gerinish and met Kirstie, and perhaps I would not have written such good poetry, but I would have been happy, my children would have been fond of me, and I would not have been faced with the prospect now before me, of lifelong homelessness.
‘Meg Jeffries,’ I said, holding out my hand.
She gave me hers. ‘Not for a long time,’ she said. ‘Margaret McHaffie.’
But still, marvellously, without a trace of pity for herself. Her husband had been killed, her family had disowned her, and she had been left to bring up her children alone. She must have had some serious illness, the aftermath of which was this twisted mouth and these pale cheeks. Things at present could not be all that well with her, or surely she would not have come to live here in Lomond Street, in its decrepitude. Yet she looked and sounded as unembittered as on that other rainy evening long ago when she had left Siloam Cottage, perplexed and worried, but in love.
Her presence was like a benediction. My own self-pity slunk off in shame.
‘So you never married again?’ I said.
I was still holding her hand.
‘I had my weans to bring up.’
‘How many, Meg? I hope you don’t mind me calling you Meg?’
‘I wouldn’t expect you to call me anything else. Three. All girls.’
‘Are they here with you?’
‘Just Margaret. She’s my youngest. The two others are married.’
For a few moments her voice trembled a little, and she tried to take back her hand. I held on to it.
‘But what are you doing here, Fergus, in Lomond Street of all places?’
‘I was visiting Mr Pringle in Kirn Street.’
‘He went blind, didn’t he? How is he?’
‘I didn’t see him. He was asleep. I’m coming back tomorrow.’
‘Are you on leave or something? You look as if you’re just back from Africa or some place anyway where there’s a lot more sun. Are you a colonel by this time? I saw a picture of your wife in the paper a week or two ago: wearing so
me kind of uniform, and visiting soldiers in hospital. Very handsome she looked. Just the kind of woman you always said you would marry. Good for you. I noticed too that you’ve become a grandfather.’
So Dorcas had given birth. My suffering then was tragic, not merely querimonious, as I thought of Dorcas’s child whom I would probably never see.
‘Your two other girls, Meg, where are they?’
‘Bridie, she’s my eldest, lives in Liverpool. Her husband has a good job in a paint works there. Well, he had. He’s in the Air Force now. And Eileen’s in Glasgow. She married a schoolteacher. He’s in the Army.’
‘Good luck to them all, Meg. I hope that you and your family here in Gantock are friends again.’
‘I’m afraid not, Fergus. You see, I let Bridie and Eileen marry Catholics too.’
Grandson of Donald McGilvray, I almost asked her, in indignation, why in Christ’s name she had done any such thing.
The rain was still heavy. We could hear it stotting on her umbrella.
But why, if she and her family were still estranged, had she come to Gantock where she must run the risk of meeting some of them, in the street or in shops? Did she hope that out of one of those stony-faced encounters reconciliation might flower?
‘It’s silly standing here getting wet,’ I said.
‘We could go up to my house, if you liked. Margaret doesn’t get home till six. For a cup of tea. It’s on the top storey, though.’
But I did not want to see her in those surroundings. Also, to be truthful, I was beginning to find the paleness of her face, the wryness of her mouth, the whiteness of her hair, and the impossibility of ever being able to help her, too much to bear.
So I lied. ‘I’m sorry, Meg, I can’t, not right now. I tell you what, though, couldn’t we meet tomorrow, say, for lunch? There must be some place left in Gantock where one can buy a decent lunch, war or no war.’
‘I’m working, Fergus. Part-time. I finish at four.’
‘What time do you have off for lunch?’
‘Half an hour. We stay in and eat pieces.’
‘Well, we’ll certainly have to meet again and have a long chat.’
‘I’d like that, Fergus.’
‘It’s a promise then?’
‘It’s a promise.’
‘Good. I’m staying at Ravenscraig with John Calderwood. His telephone number is 4545. That’s easy to remember.’
‘I’ll remember it. Goodbye, Fergus, and good luck.’
‘Good luck to you, Meg.’
I had to let go her hand at last.
FIVE
By the time I had collected my suitcase from the sweetie-shop—with much relief, for it contained some irreplaceable manuscripts—and found a 9 bus to take me to Ravenscraig, it was six o’clock. Luckily the rain was not so heavy and the sky looked brighter. Because of the blackout no lights could be seen in houses or shops. In Pennvalla there would have been still an hour to go before going upstairs to dress for dinner. Here, in Gantock, even in most of the villas, it was already tea-time, with people sitting down, in the same clothes that they had worn to work, to eat high teas that, in these restricted days, would not be quite so high; but there would still be potfuls of sociable tea. The meal would be eaten in a room where there was a fire, in most cases the kitchen. The warmest place would be occupied by father, who deserved it after working all day in poorly heated office or shipyard: though the children might think that the schools hadn’t been too well heated either. Few graces would be said, even by families that still went to church on Sundays. But if the Lord was not thanked for food which was not as appetising as the eaters would have wished, neither would He be begged to keep the German bombers away: it being stoically understood that He had nothing to do with where Field Marshal Goering sent his murderous aeroplanes.
Such were my thoughts as I sat in the bus, in the company of other Gantockians sober-faced with similar reflections.
John Calderwood must have been watching from a window because he had the door open before I had time to ring the bell.
Never having known him to be an impatient watcher or eager opener I felt for a few seconds touched and grateful.
Then dismay took over.
The man in front of me, crouched sideways, leaning on a stick, had a face so screwed up and shrunken from habitual malevolence as to suggest that he had lost not only the desire to look happy and hopeful but the physical ability. He gave me a snarl that, I saw, was his best approximation to a smile of welcome.
Yet any of his pupils in Kidd Street school nearly thirty years ago would have recognised him at once. Even the least sensitive of us then had been aware that though he wanted to love us he could not: not because of our academic shortcomings or because some of us stank through not washing often enough, but because he had seen us developing into eager conformists, indolent and cowardly acquiescers in the iniquities and inequalities of society. That was why he had been provoked into hurtful sarcasms.
As if to emphasise how grimy and threadbare his humanity was become, he was more smartly dressed than I had ever seen him before, and not in the old semi-bohemian intellectual’s way either, but in an ultra conventional suit of black jacket and grey-striped trousers, with a stiff collar very loose round his shrivelled neck.
He was by no means drunk, though. Indeed, he did not get drunk all that fateful evening, though he consumed more than a bottleful. His misanthropic rejoicings did not have that excuse.
He kept giving me grimaces which I had to accept as cordial.
As I found a peg for my wet cape on the hall-stand where Cathie’s bright hats and coats had once hung I could not get rid of a suspicion that in spite of his miserable faces he was happier than he had ever been in his life before.
Thanking him as civilly as I could, for it was a form of reproof, I went upstairs to the bathroom, past the window of the landing where Ceres or Naomi still stood up to her breasts in yellow corn. The crack that my penknife had widened in the door was still there as I found by stooping and peering through it, but Cathie of the French songs and dainty bottom was not there, and never would be again.
The towel I had to use to dry my hands was not fresh and it had a hole in it. The lavatory seat had a hinge loose. The whole house, I soon discovered, was shabby and dirty.
My host called to me from the lounge. When I went there I was pleased, though surprised, to find a fire roaring in the grate, and, on the same small table where once the goldfish bowl had stood, a tray with two glasses, a jugful of water, and a bottle of Chivas Regal whisky. This last particularly was a surprise. Even in Oronsay, where it was considered more necessary than food, whisky had become very scarce, and funerals therefore very gloomy.
‘You’ll have a dram, Fergus?’ asked my host.
‘With pleasure, John.’
He poured two very generous ones. ‘Help yourself to water if you want any. I prefer it neat.’
As I poured the water into my glass I remembered the goldfish, and Cathie and me sprawling on the carpet. My hand shook. Some water was spilt on the table.
Behind my back my host chuckled. He was enjoying my agitation. Perhaps he was mad: fifty years of castigating the lunacies of mankind had turned his brain. Or perhaps insanity was in the Calderwood family. In him it was taking the peculiarly evil form of enjoying other people’s unhappiness.
‘Well, Fergus,’ he said, ‘after so long an absence, what would you like us to drink to?’
‘To the people of Gantock,’ I said, remembering that he had said they were more in need of grace than ever.
He lifted his glass and then drank.
‘The best thing that could happen to our beloved native town, Fergus, is for a few bombs to fall on it.’
I was shocked. ‘Rather an extraordinary thing for a past member of the Independent Labour Party to say.’
‘But, Fergus, I simply want them to have an opportunity to find out the truth about themselves. Words will not do it. Words deceive. Bombs, I shoul
d think, are much more forthright. A few weeks ago, Fergus, an old woman from the East End, your part of the town, was given three months’ imprisonment for using implements to procure an abortion. The other woman in the case had already got seven children, and was terrified at the thought of having another, especially in war-time. Well, his Lordship the Sheriff chose the occasion to deliver an impassioned harangue about the sanctity of human life, and this in the midst of a war which he thoroughly approves of and in which, before it is over, millions of fully-fledged lives may well have been brutally destroyed.’
I might have had some sympathy with what he had said if he had not said it so gloatingly.
‘No one in Gantock seemed to be shocked by his hypocrisy,’ he went on. ‘No one pointed out to him that war is the greatest abortionist of all.’
‘Perhaps, John, they did not think it was hypocrisy. Perhaps they believe that the war is being fought for something more important than life itself.’
‘In which case, why send the old woman to jail? Evidently she considered compassion more important.’
I was beginning to suspect that he had invented this altruistic old abortionist.
The more he was enjoying himself the more malign he looked. ‘I put it to you, Fergus, as a man of some insight, that it is the taking of life that is sanctified, not life itself. Is not war blessed by bishops, moderators, rabbis, mullahs, and bonzes, not to mention witch doctors?’
It amazed me that at seventy he should still have the same half-baked ideas that he had had at forty. He had said these very things to me about the 1914–18 war, only he had said them then as if they were scorching his heart; now he was saying them as if they gave him as much pleasure as the whisky did.
Did all old men wish to revenge themselves on a world that had not listened to them?
I tried a little raillery. ‘Surely, John, as a once dedicated teacher you must admit that humanity is not all stupid and vile. In the innocence of children is there not hope?’
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