Poverty Castle (23 page)

She paused again, thinking how enraged Effie would have been by the last sentence.

It was no good her trying to make her account humorous: she could not have done it and she would not have been true to herself. In any case if she had made jokes Edwin would not have seen them. Unlike her he was always eager and willing to laugh but was never sure when. Even Rowena was laughing when Edwin was still wondering. The twins thought he would make a very dull husband: his being so good-natured would compensate enough. What gave their sarcasm an extra edge was their knowing that years ago she had often said that the man she would marry must be very brave. Edwin was curiously timid.

‘We came off the bus in the main street. Litter lay everywhere. Shops were closed, not because it was Sunday, but because they were derelict. Peggy pointed out the supermarket where her mother works and where she herself hopes to find a job this summer.

‘We had to walk to the council housing estate where she lives, called Netherlee Park! On our way we met two of her old school friends.

‘What horrors, as Effie and Jeanie would have said. Their hair was pink and arranged in spikes. Their faces were ghastly white. One had pink jeans with yellow patches, the other yellow jeans with pink patches. They chewed gum all the time. Their voices were quite hideous. At first I couldn't make out a word they were saying. They seemed pleased to see Peggy and in a peculiar way were proud of her. “Christ kens whaur she got her brains.” “No” jist her brains, her guts.” “See this lassie? She's suffered a million insults and never let them get her doon.” After greeting her and asking how she was getting on at University they turned their attention on me. My height amused them, both being under five feet: working-class women are often stunted. “Is it cauld up there?” They had tries at mimicking my accent. My name was a great joke. Did I know I was the first Diana they had ever met?

‘I expected Peggy to keep quiet concerning me, but no, for some reason of her own, she told them I lived in the Highlands in a house called Poverty Castle, I had four sisters, I was engaged to a baronet's son, my engagement ring had real diamonds, one day I would be Lady Campton, mistress of a house with forty rooms. What her motive was in telling them all that I couldn't tell then and I still can't. Was she making fun of all of us, me, her weird friends, and herself?

‘You should have seen the astonishment and incredulity on those white faces. They were at a loss what to say, which I'm sure didn't happen often. I saw no sign of animosity or jealousy. They didn't want to drag me down to their level. They would far rather have raised themselves to mine, if it had been
possible. Effie would have called them traitresses to their class. She really has a lot to learn.

‘As we came among the blocks of flats where Peggy lives I realised something about the working class that I had never thought of before. They live so close together, in crammed ghettos, that they are more or less obliged to take an interest in one another and also to be in a way responsible for one another. Some of the gardens or rather strips of ground that surrounded the flats were a disgrace, with hardly any grass and no flowers at all but a great deal of rubbish, including dogs' poo. Since these “gardens” are communal the shame of their condition belongs to everyone. I thought that if I had to live there I would have tried to do something about it. I would have cleared away the milk cartons and bottles, the cigarette packets, potato crisp bags, and other miscellaneous rubbish, from my own area. I suppose the most anti-social would at first jeer and take pleasure in undoing such efforts, but if one persevered even they would come to realise that if the place was kept clean and tidy everyone would benefit. It seemed to me that that was the only way by which the conditions and standards of the poor could be raised. It is no good their thinking that politicians will do it for them. They will have to do it for themselves. We must of course encourage and help them.

‘I said nothing of all this to Peggy, but my sympathy for her increased. No wonder her peculiar friends had praised her courage. I don't suppose many are born here with exceptional abilities like hers but most of them, I'm afraid, will simply succumb to the overwhelming difficulties. It makes her perseverance all the more admirable.

‘When I began this letter I was eager to tell you about her parents, but I now find myself reluctant. It seems somehow like betraying a confidence. Still, I can tell you things that I would tell no one else.'

She stopped to consider that. Was it true? Would she really tell Edwin things that she would not tell her sisters or parents?
Yes she would, and not only because he never criticised or questioned. She trusted him more than she did them: which was incredible, for they would have given their lives for her and she hers for them. His love for her and hers for him was different, requiring greater intimacies. Though she saw his faults clearly she felt that he was growing closer and dearer all the time, and she to him, whereas she and her sisters were inevitably growing apart. Even Rebecca was aware of it, which was why she hoped that the baby would bring them together again as they had been when children.

‘Except for the daughter-in-law, ludicrously called Sonia, they are ordinary working-class people, decent, respectful, and hospitable. Peggy's mother, a small prim woman with grey hair recently permed (perhaps for my visit!), apparently patterns herself on some heroine in one of the romances she reads, a duchess perhaps! You should have seen her drinking tea. Pinkie outstretched, and immense care not to slurp. The best china was taken out of the display cabinet in my honour: the imitation silver teapot too. The house was spotless and smelled faintly of disinfectant. I gathered that Mr Gilchrist is not allowed to smoke indoors. He is a funny little man, quite a midget and very bald. I got the impression that he usually wears his cap in the house. He kept pulling at the skip that wasn't there. What I liked about him was his great pride in Peggy. It's because of him that she's been given her chance to go to University. Her mother would have put her in the supermarket as soon as she left school, which she would have done at sixteen.

‘Nowadays it's not uncommon in Scotland for clever working-class girls to have a University education and become school teachers, there are some in Mrs Brownlee's boardinghouse, but none of them is an intellectual like Peggy. When they've got their degrees and their teaching posts they'll be perfectly satisfied and will never open another “serious” book in their lives. Peggy may have to become a teacher for want of anything better being offered, but she'll go on reading history
all her life. It's a pity about her appearance. It shouldn't count but it does. Suppose she and I applied for the same post? Who do you think would get it? Yes, even if my qualifications were not as good as hers.

‘Sonia, I'm afraid, I did not take to at all. She's only nineteen but nastily fat, through eating all the wrong things. She finished a box of chocolates while I was there. She's eight months pregnant too, which doesn't help. She had the gall to ask me to put my hand on her stomach and feel “Wee Eerchie” kicking. I declined. She was as inquisitive as a child of five: in her of course it was bare-faced impudence. She wanted to know all about my family, and yours too. She grabbed my hand and inspected my ring. Anyone could see they were real diamonds, she said. She assured me at least three times that I was very lucky.

‘Visiting Peggy's people was a test for me. Looking over this account I see that I do not deserve high marks. Effie would fail me completely. One of the cardinal sins among the Sempills is to patronise people. I did not patronise anyone during my visit, not even Sonia, but I have patronised them in this letter, haven't I? I can see what Effie finds “insufferable” in me. I find it insufferable myself.

‘Accompanying me to the bus-stop Peggy was evasive when I repeated my invitation to come and spend a few days with us at Poverty Castle. When I stepped on to the bus she said, “Thanks for coming.” I realised then how very lonely she must feel. Like someone else I know and love. No, not you, darling!

‘See you soon. All my love,

‘Diana.'

I
N THE
eight large blocks of council flats where she lived, with more than three hundred families all of the working class, there was not one person with whom Peggy could have discussed, say, the economic conditions in Scotland in 1314 or 1745.

Indeed, if she had widened her scope and taken in the whole town, including the High School, the Rotary Club and the local branch of the Labour Party, she would still have found it difficult to find anyone interested in such far-off matters. In the two small rooms smelling of old paper and cigarette smoke where the Labour Party branch met, she had once, aged eighteen and a new member, after listening to morose condemnations of Party leaders who had once again betrayed socialist principles, stood up and pointed out to those dour elderly men that this contradiction between idealistic intention and pragmatic performance was nothing new, and she had given examples ranging from Ancient Greece to the French Revolution. When she was finished they had praised her erudition, pitied her naive enthusiasm, and deplored her disillusionment. Time enough for her to be disillusioned when she was as old as they and had been let down as often. But for her then disillusionment had not come into it: she was simply fascinated by the human situation, without making judgements or taking sides. By the time she was twenty, after two years at University, she had begun, cautiously, to move towards a personal position.

She supported the CND and sometimes attended their rallies, though she did not wear their badge. She disliked wearing badges of any kind: she wasn't sure why but it had to do with her fear of being diminished as a private person. For
someone like her, living in a place as public as an ant-heap, and owning none of the things that conferred and protected privacy, it had been hard to stay private and she had had to pay a bitter price. She loved her parents, was to a large extent financially dependent on them, and hated to hurt them, yet day by day, watching her father read his
Daily Record
and her mother her
My Weekly Romances
, she had grown apart from them. She had sat in front of the mirror in her room and called herself an intellectual snob, guilty of ingratitude and conceit. What was there in that common-looking face to justify her conviction that she was someone special, given dispensation to go her own way no matter who was left behind? Nothing at all. She could see, only too plainly, who she was, in the world's eyes: wee Peggy Gilchrist, aged twenty, scarcely five feet in height or seven stones in weight, flat-chested and skinny-legged, daughter of an unemployed labourer and a check-out assistant, a student at Glasgow University, and with luck a future teacher of history in some east-end school appropriate to her antecedents, social status, appearance, and speech.

Her way of speaking had always been a problem. As a child she had spoken like her parents and neighbours, saying ‘widnae' for ‘wouldn't' and ‘Ah' for ‘I'. At secondary school she had begun to speak carefully and grammatically. What had then remained was for her to modify or refine her broad working-class accent. This she had tried to do at University, in Mrs Brownlee's boarding-house, in shops, on buses, and occasionally at home. Sonia had noticed. ‘Are you trying to speak posh, Peggy?' But Sonia had not been resentful or contemptuous. On the contrary she had understood and sympathised. ‘If you're gonny be a teacher you'll hae tae learn tae speak properly.' She had invited Peggy to practise on her and had promised not to laugh, unless Peggy overdid it.

For a few days after Diana's visit Peggy gave in to the temptation to imagine that she was not Peggy Gilchrist but Peggy Sempill. There were not five sisters but six. As well as Rebecca, Rowena, Effie, Jeanie, and Diana there was also Peggy. She
remembered the photograph by Diana's bed and saw herself in it. The big white house behind was her home. The tall bewildered-looking man with the moustache was her father, and the woman with the thin medieval face and mass of fair hair was her mother. She did not have to mind how she spoke: it came instinctively. If she wanted to stay in her room and read a book like the Conquest Of Mexico, no one would think it odd.

When it was being decided whether or not she should go to University, as her headmaster advocated and her father wished, her mother had said: ‘It's no' that Ah grudge ye it, Peggy. It's juist that Ah'm feart you'll never be happy amang folk no' your ain kind.'

Peggy had not said a word on her own behalf. She had known what sacrifices they would have to make. If her father hadn't been uncharacteristically resolute she would have gone into the supermarket, where, as her mother had said, hoping to entice her, she could have risen to be a charge-hand, with all those certificates she had.

They had made the sacrifices, they were still making them, and she was repaying them by depriving them of their existence so that she could see herself as one of the Sempills.

Yet, when during her visit Diana had urged her to come to Kilcalmonell, Peggy had not given a straight answer. Likely therefore the invitation no longer stood. The Sempills were too well bred to persist.

Diana had remarked that they were all going to Spain for most of the summer. They would not give Peggy a thought. They themselves were all the company they needed. They had Mama to look after.

It was probable that the Sempills had gone out of Peggy's life for good, even Diana, who had dropped a hint that next session she might move into more commodious digs.

T
HE SMALL
grey-haired manager of the supermarket had been good at history himself when a schoolboy. He could still recite the dates of all the battles fought on Scottish soil. He demonstrated: ‘Battle of Largs 1263; Battle of Bannockburn 1314; Battle of Culloden 1746.' He challenged Peggy to give the date of the Battle of Pinkie. She said she had no idea. ‘1547!' he cried, in triumph. He couldn't remember why it was fought, it was only the date that had stuck in his mind: no wonder, seeing that it had been belted into him. He was delighted that he had shown himself better at history than this University honours undergraduate. All the same he wouldn't have studied history himself if he'd been lucky enough to get to University: he'd have gone in for science.