Poverty Castle (29 page)

‘Lady Campton's are huge,' said Effie.

They all laughed again.

‘I'll sit where my feet will be in shadow,' said Peggy.

‘You don't have thermal underwear, do you?' asked Effie.

‘No.' It was June, after all.

‘Their central heating's ancient. It's always breaking down. The drawing-room's usually freezing.'

‘And smoky,' said Rebecca. ‘Remember the last time? Everybody was in tears.'

Their laughter this time came out in shrieks. Peggy did not have the same comic memories but she laughed too. She very much felt that she was one of them.

After lunch they went for a walk to the beach and the ruins of the castle. Mrs Sempill not only insisted on going but danced on ahead across the machair, though there were many rabbit holes to cause a stumble or fall. With her multicoloured silk scarf she waved away their cries of caution.

They were all present. Diana and Rowena had come back from Kilcalmonell House with a reminder from Lady Campton that Peggy was included in the invitation.

Diana had taken Peggy aside. ‘I don't know what Effie and Jeanie may have been telling you.'

‘What about?'

‘The Camptons. Kilcalmonell House.'

Peggy played the innocent. ‘They said the drawing-room was smoky.'

‘It depends on which way the wind is blowing.'

Peggy kept her face straight. Diana never had much humour. On the subject of the Camptons and Kilcalmonell House she had none.

‘Just be your usual honest self, Peggy, and you will have nothing to worry about.'

As if I was being warned not to steal the teaspoons, thought Peggy, finding it hard not to laugh.

On the walk she was in what she called a Sempillish mood: confident, reckless, and defiant. She was not in awe of them any more, not even of Mrs Sempill. As for Lady Campton and Nigel, she was looking forward to encountering their snobberies.

Walking across the machair to the beach she listened appreciatively to the information given her, now by one of them and now by another. These bushes with the sharp thorns and yellow flowers were whins. ‘Gorse is the English name,' said Mr Sempill. Pointing his stick up at the sky he shouted:

‘Don't be so morbid, Papa,' cried Diana.

This little white flower, it seemed, was eye-bright, that yellow
one tormentil. Those black-and-white birds with the red chopstick beaks were oyster-catchers. Did she know there were more red deer on Jura than sheep? Whales had been seen here last summer. The sand was shell-sand, which was why it was so white. These flowers on the shore were thrift, sea-campion, and wild iris. This was an urchin, those anemones. Kilcalmonell Castle dated from the fourteenth century. It had been sacked several times, the last being in 1644. Men, women, and children had been treacherously slaughtered then and their bodies thrown into the well.

It was Mr Sempill who told the story of the castle, standing on the bright turf within the broken walls. He held his stick as if it was a sword and he was protecting his family from the violence of the past. Rowena and Rebecca came running and placed a wreath of laurel over his brow. They themselves were wearing wreaths. Soon they all were. What victory, thought Peggy, do they think they're celebrating.

Suddenly Mama was weeping. They sat her down on a mossy stone and comforted her. Peggy was shut out. It was a Sempill occasion. She wandered off and stood under the laurel tree. Above her a bird screamed and oyster-catchers piped, as they had done that day hundreds of years ago, heedless of the cries of killers and slain.

Within the walls the Sempills were happy again. Mama could be heard hysterically chiding them for being so concerned just because she had felt overcome for a moment, not by weariness or weakness, they were not to think that, but by the wonderful feeling which all women in her condition had, that it had been given to them to replenish the earth.

Peggy's blood turned cold. She was no spaewife but it seemed to her that in Mrs Sempill's voice there was another ancestral note besides that of exultant motherhood. It was fear that if she died her child would die with her.

Peggy went back. They were still wearing their wreaths.

Mrs Sempill stared at her, as if demanding why she was so
impertinent as to invade the privacy of the Sempill family. Suddenly she came towards Peggy, with her arms outstretched.

‘While you are with us, my dear,' she cried, embracing her, ‘you are one of us. Is that not so, girls?'

They all cried yes it was. None of them seemed to be aware that their mother was not being quite sincere.

P
APA WORE
Highland evening dress and looked, Effie said, like a chieftain in a Raeburn painting. But where, thought Peggy, was the arrogant strut, the haughty stare?

Mama was swathed in swirls of pale-blue muslin. She tinkled and glittered with jewellery all over her person. She had at least five rings: her hands weren't still long enough for Peggy to count. Her make-up was not so clownish, thanks to Diana, who, to the twins' annoyance, had inspected its putting on.

The twins were dressed alike, in white blouses and long tartan skirts.

Rebecca's dress was green with a flared skirt, Rowena's white with a red sash, and Diana's unrelieved black.

The twins again had protested. It made her too old, too severe, too dutiful. That last was Effie's scornful word. Rather mischievously, Peggy had said it made her look aristocratic.

They left Poverty Castle at twenty-five past seven. It was a bright warm evening. In the Daimler were Papa, Mama, Diana, and Rowena. The twins, Rebecca, and Peggy followed in the white Escort.

‘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.