A Dark and Distant Shore (106 page)

As they fought their way round the back of the hall, a new scent was added to the melange. Whisky. There was a good deal of jostling going on, and plenty of raucous laughter. Gideon caught the tail end of one or two jokes that were very coarse indeed, and only just saved himself from tripping over the outstretched legs of a cadaverous fellow who had settled down, oblivious of the crush, with his back against the wall and a bottle in his hand. He was waving it tipsily in time to the song he was warbling to himself, a version of ‘Barbara Allan’ that wasn’t usually to be found in the song books. Gideon grinned at him and struggled on after Theo, whose appearance was productive of a hearty cheer from some of the men on the outskirts of the scrum, and some vigorous clapping on the back. Affecting to recoil, Theo murmured, ‘Good God! If this is democracy at work, I shall be compelled to vote against it!’ A roar of delighted laughter greeted this sally, and he remarked to Gideon as they reached their seats, ‘Some of the lads from the foundry. Jermyn, dear boy, why is the ancient retainer all by himself back there, instead of sitting with us?’ He was an observant bastard. Gideon hadn’t noticed Sorley.

‘What? Oh, not fitting for him to sit with the gentry, or something. You know what antiquated notions he has.’

Theo sighed. ‘Chust so.’

Almost at once, the platform party made its appearance, led by the chairman, a local worthy commonly known as Honest John – largely because his surname happened to be Cockshut. As a rule, his equals mispronounced it into unintelligibility, and his inferiors called him ‘sir’. But not tonight. With one accord, those at the back of the hall launched into a song known to initiates as ‘Frisky Johnny’. Clearly, it wasn’t spontaneous, but it
was
funny, especially as the platform party took it at first for a simple rendering of ‘Bonnie Laddie’, the tune to which it was sung, and beamed appreciatively all through the first verse.

‘Tell me what is that I spy,

Frisky Johnny, randy Johnny
...
’

Thanks to the vocalists’ somewhat glottal enunciation, realization didn’t fully dawn until the third verse, by which time the man next to Gideon was convulsed with mirth and even Peregrine James was grinning like a normal human idiot.

‘It’s round and long, with moss ’tis spread,

Honest Johnny, frisky Johnny,

And just like coral is its head,

Honest Johnny, randy Johnny,

To press it, many a lass hath griev’d,

Honest Johnny, cocky Johnny
...
’

The chairman thumped sternly with his gavel, and the song wandered to its death amid a storm of hushing from the front rows.

Jermyn, his eyes fixed thoughtfully on Ian Barber, said, ‘You know, I don’t believe Ian understood that.’ Theo gave a splutter of laughter, and Gideon, glancing up at the platform, saw that Jermyn was right. The boyish face in the frame of untidy brown hair and reddish whiskers wore the expression that had always meant Ian wasn’t sure about something.

Gideon looked forward with mild interest to how the young man was going to acquit himself on the platform. With an audience like this, he thought pessimistically, not well.

The chairman, intent on putting a damper on the proceedings, began the meeting with a long-winded summary of the aims and objects of the National Reform League. It was thirty-three years, he droned, since the 1832 Reform Act that had given the vote to the middle classes – ‘the weel-aff ones, at ony rate.’ Every effort since then to extend the franchise to the workers had failed to find the necessary support in parliament.

‘Aw, poaliticians!’ came in a stentorian bellow from the back. ‘We a’ know whit they’re worth. Bloody revolution, that’s whit we want!’

‘Now, now, my man!’ said the chairman, peering over his spectacles. ‘That’s no’ whit we want at all. The greatest stumbling block to progress was aye Lord Palmerston, but he’s gone now...’ Cheers and stamping from the back. ‘...and we just have tae persevere. Whit we want is for every honest working man to have the right to vote...’

‘
Honest
?’
roared a dismayed voice. ‘Och, that lets me an’ Wullie oot, dinnit?’ Sounds of a scuffle suggested that Wullie was taking exception to this, and the chairman rapped furiously with his gavel. ‘I canny have it, you know! I’ll have tae pit ye oot if ye go on like this!’

‘Awa’! You and who else? Jist you come doon here an’ Ah’ll melt you!’

But a chorus of be-quiets from the better regulated classes was enough to silence the hecklers, for the time being, and the chairman said, ‘Aye, that’s better.’

The first speaker, one Sebastian Donkin, didn’t have much trouble with the hecklers, boring them so much that they lapsed into a coma, but he was followed by an experienced rabble-rouser, who had them awake again in no time. And then it was Ian’s turn.

Disastrously, the chairman announced that Mr Barber had come all the way from London for this meeting, and what emerged from the immediate chorus of boos and hisses and catcalls was the general impression that the wee blankety-blank Sassenach should go blankety-blank back to where he blankety-blank came from. But the hullabaloo died down at last in response to cries from the front of ‘Order’, ‘Fair play’, and ‘Let the wee fellow speak his piece, can ye not!’

There was an uneasy silence during the first part of Ian’s speech, and then after about ten minutes a huge and uninhibited yawn from the side. A little later, a kindly voice from the rear said, ‘Aw, hey! Mr Chairman, sir, your honour. Gie him a dunt and wake him up, heh?’

Somehow Ian struggled on in his own pedantic way. Gideon could only assume that no one was actually listening, because what he was saying was ‘more haste, less speed’, which was the precise opposite of what most of the audience wanted to hear. His thesis, as far as Gideon could discover, was that to ask too much in the way of reform would result in being given nothing, whereas to ask only a little, and then a little more, and a little more again, would bring far greater rewards in the end. Gideon had his doubts. But, for a while, Ian’s style of oratory was enough to confuse even that part of the audience that had cheered the mention of ‘bloody revolution’.

It was too good to last. ‘The honour and glory of the ordinary man,’ Ian said, ‘is that he can respond internally to wise and noble things, and involves himself in no sophistical confusions in his response to them. However, I propose to ask myself a question...’

‘God!’ remarked a long-suffering voice. ‘Ye’ll get a bloody boring answer, too!’

What Ian had proposed to ask himself was lost in the ensuing grumble of restlessness. Gideon heard someone behind say, ‘Och, this wusny worth comin’ for. Ah’ve had enough. Ah’m gaun hame, are ye comin’, Erchie?’ He didn’t catch Erchie’s reply, but no one made a move.

On the platform, draped with a bright yellow banner that clashed nastily with the toast-and-marmalade hues of walls and ceiling, Ian raised his voice in vain against the growing volume of sound. He would have been wiser to give up, for by the purest bad luck a silence fell just as he reached his peroration, which concerned what would happen on the glorious day when working men received the franchise. ‘Then,’ Ian declaimed, ‘they will bring morality into public life...’

There was a howl. ‘Who will? Jock and Wullie? Ye huv tae be joking!’

‘...and cast their vote decisively against all whose vested interests are responsible for the great evils that beset us today...’

‘That’s mair like it! That’s the wee boy!’

‘...against bribery and intimidation...’

‘Aw, hear, hear!’

‘...the imposition of British rule on alien peoples...’

‘Whit was that?’

‘...against the manufacture of armaments...’

There was a low growl, and Theo murmured, ‘Oh,
dear
!
My lads don’t like that!’

‘...against drunkenness...’

And that did it. There was a concerted roar of ‘
What
?’
and pandemonium broke out. There was a surge of movement, as if the whole hall was shifting, and Gideon turned to discover that at least half a dozen fist fights had already broken out, presumably between the rowdies and some of the sturdier Blue Ribbon supporters in the back stalls. It was disturbing to see that several fists had broken bottles in them, and there was some very hearty pushing and shoving going on, as some of the hooligans tried to force their way forward, impeded by a general movement of the cannier members of the audience, who were intent on making a rapid exit through the door.

Gideon grasped Theo’s arm. ‘Where the hell’s Sorley? Can you see him? I hope to God he isn’t caught up in that mob!’

Theo said, ‘Dear me, I’d forgotten about the ancient retainer. Vilia would never forgive us if anything happened to him. Jermyn! P.J.! Can you see the old fellow anywhere? No, don’t stand up, Jermyn, unless you want to invite trouble!’

The roughs had begun throwing things, now. Gideon could see that one man had a peashooter, and two or three others were fitting missiles – coins, and bottle tops, he supposed – into the kind of pocket sling Sorley had taught him to use as a boy. He’d never quite matched Sorley’s ability to bring down a hoodie crow on the wing. Then a whisky bottle went hurtling past his ear and he dived for the floor. ‘Memories of the Crimea, dear boy?’ Theo laughed, joining him a moment later. ‘What was yours? A bottle? How commonplace. I, on the other hand, have just come near to being decapitated by a cabbage, though why the devil anyone should be carrying a cabbage at a political meeting I can’t imagine!’

Gideon said grimly, ‘They came prepared, that’s clear enough, and a well-aimed cabbage could do plenty of damage. I hope to God the platform party knows how to duck. Move over, you’re blocking my line of vision. What’s happening?’

Theo raised his head and lowered it again hurriedly. ‘They’re hastening slowly – in the interests of their dignity, no doubt.’

Jermyn’s voice suddenly drifted along to them. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor, protected by the benches. ‘It’s not uninteresting, you know. The bottle tops seem to be travelling faster than the coins. A combination of velocity, and spin, and wind resistance, I suppose.’

Peregrine James inquired politely, ‘So? If one has to be hit by one of them, which would you recommend?’

The volley of missiles began to slacken after a while, and the shouting became more ragged, as if the militant element was losing its enthusiasm. Gideon could hear separate voices from behind. ‘Come on, Jock! Come
on
!
Let’s get oot o’ here.’ And another one – ‘Jamie! Och, Jamie! Gie’s a hand. My legs is a’ dwaibly!’ And a third. ‘Ah tellt ye! Did Ah no’ tell ye? There’s gonny be hell tae pay. Ah’m off. Ah’m no’ waiting!’

Gideon and the others rose tentatively to their feet to see that most of what remained of the audience was massed round the door, each man’s eyes studiously on the back of the man before him. But there were a few people clustered round the platform where the chairman, white as a sheet and looking as if he were about to be sick, had subsided into his chair again. Sebastian Donkin was kneeling on the floor beside Ian Barber, who lay spreadeagled and very still among the debris, his face a mask of blood.

From where Vilia sat on a rock on the hill, with Sorley perched quietly on another a few feet away, she could see no more than fifteen or twenty yards into the mist that surrounded them. There was a sharp drop in front, an almost vertical slope faced with boulders and scree, leggy heathers and yellowing bracken that tumbled straight down to the floor of the glen. She knew it was there, but she couldn’t see it, because the glen itself was full of thin, teased-out masses of dirty white vapour. The wet wind tore at the shawl she had tied round her head, and tugged at the thick, enveloping coat, snatching the collar up to plaster it against her face. She was soaked through, and there was a relentless trickle of water running down her spine, and it felt as if there was at least a gallon of it in each of her boots. But she didn’t mind, although she could no longer afford to ignore it.

She glanced over at Sorley, swathed in an enormous plaid, his wild white mane emerging from under a dejected-looking woollen toorie. Always thin, he had become as attenuated as a thread in this last year or so, and never seemed free of the congestion in his lungs. Nothing she could say would persuade him to stay indoors and cosset himself. He shouldn’t have come up on the hill with her today, but she might as well have saved her breath, for all he had done was smile and follow her just the same. She must see that he had a hot toddy as soon as they got back, and tell Jenny in the kitchen to bully him into giving her every last stitch of his clothes for drying. Vilia smiled to herself, conscious of mothering Sorley more than she had ever mothered her sons. But she couldn’t afford to lose him, the first friend she had ever had, and still, as he always had been, a part of her life.

Suddenly the wind dropped, as it so often did at this time of year, and it was possible to make oneself heard again.

‘Did they find out what it was that hit him?’

‘Och, no. It could haff been anything, they said. Something small, though. An inch further over, and it would maybe haff killed him. But except for losing his eye, he iss aal right. He wass lucky.’

‘He was certainly lucky that Jermyn was there.’ With the extreme efficiency that seldom, if ever, showed in his manner, Jermyn had made swift arrangements for Ian Barber to have the best medical attention, and hadn’t hesitated to drag three of his acquaintances at the Edinburgh School of Medicine out of their beds in the middle of the night when it seemed that things weren’t going too well. Theo had remarked, in the note Sorley had brought her, ‘Such a strange thing, human nature. Only Ian Barber and young Jay standing between Jermyn’s infant son and possession of Kinveil, and yet there was papa working harder than any of us to maintain the status quo!’

She shivered a little. It was the damp air. It would be the supreme irony if she were to catch pneumonia and find herself following Magnus so quickly to the grave, like some Indian widow committing suttee. And another kind of irony, since Perry Randall was due to arrive tomorrow.