Poverty Castle (11 page)

‘What of cleanliness?' whispered Mrs Sempill.

‘Is that important?' cried her husband.

‘It is very important,' said Miss McGill, ‘but as far as cleanliness is concerned this child could take her place in any school in the country. She is very much a credit to her mother.'

‘I hope, Miss McGill,' said Mr Sempill, earnestly, ‘that you are not going to succumb to this blackmail. Is it not an empty threat? This is the only primary school in the district.'

‘They say they will drive their children into Tarbeg.'

‘How many are involved?'

‘At least a dozen. We would lose Miss McKay, our second teacher.'

‘Could you not find replacements among the tinkers? We saw lots of children of school age.'

‘An influx of children unable to read or write would ruin the school.'

‘Why should it? Would it not be a magnificent challenge?'

At the meeting about the tinkers someone had said his name should have been Simple, not Sempill. He was a gomeril who, if not discouraged, would do more harm with his well-meaning but stupid interference than the laird did with his lack of interest. That, though, had been a male opinion. His simpleness, if that was what it was, had made the women want to
protect as well as cherish him. Miss McGill herself had not been immune.

Now she merely smiled at his fatuous optimism. ‘I could cope with one little girl, but only if I could depend on help from other parents and other children.'

‘You will certainly have our help,' said Mr Sempill, ‘and our girls will give you theirs. Won't they, Meg?'

She seemed doubtful. ‘They didn't say much after we took them to see the camp.'

‘Are you saying, Meg, that in a matter of humanity our girls will be found wanting?'

‘They won't have Diana to advise them.'

It was then that it occurred to the schoolmistress where the names had come from. Well, if they were named after heroines let them be heroic. ‘I shall be glad of their co-operation, but it must of course be voluntary.'

Going back in the car Papa explained, enthusiastically. The girls listened in silence. They were not as spontaneously magnanimous as he had hoped. He felt depressed. Meg, he thought, knows them better than I do. Is it because like them she is female? Do they share secrets from which I am forever shut out? Young though they were, the world had already corrupted them. Here they were having to ponder the consequences before agreeing to a kindness. He had failed them.

‘She's not going to take Diana's place,' said Effie, dourly.

‘Of course she isn't. Nobody could. She's only eight, remember.' He looked to Diana, pleading with her to persuade them; but she tightened her lips and said nothing.

‘There could be girls we like better than her,' said Jeanie.

‘She could be sneaky,' said Rebecca.

‘She could smell,' said Rowena.

‘Miss McGill assured us she is very clean.'

‘What's her name?' asked Jeanie.

‘Miss McGill didn't say.'

‘I think we should meet her first before we promise,' said Effie.

‘You disappoint me, girls. Even if she did smell and was sneaky surely you could still be kind to her, especially if others were being unkind?'

‘Was she the girl that picked up the wee boy who was banging the car with the stone?' asked Rebecca.

‘No. That girl had red hair. I think this one has black, like Diana.'

That was another appeal. Again Diana refused to respond. They were more resolute realists than he. They knew the difficulties and their own limitations. He felt desolate.

‘What do you think, Mama?' asked Jeanie.

‘Of course you must be kind to her.'

‘What if she doesn't want us to be kind to her?' asked Effie. ‘Some children are like that.'

‘Nigel would hate you to be kind to him,' said Rowena.

‘You can't compare her with Nigel,' said Papa. ‘
He
has every advantage, and she has none.'

‘It's all right, Papa,' said Effie, a little impatiently, ‘we'll help her, if we can; but it will be easier if we like her, that's all.'

He had to be content with that. The wisest of philosophers could not have summed it up more cogently.

D
IANA DID
not want her parents to take her to the secondary school either before the opening day or on that day itself. She knew who she was, she said: she could answer any questions about herself. If she was treated with courtesy she would be courteous. If she was treated rudely she would still be courteous. They wouldn't dare treat her rudely, cried her sisters. They would soon see how unafraid she was, amidst those hundreds of strangers. Hadn't she told them, lots of times, to do and say what you thought right, no matter what other people said?

Papa listened and felt relieved. His young daughters were not corrupted. He had been pessimistic. Here they were challenging the world. They would not be defeated, as he himself had been so often. At the same time he felt sad. They would have to pay for their victories. Already he saw in Diana the woman she would become: formidable, like her grandmother Ruthven. Even little Rebecca, sweetest-natured of children, not yet five, was capable of remarks that abashed him with their uncompromising honesty.

On that first morning of separation Diana calmly kissed her parents and then, escorted by her sisters, went out to the road to wait for the school bus, under the big lime tree. Her sisters recognised and respected her mood. They had seen before that severe smile that softened when she looked at them, and that head held high, all the more impressive now because of the silly school hat. She was their Diana whom they knew so well and loved dearly, and on whom they depended so much. She was setting off for an alien country, and though she would
come back to them in the evening a part of her would be lost to them forever. They felt forlorn therefore, particularly Rebecca who cried a little though she had promised the twins she wouldn't.

It was a sunny morning with blue skies and birds singing. But for stupid school they would have gone swimming or climbing trees or gathering mushrooms or exploring the grounds of the Big House. Whatever it was they would have done it together. Again and again the pain of separation struck them: it was worse than toothache. They dreaded the coming of the bus that would take Diana away. What if she never came back? They stared at one another in terror.

Diana read their faces. ‘Things have to change, you know.'

‘We don't want them to change,' said Jeanie.

‘Of course you do. You don't want to remain little girls all your lives, do you?'

‘We're not little girls,' said Effie.

Just then the bus roared round the corner. Effie and Jeanie made sure it stopped by standing out on the road and holding up their arms. Diana climbed aboard. Boys and girls grinned down. They were friendly, but it was to them and others like them that a part of Diana had to be surrendered.

After the bus was gone they were silent. Rebecca sobbed.

‘Do you remember,' said Effie, ‘Sir Bedivere, after the barge took Arthur away?'

Papa had read the poem to them not long ago.

They remembered.

‘Well, that's how I feel.'

It was how they all felt.

An hour later it was their turn to go to school. In the back seat of the Daimler they were quiet, with resigned but martyred faces. Their parents glanced at each other and sighed. Evidently a conference had taken place and it had been decided that, though it was a terrible injustice to send them to one school and Diana to another, they would endure it without complaint but would speak only if spoken to and even then as little as possible.

Miss McGill might or might not welcome untalkative pupils, but if she suspected that their taciturnity was deliberate, a protest against the school, she would be cross.

There was too the tinker girl. Probably she would not show up but if she did and was hostilely received this Trappist quartet would be no help.

Not for the first time Papa found himself wishing they were boys. He would not have loved them more but he might have understood them better.

Several cars were parked outside the school. Almost at once the Daimler was approached by a group of young women, their faces bitter with grievance and their voices harsh with it. One of them carried a baby.

‘Good morning, Mr Sempill,' they said.

‘Good morning, ladies.'

Mrs Sempill said good morning too.

The four Misses Sempill pretended they weren't there.

‘Have you heard?' asked the woman with the baby.

He smiled. ‘Heard what?'

‘A child from the tinkers' camp is being admitted to the school this morning.'

‘Miss McGill did mention it. I thought it was splendid news. What's the trouble?'

‘That's the trouble.'

‘We're amazed to hear you call it splendid news.'

‘We think it's abominable news.'

‘Would you like your girls to sit beside her and catch some awful disease.'

‘We're getting up a petition. Miss McGill says she's obliged by law to take this child. Well, if she does we're taking ours out.'

He gave them his most winning smile. ‘Have you seen the little girl in question?'

‘No we haven't and we don't want to.'

‘They're all the same. They live like animals, so they've got habits like animals.'

Still he smiled. ‘According to Miss McGill this particular child from the point of view of cleanliness could take her place in any school in the country.'

‘How could she be clean, living in those conditions?'

‘It must be difficult but it seems this little girl's mother has achieved it. Surely she is to be commended. She wishes her daughter to receive an education. Is that not commendable too?'

Like most women they found it hard to be angry with him. Like most women too they blamed his foolishness on his wife. They were not deceived by her false smiles. It must be because she domineered him in private that he uttered such nonsense in public. Look how her girls were afraid to open their mouths!

In the playground children screamed, and on the shore seagulls. A battered blue van drove up and stopped behind the Daimler. If it had contained the devil, horns and all, the village women couldn't have stared at it with greater revulsion. It contained a loutish young man with a freckled face, a small thin-faced black-haired woman, and between them a small dark-skinned girl in a white dress with a white ribbon in her hair.

The Sempill girls refused to turn and look out of the rear window.

The woman and the girl got out. The woman smiled at the village women who scowled back. The girl glanced up at the Sempills. They went through the gate into the playground, behind the high stone wall.

‘Does she look such an ogress?' asked Sempill.

‘You don't understand, Mr Sempill. If we let one in they'll all want in.'

‘I doubt that, but even if it was true we could not deny children, any children, the right to an education.'

‘They pay no rates, so why should they get an education?'

‘Everything for nothing, that's their way of life.'

‘Let them live like pigs if they want but we shouldn't be made to associate with them.'

‘Just look at that clown, he's fairly enjoying this.'

It seemed to Sempill that the tinker fellow's grin was one of great unease.

‘Here she comes, bold as brass.'

Though she did not cringe the tinker woman looked anxious, having left her lamb among wolves. Sempill gave her a friendly wave.

Suddenly his daughters scrambled out of the car and into the playground.

A chant arose. ‘Tinker trash, tinker trash.'

‘Good God,' muttered Sempill.

His wife held on to his jacket. ‘Don't interfere, Edward.'

‘What are our girls doing, Meg?'

‘Minding their own business, I hope.'

Suddenly they heard a furious scream: ‘Shut up, you stupid bullies!' It was Effie's voice, followed by Jeanie's equally impassioned: ‘You should be ashamed of yourselves.'

Sempill's heart rose. ‘Thank God.'

‘Rebecca might get hurt. You'd better go and stop it.'

Before he could get out of the car a whistle blew. Silence fell in the playground. Miss McGill had arrived. Her voice was scornful. ‘There will be no bullying in my school.'

The village women were indignant. ‘She's got no right to speak to them like that.'

They blamed Mrs Sempill. ‘We knew your girls ran wild, Mrs Sempill. Now we learn they've never been taught manners.'

‘They have been taught to abhor injustice,' said Mr Sempill grandly.

Still they could not bring themselves to blame the big handsome simple soul. He had been trained to say what his wife was too shy to say herself.

Sempill walked along to the tinkers' van. He stood by the window on the woman's side.

‘Good morning,' he said. ‘My name's Sempill. My girls too started school this morning.'

The man grinned servilely but the woman was wary. ‘Oor name's McPhee, Mr and Mrs.'

‘What is your little girl's name?'

‘Annie.'

‘She's a very pretty and very brave little girl. You should be proud of her.'

‘She's maybe no' as braw as some but there's no many wi' mair hert.'

‘I'm sorry some of the children were rude to her. They didn't really mean it, you know. Left to themselves children have no prejudices.'

‘I don't ken aboot that, they mean it a' right. There was hate in their voices. Was it your lassies took her part?'

‘Yes.'

‘Annie's like me, no' easily feart. I warned her there micht be trouble but she still wanted to come.'

‘Good for her.'

‘She'll stick it as long as she can.'