Poverty Castle (2 page)

Always a powerfully moral writer, often not without a hint of Scottish Calvinism, Jenkins' novels, like
The Cone-gatherers
,
often concern the creation of, and then through human fallibility, the withering of an Eden.
Poverty Castle
enforces just such a theme. Those opening sentences set out a challenge which intrigues us:

He had always hoped that in his old age he would be able to write a novel that would be a celebration of goodness, without any need of irony. The characters in it would be happy because they deserved to be happy.

Novelist Donald does try to create happiness – a kind of familial Eden – for the Sempills, renovating their idyllic Argyllshire house. I am not giving too much away to hint that physical human frailty, madness, moral weakness and cruel class division begin to sour the apple for his characters.

In this way
Poverty Castle
, for all its ‘old-fashioned' surfaces of style and the highlighting of the individual artist as tortured, misunderstood loner at odds with society, is also presciently postmodern in its canny foregrounding of textuality over story. In other words, we know we are reading a written, imaginative fabrication – in fact, we know we are reading a fabrication about writing a fabrication – but still we read on. As Donald's wife admits to herself:

She was doing what she had vowed not to do. By showing interest in his characters she was giving life to them.

Thus, if sometimes the pretty Sempill daughters seem too much a construct of Jenkins' or Donald's imagination, it is we who are becoming the Greek chorus of disapproval which includes Donald's own wife. We – the readers – are the furies trying to undermine the genuine and frankly good intentions of this novelist who wants his characters to be happy. We assist in the destruction of the idyll. And the final conclusion of
Poverty Castle
is all the more moving and powerful. Like that other
great Argyllshire novel,
Gillespie
, by John MacDougall Hay, set in Tarbert,
Poverty Castle
takes a cautiously dim view of our humanity. Attempts at happiness do not write blank by any means.

Alan Warner
Seil Island, by Oban

 

H
E HAD
always hoped that in his old age he would be able to write a novel that would be a celebration of goodness, without any need of irony. The characters in it would be happy because they deserved to be happy. It must not shirk the ills that flesh was heir to nor shut its eyes to the horrors of his century, the bloodiest in the history of mankind. It would have to triumph over these and yet speak the truth. Since he would wish also to celebrate the beauty of the earth he would set his story in his native Highlands, close to the sea.

In his 73rd year, when his powers were beginning to fail, he realised it was then or never. From the point of view of the world's condition the time would never be propitious. Fears of nuclear holocausts increased. Millions guzzled while millions starved. Everywhere truth was defiled, authority abused. Those shadows darkened every thinking person's mind: he could not escape them. They would make it hard for his novel to succeed.

‘Impossible, I would say,' said his wife Jessie, a frank and cheerful Glaswegian. ‘You've always been severe on your characters, Donald. I can't see you changing now.'

They were sitting in deck-chairs on the grassy patch – it was too rough and sheep-trodden to be called a lawn – in front of their cottage overlooking the Firth of Clyde, about fifteen miles from the Holy Loch. It was a warm summer afternoon. Red Admiral butterflies fluttered in flocks from one buddleia bush to another. From the safety of rhododendrons chaffinches mocked Harvey the white cat asleep in the shade. Making for the opening to the sea, between the Wee Cumbrae and Bute, slunk an American submarine, black and sinister, laden with missiles.

In his childhood, in the West Highland village of Kilmory, there had been black beetles of repulsive appearance to which he and his friends had attributed deadly powers. Whenever one was encountered everybody had to spit with revulsion and yet also with a kind of terrified reverence, to ward off its mysterious evil. When he had grown up he had learned that the creatures were harmless, but he remembered them whenever he saw one of those submarines.

Jessie noticed him turning away his head and pretending to spit. ‘See what I mean!' she cried. ‘You can't forget those awful things and you could never let your characters forget them either. So how could they be happy?'

‘Many people seem to be happy in spite of them.'

‘Like me, for instance? Like my friends? But Donald, if you put us in a book you'd make us pay for our happiness. You'd want to show that it was just our way of escaping from despair.'

He smiled. ‘Well, isn't it? Country dancing while the world burns?'

‘It's not burning yet and with a little luck might never burn. What's wrong with being hopeful? You've always had too low an opinion of humanity, Donald: in your books anyway. I suppose there were reasons. An only child, brought up in that smallminded place by a dreary bigot of a father. I'm sorry to miscall the dead but that's what he was. If your mother hadn't died so young I'm sure your books would have had happier endings.'

He had been six when she had died.

‘Where would you set it? Not in Scotland surely.'

‘Why not in Scotland?'

‘But you think the Scots have lost faith in themselves, don't you? “The only country in history that, offered a modest degree of self-government, refused it.” No inspiration to a novelist, therefore. The very opposite. A blight on his imagination. You've said it often, Donald.'

Yes, but because he had been born and brought up amongst them the Scots were the only people he felt competent to portray.

‘Whereabouts in Scotland? For heaven's sake, not Kilmory!'

‘Why not Kilmory? It's the place I know best.'

‘What nonsense. You haven't been back there for more than ten years. From what you've told me you couldn't have been very happy there yourself, so how could you describe characters that were? Who would those characters be anyway?'

‘I don't know. I haven't met them yet.'

‘You must have some idea.'

‘None at all. I'm looking forward to meeting them.'

One thing she had vowed never to be, and that was jealous of his precious characters.

‘You'll just exhaust yourself.'

And for what? To produce a book that few would read and fewer still buy. Lack of appreciation didn't seem to have embittered him but it had her.

Writing her weekly letter to her daughter Morag in America she mentioned that Dad was talking about starting a new book. ‘A triumphant valediction, he has the nerve to call it.' She didn't expect it to get far because he wasn't very well. He had become uneasy and strange. It had crossed her mind that he might be preparing himself for death. Though not very steady on his feet he went for a walk every day whatever the weather: in search of his characters, no doubt. She suspected he took tumbles for there was often mud on his clothes, but if asked about it he just smiled. He seldom looked at a newspaper or listened to radio or watched television: a sure sign that he was broody with a new novel. At such times he wasn't much of a companion, but then he had always been aloof and solitary, as Jessie well knew. After more than forty years of marriage she knew that there were barriers beyond which she had not been allowed to pass. At her age she wasn't complaining, she was just facing facts. He should never have got married. She had often accused him of having more interest in his imaginary people than in his wife and child. Here he was, proving it again.

T
HEY LOVED
the house from the moment they discovered it, though sheep had to be shoo'd out of the ground-floor rooms and ceilings had fallen in and Rebecca, four years old and very fastidious, slid on a cow-pat and made a greenish smelly mess on her knickers. They had caught sight of it from the beach and were eager to explore. The path up to it, or rather the numerous paths, for cattle, sheep and rabbits had made many, lay first over a wide machair of turf and wild flowers, then among shrubberies of whin, broom, and rhododendrons, and lastly, in what at one time must have been the garden though the surrounding wall was broken in several places, through grass as tall as Africa.

Papa, his face under the Panama flushed with wine and sun, led the way, shouting encouragements and brandishing his arms, as if to chase off hostile natives or ferocious animals. Behind him nine-year-old Jeanie pretended to be frightened, though if any fabulous beast had been encountered she would have greeted it with the least fear and incredulity: she doted on all animals, even the ugliest creepy-crawly. Her twin Effie was as usual matter-of-fact and kept crying why were they all so excited, it was just an abandoned old house. Rowena, aged seven, always had to have a secret: now it was a small shiny green bug held in her fist. Rebecca who could see only grass, held on to Diana's skirt. Diana at eleven was the oldest. She was also the only one dark-haired, all the others being fair, especially Rowena, the beauty of the family. Diana had long ago appointed herself its guardian, looking after not only her sisters but her parents too. She kept turning to make sure her mother was following.
Oblivious of sticky-willies in her hair and wine stains on her white dress and butterflies dancing round her head, Mama was singing. She loved her family and would have given her life for them but often, in their midst, she was absent. They had once asked her where she went. To elfland looking for your little brother, she had answered. They had been, with reservations, satisfied for the time being anyway. Elfland, which didn't exist, was as good a place to look for their little brother who didn't exist either, at any rate not yet.

It was July, about three in the afternoon, hot and sunny, ideal for blood-sucking clegs and pestiferous flies. The air was heavy with familiar scents: meadowsweet, mint, and honeysuckle. There were others, ambrosial and elusive, not identified then or afterwards.

The picnic basket had contained two bottles of red wine. Behind their backs in the hotel Papa had slipped in the second one, thus breaking the agreement. To prevent him from drinking too much and falling asleep Mama had taken more than she could manage without becoming light-headed, and the girls had demanded their share. As a result they were all reckless and rushed in through the open door, scaring sheep which had been lying on the floor. It was then that Rebecca had slipped on the cow dung and Papa, shouting ‘Damn', put his foot through a rotten floorboard and grazed his ankle for he was wearing no socks and his khaki shorts, though unfashionably long, were nonetheless no protection for his pale thin legs, as the clegs had found out: there was already blood where he had been bitten. Clegs, his daughters had decided, must like wine, for they bit Papa more than anyone else.

All the windows on the ground-floor rooms were broken. What glass remained was black with dust and cobwebs and dead flies. Ceilings had fallen and most of the plaster had come off the walls.

‘Nobody's lived here for ages,' whispered Jeanie.

She and Effie ventured through the house to the back door or rather to the opening there, for the door itself had
disappeared. There was a large courtyard overgrown with brambles and briers, to which stuck tufts of wool. ‘Like messages left by somebody,' whispered Jeanie. Beyond lay a wood of elm, beech, and ash, now silent in the sunshine except for the fervent moaning of doves. The twins smiled at each other. Here was a place of many enchantments.

Rebecca's knickers had to be taken off, they were making her uncomfortable. Diana helped her. Mama was still in a dwam. She looked lost and lovely.

Rowena opened her hand. The little green bug did not move. She frowned. It had no business to be dead. She had not squeezed it hard. She blew on it, in vain. She pretended to be overcome with grief: tears came into her eyes. Inwardly she was smiling.

Papa was testing the staircase. But for some loose or mouldy boards it was still usable, with care. It had been solidly built in the beginning, as indeed had the whole house. The walls were four feet thick.

‘Why don't we buy it, Papa?' asked Effie.

Diana was also the family's puncturer of wild ideas, its reducer of things to normal size. ‘It's falling to pieces,' she said.

‘But Papa's an architect,' said Jeanie. ‘Well, he used to be, anyway. He could get it repaired. Couldn't he, Mama?'

Mama then came back, laughing happily and kissing them all at random. Heedless of damage to her dress she sat on a rusty can that had once contained sheep dip. ‘Your Papa could repair the Acropolis in Athens if he set his mind to it.'

That was the trouble, they all knew. Papa never put his mind to anything for long. He had many glittering ideas that he ran after briefly as they did soap bubbles.

‘It would cost a fortune,' said Diana.

‘Well, we've got a fortune,' pointed out Effie.

Yes, and Diana sometimes wished they hadn't. She thought she preferred the old hard-up but settled and sensible life in Edinburgh, where Papa had gone to his office every day and
the girls, except Rebecca, had attended St Mabel's School which they had liked except for the uniform of silly hat, itchy grey stockings, and navy-blue knickers. Since then they had wandered about the Highlands like rich gypsies, living not in caravans and tents, which might have been fun, but in hotels and freezing furnished rented mansions, seeking a permanent home where Papa would be inspired to proceed with his book on the characters in Sir Walter Scott's novels. He had got stuck after only eighteen pages.

An uncle in Canada had died and left him nearly three hundred thousand pounds.

‘I don't think you should venture upstairs, my love,' called Mama. ‘It might not be safe.'