Poverty Castle (20 page)

‘I keep calling your little brother Roderick, though we haven't yet discussed his name. What do you think? Is there a Roderick in Sir Walter, my love?'

Papa gravely replied there was.

‘Didn't you once say, Mama, that if you have a boy you would call him Nigel?' asked Effie.

‘Nigel is no longer popular among the Sempills,' said Jeanie.

‘What do you think, Papa?' asked Rebecca. ‘What name would you like?'

‘Nigel. Guy. Quentin. Roderick. Peveril. Any one of those would suit.'

‘Not Peveril, my dear,' cried Mama.

‘Let's try them out,' said Effie. ‘Nigel Sempill.'

‘Guy Sempill,' said Jeanie.

‘Quentin Sempill,' said Rebecca.

‘Peveril Sempill,' said Diana.

‘Roderick Sempill,' said Papa.

They were all agreed that Roderick Sempill sounded best.

‘Of course his middle name must be Edward,' cried Mama.

After dinner Papa proposed that they should have one of their old Sir Walter Scott nights. The girls would rather have listened to some new Bob Dylan records but agreed that they ought to give Papa his wish. So, after clearing away and washing up, they went to the living-room where they found that Papa had brought the white plaster bust of Sir Walter from his study and placed it in the middle of the room on a pedestal, where it was in danger of being knocked over by Rab, the collie who had taken Bruce's place. He was always pretending that he was chasing sheep, and Sir Walter's white head did have a sheep-like look about it, said Effie, who then had to kiss Papa to atone for the blasphemy. Rab was ordered to lie in a corner. Wallace was stretched out in front of the fire, and Macho the big orange tom-cat, dozed on a window ledge, paying as little attention to the hubbub within as to the splendid view outside, of the sea and the bens of Jura, tinted with evening sunshine.

Mama was first. With Jeanie accompanying her on the piano she sang the ballad
Jock o' Hazeldean
, with spirit and enjoyment, especially the last two triumphant lines:

At one point Diana noticed her mother clutch her side but it was so momentary that she would have missed it if she hadn't been watching intently.

The twins then recited
Lochinvar
, verse about, and the last verse together. Now and then they consulted the book, but this had always been permissible. Rowena though, when she began to enact the dramatic poem
Rosabelle
did it all from memory, and did it so well that the others were enthralled. When they were younger and living in Edinburgh Papa had taken them to Roslin Chapel, where they had seen:

though there had not been then any ‘wondrous blaze.'

Diana had always known that much of Scott's poetry was sad, indeed that was one of its attractions for Papa, but never before had she realised the tragic quality of that sadness so keenly as she did then listening to Rowena: ‘But the sea caves rung, And the wild winds sung' and watching Mama who, like the Maid of Neidpath, sometimes ‘grew an ashy pale'.

Rebecca sang
Bonnie Dundee
with everybody, including Wallace, joining in the chorus. They were all defying not the ‘Lords of Convention' or the ‘sour-featured Whigs' or the ‘cowls of Kilmarnock' but Fate that had had the impertinance to threaten the happiness and security of the Sempills.

Diana herself kept up that defiance. The twins asked for
Proud Maisie
but she read instead the
Pibroch of Donuil Dhu
, with its rousing summon to war:

It was not Clan Donuil but the Sempill family that she was exhorting. If they kept faith with one another they would prevail. Though she read it quietly her family recognised her purpose and when she finished were silent, until Mama cried, ‘Do you know, Diana, when I was a little girl of ten I knew that poem by heart?'

Papa's contribution was always kept to the last, because it was always much the longest, being a reading from one of the novels. This evening it was from the
Legend of Montrose
and
described Sir Dugald Dalgetty's adventures in Inverary Castle. He read it well, with the red rays of sunset, another ‘wondrous blaze', shining on him through the window.

As she listened Diana, who such a short time ago had been rallying them all to be hopeful, confident, and brave, suddenly was overwhelmed by a surge of foreboding. Mama was going to die. Diana felt like a character in a Scott poem, smitten by a tragic prophecy. Like proud Maisie indeed, except that it had been her own death that Maisie foresaw. Outwardly calm, with her hands still in her lap, Diana rebuked herself for being so foolish, she was Diana Sempill who had always been contemptuous of superstition, and yet that black knowledge covered her mind. Was it the effect of the wine? Or was it because she had been told about Mama's secret pain? Or was it a feeling that it had been decided, somewhere, that the Sempills had been lucky long enough? Whatever the reasons she sat in the room reddened by sunset, close to the others and yet remote from them. They were looking not only hopeful, confident, and brave, but happy too.

When they were all in bed except Papa, Diana went downstairs to his study. She had not yet had a private conversation with Mama, and now shrank from it.

Papa was drinking brandy, though he had promised Mama not to drink any more that night.

‘Well, have you come to castigate me?' he asked, gloomily.

She felt ashamed. He would not have said that to any of her sisters. She had always been the one who castigated. Bossyboots had wanted to set them right.

‘No, Papa. I just wanted to talk to you about Mama.'

‘What can a man do if his own body betrays him? Your mother calls it a miracle, not knowing just how miraculous. Look how grateful she is and yet I've as good as murdered her.'

Did he, wondered Diana, have the same premonition as herself?

‘Looked at objectively,' he said, ‘it could be seen as a comedy, an ironical comedy, with myself fate's buffoon. Like Sir Dugald.
Though his role, as a soldier of fortune, was so much more straightforward. What did you want to say to me about your mother?'

‘The twins told me a specialist is coming on Wednesday to see her.'

‘A quack, like the rest of them, in spite of the letters after his name. Doctors today laugh at the ignorance of their colleagues a hundred years ago. Cannot you hear the doctors of a hundred years from now laughing at the ignorance of doctors today? One would not hold it against them if it wasn't for their arrogant assumption that they know it all when the truth is that they know damned little.'

It was not like him to be so captious.

‘If this was America I could sue for ten million dollars. Except that I daren't say a word because it would let your mother know that I have been deceiving her for years. Be sure your sins will find you out. Not that she would reproach me. Has she not got at long last what she has always wanted?'

He's not talking to me, thought Diana, he's talking to himself, he's got into a habit of talking to himself, because we've all got out of the habit of listening to him. We've lavished our love on Mama because we've felt that she needed it and he didn't. We've known about his unhappiness and loneliness and sense of failure but we've not tried very hard to console him. That's why he's drunk so much wine. We've been wrong and now it's too late to remedy it. He's out of our reach.

‘We're going into Tarbeg tomorrow morning to do some shopping, Papa.'

Those Saturday morning shopping trips to Tarbeg had always been great fun, for the girls and Mama at any rate. They had not realised that Papa might have felt left out. They had gone merrily in and out of shops, leaving him half the time on the pavement outside. Latterly, when the twins and Diana had learned to drive he had made excuses not to accompany them.

‘We'd like you to come, Papa. Mama's coming.'

‘Shouldn't she be staying at home and resting?'

The girls had discussed it. They had decided that the outing would do Mama good. They would see to it that she didn't over-exert herself. They hadn't bothered to consult Papa. That was another habit they had got out of.

‘We'll all crowd into the Daimler. Goodnight, Papa.'

‘Goodnight, Diana.'

She almost asked him to drink no more but managed to restrain herself. From now on she must be more humble.

T
HOUGH SOMEWHAT
red-eyed, Papa not only accompanied the expedition to Tarbeg but rather fussily took charge of it. Eating next to nothing himself he urged them to hurry with their breakfast. If they dilly-dallied all the strawberry tarts, doughnuts, fresh bread, and avocados would be sold out. He handed out money liberally. What they didn't spend they could give to Oxfam. He was the only one of the family who frequented that shop, where he liked to browse among the miscellany of curios and books (he had once come upon a Bible in Latin) while all around him the poor of the district, including tinkers, bought second-hand clothes and shoes for very low prices. Sometimes the girls sneaked in with contributions. The volunteer ladies, who knew who they were – everybody in Tarbeg did – always assured them that their father was a gentleman, as well mannered towards the smelliest old tinker wife as he would have been to the Queen.

They all crowded into the Daimler as they had done when younger and smaller, though Papa was concerned lest Mama be crushed and jostled. She cried happily that a woman in her condition was under many protections.

Rowena sat in front with Papa and Mama. The other four sat behind, with Rebecca on Effie's knees. She was to change to Jeanie's at Seal Rock.

Papa said he would take it easy, particularly where the road was bumpy. After all, on a bright May morning like this, with the hills and loch at their most splendid, who wanted to dash? When they did get going he drove so slowly that there was soon a honking procession behind, on the single-track road. Mama had to ask him to drive a bit faster.

‘What did Mama mean by saying she was under many protections?' whispered Rebecca into Effie's ear.

Effie, the prospective doctor, whispered her reply: ‘Well, you see, Rebecca, nature's chief concern is the continuation of the species. Therefore she makes sure foetuses are not easy to get rid of.'

Diana shook her head, deploring this conversation.

‘Women who wish they weren't pregnant,' went on Effie, ‘jump up and down, fall off ladders, take all sorts of things, make themselves as sick as dogs, all in vain. Babies have been born alive though their mothers were dead.'

‘For heaven's sake, Effie,' murmured Diana.

‘Yes, talk about something more cheerful,' said Jeanie.

‘Shall we stop at Old Kirstie's?' cried Papa.

‘Yes, Papa,' said Effie. ‘Did you know she's ninety-three next week?'

The Daimler stopped outside the small white cottage. Papa was a favourite of Old Kirstie's. When they were younger the girls had often been impatient with him for spending so much time talking to the half-blind, half-deaf old woman. Five minutes would have been long enough, they had thought. Sometimes he had stayed for half an hour. Since then, they had learned better the nature of kindness.

The girls last night had held a quick conference to decide whether or not Mama's pregnancy should be kept a family secret for a little while longer, at least until after the specialist's visit. They decided it should. Papa, they were sure, would talk about it to no one. Mama, though, might tell everyone she met in Tarbeg, whether she knew them well or not. So she had to be told about their decision and begged to agree with it. None of them, however, had volunteered. The twins had said Diana should do it because she was the oldest, but when they had seen how unhappy she was about it they had not pressed her. Rowena suggested they should all go together and speak to Mama, but this was rejected since it would look too much like a deputation. In the end Mama had not been told.

So, as they trooped into Old Kirstie's cottage the girls waited, with trepidation, for Mama to shriek the announcement. She would have to shriek it, at least twice, if Kirstie was to hear it.

The old woman was seated on a chair in front of the fire, with a tartan hap over her knees and a black shawl across her shoulders. With her hairy shrivelled face and hands spotted like toadstools she had once reminded the girls of a witch in a picture-book they had, although they had never really been afraid that she would turn them into puddocks. They had been more afraid of her big black cat with its yellow eyes.

Her daughter, red-cheeked and white-haired, was pleased at the fuss these gentry made of her mother, even though they did drop in at inconvenient times.

They stayed for ten minutes, which was quite a long time really, for Old Kirstie's deafness was very bad and everything had to be shouted, to the annoyance of her cat.

When they were on their way again Papa proposed that they buy the old woman a birthday present. He asked for suggestions.

‘Tobacco,' said Rowena, for they had once surprised Kirstie smoking a pipe.

‘Slippers,' said Effie, for she had noticed that Kirstie had been wearing what Granny Ruthven would have called ‘bauchles', meaning decrepit and shapeless footwear.

‘Sweets,' said Jeanie, for she had seen sweetie-papers at Kirstie's feet.

‘A plant,' said Rebecca, for the cottage had been like a garden with flowering plants.

‘A shawl,' said Diana, for she had noticed that the one Kirstie was wearing had a hole in it, ‘a really good shawl.'