Poverty Castle (26 page)

‘It's not money. I'm sorry. I can't explain. Goodbye.'

She hung up, with difficulty. All her strength had left her. She had pulled the trigger.

She was dead and had to bring herself to life again. It would be a painful resurrection and God knew what the risen Peggy Gilchrist would be like. Human company would be needed, but not that of people who knew her or rather had known her.

In a quiet side-street there was a cafe which did not have a juke-box and therefore was not patronised by her contemporaries. She went there. It was empty save for an elderly couple who paid her no heed. She ordered coffee and took it to a table in a corner. It was a dull little place with chocolatecoloured walls and tinny chairs and tables painted dark green. The proprietor, an Italian, kept glancing at her in puzzlement. Girls of her age seldom came in and when they did they had boyfriends with them.

This, thought Peggy, is the kind of place that mediums with mundane minds picture the afterworld to be. She imagined such a medium in the Spiritualist hall in Tobago Street saying to Peggy's mother who sometimes went there (Peggy had once
accompanied her for fun) hoping to receive a message from her mother: ‘You have a loved one who has just passed on. She was rather fond of being on her own, wasn't she? Well, you'll be pleased to know that she's got her own little corner now and is content. She says you've not to worry about her. She understands now lots of things that weren't clear to her before.'

So do I, said Peggy, to herself.

She understood for instance what Effie had meant by saying: ‘We think, well I do anyway, that you would do the Sempills a lot of good.' Diana had once said: ‘My sister Effie thinks she's a revolutionary. She's very naive.' But surely it was Diana herself, with her feudalistic views, who was naive. Effie had seen what Diana never could have: that their good fortune in always having plenty of money and living in a fine big house in a beautiful place might have caused them to become selfsufficient and in some respects false, needing someone from outside, someone poor whose home was in a run-down housing scheme close to a derelict steelwork, someone like Peggy, to enable them to see their self-sufficiency and falseness, so that they could, before too late, remedy it.

The old couple got up, with an effort, he helping her and went out slowly into the sunshine and disappeared.

For a few seconds Peggy almost believed her pretence. There was about the old man and woman an uncomplaining resignation that mediums would have recognised. It was as if they were saying to each other, telepathically, for ghosts had powers not given to the living: ‘Well, whatever it was we believed in or hoped for this is what we have got and we shall have to put up with it because it's going to last for eternity; at least we're together.'

Yes, she understood better now.

She had told Effie that she couldn't explain why she didn't want to visit Poverty Castle, and it was true, she hadn't had the courage to delve deep enough to find the explanation. She had found it now. She had been afraid of being subverted. There was a part of her only too ready to give in and go over
to the enemy. The Sempills would have made her defection too easy and pleasant.

She realised now how unfair she had been, not to herself but to them.

That telephone call had been cowardly and rude. She ought to make another, if only to apologise.

She got up and went out. Behind the counter, in his apron, the Guardian Angel, picking his nose, wished her goodnight.

There was a telephone box outside the police station. Surely it had not been wrecked. She might not have enough coins left. The call would have to be very short.

There was someone telephoning. Peggy waited, patiently and unobtrusively.

Soon the woman came out, smiling. She was happier than she had been before she telephoned. It could be seen in the way she walked. Some weight had been taken off her mind.

It was a different voice this time, younger and less intense. ‘Kilcalmonell 288. The Sempills' house. Who is calling, please?'

‘Peggy. Peggy Gilchrist. Are you Rowena?'

‘No, I'm Rebecca. Didn't you call earlier? Effie said you did.'

‘Yes. Will you tell her I've changed my mind. I'd like to come.'

‘Good! Just a minute and I'll get her.'

What if Effie was at the bottom of the garden? What if the three minutes expired before she came? Peggy had no more suitable coins left. She had spent them on the coffee. Her connection with the Sempills might be ended not because she or they had broken it off but because she didn't have a tenpenny piece. It would be like something in a Hardy novel.

Then she heard Effie, panting. ‘Rebecca tells me you've changed your mind. That's marvellous. When can you come?'

‘It would have to be this weekend. I start work a week on Monday.'

Was there on Effie's part a momentary hesitation? Her voice was as hospitable as ever. ‘That's fine. Can you make it Friday?
A train will take you to Gourock where you catch the Dunoon ferry. We'll meet you on the pier. Do you think you can manage the five past six ferry?'

‘Yes, I think so.'

Then they were cut off. Still, all that needed to be said had been said.

P
EGGY
'
S MOTHER
was convinced – ‘naething will mak me think different' – that she had changed her mind out of spite and it was that same spite which caused her to refuse offers to buy her a new outfit, especially of underclothes. ‘If you don't mind shaming yourself Ah mind you shaming me.'

‘As long as what I've got is clean, Mum.'

‘I should hope what you wear's always clean, Peggy Gilchrist.'

Peggy's father gave her a wink and three pound notes.

Sonia brought along the oatmeal costume, hat, and highheeled shoes. ‘At least try them on, Peggy.'

To humour her Peggy did. Sonia had to laugh.

‘We're no used to seeing you dressed up, Peggy. You'll hae to learn to be for when you become a teacher, though, mind you, nooadays teachers dress like workmen.'

‘It's an adventure, Sonia. How can anybody have an adventure on high heels?'

‘Was it an adventure for Miss Sempill when she visited us?' asked Sonia, shrewdly. ‘Look how beautiful she was dressed.'

‘She didn't have high heels, though.'

‘Ah don't want to hurt your feelings, Peggy, but if Ah speak frankly it's for your ain good. You're supposed to hae brains and yet you cannae see that anybody that's not been lucky enough to be born wi' a good appearance has to make up for it by claes and make-up. Look at you, no' even lipstick.' Sonia was almost tearful.

Peggy liked her: she had a kind heart. If the Sempills were as kind, they would do.

‘Whit present are you taking them, Peggy?'

‘Should I take them a present?'

‘Shairly you ken it's bad manners not to. Ah suggest a bunch of roses.'

‘They'll have lots of roses in their garden.'

‘You ken, Peggy, a' thae books you read learn you nothing. It's no' the present itself, it's the thocht that counts.'

Peggy suspected that upper-class people might regard the bringing of presents as vulgar.

‘A box of chocolates wad dae,' said Sonia. ‘You're always safe wi' a box of chocolates. But no' too big a one. That wad be bad taste.'

In the station, waiting for her train, Peggy looked at the boxes of chocolates on sale. She did not intend to buy one. They were to remind her where her loyalties lay, with her parents and Sonia, not with the Sempills.

In the train she found herself beside a man about her father's age, reading the
Daily Record
and taking his time to move from Page Three. Her mother tried to censor that page in her father's copy, ‘accidentally' tearing it or mislaying it or spilling jam on it or using it prematurely to wrap tea leaves in. The joke was that her father, like many working-class socialists, was at heart a puritan.

She sighed, happily. Remembered with affection and humour, her parents, like Sonia, would help her to hold her own with the Sempills . . .

She had the
Conquest of Mexico
in her knapsack but she preferred just to look out of the window, to make sure she did not miss Dumbarton Rock.

This was not the first time she had travelled to Dunoon by train and ferry. Last year she had gone on a CND pilgrimage to the Holy Loch. Unlike today it had been pouring with rain. Her sharpest memory wasn't of the silent vigil with the massed police impatient to make arrests, but of an incident in a tearoom in Dunoon afterwards. An elderly woman appeared and furiously harangued the proprietor for allowing ‘such scum' into his premises. She hoped he would have the place fumigated.
When she had gone one of the demonstrators, a young woman with a child in her arms, both of them sodden, had asked what was the matter with the old woman. His reply had been a shrug of his shoulders. Peggy had thought that it wouldn't be with a bang or whimper that the world would end but a shrug. Thus everyone disowned responsibility.

Peggy had often wondered what could have caused the old woman's malevolence. Had she been ill and in pain? Had she been too poor to afford the sausages and chips that the ‘scum' were eating? Had her husband or brother been killed in the last war? Even so, why that vicious hatred of people who were trying to prevent another war in which countless millions would die? It was that hatred which one day would cause the missiles to be launched.

But she had not come this time as a dutiful act but for an adventure, to refresh her spirit and perhaps make discoveries. She took her cue from a little girl of three or four, with a red ribbon in her hair, whom she saw in the queue to board the ferry. Everything was wonderful to her: the
Jupiter
with the flat red funnels, the yellow-eyed gulls perched on masts, and the sea beyond. She said nothing but contained her rapture. Her mother, burdened with a baby, was not able to give her much attention, but she did not mind.

For the first time in her life Peggy thought that she might have a little girl of her own one day.

It was joy out of all proportion to the act to take the little girl's hand and help her along the gangway.

As a discoverer should, Peggy went up on to the top deck, heedless of the strong cool breeze, and stood as near the bow as she could get.

That must be the Cloch Lighthouse. Were those mountains in the distance the Isle of Arran? And was that great lump on the horizon further off still Ailsa Craig? These were strange seas. Like Cortes and his men she did not know what awaited her on land.

As the ferry approached Dunoon she found a place, still on
the top deck, from where she could watch people on the pier without being seen by them. Loudspeakers bellowed ‘Scotland the Brave', played by a pipe band.

There was Diana, accompanied by the twins and also by a tall young man in white flannels and striped blazer. He must be Edwin. Even at that range his nose was seen to be big.

The four of them were being gazed at with fascination. Edwin would be speaking that loud posh upper-class English accent that Scots of the lower orders found impressive but comic; also his blazer was an oddity; but it was really his companions who were drawing the mesmerised stares. As always Diana was ladylike and elegant, in a blue dress with a white scarf over her hair. Effie and Jeanie were tall too, with lovely long fair hair: one wore red cords, the other yellow. But it was above all their selfassurance that attracted the beholders, themselves beset with all the usual worries and doubts. The Sempill girls weren't aware of it themselves. It was natural to them. It would never become arrogance.

Peggy had instructed herself how she should behave as a guest. Though grateful for the hospitality she should treat her hosts as equals. Now she was afraid she would not be able to do it. An inbred servility towards wealth and rank would prevent her. In theory she could give reasons why she should not humble herself even to the Queen, but in practice, confronted by the Sempills and Edwin, she might find herself mumbling and hanging her head.

She had come to make discoveries. Here she was making one about herself that dismayed her.

Effie and Jeanie had come forward to have a closer look at the passengers disembarking. On their handsome faces was eagerness to welcome her but also alarm that she might not have come after all.

She hurried down the stairs and was the last to come off.

They were at the foot of the gangway to greet her. They towered over her. Jeanie shook her hand but Effie kissed her on the cheek. Diana and Edwin came forward. Diana patted
her shoulder. Edwin gave her a little bow and a big grin.

As alert as a cat in a strange situation Peggy noticed people wondering what the relationship could be between these tall well-dressed, well-spoken members of the upper class and the small scruffy girl in the cheap clothes. Perhaps they were thinking that she had come to be their servant. But a servant wouldn't have had her knapsack carried for her, nor would she have been led to the big blue car and given the place of honour beside the driver.

Other motorists might have been anxious about parking their car in such a congested place, with cars coming off and on the ferry, but not the Sempills. If they had been challenged they would have been polite but unconcerned. They would never have cringed with embarrassment.

Money gave courage, thought Peggy. But there was Edwin with more money than they, ready to blush and look sheepish.

Effie was to drive as far as Lochgilphead where Jeanie would take over. Evidently they did not think much of Edwin as a driver. He wasn't huffed or crestfallen. He sat contentedly in the back, holding Diana's hand.

‘We'll go by the high road,' said Effie, as they set off. ‘It's quicker.'

It would also mean their avoiding the Holy Loch and the American nuclear submarines. Peggy remembered that Effie was a revolutionary, at least according to Diana.