Fergus Lamont Page 13

  Now she was telling, with grim seriousness, how a few days ago one of her favourite hunters had come a cropper jumping a drystone dyke. Luckily he had broken no leg, but he had badly bruised his genitals. They had had to be rubbed with a mixture of castor oil and egg yoke. The treatment seemed to have been efficacious, for he was beginning to take an interest in fillies again.

  From the way Archie nodded and smiled, she might have been talking about the arranging of flowers.

  I realised how foolish and rash I had been in thinking that I had the hang of landed gentry ways and could possibly imitate them. I had never suspected that their women worshipped horses and had hard behinds. Other surprises, even more disconcerting, might be in store for me.

  In nearby fields white-faced ewes bleated.

  Since that stuffy afternoon in Limpy’s classroom ten years ago, the ghost of Donald of Sutherland had troubled my imagination. Now, through the sheep, it spoke, to rebuke me for associating with the kind of people who had betrayed him so cynically, and to warn me that such association would blur my poet’s vision and numb my poet’s conscience.

  For a minute or two I was minded to order Lady Grizel to stop the trap. I would throw down my bag, and leap down after it. I would bid them goodbye, without bitterness. Then I would walk until I found some shepherd’s cottage. There I would be given a cup of tea and a bannock. If he and his wife showed me too much respect I would gently reprove them. I was on their side, I would tell them, on the side of the poor and humble, and against the rich and powerful. He would take me in his cart to the nearest station. I would catch the first train to Glasgow, and then one to Gantock, where I would spend my leave among my own folk.

  Of course I had no intention of making any disastrously premature return to Gantock. So I listened to Lady Grizel, with a few haw-haws of appreciation.

  About half an hour later, we passed through large ornate iron gates, sped up an avenue lined by magnificent trees, and came in sight of the house itself, larger and more gracious than a church, with a vast lawn in front.

  At long last I had, symbolically speaking, come home.

  I held my own during that short stay at Gilbertfield Castle, even with Lady Grizel.

  Her parents’ curiosity was after all easily assuaged. They had, excessively, that sure sign of high breeding, an aversion to showing anyone a second’s more attention than they thought he deserved.

  Lord Gilbertfield often disappeared like a mole to pursue some arcane activity. Archie said it was to read, but I never saw him (or anyone else for that matter, except a maid dusting) in the library, where the walls, from floor to lofty ceiling, were lined with thousands of books, all bound in leather.

  Lady Gilbertfield spent most of the time pretending she wasn’t worried about Archie, her youngest and her darling; but there were moments when there appeared on her powdered face an aristocratic version of the sorrowful apprehension that Smout’s mother had shown in Gantock station.

  Archie took me on a tour of the house. Amidst its magnificence and splendour I was encouraged to see, in a portrait of an eighteenth-century Dungavel lady, painted by Raeburn, a strong resemblance to Mrs Blanie, Jim’s mother. She wore a dress of shimmering white satin and showed more of her bosom than Mrs Blanie would have thought decent, but she had the same flushed, heavy face.

  Because it was known I liked poetry, I had been given a bedroom once slept in by Sir Walter Scott. A portrait of him hung in it. I studied this for some time, for he was a Scotsman who had done with success what it was my ambition to do: that was, write about common people and assort with nobility. There were times when I saw on his face the sly smirk of the lawyer who had toadied to the Prince Regent and the then Earl of Gilbertfield; at other times I saw the wise, courageous smile of the creator of Dugald Dalgetty, and the author of ‘Proud Maisie’. I had the advantage over him of having aristocratic blood in my veins; he, perhaps, had the advantage over me of superior talent.

  I did not look forward to the ride up Spango. But it was no use praying for rain: Archie had said Grizel would go even in a tempest. The cook had been told to have sandwiches ready, the butler to put out bottles of wine, and the stablemen to have the horses at the door at nine o’clock.

  Grizel was alone in the breakfast room when I went there about half-past eight. She was eating a smoked haddock and studying a map.

  ‘Morning,’ she said, with her mouth full. She did not bother to look up.

  Bessie Lamont would have called her rude. But then Bessie did not know that for aristocrats the worst vulgarity was to invade people’s privacy by being needlessly polite to them.

  I helped myself to scrambled eggs.

  ‘Windy,’ I remarked.

  When I had stuck my head out of the front door a gale was blowing from the east, with ice in it. But one trick of landed gentry I had learned and could do as well as they was to understate excessively.

  ‘Archie’s cried off,’ she said. ‘Got a cold.’

  Again Bessie would have been shocked. She would have found it necessary, in the interests of truth and self-respect, to point out that last night, before going to bed, Archie had shown no sign of a cold. Thus she would have demonstrated her honesty, but also, in Grizel’s eyes, her commonness.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ I murmured.

  ‘No need. He wasn’t keen.’

  ‘Doesn’t care much for horses, does he?’

  ‘Never has liked them.’

  I remembered the Co-operative galas in Gantock, when children were carried to some picnic spot in lorries drawn by big handsome Clydesdales with tails and manes pleated with coloured ribbons. I had liked horses then.

  ‘Going to change?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, no.’ I had decided not to wear the breeches provided for me. It was not likely I would impress her as a horseman; therefore I would have to compensate with some dashing dottiness.

  Her brows went up, but she said nothing.

  I had already been introduced to the horse I was to ride. Grizel had pointed out that it was a gelding. I didn’t think of course that she had herself wielded the knife or scissors or whatever the castratory instrument was, but I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear she’d watched it being done. From a remark she had dropped, I had gathered that she’d supervised at least one equine copulation.

  The stableboy holding my horse found it easy to keep his face straight. Serving aristocrats, he had seen too much odd behaviour to find it funny.

  At first we cantered across green fields among lambs and ewes. Almost immediately, I became aware that the warning Grizel had given me, with that lifting of her brows, was justified. I ought at least to have worn thick underpants. Even for a more practised horseman than I, it would have been difficult to appear at ease, while all the time trying to prevent skin being rubbed off my backside or, worse, my scrotum. Watching Grizel bouncing up and down freely, I reflected that women, by their shape, were more fitted for riding.

  She leapt a low dyke. Low though it was, I cast my eye desperately along its length to see if there was a lower part still or even a gap. There was none. My horse seemed to have no apprehensions—was this because it had nothing left to lose?—and jumped over with ease. I was the one to suffer. The skinning had begun.

  Soon we took to the hills. Out of remote shepherds’ cottages children appeared. I waved to them, like Cortes to skulking Aztecs. They rushed back into their stone huts.

  After an hour, still some way from the top, we stopped, to rest the horses, as Grizel said. As soon as she dismounted she climbed over a wall into a wood. I wondered if ‘resting the horses’ was an aristocratic euphemism, equivalent to the plebeian ‘pouring the tatties’. She soon came back with twigs clinging to her, and sat beside me. From there we had a fine view of the castle amongst its trees far below.

  ‘Can’t see Archie as a soldier,’ she said.

  ‘Why d’you say that?’

  ‘He says he’s not going to kill anyone.’

  ‘Not
all soldiers kill, you know. Wouldn’t be anybody left on either side if they did.’

  ‘He used to lock himself in his room if there was a deer shoot on.’

  ‘Takes his Christianity seriously.’

  ‘Rot. Christians don’t mind killing. We had a bishop once staying with us who’d shoot anything.’

  ‘I expect you’re right.’

  ‘The Germans are Christians, aren’t they?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘They’ve got lots of churches and cathedrals. I’ve seen them.’

  ‘Perhaps it doesn’t follow.’

  ‘Archie says his duty is to be killed, not to kill. That’s rot.’

  ‘Yes, that’s rot.’

  Probably it was Christian rot, but I didn’t care to say so.

  ‘Shouldn’t we be pushing on?’

  ‘If you wish.’

  All the rest of the way up to the summit cairn, we did not speak. The horses often snorted, no doubt in complaint.

  The wind whistled round the cairn. The tips of Grizel’s ears were blue. I felt as if I had been making love to a demented woman with long sharp nails.

  I remembered another cairn, on top of Stony Hill, overlooking Gantock. I had climbed there once, with Meg. She had scraped both our initials on one of the stones. I had kissed her, not because I wanted to but because it was what a poet ought to do. ‘What a dutiful kiss, Fergus,’ she had said, laughing.

  If I kissed Grizel, how would she describe it? Probably as stupid.

  ‘We’ll eat somewhere below,’ she said. ‘Too cold up here.’

  We found a sheltered spot beside a stream. There was grass for the horses. I busied myself getting out the food and pulling the cork. Because of the pain of my skinned scrotum I could not help walking with my legs more apart than usual.

  ‘I warned you,’ she said.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘I always carry a first-aid box.’

  ‘I’m all right, thank you.’

  ‘I saw you grimace.’

  ‘The cork was jolly hard to pull.’

  ‘Before that. You’ve taken skin off. See, you moved and you winced.’

  ‘Sat on a thorn.’

  ‘Silly suffering all the way down again. Not fair to your horse, whatever else. I warned you, what a kilt does.’

  ‘Good wine, this.’

  ‘Are you prudish?’

  ‘Modest, shall we say?’

  ‘I shall insist, you know.’

  She was after me all right, but in what conceivable role? Hardly as a first-aid enthusiast looking for practice. Nor as a girl claiming a sweetheart. Perhaps as a gentlewoman scenting an impostor? How, in that case, to react, so as to have her decide I was genuine? Would Charlie Brack, baronet’s son, simply turn his back, lift his kilt, and let her minister? Possibly. But what if the nature of his hurt was such that he would have to face her while she was tending it? In short, how did an aristocratic young man comport himself when an aristocratic young woman was applying salve to his skinned scrotum? I just did not know. This was a contingency that had never occurred to Major Holmes.

  It was of course possible that she was teasing me, not as an aristocrat at all, but as a mischievous young woman confronted by a young man whose prudishness amused her.

  I was on the point of saying, as nonchalantly as I could, ‘Go ahead’, when she got to her feet and said it was time to start for home.

  That evening Archie came into my room before dinner.

  ‘Grizel says you let her down, Fergus. What happened?’

  ‘We rode up to the cairn and down again; that’s all.’

  ‘She’s a rum one.’

  ‘You wouldn’t say then that she’s typical?’

  ‘Typical of what?’

  ‘Of a gentlewoman of 21.’

  ‘Good Lord, no. She’s too fond of horses, for one thing.’

  ‘Are not all gentlewomen fond of horses?’

  ‘She overdoes it. She’s had a passion for them since she was five.’

  ‘For one thing, you said. Is there another?’

  ‘Dash it, Fergus, you shouldn’t be quizzing a fellow about his own sister.’

  ‘I’d like to know in what way I disappointed her. I jumped every fence she did.’

  ‘She said she’d seen more stylish horsemen, but you did all right, so far as that went.’

  ‘Did she say in what respect I did not do all right?’

  ‘You see, she puts people to tests, without letting them know.’

  ‘What sort of tests?’

  ‘It depends on what she thinks their weaknesses are. She used to drop beetles on me, to see if I was too squeamish to kill them. What did she drop on you, Fergus?’

  Young women, it seemed, whether aristocratic or bourgeois or plebeian, were illogical, perverse, mischievous, and unfair. Meg Jeffries had often been offended when I had expected her to be pleased, and she had found funny ideas I had put forward in all seriousness. Fiona Cargill, the lawyer’s daughter, and Margaret Kirkhope, the grocer’s, and other middle-class girls in the Auld Kirk bible-class had giggled in delight that I was the grandson of an earl; yet when I had assumed an air of superiority appropriate to such lineage, they had been huffed.

  It seemed to me that by refusing to let her tend my skinned scrotum I had passed Lady Grizel’s test. If I had assented she would have been shamed. Why then had she said I had let her down?

  It was another reason for being glad of the war. In France I might be killed or maimed or blinded or castrated, but at any rate I would be safe from female perversity.

  THREE

  During the Great War I was an ambitious and enthusiastic officer. That I won the mc did not necessarily mean that I was outstandingly brave or exceptionally competent. In situations that were nearly always muddled and confused, competence in the usual sense of the term could hardly exist. More often than not, it took the inspired form, in a junior officer, of leading his men to where they were not meant to go but where they were comparatively safe, and not to the right place where they would all have been killed, himself included.

  As for bravery, this too could hardly exist, as a conspicuous feature, in situations where ordinary men, clerks, teachers, barmen, roadsweepers, etc, went rushing heroically across acres of mud with shells exploding about them, to reach, first of all, thickets of barbed wire, and then, if that was passed without crippling hurt, trenches, where the enemy, similarly clerks, teachers, barmen, roadsweepers, etc, were waiting to massacre them with machine guns, grenades, rifles, and bayonets. Heroes were ten a penny then. No wonder it was said, with cheerful cynicism, that those who were given medals were like raffle-winners: lucky indeed, since in the hat or helmet were so many names.

  Though I admired this wholesale courage, I found it personally a disadvantage, in that it made opportunities to excel not easy to come by. The war would be pointless if I could not make use of it to distinguish myself, so that the Corses, when I finally made my approaches to them, would be pleased and proud to welcome me. Where heroism was commonplace, distinction was difficult.

  Another complication was that, as an officer and a gentleman, I had to be careful not to do anything ostentatious, no matter how valorous it might be. In that case it would not only win no medal, it would be condemned as vulgar and vain-glorious. Moreover, the opportunity had to arise of itself: to do anything purposeful to bring it about would be to run the risk of appearing ill-bred. Gentlemanly heroes had not only to be modest, they had to be seen to be modest. Sometimes privates and NCOS slaughtered Boches with revengeful gusto, if their own mates had just been killed, but officers, gentlemen at all times, had to show the required refinement, even when thrusting a bayonet into an enemy’s belly.

  I had one important advantage.

  In peace-time, where death comes from cancer or thrombosis or cirrhosis, no young man ever thinks he is going to die; but in war, where death’s agents are swifter and more impatient, this confidence, in the majority of cases, is
greatly weakened. Not, however, in mine.

  I never thought I would be killed. This conviction did not spring from faith in the God of the Auld Kirk of Gantock: I saw too many men killed with bibles in their pockets and crucifixes round their necks. Nor did it come from the equally superstitious belief in the protective qualities of a photograph of someone I loved. Many men before a battle looked at such photographs. Afterwards they were counted among the dead.

  The reason for my confidence was that I felt I had a greatness in me, too valuable to be lost. I had no idea what supernatural power was interested in preserving me, but all the time, whether in safe billet behind the lines or on a night raid or going over the top, I was sustained by that strong assurance of deserved immunity.

  Therefore for me to be buoyant, in the midst of shells, whiz-bangs, mines, bullets, grenades, poison gas, mud, barbed wire, gangrene, trench-foot, lice, rat-bite, blistered feet, and pneumonia, was easy enough. When the danger was greatest the voice within reassuring me was at its most convincing. Men with contrary intimations, who felt that their luck had run out and the next attack would be their last, came to look on me with envy. It was whispered I was worth keeping close to; but men were shot dead with their arms round my neck.

  The men in my company called me anointed. They intended sarcasm and achieved truth.

  The opportunity I had been waiting for for months came at last.

  I was in the front trench with my platoon. At any moment a whistle would blow, the signal for us to clamber up over the sandbags and charge the enemy trenches.

  The colonel came along, patting backs and muttering hoarse, whiskied encouragement. He had cotton-wool in his ears, for the racket of our artillery barrage was tremendous.

  He had just reached me and had his hand on my arm when we heard a peculiar whoosing sound, not so loud as the roaring of the big guns, but for us a more intimate and terrifying noise, since it was made by a large round black bomb with fizzing fuse, lobbed, God knew how, into our midst by the ingenious enemy, smashing the helmets and the heads of the two unfortunate soldiers on whom it landed.