Poverty Castle Read online

  Which would not amount to much really: for Sir Edwin, rich but thrifty, assuming that no one in his senses would want to pay a penny for a ruin, had offered only £3000.

  ‘Something else I should mention, Mr Sempill. Since Ardmore was built in the estate grounds the road giving it access to the public highway necessarily runs through those grounds. It is stated in the title deeds that the owner or occupier of Ardmore is legally entitled to the use of that road, without hindrance of any kind, for perpetuity.

  ‘I should hope so, seeing that it is the only way by which vehicles can approach the house. We ourselves approached it on foot, from the beach.’

  ‘In which case you were trespassing, but perhaps you did not know that.’

  ‘There were plenty of notices warning us to keep out.’

  Mr Patterson coughed. ‘Yes, so there would be. This road, Mr Sempill, was never anything but a cart track. Like the house itself it has been badly neglected. I understand it is now hardly recognisable as a road at all, being completely overgrown. To make it serviceable and keep it so – it is half a mile in length – would cost as much as the repair of the house itself. In fairness I must point that out.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Patterson. If I were to buy the property there would be no dispute. The road would be my responsibility.’

  The girls were more circumspect.

  ‘Shouldn’t you see it first, Papa?’ asked the eldest.

  ‘If we mended it would it be just for us or would the people from the Big House be allowed to use it too?’ That was asked by one of the twins.

  ‘If it’s on their ground they should pay their share,’ said the other twin.

  Litigation to settle that very point had been threatened in the past.

  ‘Whose road would it be, ours or theirs?’ asked the second youngest, the most beautiful child Mr Patterson had ever seen and, he had thought up to a moment ago, one of the shyest.

  ‘It would not matter, Rowena,’ said her father, ‘so long as there is amicable agreement.’

  There probably would be if it was left to Sir Edwin, who from all accounts was good-natured but was said to be under the dominance of his aristocratic wife. To be honest neither was well known locally.

  ‘I propose to put in an offer forthwith,’ said Mr Sempill, ‘through my solicitors, Chambers and Wishart of Edinburgh.’

  Mr Patterson had heard of them. They were prestigious.

  ‘In the meantime, Mr Patterson, we would like to rent a house in Kilcalmonell. Do you have one available?’

  ‘An excellent one, Bell Heather Cottage. Centrally situated. Handy for school, shop, church, and golf course. Four bedrooms, two public rooms. Large secluded garden.’

  ‘How many bathrooms?’ asked Mrs Sempill.

  ‘Only one, I’m afraid.’

  ‘We really need more than one.’

  He could appreciate that. He could have sworn that one of the twins winked at him.

  ‘It would only be for three months at most,’ said Mr Sempill, ‘and of course it depends on whether or not we acquire Ardmore.’

  ‘Why not have a look at it?’ suggested Mr Patterson.

  They went off with the keys.

  The telephone call from Mr Archibald Chambers came in the afternoon, offering £8000 for Ardmore. Disguising his gratification, Mr Patterson let it be understood, as one lawyer to another, that such an offer was not only acceptable but was accepted there and then: all that remained were formalities. Mr Chambers’ tone conveyed that in his view his client Mr Sempill, though he had plenty of it, was something of a simpleton where money was concerned. Mr Patterson who would have gladly accepted £6000 saw no reason to disagree.

  Afterwards, though, he wasn’t quite so sure. As an architect of even adequate competence Sempill could make a good job of restoring Ardmore. By spending, say, another twenty or thirty thousand on a house and road he could end up owning a property worth sixty thousand, if he ever wanted to sell. Mr Patterson hoped he would not. It was pleasant to think of the resurrected house on the machair ringing with the laughter of those charming little girls, and having as its chatelaine that sweet lovely woman.

  HE HAD never let anyone, not even Jessie, see his work in progress. Nor had she ever asked. She knew how touchy and anxious an author was when working on a new book. All the praise in the world wasn’t reassurance enough.

  This time, however, since it would be his last, she subdued her pride and asked how his ‘happy’ novel was getting on. Would he mind if she had a look at what he had done? If he had declined she would have been relieved, because in fairness to both of them she would have to say honestly what she thought, even if it disappointed and hurt him.

  He hesitated. He had only written five chapters, he said. A lot of revision had to be done.

  Thus discouraged she should have said, ‘All right. I’ll wait till it’s finished.’ Except she didn’t think it would ever be finished. But it was her duty as his wife to give him what support she could. If what he had written showed signs of enfeebled powers it would be up to her to try to dissuade him from going on with it, to the detriment of his health, physical and mental.

  ‘If you like,’ he said at last.

  She waited until he had gone out for his daily walk before reading it. She did not want him moping nearby. Like Harvey the cat when a mouse he had brought in had been taken from him.

  He was back in the house a good three hours before the subject was brought up. Out of pride he would not bring it up, and she perversely indicated that she had more urgent matters to attend to, such as the ironing and preparing the evening meal.

  At table they listened to the six o’clock news on the radio. As usual it was mainly about violence and death.

  ‘About your book, Donald,’ she said. ‘You’ve cheated. By making them so well-off. So it’s easy for them not to be envious or covetous, which I’ve heard you say are the greatest causes of bitterness and unhappiness. Rich too, through no effort of their own. Handed to them on a plate. I thought you objected to inherited fortunes. Why should a rich man’s children have so many advantages over a poor man’s?’

  He was silent.

  ‘I’m surprised you didn’t have them give it all away. That would have been more your kind of book.’

  ‘Perhaps I couldn’t.’

  ‘Do you mean nobody would have believed you?’

  ‘A novelist can’t make his characters do what’s untrue to their natures.’

  ‘Nonsense. They’re your characters, your creations. You can make them do anything you like.’

  ‘It’s not as simple as that.’

  ‘Another thing, you said you were going to do without irony. Isn’t calling the house Poverty Castle blatant irony?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘How’s it going to end? What’s going to happen to them?’

  ‘I don’t know that yet.’

  ‘You mean you haven’t decided?’

  ‘I mean I don’t know.’

  It wasn’t the first time she had felt impatient at his implying there was something mystical about the relationship between a novelist and his characters.

  ‘Usually you’ve got some nasty surprises in store for your characters, Donald, but you can’t have for the Sempills. You think they deserve happiness. They don’t know it but it’s you who are protecting them.’

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

  ‘So you would like to know what happens to them?’

  ‘I won’t lose any sleep over it. It’s real people I’m interested in, not phantoms. I know you have some kind of daft notion that the characters in your books have a kind of reality of their own. Where are they at the moment? If I was to visit Kilcalmonell, or Kilmory, would I find that house? Would I see the Sempills?’

  ‘In your imagination you might.’

  She was unwilling to admit it, yet the next thing she said was itself an admission. ‘That scene where Mrs
Sempill – lovely sweet woman indeed! – thanks her husband for making love to her. What nonsense! No woman with a scrap of self-respect ever thanked a man for that! Four times, my foot!’

  Six

  IT CONTINUED to be a fine summer, with long warm sunny days. Brown as tinkers, scratched, bitten, stung, and pricked, the girls explored everywhere, on bicycles or on foot. If an expedition was to a place too distant, Rebecca stayed at home, to keep her mother company and help her with the baking and house-work. Rowena too sometimes, but her reason was that she hated being tired and dirty. They became kenspeckle in the village. They made friends with Mr Campbell’s robins but were, alas, unable to teach them to share the crumbs with the chaffinches. They stood for hours on shoogly stones in the middle of Kilcalmonell River fishing for minnows while dragonflies darted past their heads. They gathered mushrooms on the golf course, heedless of roars of ‘Fore!’ They went to the harbour and watched the fishing boats unload their catch. They swam or paddled at their beach. Tutored by Mama they learned the names of trees and wild flowers. Smeared with oil of citronella they picnicked in midgy places, often in the estate grounds. Their hair was bleached almost to whiteness: except Diana’s, out of which often had to be combed sticky willies, tiny flies, twigs and even caterpillars, because in all their adventures she took it on herself to go first, even to the tops of trees, though she hated heights.

  Rowena went on practising acting. On one occasion she appalled them by expiring on the lawn at Bell Heather Cottage, her mouth stained with juice, feared at first to be that of the deadly nightshade but later discovered to be that of elderberries.

  They did not have much contact with the village children. This was not snobbiness. They just found their own company sufficient.

  To begin with their uninhibited inquisitiveness was regarded by the villagers as upper-class cheek, especially when they switched from their refined Edinburgh accent to the local bucolic lilt. But they proved so unquenchable and were so enthusiastically interested, even in matters quite unsuitable for small girls, such as the mating endeavours of Willie McPherson’s white bull, that they were soon accepted as valuable acquisitions to the life of the village, even if they did not go to Sunday School.

  They often went to watch the making of their road, especially when the tar was being spread. They came home with tar on their hands and even in their hair, and with their vocabulary increased. They talked to the workmen as equals.

  They visited Poverty Castle to give Papa and the building contractor advice. They advised Papa to have three bathrooms, one for himself and Mama and two for them. They had seen how he suffered in Bell Heather Cottage having to wait to get into the one bathroom there, because they were washing their own or their dolls’ hair or sitting on the loo reading.

  They asked to be consulted as to which rooms should be theirs. They caused Papa to sigh and the decorators to curse under their breath by the number of times they changed their minds as to the colour of paint and the kind of wallpaper they wanted.

  Sometimes the cost of it all worried them. What was the good of having a grand house and a private road, not to mention a private beach, if it meant that they would be too poor to keep animals or buy books? Mama reassured them, having herself been reassured by Papa. It seemed that, so long as you started off with a large enough fortune, such as Papa’s, and provided you invested or spent it wisely, you could not help becoming richer. For example, Poverty Castle would cost about forty thousand pounds but in the end would be worth more than sixty thousand. Papa was of course pleased about this increase but for some reason he was also a little ashamed. Mama begged the girls not to pester him for explanations.

  Effie proposed that they should go and take a close look at the Big House. As far as they knew there was no one there except a caretaker and his wife. Papa was consulted. He saw no objections as long as they didn’t peer through windows.

  One sunny afternoon they set off, cycling along the main road until they came to their own road that led to Poverty Castle. There was a new gate of wrought iron, to which Papa intended to have fixed a plate with the name of the house. Hiding their bicycles under bracken they took to the wood, stealthy as Red Indians. Coming upon some wood pigeon feathers Effie, Jeanie and Rebecca stuck them in their hair. Diana thought it was too childish for her. Rowena was wearing a white sunhat. It was to keep her face from becoming freckled.

  They came to a small green field laid out with red-and-white hurdles for horses to jump over. Whooping, Effie and Jeanie climbed the fence and began jumping. Crows in the tops of trees made a great clamour, alerting any gamekeeper within half a mile. Diana refused to ask her sisters to make less noise. They were doing no harm and were enjoying themselves. Even little Rebecca was pretending she was a pony.

  Rowena’s hat and dress were still remarkably clean. She perched on a hurdle and imagined she was their mother. She shook her head at the antics of Effie and Jeanie but smiled at Rebecca’s dainty and cautious jumps.

  Suddenly they heard dogs barking. More interested than alarmed, for they all liked dogs, the girls watched and waited. Down the road raced two big Labradors, one black and the other golden. Foaming at the mouth, they made for the trespassers.

  ‘Aren’t they beautiful?’ cried Jeanie, but her voice trembled a little.

  ‘Keep together,’ shouted Diana as she ran in front of her sisters.

  Rebecca was frightened. The dogs were so big and strong that they could easily send her sprawling.

  Rowena assumed the part of a heroine about to die bravely.

  Then they saw the lady. She was running after the dogs and yelling to them to come back. Two boys followed her.

  ‘Good dogs,’ cried Diana, shielding her sisters. ‘Good dogs.’

  Puzzled at finding that the insolent intruders were really harmless little girls the dogs snuffled and whimpered. Patted on the head they responded with slobbery kisses.

  Being so small Rebecca had to be protected.

  The lady arrived, red-faced and panting. She was not pleased to see that the trespassers, to save whom from being torn to pieces she had run harder than she had done for years, were patting and hugging their supposed savagers.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ she gasped.

  They weren’t shocked, because Papa sometimes said ‘Hell!’ but they did show on their faces amazement that a lady so well dressed and with such a posh accent (though her voice was a bit rough) should use such language. They guessed that she must be the lady from the Big House.

  ‘Our name is Sempill,’ said Diana, with dignity. ‘I’m Diana.’

  Her sisters gave their names.

  ‘I’m Effie.’

  ‘I’m Jeanie.’

  ‘I’m Rowena.’

  ‘I’m Rebecca.’

  ‘Good God! Where have you come from? What are you doing here? Don’t you know this is private property?’

  ‘We apologise,’ said Diana. ‘We did not know you were in residence. Our father has bought Poverty Castle. It’s not far from here.’ She turned and pointed. ‘He’s having it repaired.’

  ‘So that’s who you are!’ Lady Campton was not readily embarrassed but she did not find it easy to meet those five frank critical gazes. They were such damnably good-looking children, though four of them were dressed like ragamuffins. The fifth, in a white hat, was a real beauty. She could not help glancing at Edwin, big-nosed like herself, and Nigel, small-eyed like his father.

  The girls had already decided they liked the older boy, who was about Diana’s age. It wasn’t his fault he had such a big nose, but there wasn’t any need for him to be so shy. His brother was too sneery.

  He spoke sneeringly too. ‘Your father had no right to buy that house. My father wanted to buy it and knock it down. It’s on our land so it should belong to us.’

  His mother smiled at the rude little beast. ‘What did you call the house?’ she asked. ‘I thought it was called Ardmore.’

  Diana explained. ‘The people here call it P
overty Castle because it was derelict for so long. Papa likes the name. We’re not sure why.’

  ‘What does your father do?’

  ‘He used to be an architect.’

  ‘In Edinburgh,’ added Effie.

  ‘I say,’ said Edwin, in a voice so posh that the girls thought it very funny though none of them so much as smiled, ‘were your names taken from books by Sir Walter Scott?’

  He must be cleverer than he looked. They nodded.

  ‘Rowena and Rebecca are from Ivanhoe,’ he said.

  ‘Jeanie and I are from Heart of Midlothian,’ said Effie, and Diana’s from The Fair Maid of Perth.’

  ‘Good God!’ said the lady again.

  ‘What are your names?’ asked Effie.

  ‘Sorry. I’m Edwin. This is Nigel.’

  ‘Papa said if one of us had been a boy he’d have been called Nigel,’ said Effie.

  ‘From Fortunes of Nigel,’ said Jeanie.

  Nigel looked aghast at almost having been a member of such a family. He was also peeved that the dogs, Nelson and Drake, were ignoring him and showering affection on these strangers.

  ‘Papa said he hoped we would be good neighbours,’ said Diana.

  The lady snorted.

  ‘It was jolly brave of you facing up to the dogs,’ said Edwin.

  Nigel sneered. ‘They’ve never bitten anyone.’

  ‘Diana didn’t know that.’

  ‘She’s always brave,’ said Effie.

  ‘She’s afraid of nothing,’ said Jeanie.

  Diana blushed.

  ‘I’m afraid of lots of things,’ said Edwin, making them like him all the more. ‘I say, do you play cricket?’

  ‘Girls are rotten at cricket,’ sneered Nigel.

  ‘We play at everything,’ said Effie, grandly. ‘Badminton, rounders, football, marbles, croquet, and cricket.’

  ‘Would you like to come and play cricket with us? That would be all right, wouldn’t it, Mother?’

  ‘I suppose so, Edwin, but perhaps they would have to ask their parents first.’

  The girls conferred, not to consider whether Papa and Mama would give permission, they took that for granted, but to decide if they really wanted to go and play cricket at the Big House. It was four to one. Diana was the dissenter.