Poverty Castle Page 7

  ‘I don’t think you can,’ called his mother.

  ‘It wasn’t a no-ball,’ said Edwin.

  ‘Yes, it was. She stepped over the line. I saw her. You stepped over the line, didn’t you?’

  ‘I did not,’ said Diana.

  She remembered they were guests.

  ‘Perhaps I did,’ she said. ‘All right, Nigel. We’ll call it a no-ball.’

  ‘You shouldn’t humour him, Diana,’ cried Effie. ‘It’ll just make him worse.’

  Lady Campton heard and scowled. Nigel again took guard. Diana bowled, intending to give him an easy one so that he could score a run. He managed to hit the ball but Jeanie running forward took an easy catch.

  ‘You’re out this time,’ cried Effie. ‘Out for nothing.’

  Nigel swithered whether or not to stage another tantrum. Deciding against, he took off the pads and ran up the pitch.

  ‘Give me the ball. I’ll bowl. Edwin, you bat.’

  ‘What about us?’ cried Effie. ‘We’re in the game too, you know.’

  Edwin hesitated. He was afraid that if one of the girls batted, Nigel, seeking revenge, would try to hit her with the ball. Sighing, he put on the pads and prepared to bat. He loved cricket but knew he was a duffer. Never before had he wanted so much to bat brilliantly.

  Nigel bowled. It was really a throw and was yards wide.

  ‘You threw it,’ cried Effie.

  ‘And you ran over the line,’ cried Jeanie.

  ‘If you don’t all shut up,’ he screamed, ‘I’ll get my mother to send you home.’ Liking the idea, he rushed over to his mother and shouted that the Sempill girls were cheats and he wanted them to be sent home.

  Scorning the puerile accusation that they were cheats, the girls waited to see if his mother would cuff his ear and order him not to be a spoiled brat or would do what he wanted and send them home.

  ‘Sorry about this,’ muttered Edwin.

  He looked miserable, and, as Effie was to say afterwards, no one in the world was better at looking miserable than poor Edwin, with his big, skinned nose.

  Whatever his mother whispered to him, probably she promised him some treat, Nigel consented to come back. He did not however join in the game, but stood aside with his arms folded, as if, said Effie, he had just scored a century. He jeered at every bad shot and refrained from cheering at the good ones. In spite of him the others enjoyed themselves. Diana was top scorer with twenty-two runs.

  Meanwhile two maids had been carrying out things for tea.

  Rebecca needed to go to the bathroom.

  ‘We would like to wash our hands, please,’ said Diana.

  ‘Is it necessary?’ asked Lady Campton.

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Oh, very well. Simpson, show them where they can wash their hands.’

  The maid did not take them into the house by the front door but led them round to the side to the servants’ or tradesmen’s entrance. They went through the big kitchen. They were shown into a bathroom too small for the five of them. It was one used by servants. Rebecca was horrified at having so little room in which to piddle, but her need was urgent. The others said they would wait till they got home.

  They held a meeting.

  ‘We’re being patronised,’ said Effie.

  ‘They think we’re beneath them,’ said Jeanie.

  ‘This isn’t the bathroom they use themselves,’ said Rowena.

  ‘Perhaps Lady Campton thought it was the most convenient one,’ said Diana.

  ‘Don’t make excuses for them,’ said Effie. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘A quarter past four,’ replied Diana.

  ‘I vote we don’t wait for Papa. Let’s go home now. We can walk.’

  ‘That wouldn’t be polite,’ said Diana.

  ‘Polite!’ cried Jeanie. ‘Is it polite to make us use this smelly bathroom?’

  ‘We shouldn’t give them the satisfaction of knowing they’ve humiliated us,’ said Diana.

  ‘Well, I’m not going to eat anything,’ said Effie.

  Suddenly Rebecca started to cry. She didn’t often cry. Her feelings must be hurt. They comforted her.

  ‘All right,’ said Diana. ‘We’ll tell them Rebecca wants to go home. Does everyone agree?’

  Everyone did.

  As they went through the kitchen they remembered to thank Simpson. It wasn’t her fault.

  They waited at the side of the house while Diana went to tell Lady Campton they were leaving.

  ‘Ask Edwin to come and play badminton with us,’ said Effie.

  Diana did not falter as she addressed her hostess. ‘We’re sorry, Lady Campton, but Rebecca wants to go home. We’ve decided not to wait for Papa. We’ll walk. It’s not very far.’

  Lady Campton frowned. She did not give a damn whether they went or stayed but objected to their making the decision themselves. ‘Don’t you want any tea?’

  ‘No, thank you.’ Diana looked at Edwin, who blushed. ‘If you’d like to come and play badminton with us at Bell Heather Cottage you’d be very welcome.’

  ‘What about me?’ demanded Nigel. ‘Have I to come too? I’m better at badminton than he is.’

  ‘Neither of you is going,’ said their mother. ‘Have you forgotten that we’re expecting friends?’

  ‘That’s not till next week,’ mumbled Edwin.

  ‘Goodbye.’ As Diana walked away she heard Lady Campton say: ‘Impudent little bitch! Who the hell does she think she is?’

  ‘A descendant of the Johnny that helped to do Rizzio in,’ said Sir Edwin, with a chuckle.

  ‘I think she’s super,’ said Edwin, defiantly.

  She imagined herself turning and shouting: ‘I’ll tell you who I am, Lady Campton. I’m one of the Sempill girls. We’re going to live in Poverty Castle whether you like it or not.’

  She was more pleased with Edwin’s compliment than she should have been. It wasn’t likely she would ever meet him again.

  ‘What did they say?’ asked Effie.

  ‘Lady Campton said I was an impudent little bitch.’

  They gasped with indignation.

  ‘Did you invite Edwin?’ asked Jeanie.

  ‘Yes, but his mother said he couldn’t come.’

  ‘Poor Edwin. How does he manage to be so nice living with that family.’

  ‘Isn’t Nigel awful?’ said Rowena.

  She then began to give imitations of Nigel’s awfulness. They were so funny that her sisters couldn’t talk for laughing.

  When they got home and told what had happened Papa was for rushing off to Kilcalmonell House to horsewhip the insolent baronet. He was disconcerted when his daughters pointed out that he didn’t have a horse, never mind a horsewhip. Besides, they’d liked Sir Edwin, though he didn’t know anything about cricket. He was afraid of Lady Campton. So was Edwin. Awful Nigel was her favourite.

  They asked Rowena to give her imitations of Nigel.

  ‘Poor boy,’ gasped Mama, with tears of laughter in her eyes.

  Nine

  FOR YEARS there had been agitation in the village to get rid of tinkers whose encampments on the foreshore were insanitary eyesores. They defecated behind rocks. They spent most of their money on drink. They assaulted one another. They indulged in drunken sex in front of their children. Those children never went to school; this was deplored in theory but welcomed in practice, for God knew what diseases they would have transmitted, in addition to nits, lice, and fleas. If a respectable and law-abiding house-owner wanted to install a caravan in his own garden he had to have permission from the planning authorities. Yet the tinkers who paid no rates or taxes and lived on Welfare could clutter up every space on the shore with battered caravans, decrepit cars and vans, and tents made out of potato sacks, and authority said nothing. The police kept clear, owing to some absurd policy of non-harassment. A letter of protest had been sent to the Secretary of State. One of his minions had replied with insulting vagueness.

  There was to be still another meeting in t
he village hall to discuss the problem. Papa thought it was his duty to attend but first he had to hear the tinkers’ side of the argument. So he took time off from supervising the work being done on Poverty Castle to pay them a visit.

  He was pleased when the girls asked to be allowed to go with him. Children, he said, were more logical than adults and had a fresher sense of fairness. Mama was doubtful. She was afraid they might see and hear things that would distress them. They were only little girls, after all.

  They had debated the matter among themselves and were inclined to sympathise with the tinkers but had agreed not to make up their minds until they had seen how the tinkers really lived. That they used the shore for their lavatory was not disgusting, as people seemed to think. If you didn’t have a bathroom it was as good a place as any. As Effie said everybody’s found its way to the sea in the end.

  They went in the Daimler. It was another sunny afternoon.

  ‘They may think we are invading their privacy and be resentful,’ said Mama, as they approached the first group of caravans.

  As if to prove her right an old man, his hair as white as a seagull’s breast, rose up from behind a rock on the shore. No one needed to ask what he had been doing. He shook his fist. At the same time an oyster-catcher piped shrilly. It was easy to imagine the sound as coming from the old man’s mouth.

  ‘You see,’ murmured Papa, ‘they have feelings to be hurt, like the rest of us.’

  He stopped the car.

  Immediately there rushed at it three mongrel dogs, illnourished and bad-tempered, barking and snarling. They were followed by some children, boys and girls, three of them red-haired.

  Two women were seated on stools outside a caravan, peeling potatoes. One was big and red-haired, the other white-haired and old. The children came closer to the car and stared up at its occupants. Two held out their hands, as if begging. They all jabbered. It sounded like a foreign language.

  ‘It’s like being in Africa,’ said Mama, ‘except that the natives are white.’

  ‘Brown,’ said Effie.

  Her sisters put their fingers to their lips. The agreement was to take note but say nothing.

  ‘They are as Scottish as we are,’ said Papa. ‘They have names like Williamson, McPhie, and MacDonald. It is said that a long time ago their ancestors were cast out by their clans. No one knows why.’

  Two men almost fell out of a caravan. One had a shotgun over his shoulder, the other an almost empty bottle of whisky in his hand.

  ‘Let’s go, Edward,’ said Mama. ‘That gun could be loaded and they are both quite drunk.’

  Drunk but respectful. They approached the car, kicking the dogs out of their way. Shotgun touched his cap, Whisky-bottle his brow.

  ‘Was there something you wanted, sir, or are you chust looking?’ asked Shotgun.

  ‘Are you aware,’ said Papa solemnly, ‘that there is to be a meeting in the village hall tomorrow evening to discuss ways of forcing you to leave the district?’

  ‘They’re always haeing meetings,’ said Whisky-bottle.

  ‘It’s nane o’ oor business,’ said Shotgun.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s very much your business. What the village people object to is the mess you make on the foreshore. Just look at it.’

  ‘Whit mess, sir?’

  Both of them peered about them. They saw heaps of miscellaneous rubbish but no mess. They saw their homes.

  An infant of about two, a little boy, naked from the waist down, toddled towards the car. In his tiny fist he clutched a stone. With it he began to batter the side of the car. Feeble though his strength was in a few seconds he had done pounds’ worth of damage.

  The girls gasped, regretting their vow of silence. They looked at Papa. The car was his pride and joy. Most men would have jumped out and restrained the infant, not too gently either. Papa sat still, not because he was afraid but because he thought a small tinker child was more important than his expensive car.

  They felt very proud of him.

  A girl picked up the infant.

  ‘Are you the gentleman that belongs to the Big House, sir?’ asked Shotgun. ‘If you are I want to ask you if you minded me shooting a rabbit or two, for the pot.’

  ‘I am not the gentleman that owns the Big House, but I should think he would mind very much.’

  The big red-haired woman sauntered over. She was buxom and coarsely handsome. She wore a thin blue blouse with nothing under it and a pair of men’s trousers that were not meant to house so ample and provocative a behind.

  ‘Whit is it you want, sir?’ she asked. ‘You’ll get nae sense oot o’ this pair.’

  ‘Is there anyone, a chief or elder, who speaks for you all?’

  ‘If you mean a boss, we’ve got nane here. We please oorselves. That’s the kind of life we hae, free as birds.’

  ‘You look a sensible woman. What’s your name?’

  ‘I’m mair than sensible.’ She grinned and lifted up her heavy breasts. ‘Bella Williamson’s my name.’

  ‘If you and your companions, Mrs Williamson, were promised a properly designed camp-site, with sanitary arrangements, would you live in it and undertake to keep it clean and tidy?’

  Shotgun and Whisky-bottle slunk off. They seemed scared of the woman.

  ‘Would we hae to pay a rent?’ she asked.

  ‘I expect so, but surely it would be worth it, to have decent toilet facilities?’

  ‘We don’t mind sharing the shore wi’ the seagulls. It’s mair natural. This site, whaur would it be? Here? We think this is a grand spot.’

  ‘Its situation would have to be decided.’

  She grinned. ‘I can see you’re as simple as you look, mister, but there’s naething wrang wi’ that. Simple folk are the nicest folk. Naebody wants us on their land. We’ve been chased awa’ a dozen times. In the auld days when we worked for fermers it was different. We were welcome then.’

  ‘You should think of your children, Mrs Williamson. Doesn’t it worry you that they get no schooling?’

  ‘I got nane myself and I’ve done all right.’

  ‘But times change. It is too great a handicap nowadays not to be able at least to read and write.’

  ‘My weans are no’ ignorant, if that’s what you think. They ken things your lassies don’t and never will.’ She winked, lewdly. She was to tell a friend later that she wouldn’t have minded carrying into her caravan the braw gentleman with the blue eyes and the milk-white body.

  ‘Please, Edward, let’s go,’ whispered Mama, aware of the trollop’s enticement of Edward and afraid that the girls might be aware of it too.

  He kept trying. ‘You must find it most inconvenient having no reliable water supply.’

  ‘Still, we manage to keep oorselves clean. Look.’ She opened her blouse and showed one of her big white breasts. ‘My trouble, mister, is that I feel lonely at night. Could you dae onything aboot that? My man’s left me for a wee whure half his age.’

  ‘Good afternoon.’ Papa drove off.

  They heard her laughing raucously.

  ‘What a dreadful creature,’ said Mama.

  ‘Be fair, Meg. Not many women in her position would show such spirit.’

  Mama lowered her voice. ‘She was deliberately enticing you.’

  Ten

  WHEN REBECCA became four she had taken her place in the girls’ councils, as Rowena had done before her. Their contributions were often unexpected but useful. However, it was felt by Diana and the twins that it might be wiser to leave their little sisters out of their conference that followed their reconnoitring of the tinkers’ camp. They feared Rebecca’s inquisitiveness. Not about the old man doing Number Two behind a rock: the girls themselves on picnics had used rocks for the same purpose. Nor about the little boy with his boy-thing exposed. In Edinburgh one of their mother’s friends had had a baby boy whom they had seen being bathed. It was the woman with red hair and big bosoms they were afraid Rebecca would ask questions about. She might want to know
why the woman had kept grinning at Papa in yon funny way, and why Papa had smiled so peculiarly back. Those were mysteries that vexed Diana and the twins themselves.

  The twins had looked for the word ‘hoor’ in Papa’s huge dictionary but could not find it. Probably it wasn’t spelled the way the woman had said it.

  Unfortunately Rebecca, though always sweet, could be very stubborn. She insisted on taking part. Since it was her democratic right her sisters had to give in.

  Therefore all five of them met in the garden shed at Bell Heather Cottage, with upturned flower pots as seats. They were really seven, for a blackbird outside kept having his say too, and Squeaky the field mouse that lived in the shed crept out now and then and squeaked.

  ‘Think before you speak,’ said Diana.

  They sat thinking.

  Rowena spoke first. ‘I think they should all be made to go away.’

  ‘You have to give your reasons,’ said Effie.

  ‘They’re dirty.’

  ‘If you didn’t have a bathroom with warm water and soap you’d be dirty too, Rowena Sempill.’

  ‘The lady with the red hair said they were clean,’ said Rebecca. ‘She showed us.’

  ‘Why don’t they live in houses with bathrooms?’ said Jeanie, hurriedly.

  ‘They don’t like living in houses,’ said Effie. ‘That’s why they call themselves travelling people.’

  ‘Why do we call them tinkers then?’ asked Rowena.

  ‘They used to mend pots and pans,’ said Diana.

  ‘Nobody wants them as neighbours,’ said Jeanie.

  ‘Would we want them as neighbours?’ asked Diana.

  None of them would, except possibly the blackbird, which sang passionately, perhaps to that effect.

  ‘Their dogs are skinny,’ said Rebecca. ‘They had scabs.’

  ‘They shouldn’t be allowed to keep dogs,’ said Jeanie.

  Rebecca was becoming dangerously talkative. ‘I think the tinker children should go to school. If we have to go why shouldn’t they?’

  ‘Would you like to sit beside one of them?’ asked Rowena, and twisted her face into a resemblance of a tinker child’s. Even her hair seemed to turn shaggy.

  ‘I don’t see why children should have to go to school,’ said Effie, ‘if they don’t want to. Papa says it’s a free country. Being made to go and sit in a school for hours every day listening to a boring teacher, that’s not being free, is it?’