‘Aye: he’s like his brother Dick. They’re the only two that take after me, Sam.’
‘You’ve reason to be proud of them, Andra. But David has a way with him that Richard never had. I misdoubt but he’ll turn out as strong as Richard – I wouldna say he’d stand up to the sea as well—’
‘And you think his mind’s bent on the sea? Well, what else is there for him but the fishing or the farm?’
‘You don’t see your way to put him to the college, Andra? He’s the makings of a grand doctor in him.’
‘Aye: I’ve thought of it, Sam. I doubt if I could see him through. The rest of them will get married as soon as they can. I couldna blame them, Sam – that’s all they’ll ever be good for. And once they’re married their hands will be full and they’ll hardly have time to straighten their backs. And if I set the laddie to the college I would like to see him through with it.’
‘Aye – ye’d want to see him through and set out on his own once ye started. Better never to send him at all than disappoint his life by taking him away after he’d gotten a taste of it.’
‘That’s it, Sam. I’m no’ getting any younger. Work’s no’ what it used to be. Damnt, Sam, but it’s hard.’
‘Well, well, Andra: there’s no use in mourning. Things maun aey be some way. No doubt but the boy will find something to his bent – but guid kens I would rather see him apprenticed before the mast than taking a pair o’ horse wi’ John MacMeechan.’
‘No, no: Achgammie will never break his spirit: that would just kill the boy. No, no: I’ll find a road out for him somehow – even if it means the sea. He’s all I’ve got to live for now. It’s little enough I see o’ Dick without losing David.’
Sam MacKitteroch did not reply. He himself was alone in the world and had never married. And though he did not know what it meant to be a father he regretted deeply that he had never had a son. This was one reason why he was so gentle and painstaking with his scholars.
It was the first time Andrew Ramsay had ever admitted how much he cared for his youngest son – and how much he regretted the sea-going of Richard. Dick had had brains, initiative and courage. He had never taken life lying down but from his earliest days had endeavoured to strike out for himself.
Andrew had thought that the other boys would be the same. But they had disappointed him. Not that he ever felt inclined to blame them. Rather did he blame himself: their dullness and stupidity oppressed him with a sense of guilt.
And then, at the last, had come David, the bright-eyed. Now the years he had missed the company of Richard were being compensated. And yet he felt that the compensation was coming too late: that his efforts to give David a start in life would be inadequate. He had been an idler: he had let opportunities for material advancement slip. He could have made a greater effort and managed to save a pound or two. But – he had not. He had to face the fact. Now the best years of his life were past. He had lost custom: he had alienated custom: he had let life take its course. And all the while he had maintained his self-respect by fostering his innate radicalism: self-satisfied in his role of parish-pump philosopher.
Still, even now it was not too late: he would think out some plans for assisting the lad who was so truly his own son: his Joseph.
Of all his brothers, David liked Richard best. He had only one memory of him – when he had come home for a short week-end the previous winter and had given him a bag of sweets and a ride on his back. But even during the short time he had been at home David sensed a difference between Richard and all the others and had been conscious of a bond between them.
There was no bond between himself and his two older brothers, Adam and Samuel. They were at the fishing, mostly at nights. Sometimes they talked to him: never with him.
Alexander and John worked on Achgammie. Alexander, who was twenty-two and earning as much as he ever would, was thinking of getting married after harvest. John had feed himself to a Newton Stewart farmer and was as good as married as far as his home at the Suie was concerned.
William, having reached the age of twelve, was working a pair of horse on Achgammie: he was so tired when he came home at nights that he took his supper and went straight to bed.
David’s contact with his brothers and sisters was brief and casual. Occasionally his sisters, Bell, Mary and Sarah, who were in service, would come home on a Sunday. But their appearance and talk was that of strangers to him. Only with his sister Agnes did he feel any real bond or blood-tie. But Agnes too was now in service: she had gone at the May term as kitchen lass to the farm of Achnotteroch. David felt her loss very keenly: she had been more to him than his mother – and much more to him than his brother Peter who was only two years older. Peter was dull-witted: and yet he was ill-tempered and selfish. Sarah Ramsay had long differentiated between them. She saw how her husband doted upon David and she saw how closely David resembled his father and his brother Richard. She drew to Peter, the true child of her womb, and revenged herself on her husband through her youngest born.
But David had imagination enough to escape from much of his home influence. He made no demands: he avoided quarrels knowing he would get worsted. And he did his mother’s bidding without any outward show of resentment.
But often enough he felt resentful and rebellious. He disliked washing dishes and stirring porridge. But he could not do everything and Peter had to work too. On the least pretext whatsoever he escaped from the house. Sometimes he would go to Achgammie steading – but that was Peter’s favourite haunt. Mostly he sought the shore – or sought out his father if he were not working too far away. He had no companions for the Suie was lonely and isolated.
David did not mind being alone. He had his dreams and his visions. He had a curious interest in birds and flowers and insects: and he never tired watching the incoming or outgoing of the tide. He was beginning to love the look of the land: to be conscious that he liked it and had an affection for it. Often he found himself standing on the heughs looking across the Loch to the low hills on the Cairnryan coast and the low-hanging clouds that seemed to rest there. Sometimes he would lie down in the lee of a whin bush and watch the clouds, massing, disintegrating, banking up, floating, drifting, sailing … The earth, the sea and the sky: he was beginning to be conscious of them: conscious of their beauty and their rhythm and inexplicable harmony. He began to know every hollow in the land around the Suie: began to know every rock on the shore between Achgammie and Corsewell Point. The high wall of the estate kept him from exploring to his right – and Sir Thomas MacCready’s estate ran down to the beach at low tide – a fence of netting and barbed wire cutting down across the beach to prevent sheep and cattle from straying.
But sometimes through an iron gate in the wall he would watch Sir Thomas’s imported fallow deer feeding in the entrance park to his estate. The deer with their white-spotted tawny coats were timid but not frightened or alarmed at the near presence of a human being. They were small graceful creatures, soft-eyed and sweet-tempered. But somehow, to David, they looked alien – foreign to the land they lived on. But Sir Thomas was proud of them. He was the only man in the Rhinns who had deer in his park: he felt, by this virtue, he was quite the English gentleman.
Sir Thomas sometimes took a stroll with his lady in the cool of a fine summer’s evening and he was always delighted to hear her remark on the loveliness of his imported deer that were so reminiscent of her native Huntingdonshire.
Only once had young David Ramsay seen Sir Thomas and his lady. He had seen them as he had seen the deer – through the bars of the iron grill.
