Poverty Castle by John Robin Jenkins Page A

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?’
    â€˜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
    I T 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