The Crofter and The Laird by John McPhee

 1969

It is said on Colonsay that if you sneeze in Balnahard people will hear  moments later in Machrins that you have pneumonia, and soon in Oronsay that you are dead.  Nothing electronic has yet been developed that could outmode the gossip circuitry of this small island. People say that twenty years ago, when the population was two hundred and fifty, the gossip was extremely intense, but now that the population is half of that the intensity has doubled, for each person’s turn comes up much more often. A good thing it is, too, for not the least of the results is sanity. There is apparently a point at which gossip can become so intensely commonplace that it is not only beyond hurting anybody but is, in fact, a release.

‘There is no mental illness on the island,’ the doctor said to me yesterday.
‘I think they are all mentally ill,’ said the doctor’s wife.
‘Not from a medical point of view,’ the doctor said. ‘You’ll never kill them with quietness.’

Sometimes eruptions are direct and brief. Two men were drinking side by side last night at the pub.

‘I know you think I’m a bastard,’ said one, touching his cap. The other said, ‘We’ll let that pass. I’ve not come here to discuss that.’
“I think it’s time we buried the hatchet.’
‘Yes, if I had one I’d bury it in your bloody head.’

 

These face-to-face salutes  are merely an intimation of what is said behind people’s backs. In a sense, every house, hill, barn and byre is a center of gossip, but there are several principal ones – The Shop, the post office, the potting shed at Kiloran Farm, and, above all others, the pub, which has no name and is in the rear of the inn in Scalasaig. What is said in these places  will frequently include a high proportion of factual correctness, but truth and fiction often seem to be riding the same sentence is such way that the one would be lonely without the other. A word of two will be said about almost everyone- ‘What Davidson fails to understand is that he is a foreigner here’- but far in excess of all competition the predominant subject of conversation is the laird, owner of people’s houses, owner of the land they work. The laird is a point of focus, a determining presence, the god-head of a small religion. The laird is a young man with a large family, an advanced sense of humor, and a preoccupation with places other than Colonsay, but to the people of the island, where he spends his summers, he is the enigmatic embodiment of god and evil, hope and fear, keeper of the gate of Heaven an Hell, fate’s own fulcrum, overlord, landlord.

It is 10 P.M. and, in the pub, time to drink up. A notice on the wall says, ‘Under the provision of the Licensing Act, 1961, a period of ten minutes is allowed at the end of the morning and evening periods of permitted hours for thee consumption of alcoholic liquors purchased during such hours. It is an offense for customers to consume alcoholic liquors after this ten-minute period. Maximum penalty 100 pounds.

‘Ten minutes, gentlemen.’

‘The laird is an evil man in several senses of the word.’
‘As a boy, he took his sweets off and ate them by himself in the woods.”
‘That, I should say, is characteristic of him today.’

‘His brothers and sisters – they shared sweets with others.’

‘His father had more money than he has, but once you get past the third million, what’s money?
‘His grandmother had seven million.’

‘In her day, the money was still new. The first Baron Strathcona, the laird’s great-grandfather, was nothing more than an Aberdeenshire crofter’s son – a herd laddie in his tartan rags looking over cows. He went to Canada and sold firearms to the Indians – the old match-lock rifles.

 ‘And he got skins for the rifles-and for skins he got Colonsay, the finest island in the whole Hebrides.

‘The finest island in the whole Hebrides to get the bloody hell out of.’

Overhead, nailed on a wall, is a giant lobster claw, at least ten inches long. A sign behind the bar says, ‘Weights and Measures Act, 1963. Gin, rum, vodka, and whiskey are offered in quantities of 1/5 of a gill or multiples thereof.’
‘The laird has no time for islanders. His father’s attitude towards us was one of slight contempt. This one, I think, really hates our guts.’

‘I remember him saying once, ‘’When Daddy dies, things will change drastically.’ I never forgot it.”
‘If the old laird had lived forever, things would have been all right.’
‘The new one says he’s losing money. I have no idea where. He spends none on the island.’
‘He spent forty thousand pounds to restore his house in Bath.’
‘Och, it was a hundred and twenty thousand. That’s why he lets the island go to subsistence sums.’
‘He is the chairman of the Bath festival. He has no time for Colonay.’
’He doesn’t have the money you think he has. There are death duties, you know.’
.‘There are ways to circumvent them’
‘The old laird’s estate was only worth three hundred and sixty thousand pounds.”
“Och, three million six hundred thousand would be more like it.’
‘The laird is a Lloyd’s underwriter, and to be that you have to put down at least five hundred thousand.’

‘The old laird loved the wild geese, the graylag geese. Thousands of them stop here. He hoped they would breed here. No one dared to shoot a wild goose. The old laird would go around at night saying, ‘Did you hear a shot?’

‘The old laird himself was a good shot.’
‘The new laird doesn’t do much in the way of shooting. He’s not a good shot. Before Calum the Gamekeeper became redundant, they were out shooting snipes, and the laird kept missing, and he complained to Calum –‘I’m not hitting anything,’ he said. And Calum said, ‘And I don’t think you will, Milord, until you start using both barrels. The shells only cost eight pence a piece.’

“Mean, parsimonious, close-fisted is the laird.’
‘He’s a great yachtsman.’

‘A very good yachtsman.’
‘Seventy-five percent of the time he’s on the island is spent mucking about in his boat.’
‘When he goes to Kiloran Bay, if there’s three people there he calls in Blackpool.’
“He thinks he’s the cat’s pajamas.’

‘He’s a very vain man.’

’Mind you, he’s a broth of a boy.’

’A blue-eyed boy.’
‘Lady Strathcona is of Norman aristocracy – well diluted, I believe.’
‘Her grandmother was a housemaid.’
‘She’s of penurious stock, blue-blooded but not moneyed.’
‘And what have they done for the island? They have erected a sheep fank, and repaired two fences.’
They’ve let it seep out that the island can bloody well fend for itself.’

‘The factor has spread it around.’
‘Redundancies.’
’People in panic stations.’

’Drink up, please.’
‘People complained about the old laird, too. Let us not forget that. They said he did what he pleased. He was paying for it’
‘This one isn’t paying for it.’
‘His father spoiled the people on this island. He didn’t want industry. He wanted thee island unspoiled. When people were out of work, he took them on at the estate and paid them for doing damn all.’
‘Quite frankly, when this laird took over it was too late.’
‘People have been depending too much on Laird Strathcona. We have lost our sense of independence. There is too much soft living – National Healthy, Unemployment. You get money for sitting on your backside. It adds up to a loss of independence.’
‘Lord Strathcona is a trained economist. The factor is one of the ablest factors in Scotland. We tenants sometimes-‘
‘The estate had two factors for a long time. I feel sorry for the laird who has not got enough sense to have one factor instead of two.’

‘That’s where the money is pouring out. If the laird wants to save money, he should get rid of the other factor as well.’
‘We tenants sometimes have a biased view of it all. The economic problem is people. If you get rid of people- all kinds of people- you are tree-quarters of the way to solving the problem. More money is going out than is coming in. They have got to get rid of the human problem –use professional labor instead of salary labor. Strathcona has done nothing diabolical. He has just got rid of the human problem.’

‘He’s a feudal lord. You must remember that. He has responsibilities.’
“Good night.’
‘Good night.’

‘Sleep well.’

‘Bye-bye just now. .  .  .

A third of all the rental income derived by the laird from the crofts, farms and other properties of Colonsay goes to pay the salary of David Wardhaugh, the present factor. Wardhaugh lives in Forfar, in County Angus, and each month when the time for Rent Day approaches, he drives across the breadth of Scotland, through Strathmore and Strath Earn and on through Argyll, riding the Lochel out to Colonsay, where he collects the rents, listens to complaints, and tends the flame of the feudal system. Inevitably known as Wart Hog, Wardlough does not deserve such facile approbation, for he is apparently an empathetic man, endowed with a strong awareness of the history of his line of work in Scotland and a desire to be as just as he must be realistic. His mission is plain enough. The laird simply has no wish to be the animated exchequer of an insular, private, picayune welfare state – or, to give the situation its full setting, a welfare state within a welfare state. The factor makes recommendations on the revision of rents and the renewal of leases and, particularly, on the creation of redundancies, and sooner or later provokes hostility in almost every part of the island. He has the personal advantage of not being resident on Colonsay, and when he is present he keeps to himself at Colonsay House, the laird’s place, in Kiloran, eating his meals alone and retiring early. He is a heavyset man with thinning hair ansd a manner of rumpled tweed- pleasant, practical, somewhat didactic. He knows an anachronism when he sees one, even in a mirror. Of both the actions and  the responsibilities of the laird, he says, ‘Lord Strathcona is doing what the government should be doing.’

Rent Day approaches now, and this time both the factor and the laird are on the island,. The people, nostalgic for anything having to do with the old laird, are particularly nostalgic for Rent Day as it was when he was alive. The old laird and Findlay the Factor used to sit at a table in the inn, and as each tenant –each crofter, cotter, farmer- came the table with his money, the laird would say, ‘And how are you?’
 “Very well,’ said the tenant. ‘Very well, thank you, Milord.’

‘You are looking fit,’ said the laird.
‘Thank you, Milord.’

’Very fit indeed.’

Then the tenant would in all likelihood proceed to give the laird news of a broken window, a leaking roof, a stovepipe disengaged. The laird never argued. All complaints went into Findlay’s notebook, for attention. After any request at all, the laird would say, “Right, Findlay, you look into that.’ And a month or six later the tenant would say, ‘Milord, about the stovepipe . . .’ And the laird would say, ‘Findlay, why have you not done anything about it? ‘ And Findlay would make another note in his book,.

Why these mimes are remembered with nostalgia is obscure, but in part it is because of the gentile and graceful manner  with which the laird always brought of the scene, and in part because he had on the table a bottle of sherry and a bottle of whiskey. All who came to pay had their choice of drinks when they had done so. ‘Rent Day was a good day, a social day,’ one tenant –the storekeeper, Alistair Allan- said, describing it to me. ‘You took your glass and you rose and said, ‘My respects, Milord,’  and you drank your whiskey – ‘a drop of himself’- as Skye men say.’ When all had paid their rents and had their drams, they left the inn together and went around the island, stopping at each house for a few more drops of himself. Everyone got pretty full, as an islander would put it, and Rent Day, always a Saturday, finally ended at about five o’clock Sunday morning.

There is much less drinking now, in the new era of austerity, and Rent Day is held at the estate office in Colonsay House. I have asked a considerable number of islanders if they intend to be there this time, and almost to a man they have said, ‘och, no, I can’t be bothered, I can’t be bothered, I’ll just mail in the check and be done with it.’ – or some close variation of that theme. The hour has come, however, and in the courtyard at the side of Colonsay House they are all present. To a man, they are impeccably dressed. They wear ties. The hair of some is wett from brushing. Their cheeks shine. In appearance, they are a church congregation, but in number they are more than the minister is accustomed to seeing. Donald Gibbie, Donald Garvard, Andrew Oronsay. There are no absentees. One by one, cap in hand, they go in to see the laird.

 

‘Good morning, Milord.’

The laird is younger than nearly all the men who have come to pay him their money and respects. He is good-looking, tall, athletic, a bit heavy in the cheek, with long swept-back hair, amusement in his eyes, and the accents of Eton and Cambridge in his voice.

‘And how are you? he asks. ‘You’re looking fit.’
“Thank you, Milord.’
‘Fit indeed.’
‘Milord, I thought I might mention that I have a fence down, and . . . ‘
”Wardlaugh, make a note of that.’