Stone of Destiny (27 page)

We discussed the matter for many miles. Alan wanted to take it home to Barrhead, but I would not hear of that. If he were arrested, as well he might be, the Stone would be taken too. Illogically I wanted to take it to my home in Perthshire, but that presented the same difficulty. Scotland was full of people who would have faced torture and death itself to keep the Stone. But secret custody was no answer. There is in the end no solution to the problem, which I now state. You cannot have private custody of a public symbol. The one negates the other.

All this talk occupied us until we neared Hamilton, and by that time we knew that there was no short-term solution. The only thing we could do now was to get in touch with John MacCormick or Bertie Gray. At first we were against this idea. It was an age since we had left Glasgow, and anything might have happened. For all we knew they might be prime suspects, with their telephones tapped and each with his private shadow. But that seemed a bit thick. The police would need to have some evidence before they could do such things to men as important as them. In any event, it was the best we could do. The Stone was becoming a millstone.

Near Bothwell we dropped Bill Craig. He was guest of honour at a Hogmanay party that night and had to go home and change. Alan and I drove on alone, less tired and more jaunty than the last time we had entered Glasgow by car, only four days previously. We drove along the Gallowgate just after darkness had fallen. The snow was churned and muddy, and had lost its beauty; the gas lamps gleamed wanly, and the old and crowded houses had an air of despair; but it was Glasgow. We were home again and proud to be citizens of no mean city. We went along Argyll Street and up Buchanan Street to Bath Street. At Pitt Street we turned down to the buildings of the telephone exchange, and while Alan sat on the Stone, I went into the telephone box and put through a call to Councillor Gray.

He was just sitting down to his dinner as I phoned but he left his soup to grow cold and came on immediately. I told him we would be waiting for him outside the King’s Theatre.

I went back to Alan. We were both starving, and I remembered a little fish and chip shop in Great Western Road which kept open on a Sunday and which sold good fish and chips. We drove round to it and I got out and got two fish suppers, and then we drove back to the King’s Theatre to await Councillor Gray. We sat eating our fish and chips out of their paper pokes, feeling the alternating sting of salt and vinegar at the corner of our mouths, and the bland taste of the fish on our tongues, and I was suddenly struck by the incongruity of it all. Alan’s seat represented 20 centuries of known history, and I put my greasy hand under the old coat to feel that it was real. It was. Outside the car, people went about their business. We were the centre of the biggest manhunt ever, yet our job was to sit casually in a busy street. Suddenly the delightful daftness of it all made me chuckle. I asked Alan for a wee shot on the Stone, and we swapped places. Then I went on eating my fish and chips.

We were wiping our greasy hands on the Stone of Destiny’s royal tapestry when Bertie Gray arrived. At first he was all for solving the problem by hiding the Stone in his mason’s yard which was only 200 yards away, but I would not hear of it. Sooner or later the police would get round to visiting him, as indeed they did, only a few days later.

The councillor paused for a moment to consider whom we could trust. They were many, but the person we were looking for must have attributes other than sheer trustworthiness. He must be discreet, and not given to boasting, for all over Scotland people were saying, ‘I know where the Stone is hidden.’ He must be of a like mind to us, because one day we would ask for the Stone back from him when the time came to bring it to light. Above all he must be in a position to offer us a hiding place safe from weather and police alike. The councillor left us to go round to his office to
make a telephone call and park his car. In a few minutes he returned and got in beside us.

‘Drive out towards Stirling,’ he said. ‘I’ve got the very man.’

As we drove, we asked no questions but only answered his. He was thirsty for details of our weekend, and we told him all that had happened to us. At last he told us where we were going. After 45 minutes’ driving we climbed a hill and came to a factory standing by itself in the darkness. Far in the distance shone the lights of a town. It was a lonely place, sad enough for an ending. We drove into the yard of the factory and our headlights swung round the grimy walls as we turned. A man was sitting in another car in the yard, and Councillor Gray got out and held a few minutes’ conversation with him in the darkness. The stranger disappeared, and shortly some lights came on inside the building. A great door opened and Alan drove carefully in. The door was shut behind us.

We found ourselves in a great, dim, silent barn, cumbered with massive machinery. Only a few lights were on, and the building seemed endless. The air smelt of oil and damp and iron filings. It was the kind of place which when silent seemed dead. Apart from the scrape of our feet and our whispered voices, all was hushed.

We were introduced to our custodian under false names. I pulled the coat back from the Stone, and he looked at it with silent concentration. Then he put his hand forward and reverently touched it.

‘Guard it with your life,’ I said. ‘They may arrest us and hold us at the court’s discretion until it is produced, but no matter what happens, don’t give it up.’

He said nothing, but only smiled grimly. I think he would have delighted in torture for the chance not to betray the Stone.

We lifted it from the car and lowered it into a packing case, and then we turned to leave and go back into the darkness again. As I went out, I took one last look at the Stone lying in the box like a common piece of masonry. It had grown to be part of my life, like
a mother, or a lover, or a dear friend. Now I was to turn my back on it. My job was done and others were to take over where I had left off. I did not see the Stone again until we were on the way to Arbroath to lay it on the high altar of the ruined abbey there.

All the way back to Glasgow I said little. Alan drove me to my lonely little room at the top of a tenement in Park Quadrant. Johnny had been there before us, as the car seat was lying under my bed. Alan pressed me to go with him to bring in the New Year with his family, but I wanted solitude and would not go. We said goodbye, and he went off to face his father. I’ve always thought the world of Alan.

In a short time Johnny came in. When he saw me and heard of our success, he was jubilant and could not sit still for joy. I was strangely remote from him. He too wanted me to go to a party, but I could not face a crowd, and he departed reluctantly, knowing there was nothing he could do for me. I had lost contact with people.

I lay on my bed and smoked a cigarette, as I had lain on my bed so often before and planned and dreamed. All that was finished. We had succeeded.

Yet success was not enough. Success in the midst of strife, and achievement after struggle, are both unalloyed happiness; but final success is a finish, and no one likes to finish. It was a death.

For nine glorious days in the balance of decision and the cleanness of action I had carried responsibility. I had lived, not to eat or drink or strive after selfish ends, but to achieve. I had achieved, and now life had receded from me. I had handed over my charge to others. For nine days I had been the most privileged young man in the world. I had not only been able to make decisions, I had also been able to carry them through to their conclusion. Now the decisions to be taken were no longer mine, and anyone could carry them through. All was commonplace. I did not think it was worth wasting energy to live.

I fell asleep. Towards midnight I woke up, and got up and took
off my clothes and went back to bed. On a neighbour’s wireless Big Ben beat in the New Year.

I awakened next morning sick at heart. Scotland was on the move again, yet there seemed to be no place for me. I had shot my bolt. I felt that at 25 I had fulfilled all my ambitions. The world held nothing more that I wanted.

If only the police would come, I thought. I was ravenous for more excitement.

Suddenly there was a knocking at my door. Joy came surging over me from the fear of it.

‘Who’s there?’ I called.

‘It’s the police,’ came the quiet reply.

‘Come in,’ I cried. ‘And welcome! I’ve been waiting for you.’

I was alive again.

That is the end of my personal story of the recovery of the Stone of Destiny. My part finished with the Stone lying in hiding in Scotland. It is true that I took part in all the discussions that followed, and homologated all the decisions that were made, but these were political decisions and I am no politician. I regard the rest as anticlimax. A spectacular demonstration for my country, like sending flowers to a forlorn love, had been my intent, and I had done that. As far as I am concerned, the story ended at that factory. Yet, being party to the events which followed, I record them here.

These events are simple enough to narrate. The detective who called on me on New Year’s Day was a Skianach, and he was soon satisfied that I was innocent, or so he said. I have always had my suspicion that that man of the old blood was not so easily deceived. Perhaps . . . perhaps . . . There were many people of divided loyalties over that affair, and not for the first time in Scotland either. In any event my alibi was checked out with my father, and I seemed to be free of suspicion. The following weekend, I took the train to Birmingham and returned driving the Anglia, with Kay’s smaller piece of the Stone.

Then followed a period of inactivity on our part. The problem of what to do with the Stone went unresolved. In retrospect it would have been better if we had been caught with it somewhere
in Scotland, and then the problem would have been the government’s, not ours. We were the victims of our own success. Public pressure mounted for its return. Not its return to England, but its return to some public place. I give one example of many. Sir John Cameron, the Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, called publicly for us to produce it and then work openly for its retention in Scotland. We were in a quandary.

For this quandary there was no easy solution. We had caught the imagination of the world, and the Scottish reaction can only be described as fervent, indeed almost awed, support. But support for what? Support for our actions certainly, but not support for the total disappearance for ever of the Stone. From time to time we sensed a shift in public opinion, and as the weeks went past, it seemed clear to us that public opinion wanted some end to the matter, but no end could be found to satisfy all parties. So far as I am aware, the government resolutely refused to negotiate, while at the same time dropping hints that if it were returned openly, sympathetic consideration would be given to the Stone’s retention in Scotland. While the Stone was at Westminster, the capital of the nation, so one line of argument ran, the Scots knew where it was. Better there than lost for ever. Perhaps, ran another suggestion, if we made a generous gesture, so might the other side, and some compromise could be reached.

Well, that was one view. It was not mine. If there was to be a compromise I wanted to know what it was. I did not, do not and never will trust an Englishman in political office. Nice people as they are, they carry power as badly as a Scot carries drink. I wanted to see the colour of their public promise before I would even think of compromise. At one time I advocated sending a champed-up piece of the Stone once a week to the Dean of Westminster as a heartener. Not much; just an ounce or two. I was wrong, of course. You can’t champ up the talisman of your people. But something was needed to bring matters to a head. We attempted to do this by reiterating our aims in a further statement
like our first petition. It was typed out on the same typewriter, and we travelled through to Edinburgh and nailed it to the west door of St Giles. The press loved it; the church organist who had been playing away alone inside was arrested; but the government did not budge. Further factors began to point to the necessity for us to surrender it.

These factors can be summed up in two words, and these two words are ‘common sense’. John MacCormick was a moderate, long-headed man, who knew every breath and shift of public opinion in Scotland. At that time there was no political movement of any significance in Scotland demanding separation, and the wartime frolics of a handful of extremists, whose slogan was ‘Scotland free and neutral’, had brought the whole Scottish movement into disrepute. But there was an enormous grounds-well of support for devolution, whatever that might mean. John MacCormick, as the acknowledged leader of that movement, did not want to see it all break and come apart on this Stone which I had produced for him. He felt that that support was about to be alienated, and he came to me with these arguments.

We were, he said, four young people who had done a great thing for our country. To the original four, there had been added some others, and sooner or later the police would find us. Prosecutions would follow, and he and the rest of the Covenant leadership would be put in the position of seeing us prosecuted for an action to which they were a party. Nothing could more surely alienate public opinion than the suggestion that we were in the dock only because behind us there were older men who held on to the Stone and would not give it up even to save us from prison. Our martyrdom, if such it could be called, would be laid at the door not of the auld enemy, but attributed instead to the pointless stubbornness of himself and Bertie Gray.