The Loud Halo

by Lillian Beckwith

  By the time I returned from milking Bonny, Wayfarer had left her moorings and was already a dark speck on the horizon. Within a few days Nelly Elly, the postmistress, had received a telephone message from Erchy saying that Johnny had been taken to the dentist and that Hector had bought himself a new boat in which they now proposed to sail back. She reported that he had sounded quite sober. For two or three days there was no word from the men and so it was assumed that they were already on their way. Those of us who had binoculars went frequently to lean on our elbows on the stone dykes and stare out to sea, hoping to be the first to pick up a sight of the mariners and send the word round the village. For easily diverted people like myself it was an excuse to scan the outlying islands, trying to identify their varied peaks or, nearer home, to focus the glasses on the constant industry of the sea birds; on cormorants fishing greedily; on busy, bobbing guillemots and on the swift dipping flight of terns over the sea, contrasting their activity with the motionlessness of a stately heron standing beside the mouth of the burn, and then, ruefully, with my own idleness.

  But a week went by without any sign of the boat and when on the following Tuesday morning the mist rolled in from the sea, thick as a sponge, and hid everything beyond the boundaries of the crofts, we knew we could not expect to see them for some time. I wondered if Morag and Behag, Hector’s wife, were worrying about the lack of news and felt I ought to go along and ceilidh with them for the evening. When I pushed open the door of Morag’s cottage there came the sound of many voices.

  ‘Come away in,’ called Morag happily. ‘Come in and see the rascals.’

  Erchy, Tom-Tom and Hector, their faces shining in the lamplight, were seated at the table enjoying a meal of salt herring and potatoes. There was a partly full whisky bottle on the table and a couple of empties down in the hearth. The men looked mightily pleased with themselves.

  ‘How on earth did you get home on a day like this?’ I asked them.

  ‘We came in Hector’s new boat. How would you think?’ replied Erchy waggishly.

  ‘Did you have a compass?’

  ‘We did not, then. What would we be wantin’ with one of them things, anyway?’

  ‘But isn’t the mist as thick on the water as it is here on the land?’ I wanted to know.

  ‘Twice as thick,’ pronounced Erchy. ‘We kept catchin’ the boat right bangs. Hector said they was only hard pieces of water but I believe we hit every rock between here and Oban.’ He broke open a large floury-looking potato and stuffed almost the whole of it into his mouth. He turned to Hector. ‘She’s a good strong boat you have there,’ he told him, with an accompanying slap on the back. ‘She must be or she’d be in bits by now.’

  Hector smiled bashfully at the herring he was holding in his two hands.

  ‘Seriously,’ I taxed them. ‘How did you manage to navigate if you don’t have a compass?’

  ‘Ach, well, we was just goin’ round in circles to begin wiss,’ explained Hector. ‘Every time tse mist lifted we saw tse same bit of coast one side of us or tse usser. We was keepin’ close in, you see, trying would we creep round tse shore.’

  ‘Aye,’ Erchy took up the tale, ‘and then I remembered how my father had told me about bein’ caught in the mist on the sea once. He tore up a newspaper he had in the boat and scattered bits of it on the water as he went so he’d know if he was goin‘ in circles. We did the same just. We did that all the way and it got us home here, safe as hell.’

  It sounded like a story I had heard before and ought to have more sense than to believe. ‘Is that true?’ I asked doubtfully.

  ‘As true as I’m here,’ asserted Erchy, and to this day I do not know whether he was pulling my leg.

  ‘You didn’t tell us yet how Johnny got on at the dentist’s with his teeths,’ said Behag quietly from the bench where she was sitting patiently with three alert kittens and the irrepressible Fiona all helping her to knit a fair-isle sweater.

  The three men gave a concerted hoot of laughter. ‘You should have been there to see it,’ Erchy said. ‘Johnny went and sat in the chair like a lamb and we didn’t think he was goin’ to give any trouble at all, but the dentist took one look, at him an’ decided he’d best give him gas. That was all right and he took the tooth out after a bit of a struggle, but then he must have taken the gag out too soon or somethin’. Anyway, he had his thumb right inside Johnny’s mouth when suddenly Johnny’s teeths clamps down on it. My, you should have heard that dentist shoutin’. He started swearin’ at his assistant an’ the assistant swore back and told him what a fool he was to his face. He got his thumb out at last, but by God! he was in a state, I can tell you. Then Johnny comes to, an’ feelin’ his bad tooth’s out an’ not hurtin’ him any more, his face lights up and he jumps up from the chair an’ rushes at the dentist shoutin’ “By God! By God!”’ Here they were all overcome with laughter. ‘The poor wee dentist mannie didn’t know Johnny only wanted to shake hands with him and thank him for gettin’ his sore tooth sorted for him,’ resumed Erchy. ‘He was terrified! He thought Johnny was after him to do him some hurt an’ there he was runnin’ round and round the surgery holding his thumb with Johnny chasin’ after him still shoutin’ “By God! By God!” like he always does when he’s excited. “Get him out of here!” the dentist yells at us. Screamin’ he was too. “Get the bugger out of here before he kills me.” Well me and Tom-Tom manages to get hold of Johnny and drag him out. Poor man was that puzzled about it all so I went back an’ told the dentist that Johnny had meant him no harm, it was only that he was wantin’ to thank him.’ Erchy disgorged a mouthful of herring bones on to his plate. ‘Ach, but he wouldn’t listen to me. “Don’t you ever let him inside here again,” says he, “I might never be able to pull another tooth the way my hand is now.” ’

  ‘Poor man,’ ejaculated Morag half-heartedly, but I did not know to whom she was referring.

  ‘Did you bring any chickens?’ I asked after a pause.

  ‘Aye, so we did.’

  ‘Black Leghorns?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Black Leghorns!’ shrilled Morag with an acerbity that was mellowed by the tot of whisky she had just swallowed. ‘Drunk Leghorns more likely!’

  ‘Drunk?’ I echoed with a smile.

  ‘Aye, drunk,’ affirmed Morag, lifting the lids of two cardboard boxes near the fire.

  ‘Aye,’ Erchy started to explain. ‘You see we got them three days ago when we first thought we was startin’ back. Well, then we met up with some lads we knew and we had a good drink with them so we didn’t wake up in time to get goin’ the next day. The lads came again the next night so we stayed and had another good drink. We’d forgotten about the chickens, you see.’

  ‘I didn’t forget tsem,’ repudiated Hector who was beginning to doze in his chair. ‘I gave tsem a wee taste of oatmeal I scraped up from tse linings of my pockets.’

  Morag snorted. ‘For all the good that would be to them you might just as well have left it here,’ she told him.

  ‘Well, as I was sayin’,’ resumed Erchy, ‘we didn’t think about the chickens until sometime last evenin’ when Hector says all of a sudden: “My God! What about them chickens?” So we fetched them out of the wheelhouse where they’d been all the time and we had a look at them. They didn’t look bad and they was makin’ plenty of noise but they was huddled together just as though they was feelin’ the cold.’

  ‘Sure they was feelin’ the cold,’ interpolated Morag. ‘The poor wee creatures.’

  ‘What did you do then?’ I encouraged.

  ‘We didn’t know what to do,’ said Erchy. ‘We had no coal on the boat to put on a fire and no other way of warmin’ them, until Hector said we should try would we warm them with our own breath. So that’s what we did. We took it in turns just to go and give them a good breathin’ on every now and then. Is that not the way of it, Hector?’

  Hector again roused himself to confirm his own brilliance.

  ‘But how did they get drunk?’ I
persisted.

  ‘Ach, well you know how it is, Miss Peckwitt. These lads we met, they came down again and they’d brought a few bottles with them, so we started drinkin’ again. We minded not to forget the chickens though an’ we kept openin’ the lids of their boxes and givin’ them a good warmin’ with our breaths. I remember thinkin’ one time that they looked to be gettin’ sleepy. Their eyes was closin’ and they stared staggerin’ and lyin’ down with their legs stretched out. I thought they must be dyin’ all right but Hector said no, they was lyin’ down because they were goin’ to sleep as they should.’ He laughed. ‘Ach, I think we was both pretty drunk then.’

  ‘I would have expected Johnny Comic to have mothered them like a hen,’ I said.

  ‘He didn’t know a thing about them,’ said Erchy. ‘As soon as he stepped back on the boat he rolled himself in his oilskins and lay in the bunk there and he stirred only to eat one of the hard-boiled eggs Kirsty had given him when he came away. Honest, she gave him three dozen of them!’

  ‘They’re no’ lyin’ down any more,’ said Morag, taking another peep into the boxes. ‘They’re no’ very strong but they’re up on their feets.’

  ‘Am I not after tellin’ you it was just drunk they was. Drunk on too much whisky fumes,’ said Tom-Tom who, since finishing his meal, had sat smiling foolishly at the coloured plates on the dresser as though he was watching a chorus of dancers.

  ‘The poor wee things,’ said Morag again. ‘Day-old chicks and so drunk I’m thinkin’ they’ll not reach a day older before they’re dead.’

  But she was wrong. ‘The poor wee things’ not only survived but thrived exceedingly well. They seemed to be immune from all the maladies that can effect young chickens and not even Morag had ever known such wonderful layers.

  Tourists

  Nelly Elly, her son Duncan, Erchy and Hector were all looking slightly baffled when I called at the Post Office.

  ‘It’s a glorious day,’ I greeted them enthusiastically, and though they were emphatic in their agreement that it was indeed a glorious day and went on politely to acclaim the benefits such weather would bring in the way of increased crops and increased tourism there was an air of preoccupation about the four of them. I wondered if it had anything to do with the folder Nelly Elly had in front of her on the counter.

  ‘Ask Miss Peckwitt what she thinks about it,’ suggested Erchy.

  ‘Yes, well,’ said Nelly Elly hastily. ‘I was about to do that just.’

  I looked from one to the other.

  ‘It’s like this,’ the postmistress began to explain. ‘We’ve just had a telegram through for one of the young men that’s campin’ down by the burn there—yon dark boy who wears the thick glasses and chews bubbles when be talks, you mind?’

  I nodded, puzzling as to what the difficulty might be.

  ‘Well,’ went on Nelly Elly, with a trace of reticence, ‘it seems it’s his twenty-first birthday and the sender’s paid for one of those special birthday greetings forms for him and I haven’t one left in the place.’

  ‘And now,’ Duncan continued for her, ‘if we give it to him on a plain form just an’ he finds out it was a fancy form that was paid for, somebody might be after puttin’ in a complaint.’

  ‘What sort of forms have you, then?’ I asked, trying to be helpful.

  ‘Just these,’ said Nelly Elly, handing me two forms, one of which was decorated with wedding bells while the other was gay with storks.

  ‘One’s for weddings and the other’s supposed to be for the birth of a baby,’ she explained superfluously. ‘Those are all I have except for the plain forms.’

  ‘I’m sayin’ she should send him tse one with tse birds on,’ suggested Hector. ‘Tse poor man might get a bit of a fright if he gets a wedding telegram right in tse middle of his holidays.’

  ‘It depends on the message, I should think,’ I said.

  ‘It says just “Congratulations on your twenty-first”,’ Nelly Elly read out obligingly.

  ‘In that case I should think he’d get much more of a fright if he got a telegram with storks on it,’ I said with a levity that was not particularly well received.

  ‘Which sort of tsings is storks?’ demanded Hector.

  ‘Those birds,’ I told him, indicating the telegram form. ‘They’re the ones that are supposed to bring the babies.’

  ‘Aye?’ His expression was one of polite disbelief and I realised that of course Bruach had never indulged in such pleasant euphemisms.

  ‘Well, will one of us go down an’ ask the man which form he’d like best?’ suggested Erchy.

  ‘Ach, no.’ She seemed doubtful. ‘Maybe if Duncan took it down on a wedding form and explained to the fellow that it’s all we have just at the moment, likely he’d take it all right?’

  ‘Likely he would,’ we comforted, and so she wrote out the message and gave it to Duncan. Erchy and Hector accompanied him so as to witness any possible reactions.

  I gave my letters to Nelly Elly and she tried the date-stamp experimentally on her bare arm. ‘Ach!’ she ejaculated. ‘Fiona was in last night and was playin’ with my stamp.’ She adjusted it and again applied it to her arm before stamping it on to the envelopes. ‘There now,’ she said, dropping the letters into the box.

  She came round from behind the counter to close and bolt the door of the Post Office behind me. It was only three in the afternoon but she was going to hoe her potato-patch beside the road and from there she could see any potential customers. She was not to be left long undisturbed, for Bruach already had its first quota of tourists and I had left the Post Office only about a hundred yards behind me when I met a pair of sun-scorched and midge-bitten campers sauntering along the road, who demanded a little resentfully to know where the Post Office had hidden itself and if, when they found it, they could buy stamps there. They implied both by their tone and their remarks that they had found Bruach a little unaccommodating so far. I directed them on their way but their resentment had kindled a response in me, not against Bruach or the Bruachites but against the tourists themselves, for they were coming now in their coachloads and carloads, robbing the village of its privacy and awakening the hibernating avarice of the crofters.

  The moment the first tourists arrived (always pronounced ‘towrists’ in Bruach) the crofters began to look more alert. Except for the old die-hards like Yawn, who would have noth-to do with tourists and only gave them a ‘withdraw the hem of his garment look’ when they ventured near him, they thoroughly enjoyed the colour and the air of prosperity the presence of the visitors imparted to the village. Soon notices began to appear outside croft houses adjoining the roadside, proclaiming that they were ‘Tearooms’ or offering ‘Bed and Breakfast’, and of these there were more than enough to cater for the number of people who came. Some drew more custom than others, perhaps because of their position, perhaps because of the fare they offered, but it was comforting to see how little rivalry there was between them. Admittedly, Hamish, having been dissatisfied one season with the amount of trade his wife’s tearoom had attracted, had tried to increase it the following season by the added lure of a ‘toilet’, and with this intention he had erected a notice-board in his front garden. Painstakingly, because he was crippled with rheumatics, he had painted the word on it in large white letters, but unfortunately spelling was not Hamish’s strong point and he was soon having to endure much mockery from his neighbours for having left out the ‘i’ so that the notice stated somewhat confusingly ‘Tolet’. In an attempt to rectify his mistake he had hastily inserted an ‘i’ in the appropriate position but the letters were already so cramped that it merely looked like an emphatic full stop separating the words ‘To’ and ‘let’. That at any rate is how the tourists interpreted it and throughout that season Hamish and his family were pestered by people anxious to rent their thatched cottage, until Hamish, almost beside himself with vexation, had resolved to clarify the position beyond doubt in time for the next season. This he had done by simply adding
the letters ‘W.C.’ above the ‘To. let’ already on the board. I do not know if it brought increased custom to his tearoom but I do know that whenever I passed by Hamish’s cottage there were groups of puzzled tourists studying the sign and debating among themselves as to its meaning.

  However, on Sundays, despite the presence of tourists, Bruach reverted to its normal piety. Sheets put out to bleach were taken in if they were dry, or if they were still wet, rolled up so that the sun should not be employed to whiten them. In some houses male guests might be asked if they would mind shaving on the Saturday night because the landlady could not allow the use of a razor on the Sabbath, and always, last thing on Saturday night, the ‘Tearoom’ and ‘Bed and Breakfast’ notices were draped over with sacking, though with such artful nonchalance that the words were never completely obscured.

  ‘He Breeah!’

  I paused and turned round in the direction of the hail to see Janet talking to Dugald who was at work in his potatoes. She waved an indication that she was about to join me and I sat down on the grass verge of the road while I waited for her. The hot sun was burning through my dress and the parched grass was warm and brittle against my bare legs. The breeze was soft as thistledown and spiced with lark song, while out in the bay a school of porpoises plunged and tumbled with consummate grace. Close inshore a trio of shark fins cut lazily through the water. We were well into the second week of long days that began with the sun poking its fingers into one’s eyes in a morning and ended, after molten sunset, in a calm and soothing twilight that all too soon merged into another dawn. The cuckoos, who all day answered their own echoes until it seemed they would drive themselves and everyone else crazy, only decelerated their pace during the night—they did not cease altogether.

  ‘Ach, mo ghaoil,’ puffed Janet as she struggled up the steep bank. ‘Whenever are we goin’ to see the last of this fine weather?’