Erchy said, ‘If you turn off to the left just down this road we’ll come to the place where the fellow lives that has the gun.’ I turned off to the left and drove for some miles along a track that snaked around the hill until it finally ended at a drab, peat-stained croft house which squatted beside the loch. Erchy and Hector got out of the car and strolled with apparent aimlessness towards the cottage and, watching, Morag and I saw a bent, cobwebby looking old man emerge, greet them with traditional Highland warmth and lead them into the house. I knew there would soon follow an invitation to Morag and me to go inside and take a ‘strupak’ but the day was too tempting to stay indoors and I decided on escape. I slung my binoculars round my neck and got out of the car.
‘I’m going for a walk,’ I told Morag. ‘Blow the horn if they’re back before I am.’
‘Indeed then you might just as well expect to hear the last trumpet as that horn,’ she said prophetically. ‘I’m thinkin’ once them men gets talkin’ guns they’ll not rouse themselves till one of us puts a rope on them.’
I had made my escape just in time for I was barely out of earshot before I saw the old man approach the car and saw Morag accompany him back to the cottage. I picked my way along the shore until I was well out of sight and then I sat down on a lichened boulder at the edge of the water, savouring the still reflections and the near silence of the hill-guarded loch. In Bruach the water was almost always too shaggy for reflections and invariably there was a noise of sea, whether it was the violence of storms, the snarling surge of after-storm swell or simply the sucking and hissing of the tide. It was a change for me to rest beside quiet water for though this was a sea-loch the entrance was a narrow channel between opposing headlands so that, save in stormy weather, it was sheltered and still, the wavelets chiming against the shingle with a sound like the tinkle of draught-stirred baubles on a Christmas tree. I focussed my glasses on a thin crust of black rocks which reached out into the water about half way up the loch, intrigued by the pattern made by the quiescent gulls which had ranged themselves with such precision against their black background that the effect was of a piano keyboard. The loch itself was stippled with seabirds: mergansers, razorbills and shelduck. Drifts of eiders paddled around the margins voicing their prim-voiced exclamations; flights of oystercatchers rose to skim across the water as they shrieked their wild alarms while close at hand rock pipits flitted busily over the shallows. As always the beauty of it all filled me with humility while at the same time making me fearful of its desecration and I found myself murmuring my favourite lines from ‘Inversnaid’ and murmuring them with all the fervency of a prayer:
‘What would the world be once bereft
Of wet and of wilderness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.’
I stood up. I had suggested to Erchy that an hour was a reasonable time for him to conclude negotiations about the gun and after an extra half hour to allow for the crofters’ indifference to clock time I started back towards the car. There was no sign of them so I sat down once again to admire the scenery while keeping a sharp eye on the cottage since I knew that if, when they came out to reconnoitre, I was not visible, they would simply go back into the house to continue drinking tea and gossiping until I made my presence felt. After another half hour of waiting I began to grow impatient. The purpose of my journey had after all been for me to collect my chickens and naturally I wanted to ensure that I did eventually reach the farmer’s house before it was time to start on the homeward journey. Apart from blowing the horn which would not only have been a breach of Highland courtesy but would have been a blasphemy in such surroundings I wondered how I could attract the attention of my companions without going to the house and so risk having to stay for a ‘strupak’. I suddenly recalled Hector’s method of attracting my attention when he was too shy to come near the house such as when I had guests staying with me. He simply used to take off his cap and fling it at the hens, scattering them in panic. The resulting cacophony would bring me hurrying to the door prepared to do battle with a maurauding dog or a flock of thieving hoody crows and usually I would be just in time to see Hector adjusting his hat on his head with all the aplomb of just having raised it in salutation while he stared at the hens with well simulated surprise. I never divulged that I was aware of the strategy but since it proved unfailingly effective I resolved to try it now. I was not wearing any sort of head covering but there was a small cushion in the car which I always used to support my back when driving and thinking it would make an excellent substitute I resolved to throw that. At the precise instant the cushion left my hand I glimpsed out of the corner of my eye the old man appearing round the gable end of the cottage. He was followed by Erchy, Hector and Morag and their varying expressions as they caught me in the act of hurling the cushion imprinted themselves on my memory. Erchy looked plainly startled. Hector contrived to look exaggeratedly indifferent and Morag and the old man stared at me with that strangely hunted look which, had they been devout papists, would have been accompanied by the precaution of crossing themselves. To make things worse the sudden appearance of the old man had caused me to misjudge my aim and though the hens scattered and squawked with an embarrassing clamour alas! my cushion landed in a battered tin bath half full of sludgy water. I knew how inexplicably crazy my action must have looked and found myself shaking with inward laughter as I hastily retrieved the cushion. I knew too that at least in front of the old man I must restrain my mirth and sensing that it was wiser to proffer no excuse for my conduct I merely smiled fatuously. Morag spoke in Gaelic and the old man’s expression changed to one of happy understanding.
Erchy soured his mouth to disguise a smile and Hector gazed with serious concentration at the smoking chimney of the cottage. I guessed she had given her own highly individual explanation of my action and wondered what it might be.
Bait!
‘Now, are we ready to carry on,’ I said after successfully resisting the old man’s pressing invitation to take a strupak.
‘Aye,’ Erchy nodded. Morag got into the car and promptly took on to her lap a stone firkin jar which, I heard her promising the old man, she would leave at the post office to be filled with paraffin ready for the postman to bring out next time he came with mail. Erchy got in cherishing a twelve-bore hammer shotgun which looked to me as if it might have done duty at Waterloo, and Hector had clutched in his hand a ‘tsing’ which, after a few puzzled glances, I thought I identified as the speaking tube from an old Rolls-Royce. The articles Hector succeeded in disinterring from old byres never ceased to astonish me. When I took my seat behind the wheel I regretted having even thought of throwing my cushion at the hens for despite its brief immersion it was far too damp now to use and I was compelled to drive without its familiar support behind the small of my back. I was assailed by the feeling that the day which had begun so well was beginning to deteriorate but I shrugged off the thought, dismissing it as probably no more than the first pangs of hunger making themselves felt.
‘Can we stop somewhere for a bite to eat?’ I proposed when we were back on the main road. ‘I’m feeling a bit peckish.’
‘Ach, you should have come in an’ taken a wee strupak with the old man,’ Erchy told me.
‘Indeed, mo ghaoil, you’d be best pleased you didn’t,’ said Morag. ‘The room we was in was in such a state you could have stirred it with a stick.’
‘I mind there is a hotel we could get somethin’,’ Erchy recalled. ‘It’s on a bitty yet but I believe they’d give us a meal if we asked them for it.’
I drove on until Morag, espying the post office, asked me to stop so that she could leave the old man’s firkin jar, and remembering that in my coat pocket were two letters I had intended posting at the first opportunity I announced that I would go in and buy some stamps.
‘Ach, you shouldn’t buy stamps from this place,’ Erchy warned.
‘Why ever not? It�
�s a post office, isn’t it?’ I asked.
‘Aye, right enough but I was in there once when I came to collect a dog I’d bought an’ the old folks that was runnin’ the place didn’t seem to know a stamp from a telegram,’ he explained.
‘Had they no had it long then?’ enquired Morag.
‘Forty years,’ said Erchy. ‘You’d think they would have learned in that time or else had it taken away from them.’
‘If they had it forty years the postmaster maybe hadn’t the heart to take it away from them,’ suggested Morag.
‘Maybe so,’ allowed Erchy, ‘but judgin’ from the stamps they sold to me that day I’d think they’d likely had them in stock for forty years as well. There wasn’t a one of them would stick on an envelope.’
I chuckled.
‘It’s as true as I’m here,’ he affirmed. ‘An’ when I showed the old bodach the way they wouldn’t stick he tried would he do it himself an’ he brought his fist down with such a bang on the envelope the damty stamp broke into little bits. Honest,’ he reiterated, ‘he was still pickin’ the bits off himself when I left him.’
‘In that case I won’t post my letters here,’ I said. ‘But please be sure and remind me as soon as we see another post office. They should have been posted two or three days ago and now they’re very urgent.’ I have an unfortunate habit of what my friends describe as ‘taking my letters for a walk’, i.e. I set out with the intention of posting them but something distracts me and on my return home I find the letters still in my pocket or in the pocket of the car.
‘I’ll try to remember,’ promised Erchy.
‘Supposin’ I forget my own name I’ll remind you to post your letters,’ Hector swore fervidly.
When Morag returned after depositing the firkin Erchy observed, ‘I hate to see those jars bein’ used for paraffin. It gives me a kind of queer feelin’ inside myself.’ He regarded us with a pained expression.
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘When I was young they were always full of whisky, not paraffin, that’s why,’ he explained. ‘All the old folks had at least a firkin of whisky they kept beside the fire ready to warm them when they came in from the cold.’
‘Aye, tse old folks always had plenty whisky,’ corroborated Hector with a deep sigh of regret.
‘An’ there’s plenty of the old folks would be glad they died when they did sooner than suffer the pain of knowin’ the price of whisky today,’ added Morag.
My companions relapsed into silence as they no doubt meditated on how pleasant life must have been in the halcyon days when whisky was as easily available as tea is today.
‘Did I hear you sayin’ you came here to collect a dog one time?’ asked Morag after a little while and when Erchy nodded she went on, ‘Which dog would that be?’
‘The old one I have still,’ replied Erchy.
‘An’ I paid good money for him, I’m tellin’ you. I was done over that dog. He was supposed to be well trained.’ He snorted. ‘He was that well trained when I got him home he didn’t know to come for his food when it was put for him.’
‘He’s a good dog with the sheep, surely?’ argued Morag.
‘Aye, right enough he’s good now for all that he’s too deaf to know what I’m after tellin’ him but when I first got him he didn’t know a sheep from a stoat.’
‘Dogs don’t seem as if tsey take to me,’ observed Hector.
‘And you don’t take to dogs!’ I tossed the accusation at him. ‘You’re a menace to any dog.’ It was true. Whenever Hector saw a dog he would surreptitiously pick up a stone and when he had got safely past without being bitten he would throw the stone from behind him so that even the owner of the dog was unaware of his action. But the dogs all knew and welcomed him accordingly.
‘Aye, if Hector gets himself a bite it will be himself to blame,’ agreed Morag. Hector’s response was a limp smile.
‘Now,’ I said, after we had driven a few more miles. ‘Let’s get the day sorted out, shall we?’ I want to collect my chickens last of all so that they’re not confined too long in the box so if we can find this hotel and get some lunch we can then go to this place where Hector wants to look at the boat.’
‘Tsat’s not so far now,’ interrupted Hector.
‘And, if you don’t take too much time over that,’ I continued in a severe tone, ‘then we can carry on and collect my chickens and start for home in good time for me to be back to milk Bonny and feed the hens.’
‘Right enough,’ agreed Morag.
I glanced round to get Hector’s acceptance and saw that he was looking intently into the mouthpiece of his speaking tube; Erchy was staring straight in front of him and his eyes were impishly bright. Once again the sense that the day was deteriorating assailed me.
‘Here is the hotel I was tellin’ you of,’ said Erchy and I turned off the road and pulled in at an austere looking establishment which bore no sign proclaiming it to be a hotel.
‘They must have had the sign down for the winter an’ not put it back yet,’ said Morag. We went inside and settled ourselves in the deserted bar, while Morag went to investigate the nether regions with a view to ordering lunch.
I sniffed. ‘Peculiar smell,’ I whispered to Erchy.
He sniffed. ‘Damty queer, right enough,’ he agreed and rapped with his knuckles on the bar counter. There was no response but after a little while we heard footsteps approaching. It was Morag who appeared.
‘Indeed but we’ll get no lunch here today,’ she told us.
‘Why not?’ I asked despairingly. I was by now very hungry.
‘They’re sayin’ the cook’s gone off,’ she explained.
‘That’s what’s after makin’ yon queer smell,’ said Erchy with a wink at me. He rapped again more emphatically on the counter and this time his assault was followed by the sound of footsteps clumping down bare wood stairs. A surly young woman enquired with her eyes what we wanted but when we asked for food, pleading even for a sandwich, she told us brusquely that they were short staffed and were far too busy getting the place ready for the season to be able to offer us anything but drinks and biscuits. I said I would have a dry sherry but when it came it was sweet sherry; only the biscuits were dry.
‘Well,’ I murmured, ‘you certainly can’t accuse this place of giving us a Highland welcome.’
Morag was ashamed. ‘Indeed it’s that crabbit you would think it must be English folks that’s runnin’ it,’ she said. There were times when Morag completely forgot I was English.
‘Ach, what else do you expect from a place that leaves the cook to go off,’ said Erchy.
When we came out of the hotel there was a thick mist like grey fleece crouching behind the hills ready to bear down on us and before we had got very far along the road I had to use the windscreen wipers. With the change in the weather and with my stomach complaining of neglect it seemed that my earlier misgivings were already beginning to be justified.
‘I hope this boat of yours isn’t far away now,’ I said to Hector.
‘About half a mile just,’ he informed me blithely. But being familiar with Hector’s estimation of distance I wisely interpreted his ‘half a mile just’ as probably being nearer three miles. Once again our road skirted the shores of a loch around which were scattered the homes of landless cottars built so close to the water’s edge that their washing lines were stretched above the shingle between the margin of the tides so that it must have been possible to peg out or take in washing only when the tide was sufficiently low. As we turned away from the loch the cottars’ houses and the crofts gave way to efficient looking farms and everywhere we looked we saw that the crops were far more advanced than those in Bruach. Already their potatoes grew in stately rows whereas in Bruach they were still only squat posies above the earth; the fields of corn were bristly green whereas in Bruach the green was barely more than a portent; the fields set aside for hay were lush with silky grass while our grass had not yet grown high enough to camouflage the hoofprin
ts of the cattle which had fought and grazed over the crofts all winter.
‘They’re well on with the crops,’ observed Erchy, voicing all our thoughts.
‘They’re always well on in these sort of places,’ asserted Morag knowledgeably. ‘They get their spring work done early an’ then at the back end when we’re still gatherin’ in the corn these folks is away on their holidays an’ all their harvest finished.’
‘They probably have plenty of help,’ I pointed out.
‘Is it help?’ exclaimed Morag. ‘Indeed when I was away on my tour we was one day at a farm where they had what they said was a concubine harvester an’ the farmer was after tellin’ me it did everythin’ for him just not just cuttin’ the corn but threshin’ it an balin’ the straw.’
‘We could do with one of those in Bruach,’ said Erchy.
‘An’ what would we do in Bruach with a concubine harvester?’ demanded Morag. ‘The men wouldn’t know how to behave with it just.’
‘They’d soon find out,’ I assured her.
We were approaching a crossroads and Hector asked me to turn right and then drive in through a gap in a stone wall which bounded a field adjoining a prosperous looking croft house.
‘Is this it?’
‘Aye,’ he said, getting out of the car. ‘Are you comin’? he asked Erchy. Erchy followed him and they disappeared from sight behind some buildings,
‘It doesn’t look a very boaty sort of place,’ I said to Morag. We both got out of the car and had embarked on an inspection of the land when a middle-aged woman appeared and with real Highland cordiality invited us to take a ‘strupak’. In her aseptically clean kitchen we drank mugs of strong tea and ate wads of soggy Glasgow bread spread with home-made butter and thin factory-made jam that dribbled anaemically between our fingers while we ate. With my hunger appeased we went outside again but just as I was beginning to think the day had improved I caught sight of Erchy and Hector struggling to load a large barrel on to the back seat of the car.
Beautiful Just! Page 8
