‘Look, I can’t possibly eat all this,’ I protested. ‘Couldn’t I put some out into a dish first to save wasting the rest?’ Beside me Behag murmured that she too could never cope with such a quantity.
‘Ach, just leave what you don’t want,’ instructed the skipper, loftily. ‘Sammy will get rid of what’s left over the side.’
I felt guilty about leaving so many of the pears and more than two-thirds of the tin of milk and would have felt even more guilty had I not observed that only Angy and the cook had managed to dispose of the whole contents of their tins. The skipper and the other two crew had eaten only about half of theirs before pushing the tins away.
The cook picked up a bucket with a rope in its handle. ‘Are you sure you can no’ eat just a wee bit more?’ he enquired, looking solicitously at Behag and me and when we shook our heads he swept all the remaining tins higgledy-piggledy into the bucket and whistling nonchalantly climbed up on to the deck. I had always been brought up on the old adage ‘Waste not, want not’, and I winced as I heard all that good food splashing into the sea. The cook came back into the fo’c’sle with the pail rinsed clean. Behag and I exchanged dismayed glances.
‘Aye, it’s good to have fresh milk for a change.’ said the skipper, gulping tea from his mug. ‘I fairly enjoy the taste of fresh milk in my tea.’ He winked at me, the diffident fisherman’s method of saying thank you to a strange woman.
Behag addressed her cousin’s wife’s brother, Dodo, who was sporting a large piece of sticking plaster behind his right ear, a colourful bruise on his jaw and a deep ruddy scar on the back of one hand.
‘Were you in an accident?’ she asked him.
‘Some accident!’ snorted the cook and Dodo’s face split into a bashful grin.
‘What were you doin’?’ pursued Behag.
‘I fell down one of these manhole things,’ Dodo told her in tones that implied it had been a pleasant experience.
‘How did you come to do that?’ she pressed anxiously.
‘He was drunk,’ supplied the skipper. ‘Go on, Dodo, tell her the rest of it while you’re about it.’
‘Ach, right enough we had a good drink on us,’ admitted Dodo sheepishly. ‘It was on Saturday night when me an’ some of my pals were at a dance. We didn’t think much of the lassies there so when a gang of strange fellows came in we started tormentin’ them. It turned out they were Irish an’ it ended up by us bashin’ one another about a bit. The next thing we know is somebody’s got the pollis so me an’ my pals start to run before they can get a hold of us.’
‘Only they didn’t run fast enough,’ interjected the cook.
‘Was it run?’ echoed Dodo indignantly. ‘We ran like tinker’s ponies. “You lead the way, Dodo”, my pals shout to me seein’ I know this place as well as I know the deck of this boat, so I dodged down this dark entry but by God! hadn’t some damty fool left open one of those manhole covers an’ plump! down I went into it an’ plump! plump! plump! down came my three pals on top of me. If they’d kept quiet we would have been all right even then but they were swearin’ at me so much for takin’ them there the pollis heard an’ that’s how they found us. They carted us off to the station then.’
To me it sounded just like a description of a scene from one of the old ‘Keystone Cops’ films.
‘Did they put you in the cells?’ questioned Behag in a horrified voice.
‘Aye, until the Monday mornin’ an’ they charged us five pounds apiece to get out again.’ Dodo shook his head regret-fully. ‘I took ten pounds of good money to go an’ enjoy myself on Saturday night an’ when I got out of the cells I hadn’t a penny in my pocket.’
‘But you had five pounds’ worth of whisky inside your stomach,’ the skipper reminded him.
‘Aye,’ admitted Dodo. ‘You can say it cost me five pounds to get in an’ five pounds to get out.’
The skipper drained his cup and pushed it towards the cook for refilling. ‘Right enough, the Irish are the ones for fightin’.’ he opined. ‘I believe myself if an Irishman was on a deserted island an’ he couldn’t find another body to attack he’d have his left hand fightin’ his right before he’d be satisfied.’
‘When I was in hospital we had an Irish cleaner in the wards,’ I recalled with a smile. ‘She had rather badly fitting false teeth and one of the patients used to say that even without hearing the cleaner speak she could tell she was Irish because her top set of teeth were always fighting the bottom set.’ ‘I’ll tell you this much,’ declared Angy with some ferocity, ‘it’s not just the humans but even the bloody Irish lobsters fight.’
I could not repress a smile.
‘It’s true,’ reiterated Angy. ‘I was workin’ on a lobster boat for a time fishin’ off the Irish coast so I know what I’m talkin’ about.’
‘Aye?’ said the skipper with a wry smile.
‘Well, skipper, you know yourself I’ve fished lobsters off the coasts of England, Scotland an’ Wales in my time an’ in the ordinary way when you take the beasts out of the creels an’ put them on the deck they’ll stay quiet enough till you can tie their claws. But you try doin’ that with the Irish lobsters. By God! The minute you put them on the deck the buggers are starin’ round with them stalky eyes of theirs an’ as soon as one spots another it’s straight across the deck they are and tearin’ one another to pieces before you can bait a creel. No, if you’re fishin’ off Ireland you need an extra man to tie the claws of every lobster as it comes out of the creel,’ he concluded.
The skipper stood up, glancing at the clock on the bulk-head. I pushed Behag and Behag pushed Angy along the bench.
‘We must go back ashore,’ we said, and soon we were out on deck.
‘I’m right sorry we hadn’t a fry to give you,’ the skipper apologised. ‘But next time we’re in maybe.’
‘We have plenty of bree,’ offered the cook generously. ‘D’ you care for bree?’
‘Bree?’ I echoed and shook my head emphatically. ‘Bree is the mixture of blood and salt and fish oil left in the barrel after fresh herring have been salted and kept for about six months. It looks and smells revolting.
‘What are you doin’ with bree aboard?’ asked Angy.
‘Ach, we met up with a Norwegian fishing boat last week an’ they said would we bring them some bree if we could get a hold of it. We took it for them but we didn’t see them so we still have it,’ explained the skipper.
‘What do they do with it?’ I asked,
‘Drink it,’ replied the skipper and seeing my expression added, ‘they nearly come to blows over it they’re that keen on it.’
‘Great bowls of it they’ll drink,’ volunteered the cook. ‘Honest, they just tilt back their heads, open their mouths an’ pour the stuff down their gullets. They’ll pay for it if you’ll let them.’
Behag and I grimaced at each other.
‘They reckon it cures cancer in humans an’ foot-an’ -mouth in cattle,’ said the cook, ‘so it must be true there’s goodness in it.’
We let ourselves down into the dinghy, the crew dismissing us with enthusiastic promises of a ‘good fry’ next time they came in.
‘Oh, how terrible it was to see all that lovely fruit an’ milk goin’ over the side,’ moaned Behag. ‘I felt like jumpin’ in after it.’
‘That’s our skipper,’ said Angy proudly. ‘Unless there’s food to throw over the side he thinks his men aren’t bein’ well enough fed. He’s not a great eater himself, mind, but unless he sees food left on the men’s plates he tells the cook to be sure an’ provide more next time.’
I had from time to time heard of the prodigality of the catering on some fishing boats: the dictum that there should be ‘double helpings for single appetites and all gash straight over the side’, but I had never expected to witness it for myself.
‘But all those pears!’ I expostulated. ‘I doubt if we ate more than three tins among the seven of us and yet seven tins were opened. Anyway,’ I added, ‘surely there wa
s no need to ditch what was left. They would have kept for another meal?’
‘It’s easy to see you’re no’ used to boats,’ retorted Angy. ‘How would you keep opened tins of fruit an’ milk an’ stuff on a boat that’s likely to be jumpin’ all over the sea an’ over one side then the other when the nets are hauled in?’
‘Well,’ I began lamely but he cut me short.
‘No, it’s not “well” at all,’ he insisted. ‘A man would be comin’ down below for a sleep after a heavy night’s fishin’ an’ maybe find tins of milk drippin’ into his bunk, or sticky fruit juice all over the fo’c’sle. Indeed, any fisherman findin’ that’s as likely to throw the cook overboard as the food. No,’ he repeated. ‘Eat what you want at the time an’ dump the rest, that’s the only way on a fishin’ boat.’
‘But,’ I persisted, ‘if we’d been given plates or bowls we could have taken out only what pears we wanted. There would have been no need to open all seven tins of pears and seven tins of milk.’
‘The skipper would have been feared you were stintin’ yourselves to be polite,’ explained Angy. He back-watered with the oars as we came in close to the shore. ‘Anyway,’ he added, ‘that would have meant there was seven bowls to wash up an’ you’d have to have a woman aboard to want to do that.’
Not their Funeral
All day the village had been swathed in mist and silence and fine silky rain that trilled reassuringly from the roof gutter into the half-empty water butts. It had been the sort of day when, since it was impossible to work in the hay, Bruach women felt justified in catching up with their washing or in baking a mountain of scones and oatcakes; a day when Bruach men, anxious to get away from such activity, chose to foregather in the doorway of a neighbour’s barn or byre in the hope of being able to pass the time by watching someone else at work. For me it had been a relatively lazy day which, now that evening was thickening the mist, was going, I suspected, to leave me as tired at the end of it as if I had spent it raking and carrying hay. I had finished my evening meal and had put the sewing machine on the cleared table intending to put ‘sides to middle’ a sheet which had worn thin, but so dim was the light in the kitchen I had to use a magnifying glass to thread the needle. For over two months now I had not needed to light a lamp in the evenings and I felt if I lit one now it would be like betraying what was left of the summer. I decided to leave the sheet mending for another evening and go to call on Janet at whose house there would undoubtedly be some sort of ceilidh in progress.
‘Well, an’ here’s me thinkin’ only this mornin’ you were makin’ yourself a stranger,’ Janet greeted me as I apologised for not having looked in on her for nearly two weeks. ‘Come away in, mo ghaoil.’ Janet’s kitchen was a shade or two darker than my own but like me she had resisted lighting a lamp although on the dresser behind her brother’s chair a swaling candle lit a smoked patch on the painted wall and gave him light enough to peer at the previous day’s paper. Already in addition to Janet, her brother and myself there were seven other people in the room. Morag was one of them. I had apparently interrupted some story she was telling and punctuating it with a nod to me she continued: ‘An’ I mind old Ina keepin’ them in a drawer till Fergus came home. She showed them to me once. “Fergus keeps on sendin’ me these bills or recipits,” she grumbled. “An’ why should he do that when he’s never done it before?” “Ina,” says I, “these are neither bills nor recipits. These are five-pound notes.” She had more than twenty of them there, just pushed into the drawer of the dresser along with old envelopes an’ paper an’ bits of string an’ postcards. “Five-pound notes?” says she. “I cannot believe those things are worth five pence. Why, there’s not a bit of colour on them at all to give them a nice look,” she says, starin’ at them as if they was no more use than election forms she’d throw at the back of the fire. “That’s what they are, Ina,” I tell her, but ach, she would not believe me till Fergus came home an’ took her up to the Post Office to get a book sayin’ it was money he was payin’ into it.’
‘Ina never did take to readin’,’ commented old Murdoch. ‘I was at school with her an’ she was always the dunce, was Ina.’
The door opened and Angy came in, his homespun jacket misted with rain.
‘I was just tellin’ them about your old aunt Ina,’ said Morag, drawing him into the conversation. ‘The way she didn’t know the recipits Fergus was sendin’ were five-pound notes.’
‘Aye, I mind hearin’ about that,’ said Angy, fishing out a damp cigarette. ‘I’m thinkin’ it’s a good thing she never went to Glasgow. The poor old cailleach would have been robbed of everythin’ she had.’ He went over to the fire and lit his cigarette with a flaming peat. ‘Well, Hector an’ Erchy are well pleased with the pocketful of five-pound notes they got for doin’ their little job,’ he announced.
‘Are they back?’ I asked, and added, ‘I didn’t see their boat at the mooring.’
‘How would you be seein’ it in this mist, woman?’ Murdoch derided.
‘They got back this mornin’,’ Angy reported. ‘An’ they would have been back yesterday but for havin’ to wait for their money, so they tell me.’
‘Did they know who was the corpse?’ asked the shepherd.
‘Surely they did,’ replied Morag and went on to detail the dead man’s family tree.
‘Aye, aye, I knew the father,’ said Murdoch. ‘Four sons he had, was it not?’
‘Four,’ affirmed Morag.
‘An’ bad luck with all of them, I’m thinkin’,’ said Murdoch.
‘How would that be?’ demanded the shepherd.
‘Well wasn’t the first born deaf an’ dumb an’ the second died of his lungs an’ didn’t the third one turn into one of these psychiatrisses?’ supplied Murdoch.
‘An’ now the fourth one has been drowned,’ said Morag.
‘Drowned, was he?’ asked the shepherd and added, ‘He’d be drunk likely?’
‘No, he was not drunk,’ replied Morag. ‘They inquested him an’ they found no alkali in his body.’
Murdoch rasped disbelief. ‘Comin’ from that family he was bound to be drunk,’ he insisted. ‘Why, I never saw the like of it. There was as many bottles of whisky went into that house in a week as come into Bruach in a year.’ The old man paused as there came hoots of laughter and muttered accusations of exaggeration. ‘Indeed but it’s as true as I’m here,’ he averred. ‘I was workin’ on a boat that used to deliver the stuff to them an’ I saw it with my own eyes. When the old father of them died I was stuck on the island with the weather while they had his funeral an’ I was told by one of the man’s own relations that it took thirty-four bottles of whisky to bury him.’
‘Thirty-four?’ gasped Janet.
‘Aye, thirty-four,’ repeated Murdoch. ‘An’ that’s a terrible lot of whisky just to put one man m his grave. Mind you,’ he added, ‘I believe some of the mourners went two or three times to the house to give their condolences as they say, hopin’ everybody would be too upset or too drunk to notice them. I heard the widow herself complainin’ of that.’
‘That was some funeral,’ said Angy admiringly.
‘What some folks will do for a dram,’ said Janet with a sorrowful shake of her head.
‘Folks say this one that’s been drowned was a queer one when he was home,’ said the shepherd. ‘I never knew him myself but that’s what I’ve heard folks say.’
‘Aye, right enough he was queer,’ agreed Morag, who when it came to the inhabitants of the Hebrides was a Who’s Who. ‘I didn’t know him either but I knew a woman who lived on the same island. She told me he used to make people get angry he was that queer in his ways.’
‘What sort of things did he do?’ I asked.
‘Ach well, mo ghaoil, daft things like payin’ the income tax when they asked him an’ puttin’ his clocks backwards and forwards just whenever the government told him to,’ she explained.
‘That would upset folks right enough,’ murmured the shep
herd understandingly.
‘People reckoned it was him that took the tax mannie to the island,’ disclosed Murdoch. ‘Seein’ one was payin’ tax they thought the rest must be cheatin’.’
I was intrigued. ‘What happened?’ I asked.
I was there at the time,’ he replied. ‘An’ I saw it for myself.’ His eyes glinted. ‘Ach, he was only a wee mannie this fellow an’ he was that sick on the boat comin’ over an’ that pale he looked as if he’d been left out in the rain for a long time. He was waitin’ on the pier to see the men when they came in from the fishin’ an’ as soon as the men got word of it they started shoutin’ at one another. “There’s some tax bugger over there waitin’ for us,” says one. “Ach, throw him down the fish hold,” says another, makin’ out they was feelin’ right savage, d’you see? Then one of the boats that was unloadin’ swung its derrick over an’ tipped the whole basketful of fish on top of the poor mannie.’ Murdoch wheezed at the memory. ‘While he was cleanin’ himself up from that they started peltin’ him with fish guts. He didn’t stay after that but went back to the boat that brought him over. “Take me back to the mainland,” he tells the boatman. “There’s wild men in this place an’ I’ve suffered enough for the government. If they want taxes from this island they’ll need to send the army.” ‘Murdoch probed at the bowl of his pipe with a sharp splinter of wood. ‘Right enough, the boatman told us the poor mannie did suffer for he was sick all the way back as well.’
‘And did the tax people send anyone else?’ I enquired.
‘I don’t believe they ever did another thing about it except maybe send letters that would go at the back of the fire,’ responded Murdoch. ‘Ach,’ he added, ‘the government’s plenty of money, why should they give it to the likes of us else?’
‘I’m thinkin’ the rest of the folks on that island must have been glad when this one that was drowned took himself off to foreign parts to work,’ said the shepherd.
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