A Breath of Autumn Read online

  Bello:

  hidden talent rediscovered!

  Bello is a digital only imprint of Pan Macmillan, established to breathe life into previously published classic books.

  At Bello we believe in the timeless power of the imagination, of good story, narrative and entertainment and we want to use digital technology to ensure that many more readers can enjoy these books into the future.

  We publish in ebook and Print on Demand formats to bring these wonderful books to new audiences.

  About Bello:

  www.panmacmillan.com/imprints/bello

  About the author:

  www.panmacmillan.com/author/lillianbeckwith

  Contents

  Lillian Beckwith

  Dedication

  Vocabulary

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Lillian Beckwith

  A Breath of Autumn

  Lillian Beckwith

  Lillian Comber wrote fiction and non-fiction for both adults and children under the pseudonym Lillian Beckwith. She is best known for her series of comic novels based on her time living on a croft in the Scottish Hebrides.

  Beckwith was born in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, in 1916, where her father ran a grocery shop. The shop provided the background for her memoir About My Father’s Business, a child’s eye view of a 1920s family. She moved to the Isle of Skye with her husband in 1942, and began writing fiction after moving to the Isle of Man with her family twenty years later. She also completed a cookery book, Secrets from a Crofter’s Kitchen (Arrow, 1976).

  Since her death, Beckwith’s novel A Shine of Rainbows has been made into a film starring Aidan Quinn and Connie Nielsen, which in 2009 won ‘Best Feature’ awards at the Heartland and Chicago Children’s Film Festivals.

  Dedication

  To the people of the Western Isles of Scotland who have added so richly to my life

  Vocabulary

  Mor (More)

  big

  Beag (Bek)

  small

  Prapach (Prapak)

  a small pile of hay

  poc (pok)

  a bag or sack

  Ceilidh (Kayley)

  a meeting of folk for gossip and song

  Strupach (Stroopak)

  a cup of tea and a bite to eat

  Mo ghaoil (Moh gool)

  my dear

  Bodach (Botak)

  old man

  Cailleach (Kalyak)

  old woman (the wife)

  Cas chrom (Kas krowm)

  the Hebridean foot plough

  Skart

  the shag or green cormorant

  Oidhche mhath (Oykee va)

  good night

  Creagach (Kraykak)

  sea wrasse (a fish)

  Slainte mhath (Slanjy va)

  good health

  Potach (Potak)

  a cake made from oatmeal, water

  andor whisky

  Souming

  the number of animals a crofter is

  permitted to keep on his croft

  Beannachd leat (Bianak let)

  blessings go with you

  Lobhta (Lofta)

  loft

  Salachar

  filthy (of a person)

  Crotal

  a lichen used for dying cloth

  Trodhd (Tro-art)

  come here

  Tapadh leat (Tapa let)

  thank you

  Chapter One

  Kirsty MacDonald settled herself on the rock that protruded like a sill from the heathery bank of moorland beside the sheep track. Raising her binoculars, she scanned the rugged outline of the island that lay a mile or so across the Sound, focusing on the wide-mouthed bay whose shingle shore gave the appearance of being the threshold of the irregular line of croft houses that comprised the village of Clachan. After a few moments, she swung her gaze to the schoolhouse which, even at that distance, was easily identifiable. Set against the starkly rising cliffs at one end of the bay, it had a high-pitched roof, narrow institutionalised windows, and a tiny uncluttered playground enclosed by a sturdy stone wall which defended it from the sea. The school had a distinct air of aloofness, as if it had been designed to create the impression that it was drawing away the hem of its garments from the squat thatched croft houses with their adjoining unkempt byres and barns, their decrepit hen-houses and incongruously neat peat stacks and haystacks. For some minutes her gaze rested on the schoolhouse as if she might be seeking to detect some sign of activity, yet she well knew that her binoculars were not sufficiently powerful to discern movement at such a distance. Her eyes began to water and, with a sigh, she lowered the glasses, blinked rapidly, and continued to stare across the Sound, her mind preoccupied by how her son, the Wee Ruari as he’d always been known, was reacting to his first day of formal education.

  She herself had taken him across the Sound to Clachan earlier that morning in Katy, the dinghy with the outboard motor and, sensitive to his husky entreaty that there should be no motherly embrace or fond farewell, they’d parted from each other with no more than a muttered whisper of ‘Beannachd leat’, a nod, and a tightly controlled smile. Again at his insistence, she’d stayed beside the Katy, pretending to be adjusting the floorboards while she covertly watched him make his way over the shingle and up to the entrance of the school playground, where already several scholars of varying ages and sizes were clustered, eyeing the newcomer’s approach with evident interest. It was the first time that mother and son had been parted for more than an hour or so and now, from today, they would be unlikely to see each other until the following Friday evening, and only then if the sea were calm enough for someone to take the Katy across to get him.

  The realisation that her son was approaching the age when he would need to go to school, and that when that time came he would have to live much of the time away from her, had been a lurking disquiet in her mind for many months. It was not that she hadn’t been keen for him to be educated in a school with other children, yet when Jamie, her stepson, had said bluntly one day, ‘Isn’t it time Wee Ruari was starting school and being more with children of his own age?’ the question had stunned her momentarily: it had sounded so brusque.

  ‘Time enough,’ she’d said, trying to make her voice sound bland, so Jamie would not suspect her uneasiness, but Wee Ruari, having heard Jamie put the question, had since given her little respite from his demands to know how long he must wait before he could go to school. He was ready for school, he’d declared positively, and she had to acknowledge to herself he was certainly that. He might not have reached the required age to start, but his keenness to learn had been evident from his earliest years. As soon as his small fingers had become nimble enough to manage a pencil she had taught him firstly how to copy a few simple letters and then how to link them so that they spelled simple three-letter words. On winter afternoons, in the quiet time after she’d fed the hens and before ‘the boys’, as she referred to Jamie and his crewman Euan Ally, had returned from their fishing, it had become the custom for her to read to him from one of the children’s story-books which she’d requested from the mainland library and which Jamie regularly collected from the post office every couple of months. The books were far too advanced for Wee Ruari to read himself, but once the lamp was lit he loved to sit at the table, as close as possible to her, seemingly fascinated by the lines of black printing, which her
voice could turn magically into stories of other children, other animals, other lands far beyond the hills, beyond the sea and sometimes, as she would try to explain, beyond the sunset.

  His learning had been further advanced by a gift of more suitable books from a young couple who, while holidaying in Clachan the previous summer, had managed to persuade a boat-owner to ferry them over to Westisle. They had become so enchanted with its secluded glens and hidden corries, its undisturbed moorland, the variety of plant life and wildlife, that they had asked if they might bring over their tent and spend the remainder of their holiday encamped in the shelter of one of the derelict cottages. It was a cottage which at one time had been the home of crofters. She’d agreed, a little reluctantly at first because they were English, and the English were regarded by the islanders as being proud and unfriendly. She’d feared they might prove to be a nuisance but, to her surprise, she’d found she much enjoyed their presence and when, at the end of their stay, they had asked if they could make a similar arrangement for the following year and stay for the whole of their holiday she’d acquiesced unhesitatingly. It had turned out that the young woman was a primary-school teacher and her husband a university lecturer. When they’d arrived the following spring they’d brought with them a parcel of beautifully illustrated books of rhymes and stories for Wee Ruari, who was so taken with the gift he seemed to think that in return he should escort them to wherever they wished to go on the island and show them some of his favourite places. Kirsty, anxious that he should not be a nuisance to them, had tried to dissuade him from seeking their company too frequently, explaining to him that they wanted to be left alone to quietly explore the island and seek specimens of plants and pebbles to take back to England with them. Somewhat reluctantly, he’d agreed.

  It was inevitable that, after the couple had been encamped for a few days, a fierce gale accompanied by lashing rain had wreaked havoc on their camp and Kirsty, who, from the moment of their arrival had been prepared for such an eventuality, had offered them instead the shelter of her unused loft room. It was likely they would be cosy enough in their sleeping bags in her house. Wee Ruari had been overjoyed that they should all be together in the same house and the young woman, whose name was Polly, had been so much taken with his eagerness to learn that, when she had not been helping her husband classify specimens, she’d been happy to read to the boy, frequently encouraging him by moving her finger below the words as she read. She’d also taught him some English nursery rhymes and had been delighted when he repeated them to her almost without hesitation. Though he’d given every impression of enjoying them, he’d confided to Kirsty that English children must be ‘pretty daft’ to believe that such silly rhymes ‘schooled’ them as he put it, but both she and Jamie had subsequently suffered many days, weeks, and months of hearing the singsong repetition of ‘Bo-Peep’, ‘Simple Simon’, and ‘Little Boy Blue’ which had never impinged upon their own early education.

  Yes, Wee Ruari was certainly ready for school, Kirsty assured herself and, since he was ‘no bauthalain’ as her late husband used to declare, she was certain he would prove to be a scholar of whom she and the dominie would be proud. Waving away a hovering bumble bee, she directed her glasses on the ‘Widow Fraser’s’ reed-thatched cottage which crouched snugly at the opposite end of the bay from the school. The ‘Widow Fraser’ was, in Kirsty’s opinion, a worthy kind of woman: clean, hard-working and a good enough cook. When Kirsty had first spoken to her about having Wee Ruari to stay with her during the week when he would be attending school she had greeted the suggestion warmly. Having been a widow for nearly fifteen years and with her only child, a daughter, married and living in New Zealand, she’d welcomed the prospect of anyone, even a youngster, to keep her company and had appeared to be well satisfied with the small recompense Kirsty had been able to offer in return for his lodging.

  So Kirsty had no reason for any misgivings about being parted from her son. She had spoken to the dominie some weeks previously and had been assured that ‘the boy would be suitably supervised’. He would already be familiar with those of the scholars who had managed to coax their way onto a summer beachcombing expedition on Westisle, or perhaps had been counted useful enough to accompany a rabbit-shooting trip during the winter. The rest of the scholars would no doubt have been informed by the dominie that the new boy from Westisle would be joining the class when the new term started. There would, Kirsty imagined, be the initial wary reserve which was natural to all island children but it would speedily disperse and he would make good friends. He was that kind of boy just. She had no apprehensions as to his safety. She had taught him to swim, and the terrain of Westisle had conditioned him to cope with any hazards he might encounter in the not-too-dissimilar surroundings of Clachan, and yet she was still tense. ‘I’m only deluding myself thinking it’s just the separation from my son that is affecting me like this,’ she reasoned. ‘I’m just loath to allow myself to admit that the wrench of separation from him is aggravating the still raw wound that has ravaged me since the loss of my husband.’ It was not, she had to admit, the loss of the kind and gentle man who had been Wee Ruari’s father and who had tragically drowned before he had even known of the child that was in her womb, but the loss of his dour brother, the man who had subsequently offered her marriage without any semblance of affection but simply to ensure that she and her child could be sure of a permanent home. The man who, not until the final hours of his last illness, had confessed his secret and abiding love for her, and had, by doing so, unmasked her own love for him; a love which hitherto she had either smothered or had shrank from recognising. But that love had been a secret between the two of them and because she thought of it as being in some way illicit she had, since his death, striven to maintain a stoical composure. Her shoulders sagged at the memory of that last farewell; her stoicism seemed to be deserting her and when she again tried to raise the glasses and focus them her hands were too unsteady. Her breath started to catch in her dry throat; her breast began to heave uncontrollably. ‘Dear Lord, I’m too old to cry,’ she chided herself; but grief was threatening to overwhelm her and, before she could get a grip on herself, even before she could grab a hasty handful of the overall beneath her jacket to staunch them, the tears were gushing from her eyes and running down her cheeks, blinding her. Shuddering, she turned away from the loch and from the hills, as if fearing that they were secretly spying on her.

  Rolling onto her stomach, she pressed her yielding body into the conformity of the heather; sobs shook her as she tried to deceive herself into imagining it to be the close embrace she had yearned so much to receive.

  Thus, completely alone, the twice-widowed Kirsty MacDonald at last abandoned herself to the grief she had for too long suppressed.

  Chapter Two

  How long her spell of anguish lasted she had little idea but it was a more persistent bumble bee that, finding her tear-damp face worth investigating, recalled her to the present and, though she had no fear that the bee might sting her, it served as a reminder of the urgency of the day’s work. Weakened by grief, she nevertheless rose determinedly to her feet and started back along the track to the house, assuring herself that a good strong cup of tea would soon revive her crushed spirits. Before she had covered more than a few yards, however, her attention became riveted on the concentration of gannets over the loch. The birds had not been there earlier, and their presence brought her to an abrupt halt.

  The annual arrival of the big white birds over the blue water was for her always an intriguing sight. Welcome too since it indicated the arrival of the annual shoals of herring, ‘the silver darlings’ as the crofters called them, with the promise of good fishing and subsequently a good stock of herring for salting down into barrels for winter food for the family; for those beasts which would eat them and, hopefully some surplus for the baiting of the coming season’s lobster creels. She permitted herself to linger for a while, captivated by the birds’ swift, sleek diving, the noise curiously r
eminiscent of flat wooden boards being dropped on the water. She recollected her early childhood on her granny’s croft, rejoicing in the remembered excitement which had infected the village when the gannets were first observed to be reconnoitring the nearby loch. ‘It looks like the silver darlings are here!’ the tidings had quickly circulated throughout the village proving to be the stimulus for every man who owned a dinghy to drop whatever he was doing and, be he nearly crippled with arthritis, or be his dinghy perilously held together by little more than tar and string and the mercy of God, to seek out his net. As the evening approached he would load it into the dinghy which, often with the willing assistance of a couple of equal decrepits, would then be dragged down to the tide and rowed out to the middle of the loch, there to wait tensely listening for the splashing rustle of a tight-packed shoal.

  Each crofter cherished his own ‘piece of net’. This was usually stored along with ancient clothes and archaic tackle ‘up in the lobhta’ which, since it frequently served as sleeping quarters for less particular, or less continent relatives of the family, ensured the net was well protected, from the ravages of moths by copious doses of urine. Every autumn when the arrival of the herring was being predicted the ‘piece of net’ would be brought out and examined and then attached with what Kirsty imagined to be prehistoric lengths of rope to a varied selection of buoys and floats gleaned from the flotsam and jetsam off the shore, and stored among an accumulation of lobster creels awaiting repair, discarded whelk sacks and matted, unusable sheep fleece in a corner of a byre or barn.