The Sea for Breakfast Page 10

  God and Miss Peckwitt forgive me,’ she said with both tears and anger shaking her voice, ‘but I’m goin’ to make a swear.’

  And she did.

  The Tinkers

  ‘Sure with the spring they’ll be here like the spiders,’ said Morag emphatically.

  She was speaking of the tinkers, those good-humoured, garrulous itinerants of the Hebrides who annually invaded the village, if not with the first breath of spring then very soon after its first pant, arriving about the same time as the young divinity students who spent their vacations peddling bibles and religious books to the crofting communities—an occupation which made sense of carrying coals to Newcastle—and taking the opportunity to do a little door-to-door evangelism. The crofters placated both by their patronage but for sheer entertainment value, the divinity students were simply not in the same class as the tinkers.

  The attitude of the crofters to the tinkers, or ‘tinks’ as they are more often known, was both interesting and amusing. They despised them, they feared them, yet they welcomed them. They despised them because of the impermanence of their homes which ranged from sod huts to the backs of lorries; I sometimes thought that if Lord Nuffield had turned up in Bruach in a caravan he would have been labelled a ‘tink’! They feared them because of a lingering belief in their supernatural powers; they welcomed them because, after the isolation of the winter, any visitors were preferable to no visitors, and the tinks with their gossip and their jokes leavened many a dreary hour. In addition to pots and pans, their multifarious bundles offered for many the only chance of personal shopping, so the crofters were prepared to open wide their doors and watch indulgently while their kitchen tables were transformed into miniature bargain counters and the ragamuffins of the road became high-pressure salesmen.

  I wanted to buy a milk pail, hence my interest in the coming of the tinkers. Before Bonny had calved, I had equipped myself with all the paraphernalia necessary for providing a supply of milk, butter and crowdie, i.e. setting bowls, milk sieve, butter pats, etc., but some aberration had made me omit to buy a milk pail. There was no way of remedying the omission until I could get to the mainland and I was reduced meantime to milking into a shallow pudding basin which necessitated either my holding the basin in one hand while I milked with the other—a hand-cramping procedure—or else putting the basin on the ground and risking Bonny’s using it as a foot-bath—a mishap which occurred all too frequently.

  It was after just such a mishap one day when I was carrying a footbath of dung-mottled milk to the half-dozen hens, who now queued with disheartening expectancy whenever I went to milk, that Morag, who never used a gate or a path if she could insinuate herself into the garden any other way, emerged from round the back of the byre.

  ‘Look at that,’ I said, showing her the bowl. ‘It’s the third time this week this has happened. I do wish I could get hold of a proper milk pail.’

  It was then that she had told me of the imminent arrival of the tinkers.

  ‘I was hearin’ of tinks in Neabost last week,’ she reported a few days later. I said I must look out for them.

  ‘You mind,’ she said, ‘yon collapsible lookin’ tink that’s always comin’ from together in the middle?’ I nodded, instantly recognizing the man from her description.

  ‘Well, it’s himself has the best milk pails, but see now and don’t let him charge you more than half a crown for it. I doubt he’ll try and get more from you seeing you’re a stranger to him, but don’t give it to him. Half a crown’s what I always pay for them myself.’

  Though I had often eavesdropped on my landlady’s bargaining with the tinkers I had always been too mistrustful to buy anything from them myself, but when a few days after my conversation with Morag the collapsible tink came gangling happily up my garden path with his shirt gaping out of his trousers, his arms encrusted with shining new milk pails, I greeted him with a welcoming smile and a proffered half-crown.

  ‘I’ll take one of your milk pails,’ I offered.

  Courteously he removed his woebegone felt hat, the band of which was decorated with freshly picked briar roses and bluebells. ‘It is a glorious day, madam,’ he reproved me gently.

  I recollected myself. Even with rinks the politenesses must be first observed. I agreed that it was a glorious day.

  ‘Indeed, but you’re badly needin’ some rain hereabouts all the same,’ he went on conversationally.

  ‘We certainly do,’ I said with mounting impatience. I wanted to get back to my goulash which was exasperatedly sizzling its need for attention. Perhaps he too heard the sizzling for he suddenly changed his manner.

  ‘You’d like one of my pails, madam, did you say?’

  ‘Yes, please.’ I again held out the half-crown.

  ‘The price is five shillings,’ he said smoothly.

  I remembered my instructions. ‘I’ll give you half a crown and no more,’ I said.

  ‘I’m sorry, madam, these pails are five shillings. I cannot sell them for half a crown.’

  ‘Half a crown,’ I repeated firmly, knowing that if once I gave the tinkers the impression that I was easy game they would never cease their pestering.

  Spurning further argument temporarily, he turned his attention to the garden where the young shrubs I had planted were pregnant with blossom and the daffodils had already tired themselves out with the exuberance of their blooming.

  ‘I mind you planting these when I was passin’ this way last year,’ he observed affably. I have never discovered if tinkers really do have phenomenal memories or if their assertions are just an astute combination of guesswork and glibness. But they seem to remember everything—always.

  ‘ ’Tis wonderful,’ he mused on, ‘how things grow in a year just.’

  I agreed rather shortly. The goulash was definitely singeing but I was reluctant to take my eyes off the tinker for one moment. I wanted my milk pail and to be rid of him.

  ‘And your cow?’ he asked as he caught sight of Bonny grazing placidly amidst the blue smoky drifts of bluebells. ‘My, my, but that beast has grown too—in just a year now. Can you believe it?’ He shook his head wonderingly.

  ‘I didn’t have her a year ago,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Oh, no, you didn’t, but I saw her last spring at the place you got her from and she’s grown just,’ he retaliated nimbly. ‘Does she give plenty milk?’

  ‘Over a gallon, morning and evening,’ I told him, ‘and I’ve only a shallow bowl to milk into.’

  ‘In that case you’re badly needin’ one of my pails, madam.’ He lifted his eyes contemplatively to the rumpled peaks of the hills showing above the roof of the byre.

  Oh Lord, I thought, now we begin all over again. ‘That’s right,’ I conceded.

  Slipping a pail from the bunch on his arm he handed it to me. I examined it perfunctorily and with a smirk of triumph handed him the money. He smiled too. Indeed, I do not think he had ceased to smile during the length of our bargaining, but now there was an added glint in his eye. Giving me a whimsical little nod he pushed the half-crown back into my hand. ‘Keep that, madam,’ he said chummily. ‘Keep it till next year, see will it grow any bigger.’

  ‘Here, no!’ I expostulated, but he was already on his way to the gate.

  ‘It’s all right, madam.’ He paused to pull himself together in the middle. ‘I’ll be callin’ on you again next spring and it’s wonderful just what a year can do to make things grow. You’d scarce believe it.’

  I was too discomfited to do anything but stand and watch him sauntering his tuneful way back along the road. When I returned to my goulash it was nearly charcoal.

  That same evening I called on Morag. There was a shining new milk pail decorating her dresser.

  ‘How much did you pay for this?’ I asked.

  ‘Only five shillings,’ she said.

  ‘Only five shillings! But you insisted that I mustn’t pay more than half a crown, Morag,’ I protested fretfully.

  ‘Oh, right enoug
h, mo ghaoil, so I did, but you see these pails is twice the size of the one’s he usually brings. I wouldn’t have the cheek to expect one of these for half a crown. It would be cheating the man.’

  After enduring twelve months of self-torture I opened the door one spring day to ‘collapsible’. He still gaped distressingly amidships, his hat was again decorated with flowers, but this time he carried only two milk pails on his arm. Evidently trade had been brisk. He greeted me like an old and valued friend, and began complimenting me on the growth of my garden … on the growth of my cow … I rushed indoors for my purse and of course found that I had nothing less than a ten-shilling note. I thrust it at him. He was sorry, he said, he had no change; he was more than sorry, he said, he couldn’t offer me either of his pails instead of change because they were already ordered. He was sorry.… Oh, well! It was worth it really.

  Once the tink season had started we had no alternative but to submit to their importuning, for rarely indeed did a week go by without a bevy of tinks descending upon us.

  ‘Indeed what did I find when I got back home from my holiday but five shiny new kettles on the mantelpiece,’ complained lame Annie to me as we walked up to the post office together, she to draw her National Assistance. ‘And because five different tinks called and them havin’ nothin’ but kettles to sell just. Jonathon’s that soft he couldn’t say no to one of them.’

  I perforce had to harden my heart even to the extent of resisting ‘Aberdeen Angus’, the pathetic little Indian whose spotless white turban was always protected from the rain by a plastic bag. Each spring he tottered to our doors, so weighed down on either side by heavy suitcases that he looked to be in imminent danger of splitting down the middle. Mainly because of his skill in reading tea-leaves he was enormously popular despite the exorbitant prices he asked, yet when one saw him leaving the village he still tottered under the weight of his much depleted suitcases.

  ‘Aberdeen Angus’ was easily dismissed; he bestowed the same adoring smile on everyone whether or not they refused to purchase. It was not so easy to repulse the elderly female tinks who swung their unconstrained way up to my cottage to extol with soft spoken persistency the quality of men’s shirts, combinations, towels, ladies’ dresses and underwear which spilled on to the step from their tablecloth-wrapped bundles. When at last they could bring themselves to accept the fact that I was not going to buy they would cease their importuning and look at me for a long moment as though assessing my possible reactions to a different kind of approach—their tongues are reputed to be intimidating on occasion—and then they would flounce away with no more than an indignant rustle of petticoats—or it may have been pound notes.

  The only tinkers on whom I came to bestow my custom were ‘Tinkerloo’ and ‘Jinty’. Tinkerloo was a rollicking, robust character who came by ramshackle car to plead with us to buy bootlaces and polish, hair grips and hand cream and to give us devastating insights into the lives of itinerants generally. His appearances were infrequent and, in the hope of encouraging him to come regularly, I bought from him each time he came though his hair grips nearly always showed signs of rust and his hand cream was redolent of bad silage. I asked one of the tinkers once why Tinkerloo did not visit the village as habitually as the rest.

  ‘Ach, him, mam! He’s a terrible bad man for the drink, that one,’ he told me, with perfidious unction. ‘Three times last year and this year already he’s been in hospital to be cured of his elephants.’

  I was surprised. Tinkerloo had never struck me as being an alcoholic, but the last time I saw him he confirmed it himself, blinking the tears from his eyes.

  ‘Aye, mam, it’s true. And now they’re after havin’ me in jail for three months. Three months, mam, and that for doin’ the right and proper thing.’

  ‘How was that?’ I asked him.

  ‘Well y’see, mam. Whenever I see them’ pink elephants that you do see, comin’ up at you out of the heather, or trees maybe where there’s no trees, as I dare say you’ve heard, mam. Well then, I says to myself, I says, “It’s time you done something Joe,” I says. So I gets into my car and I just drives myself off to hospital. It’s what I’ve always done, mam, for years now, ever since the curse struck me as a lad.’ His body sagged miserably. ‘An’ now they’ve stopped, me from doin’ it by sendin’ me to jail for it. What am I to do now?’ he demanded sorrowfully.

  ‘You could get someone else to drive you to hospital,’ I told him.

  He stared at me stupidly. ‘You don’t understand, mam,’ he explained patiently. ‘I couldn’t get nobody to come in a car with me when I’m in that state. Why, I believe I’m as wild as a bull.’ The tears came afresh to his eyes and I had to buy half a dozen tubes of hand cream and hundreds of rusty hair grips before he was even moderately comforted.

  Jinty, the other tinker who was certain of my patronage was a wiry little woman of unbounded optimism. She had a wide gap-toothed smile and a nose that peeled so lavishly from sunburn that I swear it became a visible fraction of an inch smaller each year. I observed as much to her once.

  ‘Ach, no, it’s not the sun that’s my trouble with my nose. No, no, it’s my man.’

  ‘Your man?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. He’s a bacon and eggs man y’see and travellin’ as we are all the time I canna always get it for him. If he doesn’t get his bacon and eggs in a mornin’ then I gets my nose punched.’ She sighed. ‘It’s the same with the tea. Tea, tea, tea, it is for him every few minutes of the day and if there’s no tea in the pot then its a bang on the nose for me again.’

  I pressed upon her a packet of tea which she accepted with gummy gratefulness. I had no bacon and it was too early for the hens to have laid but I suggested she should call back later. I made a pot of tea and we sat in the sunshine drinking it. For the sake of Jinty’s poor nose I suppose we ought to have gone inside but the chimney had been smoking so badly that the kitchen was barely habitable. I apologized to Jinty telling her that I had been trying to get someone for weeks to come and sweep the chimney but that so far everyone had proved to be very elusive.

  ‘Sure my man will do that for you this evenin’,’ she offered briskly.

  I simulated interest in the offer, not believing for an instant that anything would come of it. The tinkers are notoriously averse to manual work and anyway I doubted if people living most of their lives in tents or in lorries would know the mechanics of sweeping a chimney. It was quite a surprise therefore about four o’ clock in the afternoon to be confronted by a fat, panting but very inoffensive-looking little man who wore a bright plaid shirt and who was already sweating in gorgeous Technicolor. He was accompanied by a youth whose figure looked as though some would-be boy scout had been practising knots with it. They had come, they announced, to ‘sweep my chimperly’ and they were in a hurry. Evidently it was to be swept in the traditional Bruach way, for the youth was carrying a large bouquet of heather and the man was clutching a boulder of suitable size. Fortunately, I had let the fire go out; I showed them the ladder and the rope which had been in readiness for weeks. They tied the boulder and the heather to the rope and then Jinty’s man climbed apprehensively on to the roof. I rushed inside and hurriedly threw dust sheets over the furniture, watched by the youth, who had followed me in and who now stood so still that in the confusion I nearly draped him in a dust sheet too.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ I asked him.

  ‘I’ll be after catchin’ the soot,’ he replied lethargically.

  ‘What in?’

  He looked blank. ‘A pail?’ he mumbled.

  I had only one pail and I didn’t want it used for soot. The youth took off his cap and gazed inside it uncertainly. I ran to get a sack but I was too late. There was a rumbling, grating noise from the chimney as the stone was lowered down and simultaneously a great plump of soot fell into the stove and overflowed on to the floor.

  ‘That’ll be the better of that,’ gloated the youth on whom the sight of the soot seemed to have an electr
ifying effect. He jerked himself outside and repeated the words to his confederate on the roof. There were some more rumbles and still more soot. The youth returned, paddled his way through the soot to the fireplace and pushed his head up the chimney. The voice, in miniature, of Jinty’s man came down. ‘He’s sayin’ the stone’s after stickin’ in the chimperly and. I’ll need to go up beside him on the roof to try will it come out,’ he translated, and jerked away again outside. There were a few moments of silence before the stone again began banging ominously in the chimney, though there were now only occasional spatters of soot. I got a shovel and a cardboard box and prepared to clear up the mess, but I tripped over some obstacle among the soot, doubtless the tinker’s cap, and sat down unexpectedly in the midst of it, banging my funny-bone on the door of the oven. I was still sitting there rubbing it when the voices began. Now although I have often heard the expression ‘swear like a tinker’, not until that moment had I the remotest conception of what it could mean. I thought I was inured to malediction but the language that came down my chimney as those two tinkers struggled with the stone was indeed a revelation. I could only wonder that it did not pulverize the stone. It was blistering! It was excoriating! I could have sat and listened to it for hours.

  Eventually the stone was dislodged and when the two performers came down from the roof and presented themselves for payment I was glad to know that my blushes were masked by soot.

  ‘That chimperly,’ Jinty’s man said confidentially, ‘she’s that coarse inside, mam, she’d be the better of a bit of blasting.’

  I drew a deep and tremulous breath. ‘Well,’ I said reverently, ‘you’ve done your best, haven’t you?’

  I put some eggs into a bag and handed them to him. ‘Will you give these to your wife?’ I asked.

  ‘My wife?’ he looked startled. ‘Who would that be?’