The Loud Halo Read online

  ‘I believe that’s the haircut all the men is gettin’ in Glasgow,’ she whispered. ‘I believe they call it the “cruel cut”.’

  The minister beckoned and in response Hairy Willie and his best man loped eagerly up the aisle towards him shaking the minister’s decorum perceptibly. He fended them off with a rigidly held prayer-book and indicated where they should stand. Hairy Willie complied and stood with his hands clasped nonchalantly behind him. There was a hissing in the front pews and the bridegroom turned round and bestowed on his supporters a jaunty smile accompanied by a convivial wink to which they responded with such uninhibited whisperings that the minister, no doubt apprehensive of blasphemy, spoke to him quietly. Hairy Willie obligingly faced the chancel and stood to attention until perhaps recalling that the black hat crushed to shapelessness under his arm had been given to him by the minister, he reached for it and, holding it behind his back, proceeded to remould it to its original shape.

  The stir of excitement that always precedes the entrance of the bride was by no means lacking at this wedding. One of the tinker children who had no doubt been held captive to this moment in the porch burst through the door, ran up the aisle and pummelling his two fists into the bridegroom’s broad back yelled, ‘She’s comin’ for ye!’ He was quickly seized by a tinker at the end of the pew and pushed protestingly out of sight among the packed bodies, and all eyes turned towards the door as the bride appeared holding determinedly on to the arm of a vacillating old man who I at once recognised to be a spruced-up version of the tinker who had coveted my teeth.

  I was astonished. She looked as pretty as any young bride I had ever seen. The warmhearted Mary Anne had not only washed and bleached her grandmother’s dress but had re-made it so that the bodice fitted perfectly and the long skirt draped itself to conceal all but the toes of my old tennis shoes which peeped out a little dustily as she walked. Her bouquet, which she held in front of her much as a housewife might hold a flue-brush, was most artistic, though the green foliage betrayed itself by its hygienic pallor. As she walked up the aisle she turned to smile with delighted appraisal at the congregation on either side of her. She looked radiant and I do not think there was a single person present who was not extremely touched by the whole event.

  Rescues

  Erchy was mucking-out his cow-byre when I called on him to ask if I could borrow his saw.

  ‘My God! but I had a good laugh out of them tinks the night of the weddin’,’ he said.

  I looked at him searchingly. Erchy had been to a cattle sale on the day of the tinkers’ wedding and on such occasions his stories of subsequent happenings were not usually very lucid, due to his own inebriation.

  ‘Aye,’ he went on. ‘That Hairy Willie was as drunk as I don’t know what an’ when one of them pulled his trousers away from his backside an’ poured a pint of beer down inside Hairy Willie didn’t even feel it.’ Erchy leaned on his fork and smiled out at the pewter-grey sea.

  ‘What I’d like to know is whether they got away on their honeymoon as they were supposed to?’ I asked. ‘There were quite a few people here who didn’t believe they’d ever get away.’

  ‘He got started all right,’ said Erchy.

  ‘Where was his bride?’ I asked.

  ‘I believe she was with him some of the time,’ replied Erchy after a moment of doubt. ‘Ach, but she was drunk as he was himself.’ He threw out a couple more forkfuls of manure. ‘I was tellin’ you about them gettin’ started on their honeymoon.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Aye, well we all saw him go, with his bride sittin’ beside him. He set off an’ he was drivin’ all over the road. It’s a damty good thing the pollis knew to keep out of the way or they would have had to take him in. The rest of the tinks was laughin’ and dancin’ away in front of the hotel. Honest, I didn’t want to get drunk myself, I was enjoyin’ watchin’ them so much.’ He looked a little wistful. ‘I can tell you I saved myself a packet of money that way too,’ he added. ‘Did I not, Cailleach?’ I turned to see that his mother had come up behind us. She smiled warmly at the two of us. ‘I wish you could be always savin’ your monies like that,’ she chided him gently, for he was the apple of her eye and she did not really begrudge him his occasional wildnesses. ‘You’ll see and take a wee strupak with me before you go,’ she said to me and I promised that would.

  ‘I was tellin’ Miss Peckwitt about the tinkers’ honeymoon,’ Erchy told her.

  ‘Oh, my my,’ whispered his mother disapprovingly. ‘It was terrible just, was it not?’

  ‘Why, what happened?’ I asked with mounting curiosity.

  ‘Well,’ said Erchy, continuing with his story. ‘About an hour after they’d gone we was sittin’ in the kitchen of the hotel havin’ a bite of somethin’ to eat with the cook, for it was well past closin’ time. There comes a bangin’ on the door and when the cook goes to open it, there on the step is Hairy Willie. “For God’s sake, help me!” he bursts out. “Here, here,” she says to him. “Help you what way?” for she thinks he’s still pretty drunk. “To get my van out of the ditch,” he tells her. “Find me some men and some ropes before the pollis sees it.” “How did it get into the ditch?” she asks him, “Woman,” says he.

  “I’m thinkin’ I must have put it there myself,” he says, “an’ now the bloody thing’s turned right over,” The cook brings him in to the kitchen an’ she was tellin’ him how lucky he was that we were all there still. Ruari and one of the others went off to see would they find a rope. Suddenly the cook says to Hairy Willie, “Where’s your bride?” “My bride?” says he as though he’s never heard of her before that minute. “Yes, indeed,” said the cook, “the girl you married today in the church and was with you in the van.” “Ach!” Hairy Willie tells her, as though it doesn’t matter, “she’s still under the van.” “Still under the van?” the cook screams at him. “My God! what are you thinkin’ of? You should never have left her. All you’re thinkin’ about it gettin’ your old van out of the ditch before the pollis sees it, when that poor lassie might be lyin’ there dead” Hairy Willie looked at her as though she’s goin’ daft. “I know fine she’s not dead,” he tells her. “I could hear her swearin’ after me all the way along the road.” ’

  ‘Oh, the monster!’ gasped Erchy’s mother in horrified tones. ‘Ruari had the hotel car out by then,’ continued Erchy with unabated enthusiasm. ‘An’ when we got to the place there was Willie’s van upside down in the ditch with half of a stone dyke on top of it that he’d knocked down. There was no sound from the van, so we told Willie he must talk to the girl and see if she was all right.’ Erchy’s eyes glittered with remembered amusement. ‘As soon as he opened his mouth there was such a stream of swearin’ would have turned your stomach to hear it. From a lassie, too.’ He succeeded in looking shocked.

  ‘Dear only knows,’ murmured his mother piously.

  ‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘we got the van out an’ the lassie was all right seemingly, only drunk still.’

  ‘Well, thank goodness for that,’ I said with a chuckle.

  ‘Wait you,’ warned Erchy. ‘I haven’t finished yet.’

  I looked at him expectantly and his mother put a hand over her mouth in an effort to hide a smile.

  ‘We’d hardly got the van out but the fellow who has the croft came shoutin’ at us. He’d seen all the lights and he’d been wonderin’ what was happenin’. When he sees all his wall’s broken down, by God! there was more swearin’ and cursin’ from him. “My cows will get out through that,” he shouts at Hairy Willie, “an’ if they get lost it’s you that will pay for them. And you’ll pay for me to mend that hole in the dyke,” says he, “or I’ll have the pollis on you.” Hairy Willie was that scared I believe I could hear his moustache rattlin’. “Where’s your cows now?” he asks the man. “In there,” says the man, pointin’ to the dyke, “but as soon as they find this hole they’ll be through it. You’ll just stay yourself and see that they don’t get out.” Hairy Willie was look
in’ that bad I felt sorry for him right enough. An’ then, before anybody knew what he was at, he got into his van, started it up and ran it straight back into the ditch again so that it filled up the gap in the dyke. “There,” he tells the man, “will that not keep your cattle in?” “Aye,” says the man, and you should have seen the look on his face. Then he starts to laugh. “All right,” he tells Hairy Willie. “Seein’ my cattle’s safe I’ll not say any more about it,” and he went off home.’

  ‘And what happened to the tinkers then?’ I asked.

  ‘Ach, they was just goin’ off back to their camp, holdin’ each other up, the last I saw of them,’ said Erchy, as he bent to lift a spilling forkful of manure. ‘I expect that’s where they’re goin’ to spend the honeymoon if there’s room for them to get in yet.’

  I went back to the house with Erchy’s mother, had my strupak and collected the saw, which she seemed a little hesitant to give me. It was not until I was on my way home that I realised it was a Saturday and that she would have preferred to keep the saw in her own house until the Monday so that there should be no possibility of its being used upon the Sabbath day.

  ‘What are you goin’ to do with that, now?’ asked the grocer facetiously, when I went to buy a tin of meat from him. ‘Build yourself a new house, are you?’

  ‘I’m going to have a good go at those old blackcurrant bushes,’ I told him. ‘They never produce a crop and I think it’s because there too much old wood there.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ said the grocer with only tepid interest. ‘Did your butcher meat not come that you’re buyin’ a tin of meat on a Saturday?’ he asked curiously.

  ‘I didn’t order any this week,’ I told him. ‘That tink they call Phillibeag promised he’d bring a rabbit for me for the weekend, but I doubt if I’ll get it now.’

  ‘Ach, you’re better not to get anythin’ from that man anyway,’ the grocer warned me. ‘He wouldn’t care what sort of a beast he’d sell you. Why, they tell me if he finds a cat in his snares he just skins it and sells it along with his rabbits. He says folks can’t tell the difference.’

  ‘Oh, Lord!’ I said, and my appetite even for tinned meat vanished completely.

  ‘You’d be as well to keep some tins of meat in the house in case we get snow,’ the grocer counselled. ‘It’s lookin’ as though it’s not far off.’

  ‘Oh, surely not yet,’ I said, thinking of my meagre fuel supply.

  ‘Aye, indeed. My brother was sayin’ only last night he was seein’ plenty of that thick snow waitin’ at the back of the hills. It’ll be here before long, likely.’

  His prediction had me a little worried and as I hurried home I mentally reviewed the contents of my store cupboard and the quantity of feeding stuffs left in the barn. I resolved to write once again to the coal merchant to ask him to speed up the delivery of coal I had ordered some time ago. So engrossed was I in my calculations that although I was vaguely aware of a male figure approaching I was not shocked into the realization that it was a stranger until I saw him take out a large’ white handkerchief and blow his nose on it. Recollecting myself in time to stifle the usual chaffing remark or specific comment on the weather I wished him ‘Good afternoon’, to which be replied with stilted cordiality and continued on his way. I was curious. Now that the tourist season was over any stranger in the village was usually something to do with an official body so that it was almost a duty for everyone to discover the reason for their visit. I turned into Morag’s cottage to find her in the act of taking a large steaming dumpling off the fire.

  ‘I’ve just seen a strange man!’ I announced.

  ‘A strange man?’ echoed Morag and Behag together and even little Fiona stopped trying to tie the tails of two cats together to stand and stare at me in unblinking surprise.

  ‘Who would that be, I wonder?’ went on Morag. ‘It’s late for anyone to be here. What like was he?’

  I described him as well as I could.

  ‘Had he an open or a closed collar?’ demanded Morag.

  The expression was new to me and I had to ask her what she meant. ‘I mean, did he have a closed collar like a minister, or an open collar like a tourist?’ she explained.

  ‘Open,’ I said.

  ‘Ach, well, then, likely he’ll be that student fellow has been preachin’ at the Seceder church these three Sundays past,’ interpreted Morag. ‘He’ll be stayin’ with Kirsty, the poor mannie.’

  ‘That’ll be the one that Euan was praising up so much?’ suggested Behag with a titter.

  ‘Aye, he will be indeed,” agreed Morag, a reciprocal smile on her lips.

  ‘Does Euan go to the other church now?’ I asked in surprise. Euan, the half-wit brother of ‘Padruig the Daftie’ had, until recent months, been kept away from any church because of the profanity of his language. However the two female ‘pilgrims’, to whom I have referred in a previous book,1 found in Euan not only a devoted admirer but also a proselyte who made up in susceptibility for what he lacked in intelligence. During their relatively short stay in the village they had undertaken both his lay and his religious education with such a degree of success that he no longer referred to a chicken as a ‘feathery bugger’ but was content to indulge his passion for epithets by the use of such mildnesses as ‘that damned-by-God hen’ They had even taught him to sing a hymn and now whenever one passed the Padruig’s cottage the lusty voice of Euan could be heard rendering adagio, prestissimo, pianissimo or fortissimo, the words of ‘When He Cometh’ with tuneless assiduity. It was shortly after the departure of the ‘pilgrims’ that Padruig had been taken ill and had gone to be nursed by his married sister on the mainland. Euan had shortly afterwards asserted his right to go to church and there he had since attended regularly, sitting in his pew rigid with importance except when the hymns were announced when, handing his book to a neighbour, he would request that the right hymn should be found for him, although he could not read a single word. When the singing commenced no matter what the hymn might be Euan joined in vociferously with ‘When He Cometh’, remaining aloofly indifferent to the nudgings and objurgations of those in close proximity.

  ‘Euan’s been goin’ to the other church for three or four weeks past now,’ Morag told me. ‘There’s no tellin’ my fine lad what he’s to do now that Padruig’s not keepin’ the upper hand of him.’

  ‘Why has he left your church?’ I asked her.

  ‘The dear knows why,’ she replied, ‘unless it’s just that he’s feelin’ he needs a change.’ She cut off a large hunk of hot dumpling and wrapped it in a cloth for me to take home for my supper.

  ‘I really must ask Euan next time I see him why he’s changed churches,’ I told them as I said goodbye. ‘It would be interesting to hear what he has to say.’

  It was not until the following Monday afternoon when I was returning from a session of beachcombing that I met Euan. He too had been beachcombing and the creel on his back was piled high with driftwood. I complimented him on his industry and then went on to question him about his apostasy. ‘It’s quite a long way further for you to have to walk to your new church,’ I suggested.

  ‘Yes, Missed,’ he agreed eagerly. ‘But when I gets there it’s a nice carpet I have to my feets an’ a good stove to warm me. I’s not goin’ to shiver in that dirty old church when I can go a bit further an’ sit back like a gentleman.’ He leaned the creel against the dyke, folded his arms in front of him and adopted the pose of a stiff Victorian gentleman.

  ‘What about the new student preacher,’ I asked him. ‘Is he good?’

  ‘God’s hell!’ he exclaimed with blasphemous piety. ‘I believe he has the Lord in him okay.’

  ‘You enjoy his sermons, then?’

  ‘God’s hell, but he’s a good preacher!’ reiterated Euan passionately.

  The evening grew increasingly cold and towards nightfall a boorish wind, laden with sleet, sent everyone hurrying to find their cattle and chase them into their stalls for the night. The followin
g morning I awoke to find my bedroom full of a strange pale light and when I went to the window I found the hills masked with snow with only a few dark patches pricking the sheet white moors where the most robust heather clumps had shrugged through the thick mantle. I fed Bonny and drove her out through the moor gate where with the wisdom of her breed she would nose at the snow until she could get at the heather beneath. For a few minutes I leaned on the gate, watching the sluggish dark clouds piling themselves around the startlingly white hills and thinking how strange it was that snow, which falls so white and clean, should yet be heralded by such a dirty-looking mess of cloud. In the Hebrides snow, when it comes, assumes a recognisable personality. There is that which steals in with ballerina lissomeness on a north wind, to leave the hills poised and breathless as a corps de ballet awaiting the re-entry of their star. By comparison the snow that the south wind brings is clumsy and sluttish and lies dispiritedly over the land until it abandons it to slime and drabness. Then there is the noisy, second-hand snow that has been wrested off the mountains by a tyrannic gale and is flung at us in crisp particles that needle into our skin.

  There came a muffled flurry of wind threaded with snow-flakes and I hurried home to get the byre cleaned and hay put out in readiness for Bonny’s evening feed, for she would need to be brought in earlier than usual. Despite the cold I was glad to be outdoors, for between the snow showers, which became more reticent as the day progressed, the sun smiled benignly, the snow shimmered and above the silence of the land came the tinkling whisper of the wind-ruffled water. Immediately after a late lunch I went to collect Bonny for, though the last snow shower had been hardly more than the flick of an angel’s duster, as evening approached there was an increasing frostiness in the air and already there was a rasping under my boots as I slithered along the path from which my own and Bonny’s footprints of the morning had been obliterated. It was a nuisance having to go out on the moors to bring home a cow, though there was solace in the beauty of the shadow-edged loch, coldly blue except where it reflected a few tatters of an elusive sunset, and in the sight of Rhuna tip-tilting its corners up from the water like a smiling mouth, an accepted sign of frost. But when one knew that nearly everyone else’s cattle needed only to hear a once-bellowed invitation or even the clang of a moor gate to go hurrying through to their byres where shelter, hay and a warm ‘potach’ awaited them, and that even those cows which did not enjoy the luxury of a byre would range themselves hungrily along the fence waiting for their owners to bring them hay, it was infuriating to have to go and seek my own cosseted cow. Cows are perverse creatures and for some curious reason Bonny and Morag’s cow Milky and Tearlaich’s Bracty had of late found a passionate attachment for one another, with the result that every evening, whatever the weather, we three unfortunate owners had to trudge out to the moors, separate three reluctant cows and coerce them homewards through three separate gates. Morag and Tearlaich were already making their way to wards the loving trio when I reached the moor and they waited for me to join them.