A Rope--In Case Read online

  ‘Ach, you’ll no say that when you’re enjoyin’ yourself at the weddin’,’ old Murdoch soothed.

  ‘I’ll not be goin’ to any weddin’.’ There was a bitter edge to her voice as she made the announcement.

  ‘Not goin’?’ exclaimed the jovial Anna Vic. ‘Why ever not? It’s a shame not to go if you’re invited.’ She centred her large backside more comfortably on the inadequate kitchen chair. ‘There’s nothin’ will keep me from goin’,’ she added firmly, and then, catching Morag’s eyes, added uneasily, ‘Unless I break my neck first.’

  ‘I don’t see the sense of wastin’ money on big swanky weddin’s,’ pursued Bean Ian Beag disapprovingly, but Erchy cut her short.

  ‘An’ there’s others don’t see the sense in wastin’ money on the sort of things you think is important,’ he told her meaningly. Bean Ian Beag flushed. She opened the door. ‘Oidhche Mhath!’ she called abruptly and pulling her cardigan close up to her throat she took her disapproval with her into the night.

  ‘She’s vexed,’ said Morag unnecessarily.

  ‘Let her be vexed,’ said Erchy.

  Bean Ian Beag’s husband, Ian Beag, had died four years previously and it had since been the often expressed desire of his widow to provide for his grave a handsome tombstone such as she had seen in mainland burial grounds. It was a desire that received scant sympathy from the Bruachites, for Ian Beag had been only a humble crofter and the few ‘swanky’ tombstones there were in the burial ground marked the graves of lairds and their ladies or of wealthy tradesmen and their families. These the crofters viewed with more indifference than envy and if, as happened infrequently, they felt compelled to mark the grave of a deceased relative they would keep their eyes open as they roamed the shore or the moors for a slab of stone of a suitable size that could be carried home easily in a creel. Should they be really determined they could take a pick-axe and excavate one from some rocky outcrop. There was stone enough in Bruach for all purposes, they reckoned, and you did not need to pay fancy prices for fancy shapes imported from the mainland. Once having found a slab of pleasing shape and size then you could chip out lettering if you felt it necessary and had the ability to do it. There were perhaps half a dozen such headstones in the burial ground, one or two of them quite skilfully executed, the rest crude. One verged on the comic. Old Neil had put it there in memory of his mother and whether having chipped out some of the lettering he had lacked further patience or opportunity no-one knew or would ever know for old Neil had himself passed on. But there the stone still stood proclaiming:

  ‘Here lies Kate Cameron

  Wife of John Mclnnes

  and mother of

  1904.’

  ‘A tombstone’s a fine thing for a widow woman to be wastin’ her money on,’ old Murdoch said. ‘An’ anyway, supposin’ she does get a swanky stone who’s goin’ to put it up for her? It’s not easy work, they tell me, an’ they charge a bit for doin’ it.’

  All eyes turned on Erchy who, being fairly young and strong and also being related to everyone in the village, had most experience of digging in the graveyard.

  ‘Not me,’ he objected.

  ‘Did she ask you about it?’ enquired Murdoch.

  ‘She spoke about it once,’ Erchy admitted. ‘ “I will not then,” I told her. “Them swanky tombstones is damty heavy things an’ if you’re so set on gettin’ one from the mainland you can get men from the mainland to come an’ put it up for you while you’re at it!”.’

  ‘That would take her back a bit, likely?’ suggested Morag.

  ‘She was mad at me,’ confirmed Erchy. ‘ “The dear knows, I’ll never afford a stone an’ pay men to come over an’ set it up,” she said. “Then you’re wastin’ your time savin’ up for it,” I told her. “You’re not gettin’ me to do it for you. Your man will lie no better or worse whether or not he has the weight of that on him”,’ he finished triumphantly.

  ‘I doubt she’ll no rest content till she gets one, all the same,’ said old Murdoch, shaking his head.

  ‘I don’t know why she doesn’t forget Ian an’ take Duncan Mor from Tornish for her man,’ interposed Johnny.

  ‘Here, no,’ remonstrated Morag, a flush rising on the wrinkled skin over her cheekbones.

  ‘He’s keen enough to get her, anyway,’ insisted Johnny.

  ‘Is that so?’ asked Janet with a surprise that was assumed so as to elicit further information.

  Everyone in Bruach knew of Duncan Mor’s attendance on the widow. He was supposed to work on the roads but it was only the small stretch adjoining the widow’s croft that was receiving much of his attention. He was always at hand to carry her bolls of meal from the steamer when it called; always available to scythe her hay when it was ready. He was there to ‘cut’ her bull calves and to strip her peats and when he had been fishing the widow was invariably given the first choice of his catch. Duncan’s attempted courtship was not much commented on in Bruach but it was certainly no secret.

  ‘He’s been tryin’ to talk her into marryin’ him for the best part of two years now,’ Johnny went on. ‘You mind he was always keen on her before ever she married Ian.’

  ‘Aye, right enough, he was,’ agreed Janet.

  ‘She didn’t fancy him then an’ I’m thinkin’ she’ll no take him now,’ said Morag.

  ‘An’ why wouldn’t she?’ enquired Erchy. ‘He’s good enough for her, isn’t he?’

  ‘He’s a good worker when he has a mind,’ conceded Janet ‘I’m sayin’ nothin’ against the man himself,’ argued Morag indignantly.

  ‘Then why are you after sayin’ she’ll no take him?’ Erchy persisted. ‘Is he no “guaranteed all correct”?’ There was general laughter. The phrase ‘guaranteed all correct’ was used at the cattle sales when a bull was put into the ring.

  ‘He’s that all right,’ said Johnny. ‘He gave that girl Fraser a fine son when he was workin’ over on the mainland a year or two back.’

  Morag looked discomfited. In explanation of her own solitary state she once confided to me that Bruach ‘misliked a widow to take a second man’. I suspected now that she was voicing the aversion of her generation to second marriages rather than intending in any way to denigrate Duncan Mor’s character or capabilities.

  ‘Ach!’ Morag tossed her head and the tone and the gesture were intended to dismiss the subject, but she was urged on. They were hoping no doubt that she would astonish them by disclosing some hitherto unrevealed tit-bit of scandal about Duncan.

  ‘I told you I have nothin’ against the man,’ she repeated. ‘But look at his face.’

  ‘Aye, his face,’ murmured Janet.

  ‘It looks for all the world as though somebody’s been walkin’ over it with their tackety boots on,’ Morag burst out.

  ‘I don’t see his face matters so long as he has a pound or two in his pocket,’ said Erchy.

  ‘I’m just sayin’ I don’t believe she’ll ever take him,’ replied Morag firmly.

  But she was wrong.

  One night several weeks later I had drunk my nightcap of hot milk, closed the book on my nightly ration of reading and turned the lamp flame low in preparation for carrying it upstairs. The hot water bottle was already between the sheets and I was indulging in my third or fourth yawn when the sneck of the door lifted and it was pushed open.

  ‘Here,’ I called.

  Janet came in out of a drizzle of fine rain that shimmered on her rough tweed coat.

  ‘Here, here,’ she exclaimed, seeing my preparations for bed. ‘You’re surely not thinkin’ of going to your bed an’ missin’ the party?’ Janet sounded excited.

  ‘What party?’ I asked.

  ‘Why, the new bride and bridegroom,’ she elucidated.

  I put down the lamp. ‘What bride and bridegroom?’ I demanded. ‘I hadn’t heard of any wedding.’

  ‘Why, Duncan Mor’s an’ the widow’s. Did you no hear they’d gone off to the mainland first thing this momin’ to get themselves married?’


  ‘No, really!’ I said, feeling my excitement rise.

  ‘Aye, an’ now they’re back an’ they’ve sent word round to everybody to come an’ have a wee bit celebration with them. You’ll surely not be missin’ that?’

  I turned up the lamp while I found a pair of shoes. I looked at Janet’s feet and saw that she was wearing her usual gumboots. ‘Is it very wet?’ I asked her, doubtfully.

  ‘Ach, it’s no bad but if we’re goin’ to cut across the crofts you’ll need boots anyway, mo ghaoil. It’s what everybody will be wearin’.’

  ‘Are they going for a honeymoon?’ I asked as we set off.

  ‘I believe they’ve had it,’ she said. ‘They went to the pictures.’

  I chuckled. ‘They’re easily satisfied.’

  ‘Aye, well, d’you see they’d have to be back to feed the hens anyway,’ said Janet.

  It was a happy enough party that had assembled at the widow’s house and at four o’clock in the morning when I left they had not come to the end of the whisky and the singers were still in good voice.

  As the day progressed the drizzle cleared and released a warm calm sunlight. I was full of yawns and there being no task pressingly urgent I had an early lunch, took out a waterproof and rug and stretched out luxuriously in the sun beside the stone dyke. I thought I was only allowing sensations of sleep to drift over me but I awoke to the sound of hard-breathed grunts that could have been made by old men or old horses. It was neither. Johnny and Erchy appeared round a corner of the house carrying between them a long heavy plank of wood which they had found on the shore. They dropped the plank abruptly on to the stone dyke and rubbed at their shoulders.

  ‘My God, but there’s some weight in that,’ grumbled Erchy. They disdained a space on the rug and sat down on the damp grass, their backs resting against the dyke.

  ‘Tea?’ I offered, but was glad when they refused.

  ‘Water’s what I want,’ said Johnny. ‘Just a good drink of water.’

  ‘I’ve got lemonade,’ I told them. ‘Made from fresh lemons.’

  ‘Fresh?’ exclaimed Erchy.

  ‘Well, pickled fresh,’ I confessed. We rarely saw a fresh lemon in Bruach but the previous day I had found half a dozen of them washed ashore. They proved only slightly salty to the taste and the lemonade I subsequently made from them was delicious. I went into the cottage and brought out bottle and glasses. They spurned the glasses and shared the bottle between them, literally pouring the liquid down their throats.

  ‘I could have done with a drink of this last night to cool my whisky down,’ said Erchy, wiping his lips.

  ‘What time did you get home from the party?’ I asked.

  ‘Home? We didn’t go home yet,’ they said together and winked.

  I laughed. ‘You Bruachites astonish me,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘You seem to be able to keep going without sleep. I left the party at four o’clock and came to bed. I got about four hours sleep but I’ve been feeling like a limp rag all morning. That’s why I brought the rug out here so that I could have a siesta.’ I studied their faces and found no visible traces of their night’s excesses. I knew only too well that my own face looked grey and drawn. ‘I wish I knew your secret of going without sleep,’ I told them with an unsuppressable yawn clipping off the last word.

  ‘I don’t go without my sleep,’ retorted Erchy. ‘It’s just that I don’t need to go to my bed to get it. I can sleep anywhere, anytime, even when I’m walkin’ round.’

  I looked at them doubtfully.

  ‘That’s true,’ corroborated Johnny. ‘I’m the same myself. Why, I can even go to sleep when I’m riding my bicycle.’

  My doubts vanished. Having driven behind Johnny and his bicycle on many occasions his statement only served to confirm my suspicions.

  They had finished the lemonade and I willed them to go so that I could laze for another half hour before I had to think about the afternoon’s chores. Johnny produced a packet of cigarettes.

  ‘Sho?’ he offered. I refused.

  ‘What did you do if you didn’t go home after the party?’

  I asked with simulated interest. ‘You haven’t been collecting driftwood all the time, have you?’

  ‘No, indeed. We went to keep an eye on Duncan Mar.’ They both winked heavily again.

  I put the question they wanted me to ask. ‘Why keep an eye on Duncan?’

  ‘Did you no hear what was happenin’ then?’

  I was suddenly alert. There is nothing like the prospect of a morsel of scandal to banish sleepiness. ‘I heard nothing,’ I told them. ‘She hasn’t turned him out already, has she?’

  ‘As good as,’ Erchy replied. His eyes looked at me triumphantly through the smoke from his cigarette. He stood up. ‘I think we’d best be on our way,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ I cajoled. ‘Tell me what’s been happening?’

  He relented. ‘Well, you’d be after hearin’ that Bean Ian Beag said she’d only marry Duncan if he would buy a tombstone for her husband’s grave?’

  ‘No!’ I replied indignantly. ‘No-one mentioned a thing.’

  ‘That’s the way of it, then.’

  ‘I wonder if he’ll keep his promise now he’s got her,’ I murmured.

  ‘Keep it? Indeed she’d have none of him till the stone was paid for an’ delivered to the pier on the mainland. It was not till she’d inspected it that she agreed to go to the registry office with him an’ have the service. They arranged when they came out of the pictures for a lorry to bring themselves home along with some whisky for the party an’ the tombstone for Ian. They dropped the stone off at the burial ground on the way back.’

  Erchy and Johnny tentatively lifted the plank of wood from the dyke. ‘Well, I never,’ I said, suppressing a giggle.

  ‘It’s a fine handsome tombstone, too,’ said Erchy. ‘One of them that’s got a thing like a toilet roll hangin’ over the top of it.’

  ‘A scroll,’ I murmured. ‘But,’ I went on, ‘surely Duncan’s not going to have to erect it for her, is he?’

  ‘Indeed he’s after doin’ that right now,’ said Erchy. ‘As soon as the party was over last night out came Duncan Mor with his spade an’ graipe that he uses for his road mendin’ an’ off he went to the burial ground.’

  I started to laugh cautiously.

  ‘We went down about an hour ago to see how he was gettin’ on an’ he was near finished of it,’ Johnny took up the story. ‘He had the stone up by then an’ he was just stampin’ the ground down round it.’ He tilted the lemonade bottle to his lips and drained it of its last drop.

  ‘Come to think of it, Erchy,’ he added reflectively, ‘he was stampin’ the ground down awful hard, wasn’t he?’

  Farewell to Farquhar

  Outside her cottage Sheena was swishing potatoes around in a pail of water. I waited until she should notice me. The potatoes had been grown on a thick layer of manure; they had obviously been lifted in wet weather, so that much of the soil still adhered to them. When cooked they would be eaten with their skins but this meagre cleaning was all they would receive beforehand. I had to assume that it was the amount of soil she ate that kept Sheena so healthy. She looked up and saw me.

  ‘Well, Miss Peckwitt!’ she exclaimed and after wiping her hands down her rough apron she pulled me into the dim kitchen, surprising a couple of hens which darted squawking between our legs. She banished them through the open door with a lengthy admonition in Gaelic, cleared her throat once or twice and spat with masculine efficiency.

  ‘You’ll excuse me, mo ghaoil, but I have a wee bobble in my throat,’ she explained as she came back inside. She shifted the kettle from the hob to a hook over the pile of peats from which there came only a faint wisp of smoke. I saw her intention.

  ‘Sheena, I mustn’t stay for a strupak,’ I said hastily. ‘I’m on my way up to the post office and they’ll be closed if I don’t hurry.’

  ‘Ach, closed indeed!’ Sheena’s voice was arrogant. �
�You can always go round to the back of the house an’ get them to open up for you,’ she said, poking vigorously at the peats with her work-toughened fingers.

  ‘But I only want a stamp,’ I told her.

  ‘Is it a stamp? Well, isn’t that what they’re there to sell to you? Indeed many’s the time I’ve had them up from their beds at night to get just that from them,’ she assured me. She looked at me, perhaps expecting to see an expression of approbation. I showed none. I had already heard many complaints from the postmistress as to Sheena’s late night demands.

  ‘I only called in for a minute to say how sorry I am to hear of your brother’s death,’ I said.

  ‘Aye, aye.’ She allowed her voice to break with conscious emotion. ‘My poor, dear brother’s passed on at last.’ She dabbed at her eyes with insensitive fingers, sniffed, and wiped her nose on her wrist.

  It was three months since Sheena’s bachelor brother Farquhar had been taken to the hospital and until then he had lived alone on the family croft inherited on the death of his parents. Alone, that is, except for a pet pigeon which at night slept in a makeshift cage beside the recess bed in the kitchen. Farquhar had been a big, handsome man of porage oats muscularity and had reputedly won prizes for various feats of strength including ‘tossing the caber’. At ‘sixty past’ when I had first encountered him he was still a striking enough figure to be bait for romantically inclined female tourists—until they discovered he was nearly stone deaf.

  Between Sheena and her brother there had, since the death of their parents, existed a state of tepid antipathy. She would call on him dutifully on the rare occasions when she was near his croft, which was at the opposite end of the village from hers, but her visits, rather than being directed towards his well-being, were more opportunities to upbraid him for not making himself available when she had need of someone to carry up her bolls of meal from the steamer, or had been desperate to gather in the hay before the threat of weeks of winter storms. Farquhar, no doubt aided by his deafness, remained loftily aloof to his sister’s taunts and on his part avoided doing more than popping his head inside the doorway of her cottage to bark an abrupt ‘Ciamar a tha?’ by way of hail and farewell. Occasionally, if he had caught more fish than he himself could use he would, in passing, tip a few into one of the tin baths or pails that stood outside ready to catch the rain, but join his sister in a strupak or sit down even for a moment in her kitchen he would not. It was accepted in Bruach that Sheena thought her brother should feel excessively guilty because he had inherited the whole of the parental croft while she had got ‘not so much as a scythe-stroke’ as she put it. Her attitude towards him they believed was resentment because he displayed no evidence of any such guilt. However, when Farquhar had at last yielded to the illness that the Bruachites had for some time perceived to be affecting him and had taken to his bed, Sheena had attended him as assiduously as could be expected. It was whispered by some that her zeal was increased by a suspicion that the village nurse, who was popularly described as a frustrated spinster, might take the opportunity to make a pass at her brother while he was too weak to resist and thus perhaps gain possession of the croft. Whether or not there was any foundation for this suspicion there was no doubt that Sheena devoted herself to her brother’s welfare. When, eventually, it was decided that Farquhar must go into hospital for examination, Sheena had come to call on me. Would she, she asked diffidently, ‘get the loan of a couple of my cushions’?