The Sea for Breakfast Read online

  A tall figure leading a cow on a rope loomed up before us as we approached the church.

  ‘Surely you’re no bringin’ the cow to the service, Ruari?’ shouted Morag.

  ‘Service?’ bawled deaf Ruari.

  ‘Aye, at the church tonight,’ replied Morag patiently.

  ‘What are they after havin’ the bull at the church for?’ demanded Ruari. ‘No wonder I canna’ find him. Here’s me been leadin’ this beast round since twelve o’clock this mornin’ and no a sign did I see of him yet. I was thinkin’ he must have gone over a cliff. At the church indeed!’ His tirade rumbled into disgusted expectoration.

  Morag took hold of his ear and explained firmly. ‘It’s they privileges. They’re holdin’ a service again tonight. There’s no bull at the church.’

  ‘Here, here, but the bull was down in the Glen yesterday. I saw him myself. He can no be far away,’ volunteered Kate.

  ‘He could be far enough,’ muttered Ruari, sitting down by the road and wiping his hand over his face. ‘I’m tired out lookin’ for him.’

  ‘Then come and sit in the church and listen to the privileges,’ suggested Morag. ‘It’s no use sittin’ there on the wet grass where you’ll get your death of cold.’

  ‘It’s too late to take her to the bull tonight,’ said Kate. ‘D’ ye think she’ll hold till mornin’?’

  ‘She might,’ admitted Ruari half-heartedly.

  ‘Ach then, see and tie her to the post just and come to the service,’ instructed Morag, taking the rope from the unresisting Ruari and tying it round a telegraph pole.

  Obediently Ruari followed us into the church whither we were pursued by reproachful bawls from the cow. We were late, so we had to sit in the front row, the church having filled from the back. The pilgrims, with resolutely happy faces, were ready to start.

  Several times during the week I had encountered the pilgrims on my daily walks and always it was difficult to reconcile the pleasant-spoken, normally intelligent young men with whom I conversed with the two who from the pulpit stridently harangued the congregation each evening. Tonight they seemed to be even more emotionally tense than hitherto. Taking their text from the Acts of the Apostles they warned us, contradicted by frustrated bawls from Ruari’s cow, not to emulate Felix and ‘await our more convenient season’. They illustrated the text by relating to us the story of a young man who had elected to postpone his decision on conversion until after he had attended a social function in the church hall. At this function the young man had caught a cold which had rapidly progressed to pneumonia and when at last he lay dying he had charged the evangelists to ensure that when his coffin was carried past the church hall they should stop and give the people this message: ‘I am in everlasting damnation and all because of a social and dance in the church hall.’ The pilgrim, the muscles of his face and throat working, paused for a full threatening minute to allow the congregation to reflect upon the tragedy. Ruari’s cow did not pause for an instant, but bellowed despairingly. No one appeared to be much affected by either performance. ‘Ah, my friends,’ continued the pilgrim, battling manfully against an obvious desire to weep; ‘that young man waited his more convenient season and it was too late.’ At this juncture he was so overcome by emotion that he had to sit down hurriedly in the pulpit and cover his face with a handkerchief while his partner took over the rest of the service. We sang a hymn and after being adjured once again to get rid of any ‘Drusillas in our midst’ we paid our fee at the door and filed out.

  ‘Well done!’ was Morag’s first remark and I, thinking she was commenting on the sermon, was about to agree spinelessly, when I saw her eyes were on the moonlit road in front of us.

  Kate’s guess that the bull could not be far away had apparently not been very wide of the mark and the bellowed invitations of the cow had brought him to her. ‘She wasn’t goin’ to wait her more convenient season,’ whispered Kate wickedly.

  I was not at all surprised to hear the following morning that after the service the bus, packed with members of the congregation, had left Bruach for a dance in the next village. In the wee small hours, long after the exultant pilgrims had retired to their beds, they were blissfully unaware that the noise of engines that penetrated their celestial dreams announced the return of last night’s congregation, or a significant part of it, exhausted after a fervid dancing session and not a little the worse for whisky. It was still later that Angus and Hector arrived home. They had taken their rifles with them in the bus and dropped off on the return journey so as to go poaching venison at first light.

  The two male pilgrims were soon followed by two middle-aged lady pilgrims who, no doubt feeling that the Bruachites were in need of constant rather than intermittent ministration, moved into the empty house adjoining the burial ground and prepared for a lengthy stay. One was a spinster, tiny, shiny, plump and gushing, with small blue eyes which glistened with tears whenever she was emotionally aroused, as perhaps by an observation on the weather or by the receipt of a compliment on a pretty dress. The other was a widow who had been married briefly to a jockey. She was dark and morose, with curiously mottled cheeks which looked as though they might have been used for stubbing out cigarettes, and her long, thin face constantly wore such an outraged expression that it reminded me of an emphatic exclamation mark. Also she had a pronounced stammer and in no time at all the village had dubbed them ‘Flutter and Stutter’. They did not, I think, belong to any particular denomination and from Stutter’s faintly servile attitude one got the impression that her religion was a very neutral affair, whipped into fervour only when necessary to appease her more ecstatic companion and so ensure a continuance of her favours. Flutter’s religion was, I am convinced, mainly glandular.

  When she was not occupied with religious meetings or in visiting, Flutter knitted prolifically and was distressed because she could find no market for her work. Stutter’s quaint hobby was the making of finger-stalls from odd scraps of material; checked ginghams, pyjama cloth, tartan, all were neatly sewn and finished with white tape. I ordered one of Flutter’s jerseys, which made her so happy the tears spilled over. I could have cried too when I got the jersey home and found it would have amply made a loose cover for my armchair. Fortunately, Stutter did not try to sell her finger-stalls but she generously left me a bundle of them whenever she visited me. After she had gone I used to examine my fingers critically, counting them to make sure I really had only ten, and then I would count again the rising stock of finger-stalls in my first-aid tin which at its peak totalled a hundred and six.

  Because they were female ‘privileges’ and because they preached happiness instead of hell-fire, the men did not feel it incumbent on them to attend the weekly meetings which the two pilgrims held in their cottage, but the women, with their more pliable conscience and glad of any diversion, turned up regularly to sing hymns and be read to by Flutter. Sometimes the readings were from the Bible but just as often they were stories from missionary magazines or, on particularly exciting evenings, from The Man-Eaters of Kumaan or even King Solomons Mines. For the reading Miss Flutter invariably took up her position directly in front of a mirror above the fireplace into which she glanced frequently for reassurance. When it was time for prayers, regardless of the work-a-day attire of her congregation, she would take her hat from the dresser and carefully arrange it on her head before announcing ‘We will now try to put up a little prayer,’ much m the same way as a poacher might confide that he was going to ‘try to put up a little grouse’. I must admit there were times when the ‘Go-back, go-back’ cry of the disturbed grouse would have seemed an appropriate response. These meetings were repeated on Sundays for the children of those parents prepared to endure the jeremiad tongues and lashing sarcasm of their Calvinistic elders to whom Sunday school was frivolous to the point of profanity. At the Sunday meetings and to a semblance of the tune of ‘Hear the Pennies Dropping’ extracted from a tortured violin by Miss Stutter, the children were invited to drop their pennies into
a ‘Present from Blackpool’ teapot. In return they received a gaily coloured tract card; when the pilgrims ran out of tract cards they substituted cigarette cards. The children thought little of Flutter’s reading; they thought even less of Stutter’s violin fit’s as wicked as the bagpipes on a Sunday but it’s no half as good a noise,’ one little boy confided to me); some of them reckoned a coloured card a very poor return for their penny, yet, because it was somewhere to go to escape the smothering Sabbath piety of their own homes, the children attended with a regularity that both flattered and astonished the pilgrims. So much so that they decided to give a party as a reward, some of the money they had collected being used to provide the refreshments. Now although many of the crofters had been broad-minded enough to join in the services at the cottage the association of parties with religion was to them completely unacceptable and though it was only obliquely expressed the pilgrims would not have needed undue powers of perception to. have become aware of the general disapproval of their project but, happily insulated by their own egotism, they sailed along with the arrangements. Miss Flutter resolutely learned poetry to recite. Miss Stutter practised her violin, while both made the rounds of the village extracting so many faithful promises of attendance that I wondered what the outcome of it all would be.

  On the day and at the, time stated I set out for ‘Pilgrim Cottage’ expecting to meet up with others along the road. Sarah called to me from the door of her own cottage.

  ‘Aren’t you coming to the party?’ I asked, seeing that she was still wearing gumboots and old clothes.

  ‘Indeed no, my dear. The cow’s just near calvin’ and I canna’ leave him now,’

  ‘I can see to him myself,’ interpolated her brother, who was carrying a pail of water into the house. ‘You can go to the party, right enough.’

  ‘Ach well, d’you see, I canna’ find one of my stockings,’ Sarah went on glibly. ‘I had it for church last Sunday, and I dare say I threw it under the bed the same as I always do, but where it is now nobody can say.’

  I could offer no help as Sarah wore only thick black woollen stockings. Not long after I had said good-bye to her with the promise that I would convey her apologies to the pilgrims, the bus pulled up alongside me.

  ‘Are you comin’ to the fillums?’ Johnny, the driver, asked.

  ‘No, I’m going to the party,’ I replied. ‘Aren’t you coming?’

  ‘Well we were thinkin’ of it right enough.’ He turned for confirmation to the dozen or so passengers he was carrying. ‘But you see it’s Whisky Galore they’re showin’ and we might never get a chance to see it if we don’t go tonight.’

  ‘I’ll have to go to the party,’ I said. ‘I did promise faithfully I’d go.’

  ‘Didn’t we all,’ said Johnny lightly and everyone laughed as the bus started off again.

  The Bruach road was busy. Hector, whom I had heard swear to cut his throat and wish to die if he didn’t attend the party, was now coming towards me, pushing a bicycle. I asked him whether he was coming.

  ‘Ach no, my cycle’s broke and I’m away to Padruig’s to see has he got a tsing will mend it.’

  It looked as though attendance at the party was going to be sparse indeed. Morag had butter to churm and the cream would not keep until morning and Fiona had been sick all day, so neither she nor Behag could, come.

  When I reached the cottage I was greeted by the flustered and delighted pilgrims. Miss Flutter was dabbing continually at her brimming eyes; Miss Stutter was wearing exotic finger-stalls on two fingers of her left hand. Inside, I was confronted by a large table bearing innumerable plates each piled high with sandwiches of a variety of pallid-looking fillings. Miss Flutter began to introduce me to each plateful; egg and cheese; cheese and egg; cheese; egg; meat paste; fish. When she was unsure of a filling she lifted the lid of a sandwich and peered.

  We sat down to await the rest of the guests, I with steadily increasing dismay. When the kettles on the side of the stove had been sighing for nearly two hours and the tops of the sandwiches were beginning to curl querulously, Miss Stutter decided that she had better make the tea.

  ‘I’ve made it nice and strong, so that we can add plenty of water to it when they come,’ she said with tenacious optimism as she poured me a cap that was the colour of faded sun-tan. Miss Flutter, by now completely dry-eyed, invited me to try a sandwich. I chose a salmon filling; she looked puzzled.

  ‘We haven’t any salmon,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ I apologized. ‘I heard you say fish and as it looked pink I took it to be salmon.’

  ‘Oh, no, this is cod,’ she corrected me with an earnest smile and handed me the plate. ‘It’s a recipe we invented ourselves to use up some that was left over.’ She took a closer look at the plate. ‘But they’ve turned pink!’ She stared accusingly at Miss Stutter, who looked guilty down at her two finger-stalls and then surreptitiously put her hand behind her back. I changed my mind and had cheese.

  When ten o’clock came round and still no one but myself had arrived for the party, the despondent pilgrims packed away the sandwiches into tins. I hoped that this might mean I could escape but they felt that as I had taken the trouble to come I must be entertained, and so I sat submissively while Miss Flutter rendered The Lady of Shallott, The Forsaken Merman and Abou Ben Adhem, and Miss Stutter chafed her violin with its bow and elicited from it jig-like noises that were no more musical than a two-stroke engine.

  The following day the Bruachites were abject in their excuses and apologies to the pilgrims and made such asseverations of their disappointment at missing the party that the pilgrims were ready to believe the fiasco had been largely due to their own mismanagement.

  ‘You know,’ said Erchy, when he strolled into my kitchen some days later; ‘Hamish had to take a gas cylinder to those pilgrims yesterday and he says they’re still eatin’ their way through piles of stale sandwiches. They asked him to stay for tea, but he knew fine what he was in for, so he said he had to go to the hill. They’ve asked quite a few in to tea since the party, but everybody’s too wise to go,’

  ‘It really was too bad,’ I told him. ‘They did ask everyone first and nearly everyone said they would go.’

  ‘What else can you say when people asks you straight out like that?’ he demanded. ‘You can’t just tell them you won’t go.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They’ll want to know then why you won’t go, and if you give them a reason like as not it will turn out to be a lie. It’s easier to tell them yes.’ He sat down by the window and lit a cigarette.

  ‘How did you like Whisky Galore?’ I asked him.

  ‘It was grand,’ he replied. ‘My but they got drunk there, I’m telling you.’

  ‘Drunker than people get here?’ I asked doubtfully.

  He pondered my question for a moment. ‘Well,’ he conceded, ‘it looked to me as if they was pretty drunk, but what I couldn’t understand is, they was in their ordinary working clothes. Ach, I don’t think they can have been drank at all or they would have had on their best clothes. I think they was only acting.’

  Erchy had dropped in on me on his way back from gathering hazels for a lobster creel he was making for me. I had bought a small, light dinghy, one that I could launch and pull up the beach unaided, and Erchy, knowing my fondness for lobsters, had suggested that I put out a creel and try catching them for myself. It was now my ambition to sit down to a meal of fish I had caught; bread and butter I had made; vegetables and fruit I had grown; so the prospect of a lobster creel pleased me as much as the prospect of a bottle of French perfume would have a few years before.

  ‘What are you makin’ now?’ Erchy asked, as he watched me break my eggs—from my own hens—into a bowl.

  ‘Lemon curd,’ I replied.

  ‘Now that’s stuff I like,’ he enthused. ‘There’s only one thing. I like better and that’s blackcurrant jam.’

  ‘I like blackcurrant jam too,’ I admitted sorrowfully. The g
arden of the cottage had been a tatter of blackcurrant bushes when I took over and I had cut them all down to ground level. Since then they had yielded seven blackcurrants.

  ‘I’ll get you plenty blackcurrants if you’ll make them into jam,’ Erchy offered.

  ‘I’ll make them into jam quickly enough,’ I agreed. ‘But where are you going to get blackcurrants?’

  ‘Never you mind,’ said Erchy. ‘You provide the sugar and I’ll provide the blackcurrants and we’ll split fifty-fifty.’

  Though Erchy’s mother was an excellent baker of girdle scones and bannocks she had never tried her hand at making jam and was completely confident that she could never achieve a ‘jell’. Indeed, few of the crofters made any attempt at jam-making despite the abundance of blackberries and brambles in their season. Those with families had no storage space; and the women complained that if they did make half a dozen jars of jam then each member of the family would take a jar and a spoon and eat the whole lot at one sitting. So I agreed to Erchy’s proposal.