A Rope--In Case Read online

  ‘It was his English that made some of us laugh,’ she recalled. ‘It was as though he could never get the right hold of it at all.’

  ‘No,’ I agreed. ‘Remember his “wee beefies” and his “bread loafs”?’ Janet laughed.

  ‘And I remember that year when there was a plague of earwigs. They were into everything and it was horrible.’ I shuddered. ‘I bought some insect spray and was spraying the bushes near the house and when I’d finished I found Farquhar had been standing there watching me. “What is that?” he asked me “Insect powder,” I told him, “I’m trying to kill off a few of the earwigs.” He looked at me so sorrowfully and said, “I don’t believe in any of them incestitudes”.’

  ‘What’s the joke?’ Erchy and Johnny demanded as they caught up with us. I repeated the story.

  ‘Aye, an’ now he’s bein’ buried tomorrow,’ said Erchy.

  Johnny seemed to be struck by a sudden thought. ‘How’s Sheena gettin’ to the funeral?’ he asked. ‘They’re not buryin’ him here so she’ll need a car or somethin’.’

  I told them she had already hired a taxi.

  Erchy turned to Johnny. ‘That’s a damty good idea,’ he said.

  ‘What is?’ asked Johnny.

  ‘Let’s hire a car for ourselves to go to Farquhar’s funeral an’ then we can go an’ get drunk at the same time.

  Manure With Cream

  The impressive silver-edged invitation card to Angus’s wedding eventually arrived. I opened mine under the arch scrutiny of the postman.

  ‘Mmm. All printed,’ I observed respectfully. Only once previously had I received an invitation card to a Bruach wedding but then it had been one of a batch chosen from the stationery pages of the ubiquitous mail order catalogue which supplied so many of the needs of the village. It had required much filling in by the bride’s parents.

  ‘Everybody’s got one,’ Postie informed me lugubriously. ‘It’s as bad as havin’ an election when you have to take the forms round to every house.’

  ‘It’s only once in a while we have an occasion like this,’ I soothed.

  ‘Right enough, but I’ve creels to lift tonight yet,’ he grumbled and when I offered further commiseration he added exasperatedly: ‘Bloody weddin’s! I don’t know why they don’t do the same as the links an’ just forget about gettin’ married.’ Irritably he sorted through a bundle of letters. ‘Why don’t they go to Glasgow an’ get their marryin’ done without all this bother for me.’

  Postie, who was by day a hard-working crofter, became the official postman only when he sighted the evening bus which brought the mails. Then he would struggle into his postman’s jacket, clamp the peaked cap on his head and race to the Post Office, hoping, by taking a short cut, to reach it either at the same time as the bus or at any rate not long enough after it to give the postmistress cause for reproof. He was normally a cheery fellow but he suffered from a bad stomach which was doubtless the reason for his occasional bouts of grumpiness. Tentatively I offered him a drink of sour milk, thick and curdy, which was the accepted local palliative. He took it gratefully and refusing the glass I held drank it straight from the jug, draining it to the last gurgling mouthful. ‘That’ll keep me goin’ for a wee whiley,’ he said as he wiped the curds from his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket. ‘I didn’t take my potatoes yet so I was feelin’ a bitty hungry.’ He heaved the heavy bag of mails back on to his shoulder and departed, blowing short blasts on his whistle to inform the occupants of the next croft of his approach.

  I piled damp peats on the fire so that it would stay alight for a few hours, chose one of the new loaves I had baked only that day and, wrapping it in a tea towel, set off to call on Morag who had been confined to the house for a few days after having cut her foot while haymaking. The cut had turned septic and had swelled so much she was unable to ‘put a boot to her foot’. As a consequence she was having to submit to having Behag, her nephew’s inefficient but sweet tempered wife, attend to her and also to the chores of the croft.

  All day it had been too wet to work in the hay, the grass being repeatedly brushed with moisture from the scattered showers that drifted across the bay. Mists had screened the hills giving us glimpses of white gulls through ghosts of rain. Now the showers had been dispersed and there was a brilliant wink of sunshine that intensified the shade of the grass until it looked like green pigment while on the sea there were so many different patches of colour it looked as if the sun was shining through stained glass windows.

  When I arrived at Morag’s she was sitting on the bench in her kitchen with one leg resting on a pillow. The foot was swathed in damp looking bandages of a familiar but far from hygienic shade of brown. She greeted me as if it had been three years since we met instead of three days.

  ‘And how’s the foot?’ I asked when I had given her the bread.

  ‘Ach, there’s hardly a thing wrong with it,’ she replied. ‘But Behag, the wretch has taken away my boots to stop me from gettin’ about.’

  ‘Good for Behag,’ I said.

  ‘She’s not been feelin’ too good in herself, Miss Peckwitt,’ Bella explained. ‘That’s why I took them away from her.’

  I looked at Morag in surprise. She was such an old stoic it was strange to hear of her suffering from anything but minor accidents.

  She looked a trifle ashamed. ‘Aye, right enough I wasn’t feelin’ in very good taste for a day or two,’ she confessed, ‘But I’m fine again now.’ She glared at Behag. ‘I would be if I could just get a hold of my boots.’

  Behag tittered good humouredly.

  I indicated the bandages. ‘Did the doctor put that on for you?’ I asked dubiously.

  ‘Indeed, no!’ she retorted swiftly. ‘Why would I be wantin’ the doctor an’ me only havin’ a poisoned foot?’

  ‘But he was here, wasn’t he?’ Everyone knew the doctor had visited Morag the previous day.

  ‘Surely he was here.’

  ‘But the cailleach wouldn’t let him look at her foot,’ Behag confided.

  ‘You should, Morag,’ I scolded her. ‘A poisoned foot can be very serious. You ought to have let him see it even if you won’t do as he tells you.’

  ‘An’ what good would him lookin’ at it do?’ she asked indignantly. ‘The Lord hasn’t given him a face that will cure poisons.’

  ‘You don’t believe he can cure anything,’ I challenged her. ‘I think he’s a pretty good doctor, and a lot better than Bruach deserves.’

  ‘I believe that too,’ Behag supported. ‘But you can’t tell the cailleach that. She thinks nothin’ of him at all’

  ‘No indeed, I wouldn’t pick him up in a flittin’,’ announced Morag. ‘He didn’t come to see me as much as he came for a dram,’ she added, meaningly.

  ‘He’s a right man for his dram,’ murmured Behag admiringly.

  ‘Aye,’ affirmed Morag. ‘Folks tell me when they go to him because they’re no feehin’ so well, all he says to them is, “Take a dose of water.” Just that. Yet when he was here yesterday and Behag gave him his dram she asked him would he take water with it an’ he pulled a sour face an’ he says, “Arrah, no! Water makes me sick!”

  Behag handed me a cup of tea. There was a stong smell of manure in the kitchen and I looked down at my boots wondering if I had trodden some in when I arrived. They appeared to be quite clean. I sniffed discreetly. The smell seemed to be coming from the direction of Morals foot.

  ‘What are you treating your foot with?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m puttin’ on it what I always use for blood poisonin’,’ she replied. ‘It’s a cure I mix for myself.’

  Behag and I exchanged wry smiles. ‘And what goes into it?’ I pursued.

  ‘It’s a wee bitty cowdung mixed with a wee bitty fresh cream,’ she explained with great dignity. ‘It’s what we always use for poisonin’s.’ I must have looked shocked for she continued reproachfully. ‘You know, Miss Peckwitt, the old folks had cures for everythin’ before ever there were doctors. An’
there’s many a one of us still believes they was the best cures. You’ll see I’ll be skippin’ around like a young goat in a few days from now.’

  Hector came in at that moment. He was carrying an ancient gun that looked as if it had been excavated from a rubbish dump but the carcases of two good-sized rabbits he carried proclaimed its efficiency. He hung them up on a convenient hook in the ceiling and pushed the gun under the bench where Morag sat.

  ‘Well, an’ how’s Miss Peckwitt?’ he asked, as he sat down at the table and attacked with his fingers a boiled mackerel that Behag had ladled out of the pot for him. Alternately with mouthfuls of fish he took mouthfuls of boiled potato, adeptly squeezing it from its skin into his mouth. He aimed the skins at the fire.

  ‘Miss Beckwith’s fine,’ I replied. ‘How’s yourself?’

  ‘Ach, I’m doin’ all right.’

  ‘An’ how’s Mary?’ Mary, my friend from England, came each year to spend her summer holiday in Bruach.

  ‘She’s fine too,’ I told him. ‘At least, she was when I last heard from her.’

  ‘Be sure an’ tell her when you write tsat I was askin’ after her.’

  ‘She was asking after you,’ I replied promptly.

  Every time I wrote to Mary I added a P.S. with the sentence ‘They told me to tell you they were asking after you’. And when Mary replied she likewise added her own P.S. ‘Tell them all I was asking after them,’ only now she contracted it to ‘T.T. A.I.W.A.A.T.’ In Bruach it was not considered sufficiently courteous to enquire as to the well being of an absent friend or relative; you must always insist that the absentee should be told you were ‘askin’ after them’.

  Morag said, ‘An’ what’s doin’ today, Hector?’

  Her nephew spoke through a mouthful of potato. ‘Nossin’, nossin’ at all. Tse same as tsere is every osser day in Bruach.’

  ‘There must be somethin’ doin’,’ his aunt reprimanded him. Tell me if Anna Vic got her winter stack finished before the rain?’

  ‘Aye,’ replied Hector. ‘Just about, tsough I reckon she’ll need to take tse top off it, yet.’

  ‘She’ll be greetin’ about that, then.’

  ‘She’ll no be greetin’ about anytsing’ for a day or two I’m tsinkin’,’ said Hector cryptically.

  ‘An’ why not?’ Morag looked hard at him. Behag paused in the middle of pouring out a cup of tea and looked at her husband expectantly.

  ‘Her uncle’s died in America,’ Hector enlightened us. ‘Tsere was a letter in tse mails tonight tellm’ her so.’

  ‘Indeed!’ Morag’s voice was reverent.

  Behag tilted the pot and filled Hector’s cup. ‘I wonder did he leave Anna Vic in his will?’

  Hector darted an impish glance at his aunt. ‘He did’, was all he said.

  Morag fidgeted. ‘Did you no hear what he left?’ she asked struggling to sound indifferent.

  ‘I’m tsinkin’ he must have left all he had for he couldn’t very well take it wiss him, could he now?’ he said, disposing of the subject.

  Behag reached up to the shelf above the range and took down the invitation to Angus’s wedding which had been propped against the purple china clock.

  ‘We got this tonight,’ she said, displaying it in front of her husband. ‘D’you think we’ll need to send a reply?’

  Hector’s eyes opened wide. ‘No, why would we?’ he replied. ‘Tsey know fine we’ll be goin’. Why else would tsey send us an invitation?’

  He pushed away his plate with its debris of bones and skin, rooted in the pocket of his jacket and brought out a crumpled packet of cigarettes. ‘Sho?’ he offered one to me. Behag extracted a burning peat from the fire with the tongs and lit both our cigarettes.

  ‘Smoke, smoke, smoke,’ Morag derided. ‘Never happy is Hector unless he’s smokin’.’ Hector retaliated by pretending to aim a cigarettee at her lap. She hunched away. ‘Indeed I’d no spoil my lungs with it’ she asseverated. ‘I’m thinkin’ if ever the doctors get to examine Hector they’ll find him infested with nicotine.’

  Hector blew smoke teasingly in her direction. Behag busied herself mixing fresh cod’s livers with oatmeal before stuffing the mixture into a cod’s head and baking it in the oven.

  ‘Did you lift the paper from the bus yet?’ Hector asked.

  ‘No, I didn’t yet,’ replied Behag. ‘Erchy said he would lift it an’ give it to you later on when he’d had a read of it.’

  Hector grunted.

  The daily papers arrived in Bruach about seven o’clock in the evening but only three or four families took them regularly. The rest simply shared. They saw no reason to pay good money for newspapers when they would be dropping in at their friends’ houses where the paper would be at their disposal. One result of this small economy was that you never saw a discarded newspaper in Bruach. All papers were eagerly sought after and cherished and when we received goods by post much of the fun of unpacking them was because they were often stuffed with newspapers which we could smooth out and read no matter how ancient the news might be. Once read the papers would be folded carefully and saved for reference, as reading matter for our friends and ultimately for re-use as packing if we should need to send anything away ourselves.

  There was a noise of footsteps outside and Erchy came in followed by his dog. The dog assessed the company and seeming to find it unattractive took himself off to be outside. Hebridean sheepdogs are primarily workers and though they are often welcome to share the home of their owners they seem to be unable to shed, even temporarily, their role of sheep watching and prefer to be outside where, when there are no sheep, they can watch or practise their tactics on cattle or hens.

  Erchy threw a newspaper on the table in front of Hector.

  ‘Did you get a read of it?’ asked Hector thoughtfully.

  ‘Aye, I’m finished with it.’ Erchy sat down beside Morag on the bench and lit a cigarette ‘I see you have your invitation,’ he remarked

  ‘We did,’ said Behag, picking it up and admiring it. ‘It’s a right grand one too.’ She looked at Erchy. ‘Are you goin’ to answer it?’ she asked him.

  ‘Answer it?’

  ‘Well, it does say R.S.V.P. on it an’ folks say that means you’re supposed to answer it,’ she explained.

  ‘Ach, them sort of things is not for Bruach,’ he assured her.

  ‘It doesn’t mean us. There’d be no reason why we wouldn’t go, after all.’

  There was a short silence while Hector studied the paper and then he pushed it aside.

  ‘Were you out with die gun today?’ Erchy asked him.

  ‘Aye.’ Hector indicated the rabbits. ‘I got tse two just.’

  ‘In the glen?’

  ‘No. Over in tse corrie.’

  ‘What took you there?’ Erchy was curious.

  ‘I had to take tse pollis over to Rhuna. Did you not hear about it?’

  ‘How would I hear of it an’ me away on the hill after the sheep all day?’ replied Erchy resentfully.

  ‘Aye, well, tse pollis came for me to take tsem over for sometsin’ or osser.’ Hector chuckled. ‘One of tsem had a right queer gun wiss him too, I can tell you.’

  ‘A gun?’

  ‘Aye, if you can call it a gun. I knew nossin’ of it till he said, “Hector”, says he, “will tsere be a chance of a shot at a skart or sometsin’ for dinner on tse way?”

  ‘ “Tsere might be,” I told him. “If you have a gun”. I didn’t want tsem to see tse one I have under tse seat,’ he added with an engaging smile.

  ‘ “I have a gun”, says tse copper an’ he pulls out tsis tsing from under his coat. I near laughed out loud when I saw it. It was from some war, or sometsin’, he said.

  ‘ “What sort of ammo would a gun like tsat take?” I asked him. “I’ve never seen tse like of it before.’

  ‘ “Tsese is tse ammo”, he says an’ puts his hand in his trouser pocket to get it out. Tsen I see his face go all queer.

  “Amn’t I tse fool?” s
ays he. “I’ve lost tse bloody ammo”. He felt in all his pockets wissout findin’ it. Tsen tse osser copper says to him, “I know what’s happened to your ammo”.

  ‘ “What?” he asks.

  ‘ “You mind tsis mornin’ we had to go an’ look for yon woman tsat had gone boatin’ an’ not turned up again? We tsought she’d been drowned an’ tse boat might have been washed ashore in tsem rocks an’ we had to wade out to tsem?”

  ‘ “Aye,” says tse osser pollis.

  ‘ “Well, you mind you went home an’ changed your trousers afterwards”, tse one reminded him. “Tsat’s where your ammo will be”.

  ‘ “Oh God!” he says. “Tsat will be tse way of it.” ’

  ‘An’ what happened to the woman?’ asked Morag. ‘Did they find her?’

  ‘Aye, tsey found her later on. She’d lost her oars an’ tse boat was blown well out to sea.’

  ‘An’ was she out all night?’ cried Behag.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘I hope she had plenty of clothes on,’ I said. ‘It was cold last night for the time of year.’

  ‘She had nossin’ on but a basing costume, so tsey told me,’ said Hector. ‘An’ no much of a one at tsat.’

  ‘And was she all right when they found her?’ I asked.

  Hector thought for a moment. ‘I tsink tsey said she was a wee bit exposed,’ he replied.

  ‘Oh well, I’m glad they found her, the poor soul,’ said Behag with relief. ‘She might have been drowned.’

  ‘You should have heard tsem pollis cursin’ her for it tsough,’ Hector told her. ‘Wiss tsem not gettin’ a skart an’ after bringin’ tse gun specially.’ He lifted up a foot and obediently Behag knelt and pulled off his boot.

  ‘I’m wonderin’ why the pollis had to go to Rhuna,’ Morag probed.

  Hector wiped his hand over his chin and there was a gleam of mischief in his eyes.

  ‘Tsey’ve lost tse bull,’ he told his aunt. ‘So tsey sent for tse pollis to see what tsey could do.’

  ‘Is that true?’ she asked.

  ‘Aye,’ he affirmed. ‘My, but I got a laugh when we was comin’ back an’ one of tse pollis says to tse osser, “It’s a shame right enough you have no ammo for tsat gun. Just look at tsat raft of skarts over tsere.” He was right too, tsere was seventy of tsem if tsere was one. I was wishin’ tsem pollis anywhere but in my boat so I could have a shot at tsem myself.’ He poured himself out another cup of tea.