The Sea for Breakfast Page 16

  The dentist obligingly fitted me in without a previous appointment. He was a charming man and when his receptionist showed me into his homely surgery he was sitting on the floor playing happily with an adorable little puppy. He was wearing a starched white jacket, bedroom slippers and no socks. I sat in the chair and waited timidly while he gathered up the puppy and carried it over to its basket. He put it in, patted it and told it to stay there and then came and stood over me. Taking an instrument from an array on a nearby shelf he told me to open wide and began to probe. ‘Ah, yes … perfect, perfect … now puppy … naughty puppy! Stay there puppy … nice puppy.…’ Even rolling my eyes to their extremities I could not see what the puppy was up to but my attention was caught by a shelf above that on which the instruments were arrayed. It looked to be a species of museum shelf and reposing on it was a collection of awe-inspiring relics of previous clients. The dentist continued with his inspection. ‘Good teeth you have … yes …’ He jerked away suddenly. ‘Puppy! Naughty puppy!’ He turned and shook the instrument at it admonishingly. ‘When he wants me to play with him he has a habit of nipping my ankles and his teeth are terribly sharp,’ he vouchsafed by way of explanation. He bent over me again but, changing his mind, he picked up the puppy and stowed it again in its basket.

  ‘Now stay there, puppy,’ he bade it firmly. ‘My wife usually looks after it but she’s gone off to hospital to visit her mother,’ he said companionably. ‘And my secretary’s away home now.’ The puppy sat in his basket looking appealingly vague. The dentist resumed his inspection. ‘Aye, yes, now there’s a wee holey there … no more I think. Ouch!’ He jerked away again.

  ‘Puppy!’ He sounded really cross and looked about him helplessly for a moment as though wondering whether to put down the instruments and chastise the offender. His eye suddenly lighted on the museum shelf. Surreptitiously he flicked off one of the relics, which rattled across the surgery with the puppy gambolling happily after it. The dentist breathed a sigh of relief and concentrated his attention on stopping my tooth. As a retriever the puppy was not a conspicuous success and there were only one or two relics remaining on the shelf when I took my leave.

  In Edinburgh we spent our days and nights being entertained by past residents of Bruach, by relatives of present residents of Bruach and by Morag’s own innumerable friends and relations, so much so that I saw hardly anything of the city and Morag did not find time to renew her acquaintance with the penguins. On our return journey we touched Inverness briefly on a hot, busy day with the buses grinding heavily along and ice cream trodden over the pavements. Inverness suffers too much from the cult of the laird to be popular with Islanders and when they go away they prefer the indiscriminate affability of Edinburgh and Glasgow. At Morag’s suggestion we carried on to Dingwall, which is a delightfully scatterbrained little town wavering between East-coast industry and West-coast indolence. Coming out of the station we were confronted with what looked like the preparations for a Guy Fawkes bonfire but which we found was the Seaforth memorial to the battle of Cambrai. But Dingwall is really dominated by the church tower with its four clocks of which, during the time we were there, no two were in agreement and not one was correct. Our landlady was no generous Highlander; she did not smother us with eiderdowns nor overtax our stomachs, but she was the only landlady I have ever come across who had the courage to put a supply of the day’s newspapers in the lavatory in addition to an ample supply of toilet paper. I like Dingwall for its individuality and for its decorous bustle but mostly it will linger in my memory as the place where at night the men stand so still on the street corners that even the dogs get confused.

  The train journey from Dingwall to the West is beautiful indeed and the halts frequent enough to allow it to be fully assimilated. I slept most of the way and roused myself for lunch to find that our compartment was now shared by a corpulent old Highlander and a heavily built, masculine-looking woman. The man was dressed in black suit, black hat, black shiny boots and with a snowy Wool-worth’s handkerchief in his breast pocket. I know it was a Woolworth’s handkerchief because I had just bought a dozen for Erchy. When he was not conversing with Morag in the Gaelic he sat self-consciously in his corner staring at the pictures of Morecambe and Bognor Regis which decorated the compartment. He looked as though he had left his croft and his bible only for a few hours and was already wearying to return to them. I discovered he had been travelling the world for the past eighteen months visiting his scattered children and was only now on his way home. The woman was wearing an amorphous raincoat and a deerstalker and she was so engrossed in a novelette with a lurid love scene backing that she appeared to be oblivious of our presence and even of the attractions of Morecambe and Bognor Regis.

  We were back to contentious seagulls; back to ‘Tea-rooms’ (instead of restaurants) with their stale cakes that looked as though they had been kept on a shelf for six months and taken down and dusted only occasionally. The drizzly rain was full of salt; boats bumped against the slip; ropes were flung; the men’s oilskins flapped and crackled. We squelched over seaweed to the ferry. I saw Morag aboard and then asked the ferryman if he could wait while I nipped into the shop on the pier. I had bought a large vacuum jar and I thought it would be a good idea to get it filled with ice cream for the children of Bruach who rarely got the chance to taste it. The youth in the shop considered the capacity of the jar and finally decided that two family bricks would compress suitably. The boy took the bricks and the jar to the back of the shop. He was gone for rather a long time and I could see the ferrymen were becoming restless.

  ‘Please hurry,’ I called; ‘the ferry is waiting.’

  He appeared hastily, rather red in the fece, and handed me the jar.

  ‘I had no idea it was going to take so long,’ I said testily as I handed him the money.

  ‘Ach, but d’you see, I had to melt them first to get them to go in,’ he consoled me fatuously.

  I hurried down to the ferry.

  ‘Miss Peckwitt! Miss Peckwitt! Mattami’ I stopped. A cadaverous oilskinned figure was lumbering towards me,

  ‘Miss Peckwitt, am I spekink to?’ He was very, very Highland.

  ‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘Do you want something?’

  ‘Would you be goin’ back to Bruach now, marram?’

  I admitted I would.

  ‘In that case would you be takink a wee message to Willy John MacRae? The phone iss not workink.’

  I said I would.

  ‘You will tell him then that there iss a corp to come over for him tomorrow on the boat.’

  ‘A what did you say?’

  ‘A corp, mattam, to come over.…’

  The ferrymen were revving the engine impatiently.

  ‘Yes,’ I cut in, ‘I know, but what is it you said was to come over in the boat?’

  ‘A corp, mattam.’

  ‘A corp?’

  ‘Indeed yes.’ He could not conceal that he thought me very unintelligent. ‘Willy John’s uncle has died in Glasgow and his corp is to come over tomorrow,’ he explained patiently.

  ‘Oh!’ I exclaimed. ‘You mean a corpse!’

  He looked at me pityingly.

  ‘Mattam,’ he rebuked me gently. ‘I was spekink in the sinkular.’

  The ‘Herring Fish’

  ‘The trouble with this place,’ complained the local vet exasperatedly, ‘is that every single soul in it is a fierce individualist. Other townships manage to work together for their own good, but Bruach, never!’

  The veterinary surgeons of the Hebrides are splendid men doing gruelling work over a vast area for long hours, often with little consideration or co-operation, yet they are unfailingly helpful, good-humoured and appear to be completely tireless. Our Island vet was no exception, but his exasperation was occasioned by the fact that he had spent a long day under appalling weather conditions chasing over mile upon mile of moor and bog trying to get within ‘slabbing’ distance of cattle that were as wild as the hills that bred them. He had ou
t-manoeuvred aggressive mothers with calves at foot; stalked refractory two-year-olds that had never before submitted to human touch; thrown himself upon young calves that fled on nimble legs from anything that had not horns and shaggy hair. In all this he had been hampered by a pack of vociferous Bruachites who, unable to agree as to the best way to catch a beast, had each gone about it in his own way; and by a pack of equally vociferous dogs which, frantic with excitement, had streaked in and out among the distraught beasts taking surreptitious nips at their heels.

  ‘It’s one thing to hold a beast when it’s half-mad, but it’s another when there’s a dog chewing at his tail,’ was another complaint the vet made; a complaint well justified by the number of rolls of coarse hair . from the tips of tails that were later to be seen strewing the moors.

  For such a round-up of cattle other villagers, as the vet pointed out, had combined to fence off cattle ‘parks’. Bruach had never aspired to anywhere other than the school playground but, to everyone’s indignation, the present teacher had protested against its use for penning cattle, maintaining that the uproar distracted the pupils and that the language they could not help overhearing, particularly when one of the more recalcitrant beasts managed repeatedly to evade its captors, was altogether unsuitable.

  Another way in which Bruach lagged behind other townships was in its reluctance to run a joint sheep stock. This arrangement whereby each crofter has an equal share in a common stock on the hill, one member of the community being employed as shepherd, appeared to work harmoniously in other places. Bruach preferred to carry on as their fathers and grandfathers before them, each man having a few sheep on the hill and shepherding them whenever he felt the need or the urge to do so. It was a method which meant the flock was being constantly separated and harried from place to place, for however unco-operative their owners may have been the Bruach sheep still retained the instinct to flock together. Half-hearted proposals to merge stocks had been put forward from time to time but they were always resisted for a variety of reasons. They had felt their resistance to be amply justified when they heard of a stranger who, having taken over a croft in a neighbouring village and with it the share of the sheep stock, had ingenuously declared his annual profit from the stock on his income tax returns, much to the interest of the Inland Revenue Authorities and much to the consternation of the rest of the holders.

  If the Bruachites had shown more spirit of co-operation they might have achieved a Public Hall of some sort. They might even have managed a piped water supply instead of one house in three having an abundance of water while the rest depended on moody springs. Though the inability to work together appeared to be congenital with the majority of the villagers yet it rarely developed into anything more serious than peevish wrangling. The two main causes of perceptible friction in Bruach were centred on the boats in the tourist season and in the herring fishing season, though if there was a glut of either tourists or of herring the crews managed to work together with the utmost cordiality, the idea being that it did not matter much which boat netted them so long as they were not allowed to get away. It was when there was a scarcity of either that any trouble flared up.

  Between Wayfarer, Hector’s boat, and Seagull, the boat of which Erchy and deaf Ruari, Morag’s brother, each had a half share, there was at times bitter rivalry. They each took tourists for trips in the season. They each fished herring when it came into the loch. Their battles over tourists not only provided much entertainment for the rest of the village but more than once resulted in neither boat getting a trip because the passengers were afraid to risk going on the water with such fierce-sounding men. Deaf Ruari was mainly responsible for their apprehension for though he was an extremely forbearing old man normally, the power of his lungs undoubtedly increased in proportion as his wrath and the sparse white hairs on his face could bristle most aggressively. At such times one could not wonder at the tourists preferring to admire the scenery from the safety of the shore.

  As the tourist season came to an end so the boat crews gradually became more amicable, helping to haul up each other’s dinghies, respecting each other’s lobster ground and frequently reporting where good catches were to be obtained. Then the herring would come in and the antagonism would spring up again.

  Herring appear to be creatures of habit and they usually shoaled into Bruach waters some time in April for a couple of weeks and then disappeared until the autumn. The Bruachites took little interest in April herring. They wanted their fish for salting and the autumn herring, being less oily, took the salt better. Round about September the previous year’s supply would be finished, or, if it were not completely finished, the fish that were left would be thrown out on to the croft for the cows, so that one became accumstomed to the sight of a cow standing chewing at a herring as a man chews at a cigar. The empty barrels would then be placed under a convenient waterfall to get thoroughly clean. (In an Island where the hills are full of streams there is never any difficulty in finding at least a cascade of water for each family’s barrel.) The herring nets would then be taken down from the rafters where they had been stored since their ‘mothproofing’ at the end of their last season. The Bruachites mothproofed their nets by the simple method of leaving them in sacks or boxes for a time at the back of the house where the men could urinate on them. This very effective method of mothproofing is not, it seems, confined to herring nets; I know of one lady who gave away her hand-woven tweed suit after spending a winter holiday in a small weaving village and deducing the reason for the weaver’s daily collection of pails of urine from their neighbours.

  On calm, cool, moonlit nights with the sea lisping on the shingle shore, the noise of herring playing in the loch is a beautiful and exciting sound. A sound to be evoked on hot, parcel-burdened days in town or when enduring the stuffy torture of a long train journey. It is as though the shoal tickles the surface of the sea and makes it bubble with laughter. On just such a night of calm I was returning home from a ceilidh with Morag when Erchy’s voice hailed me.

  ‘We’ll be thinkin’ of ceilidhin’ with you tomorrow night,’ he said.

  ‘Good,’ I replied with polite warmth. ‘Who’s we?’

  ‘Me, and Johnny and maybe one or two others,’ he enlightened me generously. ‘The loch’s teemin’ with herrin’ and we’ll need to get after them before it’s away for the winter.’

  ‘The herring’s in already?’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Surely! Are you no hearin’ it?’ I had to admit that until he had mentioned it I had not heard any unusual sound. ‘Aye, but the noise of herrin’ is like that,’ said Erchy. ‘Unless your ears is tuned in to it you can miss it altogether.’ I paused now, and listened rapturously.

  The following morning when I rowed out to lift my lobster creel two groups of men were busy preparing their nets for shooting in the evening. Erchy, Angus and deaf Ruari comprised one group and Hector and Duncan, the son of the postmistress, the other. The distance between them emphasized that the period of camaraderie was already beginning to wane. I went over to talk to Hector.

  ‘No lobster, I see,’ he greeted me.

  ‘None today.’

  ‘Nor yesterday, I’m tsinkin’.’

  ‘No, not yesterday.’

  ‘No indeed, when tse herrin’s in tse loch it drives everytsin’ away. I’ve seen whales in here, killers at tsat, and a big shoal of herrin’ has come in and frightened tsem away out of it for tseir lives. It’s as true as I’m here.’

  I was pondering this unlikely information when Nelly, the daughter of Elly, and consequently known as ‘Nelly-Elly’, came hurrying down to the shore. Nelly-Elly ran the post office.

  ‘They’re wantin’ you to go to the hills with the pollis,’ she panted. ‘There’s been an accident.’

  ‘I’ll bet you tsat will mean a corpse,’ said Hector glumly.

  ‘It does so. A man’s fallen and killed himself.’ She paused for a few moments while we reacted to the news and then continued irately: ‘I don’t kno
w whatever came over that Tom-Tom. Just because he finds a corpse he feels he should be able to tell me how to do my work. He kept ringing me up at the kiosk when I had a long- distance call occupyin’ the line and tellin’ me I was to cut short the call because he had an urgent message for the pollis. Urgent, he said! I refused to do it. “It’s no urgent at all,” I told him, “the man’s already dead.” ’

  We approved her assessment of the situation by nodding our heads. ‘The pollis will be down in half an hour,’ she added soberly.

  ‘Is Tom-Tom goin’ back with them?’ asked Duncan.

  ‘No, he says he’s not fit to go.’

  ‘Do tsey know where tse body is, tsen?’ demanded Hector, who was still very sulky with the police because he had recently been fined for carrying more than the stipulated twelve passengers in his boat. ‘I’m no waitin’ about for tsem while tsey go lookin’ for it. I’ll take tsem tsere and leave tsem, just. Tsey can walk home.’

  ‘You’d best tell them that yourself,’ said Nelly-Elly with a toss of her head. ‘Or if you don’t want the job I can give it to Erchy.’

  ‘To hell with tsat,’ responded Hector. A great bone of contention between the two boats was that since the wily Hector had taken Nelly-Elly’s son, Duncan, to work with him he had naturally fallen in for all the telephoned boat bookings, there being only one telephone line to Bruach.

  ‘I’d been tsinkin’ I’d get home to my dinner and take a wee snooze tsis afternoon,’ Hector mumbled lugubriously. ‘We’ll be up all night at tse herrin’ and I didn’t get to bed tsis mornin’ till tse back of four.’

  ‘Four o’clock isn’t all that late for you,’ I retorted. ‘Behag tells me you’re reading until about three every morning.’

  ‘Aye, it was no awful late right enough, but I’m feelin’ a wee bitty tired just tse same. I tsink I’ll come up to tse cottage with you, seein’ we can’t get home, will I? And you’ll make us a strupak?’