The Sea for Breakfast Page 18

  ‘My, but the van’s very late,’ observed Janet, getting up to put more peats on the fire.

  The outer door opened and a man’s voice shouted.

  ‘Is that you, Murdoch? Come away in,’ called Janet.

  Old Murdoch opened the door and put his head inside. He obviously had not shaved for days and his face looked as though it had been planted by the Forestry Commission. His nose reared through the growth like the beginning of a forest fire.

  ‘What’s that you’re sayin’?’ enquired Janet.

  ‘I’m sayin’ it’s no good you waitin’ here,’ he told us. ‘The van’s away back home. You’ll no be seem’ him tonight.’

  ‘Why ever’s that?’ asked Janet.

  ‘Indeed, he gave no explanation at all,’ said the old man. ‘He stopped once just at the top of the village and then he turned the van and went off home without a word to anybody.’

  ‘WeIl, well,’ murmured Janet. ‘I wonder whatever has happened.’

  ‘They’re sayin’ there’s a dance on at Sheehan and he’s wantin’ to get back in time for it,’ said Murdoch.

  There was a gasp of disapproval from the visitor.

  ‘That’s no good enough,’ observed Janet indignantly. ‘Leaving us all without supplies just to go to a dance.’

  ‘Aye, there’s some of them awful wild about it,’ agreed Murdoch. ‘Nelly-Elly’s sayin’ she hasn’t a bitty sugar in the house to take with their tea. And Anna-Vic’s sayin’ she hasn’t a biscuit left though she’s bought nine pounds this week already.’

  ‘Nine pounds of biscuits! In a week!’ repeated the visitor incredulously.

  ‘Aye, but she has a big family,’ Janet said defensively.

  ‘Her own mother had a big family too,’ exclaimed Murdoch. ‘And I never saw her buy a biscuit in her life. She baked everythin’ herself on the girdle.’ Murdoch took his pipe from his pocket, brandished it compellingly and settled himself on a chair. ‘Never a shop biscuit nor a shop loaf went into that house and look at the fine family she reared.’

  ‘No, but the vans didn’t come in those days,’ argued Janet.

  ‘No, and there wasn’t so many pensions to pay for all the stuff, either,’ retorted Murdoch.

  Janet smiled disapprovingly. ‘Murdoch would like to see us all back to the old days when women did nothin’ but work all day long,’ she said. ‘That’s why no woman would marry him.’

  I said good night, leaving Murdoch reminiscing happily with the visitor. Janet came with me to the door.

  ‘I wonder when the van will come now?’ I asked, though aware of the triviality of the question.

  ‘Dear knows,’ answered Janet, ‘but there’ll be some miscallin’ of that man if it was nothin’ but a dance took him from the village.’

  I thanked her automatically for the strupak. ‘Don’t thank me for that, my dear, it was just thrown at you,’ she disclaimed modestly, ‘You’ll be at Jeannac’s weddin’ party tomorrow?’ she reminded me. I assured her that I would be.

  There was now a nip of frost in the air, and across the vastness of the sky shooting stars dodged brilliantly as though hectored by the presumptuous moon. Beyond the bay the scattered lighthouses flashed like jewels against the rustling dark velvet of the water while close at hand the noise of the burn swelled and diminished as it was caught by the fickle breeze. I walked briskly homewards, meditating with some amusement on the visitor’s declamation on the purity of the Gael, suspecting that her opinion was based not so much on her own perception as on a superficial acquaintance with the excessive prudery of a Gaelic dictionary (which is so chaste that it gives only the alternate letters of any word that might be thought improper!). The remark had undoubtedly been offered in extenuation of the strange obsession of Janet’s sister, Grace, whose story Janet had just been telling to the visitor.

  Grace, even as a young girl, had never been particularly bright, and at fifteen she had ‘got herself into trouble’. When she was fifty, Grace had suffered a slight stroke which, though not affecting her general health in any way, had left her with a fitful stammer and with an inexplicable aversion to the fly buttons on men’s trousers. Her brothers began to find that if they left their trousers in the kitchen to dry overnight, when they came to put them on in the morning the fly buttons would all have been removed and the flies securely sewn up with strong thread. During the summer months when Janet took in boarders Grace’s affliction had proved very embarrassing for the family and though they had kept a strict eye on her whenever male boarders came with wet clothes to be dried, she had on more than one occasion successfully eluded their vigilance. When Grace was sixty she had suffered yet another stroke which, though still not affecting her general health, had completely deprived her of the power of speech and, to the dismay of the family, had intensified her passion for correcting male attire. Her brothers now found it necessary to hide their trousers when they retired to bed because she would stealthily enter their rooms whilst they were asleep and appropriate any she could. The moment a male tourist entered the house Grace would fix the offending fly with a fierce stare, her fingers would hover above the scissors on their hook, and she would have to be strenuously dissuaded from following him up the stairs to his room, snapping the scissors anticipatorily. As Janet had confided to me, the only relief the family had was in knowing that she waited until the men had taken off their trousers before she ‘Dis-Graced’ them. Now Grace was nearing seventy. ‘And dear knows what will happen if she has another stroke,’ Janet had lamented. ‘I can see us havin’ to stop takin’ in boarders altogether.’ I suggested she should take only men who wear the kilt. ‘No, no,’ Janet had shaken her head dubiously. ‘Maybe we’d better not risk that.’ Comic as it seemed the problem was certainly a serious one for Janet and she had all my sympathy.

  Around mid-day the following day the prolonged bellowing of a horn summoned me from my work. As a general rule I patronized the vans very little, begrudging the time I had to spend awaiting my turn. I could go to the village shop and get what I wanted in a quarter of the time and still be able to linger for a pleasant chat, but for some perishables and some of the more sophisticated items, like fruit juice and cream crackers, I had to rely on the vans.

  ‘Did you hear why the van driver turned back last night?’ I asked as I joined up with a group of crofters who, with rolled-up sacks under their arms, were already converging on the van and its inevitable entourage of scavenging gulls.

  ‘Aye, poor man. It wasn’t the dance at all he went back for. No, when he got to the top of the village he found he hadn’t a dram to see him through the rest of the night, and he had such a thirst on him he just felt he couldn’t wait another minute, so he turned straight back. He said he knew we’d all understand. Right enough, some was sayin’ last night they’d be after reportin’ him to the manager, but then they thought it was the dance he’d gone to. Ach, but you cannot hold a man’s thirst against him.’

  The wherewithal for a Hebridean to indulge his thirst seems to be always available, no matter how unremunerative his regular occupation may appear to be. I cannot explain why it should be so; I can only accept the fact that it is.

  ‘Next for shavin’!’ The gamekeeper’s wife stepped down from the van and called out jovially as she stowed loaves and groceries into her sack and heaved it on to her shoulder. Whenever a Bruachite finished buying at a van it was the custom to call out wittily, ‘Next for shavin’.’ The phrase had been called out by every crofter at every van I had ever waited upon throughout the years and it had never failed to bring a chuckle from the audience; the Bruachites venerated age even in their jokes.

  It was Old Murdoch’s turn next. Though Murdoch lived with his sisters he did all the shopping because, he maintained, his sisters were too vague about the value of the different coins. Today Murdoch had been selling cattle and when he came to pay for his groceries he opened a purse well stuffed with notes. He was having, as Murdoch was invariably having, some tetchy argument with the
van driver about the price of something he had bought and as he had no pipe handy to gesticulate with he used his open purse. A curious gull flew low over the van: in the next moment I realized that the word ‘shit’ can be onomatopoeic The waiting crofters shrieked and fell back with laughter and Murdoch stared at his open purse with horror and disgust. It was the first time in my life I had seen a Gael look at money in such away.

  ‘That bloody gull’s spilled into my poc!’ he spluttered as though doubting the evidence of his own eyes.

  We were all helpless with laughter and Murdoch, seeing himself as the chief entertainer, gallantly played up. He shook his fist at the gull; he danced about with rage. He gave every feather of the bird its full pedigree before he minced away holding his bulging purse at arm’s length in front of him as apprehensively as though it had been a shovel full of hot coals. Altogether the scene was one of the funniest I have ever witnessed and when my own turn at the van came I had great difficulty in composing my features ready to make the serious complaint which was my main reason for wishing to see the driver.

  In the Hebrides, where in the smaller village shops stocks are inclined to be slow moving, purchases might prove on occasion to be very unappetizing, sometimes inedibly so. In fact I had more than once been enabled to fulfil a life-long ambition to accept the printed invitation enclosed in each box of chocolates to ‘return with this slip in case of complaint’. Generally speaking, one could understand and excuse, but the van driver had sold me mouldy bread and for this I could see no excuse at all. Admittedly mould grew prolifically in Bruach; so much so that one almost caught oneself pulling up one’s sleeve to examine what was only a dark smudge on one’s arm, but the bread I had bought was supposed to be fresh and it had been wrapped bread. Normally I baked my own, but a new cooker was in process of being installed in my kitchen—Hector and Erchy had between them undertaken the task, but with Hector mislaying ‘tsings’ and Erchy anticipating Jeannac’s wedding, progress had been slow. The lack of a cooking stove had necessitated my buying bread temporarily and the first week I had got it fresh from the van, or so I had thought until I had taken off the wrapper and found it to be liberally spotted with mould. The following week when I had attended the van I had complained bitterly to the driver and threatened to report the matter unless he ensured that he sold me an uncontaminated loaf.

  ‘How am I to tell whether a loaf’s mouldy or not when it’s all sealed up in a wrapper?’ he had demanded pettishly. ‘I don’t make the damty stuff.’

  ‘Well then, you’ll just have to unwrap the loaf and examine it before you sell it to me,’ I had insisted.

  Ungraciously he had yielded and I had rejected about half his complement of loaves on the grounds of staleness or their resemblance to charred rubber before I was satisfied with the one I bought. However, when I came to cut a slice for my breakfast the next morning there was mould all the way through it.

  Now, full of righteous indignation I stepped up to the van and glaring coldly at the driver reminded him of my complaint of the previous week and retailed unsparingly to him how, the very next morning, the loaf had been cut and found to be full of mould.

  The driver made a pretence of listening earnestly and then returned my glare with an equally irate one.

  ‘I’m damty glad it was mouldy then,’ he said astonishingly.

  I was thoroughly shaken. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said I’m damty glad it was mouldy. God! But that’s funny,’ he said, bursting into laughter. ‘All that trouble you put me up to last week and all your greetin’ and grumblin’ and then you go and pick out a mouldy loaf for yourself.’

  The van driver had the most infectious laugh in the world and it was a very merry shopping expedition for everyone that day.

  Morag was waiting her turn when I stepped down. ‘You’re comin’ to Jeannac’s weddin’ party tonight?’ she asked, adding quickly, ‘If you’re spared.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I replied.

  Jeannac and her husband had been married quietly a day or two previously on the mainland but now they had returned to have a proper wedding celebration at home.

  ‘You mind when we were invited to her sister’s weddin’ two or three years back?’ said Morag. ‘It was on a Friday and they were boastin’ that their weddin’ cake weighed ten pounds, and the very next Friday they were boastin’ the same about their baby, and you were that put out about it.’

  I remembered it all very well. At the time I had been fairly new to Bruach and when the news of the birth of the baby had come so soon after the wedding I had been shocked indeed. Several months later when Morag and I had been collecting for some charity or other we had called at the house of the newlyweds. The baby had been crawling by then and such a delightful, bonny child was it that I was soon cuddling it and bouncing it on my knee. As we were coming away from the house I had observed to Morag that it was a lovely baby. ‘Yes,’ she had replied, ‘but do you mind when you first heard it had come you said the couple should have been whipped?’

  ‘Oh no!’ I had at first protested, but the faint suspicion that I might once have been so intolerant as to have made such a remark grew into a positive recollection. I had felt thoroughly ashamed of myself. ‘Yes, you did, mo ghaoil,’ Morag had asserted. ‘And I’ve never forgotten the look on your face when you said it.’

  I have long since grown accustomed to ‘God’s wedding presents’ being bestowed a little prematurely but there have been times in the wakeful hours of the night when I have wondered just what that wise old woman saw in my face that day.

  The van’s being delayed until the day of the wedding party had given me rather a rush of work. I had left Erchy putting the finishing touches to the new stove and there would, in addition to my ordinary chores, be the cleaning up of the kitchen afterwards. Intent on planning how best to accomplish everything I had to do, I was hurrying home when Peter jumped suddenly over the stone dyke from his croft with a gun under his arm. His appearance gave me a momentary fright but he dropped the gun abruptly, spat on his hand, rubbed it vigorously up and down his jacket, and offered it to me in greeting.

  ‘Any luck with the rabbits, Peter?’ I asked with a cautious glance at his abandoned gun which in places was bound with string and pieces of wire and looked as though it might prove more lethal to its handler than to any target.

  ‘Yes, Miss,’ he straggled breathlessly to tell me. ‘One and a half.’ His struggle for words was emphasized by the fact that his cap kept wriggling about on his head as he spoke.

  ‘Jolly good,’ I complimented him. ‘But what happened to the other half?’ (envisaging half a rabbit running back to its hole).

  ‘He’s no there when I go get he’s, so I leave he’s there.’

  He lifted his cap, recaptured hastily the two moribund but not completely inert fish which escaped from it, replaced them and pulled his cap down more firmly on his head, leaving their tails hanging over his forehead in an animated fringe.

  ‘Those will make a nice dinner for you and your mother, won’t they?’ I told him.

  ‘Yes, Miss, I’m away to toast she’s,’ he said, retrieving his gun.

  I was delighted to see smoke coming from the kitchen chimney of my cottage and when I pushed open the door Erchy, looking very glum for Erchy, was standing back speculatively.

  ‘Wonderful!’ I remarked with a contented smile.

  ‘Aye, it’s no so bad.’

  ‘It’s splendid,’ I insisted, ‘and the chimney seems to be drawing perfectly.’ I lit the small gas ring and put on the kettle. ‘You’ll take a cup of coffee before you go?’

  ‘Aye, thank you.’

  ‘You do sound gloomy,’ I told him. ‘What’s the matter? Disappointed because you didn’t get away to the dance last night?’

  ‘No indeed, I’m no disappointed about that at all.’

  ‘Well, you’re not like yourself,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t feel like myself then.’

  ‘You mea
n you’re not feeling well?’

  ‘Ach, I’m fine. I just don’t feel like myself.’

  I gave him a cup of coffee and put on the table some biscuits and cheese, and waited for the confidence which I knew was on its way.

  ‘It’s funny,’ said Erchy, after a sip or two of coffee. ‘I believe I must have been in love with Jeannac.’

  ‘Jeannac? The Jeannac who got married on Wednesday?’

  ‘Aye. I must have been in love with her, or why else would I feel so bad at her marryin’ another man?’

  I could only stare at him in speechless sympathy and wonder how much he was suffering.

  ‘It was the same when Marjac got married. I felt just as bad then, so I knew I must have loved her,’ he told me.

  ‘But, didn’t you realize before either of them married that you were in love with them?’ I asked him.

  ‘No, that’s my trouble. I always have to wait for them to get married before I can tell. If I feel bad on their weddin’ day then I know I was in love with them. If I don’t feel bad I know I wasn’t,’ he said miserably.

  His complaint, I thought, constituted the best recipe for remaining a bachelor that I had ever heard but Erchy was much too serious on the subject for me to dare any comment. I tried to take his mind off his sufferings.

  ‘I suppose they’ve stocked up well with whisky for the party tonight?’ I said.

  ‘They stocked up well. They got seven bottles the other night and they thought they’d have a wee drink to start off with and before the night was through they’d finished the seven. I was there myself. Adam’s havin’ to go in to the pub on his motor bike to get some this evenin’.’ He brightened considerably and by the time he had embarked on his second cup of coffee and reinspected the burning of the stove he was practically his normal self again. ‘This coffee’s good,’ he approved. ‘I don’t rightly care much for coffee, but I like this stuff you make. Those pilgrims gave me a cup of coffee when I was in sortin’ a chair for them the other day and it tasted no better than singed water.’ He accepted a third cup and then decided he must go home and ‘take his potatoes’ (his dinner). ‘I’ll see you tonight,’ he told me as he went.