The Loud Halo Read online

  ‘Aye,’ she agreed, with an anxious frown. ‘He doesn’t just seem as though he can make up his mind to die.’ We heard the latch of the gate click and both turned to look out of the window. ‘Here’s Erchy,’ she announced unnecessarily, ‘an’ I daresay he’s come to bring you a piece of meat from his own beast. He was after killin’ it a day or two since.’

  ‘My goodness!’ I said, ‘I shall be able to feast for a week.’

  As soon as the weather was cold enough for the flies to have disappeared and for meat to be kept safely for two, perhaps three, weeks in an ordinary shed, each Bruach family liked to slaughter a sheep. It was the custom to give joints to one’s friends who had not yet slaughtered and they would reciprocate when their turn came to kill. In this way the supply of fresh meat was prolonged for several weeks. I had no sheep but that did not deter my friends from bestowing upon me more than adequate joints as well as generous slices of haggis or blackpudding as they made them, for when a sheep was slaughtered the thrifty Bruach housewives saw that the entrails were eaten before the carcase was cut into at all. Yawn’s sister, Sarah, easily the thriftiest woman in Bruach, had once told me that she used every bit of a sheep except for the ears and teeth and when I had asked for a demonstration she had taken me, in company with two pailsful of internal organs, down to the burn which bounded her croft. There, standing in icy cold water with noisome contents of several stomachs and many yards of intestine swirling greenly around our gumboots, I was initiated into the mysteries of making haggis and blackpudding.

  ‘There,’ approved Sarah, when we were back in her kitchen and the lungs of the sheep were simmering in a saucepan and dribbling pink froth from the trachea which was draped over the side of the pan, ‘you’ll be able to call yourself a right crofter now that you’ve helped clean a sheep and make a haggis.’ I managed a wan smile but not until the blood had been mixed with oatmeal and poured into one stomach bag to be boiled into blackpudding, and the lungs and a selection of other dubious-looking morsels had been chopped up and stuffed into another stomach bag to be boiled into a haggis had I felt sure enough of my legs to rise from my chair and go to the door, desperate to breathe unfouled air again. But Sarah had been determined that I should witness every aspect of her skill and economy and the two collaterals were rubbing tumid shoulders in an enormous cauldron under the scrutiny of a singed sheep’s head awaiting its turn beside the fire before she had allowed that the demonstration was over.

  The following day when the haggis was cooled and set Sarah had sent me a thick slice of it which I crisped in the frying pan and then ate with some mashed potatoes. To my great surprise I had enjoyed every scrap of it and from that day on have been a devotee of the beast.

  Erchy came into the kitchen and deposited a now familiar-looking parcel on the table. ‘There’s your ration,’ he said to me and then, so as to foil any attempt at thanking him, he went on quickly: ‘I’m just hearin’ that Murdoch’s been taken awful bad and they’ve had to send for the nurse.’

  ‘Oh, be quiet!’ ejaculated Morag with startled incredulity.

  ‘Aye, it’s right enough,’ affirmed Erchy.

  ‘Indeed, he was tellin’ me only yesterday he’d been conscripted for the best part of a week and the nurse had given him five calomel to shift him,’ Morag remembered. ‘Would it be to do with that likely?’

  Erchy shook his head. ‘I don’t know at all,’ he said. ‘But what I’m after wonderin’ now is whether the third one’s not goin’ to be Willy as we’ve all been expectin’,’

  ‘Here, here,’ murmured Morag in a horrified voice.

  Erchy was of course referring to the old belief that graves were always required in threes. ‘Once you’ve opened up the burial ground you’ll need to open it up twice more,’ he had told me. Although it was uncanny how often it came true it was a cruel superstition for once the first of the cycle of deaths had occurred the old folks in the village would begin to show distinct signs of uneasiness, even panic, until the third grave was satisfactorily filled when those that were ‘spared’ would shed their fears and with them many of their years and begin what was literally a new lease of life.

  During the previous few weeks the Bruach burial ground had been opened twice—once for a young baby who had ‘died of an open window’ and once for Johnny Comic. Willy, who everyone knew could not last much longer, had been confidently accepted as the likely occupant for the third grave but in view of Erchy’s news it was possible that Murdoch might be the third corpse and when Willy died he would likely be the first of another trio. Both Erchy and Morag looked very serious indeed. I tried to take their minds off the subject.

  ‘I wish there was something I could do for you in return for all this lovely meat,’ I said, with genuine wistfulness.

  ‘Ach, ’tis nothin’ at all,’ Morag dismissed the suggestion instantly.

  ‘Well, you can do somethin’ for me,’ said Erchy with a boldness he sometimes assumed in company. ‘You can bake me a loaf of that nice bread you make. I reckon it agrees with my stomach better than shop bread.’

  I had never known Erchy to refuse at least one slice of my homemade bread even if he had just taken his dinner when it was offered to him. ‘I’ll certainly do that,’ I told him. ‘But I’ll let you into a secret, Erchy.’ He looked at me curiously. ‘The reason for the nice flavour of my bread is that I mix a handful of the hens’ bran into the flour when I make it.’

  ‘Is that right?’ queried Morag.

  ‘That’s right,’ I told her.

  ‘I’d still eat it supposin’ it was a handful of the hens’ dung you mixed in with it,’ said Erchy staunchly. ‘It’s damty good bread anyway.’

  ‘Talkin’ of bakin’,’ said Morag with careful offhandness. ‘Were you no speakin’ of givin’ a party a while back.’ She enunciated the word ‘party’ with the awkward amusement she assumed when she used a word she regarded as being ‘swanky’.

  ‘Yes, I was,’ I replied. ‘I’ve been wondering about the best time to have it.’

  ‘Wait you, now,’ said Erchy. ‘If you go an’ get all ready to have a party an’ then Willy goes an’ dies, there’s nobody would be able to come to it.’

  I had already thought of that, Willy being related to every family in the village so that no household would be unaffected by his death.

  ‘Ach, but that would be awful spiteful of the man to go an’ die on you like that,’ said Morag with just a trace of outrage in her voice.

  ‘Aye, but he might do it, just the same,’ Erchy warned her.

  ‘Aye, so he might,’ agreed Morag.

  ‘Perhaps I’d better put it off altogether,’ I suggested.

  ‘Here, no!’ said Erchy. ‘There’s no need to do that. Will your cakes no’ keep for a wee whiley after you’ve baked them?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I told him; ‘they’d keep for a few days anyway.’

  ‘Well then,’ said Erchy, ‘you go ahead an’ have your party and supposin’ Willy dies we’ll have him buried in a day or two an’ then we could all come.’

  Thus encouraged I went ahead and arranged to have what I had to refer to as a ‘good ceilidh’ on the Thursday of the following week. I started the necessary baking on the Tuesday so that there would be plenty of time for icing and decorating the various cakes. On the Wednesday morning Erchy called in to tell me that Willy had ‘passed on’ in the night. The funeral was to be on Friday.

  ‘You’d best put off your party till Friday night now,’ he advised me.

  ‘But will people come to a party the same day as the funeral?’ I asked him, more to reassure myself than from actual doubt in the matter.

  Erchy’s eyes opened wide in surprise. ‘Surely they will,’ he replied without a trace of hesitation, ‘What would be keepin’ them back then?’

  I was about to comment on Willy being the occupant for the third grave when Erchy observed with great satisfaction: ‘Well, we’ve got our third corpse all right. I’m tellin’ you it always goe
s in threes.’

  ‘You’ll have another grave to dig tonight, then, will you?’ I asked him.

  ‘No,’ he answered suprisingly. ‘He’s not to be buried here at all. Seemingly he left a wish to be put in a burial ground on the mainland where his mother and his brother is buried already.’

  ‘Does that mean you’ll still be expecting to have a third grave to dig soon? You’ve always said it was the burial ground that had to be opened three times.’

  ‘Aye, well,’ he excused himself. ‘When anybody dies I just straightway think of diggin’. It’s just my own way of speakin’ of it.’

  My mind flashed to the other invalid. ‘By the way, how’s old Murdoch?’ I enquired.

  ‘Ach, there’s nothin’ wrong with him at all. Nothin’ that a day out in the heather didn’t cure anyway. He was there squattin’ that long he took his oilskin with him an’ made a tent of it. By God! but those calomel went through him. He was feelin’ pretty bad when he got back an’ didn’t move from the fire until he heard this mornin’ that Willy was dead. As soon as he heard that he was away out to see to his horse. His niece said she couldn’t keep him back at all.’ Erchy chuckled. ‘I saw him myself out there, so I called out to him, “Murdoch, what are you at? I thought you was dyin’.” He turned on me an’ he shouted: “I’m no’ dyin’ yet. I’m owed too much money to die yet.” “Who’s owin’ you money?” says I. “The government,” he says. “Haven’t I been payin’ into that pension scheme for most of my life an’ I’m damty sure I’m not goin’ to die till I’ve had every penny of it back again.” ‘ Erchy shook his head. ‘He’s a hardy all right,’ he said admiringly.

  I left Erchy to spread the message that the ceilidh was to be postponed until the Friday evening and though I carried on with the preparations I could not help wondering if he had really spoken for the rest of the crofters and if I and the hens were to be left to eat our way through batch after batch of cakes and scones and tarts. Experience had shown me that there was always a terrific sense of relief in the village after a corpse was buried and that the subsequent ceilidhs were perceptibly more animated than usual but whether an arranged party would be considered too frivolous to follow directly upon a funeral I had yet to discover.

  At about twelve o’clock on the Friday morning, whilst I was replenishing Bonny’s manager with summer-smelling hay pulled from the middle of the stack I noticed an unfamiliar vehicle on the road and guessed that it was something to do with the funeral. A little later a few solemnly garbed people trickled homewards across the crofts and there was a busy hurrying of smoke from chimneys as everyone put their potatoes on to cook. The afternoon settled itself tranquilly over Bruach, the breeze of the morning having died away so that the cottage chimneys smoked in sleek blue plumes and the stilled moors relaxed for an hour in the discreet wintry sunshine. Only the figures of the women were to be seen going about their chores until just before dusk the small troupe of children straggled up the brae from school, their clamorous voices striking shrill echoes from the rough stone walls of the dykes.

  At nine o’clock in the evening with the furniture pushed to one side and the refreshments laid out I was waiting a little tensely for the arrival of the first of my guests. The fire was sluggish for despite frenzied appeals to the new coal merchant I had received no delivery of coal for nearly six months and was having to make do with dross fortified by that summer’s damp peats. It is a great disadvantage to have a coal merchant who is also a fish-salesman and a caterer for tourists, for when there is an abundance of either he cannot be persuaded to bother himself with the far less profitable coal. Fretfully I picked up the bellows which, like my copper warming pan, I had once bought as an antique but now found I needed to use frequently. I blew steadily on the fire and was soon rewarded by the sight of little spurts of flame that irradiated the shaggy peats into racing patterns of sparks. I was still blowing when my ears caught the noise of an engine in the distance and, throwing on a coat, I went outside to look. A pair of headlights was glaring down the road towards the cottage a few minutes later a heavy lorry swung through the entrance to my croft. The driver, a blond young man with an impudent smile, jumped down.

  ‘I’ve brought you the half-ton of coal you were wanting,’ he told me in a voice that was as spiky as if he habitually dined on cactus.

  ‘Oh, bless you!’ I exclaimed with a delight that was not wholly due to the fact that I now had some coal. Since coming to live in Bruach where one had to fetch and carry so much for oneself the delivery of even the most utilitarian commodities filled one with excitement.

  ‘Will you give me a light?’ he asked and when, with slightly less excitement, I agreed, he pressed a torch into my hand and hauled himself up into the back of the lorry. There he commenced shovelling out the coal into a heap on the frosty grass. It was bitterly cold to be standing about and it seemed to take hours before the last shovelful of coal had clattered on to the heap and the shovel had been thrown back into the lorry.

  ‘I must fill a pail and put some on the fire,’ I said, shivering. ‘You’d better come in and have a strupak.’

  Chivalrously he offered to fill the pail for me and just as I was handing it out to him we descerned several torch flashes. Somewhere along the road came bursts of shouting and laughter. ‘There’s people comin’ here,’ the driver informed me needlessly.

  ‘Yes,’ I told him. ‘They’re coming to ceilidh with me. Stay if you’d like to.’ I set the already singing kettles back on the stove and within a few moments heard the approaching thud of boots on the frosty ground followed by a heavy thump on the door. ‘Come in!’ I called, and they all pushed one after another into the tiny porch, their faces frost-whipped into enviable ruddiness. Whispering and commenting excitedly, those who wore coats took them off, dropped them on the stairs and then spread themselves over the room until all the available seats were taken and some of the girls were perched awkwardly two on a chair. The lorry driver dumped the pail of coals beside the fire and then sat himself on the floor beside the pouffé on which the attractive Mora was sitting. I met smiles with smiles and tried to make everyone as comfortable as space would allow but I was rather disappointed to note that except for the lorry driver and the old men—Yawn, Ian and an exceedingly sprightly Murdoch—the rest of my guests were female. The best ceilidhs were, always those where the numbers were more or less equal and I hoped it would not be long before the rest of the men arrived.

  ‘Where are Erchy and Hector and the rest?’ I asked Morag as we handed round refreshments.

  ‘Indeed I don’t know at all,’ she replied, genuine mystification in her voice. ‘I don’t believe they got back from the funeral yet.’

  ‘Trust Erchy,’ I said with some asperity. ‘It was he who insisted on my going ahead with this party.’

  ‘Here, mo ghaoil, there’s plenty of time for them yet,’ she soothed.

  After an hour or so had gone by and there was still no sign of the younger men the girls, except for Mora who was flirting modestly with the lorry driver, were beginning to look anxious, and though there was plenty of chatter and laughter it was possible in odd moments to hear the hiss of the pressure lamp which, to me anyway, meant that the party was not as successful as I had hoped it would be. However, Morag coaxed Murdoch into giving us a song and soon we were all joining in the choruses rapturously, the girls throwing back their heads and swaying and the old people beating their hands into their laps in time to the music. It was nearing midnight and we were in the middle of a particularly nostalgic Gaelic air when the door was flung open and Erchy and Hector and a bevy of the young men of the village tumbled in, their eyes shining, their caps pushed back on their heads and the pockets of their best suits bulging with bottles of various sizes.

  ‘I thought you’d been to a funeral,’ I commented as they sat themselves on the floor, their backs against the wall and tucked hungrily into the food that was offered them.

  ‘So we have,’ responded Erchy happily. ‘An’
a right time of it we had too.’ He looked at Hector and they grinned at each other with amiable understanding. ‘We got that much of a surprise when we saw it was a bus that came to take the coffin to the funeral,’ Erchy confided in a voice that effectively silenced everyone else in the kitchen. ‘We was thinkin’ it would be only a small car just to take the coffin and maybe one or two folks along with it. When we saw it was a bus an’ we could all go, we rushed away home to get a pound or two to put in our pockets. Seein’ we was all dressed up anyway we thought we might as well go an’ have a good drink.’ He filled his mouth with a sandwich and spoke thickly through it. ‘I’m tellin’ you, Miss Peckwitt, if it hadn’t been that I remembered about your party there’s not one of us would have been back yet.’

  ‘How did you get back?’ I asked.

  ‘We hired a car from that Farquhar man,’ Erchy told me. ‘I believe we started off fairly early but Farquhar would have us keep stoppin’ for a drink. Honest,’ he said in awestruck tones, ‘I’ve never known a car that does more pubs to the mile than that one of his.’

  ‘Aye,’ chimed in Hector, ‘and tse more Farquhar’s had to drink tse slower he drives. Indeed I was tsinkin’ we’d get back sooner if we pushed. You’d tsink it was goin’ to a funeral we was instead of comin’ back from one, tse way he was drivin’.’ He held his cup of tea at arm’s length and looked at it with much the same expression of distaste as I have seen on the face of a publican when he looks at a glass of his own beer.

  With the arrival of the virile men the girls shed the last remnants of lassitude and the inevitable teasing and chaffing began. Bottles were flourished, glasses were demanded; the singing became progressively louder and less tuneful until at two o’ clock in the morning everyone was complaining of a dry throat and clamouring for tea again.

  ‘Well,’ said Yawn, as we relaxed for tea drinking. ‘I’m thinking it’s a good thing you got over all those colds and fever you had when you was tryin’ to lift those stones. We wouldn’t be after havin’ such a good ceilidh as this one.’ It was the first allusion he had made to my having been observed defying his warning.