The Loud Halo Page 19

  ‘I’ve left them now, anyway,’ I admitted ruefully.

  ‘You should never have touched them at all,’ reiterated Yawn, ‘for you went to look real poorly after it.’

  ‘Indeed so she did,’ agreed Morag. ‘I didn’t like the look of you at all,’ she said to me.

  ‘Ach, I don’t believe myself it was anythin’ to do with the fever,’ put in Behag with surprising conviction. ‘I think Miss Peckwitt just got herself a good cold and that was the start of it all, likely.’

  The old men shook their heads, knowingly.

  ‘Ach, these colds,’ grumbled Ian. ‘I never had no trouble with all this catarrh an’ sinuses as the doctor says I have until I started to use a handkerchief.’ He darted a lugubrious glance at his sister, a very refined lady, who was sometimes to be heard chiding him for not using one. ‘It’s my belief it’s handkerchiefs that’s the cause of all colds that are going about nowadays.’

  ‘Anyway,’ interjected Morag, evidently deciding there had been enough censure for the time being, ‘Miss Peckwitt’s all right now, are you not?’ She turned to me for confirmation.

  ‘More or less,’ I replied. ‘I’m still having trouble with my chest, though. It’s pretty uncomfortable at times.’

  ‘Well then,’ commented Erchy. ‘You know what you must do for that?’

  ‘No,’ I said, hurriedly trying to recollect some of the old cures about which I had heard from time to time during my residence in Bruach. ‘What should I do?’

  ‘You should get yourself a bottle of Stallion Mixture and rub yourself with it. It’s the finest thing in the world for bad chests.’

  ‘Stallion Mixture?’ I echoed blankly, and one of the girls giggled.

  ‘What would Miss Peckwitt be wantin’ with Stallion Mixture?’ demanded Morag, indignant on my behalf. ‘It’s her chest that’s troublin’ her not her horse.’

  ‘I know that fine,’ retorted Erchy. ‘But you mind my cousin Ruari had awful trouble with his own chest? He tried everythin’ for it just, until he found he had a bottle of Stallion Mixture left in the house from when his horse was sick. He rubbed himself with that every day for a week an’ he’s never had a spot more trouble since.’ He turned to me. ‘You should get a bottle from the grocer tomorrow,’ he urged me. ‘That’ll see your bad chest off for you.’

  ‘I shouldn’t like to risk rubbing myself with Stallion Mixture,’ I told him, smiling.

  ‘What’s the risk?’ he demanded. ‘It never did my cousin any harm. Indeed,’ he resumed with increasing enthusiasm, ‘you should have seen the way the hair grew on his chest with the stuff. Just like a Highland bull he was, an’ he fathered three fine sons after it.’

  ‘Surely it must have dribbled a bit, then,’ observed the irrepressible Morag, while several of the girls shrieked with coy appreciation.

  Yawn stood up stiffly. ‘I’m away home to my bed,’ he said, and there was a murmur of assent from the rest of the old folk that the younger people affected not to hear.

  ‘I’m sure Miss Peckwitt must be tired,’ announced Katy, with a solicitousness that was belied by the mockery of her smile.

  ‘I am,’ I admitted unashamedly, well accustomed by now to being teased about my habit of liking to go to bed on the same day as I got up. There was a general if reluctant movement to go, the old folk saying good night with seeming abruptness as they were met by the icy air that came in through the open door. Apparently impervious to the cold the lassies clustered round the doorway waiting for the men to arouse themselves from the alcoholic drowsiness into which they had fallen. Becoming impatient, they grasped the men bodily and pulled them to their feet and together they all stumbled out into the night, singing and arguing their way along the road into the darkness. I waited only to tidy the room before going to bed where I fell into a deep and contented sleep from which I was aroused somewhere around six o’clock in the morning by the sound of the coal lorry being driven away.

  ‘Well, I enjoyed my ceilidh fine last night,’ said Morag, and then she went on to pay me the Hebridean’s supreme compliment, ‘I didn’t feel the time passin’.’

  ‘Good,’ I replied.

  ‘Was that the coal lorry I heard away at the back of six this mornin’?’ she enquired.

  ‘I believe it was. I wonder where he was until that time?’

  ‘He’d be with Mora,’ said Morag with complete certainty. ‘My, but she’s the one for the lads all right.’ She made a disparaging noise in the back, of her throat. ‘You’ll no’ go short of coal for a while till she’s tired of him,’ she added.

  ‘Well, that’s good to hear,’ I said. We were nearing the entrance to my croft and Morag could now see the heap of coal the lorry had dumped. It looked pitifully small.

  ‘Here, but that’s surely not half a ton,’ she declared.

  ‘It’s supposed to be,’ I told her, though I too had been suspicious about the quantity when I saw it by daylight.

  ‘It’s never half a ton,’ she insisted. ‘You should tell him that when you see him next. You know how it is with these lads at the yard?’

  I nodded. The loading of coal, unless it was being delivered direct from the boat, was a homely affair. As each half hundredweight of coal was decanted on to the lorry from a large scoop a stone was placed on a convenient window-sill and when there were twenty or forty stones on the sill there was considered to be half a ton or a ton of coal in the lorry. This method generally worked quite well but as the loading was rarely conducted with much seriousness on the part of the loaders it was not wholly reliable. Any distraction, such as an incipient dog fight might be prevented by someone picking up a stone from the sill and hurling it at the combatants; or perhaps a wandering child, unnoticed by the loaders, would appropriate a couple of the more interesting-looking stones. In either case you got jolly good measure for your money but, as it was just as likely that the child might decide to add a few stones to the array on the window-sill or even that one of the ubiquitous loiterers would take an impish delight in surreptitiously adding a stone or two to confuse the loaders, your delivery of coal might be quite seriously short.

  ‘I’ll tell the driver about it next time I see him,’ I said to Morag. ‘And you’ll be able to corroborate, won’t you?’

  ‘Indeed I will,’ she promised.

  It was only two evenings later, but well after dark, that the lorry driver turned up at the cottage.

  ‘Morag’s after tellin’ me you got short weight with your coal,’ he began.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure I did,’ I told him. ‘I honestly don’t think there was more than about six hundredweight in it. Here,’ I handed him my big torch, ‘go and have a look for yourself.’

  He went, and came back sucking his breath disapprovingly. ‘I was kind of thinkin’ that it was short myself at the time,’ he acknowledged. ‘I suppose it was the lads got larkin’ about. I was takin’ my tea at the time.’ There was a deep frown between his eyes and he seemed a little uncertain what to say next. I asked him inside for a cup of tea but he refused it hastily. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do,’ he said, making up his mind. ‘If you’ll take another half-ton of coal I’ll load it myself and see there’s extra put on to make up for last time.’

  As I have said, coal had been in short supply for some time and the prospect of another half-ton was extremely attractive. ‘Of course I’ll take it’ I told him, unable to disguise my eagerness.

  ‘Right then, I’ll try will I bring it out tomorrow.’ He jumped into the lorry and drove off and, much to my amazement, about the same time the following evening I heard the lorry approaching and soon another load of coal was being added to the heap on my croft. The sight of it glistening in the light of the torch filled me with satisfaction.

  ‘It’s wonderful to have a nice stock of coal,’ I said. ‘I’ve had so many colds this year and I’ve found it impossible to keep warm with just peats no matter how high I build the fire.’

  The driver looked sympathetic. ‘How long d
’ you reckon it takes you to get through half a ton of coal?’ he asked me.

  I thought for a moment. ‘About six weeks,’ I told him.

  ‘Then that lot you have will no’ last you very long,’ he pointed out. ‘Twelve weeks at the most.’

  ‘That’s true,’ I agreed.

  ‘I’ll not be makin’ any promises but if I can get you more coal will you take it?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ll be only too glad to,’ I said rashly.

  ‘Right then. Cheerio, I’ll be seein’ you,’ he called and was away again, racing his lorry over the bumps of the road and leaving me to wonder why I had suddenly become such a favourite. It took Morag to put me wise.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you you’d get plenty coal after your ceilidh?’ she asked. ‘I could see then the way it was goin’ to be between him and Mora.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think it’s just Mora who’s bringing him out here so often with coal for me,’ I said. ‘I think he feels sorry for me because I’ve been so long without coal.’

  Morag smiled compassionately at my ignorance. ‘Sure it’s Mora,’ she averred. ‘The only way he can get out to see her at night is on the lorry an’ the only way he can get hold of the lorry is by sayin’ he’s bringin’ folks coal. Indeed isn’t he after everyone in the village swearin’ that it’s the hardest part of the winter to come yet.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ I said. ‘But,’ I added brightly, ‘good luck to him. I’ve told him I’ll take all the coal he can bring me.’

  ‘Maybe you’ll be sorry yet, then,’ she said, but I laughed her warning away. I could always use more coal, I told myself with a feeling of light-heartedness. In that way I differed from the rest of the crofters for they used little coal, some of them none at all, and they seemed to find all the warmth they needed in a few peats smouldering greyly in the grate, but then they wore much the same clothes indoors and outdoors, even leaving on their gum boots. I, who felt a slattern unless I changed when I had finished my outside chores, liked to stoke up the fire lavishly in the evenings so that I could move about the room without finding myself in a cold corner. I had told the lorry driver half a ton lasted me about six weeks. Half a ton lasted most of the crofters a year or more.

  The obliging driver turned up with another half-ton of coal the following week and within a few days there was yet another half-ton. Gloatingly I regarded the growing heap. My winter’s supply of coal secured within easy reach of my cottage! The weather could do its worst now and I need not worry. I was extremely grateful to the driver. So much so that the following week I was confronted with yet another half-ton of coal. I began to feel faintly perturbed. Although I told myself it was a good idea to have a reserve of coal against the time when it might be unobtainable—a circumstance that was all too familiar in Bruach—I had to face up to the fact that coal cost money and my own resources were strictly limited. It was with dismay that I heard the coal lorry turn on to the croft the very next week and, like ‘the sorcerer’s apprentice’, I began to wonder when the flow was going to stop.

  ‘Look,’ I told the driver, with affected joviality. ‘I’ll take up to five tons and then you must marry the girl or else give her up. I can’t afford to buy any more.’

  He grinned self-consciously and when he bade me goodnight his voice was distinctly regretful.

  ‘Here,’ said Erchy some time later in the month. ‘You want to be glad now you’ve plenty of coal. You’ll not be gettin’ any more for a while. The lorry driver’s quarrelled with his boss so he’s not workin’ for him any more.’

  I felt a sense of relief, which was shortlived for, not many evenings later I again heard a lorry approaching with a very familiar rumble and on going outside I found myself confronting my driver friend. My heart plunged to my boots.

  ‘Not more coal?’ I asked apprehensively.

  ‘No, indeed,’ he assured me. ‘I’ve finished with that man.’ He came into the kitchen and sat down uninvited. As he seemed prepared to stay for a while I offered him tea and as he drank it he described to me the various jobs he had tried. When he had finished his tea and was about to leave he asked, ‘Did I no’ hear you sayin’ somethin’ at the ceilidh about wantin’ a new peat shed?’

  ‘You might have heard me say that I was wanting to strengthen the one I already have,’ I told him.

  ‘Aye, well, what I was thinkin’ was, I’m workin’ now for a fellow has good slabs of wood—you know, the outside of the trees, I’m meanin’. They’re good and cheap and if I brought you a load out here in my spare time the carriage would cost you nothin’ at all.’

  He was an exceedingly persuasive young salesman. It seemed a good idea, and I fell for it. A load of slabs was soon delivered and Erchy went to work on the shed.

  ‘You know,’ the driver told me, ‘you should take advantage of these slabs while they’re so cheap and get yourself another load. You could build yourself another shed with them and make new stalls for your cow byre. There’s no end to what you can do with them and you won’t be able to get them for much longer.’

  The stalls in the byre were sketchy indeed; I succumbed and ordered another load.

  ‘Well,’ said Morag, when she saw them lying on the croft. ‘You only just got your slabs in time. He’s quarrelled with the slab mannie, so he’s not workin’ for him any more.’ She shook her head, lamenting upon the fickleness of the young driver.

  ‘Who is he working for now, then?’ I asked.

  ‘Indeed, I’m hearin’ he’s gone to that place that’s sellin’ the lime,’ she told me.

  During my residence in Bruach the village had been visited by one expert after another, all sent by some official body to advise on methods of improving croft land. Lime they had invariably insisted, was the basic and most urgent necessity. Lime, lime and lime again, they adjured us. The crofters were frankly disbelieving, lime cost money, so they preferred to retain their faith in dung and seaweed. I think I was the only person who accepted the findings of the experts at that time, so that when the lorry driver eventually presented himself at my door with the offer of a load of lime brought out at cheap rates in the evening I was not too unwilling to accept. He generously offered to help me spread the first load, an offer which, had I suspected the reason for it, I should not have accepted with so much alacrity. The experts had said two tons to the acre but the driver spread his share so prodigally that the ton he had brought out did not cover nearly half that area.

  ‘Ach, but I’ll be bringin’ you out another ton tomorrow,’ he comforted. ‘You can’t give this land too much lime,’ he added with an air of superior knowledge.

  ‘And anyway,’ he added shrewdly, ‘you’ll want to qualify for the subsidy on it.’

  We spread another ton the following night.

  ‘You would be the better of twenty tons of lime on this croft,’ the driver observed briskly flapping his overalls.

  ‘I’m liming only two acres of it for a start,’ I told him with a firmness that was no doubt accentuated by my chalk-white face. ‘That means I’ll need four tons altogether. I’m not taking any more than that.’ But after he had brought me the third ton the deliveries ceased abruptly.

  ‘I’m thinkin’ you’ll need to wait a good whiley for the rest of your guana,’ Morag crowed. Everything used to fertilise the land that was not recognisable as seaweed or honest dung, Morag persisted in describing as ‘guana’.

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Has he quarrelled with the lime merchant now?’

  ‘Indeed he has,’ she replied.

  ‘Oh, well, I suppose he’ll soon get a job with someone else and be out here again coaxing us to buy things at cheap rates,’ I laughed.

  Morag gave me an odd look. ‘An’ he’s after finishin’ with Mora, too,’ she said.

  ‘Really?’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Aye, so he has,’ she told me. ‘An’ it’s glad you ought to be for that, mo ghaoil, for the new job he has is with the undertaker.’

  Ladies in Distress

  The
woman in the bed next to mine swung her legs cautiously over the side while the nurse waited, holding her dressing-gown.

  ‘They’re letting me home on Friday,’ she told me.

  ‘Where is home?’ I asked her and she described to me a little village, the name of which, along with many others, I had glimpsed so often in the Oban Times.

  ‘Where’s yours?’ she asked, and when I told her she was immediately sympathetic. ‘That’s an awful way away,’ she said. ‘No wonder you don’t get many visitors.’

  My one and only visitor had come the previous evening and then it had been well past visiting hours. The evening meal had been served and there had been the usual period of comparative inactivity before we were bedded down for the night. The patients were meditative and only the rustling of paper as presents were inspected and the light quick footsteps of the nurses broke the lazy silence of the ward. All at once we became aware of the heavy, unsure tread of rough boots. Everyone turned to look at the tall, embarrassed man, clad in homespun suit and cloth cap, who stood at the entrance. With a glow of pleasure I managed to lift my arm in an attempt at a wave and he came towards my bed, hesitantly at first and then with clumsy haste, his boots skidding on the highly polished floor.

  ‘Hector!’ I said, and my eyes filled with tears. ‘Hector, this is wonderful.’

  ‘Why, Miss Peckwitt,’ he said, obviously dismayed at my wasted appearance. ‘I just couldn’t believe it was you till you spoke just.

  Oh dear, dear,’ He shook his head and looked so distressed that I had to smile reassuringly.

  ‘I’m getting along fine,’ I told him, though so far he had been too overcome to ask how I was. ‘But tell me, how did you get here, Hector?’

  ‘I heard the carrier was comin’ wiss some sheeps tsis way, so I said would he give me a lift and here I am.’ He gave me a rueful little smile. ‘Behag said I was to get you tsese.’ He put a bag of fruit down on my bedside table. ‘An I tsought maybe you’d like tsis.’ He laid a copy of the Football Times down on the bedcover.