A Rope--In Case Read online

  ‘No, but the net was the chief thing.’

  ‘I remember that,’ she said.

  ‘Well, it was to that very man I sold them. He didn’t have the money to pay for them then but he said he’d see me right so I let him have them. I’ve never seen a penny from him since.’

  ‘The man!’ ejaculated Janet.

  ‘He looks to be doing well enough now,’ I remarked. The garage had been flanked by a shop bearing the same name and both had looked highly prosperous.

  ‘He’s doin’ fine,’ Erchy corroborated. ‘He was tellin’ me himself of all the trouble he has with the Income Tax. He says they’re always after him.’

  ‘He must be doin’ well if he has the Income Tax after him,’ said Janet, knowledgeably.

  ‘Aye, he was tellin’ me he had a letter from them wantin’ money round about Christmas time so he sent them a Christmas card with his reply. He wrote on it “A Merry Christmas to you ye buggers” and he repeated “ye buggers” wherever there was space all over the card.’

  ‘That was no very nice of him,’ Janet observed.

  ‘He was pleased enough with it,’ said Erchy. ‘He believes he fairly spoiled their Christmas for them.’

  ‘An all this time he’s never paid you for your net,’ Janet was indignant.

  ‘No, he has not.’

  ‘Have you asked him for the money?’ That was my question. Janet, being a Gael would never have suggested such a thing could happen.

  ‘Indeed no!’ Erchy was shocked.

  ‘Maybe it’s just as well you took his car, then,’ Janet told him, ‘You’ll maybe get a bit of somethin’ back from it.’

  ‘It’s a shame we don’t have the time to go for a good drive round on his petrol while we have the chance,’ he said. ‘There’s plenty in the tank.’

  ‘We could have fairly enjoyed ourselves,’ Janet said regretfully.

  Erchy inspected the boat he had been thinking of buying, rejected it with the pronouncement that it would ‘float like a bundle of hay’ and was ready to return. Back at the garage the beaming proprietor greeted us effusively. Erchy’s hand wavered in the region of his breast pocket subtly indicating that he had money to pay if the man should have the cheek to ask for it. Just as subtly the other conveyed that no mention of money must be made.

  ‘Take the car any time you’re wantin’ it,’ he told Erchy and seemed affronted that we had used so little petrol. I got the feeling that had we damaged the car he would have welcomed the opportunity to display further magnanimity. He was insistent that we took tea with him and his wife and led us into a passage which went from the garage to a newly built extension of the old croft house. Here we sat on modern chairs and were urged to eat quantities of shop biscuits while the old woman poured out cup after cup of thick black tea that looked as if we should need knives and forks to wrestle with it.

  It was time to go. We shook hands all round and thanked them for their hospitality, assuring them of reciprocal cordiality if they should ever come to Bruach. Only Erchy seemed to be a little ‘tongue in cheek’ with his remarks.

  At the pier we found the tide was out and picked our way to the ferry over slippery weed while spray splashed and shed itself over us. Just as the ferry was about to leave there came a shout and we perceived the garage proprietor running down to the jetty, gesticulating and shouting Erchy’s name. Erchy went forward to meet him.

  ‘I was thinkin’ I’d never catch you,’ panted the man, as he handed Erchy a parcel. ‘You left this behind you in the car an’ I didn’t notice it until this minute just.’

  Erchy gave a nod of pleased recollection. ‘Aye, that’s right so I did,’ he said, taking the parcel. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without it.’

  He rejoined Janet and me. ‘Erchy, I’m sure there was no parcel left in that car,’ I told him. Janet and I were most careful to check.’

  Erchy gave me an enigmatic smile. ‘Damty sure there wasn’t,’ he agreed. He opened the parcel and revealed a carton of five hundred cigarettes. They were of a brand I knew he never smoked and to my look of astonishment he explained: ‘This is just the man’s way of payin’ me for my net. Now we’re both satisfied.’

  It was so cold and wet on the ferry that the man who should have collected our fares chose not to leave the shelter of the wheelhouse, allowing us to make the journey free.

  ‘He’s no seem’ us,’ murmured Janet, in the Bruach idiom.

  ‘Not like it is in the summer,’ Erchy commented. ‘Then, when there’s plenty tourists on the ferry they won’t take it near the pier till they’ve got all the fares. They just keep circlin’ round makin’ sure no-one can walk off without payin first.’

  On the island quay stood an aged and dispirited touring car with most of its side windows missing. The bus driver waited beside it.

  ‘The buss is broken,’ he announced. His tone made the disaster sound an everyday occurrence.

  ‘Broken?’ Janet exclaimed.

  ‘Aye. It’s away to the garage an’ they’re sayin’ they’ll not likely get it sorted before midnight.’ There was a trace of exultant pessimism about him.

  ‘So we’ve got to get home in this thing.’ I said, peering into the car’s unkempt interior.

  ‘Unless you’ll stay for the dance,’ the driver proposed eagerly. ‘There’s to be a good dance on here tonight an’ I wouldn’t mind stayin’ for it.’

  ‘Oh, my,’ said Janet, already half persuaded. For her a dance promised a bevy of friends and a good ceilidh in some crowded corner of the room.

  Erchy said thoughtfully, ‘I’ve a mind to stay myself.’

  They all looked at me. ‘I must get home,’ I protested. ‘I’ve got a cow and hens to see to tonight yet.’

  ‘Ach, I can get a message for someone to see to your beasts for you,’ the driver assured me.

  ‘No need,’ I insisted heartlessly. ‘If there’s a car to take me. I’m going back now.’

  ‘There’s a car all right but you’ve not heard yet who’s goin’ to drive it.’ The driver smiled wickedly and mentioned a name. ‘An’ he has a good drink on him already,’ he added with relish. I felt myself go pale. The Bruach road ran steeply along the side of the loch and at times there were literally only inches separating the wheels of the bus from the crumbling edge of the road. With a shudder I recollected the one hair-raising journey I had endured with the driver he mentioned. For weeks afterwards in my dreams I repeatedly found myself in pieces at the bottom of some precipice.

  ‘I’m not going with him,’ I said flatly.

  ‘Then stay for the dance,’ the driver wheedled.

  ‘No.’ I knew I was being cruel but it was his job to drive the bus and I badly wanted to get home.

  ‘Ach, you’d enjoy yourself,’ he persisted.

  ‘I would not,’ I told him. ‘I don’t know a soul here. Nobody would ask me to dance.’

  ‘There’s Erchy. He’ll dance with you.’

  ‘Erchy will do all his dancing in the bar,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll give you a dance myself.’ His tone was generous.

  ‘Thankyou,’ I countered. ‘And what would I do the rest of the time? Just sit there looking out of things and not knowing what to do with myself, I suppose.’

  ‘Ach, Miss Peckwitt, there’s no need for that. Just you eat a couple of them figs you can buy from the grocer. When you’re not dancin’ it gives you somethin’ to do pickin’ all the seeds out of your teeths. It’s what I do myself when I’m at a dance in a strange place.’

  Janet turned on him. ‘That’s all right for you,’ she told him, ‘but Miss Peckwitt has her own teeth. They’re not false ones like yours.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the driver, a little taken aback. ‘That might not be so good then.’

  He suggested that we should go for a cup of tea while he made arrangements for the car and another driver. Half an hour later he was back and commanding us to get into the car.

  ‘Are you no stayin’ for the dance, then?’ Jan
et asked. He muttered petulantly.

  The only vacant places were beside old Farquhar who was ensconced majestically in the middle of the back seat. We were about to climb in beside him when the driver stopped us.

  ‘No, you cannot go in there. You’ll just have to squeeze up with the others,’ he instructed us. ‘There’s a ram I’m to pick up in a wee whiley an’ he’ll need to go in the back seat.’ He requested the passengers to lift up their feet and dumped my roil of felt on the floor.

  It took four men to get the struggling ram into the back of the car, where full mail bags were strategically placed so as to restrict its movement. Even so Farquhar had to crouch with the animal between his legs while he held on to its horns. The rest of us huddled together with our knees bumping our chins as the old car bounced from pothole to pothole and we tried not to take too much notice of the strugglings and gruntings that came from the seat behind us along with the overpowering smell of wet fleece.

  The wind was rising rapidly to a gale; the sea came foaming in beneath a mist of spray. Every now and then the driver looked up at the hood which was lifting and banging ominously. ‘You’d best some of you hang on to that,’ he advised and those who were nearest grabbed whatever handhold they could. We reached the head of the loch where the wind funnelled in from the sea and rushed screaming through the narrow strath between two ranges of hills. There was a shout of alarm as a sudden gust, stronger than any before it, thrust at the car, threatening to overturn it. We all ducked as the driver grappled with the wheel. The moment over, we sat up and saw in the same instant that there was no longer a hood on the car. Twisting round in our seats we could see the heavy canvas trailing like a broken kite behind. The driver stopped and all the passengers except Farquhar who was wrestling with an increasingly panic-stricken ram tumbled out to capture the hood. We fought the wind as we tried to pull it back over the car and secure it but the fasteners had gone and we had to stand holding it, awaiting instructions from the driver.

  ‘Wait now till I get a rope!’ he shouted and rooted under his seat. He produced a length of rope and passed one end under the car to a helper on the other side who pulled it up. With the wind tearing at their clothes they scrambled together trying to tie it over the hood. ‘The driver swore. ‘The damty thing’s not long enough.’ Turning to us he asked: ‘Anybody got a piece of rope?’

  ‘I have,’ I replied. ‘Hold on to this while I get it.’ He weighed down on the section of hood I had been holding while I retrieved the piece of rope from the bottom of my shopping bag.

  ‘That’ll do it,’ he said, snatching it from me. He tied the two ropes together and we surveyed the repair briefly before climbing back into our seats.

  ‘I only brought that rope in case the old car needed a tow,’ the driver said.

  I murmured to Janet that there would be little hope of getting a tow on the deserted Bruach road. She looked slightly puzzled.

  ‘We’re not likely to meet a car to give us a tow,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Oh, no, mo ghaoil. He wouldn’t be thinkin’ of a motor to pull us.’ She glanced round. ‘There are plenty of us here.’ We reached Bruach without further mishap and juddered to a stop outside the Post Office. ‘What’s wrong with the old car?’ demanded the postman, coming out to collect the mailbags. ‘She looks as if she’s got the toothache or somethin’.’

  ‘I doubt she would have lost her top if it hadn’t been for Miss Peckwitt here havin’ a wee bitty rope with her,’ the driver told him.

  I permitted myself a smug smile. ‘Oh, I always take a rope in case,’ I said.

  A Change in the Weather

  Even by Hebridean standards the weather during the month of May was atrocious. ‘Severe gale force nine’ and ‘storm force ten’ were predicted, realised and endured. Communal potato planting was accomplished on the few days when there was a brief respite from the stinging rain and hail, when we had to contend only with ‘gale force eight’ winds that tore at the long winter mane of the young plough horse and threatened to wrest the hair from the head of any woman who did not attend constantly to the tightening of the knot of her headscarf. The men pulled on their caps back to front and jammed them well down over their foreheads as was their habit in wild weather. We all wore at least one pair of thick woolly socks inside our gumboots and we all had ropes tied round our waists to discourage our coats from flying above our heads as we bent to the task of planting. The women complained of the cold wind blowing up their skirts and were outspoken in envying the men their long woollen underpants. They congratulated me on my wisdom in wearing slacks and though I smiled in polite acknowledgment I knew perfectly well that they would sooner freeze to death than outrage the biblical traditionalism of their own attire.

  The wind, like a heavy hand in the small of our backs, pushed us along as we hurried to and fro with our pails of potatoes and fertiliser. It filled our mouths, whipping away the instructions we shouted to one another so that we had to resort to mime. It made futile the directions Erchy, the ploughman, shouted to his horse so that he had to resort to vituperation. Man and animal grew increasingly exasperated at the lack of co-ordination in their efforts. Dung flew about us as the men carried it forkful by forkful from the scattered heaps to the furrows while one or two of the older, hardier women, unable to endure seeing good dung wasted, scraped it up in their bare hands and placed it, almost lovingly, in the rows. Those of us who, like myself, were responsible for seeing that each potato was given a generous helping of ‘guano’ (in Bruach all artificial manures were referred to as ‘guano’) were ourselves liberally coated with the dusty grey chemical. It smarted on our wind-burned lips and cheeks and made our eyes run with tears.

  ‘Oh, my, but it’s coarse, coarse, coarse,’ we complained to one another as we mustered in the croft house for a welcome mid-morning strupak.

  ‘Indeed but I’m after havin’ a job to keep the plough in the ground with the strength of it,’ grumbled Erchy. He gave three loud belches in quick succession. ‘Every time I open my mouth to shout at the horse the wind rushes in and fills my stomach,’ he excused himself. He pushed back his cap, exposing the broad weal that marked the boundary between his wind-crimsoned face and the sheltered area above.

  I became aware that Hamish, the owner of the croft we were planting, was beckoning me towards the door.

  ‘I’m thinkin’ of changin’ Sarah to plantin’ potatoes,’ he confided. ‘She’s no good with the guano.’

  I looked at him questioningly. Sarah admitted to being seventy-nine years of age and to me she had appeared to be working as well as anyone else at spreading the guano.

  ‘Ach, her back’s too stiff and she canna bend it right,’ Hamish said.

  ‘Surely she’ll have to bend even lower if she has to plant the potatoes?’ I pointed out

  ‘No, that’s not the way of it at all,’ he argued. ‘She can drop the potatoes in the furrows easy enough and they’ll land somewhere abouts even if it’s no the right place. It’s kind of different with the guano. When she drops a handful of it in this wind then it’s away before it gets to the furrow. The potatoes will be missin’ it, likely.’

  ‘Is it the potatoes is missin’ it?’ expostulated Angus, who had been listening to our conversation. ‘Man, I’m thinkin’ it’s not just your potatoes but your whole damty croft that’s missin’ it.’

  At last everyone’s potatoes were planted and we were able to return to our neglected chores while the rain renewed its onslaught. In Bruach, rain after ploughing was always welcome. It smoothed the ridged furrows and washed the earth into the gaps left by the often inexpert ploughing. We could sit back and think with deep satisfaction of the rich solution of dung and guano in which our potatoes would already be steeping.

  As May drew to a close the weather grew even less spring like. Hailstones frequently racketed against the windows and the iron roofs of our cottages and barns, and the snow which, during a warm spell in April, had disappeared from all but the peaks of the hi
lls now spread downwards again to clothe them with white capuchons. Some of us began to wonder if the warm spell had been the only good weather we should get that year but then, on the evening of the last day of the month, the baleful clouds which had shrouded us for so long parted their skirts to reveal the promising afterglow of a sunset that tinged the snow with apricot and edged the western horizon with gold. The wind gave way to noisy gusts, fierce but sporadic, the stillness between them softened by a perceptible warmth. Even before I retired for the night the sky was clear except for a few clouds thin as foam that drifted serenely. Moon shadows spread from the rowan tree and the old bam and only the noise of the swell banging pettishly against the rocks of the shore reminded me of the savagery there had been.

  On the first morning of June I washed up my breakfast dishes and sang as I worked to the accompaniment of varying creaks from the corrugated iron roof of the lean-to kitchen as it shrugged and settled itself in response to a calm, rejoicing sun. It was always good to hear those creaks; to know that once again there was real warmth in the air and that, for a few hours at least, plans could be made to carry out work that could only be done satisfactorily in calm, dry weather.

  I was putting out the sodden doormats to dry on the stone dyke when Morag arrived. She was wearing a thick navy sweater that proclaimed her to be a member of a well known steamship company; over her skirt she wore a clean sack apron and on her head was tied a square of white cloth liberally stained with brown. It looked suspiciously like the cloth she used for boiling the large fruit dumplings she made when she was expecting a visit from the missionary or someone equally impressive.

  ‘There’s a right change in the weather,’ she greeted me. ‘An’ amn’t I glad to see the back of all that rain.’

  I agreed heartily and indicated the row of footwear along the wall of the cottage, tilted towards the sun.

  ‘I haven’t a dry pair of boots or shoes to my name,’ I complained. Soggy gumboots are not only cold and miserable for the feet, they are exceedingly difficult to pull on, and throughout my stay in the Hebrides my conception of Heaven was a never-ending supply of dry socks and dry gumboots.