A Breath of Autumn Read online

  The herring could be expected to stay in the loch for perhaps three or four days and, day after day, night after night, the men devoted themselves to netting the sea’s bounty; often snatching no more than an hour’s sleep between catches and taking no other sustenance than an oatmeal potach and a wee dram of whisky. Yet they vehemently denied any feeling of tiredness or hunger. ‘Ach a man needs neither food nor sleep when the “silver darlings” are in the loch asking to be caught, supposing they would be here for a week or more,’ they maintained. Finally, they shed their damp clothes that still glistened with herring scales like miniature chain-mail. They would then take to their beds while their wives rinsed their clothes in the nearest burn and spread them out to dry.

  Though they were never allowed near a dinghy, the excitement of the herring shoaling had infected the children of the village; an excitement from which Kirsty had felt a little excluded. Though most could at least claim kinship with the owner of some sort of boat, alas the only boat Kirsty’s granny could lay claim to was the sadly disintegrating remains of one that, for as long as Kirsty could remember, had remained upside down outside the cow-byre, providing indifferent shelter for the odd broody hen and her chicks. In those days her granny had been forced to rely on the goodwill of neighbours to provide the family’s winter store of herring. But Kirsty could not remember their ever going short.

  She continued to retrace her path to the house, her attention divided between the gannets and the drifts of tiny butterflies, blue as a robin’s egg, which, as she walked, rose like blue chaff from the heather. This is a beautiful island and I am fortunate to be here, she reminded herself, trying to mute the sharp ache that remained so obstinately in her breast. Assessing the portents of the sky she assured herself that its earlier serenity, now lightly chalked with threads of static white clouds much as if scratched by the flying gannets, seemed to indicate that calm and sunshine would last at least until the night. She set herself to working out her schedule for the day. She had milked the cows early that morning before taking Wee Ruari across the Sound to school, but she knew there was an urgent need to get the winter stack built and thatched. There were also brambles, heavy with ripeness and begging to be picked and made into jams and puddings and pies, and there were potatoes waiting to be dug and clamped. She debated which of the three tasks she should embark upon, balancing the urgency of each against which would be the most satisfying to accomplish. Deciding that the completion of the haystack was the most imperative, as soon as she reached the house she made herself a cup of tea and stuffed a piece of girdle scone into her jacket pocket. Putting damp peats on the fire, she armed herself with a sickle and a length of rope from the barn and set off for the bog land at the far side of the island where there were always plenty of reeds for the cutting. It would be good to get the last of the hay stacked, she told herself as she walked. After a savage winter and a dilatory spring the grass had responded to a gentle summer by producing an abundant growth. The barn was already packed with sweet-smelling hay but there was still more grass already scythed and made into temporary prapachs awaiting incorporation into the winter stack. The week before he had started school, she and Wee Ruari had carried many of these small prapachs and heaped them beside the bam where the stack was to be built. Jamie and Euan Ally had stated their intention only the previous evening of coming in early from their fishing if the weather held so as to start work on the winter stack well before nightfall. She reasoned that if she could cut and carry enough reeds it might even be possible to get the stack not only built but finally thatched and hopefully netted and securely roped before it grew too dark. She spurred herself to quicken her pace. The two Ruaris had never allowed her to help with the stack building. It was not women’s work they maintained, shrugging off her suggestion as if she might be doubting their ability to accomplish the task without her help. She had been limited to providing strupaks whenever they were called for. Nevertheless it had been evident, in spite of their obvious tiredness, what a deeply satisfying achievement it had been for them when at last the stack was finished and they could step back and critically survey the sturdy bulk of it, assessing its firmness to withstand the onslaught of the winter gales.

  From her earliest days when she was a wee girl on her granny’s croft she had loved to be around at stack-building time, revelling in the sweet all-encompassing smell of the mixture of seedy grasses and perceiving, young as she was, the compelling urgency to get the stack finished before the rain threatened or before the wind rose – an urgency which seemed to her always to have generated a spirit of elation rather than irritation among the stack builders; every remark eliciting a chuckled response; every slight mishap an airy dismissal. Since there had been no barn or shed on her granny’s croft suitable for storing hay safe from rain and vermin, it all had to be built into a stack. When the chosen day came the hard labour of building had to begin as soon as the dew was off the grass. The work had continued unceasingly, save for a ‘fly cup’, until the stack was finished or dark had called a halt to the work. There’d been no time on stack-building day to think of ‘stopping for potatoes’, as the main meal of the day was known, and Kirsty still carried the mental image of her granny, once the task was completed, sagging with exhaustion and yet at the same time almost stately with exultation as she returned to the house to take at last the much longed for strupak.

  She was determined to be of more use to ‘the boys’ since they would be tackling the job of stack building after a full day’s fishing and, well conditioned to hard work as they might be, she was quite certain they would welcome any assistance she could give them. Once she had reached the bog lands she slashed hastily at a good clump of reeds, gathered them up, roped them into a fair-sized bundle and swung it onto her back. After only a short distance on the homeward path she realised the bundle was proving rather heavier than she had been prepared for and she felt in need of a rest, ‘I’m getting soft,’ she berated herself. ‘Either that or I’ve got to face up to the fact that I’m not as strong as I used to be.’ Dropping her load beside the path she turned towards the old crofter settlement, knowing of a good spring where she could cool her face and soothe her hot, dry throat. Once refreshed she chose an area of dry sward and sat down. Resting her back against a boulder she ate her piece of scone whilst scanning the bay. Ever since she had lived on the island, the old settlement had fascinated her.

  Today the bay was quietly rippled and at the mouth of the burn a stately heron was poised, still as a sculpture, waiting patiently for the chance of a meal. Further out to sea, rafts of kittiwakes flew speculatively above and intermittently flopped into the water in pursuit of their elusive prey. There were several gannets too, she noticed, but their diving was only sporadic and she guessed that the bulk of the herring shoal must still be located at the other side of the island.

  Her eye lit on the ancient, weed-encrusted marker buoy about a mile offshore which, during the hours of daylight, was almost always surmounted by a seabird of one species or another, more often than not a black-backed gull. The buoy, she had learned, had been there for countless years before the two Ruaris had been born and before anyone now alive could remember, yet it was still anchored and still undulating to the surge of the sea. She’d wondered what hazard the buoy marked. Was it some minor wreck? Why had it never been removed as, with neither bell nor light to indicate its presence, it was surely more of a hazard than a warning to shipping? The two Ruaris had not been concerned by its presence. It seemed unlikely that she would ever know though since she was now the owner of the island she supposed she could enquire from some official source. She shrugged off the thought, not being particularly interested. Lazily she contemplated the perched sea bird. It was, as she had expected, a black-backed gull. Her mind mulled lightly over the reason for it being there. Did it perhaps enjoy perching on the constantly swinging buoy as a respite from the equally constant cradling of the sea? Or did it simply enjoy contemplating its surroundings as she enjoyed contempl
ating it? She smiled as she switched her thoughts once again to the beauty of the island and the unforeseeable circumstances that had led to her being its owner.

  She recalled her first husband, Ruari Beag, the younger of the two Ruaris, telling her how the story had begun when they had first met and conversed in the kitchen of Islay, the boarding house where she had worked for so many years until he had rescued her with his surprising offer of marriage. The man whom Ruari had named as ‘the new laird’ had at one time owned the whole estate of which the small island of Westisle was an insignificant part. The laird’s son, rather a reckless young man had, it seemed, taken a great fancy to the island and had asked his father if he could take over that part of it which the crofters did not claim and farm it himself. Willingly the old man had not only granted his son’s wish but had built for him a good stone house in the hope that the boy might marry and settle down. But, no sooner had the house been finished, war had broken out and the young man had gone off to be an officer. Alas, he had never returned and the grief-stricken father had shortly afterwards decided to dispose of the whole estate and return to England. But the island of Westisle, which his son had so loved, he offered to his shepherd, in recognition of his loyal service to his country and to his employer. The shepherd, who was by that time courting a young maid employed in the laird’s kitchen, had taken a while to think about it. Owing to the harshness of the previous landlord, the old crofters had left the island, and he doubted if a young woman would be prepared to set up home in such isolation. When he’d put it to her however, she’d agreed without hesitation so they had ferried over a few cattle and sheep to the island and had settled in the newly completed house. It was there that the two Ruaris had been born.

  She wondered how she herself would feel if she were forced to leave Westisle. It would be a dreadful wrench she knew, since it had become a much cherished home. She mentally catalogued its advantages. Good water; plenty of stone for building; a fair acreage of pasture; a good area of rough grazing for sheep and cows and also, here at the settlement there was a good shore from which it would be easy enough for just one person to launch a small dinghy to catch enough fish for a meal when desired. She acknowledged there weren’t many good peat bogs but the peat island itself was not far away. She’d once asked Ruari Beag, her first husband, why he thought the old laird had not chosen to build the house for his son near the settlement instead of the far side of the island which she thought offered relatively few advantages. Her husband had dismissed the question in a tone of reproof. ‘Ach, what laird would have wanted his son living so close to his tenants now, surely.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ she’d replied. It had taken only a fleeting moment for her to recollect the wide gap between rich lairds and their subjects no matter how well liked and respected the laird might be. I wouldn’t have cared, she’d thought. I’d far sooner have lived near the settlement than where he built the house for his son. But she knew better than to voice her thoughts.

  When she’d decided to stop for a rest she had not suspected that she was tired enough to let herself doze off, even for a minute or so, but when she again looked at the shore she was shocked to see that the tide line was a good six feet lower than when she had been eating her scone. The heron had gone, the kittiwakes had transferred their attentions elsewhere. Hastily she rose to her feet and, once again hoisting the bundle of reeds onto her back, resumed her path to the house.

  Chapter Three

  ‘Ach, you have plenty of reeds already.’ ‘The boys’ were home even earlier than she had expected and it was Jamie’s voice greeting her. ‘We was after thinking we’d need to go over to the bog-land and gather a bundle so we could maybe cap the stack before the last of the light. We’ve found enough old straw to make a base so we’ll get started right away just.’

  She prepared a strupak for them which they quickly bolted before rushing outside. It was good to see that they were as eager as herself to start work on building the winter stack, so she threw damp peats on the fire, tied a duster over her hair, a sack apron on top of her overall and, grabbing a hay-fork, hurried to join them. They were already treading down a layer of straw and rushes for the base.

  ‘I was seeing plenty of gannets busying themselves over the loch earlier in the day,’ she announced as she approached. Stabbing a forkful of hay she threw it to Jamie who was standing in the middle of the well firmed base.

  ‘Is it gannets,’ quipped Jamie. ‘Why there’s that many gannets round the place we reckon there’s that much herring in the loch they’ll be swimming ashore and not waiting for anyone to net them.’

  ‘I doubted but that you’d not be wanting to leave your own fishing and come back to build the stack,’ she teased them lightly, knowing full well that their own fishing brought them ready money while, important as the annual herring shoals in the loch were to the crofters, the size of the shoals was relatively insignificant, seldom providing more than winter food and bait.

  ‘Indeed, we had a mind not to, did we not Euan Ally?’ returned Jamie, his eyebrows raised ironically.

  ‘That was the way of it just,’ agreed Euan Ally, keeping up the note of flippancy. ‘But we thought we’d get no more of your good tea-bread if we didn’t get this built before the rain came, so we decided we’d best try and please you, seeing you’re mighty keen to see the cattle well fed. Anyway, there’s plenty more fish in the sea.’

  ‘We’ll get the stack finished before dark and then we’ll get back to sea,’ Jamie said. ‘The best fishing comes with the darkening, so we’ll maybe stay at sea for the night.’

  ‘You’ll be gey tired,’ she cautioned. ‘You were away before first light this morning, were you not?’

  ‘Ach, a boat’s wasted on a man that’s too tired to go fishing when there’s plenty of fish for the taking,’ scoffed Jamie derisively.

  The stack rose slowly but steadily higher as Kirsty and Euan Ally continued to gather and throw up forkful after forkful of hay from the surrounding stooks to Jamie who, balanced on top of the stack, caught each load expertly in his wide-stretched arms. He spread the hay skilfully and then trod it so that the centre of the stack was well firmed and, aided by Euan Ally’s intermittent combing with a hay rake, its sides sloped without detectable bulges. They worked hastily but nevertheless with a pride in their work, which was in no way concealed by the almost constant chaffing from Jamie on their tardiness, which in turn was nimbly countered by Euan Ally’s insouciant comments on Jamie’s lack of skill at shaping. A gentle smile hovered around Kirsty’s mouth as she listened to their banter. She imagined it was as much a part of their life together at sea as it was on land. It was comforting to know that they remained such good companions, she reflected.

  The stack was already more than half built before she caught a comment from Jamie that she was not throwing the hay high enough for him to catch. With dismay she came to realise that her shoulders and arms were indeed beginning to protest at the continuing toil. She tried to ease them by lifting and lowering them, pausing for a moment or two to rest on her hay-fork until Jamie, perceiving her, commanded from the stack, ‘Ach, you get back to the house now! We’ll maybe get on as well without you. It’ll not be so long now before we’re finished and we’ll be needing a strupak then.’

  ‘I’ll stay a wee whiley,’ she demurred.

  Euan Ally snatched the fork from her and threw it towards the barn. ‘Get you gone!’ he ordered peremptorily.

  ‘I should think you’ll be gey tired yourselves,’ she argued weakly as she moved a step or two away. ‘You had a good day’s fishing before you came to start here, did you not?’ Euan Ally only grunted. ‘Will you not let me bring a wee strupak out here to you,’ she coaxed.

  ‘No, no,’ refused Jamie adamantly. ‘We’ll no be wantin’ to waste what’s left of the light and it’s likely we’ll be back at the house in the time it takes you to get it.’

  She’d hardly noticed until he spoke that the light had started to dim. Not that it
would get truly dark, since a promise of moonlight was revealing itself behind the mainland hills, but there was certainly a perceptible darkening of the twilight.

  Shaking stray wisps of hay from her skirt she turned to go back to the house; half-way there she paused and, assessing their handiwork, called back to them approvingly, ‘It’s a good enough shape then.’ It had never been in her nature to be lavish with praise, nor in their natures to accept it, and if they heard her comment neither of them made any acknowledgement.

  Back in the kitchen she first banked up the still-smouldering fire with a few twigs and dry peats and then applied the bellows until there was a good show of flames. After lighting the lamp, she swung one of the big black kettles and the full soup pan over the fire and put plates of scones, oatcakes, butter and crowdie on the table. There was enough for half a dozen appetites she reckoned before, thankfully kicking off her heavy boots, she flopped into a chair.

  When she opened her eyes again the kitchen was brightened by the dawn. She was vexed that she hadn’t heard a sound of ‘the boys’ coming in for their food but that they had been was evident from the cleared table, the almost empty soup pan pushed back on the hob, the empty teapot and the crockery washed and put back on the dresser.

  ‘Amn’t I the fool,’ she chided herself. ‘Sleeping while they got their own strupak and after they’d got two days’ work done in one.’ Rising from her chair and without bothering to put on her boots she padded across to the door and stood in her stockinged feet on the stone threshold looking at the stack. It looked sturdy enough she thought, not only finished and securely capped with the reeds she had gathered but already buttressed with a few spars of driftwood. It would need more support against the strengthening gales of winter but there was time enough for that yet, she knew. Meanwhile she experienced a warm surge of excitement in the knowledge that there was plenty of hay secured to see the beasts through until they could once again fill their bellies with the good spring grass. They’re a good pair of lads she acknowledged, looking towards the stack, and they’ve made a right good job of you.