The Sea for Breakfast Read online

  ‘Me and Peter was sittin’ in the kitchen and I was readin’ the paper to him when the smoke started to come down the chimbley as though it was on the funnel of a ship we was,’ she told me, her red-rimmed eyes still moist with indignation. ‘Of course it’s no a right chimbley at the best of times but, “Peter,” I says, “we must get some heather up here tomorrow,” I says. Mercy!, but the smoke got that thick I can tell you I was takin’ bites out of it.’ She bit the air demonstratively. ‘ “Peter,” I tells him, “for the dear Lord’s sake open up that door for fear we’ll be like the kippers with the smoke.” Peter goes to open the door. “It’s stuck, cailleach,” he tells me. “Never!” says I, not believin’ what he was sayin’, but when I tried would it open it was stuck right enough. “Help !” I shouts, for by this time me and Peter is coughin’ our stomachs near into our throats. “Help!” I calls again, though who would be after hearin’ me I’d not be knowin’. Then I hears them childrens laughin’ outside. “Help! Open the door for us, childrens,” I calls to them, but they just laughs and shouts back at me and mocks me and they bide their time till they think we’ve had enough before they cut the string that’s tyin’ the door and scramble away. Peter and me, we just fell outside with the coughin’ we was doin’, and there in the moonlight Peter points up and he says to me, “There’s no smoke comin’ from the chimbley, cailleach,” and I looks and I see what’s happened for fine I remember the boys doin’ it when I was young. “You get up on that roof right away, Peter,” I tells him, “and get that sod off the chimbley.” He went up, tremblin’ and shiverin’, for he has no head for the heights, mo ghaoil, and I was shiverin’ myself with the cold before I was able to go back inside again, and this mornin’ I see my bed’s all yellow with the stain of it.’ Sheena sighed noisily and shook her head over the brutal treatment she had received.

  After Hallowe’en was over, there was nothing for the children to look forward to except the spectacle of their elders getting drunk at New Year, which they considered vastly amusing. Christmas, as I had soon found, was ignored completely. The only time I can recall feeling lonely was when I had gone for a walk on my first Christmas morning in Bruach and had gaily wished everyone a ‘Happy Christmas’. Not one of the people I met had returned my greeting with a trace of enthusiasm, their response being an embarrassed ‘Yes, it’s a nice day,’ as though I had said something out of place. I learned later that though one religious sect did in fact condemn the celebration of Christmas, most of my neighbours had not returned my greeting simply because the unexpectedness of it had left them at a loss for a conventional reply.

  It seemed to me that a children’s party at Christmas would be a good idea and I set about planning one. My motives, I regret to say, were not entirely unselfish, for I love the tinsel and glitter and the festivities and bustle that go with Christmas, and a children’s party would provide the excuse for plenty of it and so do much to enliven the day for me. The cottage was far too small for entertaining more than one or two people at a time but I had now had built a new shed of corrugated iron with a concrete floor. Assessing with Dollac and her friends the suitability of the shed for a party, it emerged that it was a pity there was to be only a celebration for the children.

  ‘We could have a grand dance here,’ said Dollac, and began humming as she danced across the floor.

  ‘I don’t see why we shouldn’t put on a pantomime in this village,’ I said without much seriousness.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A pantomime.’

  ‘What’s a pantomime?’ They turned to me with faces that were bom puzzled and amused.

  ‘Oh, you know what I mean,’ I said, thinking there was probably an obscure Gaelic word for pantomime. ‘Plays like Cinderella and Mother Goose and Aladdin.’

  ‘Who did you say? Cinderella? Mother of Goose? What are they? What was a lad in?

  I found it difficult to accept that they really had never heard of any of them. ‘Well,’ I began to explain. ‘You know the story of Cinderella, don’t you? The poor little girl with the two ugly sisters and the fairy godmother.…’ Their expressions were revealingly blank. So I told them the story, adding that in pantomime the male parts, except for the dastardly villains, were usually played by females and that the comic female parts were usually played by men. They thought it a splendid idea and it was decided there and then that we would celebrate Christmas, first by having a children’s party to be followed by a pantomime at which the children could be present and then, after the children had gone home, by a dance for adults. The children were obviously delighted at the prospect: the adolescents greeted the news of the pantomime and dance with restrained enthusiasm and the older people, after praising me for my generosity, predicting great success for each of the entertainments planned and fervidly assuring me of their intention to be present, retired into their cocoons of Calvinism and waited to see what everyone else would do about the whole affair. Remembering the fiasco of the pilgrims’ party, I knew that I too must wait and see.

  I wrote a pantomime that I thought would amuse the village, which meant that I could unashamedly use all the chestnuts I had ever heard. I also, perhaps a little cruelly, gave one or two members of the cast the opportunity of openly criticizing my early attempts at crofting, which I knew had caused much humorous comment locally. Buttons’ haircut was supposed to look ‘as though Miss Peckwitt had been at it with a scythe’. A rickety chair was to collapse ‘like a Peckwitt hay-cock’. My intention was to try to convey to them that I accepted their criticism ruefully but as well deserved, but the cast defeated me by courteously ignoring such lines, even when the text did not make sense without them. To my surprise rehearsals were not only well attended but were enormous fun and those few weeks leading up to Christmas were, I think, the most hilarious I have ever spent in my life. On three or four nights of every week we assembled at the cottage to read our lines and no one, I think, was serious for a single moment of the time. The roadman and the shepherd capered through the parts of the ugly sisters lustily: Erchy, as the stepfather, was impressive when he could remember not to read out all the stage directions with his speeches; he was an absolute riot when he forgot. The postman, who was playing Buttons, used to come in the middle of his round, sling his half-empty mailbag into a corner of the hall and, with his mobile face creased in anticipation and his eyes shining conspiratorially, read over his part with prickly voiced diffidence. The postman’s presence was vital, for he was also providing the melodeon music for the chorus to dance to until we could get suitable records.

  ‘What about the mails?’ I asked him one time.

  ‘Ach, they know where I am,’ he replied with supreme indifference.

  I tried to insist that rehearsals should cease at midnight but the Bruachites, who regard midnight as an hour to begin enjoying oneself, had other ideas. They would put back my clock while I was out of the room or put back their watches and swear my clock was fast so that more often than not it was two or perhaps four o’clock in the morning before I could seek my bed and then only because the pressure lamp had defiantly put an end to proceedings by running out of paraffin. As Christmas bore down upon us excitement mounted visibly, more particularly among the children from whom I had begun to receive adoring looks as soon as the party had been announced. ‘Tea-parties’ became a new game and Fiona, who had been taken by Behag and Morag for a day out on the mainland and who had, as a matter of course, given them the slip, had excelled herself by being discovered in the comparatively urban graveyard engrossed in a game of ‘tea-parties’ with a grave for a table for which she had collected a bevy of decorative urns and jars from the surrounding graves.

  A great disappointment for me was that a box of decorations which I had ordered failed to arrive and two days before Christmas Eve I was faced with the prospect not only of baking all the fancy cakes needed for the parry and for the light refreshments at the dance but also with the decorating of a bare corrugated iron shed to which, by hook or by crook, I
was determined to give a festive appearance. The solution came unexpectedly when Behag and Morag, who had not been able to finish their shopping on the mainland because of having to search for Fiona, asked me if I would look after the child for the day whilst they went off on their own. I visualized myself spending Christmas Day in bed recuperating from twelve hours with Fiona, but she had not been in the house for more than half an hour before she was demanding paints. I was so relieved she had chosen such an innocuous way of passing the time that I hastened to indulge her.

  ‘You can paint some Christmas decorations for me,’ I said, giving her some sheets of thick paper and a particularly robust brush. I went back to my baking.

  ‘I’m needin’ more paper,’ Fiona ordered briskly.

  I rummaged in the cupboard and found more paper which she had covered with splodges of paint almost before I could return to my bowl. It was her incessant demands for paper that gave me the inspiration. I brought out a toilet roll.

  ‘You can paint the whole length of that,’ I told her firmly. ‘Use lots of bright colours and don’t you dare ask for more paper until you’ve painted every bit of it.’ Even Fiona was momentarily daunted by the task I had set her but determinedly she set to work, singing with preoccupied tunelessness to herself as she daubed her way along the whole length of the roll. The table top was covered in plastic; Fiona was enveloped in an old overall; there was plenty of paint—and toilet rolls. I carried on blissfully with my cooking and when I could spare a few minutes from it Fiona and I cut up the daubed paper into decorative garlands which we later carried out to the shed. When Hector came to collect his daughter we showed him the results of her artistic skill which the child, as though ashamed of my own rapture, dismissed with adult coolness as being ‘no bad at all’. Hector immediately volunteered to come next day and hang them for me and with uncharacteristic fidelity he came, bringing a curious Erchy along with him. They were each carrying big bundles of holly and ivy. I had run out of flour and was getting ready to go over to Sarah’s to borrow some when the two men arrived so I left them to their work, telling them that if I was not back by the time they had finished they could make themselves a cup of tea and help themselves to scones. The kitchen was luxuriant with trays of tarts and cakes and buns of every kind but, I warned, they were strictly party fare.

  ‘My, but they make my teeths water,’ said Erchy, looking covetously about him. ‘I believe I could eat the lot.’

  ‘You must promise not to eat anything but the scones,’ I told them, and they promised cheerfully.

  Before I closed the door I turned to look back at the kitchen, making sure that everything was safely stacked and that I had not left anything in the oven. The sight gave me a great deal of pleasure. On the dresser, already gay with its poppy and blue china, were three trays of sponge cakes waiting to be crowned with a whirl of cream. Eclair cases ready to be filled and iced were piled on the top of the trolly: cream horns wanting their insides stoked with jam and cream covered the bottom. Beside the stove a large sponge cake, roughly shaped like a boat waited to receive its cargo of children’s names in coloured letters. On the kitchen table, with its black and white chequered plastic top, reposed trays of blackcurrant and lemon curd tarts, making a colourful centrepiece. My own teeths began to water and I shut the door firmly.

  When I called, Sarah was herself preparing to bake girdle scones, while Flora watched impassively. ‘Surely, mo ghaoil, but I’ve plenty of flour,’ Sarah assured me as she swung the girdle to one side and pushed the whispering kettle on to the peats. ‘Just sit now and rest a bitty while I make a wee strupak.’

  I had hoped that she would be busy about the sheds and that I should escape without having to wait for a strupak, but when I sat down I found I was glad to do so. Having spent the whole of the previous two days baking, I felt I was going to enjoy the sight of someone else doing some. Sarah spread a newspaper over the table and floured it liberally. My neighbours made wonderful girdle scones but despite repeated demonstrations I had never been able to achieve just the lightness and texture in my baking that they unfailingly achieved in theirs. Perhaps it was because I used a well-floured baking board to press out my scones instead of a well-floured newspaper. She reached down a small pudding basin from the dresser—another essential for baking good scones seemed to be the use of a too small bowl so that the flour could spill over when mixing began. She brought out a tin of cream of tartar and a tin of baking soda from the cupboard and then stopped in her tracks to peer with a puzzled frown about the kitchen. Several times I had thought I could hear the plaintive miaow of a cat but I had refrained from mentioning it, suspecting that it was quite possibly entombed beneath Flora’s skirts and that if this were the case it would only be a matter of time before it burrowed its way out again. Sarah went into ‘the room’ and brought out a jug of sour milk which she set on the table.

  ‘I can hear that cat somewhere,’ she said, looking all round the kitchen again. She picked up the basin and went over to the large wallpaper-decorated barrel which stood beside the fireplace. As she lifted the lid a startled exclamation burst from her and an albino cat leaped on the rim of the barrel and then down to the floor where it sneezed, shook itself vigorously and revealed itself as tortoise-shell. ‘Well,’ said Sarah, ‘so that’s where he’s been hidin’ all this time; in my flour barrel’ She gave a little self-conscious chuckle, dipped the basin down into the flour barrel and began to mix her scones. The cat continued to miaow and rubbed itself against her boots.

  ‘She seems glad to be out again,’ I said.

  ‘I expect the beast’s hungry,’ said Sarah. ‘Dear knows how long he’s been in there.’

  I hurried home, clutching my bag of flour and salving my conscience by recalling some of the less hygienic practices of my neighbours. I could, I told myself, keep back the cakes baked with Sarah’s flour and produce them only if and when everything else had been eaten. There was no sound of hammering or of voices when I reached the cottage and I went to the shed to see what was happening. The decorations were up and, betraying not the slightest sign of their humble origin, looked ‘beautiful just’. The holly had been nailed in bunches along the walk: ivy cascaded from the roof. In one corner, a tub (an old salt-herring barrel) already filled with peat waited to receive the Christmas tree which was due to arrive the following evening. With a sigh of relief I closed the door. The silence everywhere coupled with the non-appearance of either Erchy or Hector made me wonder if they had already gone home and as I passed the kitchen window I glanced inside. The two men were sitting at either end of the kitchen table with cups of tea beside them. Their chins were resting on their left hands, their right hands held cigarettes from which they flicked the ash periodically into their gumboots. They were looking down at the checked table top with the dedicated air of keen chess players and neither noticed my presence outside the window. I waited a moment before announcing myself and saw Erchy push something a little along the table towards Hector. To my horror I saw it was a blackcurrant tart! Hector retaliated by pushing a lemon curd tart one square towards Erchy. I peered closer and suddenly divining the reason for their absorption I bounded inside.

  ‘Hector and Erchy!’ I upbraided them. ‘What do you think you’re doing with those tarts?’

  They both looked up in pained surprise. ‘Only playin’ draughts,’ said Erchy mildly, as with a triumphant flourish he passed a blackcurrant tart over a lemon curd and drew the spoils towards him.

  ‘But you promised not to touch them,’ I reminded them petulantly as I hurried forward to retrieve my precious baking.

  ‘We promised not to eat tsem and we haven’t,’ said Hector earnestly. ‘Honest, we haven’t touched a one.’ He disentangled a couple of ‘crowns’ as he spoke, examining their jammy bottoms, ‘Look!’ he insisted, ‘tsey’re as good as new.’

  I loaded the tarts back on to the trays, sourly ignoring their pleas to ‘let’s finish the game out’.

  ‘Ach well, I near had
him beat anyway,’ said Erchy, getting up. ‘My but those scones of yours was so light it was like bitin’ into a cloud,’ he added with awkward flattery.

  ‘Indeed tsey was beautiful just,’ supported Hector fulsomely. ‘I was after sayin’ to Erchy, if only we could eat our draughts when tse game was over, I wouldn’t mind losin’.’

  Early in the afternoon of Christmas Eve the tree arrived, a magnificent specimen generously contributed by the estate manager. Morag and Dollac were with me at the time helping me to put the finishing touches to the fancy cakes, and we all left off to go and see the tree installed in its barrel. Erchy, Hector and deaf Ruari who, though he claimed to be too old to be interested in such frivolities, was just as curious over the preparations as were the younger generation, had appointed themselves to escort the tree, and inevitably there was argument as to which branches must be cut off and whether the barrel was suitable and whether it was sufficiently stable, but at last they reached agreement and the tree stood gracefully awaiting our attention, its fresh resiny smell filling the shed.

  I sniffed appreciatively and winked at Morag.

  ‘Ruari!’ scolded Morag loudly. ‘You must send your dog out of here. He’s throwin’ smells.’

  ‘Aye, I got some new meal for him yesterday an’ I don’t believe it’s agreein’ with him right,’ Ruari submitted by way of explanation when he had ordered the dog outside.

  Morag and Dollac and I returned to the kitchen to finish our preparations there before starting to decorate the tree.

  ‘Did I ever tell you?’ asked Morag as she painstakingly halved cherries to top the cream cakes, ‘I worked in a bakery once and I used to watch the baker decoratin’ the cakes with halves of cherries just like I’m doin’ now, but my fine fellow wouldn’t bother himself to cut the cherries in half. Oh, no, he just would bite them in half.’ I wondered fleetingly if she was suggesting she should do likewise and was immensely relieved when she continued, ‘I’ve never eaten a cake with a cherry on the top since.’ I debated whether to mention the cat in the flour barrel, but decided against it. I had already taken a bite of one of the cakes made from the flour and though I had come to the conclusion that the cat had been in the barrel for quite a long time, the cake was, I felt, far more palatable than, for instance, Sheena’s shortbread.