A Rope--In Case Page 4

  On the crofts the oats were through, giving a silvery green bloom to the patches of harrowed earth. The earlier planted potatoes were already showing squat posies of green leaves and among them the crofters worked away with their hoes. The younger men took off their jackets and jerseys, for once unashamed to show their braces and striped union shirts. The more daring of them left open the two top buttons of their shirts revealing a ‘V’ of sun-scorched throat. Even the old folk—and by old I mean the septuagenarians onward—began to look thinner and younger as the sun flushed their wrinkles and encouraged them to discard a little of their winter padding. I myself, feeling relatively lissome for being dressed in thin garments that had lain so long at the bottom of a trunk that I had almost forgotten I possessed them, laboured to finish the outstanding work of my croft; clearing the debris of last year’s stacks and gathering stray stones from among the grass so that they should not damage the scythe when the time for hay harvest came. Every night I contrasted the deepening tan on my hands and arms with the paler less exposed parts of my body. The mirror showed me streaks of bleached hair above a complexion which caused Morag to comment that I looked like a ‘summer tinker’. Most comforting of all was the warm glow which had replaced the chill that had been biting deep between my shoulder blades all winter.

  The time had come, Morag called to inform me, for us to think once again about transporting our peats home. ‘Not that you have many,’ she went on, although I thought I had cut an enormous quantity. ‘You could maybe carry them home yourself.’

  I had tried very determinedly one year to accustom myself to the incessant trudgings to and from the moors carrying home creelful after creelful of peats on my back, joining the procession of grandmothers and grandfathers and even young children who daily coped with their high-piled creels. Bent forward, with arms folded and the thick rope tight across their chests, they negotiated the stepping stones of the burn and called greetings and encouragement to me on rasping breaths. But my body rebelled against such exertion. My shoulders ached excruciatingly after every load and continued to ache for days afterwards. I unhesitatingly agreed to join once again in the hire of the lorry.

  Morag left me to make the arrangements and soon returned to tell me that Willy Ruag would be coming the very next morning ‘if the Lord spares him’ to transport our peats. In view of my experience the previous year it was agreed that mine should be the first to be loaded.

  ‘Let’s hope the weather holds,’ I said without a trace of pessimism. The sky was still blue and cloudless except for tiny pennants of white that hardly changed their shape however long one looked. The hills were tranquil under a peach bloom of haze.

  ‘Ach, they’re after sayin’ there’s no sign of a break in it yet a whiley,’ Morag confirmed. ‘An’ you know yon beasts we call ‘Reudan’ an’ that you say is ‘woodlice’?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Well, the children’s shakin’ them in their hands every mornin’ an’ they’re not rollin’ themselves up like they do when it’s goin’ to rain.’

  This particular method of weather prediction made me shudder. Morag saw my grimace.

  ‘They’re as good at tellin’ the weather as them meteoritists anyway,’ she said defensively.

  Next day I was waiting at the gate of the croft when the lorry halted outside and with a loud honking which was patently unnecessary summoned me to join the bevy of loaders who were already ensconced in the back. All the women carried a milk pail and doubtless theirs, like mine, contained a ‘piece’ for their lunch. The track was dry, the moor was dry and the lorry romped alongside the peat stacks. Immediately we began loading. There was no breeze today to avert the vicious attacks of the clegs and they banqueted on any exposed flesh. Everyone wore gumboots. Everyone that is except myself, for I, hating the idea of heavy boots on such a warm day, was wearing sandals on my bare feet. There is no part of the human body that is distasteful to a cleg and it was lucky that I had tied the ankles of my slacks with string. As it was they assaulted me through the holes of my sandals and probed deep into my unprotected arms and neck. The Bruachites seemed to have become immune to the attacks of these creatures but I was tortured by them; forced to frequent exclamation and slapping them into bloody patches on my skin.

  ‘What’s the matter with Miss Peckwitt?’ someone asked.

  ‘Ach, the beasts is at her,’ explained Erchy, who was one of the loaders.

  Perhaps I should explain that in Bruach the term ‘beast’ embraced the whole of the insect and most of the animal world. ‘A beast is at her’ could mean that the victim was being gored by a bull or merely suffering the discomfort of a few midge bites. Only the difference in tone betrayed the degree of calamity.

  When all my own peats were loaded and home it was the turn for Morag’s stacks to be attended to but first she insisted on a strupak. Already she had lit a fire of heather and peat in a hollow left by an ancient hag and soon the kettle was boiling. She threw a couple of handfuls of tea into it and Erchy drew a few squirts of milk from the most acquiescent cow in reach. We sat on the warm turf and ate our ‘pieces’.

  ‘My, but it’s too hot to eat,’ said Erchy, sipping a steaming mug of tea. The taut burned skin of his face shone with sweat.

  ‘My but it’s hot, hot, hot,’ moaned Nelly Elly, holding her damp blouse away from under her arms.

  I lay on my tummy listening to the competitive exuberance of the larks; to the rarer notes of the tiring cuckoo; to the elusive raspings of a corncrake.

  ‘The trouble with this sort of weather is that nobody can think of any other tropical conversation than that it’s too hot,’ complained Morag. ‘Is there not somethin’ else that is worth talkin’ about?’.

  Erchy made some inarticulate comment and stretched himself flat on his back.

  ‘Now if we was wearin’ trousers like Erchy an’ Miss Peckwitt we could lie down too,’ said Nelly Elly with a provocative glance at old Sarah. Sarah was a vintage spinster, very missionary conscious and unique in that she was reputedly a virgin.

  ‘Here, here,’ Sarah reproached her and giving a coy giggle she tucked her long skirts primly over her ankles. ‘Don’t be after sayin’ things like that.’

  ‘Those trousers Miss Peckwitt is wearin’ is very good to her,’ Morag hastened to defend me, though privately she disapproved of women in slacks.

  ‘I’d be afraid of bein’ killed in them,’ said Sarah. She blushed, obviously finding the conversation immodest.

  I laughed. ‘Why should you be killed just because you’re wearing slacks?’

  ‘No, not like that,’ Sarah hastened to explain. ‘But what I mean is, if I was to die suddenly an’ me wearin’ trousers how would I face the Lord an’ Him not knowin’ whether I was a girl or a boy?’

  Erchy sat up. ‘Well, I can tell you, you’re not either,’ he told her scornfully. ‘An’ as near eighty as you are He’s not likely to care anyway.’

  ‘Me, near eighty?’ Sarah’s indignant tone quelled the shocked reproaches that Nelly Elly and Morag had begun to utter. ‘I’m nowhere near eighty I’ll have you know, my fine fellow,’ she told him.

  ‘You must be,’ retorted Erchy, winking at us.

  ‘Indeed I am not,’ reiterated Sarah. ‘I am no more than seventy-eight.’

  No-one laughed. There was not even a smile. Morag said, ‘Aye well, work doesn’t get done by itself.’ We stood up, caressing tired backs, and started to dismantle the next stack.

  ‘How noisy it is today,’ I observed as the sound of the lorry spread itself over the normally silent moors. ‘What with the larks singing and our chattering and the lorry roaring away it’s not a bit like the lonely quiet place it usually is.’

  ‘Indeed an’ I’m glad of that,’ said Nelly Elly. ‘I hate it just when the cattle go so far away that there isn’t a body or a house in sight when I go to do the milking.’ Nelly Elly rose earlier than the rest of us and had usually returned from the morning milking before there was more than a wisp of
smoke to be discerned in the village. As a consequence it was always Nelly Elly who had the lonely task of locating the cattle which, during the night, might have roamed miles away from their evening grazing. The more slothful milkers had only to enquire of her in which direction they should go to seek their cattle.

  ‘Miss Peckwitt loves to be on the moors by herself,’ Morag asserted playfully. ‘Is that not true?’ she asked me.

  I smiled confirmation. My wanders on the Bruach moors provided me with hours of pleasure both by day and in the evening when with the lamp drawn close to my books on birds and plants I could try to identify what I had seen and collected.

  ‘Indeed you shouldn’t do too much of that,’ cautioned Erchy. ‘These moors would send a body mad if you took too much to do with them on your own. Especially when the mist comes down. Even the birds goes crazy when it’s misty,’ he added.

  I grinned unconcernedly. Being caught out on the moors in a sudden mist was not particularly pleasant but it had once given me an unforgettable experience. I had been crouched under Bonny milking her when the mist had swirled in with dramatic suddenness. As I had been stripping the last teatful into the pail I had looked up and there directly above me hovered a bemused kestrel so close that I could look through the exquisite tracery of its spread wings. Its stillness and silence were uncanny and for a moment I thought that I was its prey. Then Bonny gave an impatient jerk of her head and the kestrel flew into the mist, leaving me with the memory of what I felt was likely to be an unrepeated experience.

  My indifference to Erchy’s warnings spurred him on to more cautionary tales.

  ‘There’s old Donald Bhan, now. He spends too much time by himself whether it’s on the moors or at home, an’ he was actin’ awful queer when I saw him at his stacks the other day.’

  We all looked at Erchy expectantly.

  ‘He didn’t see me comin’ so I hid behind a stack an’ watched him. He had his peat iron an’ his spade an’ a fork an’ a stripper all stuck into the ground in front of him, an’ there he was like a sergeant major shoutin’ orders at them. “Attention!” he barks. “Eyes right! Shoulder rifles!” It’s as true as I’m here, he was drillin’ them as though he had an army in front of him. I let him do it for a while an’ then I went close up behind him an’ shouted “HALT!” in my loudest voice. My God! but he got a shock, I can tell you. His mouth dropped open so wide I thought his teeth would be fallin’ into the bog.’

  We all laughed, though Morag, seeming to be a little embarrassed on Donald’s behalf, ended her laughter with murmured sympathy.

  ‘Maybe we’d all have time to play at the peats if we had a cart,’ I pointed out.

  ‘How would that help him?’ demanded Erchy, looking puzzled.

  ‘Well, having a cart means he can get his peats home in his own time. He doesn’t have to carry them himself or wait for a lorry like the rest of us.’

  ‘I’m not gettin’ your meanin’,’ said Erchy, still puzzled.

  ‘His peats—in his cart. He has a cart, hasn’t he?’ I repeated testily.

  ‘He has two or three but I don’t see how they’d help him get home his peats,’ said Erchy.

  ‘Miss Peckwitt’s meanin’ to say a carrrt,’ interpreted Morag.

  Erchy’s face cleared. ‘Ach, is that it? I thought she was goin’ mad herself talkin’ about a cat helpin’ him to get home the peats. Honest, you English folk do speak a funny language sometimes.’

  The lorry returned for its next load and brought Katy who had decided to join us in the hire so as to have her own peats taken home. Katy was Bruach’s newest bride, having married Fergus only two years previously. Wherever she went she still had to endure bawdy innuendoes about her married state.

  ‘Ach, but I’m often wishin’ I’d married myself,’ old Sarah confided to me during one lull in our work and when no-one else was in earshot.

  ‘Do you, Sarah?’ I asked with some surprise. She had always seemed to me to be a very contented and self-sufficient old lady. Certainly I had never dreamed that she might have been pining for a husband.

  ‘Oh, aye,’ she admitted with a little shamefaced sigh. ‘Many’s the time, even now, I would jump at the offer of a man if I got it.’

  ‘You seem to have managed very well without one,’ I comforted her.

  ‘Oh, yes indeed. It’s not for livin’ with I’d be wantin’ him but it’s for when I go places an’ I’m all by myself.’ She sighed again and resumed with touching pathos. ‘It’s then I get the feelin’ that I’d like a man of my own beside me, just to take the bare look off me.’

  The loading progressed with continued chaff and merriment until about nine o’ clock when the driver remembered he had a date. He rushed off, promising to return the following morning to resume work—‘if the Lord spares me,’ he threw as a parting shot at Morag.

  We pulled moss and with it wiped our peat-dusty hands and faces. We gathered up some of the small broken pieces of peat that were too crumbly to stack and yet were precious for lighting a fire and filled the sack each one of us had brought with us, tied them with rope and slung them over our shoulders. Loaded with full pails and sacks we converged again into an attenuated line and plodded home at a companionably slow pace, each of us evincing a degree of tiredness that varied inversely with age. Old Sarah blithely talked of making a dumpling when she got home and a dumpling takes three to four hours for the boiling.

  The heat of the day was over but the sun-baked rocks on either side of the track gave out patches of their stored warmth. The burn rippled with a childish trill in contrast with its full-throated winter roar; the water of the bay was purple-shadowed, patched with all the colours of a bunch of delphiniums. Overhead a tern flew, an eel hanging from its beak being plainly discernible.

  ‘See that now,’ said Erchy. ‘It’s away to its nest. I’ve seen it near every night around this time an’ it’s never without an eel in its beak.’ I leaned against a rock, resting my load as I watched the bird disappear over the ridge of the moor. It was the third evening in succession I myself had seen it flying thus.

  ‘Indeed an’ I’ll be glad to see my own nest tonight,’ said Morag.

  ‘Me too,’ agreed Katy fervently. ‘The sooner I get to my bed the better I’ll be pleased.’

  ‘Ach, you an’ Fergy can never wait to get to bed,’ Erchy taunted her amid a burst of anticipatory laughter. Katy’s glowing face glowed even deeper.

  Old Sarah was suddenly serious. ‘Aye, but it’s sad I am to see there’s no sign of a bairn with you yet,’ she observed regretfully, her eyes assessing Katy’s slim body.

  Katy’s face assumed an enigmatic smile. She stared up at the navy-blue cloud that was waiting to engulf the sunset.

  ‘But never mind,’ continued Sarah reassuringly. ‘I’ve no doubt when the Lord sees fit for you to have a bairn then the Lord will put a bairn in your belly, I doubt.’

  Erchy stopped in his tracks and thinking he had noticed something unusual we too stopped. ‘Well,’ he said, shaking his head in a puzzled way, ‘that’s the first time I ever heard Fergus referred to as the “Lord”.’

  He glanced briefly at the range of expressions on our faces, then doubtless anxious to escape the reproof that threatened he turned his back on us and went quickly ahead.

  ‘Oidhche mhath!’ he called over his shoulder in a tight voice.

  ‘Oidhche mhath!’ we returned uncertainly.

  Venison Supper

  Down on the shore the men were working on their boats. Some tended small fires of driftwood over which cans of tar were being heated; others wielded saws and adzes, chisels and hammers. They greeted me abstractedly, only briefly interrupting their boat talk with its references to tumble-home and garboard strakes; to stern tubes and fairleads; to stems and aprons—enchanting names which at one time had been completely unintelligible to me but which now I could precisely identify. I paused beside Erchy’s dinghy and watched him slathering melted tar into seams and cracks which showed thro
ugh the thick, blistered coating that had been built up over the years.

  ‘More tar!’ I commented with a grimace. If Erchy took me out in his dinghy I was expected to help haul it up and down the beach and tar makes a boat exceedingly heavy.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Is it necessary to do the boat every year?’ I pursued.

  ‘Aye,’ he said again. ‘Two weeks of June sun does more harm to a boat than two years in and out of the water.’ He rammed the black sticky brush into the gap between two boards. ‘See that now?’ he asked. ‘That’s just the last few days that’s opened that up. If I was to put her into the sea without tarring her the water would pour in, just.’

  My experience of Erchy’s dinghy had taught me that despite the tar the sea usually did pour into her. I was used to spending a lot of my time bailing.

  ‘I hear Hamish was after tryin’ to sell you his new boat that he bought last year,’ he said, straightening up and wiping the sleeve of his pullover across his fiery cheeks.

  ‘Was he?’ I exclaimed. ‘When?’

  ‘Aye, so he was sayin’.’ Erchy was positive. ‘The other night, just. He came to see you specially.’

  I have never ceased to be astonished by the wiliness of the Bruachites. In my innocence I had been under the impression that Hamish had called to ask if I could sell him a hive of bees. I said as much to Erchy.