A Rope--In Case Read online

  ‘What would Hamish be wantin’ with a hive of bees?’ His tone was derisive. ‘You should have known better.’

  ‘Well, that’s all he talked about,’ I returned limply.

  ‘Ach, he’d make damty sure before ever he mentioned it that you couldn’t sell him a hive of bees.’ He reflected a moment. ‘Are you sure he made no mention of his boat at all?’

  ‘Not until he was leaving. Then he just said something about my needing a nice lightweight boat so that I could go fishing whenever I felt like it.’

  ‘An’ did you agree with him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, then, I doubt he thinks he’s made a bargain with you.’ Erchy slapped on more tar.

  ‘I certainly didn’t say anything about buying his boat,’ I said anxiously. ‘I can’t possibly afford it yet.’

  Erchy carefully placed the can of tar on the fire. ‘An’ supposin’ you could afford a boat yon’s no good to you. Not if you’ve any sense,’ he confided. I waited for enlightenment. ‘He got that boat at the beginnin’ of last year an’ then he went away to a job an’ he just left her there on the beach without nothin’ so much as done to her at all.’ There was strong disapproval in his voice and expression. ‘This year when he tried to put her in the sea she was just like a colander. The only reason he thinks it right to try an’ sell her to you is because he knows you can swim.’

  ‘Well, thanks for telling me,’ I said, realising that the decision to warn me and thus betray his friend must for him have been a much considered one. ‘I’ll remember to be careful what I say next time he comes to try to buy a hive of bees.’

  ‘You’ll no say I told you.’ It was a statement, not a question, and he needed no reply. He dipped the brush into the can and then held it poised so that a line of black scribbled itself over the stones. ‘I don’t see him ever sellin’ the boat hereabouts,’ he said. ‘The only way he’s likely to get rid of her is by puttin’ her in the papers.’

  The sea was calm; the tide was well out and I picked my way down to the shore and waded into the shallow water, intent on collecting carragheen moss to dry in preparation for making jellies and puddings. The moss grew on craggy sea-washed boulders which were exposed only at low tides and the more inaccessible the boulder the more nutritious the moss was considered to be. It was a congenial task for a perfect day. The sea washed languidly around my gumbooted feet; the smell of the barnacle-stippled tangle was fresh and strong. Convinced that I could feel the beneficial effect of every lungful I practised taking long deep breaths while I wrenched handfuls of moss from the abrasive rocks. When my bag was full I bent to dip my bleeding knuckles in the sea. The water was crystal clear and I could see the long thick stems of sea-wrack genuflecting with the lazy surge of the tide. Deeper down grew the secret jungle of other weeds in which no doubt all specimens of sea life awaited their prey. There would be lobsters, I knew, and crabs and perhaps a conger eel threading its sinuous way. I recalled the piece of chart from an echo-sounder which Angus, the fisherman, had once brought me and which stayed pinned to my kitchen wall for many weeks. The tints of the chart varied according to the atmosphere from a dark sepia to a paleness that left the outlines scarcely distinguishable, but on its sepia days it revealed the, to me unsuspected, peaks and valleys that make up the sea bed. It had never struck me until then that the sea conceals a land as rugged as the land we see. Angus had pointed out small smudges of sepia and interpreted them as shoals of fish. One shape of smudge showed the herring they were seeking; another showed a shoal of mackerel which was of little commercial value; yet another he distinguished as being ‘horse mackerel’—a fish they cursed not just because of its unsaleability but because its sharp fins made it difficult to shake out of the net. Eventually the piece of chart had faded permanently but while it was there it had proved as much a source of interest to my town friends as if it had been an expensively acquired painting.

  I looked up as I heard a faint quacking and saw a proud shelduck appear leading her newly hatched family on an exploratory tour among the rocks. The drake followed and was the first to discern my presence. With husky warnings he ushered his mate and brood away. A little farther out a great northern diver rested on the water, seemingly motionless except when it lifted its beak to utter its strange wild cry. Each spring the solitary bird, known locally as ‘the Widow’, came to the bay to wait expectantly for the mate which Tearlaich had shot three years previously. Each year it lingered long after the experts claimed it should have left our shores. Even as I watched she lifted her beak and the haunting despair of her cry was strangely affecting. The Bruachites were touched by the constancy of the bird and Tearlaich had to endure acrid references to his cruelty.

  ‘It was good eatin’,’ he defended himself ‘An’ it’s daft to feel like that when a bird’s good for the pot.’

  ‘There’s folks that say it’s ill luck to kill them,’ they warned him.

  ‘Ach, that’s nonsense.’ Tearlaich tried to make his voice sound indifferent but despite the remaining bird offering itself as a perfect target he never made any attempt to shoot it. If he was working near the shore and the diver’s sudden cry startled him he would jump and mutter malediction.

  Though there was no perceptible rise in the line of water around the rocks I knew the tide had turned. Living and working in close proximity to the sea one acquires an awareness of such things, so that a change of tide is more of a sensation than a observation. I sensed that there was a sort of brio, a small stirring of excitement in the water; that the slight breeze blew fractionally cooler on my skin. There was a new alertness in the attitudes of the sea birds which hitherto had been basking and preening themselves on the guano-spattered rocks; the excitement communicated itself to the life in the shallow pools far above the tide; tiny crabs heaved themselves out from the shell debris while sea anemones, which contracted looked like red sweets that had been sucked and spat out, now blossomed into rosettes of tentacles in expectation of their prey.

  Slowly I made my way up the shore. The warm rocks were speckled with winkles whose shells had bleached grey in the sun. I flicked off several, sending them to join their inky black kindred in the pools. I picked up a few stems of the seaweed which the Bruachites referred to as ‘staff’ and examined them. At the right stage of ripeness the weed was supposed to be very refreshing and Bruach children liked to munch a piece of ‘staff’ as town children liked to munch a bar of nougat. But first it must be washed ashore. After a summer storm the children would search along the line of sea-wrack looking for a stem which had embedded in its pith a particular kind of sea snail. Like the fanner who maintains that the best cheese in his dairy is invariably the one the mouse will choose, so the children claimed that the sweetest stems of ‘staff’ were the ones the snails liked to feast on. The stems I picked up were dry and untempting and I threw them down again.

  The men were still working at their boats but with less dedication now. Erchy was wiping his tarry hands on a bundle of wet seaweed. He acknowledged me with a nod.

  ‘A lovely evening for a sail,’ I observed in passing.

  ‘Aye, well, if that’s what you’ve a mind for you’d get with Hector. He’s to take that lady tourist for a run to Rhuna as soon as the tide’s up far enough.’

  I shook my head, having no mind to go. Rhuna was some miles away and having met the tourist in question I knew her to be irrepressibly garrulous. It is not only to the watcher on the shore that a small boat appears to diminish in size as it moves out to sea: the occupants are also aware that its confinity increases in proportion to the distance from the land and that any incompatibility among them will increase correspondingly. I did not seek an invitation from Hector but instead continued my scramble along the shore in search of whatever treasure I should be lucky enough to find.

  The island beaches were a repository for every kind of flotsam and jetsam and there were few crofters who did not make a point of roaming the shores several times a week retrieving
wood or other objects, some of whose legitimate use they were completely ignorant but which were salvaged because they might be of some conceivable use in the future. Every croft had its hoard and even if an object was not considered worth carrying home it was at least dragged up above high tide in case it should be needed at some time. And how often it was needed! Apart from firewood we found iron bolts and shackles and chains; hinges and odd pieces of metal which even if you had had access to a store you would have found it impossible to buy. We found drums of kapok with which we stuffed cushions and quilts; brushes and brooms; lengths of rope; tins of grease and drums of petroleum jelly. There were pieces of cork of every size and shape; oars and boathooks; enormous hatch-covers and pit-props for building; crates and boxes of every description. We found coir fenders which, if one could resist the importunings of the boat owners, made excellent pouffes, and the children had firework celebrations whenever bundles of cordite and smoke floats were washed ashore.

  I gathered a good bundle of wood, roped it on my back and was about to make for home when I saw an interesting looking object a little further along the shore. Going to investigate I found it to be the washed-up carcase of a young stag. There was no visible sign of injury and I stood pondering how it had got into the sea in the first place. I heard a shout behind me. Yawn came hurrying up. He turned the beast over with his foot and we saw then the great sea-washed gash in its throat.

  ‘My, my, but that’s a fine beast you have there.’ His tone sounded congratulatory. ‘A fine beast indeed,’ he repeated, ‘an’ not more than a few hours in the water at that.’

  ‘How would it have got there?’ I asked him.

  ‘Ach, fightin’, I’m thinkin’.’ He nodded in the direction of the largest of the outlying islands. ‘There’s that many of them over there an’ they get to fightin’.’ He butted his head towards me in imitation of an angry stag. ‘This one must have got the worst of it an’ gone away back till it was over the cliff an’ into the sea,’ he explained. He bent down, examining the carcase more closely and then he looked up at me.

  ‘You’ll not get it home like this,’ he said. ‘I’d best skin it for you.’ I murmured a doubtful ‘Yes, please,’ and let myself think of the uses of deer skin. He whipped out his knife and made a long slit in the belly. I turned away seaward as his hands plunged inside and detached the guts. There was a splash as the guts landed in the sea in front of me and I recoiled again.

  ‘A fine beast,’ Yawn mumbled again. I watched his deft handling of the knife as it slid under the skin. When he had finished he threw the skin towards me. ‘Just you wash that in the sea an’ then you can dry it afterwards.’ I did as I was told and when I turned from my task I saw that the head of the beast was off and he was already beginning to joint it.

  ‘You’ll not be needin’ the butcher for a week or two at this rate,’ he complimented me.

  I felt my mouth drop open.

  ‘But Yawn,’ I protested. ‘It’s not fit for eating, is it?’

  ‘Not for a day or two,’ he replied equably. ‘You’ll need to hang it for a wee whiley an’ then it will be ready.’ He glanced up, saw my expression and misinterpreting it hastened to add: ‘I’m tellin’ you, its a young beast so it’ll not need much hanging. You could cook it maybe the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘But surely washed up venison isn’t fit for people to eat?’ I argued weakly.

  Yawn was an impatient man and his tongue could be scathing on occasion. ‘Not fit to eat?’ In his horror he dropped his knife and the sound of it clattering over the stones was like a derisive echo. ‘Of course it’s fit to eat, woman!’ he bawled at me.

  I felt I had to persist. ‘But we don’t know how long it’s been dead.’ My voice was almost a wail.

  Yawn retrieved his knife and gave me a look of complete disdain. ‘I tell you it’s not more than a few hours has it been in the sea an’ do you not know, woman, that sea water is salt water an’ that salt water makes the best pickle?’

  His contention sounded reasonable enough and I felt my doubts receding a little.

  ‘Won’t you have some for yourself?’ I suggested subtly.

  ‘That’s very good of you, Miss Peckwitt. Indeed I would be very glad to have some. I’m very fond of a wee bitty venison.’

  His acceptance made me feel much better. ‘Take as much as you like,’ I told him graciously.

  He stowed the joints in his own sack, roped it on his back and said he would carry it home for me. I rolled up the dripping skin and carried it myself.

  At my cottage he dropped the sack and asked me where I wanted him to put the meat.

  ‘I’ll just take one haunch,’ I said. ‘You have the rest.’

  His delight was obvious. ‘Are you sure that’s goin’ to be enough for you?’ he demanded.

  I was quite sure.

  He extracted a haunch and hung it for me in the outside cupboard. ‘You’ll enjoy that in a day or so,’ he assured me as he left.

  For two days the haunch hung there and whenever I opened the cupboard I eyed it dubiously wondering if I should ever pluck up courage to cook it.

  On the third day I made an excuse to visit Yawn’s house where his sister Sarah greeted me.

  ‘My, my, but that’s a grand lot of venison you gave my brother the other day just. We had it with our potatoes an’ it was good. We fairly enjoyed it.’

  ‘It was all right, was it?’

  ‘Indeed I’ve never tasted better,’ she enthused and looked at me for confirmation. ‘Did you not have any yourself yet?’

  I admitted I hadn’t cooked my haunch yet but seeing her so hale and hearty I resolved that I would cook it for supper the very next evening when I was expecting Mary, my friend from England, to arrive. I told myself that the venison would probably be as wholesome as any meat I might be able to buy from the unsavoury little butcher’s van which might or might not turn up next morning. I recollected the last purchase I had made from the gore-splashed van. The customer before me had been buying mince and when the butcher had come to serve me he had been unable to find the cloth for wiping down his cutting board. He had looked in the van and then on the road thinking he had dropped it. We had both noticed a sheepdog pulling at a grey-looking something a little distance away. With an oath the butcher had rushed at the dog, wrested the cloth from it and then had returned to wipe down the board with the cloth. So inured had I become to this sort of thing I did not even murmur a complaint.

  The following afternoon I took down the haunch and wrapped it in a pastry case, as advised by Mrs. Beeton. I put it into the oven to cook slowly for several hours. By the time Mary arrived the whole house was full of a tempting aroma.

  ‘My Golly! That smells good!’ was Mary’s first remark. And a little while later it was: ‘Becky, how long is supper going to be?’

  Debating whether or not to tell her anything of its history I lifted the haunch from the oven and broke off the crust. The meat tin was half full of rich brown gravy. I placed the haunch on a willow-patterned dish and carried it to the table. Beside it I placed a tin of corned beef. Mary, who by this time was sniffing ecstatically, looked up enquiringly. I ignored her and took up the carving knife. It slid through the flesh as effortlessly as if it had been the breast of a young chicken. Mary held out her plate. I took a deep breath.

  ‘I think I ought to tell you …’ I began. Mary listened and drew back her plate. ‘Yawn and Sarah have eaten it,’ I ended. ‘And they’re all right.’ She still held on to her plate.

  ‘Aren’t you even going to taste it?’ I asked anxiously.

  ‘Not until you’ve tasted it first,’ she said,

  I picked up a slice in my fingers and nibbled it. I pushed the rest of the slice into my mouth and licked my fingers before forking several more slices on to my own plate. Mary took a small piece and ate it.

  ‘It’s delicious!’ she said incredulously and proffered her plate again. Across the table we grinned at each other and took up our knives and
forks. I had a sudden thought and put mine down again.

  ‘Just a minute, Mary,’ I said. ‘Don’t you think this is one occasion when we can’t neglect to say grace?’

  We bowed our heads.

  Romance

  We were gathered in the schoolhouse for a meeting with the landlord and a representative of the Department of Agriculture who wished to sound village opinion with regard to a proposal for realigning croft boundaries. The scheme purported to be for the benefit of the village but the crofters, always suspicious of anything new, were intent on vetoing any change. They did not see how realignment could take place without robbing one man to give to another. Someone was bound to lose, they asserted, and as every man present was determined it should not be himself there seemed little point in having a meeting at all. Nevertheless the crofters attended as they attended every meeting ever held in the village. It ‘made a change’, they said, and though outwardly they were prepared to treat a subject seriously one sensed the latent hope that some amusing argument or comic situation might develop during the discussion. They in fact regarded a ‘meeting’ as just a different kind of ceilidh with the presence of strangers making it necessary to restrain the impulse to comment or deride.

  Tonight the presence of the landlord ensured that there would be little if any argument for though the Bruachites were fortunate in having a relatively tolerant and indulgent landlord there still lingered in their minds the vestiges of a feudal system where the goodwill of the landlord was necessary for survival. There was for instance either a law or a tradition that every male in the village should be given so many paid days’ work on the estate every year and though times had changed and the crofters were prosperous enough not to need such benevolence they would have resented any suggestion that the practice be discontinued. The absence of an offer from the landlord of such work would be regarded as evidence that they were out of favour and this they were anxious to avoid.

  So everyone listened to the speech of the Department representative in courteous silence. Everyone that is except Torquil who though he was a ‘wee bit simple’ was the possessor of a loud clear voice. It was these two attributes that made him the ideal choice for a heckler and having been well coached beforehand he now jumped up at regular intervals to bawl loudly ‘We want our rights!’. The speaker bore with the constant interruptions good humouredly for a time but at last becoming exasperated he turned on Torquil. ‘Very well, you insist you want your rights,’ he taxed him. ‘Tell me, what are your rights?’