Lightly Poached Read online

  ‘No damty fear,’ replied Erchy. ‘If nobody comes to meet us at Rhuna Miss Peckwitt can swim ashore an’ get a hold of one of their dinghies.’ I gave him an arch glance. I am a poor swimmer but the fact that I could keep afloat in the water at all astonished the Bruachites. The skirl of compassionate murmurings directed at me from the female passengers gave way to small shrieks and squeaks of excitement as the bow of the boat cut a sweeping arc through the water and turned towards Rhuna. The postman soon produced a mouth-organ and gradually coaxed most of the passengers into the singing of Gaelic and Scottish songs, the mixed choir of voices surging and ebbing over the water while the throbbing of the engine and the strains of the mouth-organ compounded into a makeshift orchestra.

  ‘When you’re on the sea,’ Erchy had once confided to me, ‘you either want to sing or you want to swear.’ I stole a glance at him as he stood with one hand on the tiller, his head raised and his mouth wide open as he sang lustily. I watched the receding shore, the feeding birds and the evening settling over the water.

  ‘Oh, look! A seal!’ I cried as a sleek dark head bobbed out of the sea about fifty yards behind us. The rest of the company turned to give the seal a moment or two of its attention and then the singers, whose voices had only wavered at my interruption, were at full volume again. It was sometimes difficult for me to remember that sights which thrilled me were to the Bruachites so regular as to be commonplace; that they were as used to the presence of seals around their shores as I had once been to the presence of hawkers in town.

  ‘There’s another of them been following us for the past twenty minutes if you’re that keen to see them,’ shouted Tearlaich. ‘It’s the singing that brings them.’

  ‘I sing nearly every time I go out in a boat,’ I yelled back, ‘but I’ve never managed to lure a seal to follow me yet.’

  From the stern of the boat Erchy’s voice came piercingly. ‘That’s because you sing in English. It’s only the Gaelic that attracts them.’

  For some time the two seals accompanied us, submerging and re-emerging at varying distances from the boat but always it seemed keeping us under observation with such timid yearning in their large dark eyes I was reminded of pictures of hungry waifs locked out from a feast.

  As we approached the dark mass of Rhuna the island slowly yielded up its secrets. The bastion-like cliffs revealed themselves as being riven into steep sea-washed caverns and tiny shingle coves; shadowy hollows betrayed the entrances to secret caves; craggy pillars of rock were tenanted by uneasy shags, while on the tumbled boulders, still wet from the retreating tide, stood confident gulls watching us with half-hearted interest. Erchy steered the boat toward the mouth of a burn where two dinghies were moored by ropes to the shore. While we watched two men came out from one of the cottages and began to pull in both dinghies preparatory to rowing out to meet us.

  ‘It’s Roddy an’ Calum that’s comin’,’ announced Erchy. Hector stopped the engine. ‘Aye, an’ seein’ tse’re bringin’ two dinghies they must know we have a good load,’ he observed.

  ‘They’re no’ blind, are they?’ Tearlaich told him.

  If the boat had been overloaded the dinghies were even more so, there being barely three inches of freeboard on either of them. But no one worried. It was a calm evening and a short row. We clambered out on to the shingle without mishap.

  ‘The cailleach has a strupach ready,’ said Roddy, thus obliquely conveying to us that whoever we might wish to visit during the evening the real ceilidh was to be at his mother’s house. She had staked her claim to our company.

  ‘We’d best away an’ get our hazels first,’ Erchy told him. ‘We’ll take a strupach when we get back.’

  ‘I’ll take a look in at her,’ Morag promised. ‘But I couldn’t swallow a mouthful till I’ve undone myself from the knot I was in aboard that boat. Indeed my legs was that stiff I thought I’d have to leave them behind.’ She rubbed her knuckles into the small of her back.

  ‘I want to go and see that apple tree,’ I said firmly.

  Rhuna boasted an apple tree which was reputed to have been grown from the pips of apples washed ashore when an American schooner foundered off the island during the Great War and on a previous visit, late in the autumn, I had discovered beneath the tree two rotting apples which I had taken home and planted. Despite lavish attention, however, the seeds had not germinated and, since I hoped to try again, I wanted to go and inspect the tree to satisfy myself it was still flourishing.

  ‘I’ll come along with you,’ said Behag promptly. It transpired that most of the party had friends they wished to see or things they wished to do before gathering for a final strepach so it was agreed that Roddy was to tell his mother we would all return in about an hour’s time for our ceilidh with her. The party therefore split up into various groups and went their different ways. Behag and I were joined by Tearlaich and by Roddy’s brother, Calum, who, because he had spent much of his time at sea, was almost a stranger to Behag and to me. We ambled along slowly and Morag, who had nipped into the cottage to exchange polite greetings with the ‘cailleach’, soon caught up with us.

  ‘You didn’t tell me your sister Marie was home,’ she accused Calum.

  ‘Aye, she’s home. She’s gettin’ married at the back end to some doctor or other so she’s home for a rest first.’

  ‘She’ll need a rest first if she’s goin’ to marry a doctor,’ remarked Tearlaich with an obscure smile.

  ‘To a doctor,’ echoed Morag. ‘Do I know of him?’

  ‘Indeed I don’t know him myself,’ returned Calum, ‘except that he’s from some hospital in Glasgow where she was once nursin’.’

  ‘Aye, well, I’ve no doubt the girl will do well for herself,’ said Morag in much the same tone as I might have said, ‘She could do worse, I suppose.’

  We followed Calum along an erratic track that skirted rags of crofts where tousled grass contested with drifts of heather its right to grow among the innumerable outcrops of stone. Calum stopped frequently to point out places of interest.

  ‘It was just there my father dug up a barrel of salt butter when I was a boy,’ he told us. ‘An’ it was still good.’

  ‘An’ how long would that have been there?’ asked Morag.

  ‘God knows,’ replied Calum. ‘Twenty-five years maybe. There was nobody livin’ then who remembered it bein’ put there.’

  ‘That’s most interesting,’ I commented.

  ‘I’d be more interested if you dug up a barrel of whisky,’ countered Tearlaich wistfully.

  ‘An’ that was a fairy house, there,’ said Calum at another juncture, indicating a smooth green mound covered with flat stones. ‘An’ this we’re comin’ to is what’s always known as the “Red Bum”.’

  ‘Why red?’ I asked.

  ‘Because of all the blood that flowed in it.’ His tone became grave. ‘In days long ago, Miss Peckwitt, there was a wicked factor lived hereabouts an’ once every year the crofters used to gather here to pay him their rents. Any man that couldn’t pay was just murdered an’ his body thrown into the burn. That’s how it came to be known as the “Red Burn”.’ He looked at Morag. ‘You’ll surely have heard the story?’

  ‘They say it was all true, right enough,’ agreed Morag. ‘It must have been,’ asserted Calum. ‘Why else would the cows refuse to drink from it, even to this day? No, nor walk through it, even.’ ‘Is that so?’ asked Tearlaich with polite interest.

  ‘It is so,’ maintained Calum. ‘I’ve seen a cow that’s been tethered all day on the croft without water an’ when she was loosed she made straight for the well on the moors sooner than go anywhere near that burn.’

  There must be the smell of murder in it yet,’ declared Morag with apparent conviction.

  ‘Aye, an’ another thing,’ continued Calum. ‘Supposin’ the cows are over this side of the island an’ you need to drive them back to the crofts you can put half a dozen people an’ dogs on to their tails but the beasts will never cross th
at burn. You’d have to walk a good mile out of your way an’ beyond the loch before you’d get them home.’

  We crossed the ‘Red Burn’ by the stepping stones and in doing so I noticed a promising-looking clump of watercress growing on one of its boggy banks.

  ‘Look, watercress!’ I pointed it out to Behag. I turned to Calum. ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘do the people of Rhuna believe like the Bruach people that watercress should be left for the fairies?’

  ‘Aye, so they do.’ He nodded back towards the burn. ‘I seen a couple of them here the other night just, gatherin’ great bunches of it.’

  ‘Fairies?’ I asked.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Did you see them yourself?’ breathed Behag in an awestruck whisper.

  ‘I did. I was out after a rabbit an’ I came back this way pretty late an’ there they were. I saw them as plain as I’m seein’ you.’

  ‘How did you know they were fairies?’ I asked in a steady voice.

  ‘Who else would be wearin’ little green jackets an’ red caps,’ he retorted with a trace of asperity. Behag and I exchanged quick glances.

  Our path led us towards a lichen-patterned heap of stones which had once enclosed a small patch of ground and I was delighted to see the apple tree not only growing vigorously but bearing an abundant crop of sizable though still unripe fruit. Tearlaich picked one but after tasting it he threw it nonchalantly in the direction of a late lingering hoodie crow which was picking at an ancient cowpat. Calum volunteered to bring me over a creelful of apples as soon as they were ripe if the Lord spared him.

  ‘Now you’ve seen your tree is it not time we got away back to the house?’ asked Morag.

  ‘Ach, there’s plenty time,’ argued Calum. ‘If the tea’s cold the kettle will boil again.’

  Morag was looking curiously at a ruined house nearby. ‘Is that not the place the filmies burned?’ she asked Calum.

  ‘Aye, that’s it.’

  ‘They really burned down a house for making a film here?’ I questioned.

  ‘They did, but it was a ruin before they burned it mostly. They got my Uncle Alistair an’ my cousin John to build up the front of it an’ put a bitty thatch on so that it looked all right to the cameras but it was no more than a ruin for all that.’

  ‘Was it not your Uncle Alistair that let them have the house to burn?’ pursued Morag.

  ‘Aye, it was him.’

  ‘I heard he got good money for it,’ Tearlaich observed.

  ‘I believe he did,’ admitted Calum. ‘Ach, an’ why not?’ he continued. ‘Those filmies were right daft with their money.’

  ‘That’s what I was after hearin’ myself,’ said Morag enviously.

  Calum chuckled. ‘Right enough, at first Alistair was makin’ out his own father was born in that ruin an’ so the old place meant a lot to him still.’

  ‘Was his father born there?’ I asked.

  ‘He was not. Alistair just wanted to push up the price he could put on it but the filmies were that convinced they started askin’ around for men to build them just enough of a place to fool the cameras. Alistair got so scared they’d do it he went an’ offered the ruin to the filmies for fifty pounds so long as he and his son got the job of building it up for them. I believe he had to have a good drink on him before he could pluck up courage to ask such a high price but the filmies jumped at it. When he got home he was as sick as a dog for not havin’ asked double.’

  ‘Were you home yourself the time the filmies were here?’ asked Behag.

  ‘I was. Indeed I was in the film myself,’ Calum replied.

  ‘You were?’ exclaimed Behag admiringly.

  ‘Aye. I played one of these extras, they call them. We all did at one time or another. They paid us well for it too. I tell you they was daft with their money. In the evenin’ when we went to draw what was owin’ to us they paid everybody that was in sight whether they’d been workin’ for them or not. Hamish Beag came ashore in his boat one time, just, after bein’ out fishin’ but when he passed the place where the man was payin’ out the money he was called over an’ handed the same pay as the rest of us, I’ve never seen a man look as surprised as Hamish looked then, I can tell you.’

  ‘Why would they do that?’ asked Morag, puzzled.

  ‘Ach, they didn’t seem as if they could tell one from another of us no more than I can tell one black man from another.’ He chuckled again reminiscently. ‘We got a good laugh out of those filmies an’ all.’

  ‘An’ good money,’ Morag reminded him again. ‘There was a few in Bruach would have come over to work for the filmies if they’d got the chance. Why, they tell me even old Kenny Mor, him that was so religious he wouldn’t so much as boil a kettle on the Sabbath an’ yet he was earnin’ money for himself makin’ tea for them.’

  ‘He was so,’ agreed Calum. ‘An’ Kenny fairly enjoyed himself doin’ it until the missionary came over one Sunday an’ preached that films was sinful an’ anybody that worked for them would go straight to hell.’

  ‘An’ did anybody take any notice?’ asked Morag.

  ‘Only Kenny Mor,’ rejoined Calum. ‘He gave up the job an’ the money for fear of goin’ to hell.’

  ‘Ach, the missionary was just jealous,’ summed up Tearlaich. ‘I doubt he wanted to make the tea for them himself.’

  ‘Where are you takin’ us to now?’ demanded Morag as Calum led us on through a narrow strath of swampy ground so liberally tasselled with bog-cotton it looked as if an eiderdown had burst over it.

  ‘Just a wee way yet,’ he told her.

  We followed, pushing our way through a tough little corrie black with waist-high dead heather; over wide slabs of weathered rock and then along a poachy path, rumpled with hoof prints and leading into a miniature birchwood which in turn petered out as it met the rocks and shingle of the shore.

  ‘Who can that be?’ asked Morag, stopping in her tracks. A man and a woman were coming away from the beach, the woman bent under a burden of driftwood that was roped to her shoulders while the man carried only a few short lengths of wood under his left arm. In his right hand he held a slim pole which he was using as a walking stick.

  ‘That’s Dolina an’ Mata,’ Calum told her.

  Although it was impossible for our paths not to bring us face to face, Morag immediately began to shout greetings in strident Gaelic which diminished in volume as the distance between us decreased. By the time we did meet all the initial pleasantries were disposed of and they were ready to converse in English. Dolina, whose tall, utility-built body seemed to be packed full of bones, was obviously delighted to see us. With strong hands and in no way constrained by the load she carried she pulled first Morag, then Behag, then myself into a warm embrace which was intense enough to make me gasp, and in the brisk whisper that was her normal speaking voice she begged us to be sure to take a strupach with her before leaving the island. Here, however, Calum stepped in, jealously guarding his mother’s privilege, and advised her of the proposed ceilidh, whereupon Dolina declared that nothing save a cow calving or the end of the world would keep her from joining the company. ‘Is that not; so, Mata?’ she addressed her husband.

  In contrast with Dolina, Mata looked as if he had been expertly filleted; his handshake was flabby and his bulging grey eyes looked about as ardent as two water blisters on the point of bursting, but he managed by a swift raising and lowering of his eyebrows to convey that he too would be coming to the ceilidh.

  ‘We’d best not keep you back,’ said Morag after a while and having been thus politely dismissed Dolina and Mata went on their way.

  ‘I wish to goodness he’d carry her load for her,’ I said as soon as they were out of earshot.

  ‘Indeed Dolina wouldn’t allow it,’ stated Morag.

  ‘He’d never have married her if he thought she’d let him,’ added Tearlaich.

  I murmured something about his being a shirker.

  ‘But poor Mata doesn’t enjoy good health,’ Morag excused him.<
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  ‘Damty sure he doesn’t,’ Tearlaich rejoined. ‘That man only enjoys himself when he’s sick.’

  ‘Oh, whisht, now,’ chided Morag, chuckling in spite of herself. ‘All the same,’ she added after a pause, ‘there’s somethin’ about that man I canna help mislikin’.’

  ‘I mislike him myself,’ Tearlaich agreed and added, almost confidentially, ‘I’ll tell you, he’s a disgustin’ bugger that one.’

  ‘I haven’t seen him do anything positive enough to be disgusting,’ I told him. ‘Except, of course, leaving Dolina to do all the heavy work and he’s not the only man around here who’s guilty of that.’

  ‘It’s the way it’s always been since I remember,’ interpolated Morag. ‘An’ right enough that’s the way many of the women want it to be.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of him being disgusting like that,’ Tearlaich denied. ‘But I was on the bus with him once and he started shouting he wanted to pee. He made the driver stop and he got out but instead of going some place where he wouldn’t be seen he just stood and peed beside the bus like a tracehorse. Honest to God! And there was tourists aboard too. I didn’t know where to look I was that ashamed of him.’

  ‘That was ignorant of him,’ Morag agreed. ‘Poor Dolina would have died had she seen him.’

  ‘I can’t help feeling sorry for Dolina,’ I said.

  ‘I feel sorry for her myself,’ concurred Tearlaich, ‘but all the same I was near laughing when I saw her hugging you three as if you were children.’

  ‘An’ isn’t it because she has no children of her own that makes her want to hug people,’ Morag reproved him. ‘A woman like Dolina ought by nature to have children at her skirts.’

  ‘Aye, right enough, but not you three grown women.’ From his expression I guessed he had been about to say ‘old women’ and had only just caught himself in time. ‘It’s not Highland,’ he added, much as an Englishman would have said ‘It’s not done’.

  ‘Mata didn’t marry Dolina to give her children,’ asserted Calum. ‘The reason he married her was to quiet his sister.’

  ‘That’s not what I heard then,’ Morag rebutted his statement indignantly. ‘Surely his sister was that jealous of Mata takin’ a wife if it hadn’t been for Dolina’s good nature they would have quarrelled every day of the week—except the Sabbath,’ she added.