The Hills is Lonely Page 6

I went to see deaf Ruari, who by this time had become a very good friend of mine—if friendship can be said to exist between two individuals who resemble one another about as closely as a blast furnace resembles a candle. Ruari’s powerful voice may at times have been an asset, but a few minutes conversation with him left me feeling bruised all over. It was said of Ruari, and I could well believe it, that his call for his stick and his dog was enough to put to flight the sheep on the far side of the hill. It was said that the cattle on the neighbouring island ceased their grazing and stared apprehensively about them when Ruari called home his own beasts. His dog, having had orders bawled at him since he was a puppy, would obey no command given in an ordinary voice, though he obviously possessed acute hearing. Ruari’s voice was unique in my experience, and his habit of ‘whispering’ confidential asides was a source of embarrassment to everyone within earshot. On Sundays he was repeatedly adjured by both his wife and his sister to ‘keep his mouth quiet’ lest he should desecrate the Sabbath, and I had no doubt whatever that if Morag could have had her way her brother would have been banished to the creel along with the cockerel. But Ruari was a big man, and a determined one. His blue eyes topped by belligerent tufts of white eyebrows could be very fierce on occasion and when roused from his normal stolid good humour his red face beneath its feathering of white down would deepen to the colour of an overripe plum. He certainly would never be dominated by any woman.

  This particular afternoon I found Ruari sitting on a kitchen chair in front of his house, his head supported by the ample stomach of the grocer-cum-barber, a cherubic octogenarian, who stood with wide-straddled legs in front of the chair and wielded a pair of scissors menacingly over Ruari’s thin white hair. Against the Wall of the house squatted a queue of patient but critical ‘customers’ of all ages and sizes, all alike in their indolence and shock-headedness.

  I was greeted courteously and at considerable length, and when the subject of the weather had been completely exhausted and a polite interval had passed I collared Ruari’s ear and made my request known. The waiting group concealed their smiles with difficulty. Women have for so long been nonentities in the islands that the idea of any woman, particularly a townswoman, going fishing appeared to them highly ludicrous. Ruari’s voluble acquiescence was only slightly muffled by the barber’s paunch, which shuddered visibly so that he stepped back a pace with the hurt look of a man who has received a low punch.

  Ruari’s wife Bella, having heard my voice, appeared in the doorway of the house and beckoned. Bella was pleasant and rubicund and had the shy, foolish look of the woman of seventy who had remained a virgin until she was sixty-five, for she and Ruari had married late in life. She accompanied me to the calf shed where Ruari’s rods were kept, so that I might choose one for myself. The door of the shed stood wide open and inside a tousle-headed young boy sat on a log of wood, reading a comic which he held awkwardly in one hand. The other hand grasped a battered pail. I recognised the boy, chiefly by his insignificant nose, to be one of the clan of ‘the other half of the boat.’

  ‘Johnny here is waitin’ on the calf to watter,’ explained Bella with a bashful smile and in answer to my look of enquiry continued, ‘He’s awful sick with the red watter.’ I was not at all sure which of the two occupants of the calf shed had the ‘red watter’ until Bella went on to tell me that red water fever was a very common ailment of young calves and that the only remedy was to ‘make him drink his own watter’. This they intended to do and young Johnny was now engaged in earning a sixpence by waiting, pail in hand, for the calf to perform. The boy’s hopes of his sixpence were apparently fast receding when we arrived on the scene, for so engrossed had he become in his comic that the calf had already foiled him twice. At our entrance, however, the beast woke from its torpor and almost before Bella had finished explaining it rose to its feet; there was a shout, and Johnny leaped forward and at last the precious medicine was safely in the pail.

  ‘There now,’ gloated Bella, ‘you’ve brought him good luck; so soon as Ruari’s finished with his hairs we’ll give him the dose.’ She took the pail and put it in a safe place.

  I chose my fishing-rod under Johnny’s careful supervision. It was of hazel and resembled a young sapling, to one end of which was attached a length of gut and a hook. I carried it outside into the sunshine and looked at it dubiously.

  ‘Have you got any bait?’ called the barber jovially.

  I admitted that I had no bait and knew nothing about getting bait, or using it if I should get it.

  ‘I’ll come and get you bait,’ offered Johnny, who evidently had not forgotten my help in the earning of the sixpence.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘But aren’t you waiting to get your hair cut?’

  ‘Ach, they’ll no be finished for a while yet,’ he said, as he fell into step beside me.

  I called my thanks to Ruari and Bella and, conscious of the surreptitious smiles of the onlookers, balanced the rod carefully over my shoulder and set off down the lane.

  ‘I doubt she’ll bring home a shark,’ Ruari’s ‘aside’ echoed down the lane and Johnny glanced anxiously at my face. I walked on indifferent, my companion padding silent and barefoot a yard or two to the side of me, wisely keeping his distance, for I was inclined to hurry, causing the fishing-rod to thrash around wildly.

  We made our way to a rocky part of the shore and here my young friend pointed out a suicidal boulder which overhung the water, insisting, in spite of my protests, that it was the only good fishing place along the whole length of the shore. It began slowly to dawn upon me that, for the sake of his own reputation, Johnny intended me to catch some fish that day. I yielded hesitantly and with a good deal of trepidation climbed, skated and tottered to the top of the boulder, glad that my residence in Bruach had accustomed me to such exercise. Had I refused to go my youthful friend would doubtless have commandeered the fishing-rod for himself and I should have been relegated to the position of bait-seeker.

  Meanwhile the boy was industriously investigating the deep pools among the rocks, grunting and wheezing the whole time like a man nine times his age.

  ‘What is happening?’ I called.

  ‘Ahhh!’ He gave a grunt which sounded more satisfied than the previous ones and held up a lively, wriggling crab. I felt a little nauseated when he wrenched off its legs and threw them into the sea, but the nausea was nothing to what I experienced when I saw him apply his mouth to the soft underpart of the body and dig his teeth so deeply into it that the shell almost sliced off a portion of his rudimentary nose.

  ‘You’ll die!’ I gasped.

  ‘I’ve been dead plenty times then,’ he replied seriously.

  I almost believed him.

  For a few moments Johnny chewed with gusto and then, spitting out the conglomerate mass, divided it into equal portions, which he laid carefully on a flat rock. I had just begun to wonder what on earth had given me the idea that fishing might be a pleasant way to spend an afternoon when the boy whipped out some dirty grey stuff from his pocket and commenced to work it about in his hands.

  ‘What is that?’ I asked.

  ‘Fleece,’ he answered shortly and, commanding me to watch so that I could learn to do it by myself, he took my rod and proceeded to attach one of the disgusting little morsels of chewed crab to the hook and then to wrap it carefully with the sheep’s wool.

  ‘Goodness!’ I ejaculated with a smile. ‘Do fish need food and clothing then?’

  He treated my remark with the contempt it deserved and handed me the rod.

  ‘Now what do I do?’ I asked.

  ‘Put it out as far as you can,’ he enjoined me.

  Gingerly I stepped to the edge of the rock and prepared to do as my tutor advised. In vain I tried to recollect some angling photographs which might give me an idea how to cast; but perversely I could only recall a series of pictorial instructions on how to achieve a good golfing stance. I compromised by holding my rod as though it was a bayonet and I was about to char
ge.

  Having always had the notion that anglers spent their time as Constable depicted them, sitting comfortably beside quiet, tree-shaded rivers, lazily swatting the occasional bothersome fly and carefully unhooking the occasional fish, I was totally unprepared for the rough and laborious business which I had undertaken. My rod was so long and heavy I felt I stood more chance of spiking my fish as it lay on the bottom of the sea than of hooking it near the surface. My feet were threatening at any moment to slip from under me and if this happened the slimy, seaweed-covered rocks would jettison me into the water like a helter-skelter.

  ‘Throw it out,’ insisted Johnny impatiently.

  ‘I’m much too afraid I might follow it,’ I argued.

  ‘Ach, that’s because you have shoes on,’ he said with a scornful glance at my very good brogues.

  Resignedly I laid down the rod and took off my shoes. Thank goodness I was not wearing stockings. ‘The fish round here are very particular,’ I remarked peevishly.

  ‘Dinna talk of the fish to their faces,’ wailed Johnny in agonised tones. ‘You’ll never catch a fish if you talk of them by name.’

  Groaning inwardly I took up the burden of rod again and as my glance rested on the water I glimpsed a swift iridescent shape in the depths.

  ‘There’s a fish!’ I yelled shrilly. ‘A fish! Look!’ I turned excitedly to my companion. His expression was one of extreme anguish.

  ‘There now!’ he said sadly; ‘You’ve gone and pointed at the fish, and surely it’s that bad luck to point at a fish I’m thinkin’ we may just as well go home.’

  ‘Well I’m sorry,’ I apologised; ‘but you’ll have to forgive me. I had no idea the fish were so self-conscious.’

  He turned his back on me and went seeking another crab. ‘You’ll never catch a fish with your rod on dry land,’ he threw at me over his shoulder.

  Resolutely I lowered the rod.

  ‘Ach, that’s no good at all. It’s in the sea itself the fish are, not in the air.’

  Johnny’s continual reprimands began to get on my nerves. ‘It is in the sea,’ I retorted. ‘Come and see for yourself.’

  He came, and agreed that the hook was in the sea—just.

  ‘Then you do it,’ I said. He relented and taking the rod from my unresisting hands, he brandished it and sent the line out over the water. He then allowed me to take over. Nothing happened except that my rod became momentarily heavier and more difficult to handle; but there was some compensation in that I was able to admire a view of the village which I had not previously seen. The hills away to the right were dark and sombre, their peaks lost in the lowering clouds; the moors were dust coloured and by contrast the crofts looked richly green. In the distance I could see the roof of Morag’s house and the gable end of what I decided must be Ruari’s barn. Behind me, close to the shore, was a regular row of houses, only a few yards between each. ‘Beach Terrace’ I mused, and even as I watched a figure came out from one of the houses and waved. I waved back, a foolish action which very nearly caused me to meet the fishes in their own element. There was an audible titter from behind me and I concentrated again on my rod, which by now seemed to have grown from a sapling into a tree trunk. I remembered Ruari’s jocose ‘aside’ and felt that it might yet turn out to be a prophecy. Certainly I seemed to have the right tool for the job.

  ‘How shall I know when there’s a fish on the line?’ I called.

  Johnny, who had got another crab and was busily preparing it, disgorged it into his palm. ‘You can never mistake that.’

  I invariably mistake the unmistakable. ‘I might hook some seaweed,’ I hazarded.

  ‘Seaweed doesn’t pull and wriggle,’ he replied.

  Seeing that I was standing on a carpet of the stuff I was immeasurably thankful that what he said was true.

  As though Johnny’s word had been a sign. I felt almost immediately a sudden twitching of the rod which it was impossible even for a novice to doubt. I forgot the self-consciousness of the fish.

  ‘A fish! A fish!’ I cried. ‘I have one here.’

  ‘Bring him in then,’ ordered Johnny, running towards me. ‘Up with the rod.’

  In the bustle of those few moments I was not quite sure what happened, but with a sudden onrush of strength I jerked at the rod, which came up in the air, the line flying like a kite behind it; I sat down heavily on a wet and glutinous cushion, aware as I did so that a silvery writhing missile was flying over my head and towards the houses beside the shore.

  ‘Why, you’d be throwin’ him right across the Island and into the sea the other side,’ grumbled Johnny irritably.

  ‘Was it really a fish?’ I demanded.

  ‘It was indeed.’ he assured me, ‘but if I don’t get it quick it’ll likely be hen food!’ and skipped away in the direction in which the fish had disappeared.

  ‘See if you can bait yon hook now,’ he called. I looked at the hook; I looked at the bait; I looked at the sea, and decided that in this case, ignorance was bliss.

  Standing up again I saw that in the garden of one of the houses two figures darted here and there as though seeking something. I had no doubt at all that one of the figures was Johnny, and in a few minutes he returned bearing proudly on the flat of his palm a silver-bellied fish of pathetic size.

  ‘It’s no a bad one at all,’ he complimented me, caressing the fish gently with his other hand.

  I asked him what sort of fish it was and he gave me the name in Gaelic. It sounded rather like ‘brickbat’.

  ‘What is it in English?’

  ‘Ach now, I haven’t the English for it.’

  ‘Can one eat those sort of fish?’ I asked him.

  ‘Indeed you can. They’re good. You should have it for your supper supposin’ you get no more.’

  I thought that might be quite a good idea.

  ‘Where did you find it?’

  ‘Under the gooseberry bush, just beside the manure heap in Kirsty McKinnon’s garden,’ Johnny said.

  ‘Oh!’ I said, abandoning the idea of a fish supper.

  I offered the fish to Johnny. He refused politely, saying that they had ‘plenty fish’ and telling me that by the time I got home I would have an appetite for all the fish I could catch. I did not contradict him and, with one glance at the neat piles of chewed crab and then at the empty hook, he set about the task of re-baiting without further comment.

  Thus in partnership we continued fishing for some time, I manœuvring the heavy rod while Johnny fielded very efficiently in the rear. It was at the moment of retrieving my third ‘brickbat’ that we noticed one of my shoes was missing. Together we searched, but in vain, and it became obvious that in the excitement of landing the fish one of my shoes had been kicked into the sea.

  ‘Bother!’ I said. ‘If I’ve got to walk home barefoot I shan’t have time for any more fishing.’

  ‘Kirsty’ll lend you a pair of her own shoes,’ Johnny consoled me.

  Remembering the size and more particularly the shape of Kirsty’s feet I rejected the suggestion, feeling that my own would suffer less by going unshod than by being subjected to the torture of having the toes turned up very nearly at right-angles.

  Slowly Johnny and I toiled homewards, he carrying the fish and the rod, and I, optimistically, carrying my remaining shoe. It took nearly two hours to cover the distance we had earlier covered in half an hour, and at times I felt that even Kirsty’s turn-ups would have been preferable to the grazes and cuts I sustained as a result of encounters with limpet-covered rocks and over-familiarity with shell-strewn shingle.

  ‘What sort of fish d’ you like best?’ asked Johnny abruptly.

  ‘Plaice, sole, any sort of flat fish,’ I replied.

  He thought for a moment and then offered: ‘I could show you how to flounder next week.’

  ‘I’ve no doubt you could,’ I replied with a forced laugh.

  ‘Will I do that then?’

  I glanced at his face. It was quite serious.

&
nbsp; ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘The flounders. They’re good,’ he replied. ‘Flat fish they are and all you have to do is paddle out into the water when the tide’s comin’ in and wriggle your toes in the sand.’

  ‘But how do you know when you find a flounder?’

  ‘Ach, you can soon tell, for it’s smooth and slippery, and you just bend down quick and whip it up.’

  ‘How deep is the water?’

  ‘Not more than this.’ He indicated a line well up on his thigh.

  ‘I don’t think I should take to floundering, but I’ll give you a sixpence for every one you bring me,’ I told him, and saw by the gleam in his eyes that I had said exactly the right thing.

  After an absence of about four hours we reached Ruari’s house again and I was relieved to find that Johnny was in plenty of time to get his hair cut. The knot of men, no longer shock-headed and indolent, but shorn and alert-looking, still hung about and they had been joined now by ‘the other half of the boat’.

  ‘Where’s your shoe?’ queried the barber, glancing from my bleeding feet to the one shoe which dangled from my hand.

  ‘She’s used it for bait,’ chuckled Lachy, and was in no way quelled by my withering glance.

  I received much congratulation on my catch and even more commiseration on the loss of my shoe.

  ‘But you’ll know better next time, and maybe you’ll get better fishing.’

  ‘If there is a next time,’ I said doubtfully, but they mistook my meaning. (In point of fact there never was a next time.)

  ‘Surely the tide will be right again tomorrow and the day after that too if the weather holds,’ someone said as I turned to go.

  ‘Sure the weather will be good.’ One of the men spat with the air of making a profound announcement. The Bruachites put more animation into their spitting than they ever allowed to come into their speech. They spat expressively and with consummate skill.

  ‘No it won’t then,’ someone contradicted him. ‘Occasional showers with patches of smoke, that’s exactly what the wireless says.’

  ‘Ach, what do they know about the weather?’ retorted the seer contemptuously. ‘They have no influence on it at all. No influence whatever.’