A Rope--In Case Read online

  ‘An’ Ealasaid’s the only one from here invited,’ supplied one of the girls. ‘He’s only havin’ his swanky friends apart from her.’

  ‘An’ she has a new dress for it,’ said Anna Vic.

  Sandy looked straight at Ealasaid. ‘You’ll no be goin’.’ It was as much a statement as a question.

  ‘Indeed I am so,’ I noticed Ealasaid did not look at Sandy as she spoke and they did not seek each other out when goodbyes were being said.

  Back at Bruach Morag and Anna Vic and I were in the last dinghy load to go ashore and by the time we stepped out the rest of the party had disappeared up the brae.

  ‘Oidche Mhath!’ we called to one another as we were about to disperse.

  ‘Here, wait a minute!’ Erchy summoned. We turned to see what was happening. ‘We have somethin’ for you,’ he said. ‘We managed to get the net across the river after all, while we had the lend of Padruig’s dinghy.’

  Hector lifted the floor boards of the boat. Underneath lay half a dozen fresh salmon.

  The following evening Bruach had its own small excitement when an auction sale was held in the schoolroom, the money raised being for an old people’s home. The ‘auction sale’ would be better described as a ‘bring and buy’ sale for everyone had given what they could which meant that there was a plethora of eggs and sacks of potatoes with perhaps a dozen half-bottles and bottles of whisky. No-one therefore wanted to buy eggs or potatoes but nevertheless bidding was spirited and immediately they were knocked down to a buyer they were put back into the sale. Even the whisky had to go back in time after time until perhaps the eventual buyer would have paid as much as seven pounds for a bottle. At the end of the sale the whisky was quickly disposed of on the spot and the eggs and potatoes—those that were left after the children had quite literally ‘had their fling’—were packed up and put on the bus for delivery to the hospital. We were preparing to put the schoolroom to rights and go to our homes when Sandy appeared.

  ‘You may as well shift the desks round the wall and clear the floor ready for the dance,’ he instructed us in his clipped authoritative voice.

  Everyone looked at him in surprise.

  ‘We’ve no permission to have a dance here,’ Janet told him.

  ‘We have so,’ returned Sandy shortly. No-one ever doubted what Sandy said. Somehow, he had obtained permission for a dance and his statement was accepted without further questioning.

  ‘But what about the music?’ One of the young girls spoke up. ‘A dance is no good without a piper or a fiddler.’

  ‘We have a fiddler an’ a melodeon,’ Sandy told her. ‘Here they are an’ all ready to play.’ He stood aside to allow two tousle-headed men into the room. One was carrying a fiddle, the other a melodeon.

  ‘My God!’ said Erchy, and his eyes were twinkling. ‘Come on, get these desks out of the way.’ The floor was soon cleared, the music began, but Sandy disappeared.

  The story came out later.

  Sandy, being determined that Ealasaid should not go dancing with her rich suitor, had taken the day off and gone to the village where lived the two musicians who had been engaged to play at the suitor’s dance. There he had contrived some business with them, had treated them generously to whisky, delaying them until they missed the bus, and then suggested that as he was hiring a car to get him home they would be welcome to a lift. He would drop them off at the hall on the way home, he had assured them. The musicians were pathetically grateful but Sandy had told his driver to go slowly and before long the two men had been sleeping off their excesses in the back of the car. When they awoke they were in Bruach and as the hired car had returned immediately and there was no chance of their getting any other transport that evening, in Bruach they had to stay. In short, Sandy had kidnapped the band and as he had promised to pay the men the same fee as they had expected to receive from their official engagement they were happy enough to play for a Bruach dance.

  When Sandy disappeared from the school, after seeing the dance commence satisfactorily, he went straight to Ealasaid’s house and there he waited until she was brought home by her sulky suitor. As soon as the man had taken his leave Sandy confronted Ealasaid.

  ‘Did you enjoy your dance?’ he asked.

  ‘There was no dance. There was no band arrived an’ everybody sat around, not knowin’ how to enjoy themselves.’

  ‘Aye, that’s the trouble with these swanky folks,’ Sandy agreed. ‘They’ve forgotten how to enjoy themselves while they’re makin’ money.’

  ‘Dear knows what happened to the band,’ said Ealasaid.

  ‘They were nearly off their heads lookin’ for them but nobody saw a sign of them.’

  ‘Ach, they’re down at the schoolhouse playin’ for our dance,’ Sandy told her. ‘I’ve come to take you there now.’

  ‘Here? In Bruach?’ Ealasaid was at first horrified and then as Sandy explained she dissolved into laughter.

  It was after midnight when the two of them arrived at the schoolhouse and immediately the pair rushed into a Schottische.

  For the rest of the night, when Ealasaid wasn’t dancing with Sandy she was sitting looking at him with wide adoring eyes. At the end of the season of watching the pair slipped quietly off to Glasgow and were married.

  A Vest for St. Peter

  Johnny and Erchy were entertaining an obviously appreciative cluster of friends outside the door of the byre on Erchy’s croft. I called a greeting as I passed on my way to the Post Office and was summoned to join them.

  ‘Here, look at this!’ commanded Erchy pulling off his gumboot to expose a thick sock that had been darned with so many bright colours it looked like a child’s attempt at tapestry. There was a renewed outburst of shrieks and sniggers from the group. I too found myself smiling broadly.

  ‘I can guess who’s responsible for that,’ I said.

  ‘Aye, indeed,’ replied Erchy feelingly. ‘I only put it on just for a bit of a laugh. My mother was for puttin’ the lot at the back of the fire when she saw them.’

  ‘It’s partly my fault, I suppose,’ I confessed.

  ‘You? Was it you put her up to it?’

  ‘No, but I happened to drop in at her cottage when she was darning your socks. She’d just finished the first one and when I saw she’d used bright green wool for the toe and orange for the heel I couldn’t help a bit of a chuckle.’

  ‘That would do it,’ Erchy accused. ‘She’s a right queer one for wantin’ to get a laugh.’ He put on his boot. ‘They were no bad socks till she got a hold of them,’ he complained. ‘Now I’ll need to get new ones from the tinks when they come.’

  ‘She was after my mother to give her some of mine for darnin’,’ put in Johnny.

  ‘Did she get them?’

  ‘Aye. I’ll need to try an’ get them from her before she spoils them.’

  ‘You’ll be too late,’ I told him. ‘She prides herself on being a fast worker.’

  ‘They’ll go under the kettle if she does what she’s after doin’ with Erchy’s,’ he threatened. ‘She must be thinkin’ we’re like the tinkers ourselves to be wantin’ colours like that on our feets.’ He hammered a wooden tooth into his hayrake.

  ‘Did you see the socks she knitted for the Children’s Home?’ I enquired.

  ‘Aye, I did,’ replied Johnny. ‘An’ I feel sorry for the poor childrens.’

  The Home had advertised for voluntary knitters, offering to supply wool to anyone who would knit socks for the children. Miss Parry, Bruach’s newest resident, had immediately responded and soon a large parcel of wool had arrived—enough to knit a dozen or so pairs of socks, each pair to be a different colour. A few days later when Morag and I had called at Miss Parry’s house we found she had already knitted up most of the wool and the finished socks were laid out in what were supposed to be pairs. Morag and I had exchanged secret glances. The socks were merely long tubes joined together at the toe and out of the twenty odd socks it was impossible to pick out two that were identica
l in size and colour. I forced a smile, to which Miss Parry responded with a delighted giggle.

  ‘I’m hoping they’ll get a good laugh when they see them,’ she simpered behind her spectacles. ‘And orphans need a bit of a laugh.’

  Morag picked up a sock and examined it. ‘Did they no ask you to turn the heel?’ she asked guilelessly.

  There was a moment of tight silence before Miss Parry acknowledged the question and when she spoke her voice was harsh and the twinkle in her eyes had been switched off.

  ‘Orphans don’t need heels,’ she snapped.

  Miss Parry had come to the village of Bruach about six months previously, having taken over the cottage once occupied by the two spinsters who had been known locally as the ‘lady pilgrims’1. She was a tall, bony woman who Erchy described as ‘lookin’ as if she was made out of knittin’ needles’ and lived a life of austerity that astonished even the Bruachites. Her cottage was the traditional ‘but an’ ben,’ that is, two rooms, one a kitchen and the other a bedroom with a tiny cupboard of a larder interposed between them. Her kitchen was bleak and sparsely furnished with two bentwood chairs, a small sewing table which also served as a dining table, a sewing machine and two large black chests on one of which reposed a tiny lamp that gave no more illumination than a candle. The firegrate was always empty because Miss Parry ‘couldn’t stand heat’ and the only warmth came from a tiny oilstove which also supported a kettle, though so suspicious was she of oilstoves that the flame was never more than a thin rim of blue and the kettle rarely managed anything above a sigh of frustration. There were no curtains or blinds but she kept sheets of brown paper to pin over the windows at night or when the sun should have the temerity to peep in at her.

  It was impossible to completely list her innumerable ‘hates’ but the sun and children ranked high among them. She also hated animals because they smelled or they might trip her up; she hated flowers because they reminded her of death; she hated birds because they were too noisy. Arid yet despite her aversions she was generally a smiling, seemingly good natured woman who enjoyed nothing better than bestowing gifts on her neighbours. It was a pity that her neighbours could not share her enjoyment but the trouble was that Miss Parry’s gifts were mostly unusable or unwearable. She would knit pullovers for the men but so determined was she to impress people with the speed and economy of her knitting that after the welt and a few inches of pattern she would begin to cast off for the sleeves and neck. Consequently the recipients found that if they lifted their arms the welt would rise up and threaten to choke them. I have never seen men’s faces express such pathetic dejection as when they first tried on one of Miss Parry’s hand knitted pullovers. Yet, even when they were tried on in her presence Miss Parry could see no fault in her workmanship and I think she never even bothered to suspect that the women had to unpick all the garments and re-knit them before they could be worn.

  The more intimately I got to know her the more her way of life astonished me. She wasted nothing and seemed content to spend all her time sitting in her cheerless kitchen devising uses for odd pieces of material and lengths of wool of which she must have kept a prodigious store. If she heard of any one being ill she would soon have knitted them an unwearable bed jacket or, if it was a man, it would be a pair of bedsocks that were comparable in size to a baby’s bootees. When someone complained in her hearing that they could not buy some article of clothing from the mail order store Miss Parry would set to work and contrive an alternative. She once heard me lamenting that it was difficult to get comfortable bras when one had to depend for choice on a mail order catalogue. Within a few days she was at my cottage with half a dozen bras, designed and made especially for me from odd pieces of material out of her ragbag. I was horrified. One bra was made of Harris tweed, another in Buchanan tartan, yet another in stiff calico. The rest were in an assortment of sad cottons and they had all been achieved by sewing together two large triangles of material that looked more like boat sails than lingerie. The triangles were bound with broad black tape, lengths of which had been left for tying the garment around me.

  ‘They’ll last you longer than anything you could buy from a shop,’ she predicted happily—and truthfully. I managed to comment favourably on them and restrained my laughter until I could try on a ‘bra’ in the privacy of my own bedroom. Even when I pulled the tapes to their limit the boat sails came underneath my armpits and the shoulder straps fell in loops down my back. Miss Parry had once confided to me that both her own breasts had been removed because of cancer and I was forced to the conclusion that it must have been such a long time ago that she had forgotten the usual location of such female appurtenances.

  The Bruachites soon grew to think of Miss Parry as a professional invalid. She looked well but she boasted of having had so many operations that her life must have been lived in and out of hospitals. Besides having had both her breasts removed she informed me at various times that she had lost her womb; her gall bladder and one kidney; her appendix had been removed in a station waiting room because the train that should have taken her to the hospital had got snowed up; she suffered from high blood pressure and had at different times broken both her arms and both her ankles. In fact one got the impression that so often had she been at death’s door she had wedged a decisive foot there to keep it open. Considering everything she was remarkably strong, as I found to my cost when I once gave her a supporting arm on the way back to her cottage. She was a quick and clumsy walker and had stumbled so often that the frequent tugs on my arm had left me feeling as limp as if I had done a strenuous day’s work.

  The most puzzling thing about Miss Parry was her diet. No-one ever saw her cooking or partaking of a meal in her own house and the grocer reported that she bought no more from him than would have kept a mouse alive. The first time I had invited her to a meal had been on Sunday evening after church. The table was set with my home-made bread and butter, a cheese soufflé and scones and cake. To me it all looked very appetising but Miss Parry declined everything save a half slice of bread which she asked if she might have toasted. It was barely warm before she indicated that it was done sufficiently and she refused butter with it—butter ‘Vexed her insides’, she said. When I started to pour out tea she stopped me before the cup was half full and requested that it should be topped up with cold water. She took no sugar or milk. While she nibbled at her wan toast and sipped at pallid tea I tried not to feel too uncomfortable as I tucked into cheese soufflé. Religion always makes me hungry and as I had taken a good deal of trouble with the meal I was not going to see it wasted.

  ‘Are you sure you’ve had enough?’ I asked her anxiously when I considered we had sat long enough at the table.

  ‘Plenty,’ she replied in a Sabbath whisper. ‘I never eat more than that.’

  I wondered if she suffered still with her stomach. She was quick to tell me she had ulcers.

  While we washed and dried the dishes she told me the story of her life. Her parents had died when she was small and she and her young brother had been brought up by their grandparents, characters so harsh they could have come from the pages of a Cronin novel. Life had been hard; comfort condemned as smacking of the devil and his works. Every morning after a breakfast of porridge and milk, brother and sister, carrying a thick slice of plain bread for their lunch ‘piece’, had walked the six miles to school each day. Returning home they would be given work to do on the croft or in the house. There were no near neighbours and the children were allowed no friends to visit them. On Saturday nights they were given a bath in a doorless shed beside the house and winter and summer a bucket of cold water was emptied over them to ‘toughen them’. This was followed by a dose of laxative from granny to rid them of the week’s poisons and a thrashing from their grandfather to rid them of the week’s sins. They would then be sent to bed with no candles to light them up to the dark bedrooms and no hot water bottles to warm the chill sheets though the windows were nailed wide open all the year round. When she had left scho
ol Miss Parry had trained as a teacher and had continued to teach until her retirement five years previously. She had never made close friends with anyone; never had a boy-friend or even thought of the possibility of a boy-friend. The only leavening in her life had been her church-going and her frequent visits to hospital. I wondered why she had come to Bruach. ‘I always wanted adventure,’ she said.

  When Miss Parry returned my hospitality I made certain I ate a substantial meal before I went. And of course I found she had provided amply. There was tinned meat and tinned fruit and shop bread and shortbread and the tea was so strong I could have danced on it as it came out of the pot. I wilted before the sight of it but I had to endure.

  ‘I know you have a good appetite,’ said Miss Parry, twinkling, and pushed all the meat and bread at me, except for the one half slice she ate herself.

  Next time I was in the grocer’s he said: ‘I hear you went for a meal with Miss Parry one day last week?’

  I admitted I had.

  ‘I was wonderin’ why she suddenly bought all that food,’ he told me, giving me a look of great respect.

  There were times when Bruach wondered a good deal about Miss Parry. Did she have any living relatives and if she had why didn’t she go to see them? Everyone was greatly interested therefore when she announced that her brother and his wife were to pay her a visit. They arrived one perfect day of August; a day of high skies and sun with a breeze soft as a silk shawl teasing the bay into iridescent ripples and filling the air with the scent of new-mown hay. I was invited to tea to meet them and when I arrived I was astonished to see the small sewing table and the two wooden chairs outside in the neglected garden.

  ‘It’s a pity to waste all this sunshine,’ said Miss Parry’s sister-in-law as she busied herself carrying out plates and cups and saucers. ‘Come and sit down,’ she bade me. Her husband appeared with a wooden box and a stool. We sat waiting for Miss Parry.