The Hills is Lonely Page 7

  I left them arguing and limped home where Morag awaited me on the doorstep.

  ‘Ah, mo ghaoil,’ she greeted me solicitously, ‘what for are you dancin’ around in your bare feets at this time of the evening’?’

  I assured her that I had never felt less like dancing, bare feet or otherwise, and held up the one shoe for inspection. ‘I don’t know why I bothered to bring it home,’ I said.

  ‘Ach, but you never know what treasure the watter might yield up in time,’ she remarked, wagging her head mysteriously. ‘It’s just as well you brought it for what the sea takes away here it gives up there,’ and strangely enough my shoe was eventually washed ashore, about a mile from where I had lost it.

  I presented Morag with my catch. They were rather warm and limp, doubtless because Johnny, proud of the success of his pupil, had seized every opportunity to display them, with many tender caresses, as he expatiated on their virtues to me and to everyone we had met.

  It appeared that the fish were considered a delicacy in Bruach and my landlady expressed pleasure at the sight of them. ‘In the Gaelic,’ she told me, ‘we have a sayin’ that this fish is so good that the daughter is not expected to give it up even to her own mother.’

  I decided not to relate the adventures of at least one of my catch.

  ‘And how is your pain now?’ I asked.

  ‘Me, I’m just fine,’ she replied, ‘but you’ll need to bathe your feets, my dear, or some of them cuts might go turnin’ antiseptic.’

  The next morning at breakfast I was confronted by a reproachful one-eyed glare from my share of the ‘brickbats’. I glared back seeing not the fish but the mouthfuls of chewed bait: the seeking figures near the dung heap and Johnny’s hot, grimy hands nursing the catch all the way home.

  I said that I would prefer a boiled egg.

  4 The Funeral

  During the whole of my first year in Bruach there occurred no birth, marriage or death to disturb or enliven the leisurely amble of our lives. With the coming of the second autumn each of the three events came to pass, though not in that specific order.

  The birth excited little interest beyond a sporadic procession of female visitors to criticise and admire the baby. The wedding was an insipid affair, the ceremony having taken place in a Glasgow register office, and except for a complaint from the postman when he was called upon to deliver almost a mailbag full of sanguinary ‘wee wee pokes of cake crumbs’, it passed practically unnoticed. The death was easily the most impressive event of the year for due to the frequency of inter-marriage everyone was related in some degree to everyone else. As a result the funeral necessitated the attendance of the community en masse and the occasion became virtually a general holiday. Now the Gael in holiday mood is irrepressible and, as he arrays himself in exactly the same ‘best’ clothes whether he is to attend a funeral or a festivity, it is perhaps not surprising that he shows a tendency to combine the two.

  The news of the death of Ian Mor, the old fisherman, came one dull October morning when Morag brought in my breakfast tray. Ian Mor had lived with his two sisters in one of the houses which I had dubbed ‘Beach Terrace’, and, as he had always been a strong, healthy-looking man, his ‘being changed’ had come as rather a shock to everyone in the village. To everyone, that is, except myself; I could feel little surprise at the death of a man who had passed the allotted span by at least nine years. Rather was I inclined to wonder how the villagers, in view of their seeming disregard for their physical well-being, managed to live so long.

  ‘And he was such a fine man,’ Morag lamented tearfully. ‘A good Christian and a good fisherman.’ She wiped the sleeve of her cardigan across her brimming eyes.

  It was the custom, my landlady went on to tell me, for everyone to pay their respects to the corpse and, though I was loth to do so, she eventually prevailed upon me to accompany her on a visit of condolence to the bereaved sisters. Thus it was that in the twilight of the evening before the funeral we set out for the house in ‘Beach Terrace’. The melancholy of the occasion was increased by the fact that it was raining; the steady relentless rain that makes the grass and the trees and even the sea itself look tired and defeated. Morag had donned her largest oilskin and with it a cloak of intense piety which effectively prevented her from being her usual voluble self. For some time we plodded heavily and silently across squelching crofts and along boggy footpaths until, irritated by the solemnity. I tried to draw out my companion by asking about the deceased fisherman’s youth. The experiment was successful.

  ‘Indeed he was very fond of myself at one time,’ she confided, a trace of coyness in her voice. ‘Why, he’d even made a song for me.’ (In Bruach the ‘making of a song’ for one’s sweetheart was of far more importance than the giving of an engagement ring!) Love’s ardour had cooled, however, when Ian had learned that Morag’s father was not going to be particularly generous in the matter of a dowry for his daughter, and the final break had come when Ian had called one evening to ‘do his wee bitty courtin’’. and Morag, instead of sitting beside him on the bench, had set him to carrying manure for the potatoes.

  ‘He was that vexed because I put too much manure in his creel that he never came near me again, and that was the end of it.’ The resigned sigh which followed this recital was expressive of my landlady’s conviction of the fickleness of all sweethearts.

  ‘Whatever came over him, I don’t know,’ she continued sadly, ‘but he started to get religion. I always used to comfort myself afterwards that maybe I spoiled him with too much manure, but he came near to spoilin’ me with too much religion.’

  The subject of Ian Mor was summarily dismissed from the conversation as a figure approached us from the opposite direction, doubtless returning from the same errand as that on which we were bound.

  ‘Who on earth can this be without a waterproof on an evening like this?’ I asked.

  Morag made a noise approximating to a snort.

  ‘Sure it’s yon fool Dugan Ruag. He’d be the only one to care naught for rain such as this,’ she replied.

  Dugan Ruag, hands in the pockets of his tweed jacket, paused as we drew closer and I had no difficulty in recognising the ‘precentor’.

  ‘Here, Dugan,’ Morag greeted him. ‘It’s a wonder you’re not under the ground yourself, man, with no coat on and a day like this.’ The threat combined with the allusion to the prospective funeral made the man spit contemptuously.

  ‘Me? I’ve been wet since the day I was born near enough, and never taken no harm,’ he replied.

  ‘I’ve seen him in a coat but once in his life,’ Morag admitted to me.

  ‘You have once? Then if you’ve seen me in a coat she must have been blowin’ a gale on us. Man! I’d wear a coat for the wind, but the rain!’ He spat again and glanced confidently at the leaden sky. ‘The rain itself would no hurt me.’

  ‘I’m no so sure,’ called Morag over her shoulder as Dugan, with elbows pressed close against his body and chin tucked well down, continued on his way. To me she remarked: ‘In all the years I’ve known that man, and there must be over sixty of them, there’s few have seen him in a coat, and yet he’s never needed a doctor in his life.’

  I wondered if peat smoke has an effect on the human skin like tanning on a cow hide, for there was no doubt that many of the Bruachites seemed to be well-nigh impervious to rain.

  We reached the house of the late Ian Mor and pushed open the door of the kitchen to receive a restrained welcome from the two sisters, who immediately set about preparing a strupak. While the tea was brewing Morag followed the younger sister upstairs to view the corpse but, though invited to go with them. I shook my head, electing to stay in the kitchen with the elder sister to whom I proceeded to offer my condolences.

  ‘Indeed it was spiteful of him to go and die on us like that,’ she replied, with a touch of asperity in her voice.

  I reminded the old lady that her brother had lived to a good old age.

  ‘Old age, indeed!’ s
he expostulated with some bitterness, ‘he could have been looking after us for ten years and more yet. There’s plenty does.’

  ‘He certainly looked very fit the last time I saw him,’ I said.

  ‘Aye, aye,’ she agreed, ‘and who’d have thought now that a little thing like pleurisy could have killed him; and him as strong as a bull.’

  ‘Yes, he did look strong,’ I conceded.

  ‘Indeed, that’s true enough, but ach! that doctor!’ She expressed her contempt for the doctor by a vindictive poke at the fire. ‘If I could have got the vet to him instead of that doctor,’ she continued to my amazement, ‘I truly believe he would have been alive and out fishin’ at this minute, instead of lyin’ up there senseless in his bed.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’ I asked, too much taken aback to think of anything else to say.

  ‘Yes I do,’ she replied with an emphatic nod. ‘Why, when our old cow had pleurisy didn’t the vet cure her of it in no time at all? And she after havin’ a calf regular each year since?’ She glared at me intimidatingly as she continued: ‘And if he could do that for our cow then I’m no doubtin’ but what he could have done the same for our brother.’

  I suggested, somewhat diffidently, that the two cases were not identical.

  ‘That’s what the vet said when I sent him the telegram,’ she answered.

  ‘Of course it would be quite different.’ I began, but she silenced me with a peremptory flourish of the dish cloth.

  ‘Same cause, same cure,’ she observed epigrammatically. She swabbed the table top vigorously for some minutes before saying with biting scorn: ‘I’m tellin’ you that doctor couldna’ cure a corn on your toe without cutting off your foot and if he cut off your foot and buried it, likely as not it would grow into a poisonous weed.’

  I was saved from further confidences by the re-entry of Morag and the other sister who were closely followed by Johnny the bus-driver and Lachy of the boat. Presently the two sisters led the men upstairs, while Morag and I remained in the kitchen. From the room above came the sound of heavy footsteps.

  ‘Johnny and Lachy have come to take Ian down to the sofa in the parlour,’ my landlady explained.

  ‘Doesn’t the undertaker do that on the day of the funeral?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, he would likely,’ she replied, her voice dropping to a whisper, ‘but d’ you see the coffin won’t go up these narrow stairs, and the undertaker doesna’ care one bit. He just takes hold of the corpus by the feet and drags it bump, bump, bump down the stairs whichever way it’ll come best.’ She illustrated her words horrifically with a fist on the table.

  ‘Oh no!’ I protested.

  ‘Ach, indeed he does, and folks doesn’t like it, you know.’

  ‘I should think not!’

  ‘No, they don’t,’ she repeated; ‘they say they never seem to get the noise of it out of their ears for weeks afterwards. That’s why the men try to get them down before yon fellow can lay his hands on them.’

  At that moment the door of the kitchen opened and the two sisters came inside. They closed the door firmly behind them. The noises in the bedroom above increased, and were followed by the sound of slow, halting footsteps on the stairs, and the scuff of garments against the wooden walls. I tried hard not to listen.

  ‘The weather seems to be improving,’ I said desperately.

  My companions merely nodded, their whole attention being riveted on the performance without.

  ‘Steady there!’ That was Lachy’s voice, respectful and quiet.

  ‘Up your end a bit.’ That was Johnny, purposeful and businesslike. ‘Now over this way a bit.’

  Suddenly there was a choking gurgling sound followed by a fit of violent coughing, which caused the four of us in the kitchen to stare questioningly at the door and then at one another.

  Johnny’s voice, now plaintive, filled the passage: ‘Lachy, you damn fool! Lower your end a bit; that was his big toe nearly halfway down my throat.’

  From the stairs came Lachy’s voice raised in remonstrance:

  ‘For God’s sake let him down a minute!’

  There was a significant pause and then the ominous noises began again. This time, except for a suspicious-sounding thud, there was apparently no mishap, and a few minutes later Lachy and Johnny burst into the kitchen. Both were inhaling deeply at the cigarettes in their mouths. Johnny made a beeline for the water-pail, helped himself to a ladleful and tilting it to his lips drank deeply.

  ‘Did you manage him all right?’ asked one of the sisters unnecessarily.

  ‘Aye, so we did,’ exploded Johnny, panting and shaking his head like a swimmer after a cold plunge. ‘By God I’m tellin’ you that many’s the corpse I’ve carried, but that’s the first time I’ve been forced to swallow one.’ He banged down the ladle heavily. ‘Bah! What a taste!’

  ‘Whisht!’ said one of the sisters, while the other repeated: ‘Oh God! Oh God!’ over and over again, but whether as an imprecation or an invocation I could not guess.

  Johnny and Lachy, after drinking the tea which had been awaiting them, were armed with the gift of a bottle of whisky and departed to dig the grave. They reassured the anxious sisters, one of whom was worried ‘in case they should get Ian taken all that way and then find no hole to put him in’, that with the stimulus of a bottle of whisky there was bound to be plenty of labour.

  ‘I’m after takin’ the bus anyway,’ said Johnny; ‘so mere’s plenty will come along just for the ride.’

  Other people began to arrive and Morag and I prepared to take our leave.

  ‘It’s funny Old Farquhar hasn’t been near since Ian died,’ said the sister who saw us to the door. ‘I don’t believe he can have heard yet.’

  Thus obliquely she suggested that we should take upon ourselves the task of acquainting Farquhar with the news of Ian’s demise and, as the rain had stopped, bringing a bright starry sky with a full moon on the point of rising, we readily agreed.

  Old Farquhar was the tatterdemalion of the village, who passed a hermit-like existence in a secluded little corrie a couple of miles away from the nearest habitation. I had seen him infrequently, and then always hurrying awkwardly in the opposite direction. I was hearing of him constantly, for in addition to his being something of a bard he was reputed to possess the ‘second sight’, but I had not yet met him and, as his was a character obviously worth investigation, I was not averse to taking this opportunity of doing so.

  To reach Farquhar’s house we had to pass by the graveyard. The empty bus stood outside and we could not help being aware that somewhere beyond the trees an extremely merry party of grave-diggers were already engaged upon their task.

  ‘Dig first and drink after!’ called Morag, with a hand cupped to her mouth; but there was no response and the sounds of merriment continued unabated.

  Farquhar’s cottage when we reached it appeared to be nothing more than a dilapidated barn, and, in spite of Morag’s reiteration, I could not at first believe that it was actually occupied by a human being. It was stone built and thatched, but the latter was black with age and part of the house seemed to have fallen away altogether. A space in the wall which had at some time been a window was now partly blocked with a barrel, from the chinks around which there eddied drifts of peat smoke.

  Morag called out and then opened the door. Hesitantly I followed her into a room where an old man sat at a table slicing a loaf with a large clasp knife. He looked up as we entered and, brandishing the knife in welcome, bade us be seated. My companion lowered herself on to a plank supported by two more barrels and introduced me to Farquhar, a scarecrow of a man whose clothes hung raggedly on his gaunt, bony frame. As he shook my hand his blue eyes gazed at me with quick intelligence from deep in his lean, dark face, the skin of which was fissured and brown as the bark of an ancient oak.

  Morag and our host immediately started to compare reminiscences of Ian Mor and, as their conversation lapsed into the Gaelic, I was at leisure to examine my surround
ings. The room, though rude, was surprisingly warm with the heat from an enormous peat fire which glowed on an open hearth; the smoke curled upwards to be caught by yet another barrel suspended from a beam and guided through a hole in the thatch. By no means all the smoke escaped this way; quite a lot still eddied about the room, but peat smoke can be thick indeed before it becomes unpleasant. Apart from the table and the plank upon which we were sitting, the only furniture was the barrel on which Farquhar himself was seated when we arrived. The floor was a jig-saw pattern of driftwood of all shapes and sizes, and in all stages of decay. There was no sign of a bed and I wondered if there could possibly be another room in which Farquhar slept, or if he slept on the plank we now occupied. Illumination was provided by a candle which stood, supported by a cake of its own grease, in the centre of the table. Beside the loaf of bread was a jar of jam, a paper of butter, some oatcakes and a saucer of crowdie. Evidently we had interrupted Farquhar at his evening meal but, in no way put out, he gestured enthusiastically towards the oatcakes and jam, telling us as though it was a recommendation that he had made the former himself; he was already wiping a horny finger round the inside of two handle-less cups ‘to chase out the dust’ before Morag, noticing my frantic signals, managed to convince him that we could not possibly drink another cup of tea or eat one mouthful of food. He was sorely disappointed at our refusal and obviously considered that he was being slighted; but I felt that I had gone through enough for one night. For the life of me I could not have swallowed food in that house.

  As Farquhar talked animatedly I noticed that he continued to cut and butter slices of bread, until he had sliced up the whole loaf. It seemed an enormous meal for one old man but, before he resumed his own repast, he deliberately placed one of the buttered rounds at each corner of the table farthest away from him. I had by that time become accustomed to the eccentricities of some of the older crofters but, as Morag had distinctly told me that Farquhar had always lived alone since he was capable of doing so, I rejected the idea that the rounds were set there for a brace of memorable family ghosts. My thoughts were busily engaged in seeking a reasonable explanation for his action when I glimpsed a stealthy movement and, turning, saw two beady eyes followed by the head and body of a large rat appear over the corner of the table. Stifling a scream I jumped up on to the plank.