The Sea for Breakfast Page 7

  I ran for Yawn and told him what had happened.

  ‘She’s broken her leg, you say?’ he asked with patent disbelief. Yawn had always regarded me with suspicion; I think he was afraid that I too lurked m caves in stormy weather and might some time beat him to the choicest finds. ‘I think so. But do hurry and come and get her.’

  ‘Ach, I suppose I’d best take the wheelbarrow,’ he said ungraciously, leaving his half-finished cup of tea. Flora made some derogatory remark in the direction of the fire. I paused for a moment thinking that if I explained Sarah’s predicament to her carefully it might rouse her into action and wondered vaguely if she did attempt to rise whether the chair would cling to her back, like the shell of a snail. Her vacant immobility quelled the impulse and I hastened back to Sarah.

  ‘Could we get her to my cottage?’ I suggested to Yawn.

  He bestowed upon me and my cottage a look that should have annihilated the two of us.

  ‘No,’ he replied, ‘I’ll take her to my own house. I don’t suppose there’s much wrong with her.’

  I hated to see Sarah bundled into a wheelbarrow and trundled over the rough ground, but I realized that under the circumstances it was the best thing we could do. She obviously must not be left there until neighbours could be recruited to find a stretcher. Had we decided on that course I felt that some tactless souls would have been certain to turn up with the bier from the burial ground. So Yawn struggled and swore his way home while I hovered meekly behind. A scholar on his way to school came running up to us enquiringly and I sent him with a message intentionally to Morag and unintentionally to everyone else in the village. I ’phoned for the doctor, who came and affirmed that Sarah had indeed broken her leg.

  Sarah, quite conscious again, sighed with a certain amount of relief at the news. ‘It’s thankful I am he didn’t have the leg right off me,’ she said, displaying her left hand minus its thumb which as a young girl she had lost in a similar accident.

  ‘In that case you would have to have a beautiful new wooden one,’ I soothed jovially.

  ‘Ach, like that man with the fire brigade,’ she rejoined. ‘I believe he keeps a wooden leg some place.’ She looked up at the doctor anxiously. ‘I will be able to walk again, doctor, will I?’

  ‘Of course you will,’ he assured her. ‘You’ll have to rest it for a while but you’ll be as good as new in a few weeks’ time.’

  ‘I wish you’d cure my corns for me as quickly while you’re about it, doctor,’ she said wistfully.

  ‘What are you doing with corns, Sarah?’ demanded the doctor.

  ‘It’s they big boots I have to wear. Yawn won’t let me have gumboots, and they’re after puttin’ terrible corns on my feets.’

  ‘Very well, I’ll send you over something for them,’ promised the doctor, who was new to Bruach and did not yet know that Sarah’s corns were almost as old as her feet.

  ‘I wonder was he just sayin’ that about my leg to comfort me?’ she asked us dubiously, when he had gone.

  ‘Now, Sarah!’ admonished Morag, who had by this time arrived on the scene full of bracing sympathy and competence. ‘Why would he say that if he didn’t mean it? Sure, she’s been a good leg to you all these years and mere’s no reason for thinkin’ she won’t be a good leg to you again.’

  Sarah nodded slow acquiesence and stroked the broken leg with tender pride.

  Despite her age, Sarah’s leg did heal in a remarkably short time. While she was incapacitated I visited her often, taking her whenever I could pictures and photographs of the royal family, to whom she was touchingly devoted. So eager was she to hear of royal activities that whenever she could she stationed herself close to the timid-toned old wireless at news bulletin times simply to hear the Queen mentioned. Under her bed she kept several ribbon-tied boxes full to bursting with photographs she had cut from magazines and newspapers for over half a century, and whenever she had the excuse or the opportunity these were brought out and examined lovingly. The Queen Mother and her two daughters she particularly adored. ‘Ach, the bonnie wee Scots lassie,’ she would croon as she studied a photograph of the Queen Mother, and ‘They sweet little darlings,’ as she pored over photographs of the Queen and Princess Margaret as children.

  When she was not gloating over photographs of royalty Sarah spent her evenings sewing, using, because her eyes were weak and she would not wear glasses, an outsize darning needle which her brother jocularly referred to as a ‘boat-hook’. Flora’s former mistress had left her trunks of ravishing evening gowns and it was strangely affecting to see Sarah’s white head bent over lengths of pink taffeta or blue satin, her stiff, rough fingers stabbing the large needle in and out as she transformed the gowns into what she considered to be suitable day dresses for herself. I have seen her mucking out the cow-byre arrayed in sequin-spangled pink taffeta. I have met her on the hill, her swirling skirt of gold satin pulled high above her thin wool-encased legs which stuck out from her black tackety boots like sticks from a glue-pot. I have watched her winkle-picking attired in silver lamé and velvets, reinforced by old meal sacks.

  By the time she was on her feet again Sarah and I were close friends. I had taken on the task of writing her letters for her, much to the relief of her brother who disliked letter-writing and considered he had quite enough to do to write his own. I sympathized with Yawn; living in isolated places demands an enormous amount of letter-writing, ranging from ordering a pound of sausages from the butcher to a new dress from the store. Yawn, who I suspected was really very fond of his younger sister though he never allowed his affection to show, had come by this time to accept me as not quite such a menace to his fortunes as he had at first believed. Soon he took to calling in at my cottage and presenting me with some of his trophies: a sisal doormat, which I was very glad to have; tortured lumps of paraffin wax which helped fire-lighting considerably; a life-jacket, and more than once a lump of venison which I had to believe was from a freshly washed-up stag.

  ‘Yawn,’ I asked him one day, voicing a fear of my own; ‘have you ever come across a body on the shore?’

  ‘Indeed I did once,’ he admitted, ‘and I was wonderin’ to myself what sort of a beast it was till I saw it was wearin’ socks.’

  ‘I found a baby seal washed up the other day and that was horrid enough,’ I said with a shudder. ‘It very nearly cured me of beachcombing. I don’t know what I’d do if I found a human body.’

  ‘Ach, there’s no need to do anythin’ but let the tide take it away again,’ he told me. ‘We used to get four pounds for them but there’s nothin’ in it now.’

  He watched me as I nailed an old piece of linoleum to the top of a tea-chest which I hoped to use as a coop for a broody hen.

  ‘She’ll no keep chicks warm enough in that,’ Yawn pronounced, ‘But I have in my shed what will do for you to cover it over. I’ll bring some of it with me next time I’m passin’.’ A few days later he brought me some suitable lengths of heavy felted material which I draped over the tea-chest.

  ‘What do you call that stuff?’ I asked him. ‘It seems to be the ideal thing for the job.’

  ‘Indeed I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘It was just some stuff I got on the shore. In a big sort of tank it was, lots of it. I had Sarah make me a mattress of it and I can tell you I’ve never laid on a more comfortable bed.’ I was dubious of its attractions as a mattress, but thought it possible that Yawn preferred his bed to be as tough and unyielding as himself.

  ‘I doubt you’ll have to nail it on for the storms,’ he called as he shut the gate behind him.

  ‘I shall probably do that in any case,’ I assured him, but lazily left it for another time.

  Some days later when Sarah came to have her letters written she brought the news that Yawn was in bed with lumbago. The doctor had sent him some pills but he was to rest in bed for a while.

  ‘And there’s the corn half-cut, and the hay still in cocks,’ Sarah moaned. ‘We’ll be gatherin’ in the corn at New Year. I ca
n no understand it,’ she went on, ‘he used to have terrible rheumatics right enough but when once he’d started sleepin’ on that new mattress I made him of that stuff he found on the shore he’s never felt hardly a twinge.’

  Hector and Erchy were persuaded to give a hand with scything corn while Sarah and I gathered and tied it into sheaves, and when it had spent the required three Sundays in the field we stacked if. Yawn was still confined to his bed.

  My broody hen had hatched her chicks—three cockerels and two pullets, five out of a setting of a dozen eggs. The rest of the eggs were infertile.

  ‘You’d best get yourself a cockerel that isn’t so particular,’ said Morag when I told her.

  Autumn was bullied out of existence in a single night and when went the next morning to feed my chickens, which had been growing strongly, I found the felt covering their tea-chest had been blown off and the tea-chest itself turned over. The valiant mother brooded the two remaining chicks in its shelter. I resolved to go to the mainland that day for some nails to secure the felt.

  The following morning was bright and, as I now knew, treacherously calm, and after breakfast I collected my nails and a hammer and went off to make for the broody hen the home she deserved. As I went out through the door the policeman, his peaked cap catching the sunlight, was opening the gate.

  ‘You haven’t a dog, have you?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Why?’

  There’s been complaints of sheep worryin’ and I’m wantin’ to see all the dog licences,’ he told me.

  He saw my hammer and nails. ‘What are you going to do? Building yourself a new house, is it?’

  I took him and showed him the tea-chest and the cheeping chicks and the indomitable old mother. His eye lit on the strips of felt that lay in readiness.

  ‘Good God!’ he gasped in horror. ‘Where did you get that stuff?’

  ‘On the shore,’ I replied, a trifle bewildered.

  He picked up a piece and examined it very gingerly. He passed his tongue over dry lips.

  ‘What are you thinkin’ of doin’ with it?’

  ‘Oh, I’m going to nail it to the top of the tea-chest to keep it warm and dry. It’s good heavy stuff too, it will add a bit of weight.’

  ‘Like hell you are,’ said the policeman. I noticed he had gone pale.

  ‘How much of this stuff have you got?’ he demanded.

  ‘Oh, just that you see there.’

  ‘Has anybody else got any?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I replied evasively. Yawn would never forgive me if I betrayed the fact that he was sleeping on a mattress of it.

  The policeman became authoritative. ‘You’ll not touch that stuff at all,’ he ordered. ‘You’ll leave it there till I get my instructions what to do with it. I’ll go away and ’phone now. Don’t you touch it on any account. It’s highly dangerous. A find of this kind should have been reported right away.’

  ‘Dangerous?’ I echoed incredulously; the stuff looked harmless enough to me. ‘Why, what is it?’

  ‘Gun-cotton,’ returned the policeman abruptly.

  ‘Good God!’ I gasped, even more horror stricken than he had been.

  He loped off to where his car was parked and as soon as he was out of sight I flew to Yawn’s house in mounting panic. I rushed into the kitchen. Sarah was out and for the only time in my life I had reason to be grateful for the impassivity of the figure beside the fire. It recalled me to my senses.

  ‘Is Yawn in bed?’ I asked with enforced calm.

  ‘In bed he is.’

  I raised my voice. ‘Yawn!’ I called. ‘May I come in?’

  ‘Come in.’ I went through into the bedroom. Yawn was propped up with pillows, placidly smoking his pipe. I was not wholly conversant with the properties of gun-cotton but my stomach nevertheless turned over at the sight of him.

  ‘Yawn,’ I began, ‘can you get up without help?’

  ‘Ach, no indeed. My back’s that bad I canna’ even turn myself over. The pain’s terrible. Terrible just.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to be got up,’ I insisted urgently. ‘That mattress you’re sleeping on .…’

  ‘Indeed it’s a grand mattress right enough,’ he interpolated. ‘An’ I believe it’s helpin’ a lot to cure me of this lumbago the doctor says I’ve got. It’s doin’ more than his pills is doin’ for me anyway. I was helpless at first; helpless like a child, but just lying’ here in my bed I’m feelin’ myself gettin’ better every day, though the pain is still awful bad when I move.’

  I took a deep breath. ‘Yawn,’ I enunciated carefully, ‘the policeman has just seen some of that stuff your mattress is made of and he tells me it’s explosive!’

  ‘Never!’ protested Yawn.

  ‘Yes, he’s certain it’s gun-cotton and highly explosive.’

  Yawn’s body stiffened and his eyes fixed themselves unwaveringly on my own. He must have seen my panic.

  ‘Get out of the room, woman!’ he directed me sternly. I stood blinking at his tone of voice. ‘Get out of the room while I put on my trousers,’ he shouted at me. I fled.

  Now if any doctor reading this is sceptical about the efficacy of gun-cotton for curing rheumatism and lumbago I should like to assert here and now that within five minutes of acquainting him with the news I saw Yawn outdoing the man of Bethesda; he not only took up his bed but he ran and ran and ran to where his croft ended in a cliff that overhung the sea. He flung the mattress over the edge and then went back to the house where he finished dressing himself. Then he went out to feed the cows. He has never suffered from lumbago or rheumatism since.

  Sarah came hurrying back into the kitchen, full of consternation.

  ‘My brother, my brother!’ she gasped out. ‘What has happened to him?’

  I told her.

  ‘Well, well, and wasn’t he always after sayin’ it was wonderful stuff,’ she said.

  Flora looked at the fire. ‘He is himself again.’

  ‘Aye, sister.’

  ‘He has thrown away his bed.’

  ‘Aye, he has so.’ A bawl from a calf took Sarah scurrying outside. Flora wanted to be told why Yawn had thrown away his bed so she repeated her statement.

  ‘He has thrown away his bed.’

  ‘Yes.’ The old ‘cailleach’ was getting no indulgence from me.

  Her empty eyes slid from the fire to my face and back again.

  ‘It was damp.’

  ‘No, not damp.’

  ‘It was no longer comfortable,’ she vouchsafed.

  ‘It had become very uncomfortable indeed,’ I agreed, and wished I could ask the policeman to leave me a sample of the gun-cotton to offer her as a cushion.

  Work on the Croft

  The sky was effervescing with lark song, the rocky outcrops of the croft were starred with wide-eyed primroses and every convenient wall or hedge near each house was draped with blankets out for their annual sun bath. I sat in my garden trying, very inadequately, to put the tints and demi-tints of the dry-stone byre with its thatched roof, its blue door and its hem of tiring daffodils on to paper, when I heard the voice of Yawn calling to me from the garden gate on which he was leaning with contorted self-possession.

  ‘I was wonderin’ would I get a hand to plant the potatoes,’ he asked. ‘The tractor says he’ll be here at ten o’clock in the mornin’.’

  I told him I would certainly help plant his potatoes and carried on with my painting. Yawn, gaining confidence, came Into the garden and looked over my shoulder. ‘My, but it’s mighty like,’ he exclaimed with unflattering surprise.

  I murmured non-committally, being well aware that my artistic skill is negligible. I venture to paint only when I feel compelled to preserve, strictly for my own enjoyment, some scene that I fear I may never see again. In this case I knew that the thatched roof of the byre was rapidly disintegrating and that it must soon be replaced with corrugated iron. I knew too, from shivering experience, that in winter the dry-stone walls merely acted as funnel
s for arctic draughts and fine snow and that if Bonny were ever to have reasonably comfortable quarters they would have to be mortared and cemented. From the point of picturesqueness I regretted having to replace the thatch, but the prospect of the walls being mortared and thus denying access to all the little birds which nightly shared Bonny’s steading was indeed a gloomy one. Admittedly, I rarely glimpsed the birds but, each morning, the stall was so liberally betokened that I knew there must have been at least a dozen of them snug in their secret roosts above Bonny’s warm breath. I liked to imagine the night noisy with their cheeped ‘gardyloos’.

  ‘You know,’ went on Yawn, ‘there’s some of these painters comes here and sits around for days with their paints and when they show you what they’ve done you’d not be knowin’ whether it was the hills themselves or some cocks of old hay that’s been left out in the wet you’re lookin’ at. Indeed, I’ve seen my cow paint better pictures with his tail on the back of his stall than some of them. But that,’ he made an indulgent gesture towards my pad, ‘dial’s like, right enough.’ He watched me for a few moments longer. ‘You’ll be after wantin’ a nice frame for it when you’ve done,’ he suggested.

  ‘Oh no,’ I said, and firmly resisting further compliments I put the finished painting inside an old blotter along with several others and dismissed it from my mind.

  The following morning again dawned sunlit and light-hearted with a brisk wind that coaxed the ripples of the bay into new-toothed baby smiles and as soon as I heard the noise of the tractor in the distance I pulled on a pair of gumboots and went to join the coterie of people who were already assembled on Yawn’s croft. The cultivation of the land in Bruach could not begin until the cattle, which were allowed to graze the crofts from the end of November until the spring, had been driven back again to the hills, and so it was always well into April or even early May before spades were probing into the hoof-pitted ground and ‘pliachs’ were thrusting through the newly turned soil. There were no tractors in Bruach. Only one man still used the ‘cas chrom’, the old hand plough. Those who were lucky enough to possess a horse and considerate enough to feed it oats in the winter might be able to use it for the spring ploughing but generally the horses, left to roam the moors wild and unfed throughout the severe winters, were too weak to pull a plough by the time spring came round. For most of the crofters, the only alternative to digging was to await with that peculiar brand of patience inherent in the Gael the arrival of the itinerant Department of Agriculture tractor and, as the tractor’s schedule, never a very strict one, was likely to be upset by weather and by mechanical breakdowns so that it might be late in the season before it reached the village, the noise of its approaching engine was always a very welcome sound indeed.