The Sea for Breakfast Read online

  It was the custom for all the would-be hirers of the tractor to band together and help one another with their planting, not only because the tractor was charged by the hour or because of the ever-present fear that the weather might break but because in Bruach potato planting was, curiously enough, traditionally a co-operative task and it was entered into with something like a festival spirit. A string of women and girls, all with bright floral aprons covering their tweed skirts and all gumbooted like myself, were stationed along the plot when I arrived. Others were filling pails and bowls from the sacks of potatoes and fertilizers, their unrestrained chuckling and chattering adding yet more geniality to the day. The men, sombre in comparison yet equally loquacious, were carrying on their backs the last creelfuls of dung to the heaps dotted along the length of the plot. The manipulation of heavy creels of dung requires a certain amount of skill as well as strength. The men first removed their caps to save them from faffing off and being buried in the dung and then, as they bent well forward, they jerked up the bottom of the creel from behind so that the contents spilled out over their heads. As every one of the men showed a round, bald patch on his head when he removed his cap I was forced to the conclusion that hair and potatoes do not respond to the same fertilizers. When the tractor was ready to start ploughing, the men, except for Yawn, took forks and plunged them into the heaps of dung and, as the furrow was turned, they threw the dung into it. Yawn followed, placing potatoes at regular intervals on the dung, demonstrating with unspoken authority to the women who followed him how far apart he wished the plants spacing. Those of us who were not planting filled and carried pails of artificial fertilizer and, straggling in the wake of the tractor like dilatory gulls, we circled each potato with a handful of fertilizer. Sarah, who was supposed to be in the kitchen preparing a ‘strupak’ for everyone, kept scurrying anxiously from the house to inspect progress and to plunge her bare hands deep into a pile of dung to add a couple of handfuls when she feared a potato might suffer from lack of nourishment. She wore a sacking apron over a plum-coloured velvet dress, the deep-hanging sleeves of which were lavishly trimmed with flounces. The flounces were soon showing signs of overnourishment.

  When the last sod had been turned and the empty sacks had been shaken out in the breeze, we sat on the grass waiting for the tractor-man and those who had accepted the invitation to a ‘strupak’ before moving on to a neighbour’s planting.

  ‘I could do with a cup of tea myself,’ said Erchy, ‘but I’m damty sure I’m no goin’ to have to talk to old Flora just so as to get it.’

  ‘Nor me either,’ panted Anna Vic who, despite her stoutness and the shortness of her breath, was one of the nimblest workers in the village.

  ‘That old cailleach,’ went on Erchy with strong disapproval, ‘I believe she’d still stay fixed if you snatched the chair from under her.’

  ‘Indeed yes,’ echoed Anna Vic, with a giggle. ‘Sarah was around at our own house the other night askin’ would she get a broody hen so she could hatch out some chicks. I hadn’t one, so I told her she should try puttin’ a clutch of eggs under Flora to see what would happen.’ She laughed apologetically.

  ‘I believe they would have hatched too,’ said Erchy, ‘but I doubt you’d never be able to find the chicks supposin’ they did. Not till they was grown hens anyway.’

  ‘Aye, but, poor soul, it must be awful sittin’ there with nothin’ to look foward to from one year to another.’

  ‘Nothin’ but gettin’ the flu’ every winter,’ corrected Erchy.

  When the village-potato planting was finished the tractor started to plough for corn. I was fortunately able to grow enough potatoes in my garden for my own requirements and also to provide Bonny with her evening mash of boiled potatoes dried off with oatmeal, which is the nightly fare of a cosseted Hebridean cow, but I yearned to see some of the matted turf of my croft turned into black earth to match the crofts of my neighbours and so I resolved to try growing a patch of oats. I had already learned how to tie and stook corn from helping Morag and I was fairly certain that I should be able to get someone to come and cut it for me when it was ready. So the tractor came and ploughed and Peter, always fiercely eager to oblige, came and broke down the sods by harnessing himself to some home-made harrows and dragging them over and over the plot. To the casual observer the sowing of oats looks ridiculously easy and when I used to hear Morag importuning various male relatives to come and sow corn for her I used to wonder why such an independent old woman did not undertake the task herself. Whenever there was an opportunity I watched the sowers at work. They appeared to do nothing more strenuous or scientific than to walk steadily up and down the plot scattering handfuls of seed from the pouch full of grain which they wore as a sling over one shoulder. I evaded acceptance of Yawn’s offer without committing myself to a definite refusal and, tying an old sheet over my shoulder and filling the pouch of it with grain, I went forth sowing. It was not long before I began to suspect that there was a good deal more to sowing corn than there had always looked to be. I paused to survey my work. In some parts of the plot the grain lay almost as thick as it lay in my pouch: in others it was as scant as if I had aimed each seed singly, like a dart at a dartboard. I gave up when I had covered a few more square yards without noticeable improvement in my aim and as soon as dusk came I surreptitiously forked earth over my efforts and humbly approached Yawn, who came the following day.

  ‘I see you’ve been after tryin’ to do it for yourself,’ he rebuked me, for the birds had traitorously uncovered my attempts at concealment.

  ‘Yes, I did, as a matter of feet,’ I admitted with limp gaiety. ‘It always looks so simple when other people do it.’

  Yawn grunted and started to sow, the grain scattering from each effortless swing of his arm with the conscientious regularity of spray from a watering can.

  ‘I wish you’d tell me the secret of getting the seed to fall so regularly,’ I said.

  Yawn retorted with another grunt.

  ‘Is there a special way of sowing so that the seed falls so regularly?’ I persisted, for in spite of having tried and failed, it still looked remarkably easy.

  ‘Yes, there is,’ said Yawn reluctantly, not lifting his eyes from the ground. ‘You must always see that you throw it five grains to the horse’s hoof-mark,’ an instruction which, considering the ground had been ploughed by tractor and harrowed by Peter, wearing gumboots, was only faintly enlightening. I stood watching him perplexedly while the shadows of gulls’ wings passed unconcernedly over the plot. In the early morning the gulls would be stuffing themselves on the grain, abortively it seemed, for the locals maintained that the birds could not digest the grain and vomited it shortly after eating it. Still baffled by Yawn’s technique I left him absorbed in his task while I went to put on the kettle for his ‘strupak’. When I returned he had finished sowing and was himself watching Peter who had brought his graipe and was forking over the seed.

  ‘You could get a sub-side-y on this ploughin’,’ Yawn told me. ‘There’s not been a plough on this croft for years and there’s a good grant for it.’

  ‘Oh, I hardly think it worth while,’ I said. ‘It’s such a small plot.’

  ‘Indeed, it’s no small at all. I believe it’s the same size near enough to my own piece and that’s near an acre.’

  ‘An acre? Not that plot we were planting the other day with potatoes behind the tractor?’

  ‘Aye, that one.’

  ‘That was never an acre, Yawn, or anything like it,’ I contradicted flatly, after a swift mental rehearsal of the table of square measure.

  Yawn turned on me a withering look that gradually grew less withering as he realized I might possibly know what I was talking about. ‘Well,’ he conceded with lofty defiance, ‘it was an acre long anyway.’ He stalked away crossly, not waiting for his cup of tea, but a day or two later when he had forgiven me for being right and wished to make amends he was back again at my door with a parcel under his arm.


  ‘I have but what’ll do a nice frame for the picture you were paintin’,’ he said. ‘I got it washed up on the shore a day or two back just. It’s lost its picture and I’ve had to put a wee bit board on the back and this bit chain I had by me to hang it. See and get your picture now and we’ll try will it fit.’

  Feeling rather touched by his thoughtfulness I went into the bedroom and got my painting and when I came back into the kitchen Yawn had unwrapped the parcel and was proudly holding up a very distinctive horseshoe-shaped frame enamelled in turquoise blue. I stifled an incredulous gasp and watched his face intently as he carefully inserted the picture between the backing and the frame. I swear there was no trace of guile in his expression. ‘There now,’ he said, holding it up for my inspection. ‘Do you not think that looks fine now?’

  With a tremulousness that he fortunately took to be modesty I agreed that it did indeed.

  ‘It makes all ‘the difference to a picture to put it in a nice frame,’ he told me. ‘Now, where would you like it hangin’ and I’ll put a nail in for you while I’m here?’ I indicated a spot in the darkest corner of the room. ‘Ach, but it’ll no catch the light there at all. Folks will not see it there.’

  ‘It’s not a very good painting,’ I demurred.

  ‘Ach, it’s no bad. No bad at all. What about havin’ it here?’ He held it up on the wall above the cooker. ‘See now, there’s a nail here all ready for it.’ Silently I cursed the obstinancy of that one nail. Yawn stepped back to admire the effect. ‘Beautiful just,’ he commented. I echoed his admiration. ‘I knew as soon as I saw the frame lyin’ there on the shore that it was just the proper frame for your picture,’ he assured me with solemn affability as he hurriedly took his leave, no doubt to escape the profuseness of my gratitude. Dear Yawn. How shocked he would have been had he suspected the double entendre of his last remark. But if anyone between here and America happens to have lost a turquoise blue enamelled lavatory seat they might be interested to know that it hangs in my kitchen above the cooker framing an amateurish representaron of an old stone byre with a decaying thatched roof and a hem of tired daffodils. It looks beautiful just!

  As spring advanced and the days lengthened to accommodate all the extra work it brought, peats were cut and dried and stacked; cows calved. Normally Bruach cows were left out on the hill to calve where they chose, the calves being left to run with their mothers until the rounding up for the autumn sales but, when the date for Bonny’s calving drew close, Morag, who had never ceased to be as watchful over my interests as her own, advised me to bring her into the croft so that I should be able to keep an eye on her.

  ‘You mind yon trouble our own Ruari had with his bought in heifer,’ she cautioned.

  I remembered the trouble very well. One evening whilst I was still living with Morag, Bella, Ruari’s shy and untranquil wife, had rushed round calling distractedly for Morag to come and help because their new heifer was ‘stuck up with his calf. I was implored to go and ’phone for the vet. Some hours later, when I was sitting in my own room with my knitting and my nightcap of cider, I heard a knock on the door and one of the young village boys put his head round and said, with perfect seriousness: ‘Morag’s wantin’ a clean sheet for the calf’s bed.’

  I could only echo his request uncomprehendingly.

  ‘Aye, she’s sayin’ you will get one from the drawer up in the wee room.’

  For a few moments I stared at the boy, trying to reconcile my knowledge of Bruach calf pens with the likelihood of a calf being put to bed in clean sheets in one of them. Deciding that the boy was probably playing some game of ‘dare and do’ and I was the chosen dupe, I grinned and relaxed into my chair.

  ‘She’s wantin’ it right away if you’ll give it to me.’ The boy’s voice was edged with intolerance.

  ‘Are you sure it has to be a clean sheet?’ I mocked, fully expecting to hear a burst of giggling from his cronies who I felt sure were bolstering him with their presence out there in the dark.

  ‘Yes indeed.’ His expression grew tense as I still made no attempt to go upstairs. ‘Must I go back and tell her you’ll no give me a sheet then?’ he demanded testily. ‘Will I tell her she must come and get it for herself?’

  Against my better judgement I went up to the wee room and taking a fresh-laundered sheet from the drawer I thrust it into his waiting hands, resigning myself to the fact that if it was a hoax it would be all over the village by morning. I could, of course, have gone over to Ruari’s and made discreet enquiries but as my presence would doubtless have added to the complexities of the situation it seemed unfair to pester them with my doubts. Morag had still not returned when I went to bed that night and the next morning when she brought in my breakfast she was looking as dishevelled as if she had spent the night outdoors in a gale of wind.

  ‘Well, Ruari has a fine bull calf for himself after all the trouble,’ was her greeting. I murmured suitably, waiting for the teasing which I was sure would soon begin. ‘An’ fancy Bella never havin’ a clean sheet that would do the calf’s bed,’ she exclaimed disgustedly.

  I answered her with a look of easily simulated amazement.

  ‘Wasn’t all she could find an old cover that the colours leaked out of when it got wet,’ she enlarged. ‘It would never have done for the beast. I would have been ashamed of myself.’ She shook her head sadly over her sister-in-law’s shortcomings.

  ‘I thought the boy was playing a hoax on me when he came and asked for a clean sheet for the calf’s bed,’ I confessed ruefully.

  ‘You did? Right enough he told me you didn’t seem as if you wanted to give it to him. Why was that now?’

  ‘I just couldn’t imagine a calf being put to bed between sheets,’ I told her. ‘I still can’t. It sounds so utterly unlikely.’

  Morag suppressed a snigger. ‘But, mo ghaoil, a calf’s bed is what me beast lies in before he’s born. What would be the English for it now?’

  ‘The womb, you mean?’

  ‘Aye, right enough, the womb. Well, that came away with the calf last night and we had to try would we push it back in again with a sheet. Some folk use a bag of straw but Ruari, he would have none of it. A clean sheet, he said, and nothin’ else it had to be.’ As she went into more gruesome details I realized that my appetite for breakfast-haggis and egg – was wilting rapidly.

  ‘And you say everything’s all right now?’ I cut in desperately.

  ‘Ach, aye. The vet had to do a wee operation on the calf but this mornin’ when I sees him he was skippin’ around on his legs as though there’d never been a thing wrong with him.’ She poured herself a cup of tea and sat down. ‘My, but that vet was tired before he was finished and that was at the back of four this mornin’.’

  ‘It was a bitterly cold night too for this time of year,’ I said, mentally experiencing the discomforts of the average Bruach byre.

  ‘Aye, we was all complainin’ of the cold though the vet was sayin’ he was warm enough where he was.’ She ended in a little hiccough of laughter.

  ‘Why, where was that?’ I asked innocently.

  ‘Half-way inside the cow for the best part of the time, mo ghaoil,’ she informed me with great relish.

  So Bonny awaited her confinement on the comparative lushness of the croft, becoming more of a household pet daily. She was the nearest thing to the real old Highlander it had been possible for me to buy: shaggy, red-haired, with a black-ringed snout. Her horns were crooked.

  ‘One of her horns points to Heaven and the other to Hell,’ my neighbours said when they saw her. ‘You’ll find she’s half angel and half devil.’ But she was mostly angel. I could perhaps have regularized her appearance if I had taken Morag’s advice which was to bake a large turnip in the hot peat ashes and clap it quickly on to the crooked horn, gradually coaxing it into position as it softened. I doubted if Bonny would take kindly to the treatment and secretly I was glad of her cock-eyed appearance because it made her more easily distinguishable from the scores of oth
er Highland cattle out on the hill. I had embarrassed memories of volunteering to feed Morag’s cows and of standing calling forlornly in the gathering dusk unable to tell one cow from another, until one of them had had the good sense to recognize me.

  When Bonny did calve she accomplished it uneventfully. I went to pay her my usual morning visit and found she had a tiny replica of herself snuggling into her flank. Her eyes were dark and dilated with love and she lowed softly as I approached, but though she shook her wide horns at me in a cautionary way when I started to fondle the calf she was careful to ensure that they did not touch me. The first thrill of having a croft of my own had come when I held in my hand the first warm egg from my hens. Then had come the acquisition of Bonny; the first turned earth, and now Bonny’s calf which was a sturdy little thing with a tightly curled light brown coat that reminded me of aerated chocolate.

  Once all the village cows had calved, milk, which was always scarce in winter, became super-abundant. Crowdie was offered with every strupak and cream was not only served at every meal but was smoothed on the skin as an emollient for sunburn. As the days grew warmer and we discarded winter coverings, the clegs became aggressively familiar; weeds seemed to appear in full stature overnight, imperilling the young potato plants; the grass on the crofts grew long enough to ripple in the wind; the midges which outrival Glasgow bread and lavish Public Assistance as the curse of the Highlands, came in their hordes, vanquishing the clegs no doubt in the manner of ‘greater fleas,’ and tormented us as we hoed and earthed up our potatoes. The rainy spell of July came and went leaving behind it a lush carpet of growth that effectively camouflaged the stony soil and when, just about the time in English churches the harvest festival hymns were being rehearsed, scythes were brought out and sharpened: the hay harvest had begun.