Beautiful Just! (16 page)

Morag said, ‘I'm thinkin' the rain's no far away.' I turned to look at her askance as she dug her hayfork into the ground and held on to it with both hands as if for support while she scanned the sea.

‘Oh, no!' I protested. Everything had been going so well that I had been too absorbed to perceive how the sun had paled at the approach of an army of dark clouds which were massing over the outer islands. Now as I paused I could see the treachery in the sky and feel the breeze renewing its strength.

‘You'd best not open up any more of those cocks,' Erchy warned. ‘We'll maybe have time to finish what we have spread just before she'll be here.' I felt myself sagging with tiredness. The stack was two-thirds built and if only the weather had lived up to its early morning promise I would have been able to go to bed blissful in the knowledge that my hay was secure for the winter. But when the rain came and there was no doubting now that it was being pushed closer and closer by the wind I would have to revert once more to staying constantly attuned to the portents of the sky; to trying to anticipate the attempts of the wind to destroy my haycocks and to trying to steal a march on the frequent squalls while I waited for the promise of another fine day which would coincide with Erchy's availability and inclination to complete the stack building. As the first splodgy raindrops fell coldly on our tingling arms and faces we pulled the tarpaulin over the top of the unfinished stack, weighted it down with boulders tied to the corners, and as I leaned my fork and rake against the wall of the barn I thought that even the prospect of a respite from work was little solace for my disappointment at not seeing the job completed. The rain brought an early twilight and we returned to the house for a meal of rabbit casserole which had been keeping warm in the oven. In the lamplight I saw that Morag's face looked drawn and tired and I was ashamed of having allowed her to work so hard. Physically her job had been the most demanding but both she and Erchy had insisted that it was she who must throw up the hay since on a croft even the most simple looking tasks required a degree of expertise and neither of them considered me skilful enough to do the job. ‘Not without I'd be havin' to swear at you, an' I wouldn't want to do that,' Erchy explained.

‘You'll have plenty hay this winter,' said Morag. ‘Even supposin' you don't get any more of it into the stack you'll do well enough.'

‘Unless she buys in another beast,' suggested Erchy. They looked at me as if expecting an answer.

‘Yes, I have thought of that,' I admitted. There was a subsidy on cows and since my croft had yielded well I thought I might just as well draw two lots of subsidy as one. ‘Have you heard of anyone who's thinking of selling a good cow?' I asked them.

‘Ach, you shouldn't be thinkin' of buyin' in a cow,' Erchy told me. ‘You'd be best to get a calf an' rear it yourself.'

‘And where will I get a calf at this time of year?' I put to them. They shook their heads and murmured dubiously.

‘It's a pity yon fellow they used to call the “black drover” isn't still alive,' said Erchy.

‘Did he have good calves?' I asked.

‘He'd give any woman that went to bed with him a good calf,' returned Erchy. ‘An' they were the best, too. He'd make sure of that.'

‘Whis!' Morag chided him. ‘Miss Peckwitt doesn't want to be told things like that.'

‘Why not?' demanded Erchy. ‘He's dead now so she's too damty late anyway.'

‘Ach, you're a terrible man for the lies,' she told him.

‘It's no lie indeed,' began Erchy but Morag silenced him with an arrogantly lifted hand. I glimpsed the trace of a smile touching Erchy's mouth as he fixed his attention on a ceiling beam immediately above his head. We heard the drone of an engine which ceased outside the house.

‘That's the nurse surely,' said Morag. In Bruach, except in summer when the tourists poured into the village, one could identify engine noises as being that of the bus, the grocery van or the nurse's car and since it was not time for the bus and not the right day of the week for the grocery van to come then it needed little reasoning to know that the only remaining probability was the nurse's car. A few moments later the nurse bounced into the kitchen. Unlike the Bruachites she, being no Highlander, professed always to be in a hurry.

‘I mustn't stay,' she announced with practised breathlessness, ‘but I just wanted to ask you if you're going to this dance Flora's on about. I said I'd find out for her how many were going and what I was thinking was if you'd like to go as a nurse you could borrow one of my uniforms.' Her eyes went wistfully to the table where there was a plate of small iced cakes and another of sliced bunloaf.

‘Surely you have time to take a strupak,' I invited.

‘It looks so tempting,' she confessed and promptly sat down beside Erchy. ‘I'll just take a cup in my hand.'

Erchy pushed the plate of cakes towards her. ‘Take one seein' this is what you came for anyway,' he teased. She blinked away a coy smile as she took a cake.

‘What do you think about this dance?' she asked, looking at me.

‘I'm not going,' I told her.

‘You're not?' I shook my head. ‘You used to enjoy a dance,' she reminded me.

‘Ach, she's thinkin' she's too old for them now,' Erchy informed her and the nurse, who was some years older than I, blushed. He was right, of course. I was getting too old for such capers and Bruach dancing was so rigorous that at the end of each dance the partners did not thank each other politely but thanked God audibly.

‘Oh, do come,' pressed the nurse. But I would not be persuaded.

‘I never did like fancy dress dances anyway,' I added by way of excuse.

‘What are you dressin' up as yourself?' Erchy asked her but she would not tell him. ‘There's a good few goin' all the same,' he told her and nodded across at me. ‘Yon man that was over here buyin' your dung was tellin' me he's thinkin' he might go himself.'

‘What will he be after dressin' himself up as?' asked Morag.

‘Indeed I don't know. Unless he's plannin' to go as a heap of manyer an' that's why he came to get the dung when he did.'

The nurse sniffed. ‘He wouldn't need to dress up much if that's what he's going as,' she said with elegant sarcasm. She put down her cup. ‘I must go anyway,' she told us. ‘I have to see Alistair yet tonight.'

‘I'll go with you, then,' Erchy proposed. ‘I told the cailleach I'd go some time.'

Together they went out into the now wet and blustery evening and through the window we saw the headlights of the car probing their way along the narrow road. I had got out of the habit of drawing the curtains since in Bruach one did not want to shut out the night but rather to allow it to share one's company. Morag sighed. ‘I'd best be away myself,' she said but I pressed her to stay and brewed another pot of tea and while we sat at the table drinking it she told me of her childhood; of sitting round the peat fire which was in the centre of the room; of her mother and grandmother spinning and carding wool in the evenings; of herself knitting stockings for the family; of their unquestioning belief in curses and the powers of some people to lift them; of her own longing to go to school. ‘Aye, an' I mind when I was at school first there was this new teacher came from the mainland an' he got us children singing',

“Jesus is my dearest friend,
I love him more than coal.”
'

‘Coal?' I interrupted.

She nodded. ‘That's what we used to sing right enough until one day he tells us to say the words just an' not sing them an' when he hears us say “coal”, says he, “It's not coal, children, but gold”, though he didn't think to tell us what gold was an' none of us cared to ask him. So we sang about gold an' I mind when we young ones got outside we were after askin' each other what like of stuff it was. See,' she explained, ‘we'd none of us heard of it or seen the like of it that we knew of. We knew coal was kind of precious since it was only the laird that could afford to buy it so we knew we'd have to be lovin' Jesus plenty if we loved him more than coal but we didn't know what use there would be for this stuff called gold. We children made it up between us that it must be some sort of stuff that warmed you better than coal.' She looked at my astonished face. ‘There now,' she said, ‘that's how far back we were in those days.'

‘When did you first see a coal fire,' I asked her.

‘Not till I was workin' at the laird's house an' I was sixteen by then,' she replied. ‘One of the things I had to do there was to get in the coal for the fires an' I mind thinkin' the first time I had to do with it that we children must have made Jesus awful sad to be singin' to him that we only loved him more than these pails of dirty black stuff I was after carryin'.' She smiled reminiscently. ‘Aye, but those days are gone an' now there's not a one that cannot afford to buy coal to burn along with their peats, even if they don't see much gold.' The room was quiet except for the buffeting of the wind and the whine of a draught under the door.

‘Was there much entertainment in those days for the young people?' I asked her.

‘Indeed more than there is now,' she replied. ‘There was shinty for the men an' then the laird would give a dance at the backend of the year for the estate workers an' anyone that had a mind to come. These days you'll not see a dance in Bruach from one year to the next.'

‘Did you do much dancing?'

‘When I was young I did,' she admitted.

‘Did you ever fall in love?' I pursued.

Her month was softened by a fugutive smile. ‘Not love the way you English would have it,' she told me. ‘But I wasn't passed by,' she added proudly.

‘No one special?' I persisted.

‘Ach, there was a young gamekeeper at the time helpin' out the regular gamekeeper but he was such a dour one I didn't know for sure was he wantin' me or not.'

‘How was he dour?'

‘Ach, he was that feart of folks makin' a game of him, though why they would I don't know for he was a well set up young man. I mind him at the laird's dance one time an' I knew he was wantin' to catch my eye but I was thinkin' to myself that if he hadn't the nerve to ask me to dance then he wasn't the man for me anyway.'

‘Did he ask you?'

‘Aye, well, he works his way round to where I'm sittin' an' makin' out I'm not seein' him at all. Then when he's right beside me he says quietly, “Are ye dancin'?” No more than that just but “Are ye dancin'?”. Says I without lookin' at him, “Are ye askin'?” Says he, “I'm askin'.” Says I, “I'm dancin',” and with that we started dancin' together but he never spoke another word to me the rest of the night.'

‘Did you meet him again?'

‘Indeed I did so but seein' he was that slow makin' up his mind I thought I was best off without him though he was a fine young fellow. I couldn't have had him anyway for my parents needed the money I was gettin' workin' for the laird an' after about a year or two of courtin' me with his eyes just as you might say he was away to the mainland for another job an' I never heard of him again.' She sighed. ‘Ach, I liked him well enough but he would never have done for my parents seein' he wasn't from these parts.' She yawned. ‘It must be at the back of ten,' she said and looked at the clock, which said it was twenty past six. My clock almost always said it was twenty past six. It was a seven-day clock which had been given to me by an English friend who when she had stayed with me had been distressed because I rarely used clock time. Now that I had a clock I was not much better since I wound it only on impulse; just as I would decide to wash curtains or bake an angel cake, I would decide to wind the clock and since the impulse came only about four times a year for three hundred and thirty-seven days out of three hundred and sixty-five my clock gave the time as twenty past six. Morag rose and pulling her buttonless jacket over her chest she tied it with a belt of rope and refusing the offer of a hurricane lantern dove out into the night leaving me to muse over the image of the diffident young gamekeeper and his approach to the equally diffident young Morag.

‘Are ye dancin'?'

‘Are ye askin'?'

‘I'm askin'.'

‘I'm dancin'.'

It was such an illustrative example of tight-lipped Highland reserve that I went over it again and again until it had settled in my mind like a formula.

Two weeks were to pass before there dawned a morning that gave promise of a calm dry day suitable for stack building and, as luck would have it, on that day I had arranged to catch the bus to the mainland. Two friends of mine, Sue and her husband Robert, were coming to pay me a visit and I had promised to go over to the mainland to meet them and their car and guide them along the road to Bruach. As I waited on the pier for their arrival I looked at the serene blue sky and the lazy sea and as I felt the genial smile of the sun I thought if only I had been home in Bruach I could no doubt have persuaded Erchy to finish my winter stack for me. My visitors were delayed on their journey and it was nearly dusk when we reached Bruach and just as I had lit the lamp and was telling my guests to make themselves comfortable while I rushed round seeing to the outside chores Morag appeared in the doorway. I introduced her and suggested that she might like to stay for the strupak I would shortly be making but she resisted firmly. ‘I have fed your hens,' she told me as she saw me start to prepare mash.

‘Oh, bless you Morag, you're a treasure,' I told her. She made a deprecating gesture, then still standing in the open doorway she turned and pointed out into the gathering dusk and to my delight but to the utter bewilderment of my two guests she declared dramatically. ‘' Tis no myself would be botherin' Miss Peckwitt but 'tis Erchy that's wantin' her to go to him just so he can show her the beautiful shaped cock he has waitin' for her out there.'