Beautiful Just! (17 page)

My friends, Robert and Sue, were so impressed by the slow pace and the contentment of life in the Highlands they became enamoured with the idea of looking for a place of their own. Bruach, they decided, was too wild and barren for them to think of settling even had there been a croft available.

‘You ought to write a book and call it “How Bare was my Bruach”!' suggested Sue.

After much map searching and much scanning of the newspapers which circulated in the crofting counties they came to the conclusion that their best course was to make a leisurely tour of the Highlands and keep an eye open for a place which offered what they were seeking, i.e. tranquillity without isolation; beauty without barrenness. They suggested I accompany them and since Morag was there when the idea was first mooted she volunteered immediately to look after my cow and hens. There was little to do on the croft now that my winter stack was complete. Bonny was still out on the hill and needed only to be milked and given a bundle of hay each day. The hens had to be fed and the eggs collected but until Bonny had to be brought in to the byre at night I was relatively free and the temptation to accept the invitation and see parts of Scotland I had never previously visited was strong indeed.

‘Of course she'll come,' Morag assured them with such emphasis that I think they expected me to begin packing right away.

We set off a few days later and in golden sunshine made for the remoter parts of the Highlands, spending the night wherever reasonably attractive lodging offered accommodation so late in the season when snow was already capping the sable hills and the yellow-reeded bogs and pools were stilled by frost. We had enjoyed Highland hospitality everywhere. The colder the night the warmer the fires they built for us; the more blankets they piled on our beds; the more hot water bottles they put in them; the more food they loaded on to our plates. ‘Marvellous people,' Robert frequently observed.

‘They all look so happy and serene,' said Sue. ‘I've always thought Highlanders were dour and uncommunicative but it simply isn't true.'

It is really asking too much to make one's first tour of the Highlands and house-hunt at the same time. One becomes so overwhelmed by the vastness of one's surrounding; by the superabundance of hill peaks; the glory of lochs; the slightly intimidating desolation of the moors, that one is capable of doing little else but marvel at their wildness. So it was with Robert and Sue. Though they saw many deserted looking croft houses in situations which strongly appealed to them ferreting out information regarding their owners and the possibility of sale had proved, as I suspected it might, a frustrating task for a tourist. ‘I have never before experienced such courteous dissimulation,' Robert complained. ‘They seem willing to give one almost anything but the information one wants. I believe sometimes I'm actually talking to the owners of the place I'm enquiring about without them ever betraying the fact,' he ended with a chuckle.

‘I think you might find it more rewarding to put an advertisement in one of the Highland papers,' I suggested meekly.

‘I think you're possibly right,' Robert conceded and thereafter we gave only desultory attention to house hunting and simply allowed ourselves to revel in the scenery. We had enjoyed splendid weather for our trip; indeed Robert and Sue had not seen a drop of rain since they had set foot in Scotland but the day before we were due to return to Bruach there was a perceptible difference in the day.

‘I shan't mind going back to the office nearly so much if the weather turns nasty before we leave,' Robert said.

‘The office!' moaned Sue. ‘After this.' We were having a picnic lunch on a hill overlooking a long narrow loch that was like a blue furrow between ridges of the hills and not even the croak of a hoody crow or the bleat of a sheep broke the all-enveloping silence. I understood the despair in her voice.

We returned to the car and it was as if we had absorbed some of the silence for none of us spoke until Robert brought the car to a stop outside a small hotel whose front lawn bordered the loch.

‘This looks okay,' he said and went to enquire as to the possibility of our spending the night there. When he reappeared he was nodding affirmatively. As we took our overnight bags out of the car we felt the first sleety cold drops on our faces.

We were the only guests at the hotel and after eating a traditional and immensely satisfying high tea we were invited by the friendly old couple who apparently owned the hotel to forsake the indifferent comfort of the residents' lounge for the snugness of their private living room, one end of which was conveniently bounded by the back entrance to the bar. Robert suggested drinks but the old man held up his hand and a moment or two later his wife appeared with a tray on which there were five glasses of whisky and a jug of peat tinted water. We raised our glasses to the old couple and wishing them ‘Slainte Mhath!' began sipping what was to me the mellowest whisky I have ever tasted in my life. The old man questioned us about our travels and in turn Robert plied him with enquiries about crofts that might be for sale but, as always, it seemed that the crofts in the vicinity were claimed by the locals or by their relatives who even though they might live on the mainland still held on to the houses as holiday homes or as places they hoped to retire to.

‘Ach, but this is a gey lonely place,' said the old woman. ‘I doubt you would want to live here.'

I looked at Sue. I had no doubt of her desire to live in the Highlands but I guessed she would soon be wanting more company and more amenities than a lonely croft could provide. But it was nice that she should have her dream.

The old man had a folded newspaper on his knee and I asked him if there was anything of interest in it. He offered it to me and pointing a finger to a headline said, ‘I was just readin' to Peggy the piece about the twin brothers. Now that's a strange thing, do you not think so?' I began to read.

‘Read it aloud,' pleaded Sue, so I read them the report of twin brothers, one of whom had been engaged to the daughter of the local gamekeeper, but a few weeks before the marriage was to take place he had been killed in an accident. Some time later the surviving twin had become engaged to the same girl but only forty-eight hours before the wedding day he too had met with a fatal accident. The gamekeeper's daughter was quoted as saying she ‘had the feeling that her first fiancé had reached out beyond the grave and prevented the marriage'.

‘Aye, that would be the way of it just,' said the old man. ‘There's things happen in these parts that's so strange when you come to tell of them folks don't believe you.' He sat back in his chair and puffed at his pipe. ‘And since no Highlander can bear to be thought a liar,' he went on, ‘then they don't trouble themselves to tell of these things.' His bright blue eyes regarded us challengingly through a mist of tobacco smoke.

‘Well that story of the twins certainly sounds a fascinating coincidence,' said Sue, who shared my appetite for ‘coincidences'.

‘Aye, indeed but there's plenty says these things are true enough,' maintained the old man.

‘What things?' asked Robert, lifting his empty glass and also his eyebrows to indicate that it was his turn to stand a round. The old woman took our glasses and while we waited for her to refill them only the snarl of the flames round the logs on the fire and the sad keening of the wind as if over the passing of autumn broke the silence. The old woman placed our full glasses in front of us and sat down again.

‘It's true that the spirit can reach out beyond the grave,' explained the old man in answer to Robert's question. He took a good sip of his whisky and looked across at his wife. She glanced up from her knitting and I had the distinct impression she had given him a nod of permission. ‘There was the like of such a thing not so far from here,' he continued. ‘It was a good few years back now but just the same I remember it well enough.' Sue and I exchanged delighted smiles. We guessed there was a story coming and neither of us could have chosen a better way to spend the evening than by listening to a tale beside a log fire in a lamplit room.

‘There was these three crofts, see, at the head of the loch,' went on the old man. ‘An' they were owned by three brothers. It was one big croft just when the father was alive but in dyin' he split it among his three sons so it wouldn't seem as if he was favouring the one more than the other. But ach, it made the crofts that small and awkward to work that two of the brothers agreed they would work theirs together as well as they could which was not all that easy seeing the third brother had the croft that lay in between their own crofts. I hardly like to say it but the third brother was always the jealous one; right from a youngster he was spiteful an' thrawn as they say; what we would call in the Gaelic a “Greannach”.' He looked at me. ‘Yon will have come across that word, I doubt?' he asked. I nodded. ‘Aye well, the Greannach was that blinded by spite against the other two he would as often spoil himself in trying to prevent them making the best use of their crofts.' He looked at the bottom of his empty glass and gestured to us to finish ours. Sue and I refused firmly but the old woman filled the glasses for the two men. ‘Ach, it was a foolish thing the father did, that, splitting up the croft though no doubt he was tellin' himself it was for the best.' He kicked back a log that had rolled out of the fire. ‘An, the time goes on,' he resumed, ‘an' the Greannach got himself a wife an' then they had a daughter. Then another brother married an' had a son. The other brother didn't marry at all so when he died he left his croft to the son of his brother so that after a time the son came to own two of the three crofts. What then could be better than that he should marry his cousin, the daughter of the Greannach, so the three crofts would be one again? The young man set about courting his cousin but though she herself was pleased enough to have him her father refused to let her. She was old enough by then to choose for herself but the Greannach was so determined the young man shouldn't have his croft that he threatened if his daughter married her cousin she should never inherit it. Ach, it was a pity an' more than a pity right enough for I believe the young man would have made his cousin a good husband an' the three crofts together would have given them as good a livin' as they needed for these parts. But seein' her father was so set against it the girl wouldn't go against him. No son or daughter of the croft would want it to go to a stranger an' seein' there was no other relations nearer than Australia strangers is what they would have been, so the girl maybe acted wise enough. Even on his deathbed the Greannach was after makin' his daughter swear she wouldn't marry her cousin an' what she said to quiet him no one but herself would know but after he died she got the croft. A couple of years went by an' the young man thought maybe it was time he tried his luck with his cousin again. She didn't take much persuadin' seein' she'd not been over fond of her father with his mean ways an' his sharp temper an' since she was thirty past an' a wee bitty deaf an' a wee bitty short-sighted she knew well enough she'd not be likely to get another chance if she waited. So they arranged the weddin' an' the young man was well pleased at the thought of the three crofts bein' one again an' he planned how he'd work it the next season without being girned at for lettin' his cow put a foot over the boundary or maybe takin' a sweep of grass that wasn't his. The weddin' was planned for November for then all the harvest would be in but that summer an' autumn were so wet the work was held up again an' again an' they had to delay the weddin' until the New Year. Ach, it was terrible weather that year; great pourings of rain that turned the crofts into bogs that the cattle churned up with their hooves; the drains overflowin' so there was that much mud goin' into the wells you couldn't take a drink of water without lettin' it settle in the pail for an hour or two after you'd taken it from the well. An' the burns were that swollen they flowed white like snow down the mountainside.' He paused and stared meditatively into the fire; his wife reached for a pair of spectacles and started to count the stitches on her needles; Robert lit another cigar and Sue and I sat quite still waiting for the old man to continue his story.

‘Three days before the weddin' the girl was thinkin' she ought to go an' tidy up her father's grave seein' it was comin' up to the New Year an' seein' she was goin' to flout him anyway. She'd done him well, mind, an' had a fine gravestone erected for him only six months before an' had his name put on it along with the date of his death an' a ‘Rest in Peace' to calm him down as she thought, but she was keen he should be spruced up for Hogmanay. The burial ground was about three miles away round the other side of the loch an' the rain was still pourin' down when she left the house but ach, she didn't mind rain; she was well used to it. It was after dark that evenin' when the young man went to her house to do his bit of courtin' an' when he found the place in darkness an' the peats cold on the hearth he was askin' himself where she could be. The cattle were still standin' beside the byre wantin' in an' the henhouse wasn't closed up so he guessed the hens hadn't been fed. He looked around the croft an' shouted but gettin' no sight nor sound of his cousin he made for the shepherd's house to ask did they see her anywhere. Right enough, they told him, she'd called there on her way to the burial ground but they had no seen her comin' back yet. The shepherd an' the young man thought they'd best go lookin' for the girl an' they took lanterns an' set out callin' out her name as they went along. It was in the burial ground itself they found her an' at first all they could make out was her boots stickin' out from beneath the heavy gravestone. Seemingly the ground had got that soft with all the rain an' the gravestone hadn't been given a chance to settle properly an' it had toppled over an' crushed her just as she was leanin' over attendin' to the grave.' The old man drained his glass.