Beautiful Just! (7 page)

‘I don't know an' I don't care.' Angy was becoming impatient. ‘All I know is they'd find him all right. We left him in a place where they couldn't miss him.'

‘Where was that?' asked Morag.

‘Didn't I tell you, on the fish slab itself,' retorted Angy. ‘An' since they'd need to have the slab clear before they started filletin' the fish, they'd have to do somethin' with him. They wouldn't just leave him there.'

I found myself swallowing rather hard.

‘The poor man!' breathed Morag.

‘Ach, he wasn't much of a fellow,' said Angy dismissively. ‘He was only a fisherman because he couldn't keep another job an' he was nothin' but a bloody landlubber aboard. Honest, he was so scared of the sea he couldn't pee from the time we left the harbour till the time we got back in again.'

I stood up. ‘It's time I was away home to my bed,' I announced. There was a general move to go and as we stood outside assessing the night before we took our different paths Erchy said, I suspected with the intention of frightening me, ‘I'd like fine to know whether it was Neilly's ghost you saw last night.'

‘Ach, how could it have been?' asked Tearlaich. ‘What would Neilly be wantin' from Miss Peckwitt?'

‘Did you say it was about nine o'clock when you saw him?' Erchy would not leave the subject alone.

‘Yes,' I said resignedly.

‘Then I doubt he was wantin' in to have a listen to the news on the wireless,' said Erchy.

‘More like to listen to the weather forecast,' put in Johnny. ‘He'd be wantin' to know what like of weather he was goin' to get for his own funeral.'

I had been over to the mainland and had finished all my business there several hours before the bus was due to return to Bruach and since the inducements to linger on the mainland were limited to the chilly railway station buffet and the equally chilly local tearoom, both of which offered identical fare and provided identical comfort, i.e. tea and stale cake and straight-backed wooden benches I resolved to begin walking back to Bruach and to take the opportunity of calling in on a friend who lived close to the bus route. When I set out it was a pleasant afternoon in November, cold and clear except for the tendrils of mist which a lisping wind was curling round the crook-backed hills. The wide moors, gashed by the black troughs of peat diggings, stretched on either side of the road and there was no sound save that of my own footsteps; the occasional ‘clunk' of a raven; the mewing of a buzzard and from somewhere in the hills the echoing bleating of sheep. My friend's house was about six miles away and before I had covered five miles I had seen the tendrils of mist spread, densen and merge to enfold all but the skirt edges of the hills and the sky greying to release a thin drizzle of chilly rain. I was beginning to grow tired of walking but I quickened my step, thinking of my friend's warm bright kitchen and of the strupak which would undoubtedly be prepared for me there. However as I approached the house I began to suspect I might be in for a disappointment There was no smoke eddying round the chimney and as I opened the gate I saw with some surprise that the door of the house was tight shut. I turned the handle and poking my head inside called out, ‘Are you there, Marie?' The only response was an inarticulate croak from the direction of the fireplace where an old man sat like a fossil in a wooden chair beside the sluggish peat fire. I recalled Marie having told me about a ninety-year-old uncle of hers who was coming to live with her and guessed that this was he.

‘He Fluke,' I said. The old man only stared at me warily without moving his lips. I assumed he was deaf and shouted my greeting. ‘He Fluke.' He nodded but his ‘He Fluke' in return was reluctant and barely audible. I stepped inside and he shrank back in his chair. ‘Is Marie not at home?' I asked and then repeated my question in a louder voice.

‘Ha Nyall!' His voice was thick and his faded old eyes wide with apprehension.

I moved towards a chair and sat down.

The fire was piled with dry peats but only a wisp of smoke was threading its way round them and I wondered if I dared offer to set the fire blazing again by pushing in some of the dry twigs which lay ready on the hearth.

‘Is Marie about the croft?' I asked. I had to shout the question three times before he understood it and each time I leaned forward to shout he cringed further and further away from me.

‘Ha Nyall!' he muttered and then in a slightly more confident voice added, ‘The doctor.'

My heart sank. If Marie had gone to see the doctor then in all probability she would be returning on the very bus which I had to catch. I realized it was no use waiting. There was no welcome for me here for though the old man was ninety, almost stone deaf and crippled with rheumatism he was obviously so scared of my being a stranger that I feared he might die of fright if I stayed.

‘Oidche Mhath!' I called defeatedly as I closed the door behind me.

‘Oidche Mhath!' The reply came with an instant of animation. It was beginning to grow dark; lamplight glowed behind the misted windows of the croft houses and as I walked on through the scattered village I debated what I should do. The cold had not worried me hitherto but now after my rebuff at Marie's cottage I was aware that my hands and feet were really very cold; that my clothes felt clammy and that my legs were aching with weariness, yet the bus was not due for at least another two hours. Once I had left the village behind there would be no more houses, no shelter of any kind; not even the faintest glimmer of light to be discerned until I came in sight of Bruach while the road itself as it began to wind its way through night-soaked hills would grow steadily darker and eerier. I had taken a torch with me to the mainland intending to get new batteries for it but alas I was informed there was a shortage of batteries so my empty torch lay uselessly at the bottom of my bag. I thought of seeking shelter at one of the croft houses, knowing that I had only to ask and not just shelter but a welcome strupak would be immediately forthcoming but I also knew from my own experience that this hour, just when dusk is closing in over the land, is always the busiest one of the crofter's day and I was loath to burden them with the company of a stranger.

I was passing the last house in the village and with the prospect of the lonely dark road confronting me had more or less decided to overcome my reservations and ask for shelter when I glimpsed an unfamiliar light on my left. With a surge of relief I suddenly remembered there had been talk at one of the ceilidhs about Hamish having recently opened a shop in the shed he had built at the end of his house. ‘Someone else that's after thinkin' he'll make money out of us,' Erchy had said gloomily. I stared at the light only half believing my good luck and then I hurried towards it fearful lest it should disappear leaving me to face once more the decision as to whether I should go on or go back.

I turned the handle of the shop door and went inside. Hamish was leaning on the counter reading a magazine and when he looked up and saw me his surprise was so great his spectacles fell on to the counter.

‘He Fluke!' I greeted him.

‘He Fluke!' he replied with a worried frown that was intended as a disguise for his diffidence.

Hamish was known as the ‘Shenagelly' which Morag translated for me as being a ‘man that doesn't take lightly to women', and I knew him, as he knew me, by sight and reputation only. He was a gangling man, clumsy with shyness and seeing that I intended he and his shop should endure my presence for the next couple of hours I set about putting him at his ease.

‘My, but you have a splendid little store here,' I complimented him as I surveyed his crammed and varied stock of tinned fruit, biscuits, sweeties, butter, flour, crockery, paint, nails, brushes, soap and cigarettes along with what seemed to me a disproportionate quantity of aspirin tablets.

‘Ach!' He waved his hand in a deprecating gesture. ‘I've more than this coming.' He nodded towards the road. ‘Johnny's bringing me a box of gumboots when he comes.' He looked down at my sodden shoes. ‘Ladies' boots, too,' he added.

I too looked down at my shoes. ‘My gumboots are on the bus,' I explained. ‘I've been over to the mainland and when I'd finished there I decided to walk back to Bruach. It was a nice enough day when I started out.'

Hamish was aghast. ‘You've walked all that way?' he asked. ‘Did you no stop any place?' I told him of my plan; to drop in and see Marie and of finding the old man there: alone and aloof. ‘My, my,' he commiserated. ‘You'll not have had a strupak since you left the mainland, then?'

‘I'm not so much missing a strupak as wanting to sit down,' I told him. ‘I wonder would you mind if I sat down on the end of this box while I give you my order?' I indicated a large wooden crate labelled ‘CANDLES'.

‘Ach, this one's best,' said Hamish. ‘That one's wet with the dogs.' He bumbled forward and gathered up some tins so that I could sit down on a box that was clearly marked ‘DO NOT CRUSH'.

‘Lovely,' I said, easing myself down. It was only fractionally warmer inside the shop than outside but at least it was dry and I was comfortable enough as I made my choice of the items he had to offer. When I had paid for my purchases and had stowed them away in my bag I began to cast around for an interesting topic of conversation but Hamish began to clear his throat nervously, and then burst out, ‘Will you take a strupak supposing I make one?' I told him of course that it would be putting him to too much trouble but he must have read the longing in my expression.

‘It is not very nice for you to be sitting in the cold here,' he told me and indicated the door that led through to his house. ‘If you will come with me just through here I will show you my private parts.' Unhesitatingly I followed him. I had heard that Hamish had made himself a ‘swanky' home and I was struck by the difference between it and the usual crofter's house. Here were comfortable armchairs; a writing desk; a polished table, even a square of carpet on the floor. The house smelled of furniture polish instead of the usual mixture of hens' mash, sour milk and peat smoke and when he turned up the jet of the gaslight the sheen on the woodwork showed how much attention was lavished on it. I enthused on its appearance while Hamish filled a kettle from the pail of water, for despite his modern furniture and the convenience of bottled gas he still had to carry all his water from the well. He set the kettle on a small gas ring.

‘If you would care to blow up the fire,' he told me, indicating an extremely functional pair of bellows, ‘I will get some biscuits from out the shop.' Contentedly I went down on my knees and worked the bellows until the flames burst and spread themselves over the dry peats. When Hamish returned he threw on some chunks of driftwood and some pieces of coal.

‘I have closed the shop,' he told me, setting down the hurricane lantern which had provided light for the shop. ‘There will be no one coming now and we can see the headlights of the bus from the window in plenty of time.'

It was so long since I had been entertained in such a charming room and as I sat toasting my feet and drinking hot tea I reflected on my good fortune. Over his strupak Hamish became almost loquacious, telling me of his early life on the mainland. He was, as I suspected, no Highlander: to me he did not even look like one, but his maternal grandmother had been a Highlander and through her he had inherited the croft; his passionate love of the island, and presumably his Highland way of speech. Our talk turned to writing and he confessed that sometimes he wrote poetry; he suggested that I might like him to read some of his poems to me and I, feeling so smug and warm that I could have listened to a party political broadcast without flinching, expressed keen interest. He took a sheaf of papers from the writing desk and started to read in a flat voice that would have ruined a Shakespearean sonnet while all the time he fidgeted so extravagantly – crossing and uncrossing legs and drawing first one knee up to his chin and then the other – that it was evident what the reading of them was costing him. It occurred to me that he must be a very lonely man, being as he was a non-Highlander among Highlanders; a non-crofter among crofters, for though Hamish had inherited the croft it was only the house which interested him. He kept no animals and grew no crops. He did not even cut peats for himself but resorted to buying a few sacks from his neighbours when he wanted to eke out his coal. I knew what it was like to be an Englishwoman among Highlanders (though once when I had mentioned this to Morag she had dismissed the idea of my place of birth being of any moment – ‘If you had been born in a stable it wouldn't have made you a horse', she had quoted). But at least I was a crofter so that I shared and could discuss the demands and frustrations, the rewards and compensations, of the crofting life with my neighbours. I began to suspect that perhaps Hamish had opened his shop not so much with the idea of making a profit from the village as of making contact with the people and I felt a wave of pity for him.

When he had finished reading his poems he relapsed into a thoughtful silence. I looked at my watch. There was still half an hour to go at least before I could expect to see the headlights of the bus and since we had finished our strupaks I suggested I should wash the dishes. I expected him to refuse politely but Hamish seemed delighted by my offer and poured the remainder of the water from the kettle into a bowl. While I washed he wiped the dishes and put them away.

‘It is the first time in many years since a woman has washed dishes for me,' he confided and there was a tinge of sadness in his voice.

We sat down again to wait and again I remarked on the attractiveness of his home. ‘You know, Hamish,' I told him, ‘You really should get married. It seems such a pity that such a lovely place as you have should be wasted on a bachelor.'