A Rope--In Case (14 page)

As New Year drew closer Johnny became more desperate. ‘Ten damty pounds!' he would mutter when he looked at Erchy.

At four o'clock on New Year's Eve Erchy lurched at my cottage door with a bottle of whisky more than half empty in his hand.

‘Here, take your New Year now,' he exulted. ‘I won't be around to give it to you later.'

‘But Erchy,' I said, ‘you've lost your bet. After keeping off the whisky all these weeks you've spoiled it by not waiting another couple of hours.'

Erchy was shocked. ‘But if I'd done that the man would have needed to pay me ten pounds,' he pointed out.

‘Well, that was the bet, wasn't it?'

‘Aye, right enough, but I only did it to give the bugger a scare. I didn't mean to keep on until the last minute so that he'd have to pay me. He's my best friend!'

‘Oh, Erchy!' I said, and sat down weak with laughter.

‘Johnny will be relieved,' I told him. But Bruach was Bruach. Johnny was furious.

‘He only took a drink before time so that I wouldn't need to pay up,' he complained loudly. ‘Does he think I can't afford to pay him ten pounds? I'll soon show him!'

Morag reported that Johnny and Erchy ‘took to their fists about it' before they had settled the matter to their joint satisfaction.

Angus, the Fisherman

I was painting the window frames of my cottage when Angus, a stocky, handsome young fisherman, called to bestow on me a ‘wee fry of herring'—a half dozen or more fresh and glistening fish threaded through their gills by a piece of net twine. There were more ‘frys' hanging from his gory, fish scaled fingers as evidence of his benevolent intentions towards other friends.

It was early in the season for local herring and exclaiming gratefully over the gift I put down my paint tin and brush and, from what had now become force of habit, asked if he had time to take a ‘wee strupak'.

‘No, no,' he declined hastily. ‘I'm just newly back from the sea so I'd best be gettin' to the house. The cailleach will have my potatoes in the pot waitin'.'

Angus was a member of the crew of a fishing boat which operated from the mainland port and consequently the village saw little of him during the week. Only on Friday afternoons and then only when the weather was calm enough for the boat to call at Bruach's exposed and inadequate fragment of stone jetty did Angus get home to spend the weekend with his mother, the ‘cailleach'. I had no doubt she would be anxiously awaiting him with his meal ready in the pot so I did not press him to stay. Nevertheless he found time to follow me into the kitchen and to watch while I gutted and scaled the herring. I often think it is a pity that town shops pretty up their herring by removing all the scales, or perhaps there are no scales left after the fish have tossed and rubbed their way to market. Our herring coming like this straight from the fishing boat was thick with scales which shone like spangles as my knife slid under them. I put the guts into the hens' pan and was about to scrape the scales off the plate into the fire when Angus stopped me with an expletive and a restraining hand.

‘You mustn't do that!' His expression was one of horror.

‘Mustn't do what?' I asked.

‘You must never burn herrin' scales so long as you live,' he replied.

‘Bad luck?' I asked wearily.

‘Aye, indeed,' confirmed Angus. ‘Did nobody ever tell you?'

‘I don't think I've heard of that one,' I told him. ‘And by now I've burned so many scales it can't possibly affect my luck either way.' I turned again to the fire. ‘I always do burn them. I don't know quite what else to do with them.'

‘This is what to do with them.' He snatched the plate from me and going outside scraped the scales on to the cobbled path in front of the door. ‘The hens will get the benefit of them now,' he said.

I sighed, and checked the reproof that was on my lips. Ever since moving into my own croft I had steadfastly discouraged the poultry from approaching too close to the cottage, being determined to keep the area around the door free from their indiscriminate droppings. But it was not so much the poultry that were worrying me at this moment. I suspected that the herring scales would attract not my hens but a horde of opportunist sea gulls and their droppings were even more indiscriminate. I put the herring on a clean plate and carried them out to the shady side of the house where there was a large, flyproof cupboard. Angus followed me and watched me put the fish inside.

‘That's going to be something to look forward to for my supper tonight,' I told him as I secured the door of the cupboard. I looked sideways at him. ‘Nice legal fish. too.' I said with a grin.

Angus grinned in return. He was easily the most successful poacher in the village. It might have been thought that a man working all week on a fishing boat would have little inclination for fishing at weekends but it was not so with Angus. The catching of legal fish was work; the catching of illegal fish was sport. And Angus considered himself a great sportsman. Every Friday night during the salmon season he was away poaching some river and when the salmon season was over one would hear stirring tales of Angus and a few of his cronies outwitting the local gamekeeper and returning home with an illicit stag or two.

The fact that the gamekeeper was his cousin might have led some people to suspect that Angus's poaching success coupled with his ability to escape detection were not entirely due to his own astuteness. But this was far from the truth. The gamekeeper was indefatigable in his search for all such malefactors and what is more he suspected his cousin strongly. Angus knew well that if he were to be caught red-handed at the poaching the consanguinity would not ensure leniency. In fact he rather expected it might be the reverse. So while Angus took good care not to be discovered the village sat back and enjoyed the situation, and also the clandestine gifts of salmon and venison which the good hearted Angus bestowed on us from time to time.

‘There'll be some grateful folk when they see what you've brought them,' I said, indicating the ‘frys' still hanging from his fingers. ‘Everybody's been so keen to get the croft work finished they've had no time for fishing.'

‘Ach, they're not so keen on the herrin' at this time of year anyway,' he responded. ‘I doubt they're a wee bitty on the oily side for them yet. They'd be keener on them if it was at the back end.'

Every year the Bruachites put down their barrel or half-barrel of salt herring for the winter but it was the autumn herring they used for this purpose. The summer herring was too rich to take salt satisfactorily—or so they maintained.

‘Give me a fresh herring any day in preference to a salt one,' I told Angus. ‘Even if it does result in a touch of indigestion.'

‘You don't put any down yourself?' he asked, disapproving of what he considered to be my improvidence.

I did but I must confess that it was mainly the shapeliness of the small quarter barrel snug on a low shelf in my larder that gave me aesthetic rather than gastronomic, pleasure.

Also it helped to establish me as less of a novice to the crofting life and I could at least answer in the affirmative when the annual enquiry came as to whether I had yet put down my herring. To the Bruachites a dish of salt herring and potatoes was in the nature of a gourmet's delight—a traditional dish that exiles recalled with great nostalgia. But like most crofting traditions it was an extremely practical one.

‘You'll never go short of a meal the winter through so long as you have your own tatties an' a barrel of herrin' put by,' they assured me with great seriousness. Every winter when the poachers could offer no venison, the sea was too rough for fishing and due to either caprice or catastrophe the butcher's van did not reach the village, I would cook myself a salt herring and potatoes and with great determination try to acquire a taste for it. It invariably ended with my eating a lot of potato and leaving all but a mouthful of herring on the plate. Every spring, when the risk of being snowed up was safely over I started to feed the contents of the barrel to the poultry, boiling it up with their mash at the rate of one fish each day in case an excess of salt should have disastrous effects on their laying or even on their lives. Surprisingly too my cow liked a ration of this mash.

‘It's funny it doesn't take to you,' said Angus. ‘I've known folks from away that's taken to it better than salmon or trout. There's my cousin—or some relation he is—that stays with us now and again an' he tells my mother, “Give me salt herrin' every day I'm here, Auntie, for I never get the taste of it now I'm livin' among the heathen.” He's a banker away in England, you see,' explained Angus with a trace of apology.

‘He's welcome to his salt herring,' I said.

His grunt dissociated him from such heresy.

He waited, restlessly shifting his weight from one foot to the other. It is second nature to a fisherman to keep moving —doubtless to combat the cold when they are on deck. We watched the over-busy bluebottles buzzing frustratedly around the cupboard, seeking any crevice where they might gain entry. I was sure there was none. Hebridean bluebottles seem to be hairier, grosser and more malignly persistent than bluebottles elsewhere. It is reputedly the preponderance of hill sheep, sometimes so casually ‘dipped', combined with the abundance of bracken which gives the flies cover, that account for the heavy infestation of these pests but, whatever the reason, with no refrigerators to store food precautions to outwit them had be be meticulous. I had my outside cupboard with' its door of zinc mesh. The crofters still used the old methods of burying or salting. Such things as ‘skarts' and rabbits which were to be kept for only a few days were wrapped in a cloth and then put into a hole in the ground and covered with earth and sods. Fish that was not going to be eaten immediately was put in a bowl and covered with layers of coarse salt, except for skate which, because of its abrasive, ammoniacal skin, was supposed to be immune from the attentions of the flies. It could be hung out in the sun for a few hours to improve its flavour. The first time I was given skate I was advised to treat it thus but was horrified when I went to take it in to find that there were several patches of fly eggs on the skin. With rising nausea I pointed them out to Morag who had come to supervise the cooking of the fish.

‘Ach, but them's nothin's,' she comforted me. ‘You'll see they'll never hatch out.'

‘They're not going to get the chance to hatch out,' I told her decisively. ‘It's going straight back into the sea where it came from.'

‘Indeed, I'll take it myself before I'll let you do that with it,' she insisted. ‘You have only to scrape them off with a knife.'

I held it out at arm's length and she was happy to take it from me.

Angus began to show signs of impatience. He made trivial observations about the weather, about my hens and about my garden. Anything, it seemed, to prepare the ground for something he particularly wanted to say. I had grown accustomed now to the fact that the Bruach people always reserved the most important reason for their visit to be mentioned off-handedly as they were about to leave. I waited, studying him covertly as we exchanged more trivialities. His alliance with the sea seemed to have infected him with a permanent buoyancy both of figure and expression. His forehead was sun and windburned; the youthful ruddiness of his cheeks was not wholly submerged in a week's growth of beard; his teeth were even and white; the thick black lashes shading his eyes gave them the smoky blue of muirburn. Compressed black curls insulated the rolled edge of his knitted cap from his forehead and thigh-length boots gave nattering length to his short legs. I was thinking to myself that if Angus had had a sister she would undoubtedly have been a beauty when he spoke decisively.

‘I'd best be away, then.'

I walked with him to the gate but again he hung back, calling my attention to the silver-seamed clouds that were converging on a misty sun. The sea had darkened and stilled. I had been long enough in Bruach now to consider myself a competent weather prophet.

‘Thunder?' I suggested. The day had been heavy and insect-ridden as evidenced by the hundreds of tiny flies imprisoned in the fresh paint of the window sills.

‘Aye, it's thunder, I doubt,' agreed Angus and began to walk up and down in the road—slowly, four paces each way. I could deduce that the clear space of his boat deck could be measured by these paces, for no matter how extensive the pier or the land when the fisherman waits ashore he still moves as if he is confined by a deck. I wondered why he still waited and cast around in my mind for some topic I might have neglected to mention. I must not insult him by offering payment for the fish. Had he suffered some misfortune on which I should be offering condolence? But no, I had heard of nothing. His mother was well: I had seen her only that morning chasing a broody hen with all the vigour of a twelve year old. None of his cows had died recently and there had been no storms to keep his boat in harbour.

‘Did you have good fishing this week? ‘I asked.

‘Ach.' He nodded towards the sea where an offshore wind had begun to fan ripples across the bay. ‘You know what they say about this sort of weather?'

I knew a lot of sayings about weather but I was not sure which was applicable in the present instance.

‘ “East wind an' small beefies”,' he explained. ‘You don't catch much when the wind's offshore. Not enough for a man to put by,' he added meaningly.

In a flash I remembered. ‘Angus! I hear you're thinking about getting married?' I challenged him with a smile.

He half smiled in return, showing only his bottom teeth.

‘You heard that?' he demanded with a quick shy look.

‘Yes,' I admitted. Actually what I had heard was, ‘They're saying Angus is speakin' of marryin' this year but ach, I believe it's all a lie for there's no sign of a bairn yet with Mairi.'