A Rope--In Case (20 page)

‘Aye, I'm feelin' tsat poor I wish I could rob a bank,' Hector told her. Morag murmured condemnation.

‘Would you throw me out if I did?' he taxed her.

‘Indeed I would.'

Hector turned to his wife. ‘Behag wouldn't, would you Behag?' he asked. ‘You'd never give me away.'

Behag smiled at him fondly. ‘It depends,' she told him.

‘Depends on what?'

‘How you did it,' she replied gently. ‘So long as you didn't hurt anybody I'd hide you an' lie for you, but once I heard you had laid a hand on a body then you would be on your own.'

‘Well nobody's robbin' any banks,' said Morag, standing up. ‘An' there's hens needin' to be fed an' cows to be milked.' As she had predicted she was now ‘skippin' around like a young goat.'

The morning of Angus's wedding dawned with autumnal scarves of mist that were threaded with rainbows. Bruach was astir early and busy about its chores. The moors rang with the scolding voices of humans and dogs as stubborn cows were coaxed and coerced into haste. It was a good day for the wedding, Bruach allowed, because the weather was such that they felt no compulsion to resist the lure of the festivity in order to ensure the safety of the hay harvest I had by this time retrieved my long absent car, ‘Joanna', from the clutches of the mainland garage where it had been undergoing a thorough, and thoroughly prolonged, overhaul and as I had promised to take Morag, Behag and Hector to the church I set off in good time, announcing my arrival at their cottage by a few toots on the horn. Morag emerged but then found it necessary to go inside again; she and Behag came out together and Behag had to go back. When at last they were both settled in the car we sat waiting for Hector who finally ‘sprackled' from the house, looking very self-conscious in his best clothes.

‘Here's you keepin' Miss Peckwitt waitin' again,' Morag chided him.

‘Ach, it was no my fault. Did you tell her tse reason for it?'

‘I did not, then.' Behag spoke quietly.

‘Aye, well you see, Miss Peckwitt, it was like tsis. Behag put out my shirt on tse line to take out tse creases an' didn't a bloody gull go an' shit on it.' Hector was outraged.

‘Ach, an' you makin' such a fuss of it.' returned Morag contemptuously. ‘It was only on the tail of it that it shit an nobody was goin' to see it there.'

Most of the Bruachites had gone by specially hired bus and when we arrived the church was nearly full. The stately red-haired Mairi was stunning in her white dress and clouds of veiling and Angus, though he looked extremely tired, was a proud and determined groom. The minister hurried the service a little, I thought, and when it was over and it was time for the couple to leave the church he did not suggest that they wait until the vicious squall which greeted them had passed away.

‘Ach, he's in a hurry for his dram,' Johnny excused him when I commented on this.

At the hotel we sat down to a lunch of fresh salmon and vegetables. The helpings were lavish.

‘Fresh salmon,' I murmured appreciatively. ‘He's not sparing any expense at this wedding, is he?'

‘Expense?' Morag looked at me pityingly. ‘Indeed, where would there be expense when he hasn't seen his bed for the last three nights with all the poachin' he's been doin.”

‘So that's why he looked so tired,' I exclaimed.

‘That's the way of it,' she said.

I looked along the seated lines of guests who were tucking in with excellent appetites. There was only one figure who appeared not to be enjoying the repast quite so much as the others. Not surprisingly, perhaps, it was the gamekeeper.

The waitresses filled our glasses with whisky and during the rest of the meal and throughout the toasts and speeches they were being continually refilled. The telegrams were read out.

‘Very disappointin',' Morag commented when they had come to an end and she had detected no lewdness.

‘Mairi told the best man not to read the good ones,' Erchy explained. ‘We can read them ourselves when the minister's out of the way.'

Soon the singing began, appropriately enough with ‘Mairi's Wedding' and from then on it was just a splendid ceilidh with anyone standing up and ‘giving us a song' and everyone joining in the chorus. Jokes were screamed across the room and followed by guffaws of laughter. The tables were cleared and we danced, the bride and bridegroom leading on to the floor. Mairi was very regal, but as the rest of the gathering became more boisterous someone managed to tread on her veil. She was on her way upstairs to take it off when a voice arrested her.

‘Now, Mairi my girl, watch out what you do with all that net. We'll be needin' it for the herrin' on Monday.'

When she came downstairs again Mairi was dressed for travelling. Angus joined her and the guests thronged around the couple with handshakes, kisses and farewells. ‘A grand weddin',' they told Angus. ‘I don't know when I enjoyed myself so much.' Only the gamekeeper stood on the edge of the crowd, aloof from all the compliments. At last it was time for the couple to go. Angus caught the gamekeeper's eye.

‘Well, are you enjoyin' yourself?' he asked him.

‘I am fine,' replied the gamekeeper levelly.

‘Good,' said Angus. ‘An' you enjoyed your dinner?'

‘I did,' said the gamekeeper. ‘I fairly enjoyed it.'

That's good,' Angus told him pertly. ‘For there's that bloody much of it left over it looks as if the village is goin' to be feastin' on it for a week yet' He winked and turned again to his bride, pulling her out through the storm of confetti to the car.

‘Well, well,' Morag greeted me next day. ‘It's back to porridge an' old clothes for us after all the festivities.'

‘It was a good wedding,' I said.

‘Aye, indeed. They said at the bar they sold more half bottles of whisky than half pints of beer. That's always a sign folks is enjoyin' themselves.'

‘I'd like to have a rough estimate of just how much was drunk I said. ‘Certainly the hotel keepers must have been pretty pleased with themselves.'

‘I'm thinkin' they can be pretty pleased with Angus for all the trade he gave them,' she said.

From the shore came the sound of a klaxon horn. We turned and saw it was the fishing boat on which Angus normally worked.

‘I wonder why she's coming in today?' I murmured.

‘To pick up Angus,' explained Morag.

‘Angus? But he's away on his honeymoon.'

‘He is not,' She nodded towards a familiar figure hurrying down to the shore with a bundle under his arm. Angus gave us a cheery wave.

‘But I saw him go off on his honeymoon with his bride last night,' I insisted. ‘Mairi herself told me it was to be for a week.'

‘You saw him go but it was only to see Mairi off from the mainland station,' Morag told me. ‘Angus couldn't spare the time to go for a honeymoon just now, after havin' time off for the poachin' an' all, so Mairi's just had to go by herself.'

I was feeling very sorry for myself. For two days I had been in bed, sleeping, vomiting and sweating my way through a bout of influenza. By the afternoon of the third day, however, I felt rather better. The nurse, whose attentions had been confined mostly to brewing herself cups of tea which she drank sitting beside my bed while comforting me with stories of the high incidence of tuberculosis in the village and congratulating me on my good fortune in enjoying her devoted ministrations, withdrew the thermometer from my mouth and announced that I might sit up. She propped me up with pillows before she left and I listened for the sound of her retreating car before reaching for a dressing gown. The bedroom was beset by irrepressible draughts and chilly despite the hissing of the paraffin stove which though efficient enough when well pumped wilted and popped despairingly every couple of hours demanding renewed pumping or that its jet be pricked. Outside the wind hissed through the leafless rowan tree and rain and hailstones rapped aggressively at the roof and window. I thought of the cosiness of the kitchen and resolved to make my way downstairs.

I was standing beside the bed, gathering strength, when I heard a shout from the bottom of the stairs.

‘Bella's wantin' to know do you need anytsin'?' Bella and Morag had been attending to the chores while I had been in bed.

‘Bless you, Hector,' I called back. ‘I'm getting up. If you wouldn't mind seeing that my coal and peat pails are full I'd be very grateful.'

‘Right, I'll tell her,' came the reply and a moment later I heard the door bang.

‘Oh, Hector,' I mused, ‘you lazy rascal. Couldn't you have seen to that little job yourself?' The door banged again and to my surprise there came two distinct thuds of full pails on the floor. For once I had misjudged Hector it seemed.

I continued downstairs, appreciating the comfort there is in the sound of pails of fuel being thumped on the floor on a winter evening. The lighting of the lamp, the clatter of dishes, the stoking of the fire, all make the pattern of the evening, but it is this thump of deposited pails that separates like an emphatic punctuation mark the end of the day's work and the beginning of the hours of relaxation.

I was ready with words of thanks on my lips to greet Hector, but it was not Hector who was standing beside the pails. It was Erchy.

‘I could have sworn it was Hector calling upstairs to me,' I said. ‘Really, I think my head must still be a bit muzzy.'

‘So it was Hector,' Erchy told me. ‘I was here too an' heard what you said.' He pushed the pails well to the side of the fire. ‘I doubt Hector would get the peats for you supposin' you'd been freezin' to death.'

I grinned. ‘I must say I was surprised when I thought he'd done it. But Hector does surprise me sometimes.' I was about to go on when the door opened and Hector himself stood there, smiling ingenuously.

‘I tsought I might just as well fill your pails myself, save Bella doin' it,' he began. His glance lit, as if by accident, on the full pails and his eyes widened in well affected surprise. ‘Tsey're full!' he exclaimed and came forward to warm himself at the well-stoked fire. Erchy and I looked at each other.

‘Aye, the fairies filled them,' said Erchy drily.

Hector took three mugs down from the dresser. ‘I daresay you're feelin' like a cup of tea,' he said, and lifted the kettle on to the fire. Seemingly exhausted by this effort he flopped into a chair.

‘There's a lot of it about,' Erchy remarked.

‘A lot of what?'

‘This cold an' sickness they're after callin' 'flu,' he replied. ‘Indeed I had it myself for a while. It was just as if I was like to faint every time I got up from a chair or out of my bed.'

‘What did you take for it?' I asked.

‘Ach, a good dose of whisky. There's nothin' better.'

‘We should go back to makin' our own whisky, if we had any sense,' Hector said. ‘Tsere was never any colds nor 'flu tsat I heard of when everybody kept a firkin of whisky beside tse fire an' just took a wee dram when tsey came away from the storms.'

‘I don't know why tsey stopped us makin' it,' grumbled Erchy. ‘Nobody took any harm from it.'

‘Tsey had to stop us because tsey had to stop tse English from doin' it,' explained Hector.

I looked at him enquiringly.

‘Aye well, some of tsese Englishmen, if tsey get at much whisky tsey go prancin' after tse women like billygoats. Tsey go mad, just.'

This explanation coming from Hector of all people almost caused me to laugh out loud.

‘It's different here,' he went on. ‘In tsese parts takin' a good dram is for when a man wants a medicine or when he wants to enjoy himself. Not for when he's obligin' tse women.'

There were times when remarks made by the Bruachites left me temporarily breathless. This was one of them, though I knew it was generally accepted among them that women were more strongly sexed than men and suffered more if their desire was unfulfilled.

Hurriedly Erchy reverted to the subject of colds. ‘I mind my grandfather boastin' he never took a cold in his life,' he said.

‘Aye, but your grandfather knew where was tse whisky,' Hector told him and turning round in his chair he gave me an expressive wink.

I responded with a smile. Well within the memories of some of the older Bruachites whisky had been buried beneath the earth floors of the houses and byres to keep it safe from thieves and customs men. As a result, when the young folk had inherited the old houses and modernised them by putting in wood floors they had occasionally unearthed a secret store. Erchy's grandfather was known to have been even more cautious. Having found a large cask of whisky washed ashore he had taken it by boat and hidden it in a secret cave known only to himself. Soon afterwards the old man had died quite suddenly and though with his last breath he had managed to gasp out his secret his instructions for finding the cave were so confused that his sons, despite exhaustive searching, had never succeeded in locating it. Now the cave and its treasure had become a perpetual lure for his grandson, Erchy, and his cronies and whenever they found themselves in the supposed vicinity of the hiding place they dedicated themselves to searching for the cave, reassessing its probable situation and making plans for what they would do with the whisky when they eventually found it. They dreamed of success in their search as other people dream of winning the football pools. They sought the cave as other men have sought El Dorado.

‘If my grandfather's ghost came back that's the only question I'd have for him,' said Erchy. ‘ “Where did you hide that cask of whisky?” I'd say.'

‘What good would the whisky be after all these years?' I asked. ‘Surely the cask would have disintegrated by now, anyway?'