A Rope--In Case (7 page)

‘A fine beast,' Yawn mumbled again. I watched his deft handling of the knife as it slid under the skin. When he had finished he threw the skin towards me. ‘Just you wash that in the sea an' then you can dry it afterwards.' I did as I was told and when I turned from my task I saw that the head of the beast was off and he was already beginning to joint it.

‘You'll not be needin' the butcher for a week or two at this rate,' he complimented me.

I felt my mouth drop open.

‘But Yawn,' I protested. ‘It's not fit for eating, is it?'

‘Not for a day or two,' he replied equably. ‘You'll need to hang it for a wee whiley an' then it will be ready.' He glanced up, saw my expression and misinterpreting it hastened to add: ‘I'm tellin' you, its a young beast so it'll not need much hanging. You could cook it maybe the day after tomorrow.'

‘But surely washed up venison isn't fit for people to eat?' I argued weakly.

Yawn was an impatient man and his tongue could be scathing on occasion. ‘Not fit to eat?' In his horror he dropped his knife and the sound of it clattering over the stones was like a derisive echo. ‘Of course it's fit to eat, woman!' he bawled at me.

I felt I had to persist. ‘But we don't know how long it's been dead.' My voice was almost a wail.

Yawn retrieved his knife and gave me a look of complete disdain. ‘I tell you it's not more than a few hours has it been in the sea an' do you not know, woman, that sea water is salt water an' that salt water makes the best pickle?'

His contention sounded reasonable enough and I felt my doubts receding a little.

‘Won't you have some for yourself?' I suggested subtly.

‘That's very good of you, Miss Peckwitt. Indeed I would be very glad to have some. I'm very fond of a wee bitty venison.'

His acceptance made me feel much better. ‘Take as much as you like,' I told him graciously.

He stowed the joints in his own sack, roped it on his back and said he would carry it home for me. I rolled up the dripping skin and carried it myself.

At my cottage he dropped the sack and asked me where I wanted him to put the meat.

‘I'll just take one haunch,' I said. ‘You have the rest.'

His delight was obvious. ‘Are you sure that's goin' to be enough for you?' he demanded.

I was quite sure.

He extracted a haunch and hung it for me in the outside cupboard. ‘You'll enjoy that in a day or so,' he assured me as he left.

For two days the haunch hung there and whenever I opened the cupboard I eyed it dubiously wondering if I should ever pluck up courage to cook it.

On the third day I made an excuse to visit Yawn's house where his sister Sarah greeted me.

‘My, my, but that's a grand lot of venison you gave my brother the other day just. We had it with our potatoes an' it was good. We fairly enjoyed it.'

‘It was all right, was it?'

‘Indeed I've never tasted better,' she enthused and looked at me for confirmation. ‘Did you not have any yourself yet?'

I admitted I hadn't cooked my haunch yet but seeing her so hale and hearty I resolved that I would cook it for supper the very next evening when I was expecting Mary, my friend from England, to arrive. I told myself that the venison would probably be as wholesome as any meat I might be able to buy from the unsavoury little butcher's van which might or might not turn up next morning. I recollected the last purchase I had made from the gore-splashed van. The customer before me had been buying mince and when the butcher had come to serve me he had been unable to find the cloth for wiping down his cutting board. He had looked in the van and then on the road thinking he had dropped it. We had both noticed a sheepdog pulling at a grey-looking something a little distance away. With an oath the butcher had rushed at the dog, wrested the cloth from it and then had returned to wipe down the board with the cloth. So inured had I become to this sort of thing I did not even murmur a complaint.

The following afternoon I took down the haunch and wrapped it in a pastry case, as advised by Mrs. Beeton. I put it into the oven to cook slowly for several hours. By the time Mary arrived the whole house was full of a tempting aroma.

‘My Golly! That smells good!' was Mary's first remark. And a little while later it was: ‘Becky, how long is supper going to be?'

Debating whether or not to tell her anything of its history I lifted the haunch from the oven and broke off the crust. The meat tin was half full of rich brown gravy. I placed the haunch on a willow-patterned dish and carried it to the table. Beside it I placed a tin of corned beef. Mary, who by this time was sniffing ecstatically, looked up enquiringly. I ignored her and took up the carving knife. It slid through the flesh as effortlessly as if it had been the breast of a young chicken. Mary held out her plate. I took a deep breath.

‘I think I ought to tell you …' I began. Mary listened and drew back her plate. ‘Yawn and Sarah have eaten it,' I ended. ‘And they're all right.' She still held on to her plate.

‘Aren't you even going to taste it?' I asked anxiously.

‘Not until you've tasted it first,' she said,

I picked up a slice in my fingers and nibbled it. I pushed the rest of the slice into my mouth and licked my fingers before forking several more slices on to my own plate. Mary took a small piece and ate it.

‘It's delicious!' she said incredulously and proffered her plate again. Across the table we grinned at each other and took up our knives and forks. I had a sudden thought and put mine down again.

‘Just a minute, Mary,' I said. ‘Don't you think this is one occasion when we can't neglect to say grace?'

We bowed our heads.

We were gathered in the schoolhouse for a meeting with the landlord and a representative of the Department of Agriculture who wished to sound village opinion with regard to a proposal for realigning croft boundaries. The scheme purported to be for the benefit of the village but the crofters, always suspicious of anything new, were intent on vetoing any change. They did not see how realignment could take place without robbing one man to give to another. Someone was bound to lose, they asserted, and as every man present was determined it should not be himself there seemed little point in having a meeting at all. Nevertheless the crofters attended as they attended every meeting ever held in the village. It ‘made a change', they said, and though outwardly they were prepared to treat a subject seriously one sensed the latent hope that some amusing argument or comic situation might develop during the discussion. They in fact regarded a ‘meeting' as just a different kind of ceilidh with the presence of strangers making it necessary to restrain the impulse to comment or deride.

Tonight the presence of the landlord ensured that there would be little if any argument for though the Bruachites were fortunate in having a relatively tolerant and indulgent landlord there still lingered in their minds the vestiges of a feudal system where the goodwill of the landlord was necessary for survival. There was for instance either a law or a tradition that every male in the village should be given so many paid days' work on the estate every year and though times had changed and the crofters were prosperous enough not to need such benevolence they would have resented any suggestion that the practice be discontinued. The absence of an offer from the landlord of such work would be regarded as evidence that they were out of favour and this they were anxious to avoid.

So everyone listened to the speech of the Department representative in courteous silence. Everyone that is except Torquil who though he was a ‘wee bit simple' was the possessor of a loud clear voice. It was these two attributes that made him the ideal choice for a heckler and having been well coached beforehand he now jumped up at regular intervals to bawl loudly ‘We want our rights!'. The speaker bore with the constant interruptions good humouredly for a time but at last becoming exasperated he turned on Torquil. ‘Very well, you insist you want your rights,' he taxed him. ‘Tell me, what are your rights?'

Torquil's face went completely blank. ‘I'm damned if I know,' he replied and sat down.

Soon afterwards the landlord, who must have known the futility of trying to make changes, brought the meeting to a close. His car whisked away the dispirited speaker before the audience had finally emerged from the schoolhouse.

‘Oh, my, but it's a grand evenin',' said Anna Vic, looking out to sea.

It was indeed a grand evening. An evening that had followed a day that had been warm and sunny as a day of midsummer. The sea was lazy and patched at intervals with dimpled water that betrayed the presence of shoals of ‘soo-yan'. Every few minutes we would see the dimples break into silver and would hear the lisp of water as the shoal leaped to evade the pursuit of predatory lythe. A mile or so out from the shore a rabble of gulls hovered restlessly above the sea, their bickering, protesting cries sounding thin as they reached us on the slight, sea-cooled breeze. Swinging lazily out at her mooring lay Hector's motor boat, newly painted and refurbished in readiness for the tourists who as yet were arriving only sporadically.

‘Seein' we're dressed,' said Erchy (which meant that some of us were wearing shoes instead of gumboots) ‘what about a cruise?'

‘Why not?' agreed Hector. There was an immediate move to launch the dinghy.

‘I'll need to tell Katy,' someone said.

‘I'll need to see to the hens.'

There were so many people to be told and invited to come along; so many chores which needed to be done, that we arranged to meet at the shore in an hour's time. Knowing I could safely stretch the hour another ten minutes I did so but when I arrived at the shore only Hector and Erchy and Janet were there, sitting on the gunwale of the dinghy awaiting passengers.

‘May as well put you two out,' said Hector and rowed us to the motor boat. We climbed aboard but Janet, whose eyes had at once begun to scan the land, suddenly seemed anxious.

‘Is that no my cow there, Erchy?' she asked, pointing, to an animal that was grazing perilously near to the steep cliff edge.

‘Aye, so it is,' Erchy confirmed.

‘Then I must get to her an' drive her away.' Janet started to climb back into the dinghy. ‘Isn't that the place her own mother fell over only last spring?'

‘It must be in the beast's nature,' said Hector.

‘Nature or no, I'll need to get her away from that cliff,' insisted Janet. The two men rowed her ashore and I was left alone on the boat. I sat in the stern, listening to the music of the sea as it caressed the boat; peering down into the clear green-grey shoaly depths. I thought of ninety year old Donald, a pious and forthright man who would rather have cut off his right hand than tell a lie, yet who insisted that once in his youth he had seen a merman in these waters. Anyone but the virtuous Donald would have described it as being a mermaid but Donald, who would never have permitted himself to look upon a naked female form—even if it was only the top half—insisted that despite its breasts the creature was male. He had been about eighteen at the time, he used to say, and had been fishing lobster creels just around the point when the merman had risen from the water about fifty yards away from the boat. It had just stayed there, watching him and Donald had stared transfixed until the creature had seemed to stretch out an arm as if beckoning him. Then Donald had taken fright. He let go of the creel and grasping the oars started to row as fast as he could for home, praying for guidance as he did so. Even I believed Donald's story, having read that there were reports of dugongs being sighted in the past in the area.

Once again the dinghy came alongside. This time it was full of people, a laughing happy crowd intent on enjoying the evening. The dinghy returned for another load. There was no limit to the number of passengers on an evening cruise. The law was interpreted as limiting the number of fare-paying passengers and as this was a free cruise for friends only the limit was reached when the boatman considered the amount of freeboard to be over the danger limit. Sometimes it could be a matter of inches.

Perhaps it is because the Hebrideans live so close to the sea that they are, or appear to be, indifferent to its hazards. A boatman may have some misgivings as to the capacity of his boat but passengers seldom have any. As an instance I recall a time when I was about to travel on the official ferry to the island one wild and stormy day. When the boatmen had come to untie the ropes that held her they saw that the number of passengers greatly exceeded the number permitted or considered safe. They had refused to sail until some disembarked. No one had made any move. The boatmen were adamant. The last twenty people aboard must get off and wait for another ferry, they said. Still no-one moved.

‘I'm no takin' this boat to sea loaded like this,' one had insisted. ‘She's no safe. You can see for yourselves how little free board there is. She'll never make the other side.'

An old man had objected. ‘We're on board now,' he said stubbornly. ‘How can you force us to get off?'

‘I'm sayin' she's overloaded an' dangerous,' reiterated the boatman. ‘An' some of you will need to get ashore.'

‘There's none of us gettin' ashore,' the old man had told him. ‘An' what's more, with the tide goin' out like it is you'll need to sail from here or you'll have her bangin' her bottom out.'

The boatman looked harassed. There was no disputing the truth of the statement and he looked as if he might soon yield to persuasion. Grudgingly he begun to untie the rope from the bollard.

In a mounting panic I had pushed my way forward. If the boatman considered it unsafe I was not disposed to argue. ‘I'm getting off,' I said, but as I was about to jump ashore the old man restrained me with a hand on my arm. ‘Don't give in to him, madam,' he instructed. ‘You have every right to be here. You were one of the first ones aboard.'