Bruach Blend (5 page)

‘Whisht!' Morag admonished them. ‘He might,' she said in reply to my suggestion. ‘Though why he would when he has a mouth on him I'd not be knowin'.' Before I could ask what she meant she went on, ‘Why do you no ask Janet's brother Hamish to take a look at the beast? Hamish is as good with sheep as the shepherd himself.'

I found Hamish outside his cottage weaving new hazel wands into an old peat creel.

‘You're busy!' I gave him the greeting which in Bruach was tantamount to a polite request for him to spare me some of his time.

‘Aye, indeed.' He released a brief, yellow-toothed grin. ‘Janet's grumblin' she has no bottom to her creel an' she's after losin' the peat out of it,' he explained. ‘I was wantin' to finish it tonight just.' Thus he let me know with reciprocal politeness that, though help if I needed it would not be refused, I must remember that he had other work to do. I told him about the sick lamb.

‘See an' just go away inside an' have a wee word with Janet,' he instructed me. ‘I will be over in a whiley.'

Hamish joined us almost before Janet and I had finished greeting each other and together the three of us set off for my cottage. He inspected the lamb. ‘The poor wee thing,' he murmured gently. ‘I'm thinkin' it's like to die on you.'

Janet looked at me and then at her brother. ‘Can you no' do anythin' for him?' she asked.

‘Indeed I cannot say.' The doubt in his tone made it sound as if he was reluctant to be involved in any attempt to succour the lamb.

Janet, whose role in the household was somewhat matriarchal, pinned him with her glance. ‘A wee droppy milk,' she suggested compellingly.

‘Aye, then,' agreed Hamish.

‘Warm?' I asked, hastening to get the milk.

‘No, no. Straight from the bowl just if you have it,' he said.

When I had brought the milk Hamish tenderly lifted the feeble little body of the lamb on to his knees and turned its head towards him. ‘See now that you watch what I do,' he told me. ‘It's what you must do yourself if you're thinkin' to save him.'

I watched interestedly as Hamish took a gulp of milk from the cup and holding it in his mouth for a few seconds slowly shook his head from side to side as if he was using it for a mouthwash. Then he bent forward and lifting the lamb's head he brought his own mouth down on to the open mouth of the lamb when, like a bird regurgitating into the rictus of its young, he allowed the milk to dribble slowly from his mouth into the mouth of the animal as he gently stroked its throat. He took another mouthful of milk and repeated the process of regurgitation. This then was what Morag had been referring to when she had mentioned the shepherd having a mouth. I continued to watch with steadily increasing nausea, mindful that this was merely a demonstration of what I myself was now expected to do. My resolve to save the lamb wilted. Even a healthy baby lamb is not on intimate acquaintance a particularly sweet-smelling object, and this lamb, damp with his own urine and sticky with mucous, was decidedly malodorous.

Hamish put the animal back into its box. ‘That will do for him now,' he pronounced, wiping the dribbles of milk off his stubbly chin with the cuff of his jacket. ‘See now an' do the same again before you go to bed. I'll be over an' take another look at him in the mornin' supposin' he's still alive.'

Janet noticed my stricken expression. ‘Do you think you can do it yourself now, mo ghaoil?' she asked, but the concern in her voice was belied by the impish gleam in her eyes.

‘Surely she can,' Hamish asserted for me. ‘Indeed there's nothin' to it once you've seen it done. Don't give him too much at a time, that's all.'

Janet continued to regard me with amused commiseration. ‘No, but I'm thinkin' Miss Peckwitt's not goin' to enjoy herself doin' it,' she said, and this time she was unable to disguise her enjoyment of the situation.

‘No, but you're going to enjoy the thought of my misery,' I countered with a stoical grin.

She laughed outright. ‘Ach, mo ghaoil, I'm feelin' that sorry for you I would come an' do it myself but that I promised faithfully I would go over an' ceilidh with old Flora this evenin'.'

We exchanged understanding grins. We both knew that Janet's faithful promises could be shed as easily as old clothes if she felt so inclined.

‘I'll do it,' I told her, and ignored her dubious head-shake.

After they had gone I again inspected the lamb. Already it seemed to me to be fractionally stronger and as I fluffed the hay gently around its body to keep it warm the pathetically faint nicker it gave did much to stiffen my resolve to try to nurse it back to health. All the same, I was glad I had a good hour in which to overcome my squeamishness sufficiently to emulate Hamish's example.

Next morning the lamb was perceptibly stronger, though I hardly dared eat for fear of regurgitating more than warm milk into the animal's gullet. When Hamish came he cautiously predicted that he might be able to get hold of a teat of some kind when there was a possibility of the lamb having recovered enough to suck milk from a bottle. By now of course the story of the orphan lamb was all round the village, and as a result I was not surprised though I was immensely relieved when the following day, Hamish arrived at the cottage triumphantly displaying on the palm of his hand what he referred to as a ‘tite', though at first glance it looked to me more like a plug than a teat. He dipped the teat into warm milk before inserting it into the lamb's mouth and I felt discouraged when instead of gripping it eagerly as I had expected the lamb remained unresponsive, refusing to hold the teat in its mouth. With infinite patience Hamish continued coaxing until at last the lamb accepted the teat and began to suck, weakly at first and then with steadily increasing enthusiasm. Gradually my stomach unwound itself from the coil into which it had tightened during the regurgitation period and I was able to look forward once more to the enjoyment of my own food.

‘He'll do at that,' said Hamish, after putting the lamb back into the box. ‘But if you're wise you'll see an' take him back to the shepherd before he's much older. He's more used to doctorin' young lambs an' supposin' you keep him here you might never get rid of him except to the butcher.'

I nodded firm acceptance of his advice. I had every intention of returning the lamb to the shepherd as soon as it was strong enough to fend for itself. But I knew Hamish was right to remind me that I should not grow too fond of the animal, both for its sake and my own. There is no doubt that a hand-reared lamb can become an unmitigated nuisance once it is fully grown and I recalled how, when I was new to Bruach, I had found a friendly sheep out on the hill and, thinking it was lost, had guided it back to the village, only to be upbraided by the irate owner, who, it transpired, had spent the whole of the previous day walking the animal to the remoter slopes of the hills in an attempt to ‘lose' it. That lamb had been hand-reared and had quickly become a pet with the crofter's children, but it had been kept too long as a pet and the outcome had been an unhappy one. Even before it was full-grown the crofter's wife was heard to grumble about its misdeeds. It banged its way into the meal shed, she complained, where not only did it help itself from the open sacks of meal and grain but it spilled as much as it ate, which encouraged the hens to come and join in the feast. On fine days when the door of the cottage was more or less permanently open the lamb went into the kitchen when no one was there, where it had intentionally or unintentionally more than once knocked over pails of milk and stood in setting bowls of cream. On stormy days when the door was firmly shut it was in the habit of planting itself firmly in the doorway ready to butt its way inside the moment it saw its chance and though strong men found it easy enough to eject an unwanted sheep from their path, a woman, encumbered as she so frequently was with a bowl or pail or both, found wrestling against the wind to open the door enough of a hazard without the added menace of attack by a hard-horned, determined and wet-fleeced sheep.

The crofter had tried tethering the sheep, but good grass had to be reserved for hay and poor land was either too stony or too boggy for a stake to hold against the persistent straining of an animal which with the perverseness of its kind was constantly striving to feed beyond the circle of the restraining rope. It was forever breaking free, invading near-by crofts and eventually becoming the cause of so many acrimonious exchanges that there was united insistence on its disposal.

The only alternative to slaughtering was for it to be taken and ‘lost' among the flocks of hill sheep and, yielding to the entreaties of his children, this the crofter had attempted to do. My action in ‘rescuing' the sheep had, alas, only hastened its journey to the butcher.

Mindful of Hamish's advice and determined not to become anthropomorphic about my patient, I gave him no pet name save ‘Lamb', which only when I forgot my resolves was gentled into ‘Lammy'. When he had grown sturdy and taken to following at my heels like a faithful dog I tried to feel no pleasure and when, with the strong encouragement of my neighbours, I felt the time had come for him to join the sheep on the hill I carried out my resolution of returning him unquestioningly to the shepherd. But I confess I hated doing it. One cannot succour any ailing young thing; cradle its little body in one's aproned lap; feel the rhythmic pull of its sucking on the feeding bottle; watch the ecstatic glazing of its eyes as the warm milk reaches its stomach; observe with pride its growth from weakness to frisky strength, and yet still remain completely detached.

‘You'll be well rid of him,' the shepherd observed, as he pushed Lammie into a small enclosure with two other lambs which his wife had hand-reared and which were also now due to join the hill flocks.

I turned to the shepherd's wife. ‘How do you feel about letting them go after you've reared them?' I asked.

She smiled obliquely. ‘When he first brings them home I'm as soft over them as I'd be over a bairn,' she admitted. ‘But when they're grown they're just sheep an' I'm the best pleased of everyone when they're back on the hill where they rightly belong.'

I looked at her closely, wondering if she was hiding her true feelings and seeing my serious expression she chuckled. ‘Come away in an' we'll have a strupak to celebrate gettin' rid of them,' she said.

I had crossed the strath now and was approaching the spot where Tearlaich had reported seeing Bonny and the bull and pausing beside a tumble of rocks from which an isolated young rowan tree reared itself like a flag, I scanned the moors for a glimpse of them. It was habit now when my wanderings brought me this way to pause beside the young rowan tree. When I had first come to Bruach to spend what was intended to be a month or two's holiday I had on my very first exploration of the moors discovered the rowan tree; a struggling seedling with its roots clamped between two bald boulders where there was no visible trace of soil. Intrigued as to how it was possible for the seed to have germinated let alone grown under such conditions, I began to visit it regularly and observe its development. Foreseeably the rate of growth had been slow and even after more than ten years it was still no more than a slender sapling and no taller than myself. But despite the ferocity of the storms which had already trained the few stunted sallows to permanent obeisance the rowan had grown straight and proud; a slim soldier of a tree battling grimly against the harshness of the seasons; the storms of winter; the spring droughts, and most cruel of all the treacherous summer gales which stripped it prematurely of its foliage and left it looking so wearied by its combat that I wondered how much longer it would be before it succumbed to the mastery of the seasons. There was a single rowan tree on my croft; a tall and sturdy tree which every autumn was briefly caparisoned with rich red berries that the gluttonous starlings had usually harvested before I realized the berries were ripe. I had never seen a berry on the lonely little rowan; only wind-shredded foliage, but it continued to survive and in time it became for me not just a landmark but a symbol of courage and tenacity and I never passed it without sliding my hands caressingly down its slender trunk.

I detected Bonny, with Crumley in close attendance, just outside the boundary fence and in the hope that she might temporarily desert him and come to me I climbed on the gate and holding out the potach in my hand began to call. As soon as she heard my voice she looked up and started a few eager paces towards me, but then, seeing Crumley was not following her, she coyly lowered her head and resumed grazing.

‘Bonny!' I called again and again, trying to infuse both cajolery and command into my call, for though by now I was a seasoned enough crofter to accept the presence of a bull on the moors during the summer months I had never quite succeeded in overcoming my fear of bulls, particularly when, as tonight, there was no other human being within screaming distance. My plan was to coax Bonny to come to the gate when I could, with the aid of the potach, persuade her to come through so that I could shut the bull safely on the other side. Once milking was finished all I would have to do would be to let her through the gate where she could rejoin her lover. But tonight Bonny was thrawn. It was uphill to the gate from where she was standing and she was either too tired or too loth to leave Crumley to be persuaded either by my presence or by the offer of the potach. Since I knew the battle of wills could continue for some time, I gave in and, still keeping the fence between us, I walked down the slope towards her. Both Bonny and Crumley watched my approach, Bonny eagerly but Crumley with only moderate interest. However, when I tried to bolster my own courage by scolding Bonny for not coming when I called her his interest increased. I thought he began to look a little menacing and recalled his reputation for being cross. For a few moments I stood chiding myself on my fear and reminding myself that Tearlaich had said the bull would be too ‘shagged out' to be aggressive. I tried again to coax Bonny to come closer to the fence with the idea that I might just wriggle through between the wires and, in the case of attack, wriggle quickly back again, and eventually she condescended to detach herself from Crumley and come within about fifty yards of the fence. But she would come no closer. Taking a deep breath and keeping my eyes fixed on the bull, I wriggled cautiously through the barbed wire and moved towards her. Breaking a piece off the potach, I fed it to her and after reassuring myself that the bull was showing no particular interest in me crouched beside her and started to milk. She began to cud contentedly and, lulled by the fact that Bonny's great belly was now screening me from the bull, the tension within me relaxed a little and resting my head against her warm flank I allowed the worst of my fears to be soothed away by the sound of the milk spurting rhythmically in to the pail. Bonny turned her head towards the spot where she had left Crumley and paused in her cudding to send him a gently loving low.