Four Ducks on a Pond (6 page)

Inside the house, Kitten cooked and cleaned, and Grandpop mended things – the car, the roof, the electric-lighting plant, anything that was broken at all. And as he mended, he hummed his
little hums, particularly one about counting your blessings, which he had heard sung during Community Hymn Singing on the wireless, and which reminded him of his happy student days in Edinburgh
– days which he never ceased to recall and which made him sometimes feel very nostalgic. John finished his packing and his fencing and his instructions to Puddy about what she was to do while
he was away. Then one day he and all his baggage were heaped into Florrie, and Puddy drove him off, and returned much later, alone.

So he left in the car, not the bus, which showed that his departure was important. As the car left the drive, Corrie neighed and I meowed, but I’m afraid he never heard us.

There is something wrong with Florrie’s silencer, and a little meow and a low whinny could never penetrate through the din of the engine. All the same, we did our best, and some day, if he
reads these words, he’ll know we are thinking of him and loving him yet.

Puddy is not the sort to sit down under depression and mope. On the day that horrid pit was dug, she moved a broody hen into a box and she went off in Florrie to a farm right
out of earshot of the sound of the humane killer, and she brought back twelve duck eggs, which she set under the broody hen. After that, she was in a constant state of worry about the rats eating
the eggs, and you’d never believe the number of contraptions she erected round that box to keep it rat-proof.

Ducks

Then one day Archie-the-Carrier arrived with his lorry, and on the lorry he had a beautiful rat-proof coop and run that Puddy had ordered from the mainland. Very carefully she transferred the
hen and the eggs into their new home, and after that she didn’t worry about rats any more.

Archie-the-Carrier paid us lots of visits, as he brought the sacks of grain, the manure, the fencing stobs, wire netting and indeed every manner of thing that could not be bought in the village
store. Archie was always very cheerful and in windy weather he kept his hat tied on with string. Whenever the family thanked him for bringing things he said, ‘You’re welcome,’
which I think is one of the nicest ways of telling people that you are happy to serve them.

The oats were showing very green now, and Puddy was working busily in the garden, a very unrewarding task, for the rabbits somehow always managed to find a way in, and they made havoc with the
things she tried to grow. She now chose flowers that they didn’t like eating, such as gladioli and lupins, but unfortunately she couldn’t do the same with vegetables. The fruit trees
she had planted last year were in blossom but I feared the wind would blacken the leaves before the fruit began to form. I was wrong here, for two of the trees produced quite good red apples which
Kitten picked before the wind could blow them off. Before John left, he planted four poplar trees as an experiment. There is a high hawthorn hedge round the west and north sides of the garden, but
it does not give enough protection from the wind, and if these poplars are a success Puddy means to plant more, just inside the hawthorns. On the east side there is fencing, and laburnum and lilac
trees. The laburnum flowered beautifully but the lilac never seems to flower. On the south there is a privet hedge, which divides the garden from part of the paddock. Corrie once came through this
hedge to have a look at the garden, so now it is reinforced with a low wall.

Mostly the garden grows weeds, and when I say weeds, I don’t mean the odd dandelion. Puddy’s weeds are champions, the burrs being perhaps the biggest and the best, with leaves the
size of a tennis racquet, and they tower over Puddy, who says the roots are twice the length of her height.

The cuckoo had arrived, and we were never allowed to forget it for long. The skylarks, who build their nests on the ground – the wild field where Corrie now lives was a favourite spot
– flung their glorious song as they flew higher and higher, vanishing like a speck into the sky, and I believe that even if the family didn’t love birds, I would never touch a skylark,
even though many’s the time I’ve almost trodden on their nests. Perhaps I must be a musical cat, for I always notice the song of birds. And you should hear the blackbirds, who like to
perch on the chimney stacks and give a recital to warm the cockles of your heart. But if you know what the cockles of your heart are, you are cleverer than I am.

Kitten was wonderful with birds. She would stand at the back door, throwing crumbs and whistling, and in no time she would have birds of all sorts hopping round her, quite unafraid. Then the
goats would come clicking along to join the party, and off would fly the birds, to Kitten’s annoyance, and the goats’ pleasure. This was very tiresome of the goats, for normally they
will not touch any tit-bit that falls on the ground.

Johnnie-the-Postman was always very much looked forward to, as I’ve told you already, but now, with only half the family at home, the arrival of the mail was more important than ever.
Fionna’s letter came once a week, on Monday unless for some reason it had missed the collection, and when this happened it came on Tuesday. Fionna’s letters were brief, rather messy and
absolutely full of drawings, mostly of horses. During the autumn term, she gave the score of the hockey matches which her boarding house played against other houses; in spring she gave the score of
the lacrosse matches and in the summer the cricket and tennis matches. And she wrote about Gilly and Jelly and Horsey and Sago, but they were nothing to do with food, as you might suppose. They
were the names of her friends, and for a time I wondered what their godfathers and godmothers must have been thinking about, giving the children such names. Then I realised that they were probably
pet-names, like Puddy and Kitten, so perhaps their godfathers and godmothers weren’t so thoughtless after all.

Margie’s letters came every few days, written very big so that they looked very long until you read them. Margie was absolutely well now and wished she could leave London and live in Mull
for ever. John’s letters were long when they came, which wasn’t often. They were always very cheerful, and Puddy said that even when he was snowed up in the trenches in Italy during the
war, his letters had been cheerful. So as he was living in Stirling Castle, I suppose he could feel very cheery indeed. Secretly I was most impressed by his address – Stirling Castle. I made
a point of reading about it in the history books in the cottage, and exciting reading it made too. The names it conjured up – the Black Douglas, Robert the Bruce and Mary, Queen of Scots.
After a while I became a fervent Scottish Nationalist until I remembered the dire effects being political had on people, and not wanting to become narrow-minded like Arnish, I read the Elizabethan
voyages of discovery and my sense of balance was restored.

Just four weeks after Puddy had put the eggs under the broody hen, she came into the house very flushed and excited, saying that she could hear cheeping under the hen and could just see one egg
half open and a feathery duckling inside. I made an excuse to go out of doors, for I wanted to see the miracle myself. However, the hen looked so angry when she saw me approach, and she fluffed her
feathers so indignantly, that I pretended I was simply walking past and stalked off into the garden. Don’t think I was afraid of that hen – not me! Besides, the wire netting that kept
the rats out of the run also kept the hen inside. But I had heard that hens at this time are in an odd mental condition, and may kill the chicks if danger threatens. That hen should know by now
that I’m not Danger; all the same, it wouldn’t do to run risks, and I just don’t know what Puddy would do if she lost her ducklings now, just as they were hatching.

The next morning, Puddy was down early, and I left the electric-lighting plant house, where I had spent the night, as soon as I heard her open the kitchen door. Carla greeted me with more
exuberance than seemed to me necessary, and when I had righted myself from the somersault I had unwittingly turned, I followed Puddy to the coop, and there, sure enough, was the broody hen and
eight tiny ducklings with golden bills and huge web feet! Carla and I sat quietly together, for Carla can be quiet if she likes, while Puddy removed the four eggs that had not hatched, together
with the empty egg-shells. Then she put some clean straw gently under the hen, and added a dish of water alongside the food she had already placed in the run. The ducklings scuttled quickly under
their foster-mother but soon they were out again, splashing in the water. It’s a curious fact that while a new-born duckling enjoys a swim, it will die of chill if caught in the rain. I
wondered if Puddy knew this, and soon found that she did, for whenever there was a drop of rain, she covered that coop with a tarpaulin. And this she did till the ducklings, who grew at an
astonishing rate, were quite able to withstand all manner of weather.

That poor hen must have wondered a lot about the curious shape her chicks had become. I often saw her look at the other baby chicks, who were now running around in the hen-run, and when she
could, she pecked at them through the bars. I put this down to jealousy. She must have resented those chicks looking so much prettier, as she thought, than her own brood. Personally, I found the
ducklings enchanting, with their khaki feathers and yellow chests. Later on, two of them developed bright bills and more vivid feathers, and those, Puddy said, were the drakes and would be the
first for the pot. Which I considered was most unfeeling of her.

I heard Puddy say to Grandpop and Kitten that the hatching of those eggs quite made up for the dreadful slaughter of the animals, and I could understand what she meant. In the balance of things,
eight little ducks don’t add up to much compared with hundreds of head of cattle, yet the very fact that an apparently dead thing like an egg can turn into a living thing like a duckling is a
startling and wonderful manifestation, if you think of it at all. That’s why I called it a miracle when I first referred to it. People wouldn’t want to have seas dividing and rivers
running backwards if they’d stop to think seriously about eggs.

This brings me to a personal matter, which in fact my dissertation on eggs is leading up to. I had become the father of five lively kittens, three girls and two boys. Their mother was a wild cat
with whom I had become friendly, and she had a nice home for them in a rabbit-hole under a whin bush in Corrie’s wild field. Don’t think that when I say the mother was a wild cat I mean
one of the big snarling brutes still to be found in remote parts of Scotland. The wild cats in Mull are descendants of domestic cats, probably some of those left behind at the time of the dispersal
of the Highlanders.

At Carsaig in Mull there is a herd of wild goats that can be traced back to that dreadful time. I’m not going to give you the history of the Clearances, because it makes me so angry that I
get political, which I don’t want to be. But I can tell you that many good Highlanders were turned out of their homes and shipped off to Canada and other places so that their land could be
used for deer-stalking, a pastime of rich people from far away. Puddy’s grandmother used to tell Puddy of the ships laden with weeping people being sent away to unknown shores. Puddy’s
grandmother had seen it herself when she was a young girl, and that is the nearest I can get to an eyewitness account, for it happened over a hundred years ago.

In case I have depressed you, I’ll just add that the descendants of many of those people are rich men today in the New World. I’m not excusing what happened when I tell you this, but
there it is.

One day I was sitting on the wall by the gate, worrying a little I confess, as during the past few days I had become the father of three more families, which I think you will agree, is too much
of a good thing. Puddy was weeding the drive. That is to say, she was spraying it with a special preparation made out of water and sodium chlorate. This is death to weeds and harmless to animals,
so it was just the thing for us, and for you, too, if you have weeds and animals as we have.

I saw Kaya coming along the road before Puddy saw him. Kaya had bunches of rabbits dangling from each side of the handlebars of his bicycle. He was pushing the bicycle, so perhaps he had a
puncture. When he reached the gate, he had to stop and watch Puddy and ask her what she was doing. She explained about sodium chlorate and animals, and he said that was just grand. At this point my
attention was distracted by a fly, and when I had disposed of it, I was shocked to hear Puddy saying, ‘I’ve arranged for her to travel by the cattle boat from Bunessan, then
she’ll go by train to Perth. But I don’t want to take her to the boat myself. I’d so hate saying goodbye.’

‘Chust you give me her halter and I’ll see to it all for you,’ Kaya said comfortably. ‘And it’s good luck I’ll wish her, I’m sure.’

They talked some more, but I was too heartsick to hear what they said. Puddy was sending Corrie away! I had to repeat it over and over to get the sense of it. It couldn’t be true. She
loved Corrie. But why else would Corrie be sent to a boat, and then by train to Perth?