The Loud Halo (2 page)

‘He was always the clown, was Johnny,' they invariably added, ‘and he took in no learning save what the schoolmaster leathered in through the seat of his breeks.'

I had first met Johnny the day I moved into my own cottage in Bruach when, as soon as the furniture had been carried in and the willing helpers had left to attend to their cattle, he had suddenly appeared outside the window, where he had settled himself, elbows resting comfortably on the sill, and had subjected me to an embarrassing mute scrutiny as I wrestled with a reluctant stove and endeavoured in the midst of chaos to cook myself a meal. When I appeared to be looking for something he would peer anxiously into the room, pressing his face against the glass. When I seemed to have found whatever I was looking for he would grin and nod with satisfaction. He did not live in the village and I had never seen him before but eventually for both our sakes I called him to come inside; for a moment his expression was one of horror and then he almost fell in his anxiety to get away from the window. By the time I had reached the door he was hurrying across the moor as fast as he could go.

‘Ach, but mo ghaoil, he'll not be knowin' you and he'd be frightened likely that you'd seduct him. The lads tease him, the wretches,' Morag explained when I told her of the incident.

Once I was settled in my cottage Johnny, apparently having no more fear of or less aversion to losing his pudicity, got over his mistrust of me and became a regular visitor. Every couple of weeks he would walk to Bruach over the moor, his awkward shambling gait seeming to carry him rapidly across country in all kinds of weather without any sign of distress. He came, as he explained, because he thought I'd like a ceilidh, but his real reason for visiting me, though it was never allowed to emerge until towards the end of his stay, was to sell me some article he had made and thereby earn a few coppers for ‘wootpines', for he loved a clandestine smoke and his sister Kirsty, with whom he lived, appropriated all his pension. Sometimes it would be a small model boat made from driftwood, sometimes a glass netfloat in a piece of herring net, but more often than not it would be a heather besom. The frequency with which he offered me these indeed suggested that he himself had little faith in the lasting quality of his handiwork; if he ever noticed the ingenious windbreak I contrived of upended besoms he never commented on it.

I brewed tea, spread some pieces of scone with jam and put them beside him on the table. Then I made some excuse to go upstairs. My first attempts to entertain Johnny had been embarrassing for both of us. I had poured out a cup of tea and placed it beside him along with a plate of scones. He had sugared the tea and stirred it, wiping the spoon carefully on his coat sleeve before replacing it in the basin. All the time I was drinking my own tea he had talked politely, never so much as glancing at his own cup so that it had got quite cold. I had offered to empty his cup and refill it with hot tea and he had accepted with alacrity. Once again he had repeated the ritual of sugaring it and wiping the spoon, but despite my urgings he had again left it to go cold, and still had not touched the scones. Feeling a little piqued I had filled his cup yet again with hot tea and then quite without design I had gone to get something from the shed. When I returned after only a very brief, interval the tea had disappeared and so had all the scones. The next time he came much the same thing had happened but by the time he paid his third visit I knew what was expected of me and obliged accordingly.

When I came downstairs after a discreetly judged interval Johnny had finished his strupak and was leaning back in the chair.

‘More tea or scone, Johnny?' I offered.

‘No, thank you, I've done lovely,' he replied, lifting one of his large hands in a gesture of repression. He waited expectantly until from the dresser I reached down a jar of baking-soda and a spoon which I kept especially for Johnny. Avidly he dug in the spoon and with obvious relish swallowed three or four heaped spoonfuls of the powder, spilling it down his jersey in his eagerness to get the spoon into his mouth. Then he replaced the jar on the table, dusted down the front of his jersey and leaned back in his chair to stare tranquilly at the ceiling and to remain splendidly indifferent to his own loud and fulsome belchings which when I had first heard them had filled me with consternation but which now I accepted with only slight uneasiness. Once, thinking I was doing Johnny a good turn, I had refused the baking-soda, but when I had returned to the kitchen the trail of white powder from the dresser to Johnny's chair had told its own tale and I was so ashamed of myself for causing the look of guilt on Johnny's normally ingenuous face that I never had the heart to refuse again.

The belchings diminished in volume and I started to move about the kitchen, wishing that Johnny would realise that it would soon be dusk and that I had yet to go and milk my cow. It was unthinkable that the solicitous ‘Ach, but I'm keeping you back', which is the polite Bruach way of telling a stranger it is high time he went, should be used by an English woman to a Gael. I groped for an alternative. On the dresser was a bowl of peanuts still in their shells which had been sent to me from England. Taking a good handful I put them into a bag and offered them to Johnny.

‘Take these home to Kirsty,' I said.

Johnny turned them over suspiciously. ‘Which is these?' he asked me.

‘They're peanuts,' I told him. ‘Very good to eat.'

He still continued to turn them between his large fingers.

‘I'm taking some with me to chew while I'm looking for the cow.'

‘Aye?' he agreed uncertainly. He put them in his pocket and went through into the hall where I heard him struggling into his jigsaw of oilskins. I rushed out of the back door to get meal for Bonny's potach and to collect the milk pail. When I came back into the kitchen Johnny met me with an approving smile.

‘Them things is good, good,' he asserted.

‘What things?' I asked stupidly, my mind on the task ahead.

‘Them nuts, you say. They're good I'm tellin' you.'

‘Oh, have you eaten some? I thought you'd like them,' I said. ‘Here take some more to eat on your way home.' I took another handful from the bowl. ‘Give me your bag and I'll fill it up,' I said, anxious to hurry him on his way so that I might look for Bonny without the dubious assistance of a torch. He proffered me an empty bag. ‘Have you eaten them all, Johnny?' I asked, mildly astonished.

‘Aye, an' they was good I'm sayin'.'

I dribbled more nuts into his bag. ‘You'd better give me the shells and I'll throw them into the fire,' I said. ‘Otherwise Kirsty will be complaining that I encourage you to fill your pockets with rubbish.'

‘Shells?' he repeated vaguely.

‘Yes, the shells off the peanuts. Have you thrown them away, thee?' I glanced down at the floor hoping he had not scattered them at random as he did his wood chippings.

‘These has shells?' he demanded, taking one from the bag and holding it up.

‘Why, yes, of course,' I began to explain. ‘Look', and then I broke off to stare at him with mounting concern. ‘Johnny, you didn't eat the shells too,' I accused.

‘I eat them,' retorted Johnny proudly. ‘I eat all of them an' they're good, I'm tellin' you.' With great bravado he popped a couple of nuts into his mouth and chewed them noisily.

‘But, Johnny,' I remonstrated, ‘you mustn't eat the shells. They'll give you terrible indigestion!'

Completely unperturbed he continued to pop nuts into his mouth, still chewing with gusto. ‘Never have indigestion in my life,' he assured me happily.

‘Never had indigestion!' I exclaimed. ‘Then why on earth do you take all that baking-soda?'

For a moment he looked vaguely perplexed, and then, wagging a finger at me, he recommended: ‘Take plenty bakin' sody and never no indigestion. Just plenty sody.'

I opened the door and the wind charged in. Johnny met it with a magnificent belch which had such a repelling effect that in the brief respite I managed to slam the door behind him.

‘Thank you for that, Johnny,' I murmured with a smile and went to the task of getting into my gumboots and oilskins once again.

Hector had decided to sell his boat
Wayfarer
so that he could buy a bigger one with more accommodation for passengers, for Bruach was being discovered by a steadily increasing number of campers and coach tourists and the crofters were confidently predicting that the coming season would be a bumper one. Some days after his advertisement had appeared in a Highland paper Hector turned up at my cottage with a sheaf of letters he had received in reply.

‘It's a grand day,' he proffered with beguilement in his blue eyes and a diffidence in his voice that was no doubt induced by the fact that it was at least six weeks since our last meeting and that I had, on that occasion, soundly upbraided him for daring to borrow my one and only toothbrush. He had been bewildered and hurt by my attack and had been quick to assure me that he had put the brush back most carefully in its tumbler beside the water bucket where it was always kept. What he hadn't been able to reassure me about was why, when I came to use the toothbrush, its bristles should have been fuzzy with black hair that was exactly the same shade and texture as his own.

‘Why, Hector!' I greeted him now with genuine cordiality, for no one could help loving him whatever he did, ‘where on earth have you been all this time? I don't seem to have seen you for ages.'

‘Ach, I'm just where the tide left me when last you saw me,' he said with a gloomy smile. I told him to sit down but he remained standing, shuffling from one foot to another and gnawing along the length of a grubby forefinger.

‘Behag was tellin' me,' he began, and then pushing up his peaked cap he rubbed an exploratory hand among the sparse hair it constrained. ‘I was wonderin',' he started again, this time pulling at his ear, ‘maybe would you do me a few wee letters on tsat machine you have? I'm tsinkin' it would be quicker.'

I looked up from the sewing machine on which I was running up a pair of gay new curtains. ‘Of course I'll do them,' I agreed. ‘Do you want them right away?'

‘Ach, no.' With renewed confidence he drew up a chair and sat down beside me. ‘You can finish what you're doin' first,' he told me magnanimously.

I turned back to the machine.

‘Will I work the handle for you,' he offered when he had watched me long enough to be sure the task required very little exertion. I said that I would prefer to do it myself and while I put on a new reel of cotton and re-threaded the needle he toyed delightedly with the material, rubbing it between his stained fingers and examining the bright red peonies with which it was patterned. ‘Tsese is nice flowers,' he confided, ‘I mind they used to call tsem “chrissie-annies” in Glasgow when I was tsere.'

When I commenced sewing again Hector bent over me anxiously. Now despite the fact that I need to wear spectacles for close work I flatter myself that I can run up a straight seam as neatly as anyone, but Hector, who admittedly had perfect eyesight, was so dubious of my skill that every few inches if he considered there was the slightest deviation he would give an audible ‘tech' of concern and an enthusiastic twitch at the material, which resulted in the sewing of a pronounced ‘V'. I must confess I was too amused to curb his enthusiasm though by the time I had reached the end of the seam the stitching resembled a wavering flight of birds. I thought it might be more satisfactory if I finished the curtains when I was alone but he was insistent that the work should not be put aside just for his ‘few wee letters'. I suspected that he was thoroughly enjoying guiding what he no doubt believed to be my very erratic hand, and he seemed greatly disappointed when we had finished and I announced that I must press the curtains before they were hung so that he would have to wait until his next visit before he could admire the full effect of his collaboration.

I put away the sewing machine and brought out the typewriter. ‘Now,' I invited, when there was a sheet of paper in the machine, ‘tell me what you want to say.'

He began to chew his finger again. ‘Well, what will I tell tsem?' he demanded perplexedly.

‘What do you want to tell them?' I retaliated.

He put the letters down on the table beside me. ‘Well, tsat one wants to know is tse engine forrard or aft. You could tell him it's aft.' He brought up one of his knees and attempted to rub his chin on it. ‘Tsere's anusser wants to know where is tse wheelhouse. You can tell tsem it's aft too.' He sat back limp and exhausted.

I glanced quickly through the letters. ‘They all want to know the price you're asking. You'll need to give them an idea of that,' I told him.

Hector looked momentarily discomfited. He did not want me or anyone else in the village to know the price he had set on
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. ‘Well, now, I'll not be knowin' what to ask for her,' he prevaricated. ‘Behag's sayin' one tsing and tse cailleach's sayin' anusser.'

‘We'll leave that blank then, and you can fill it in when you and Behag have decided,' I suggested.

‘Aye, aye. Tsat'll be tse way of it.' He cheered up instantly.

I drew up a list of questions and asked Hector for the answers. ‘Now,' I told him. ‘We'll just set down all this information in each letter and then they'll know as much about the boat as you can tell them. Is that all right?'

‘Tsat's fine,' said Hector.

‘Shall I just begin, “Dear Sir, In reply to your letter of such and such a date, here is the information you ask for.…”?'

‘We cannot say “Dear Sir”,' cut in Hector with shocked disapproval. ‘Not when you're writin' to folks about a boat.'

‘Why not?' I asked with surprise. ‘You don't know these people, so you should begin with “Dear Sir”.'