The Loud Halo (21 page)

Not for the first time I wished that the powers-that-be would get their priorities in order. It seemed to me ludicrous that electricity, which was well on its way to Bruach, should come before there was a prospect of a water supply, but that was what was happening in other less inaccessible villages so that it was not unusual to see bent old women tottering from a well, which was often no more than the most rudimentary depression in the ground, carrying the full pails of water back to their old-fashioned croft kitchens and there shakily lading the water with the traditional tinker-made dipper into a shiny new electric kettle.

One or two families in Bruach already had a water supply, but they were the luckier ones who had wells close to their houses yet on higher ground so that it was an easy and relatively inexpensive matter to pipe the water. It is doubtful if even they would have bothered had they not intended to cater for summer tourists. The rest of the crofters, having carried water all their lives, suffered little frustration from the lack of it and though they would agree wholeheartedly, when the subject was mentioned at the ceilidhs, that it would ‘indeed be wonderful to have the watter', their desire for it was never as fervent as my own. They professed to want bathrooms but more, I suspected, as a status symbol than a genuine need. Their attitude was in fact epitomised for me by old Murdoch who having heard he could get a grant to have a bathroom built on to his house applied for it immediately. Now Murdoch and his niece had been doing very well out of taking in boarders for bed and breakfast—‘nighter's' they called them —and the wily Murdoch thought that if he could, without much cost to himself, get another room built on he could offer even more accommodation. He reckoned that once the bathroom was built he would only have to turn round to the authorities and tell them there was no water supply and they would just pay the grant and let him get away with it as an extra bedroom. It was unfortunate for Murdoch that a new inspector was appointed just about the time his so called bathroom was completed and although it was furnished with a bowl on a stand, a pail of water and a towel rail Murdoch found it impossible to convince the inspector that the new building merited the description ‘bathroom'. To the old man's dismay he was informed that the grant would be withheld until the room was equipped with a conventional bath, toilet basin and W. C. Vociferous with indignation Murdoch grudgingly complied and again approached the authorities, assuring them, no doubt in good faith, that he was willing to sign an undertaking that as soon as piped water was available in Bruach he would have it connected to his bathroom. He naturally did not disclose that in the meantime he intended to store the unusable mod. cons. in a shed and let the room as a bedroom to help pay for them. But the authorities were adamant. To qualify for the description ‘bathroom' there must be running water. The inspector came to deliver the ultimatum to Murdoch when the old man was perched on a ladder repairing for the third time that season the damage the storms had done to his roof. Murdoch almost exploded. The inspector waited for him to subside and then pointed out helpfully that there was a good well not far away which could supply ample water without a great deal of expenditure. Murdoch, still spluttering with wrath and argument, descended the ladder and faced the inspector aggressively and then in truly Gaelic fashion, he flung out his arms in a dramatic gesture. ‘Look at that!' he cried, pointing up at the roof. ‘Look at it, will ye! Over fifty years me an' my father before me has been tryin' to keep the water from comin' into this house, an' now you're after forcin' me to take it in.' He had spat his disgust into the wind, chuckled appreciation of his own joke, and then invited the inspector inside for a strupak.

So Murdoch had ‘taken in the watter' and no one was more proud than himself when it was finally installed. He had even announced his intention of taking a bath some day, the first in his long life. It was about six months afterwards that he had sprackied up to me when we were both out on the hill feeding our cattle in the misty quiet of the evening.

‘Here, Miss Peckwitt,' his voice was hardly more than an awed whisper. ‘Did you ever take a bath?'

‘Yes,' I answered, knowing that if I betrayed the least surprise or amusement I should never know what lay behind the question.

‘Well, tell me, when you came out of it did you no' feel like a herrin' that's been stripped of its scales just?' His blue eyes were anxious and expectant.

‘I don't think so,' I said and this time I could not control a slight tremor in my voice.

‘An' did you no' feel for a week or more after it as though your clothes was full of wee, wee splenters?' He wriggled with a suppleness that belied his age. I shook my head.

‘Ach, well that's just the way I felt myself after it, Ach, I enjoyed it right enough when I was in but I never want another one the way it left me feelin'.'

The day stayed calm and patchily bright. After lunch I got out Joanna, having promised to drive Katy, the shepherd's wife, and her half-sister, Ishbel, to a neighbouring village to visit a friend who had just moved into a newly built house. It had been arranged that I should pick them up at ‘the back of three' and Ishbel was already waiting for me by the croft gate, dressed regally in her best clothes and carrying a string bag which contained a couple of small parcels. Whenever she visited a house, however briefly, Ishbel always took along some little gift. It was usually something quite trivial, perhaps a hank of darning wool, or a packet of envelopes, perhaps a magazine or even a packet of needles, just some little thing she found she could spare, so that she should never go empty-handed. Nervous, as always, she got into the car filling it with the evidence of her unstinted and relentless combat with the moths which she imagined campaigned against her with a vindictiveness that was purely personal.

At the shepherd's cottage we picked up the plump and voluble Katy who seemed to burst into chatter with every bump of the rough road. Ishbel said little and she was too shy even to respond to the convivial knots of workmen we passed, who took their weight off their spades to raise them in excited greeting—which, Katy observed derisively, was probably the most strenuous work they'd be doing that day. Despite the indolence of Highland labourers, however, progress was stalking rapidly towards Bruach, leaving a wake of tall poles which were to carry the electricity to the village. There were more signs of change too, for there was an extremely favourable grant and loan scheme for building new houses to replace the old croft dwellings, and the younger folk, though perhaps exiles themselves, had been quick to take advantage of it. The squat, tiny-windowed old croft houses usually built in the most sheltered corner of the croft, were becoming byres for cattle while beside them desirable two-storey residences with modern steel windows were appearing, looking as exposed and uncomfortable as someone who has just been kicked out of a warm bed. Into these the old people moved reluctantly, complaining of their coldness and temporarily overawed by their comparative spaciousness and by the sight of the bathrooms and up-to-the-minute sink units complete with mixer taps—though of course they still had neither water nor drainage.

It was beside such a cluster of raw-looking houses that I brought Joanna to a stop and Maggie, a dumpy, merry-voiced little woman with almost no inhibitions, rushed out to greet us effusively. Ishbel presented her gifts—a packet of biscuits and a tin of condensed milk—both of which were opened immediately and offered to us. We sat in the white glossy kitchen and drank tea while Maggie entertained us with a fluent and descriptive recital of all the events that had taken place in the village of recent months. She told us, with many interpolations from Katy, of Padruig Mor, who had been to the mainland to attend an auction sale where he had bought himself an old grandfather clock.

‘Ach, it was no bloody good at all,' said Maggie. (It is not usual to hear a Hebridean woman swear but the fact that Maggie did so unrestrainedly seemed, so far as her neighbours were concerned, to enhance her attraction as a hostess.) ‘Indeed,' she continued, ‘the works was all gone out of it long since but he brought it home with him on the train as proud as a cockerel.' I recollected Padruig Mor's tiny, dark old house, commonly described as a ‘wee but and ben', and so was not surprised when Ishbel asked: ‘How in the world did he get it into his house?'

‘He didn't to begin with,' replied Maggie, shrill with ridicule. The ceilin' was too low, so what did my fine fellow do but dig a hole in the floor till the clock would fit it. It's daft he is surely.'

‘So grandfather has one foot in the grave already,' I murmured.

‘So he has. You should go and see it for yourself. It looks crazy just but he's that pleased with it,' said Maggie. ‘Aye, but it was a laugh, I can tell you.'

Ishbel, Katy and she fell to discussing the rest of the neighbours, politely drawing me into the conversation when it seemed I had been silent too long, although most of the names they referred to I had heard of only vaguely, if at all. Despite the fact that I had not taken off my coat I felt cold, for the room was too large to be heated adequately by the discreet little grate that peeped out of the ultra-modern tiled surround, although Maggie had it piled high with peats. The room was full of such contradictions. The fireplace was flanked by battered pails of peats and the miniature mantelpiece was decorated with imposing silver ornaments that looked as though they might have been filched from a hearse. On the spotless hearth two black iron pans stood and a bundle of hen feathers lay ready for sweeping up any fallen ash. The centre of the room was taken up by a plastic-topped table with metal legs but the solid old croft-house bench was backed along one wall, throne-like in its austerity. Above it a bundle of rabbit skins hung from the ceiling. Everywhere looked scrubbed and clean, the new linoleum on the floor being still smeared with damp from a recent washing and even as I watched a grey-looking cat sidled apprehensively from under the bench and then streaked out through the open door as if it too expected to be picked up and scrubbed.

Maggie filled an old black kettle from one of the enamel pails which stood in the stainless steel sink and poised it delicately half on, half, off the fire with the remark that she didn't see the use of these sort of fireplaces anyway, what was the use of a fire that didn't boil the bloody kettle?

‘Don't you use the electric kettle?' Katy asked.

‘I can never find a match to light it with,' retorted Maggie, and when we had finished laughing, she went on: ‘The bugger won't let me use it. He says I'll likely burn the bottom out of it.' The outrage in her voice was only for our benefit.

‘The bugger', her son Seoras, appeared in the doorway at that moment. He was a dark, wiry young man with a permanently satirical expression on his face and a tongue even less inhibited than his mother's. However, he greeted us with perfunctory politeness as he threw off his jacket and sat down at the table. Maggie scooped a steaming bowl of unpeeled potatoes from one of the pots on the hearth and ladled a mound of boiled fish onto a plate from the other one and placed them in front of Seoras. He bent to his repast with great concentration.

‘Will you come and see over the house?' invited Maggie, and led us first to the blue and white tiled bathroom which contained, besides an aridly futile-looking W.C., a bath so narrow that anything but the slimmest of figures would have needed the aid of tyre levers to get in or out.

‘That's a useful cupboard you have there, under the washbasin,' I observed. ‘Much better than being able to see all the pipes.'

‘Indeed it is,' agreed Maggie, and opened the door to reveal a broody hen sitting tight on a clutch of eggs. ‘It's a grand little cupboard,' she enthused.

We followed her into a downstairs bedroom and then into another room, not yet furnished.

‘Which room is this to be?' I asked.

Maggie hesitated a moment or two before replying.

‘Indeed, I don't know just what he called it,' she admitted. ‘Seoras!' she screamed back into the kitchen. ‘What did they call this room on the plan?'

‘Damned if I know,' responded Seoras thickly.

‘Wait now till I get the plan and then you'll tell me,' said Maggie, rushing off. She returned and handed me a rolled-up plan which we studied for a moment together.

‘This will be the sitting-room, then,' I hazarded.

‘The sitting-room?' she repeated guilelessly. ‘Is that what they call it? Indeed, God knows what we'll put to sit in here unless it's more clockin' hens.

‘D'you hear that, Seoras—it's the sitting-room,' she called.

‘No, it is not, then—the shitting-room is the one with the bath in it,' retorted Seoras.

Upstairs there were three bedrooms, more than Maggie had known in her life although she had brought up seven children. ‘It's kind of lonely, though,' she said regretfully when we exclaimed over their proportions. All the windows were curtained with net, shutting out the glorious view and to me it seemed a pity that the crofter wife should emulate the townswoman in that the bigger windows she aspires to the more curtaining she buys to screen them. I drew aside one of the bedroom curtains to look out across the shaggy moors, smouldering with autumn colour, to where the mist-wreathed hills looked down sulkily at the restless water. My three companions came up behind me.

‘I see old Flora and Jamesie didn't take to livin' in their new house yet,' observed Katy, pointing to a brash new dwelling beside an old croft house on which a sagging roof seemed to have settled with much the same brooding determination as the hen I had just seen on the clutch of eggs in the bathroom.

‘No, and I don't believe they ever will,' Maggie asserted.

‘I wonder why?' I mused.

‘Ach, I think they're afraid of dirtying it,' was Maggie's pert rejoinder.