The Loud Halo (6 page)

‘Ach, no.' She seemed doubtful. ‘Maybe if Duncan took it down on a wedding form and explained to the fellow that it's all we have just at the moment, likely he'd take it all right?'

‘Likely he would,' we comforted, and so she wrote out the message and gave it to Duncan. Erchy and Hector accompanied him so as to witness any possible reactions.

I gave my letters to Nelly Elly and she tried the date-stamp experimentally on her bare arm. ‘Ach!' she ejaculated. ‘Fiona was in last night and was playin' with my stamp.' She adjusted it and again applied it to her arm before stamping it on to the envelopes. ‘There now,' she said, dropping the letters into the box.

She came round from behind the counter to close and bolt the door of the Post Office behind me. It was only three in the afternoon but she was going to hoe her potato-patch beside the road and from there she could see any potential customers. She was not to be left long undisturbed, for Bruach already had its first quota of tourists and I had left the Post Office only about a hundred yards behind me when I met a pair of sun-scorched and midge-bitten campers sauntering along the road, who demanded a little resentfully to know where the Post Office had hidden itself and if, when they found it, they could buy stamps there. They implied both by their tone and their remarks that they had found Bruach a little unaccommodating so far. I directed them on their way but their resentment had kindled a response in me, not against Bruach or the Bruachites but against the tourists themselves, for they were coming now in their coachloads and carloads, robbing the village of its privacy and awakening the hibernating avarice of the crofters.

The moment the first tourists arrived (always pronounced ‘towrists' in Bruach) the crofters began to look more alert. Except for the old die-hards like Yawn, who would have noth-to do with tourists and only gave them a ‘withdraw the hem of his garment look' when they ventured near him, they thoroughly enjoyed the colour and the air of prosperity the presence of the visitors imparted to the village. Soon notices began to appear outside croft houses adjoining the roadside, proclaiming that they were ‘Tearooms' or offering ‘Bed and Breakfast', and of these there were more than enough to cater for the number of people who came. Some drew more custom than others, perhaps because of their position, perhaps because of the fare they offered, but it was comforting to see how little rivalry there was between them. Admittedly, Hamish, having been dissatisfied one season with the amount of trade his wife's tearoom had attracted, had tried to increase it the following season by the added lure of a ‘toilet', and with this intention he had erected a notice-board in his front garden. Painstakingly, because he was crippled with rheumatics, he had painted the word on it in large white letters, but unfortunately spelling was not Hamish's strong point and he was soon having to endure much mockery from his neighbours for having left out the ‘i' so that the notice stated somewhat confusingly ‘Tolet'. In an attempt to rectify his mistake he had hastily inserted an ‘i' in the appropriate position but the letters were already so cramped that it merely looked like an emphatic full stop separating the words ‘To' and ‘let'. That at any rate is how the tourists interpreted it and throughout that season Hamish and his family were pestered by people anxious to rent their thatched cottage, until Hamish, almost beside himself with vexation, had resolved to clarify the position beyond doubt in time for the next season. This he had done by simply adding the letters ‘W.C.' above the ‘To. let' already on the board. I do not know if it brought increased custom to his tearoom but I do know that whenever I passed by Hamish's cottage there were groups of puzzled tourists studying the sign and debating among themselves as to its meaning.

However, on Sundays, despite the presence of tourists, Bruach reverted to its normal piety. Sheets put out to bleach were taken in if they were dry, or if they were still wet, rolled up so that the sun should not be employed to whiten them. In some houses male guests might be asked if they would mind shaving on the Saturday night because the landlady could not allow the use of a razor on the Sabbath, and always, last thing on Saturday night, the ‘Tearoom' and ‘Bed and Breakfast' notices were draped over with sacking, though with such artful nonchalance that the words were never completely obscured.

‘He Breeah!'

I paused and turned round in the direction of the hail to see Janet talking to Dugald who was at work in his potatoes. She waved an indication that she was about to join me and I sat down on the grass verge of the road while I waited for her. The hot sun was burning through my dress and the parched grass was warm and brittle against my bare legs. The breeze was soft as thistledown and spiced with lark song, while out in the bay a school of porpoises plunged and tumbled with consummate grace. Close inshore a trio of shark fins cut lazily through the water. We were well into the second week of long days that began with the sun poking its fingers into one's eyes in a morning and ended, after molten sunset, in a calm and soothing twilight that all too soon merged into another dawn. The cuckoos, who all day answered their own echoes until it seemed they would drive themselves and everyone else crazy, only decelerated their pace during the night—they did not cease altogether.

‘Ach, mo ghaoil,' puffed Janet as she struggled up the steep bank. ‘Whenever are we goin' to see the last of this fine weather?'

‘Are you tired of it?' I asked her.

‘Indeed, I'm no tired of the weather but I'm tired of bein' short of water,' she grumbled. ‘My brother's complainin' he has time for nothing else all day but going back and forwards to the well for me.'

It was always the same when we got a nice spell in Bruach. We could not really enjoy it after the first few days because by then we had begun to fret about our water supply.

‘I have that many sheets to wash,' resumed Janet, ‘an' there's more visitors comin' tonight. An' even when I get the water the well is that low it looks like I'm washin' the sheets in strong tea.' She swung her sack of bread over from one shoulder to the other. ‘Indeed: that woman I have stayin' with me just now came out to speak to me while I was doin' my washin' yesterday an' you should have seen the look she gave to my water.' Janet chuckled tranquilly.

‘Is that the woman from Manchester you were telling me about?' I enquired.

‘It is so, mo ghaoil, an' that's what I was wantin' to ask you about. She's sayin' she feels it that strange here an' she's just longin' to meet another Englishwoman. I was wondering would you come over and have a wee crack with her this evenin' and cheer her up a bitty?'

‘I can't come now,' I apologised, for in Bruach ‘afternoon' receives no recognition. It is morning until about two o'clock and then it becomes ‘evening'. ‘I've promised to take Fiona for a picnic and I don't suppose I shall feel much like going anywhere but to my bed when I get back from that.'

‘No, indeed,' agreed Janet understanding, for Hector and Behag's small daughter was a notoriously intractable child.

‘Will I tell her you'll come tomorrow, then?' Janet pleaded, and when I agreed she grasped my hand thankfully. ‘She'll be fine an' pleased when she hears it, for she's like as if she thinks she's among a lot of savages.' Janet's laughter bubbled again. ‘Indeed, d' you know she asked me the other day if there was coal mines beyond the hills because they reminded her so much of the “slack heaps” I think she called them she's after seein' in England.'

‘Why ever did she come here?' I asked, feeling vaguely affronted.

‘Ach, well, I believe her husband used to come to these parts an' he was always after praisin' it up to her so when she lost him she thought she'd best come here an' see what he liked so much.'

‘What a good thing she didn't come with him and spoil it for him.' I said.

‘That's just what I was sayin' there myself to Dugald. The woman's a right misery to herself because she can't see a single factory chimney no matter how hard she looks.'

The sandwiches and cake for our picnic were already prepared and I had only to pack them into a bag and then collect Fiona. She was bobbing impatiently in the doorway and as soon as she detected me she ran towards me, shouting all the way.

‘Dugald's just away and he says you're to get rhubarb tonight on your way back.' She tugged at my hand, pulling me round so that we faced in the opposite direction to which I had planned. ‘We're goin' this way,' she announced.

‘No, we're going this way,' I told her firmly. The trouble with Fiona was that she was so used to getting her own way she was completely deaf to correction. She continued to pull me in the direction she wanted to go but on this occasion I had resolved that I must be equally firm.

‘I am going this way, Fiona, and if you want to go the other way you may. We'll share out the food now,' It was a risk because she was quite capable of agreeing to go off by herself and I should then have had to trail surreptitiously in her wake to make sure she came to no harm. Her sudden capitulation appeared to stagger her as much as it did myself for she was too speechless to issue a single command while we plodded over the brittle dry moors and picked our way across the beds of dried-out burns.

‘Why did you no' want to go the other way?' she demanded when she had regained her complacency, and while we helped each other to descend a narrow path that led to a beach which Fiona had never visited before and which I loved for its seclusion I explained to her why I had chosen to come this way. It was really to avoid Bonny, for when I had first bought her and put her out on the hill with the rest of the village cattle she had been friendless and alone for a time and so whenever she saw me she had got into the habit of following me. I had made the mistake then of packing a ‘wee potach' for her along with my own picnic lunch and had then had to endure her standing over me ecstatically chewing a juicy green cud from which webs of saliva drifted all over my own food. The next time she had spied the lunch bag on my shoulder she had grown impatient for me to open it and had insisted on escorting me so very closely that when I had come to the stepping-stones of a burn and had stood poised hesitantly in the middle she had urged me on so eagerly with her horns in my back that I and the lunch bag had emerged in a wet and sorry state. Her devotion to me was touching and because of it I did not try too much to discourage her until she had progressed from being merely accepted by the other cattle to become the acknowledged leader of the younger set. Then I had to find a different location for my alfresco meals. It was one thing to take one's own cow for a picnic. It was quite another to take thirty or forty other cows, each one of them curious to discover what it was in my lunch bag that was so attractive to their leader.

Fiona stared at me expressionlessly as I talked and when I had finished she asserted flatly, ‘See that boat out there,' as though she had not listened to a word I said. She was looking out across the listless water through which a ringnetter was tearing its way with emphatic urgency.

‘She has plenty fish,' she added with adult self-assurance.

‘How do you know she has fish, clever puss?' I teased.

‘Because she has the gulls with her,' replied Fiona through tightened lips. She did not call me a silly old cailleach as she would have had I been her mother or aunt, but her tone was unmistakable. I stared out at the ringnetter. There was a trail of fuzzy smoke from her galley chimney and in it the gulls whirled and eddied with the sun glancing off their wing tips so that it looked as if the boat had thrown over herself a gauzy, sequin-studded scarf.

I suggested beachcombing, a pastime which the child revelled in and which I found at least as pleasurable as at one time I would have found a shopping spree in town. It added to one's feeling of self-sufficiency and independence to gather driftwood for one's fire and in addition there was always the exciting prospect of stumbling upon a really worthwhile find. Our progress was slow for Fiona demanded my attention for even her most trivial finds and her chatter was incessant. However at last we found for her a brightly coloured ball and then almost simultaneously a coir doormat and a perfectly good plastic pail. She was momentarily overawed by her good fortune until she recollected our picnic.

‘When will we take our tea?' she asked with only partially concealed impatience.

I waited only to pick up my own finds—a brass porthole with glass intact that I thought would improve my front door and two aluminium net floats which Erchy would halve for me to provide four typically Bruach feeding bowls.

‘We'll have it now if you like,' I told her. We sat down cautiously on the sunbaked rocks with our bare feet in a warm, tide-washed pool that was floored with pounded shells and studded with sea-anemones, and when we had eaten we played at sailing Fiona's ball until the sun had moved off the cliff-screened shore and the midges began to work up to their evening appetites. We climbed up to the open moors again, our feet disturbing hundreds of heather moths which fluttered up in front of us like petals chased by a gamin breeze. The sun was still shining with evening-tempered brilliance; the sheep were just beginning to rouse themselves from their siesta; a lamb bleated for its mother and was answered by the frustrated mew of a buzzard planing overhead. Fiona's fat little legs plodded sturdily beside my own but she had gone very quiet and I suspected that she was tired. I hoped she had forgotten Dugald's message and planned to deposit her back with her mother and aunt before I went to collect the promised rhubard. But of course she had remembered and of course she insisted on accompanying me, although it would add another mile to our walk. I gave in without argument.

Dugald's croft ran alongside the road and was recognisable by a large notice stating that it was a ‘Car Park, price 1/-', a notice which had been erected originally more as a piece of bluff than anything else but which was now appreciably augmenting Dugald's pension. It had been at a ceilidh one evening that Dugald had been complaining bitterly that the tourists' cars were ruining his hay and someone had then suggested that the best way to stop the cars from parking on his croft was to make them pay for the privilege. Dugald had thought it an excellent idea and had immediately erected the notice, but to his bewilderment instead of continuing along the road where there was ample free parking space the foolish drivers still came and parked on his croft. For some days Dugald had tried to look as though neither the house nor the croft belonged to him when he saw honest drivers looking for someone to pay their shillings to, but when, from the concealment of his byre, he had watched them go to the cottage and hand the parking fee to his wife, Dugald had been so shaken that, as he put it, ‘didn't know what to say to myself.' When he saw how the shillings mounted up he realised that he was on to a good thing and now Dugald was soon out of the house and waiting for his fee whenever a car so much as put a wheel on his croft. Except of course on Sunday.