Lightly Poached (10 page)

The postie blew suddenly on his mouth-organ a long chord that could almost have been a raspberry.

Calum's uncle got up stiffly, stretched himself and went to stand at the open door. ‘The light is awakenin',' he proclaimed, coming back to resume his seat.

Erchy, who appeared to have been dozing through much of the old man's tale, pulled himself up from the floor. ‘One more song an' then we must be away,' he declared. ‘Come on, everybody.' The postman began to play ‘My ain Folk' and we belted it out with sad enthusiasm before we trouped down to the shore in time to a lilting version of ‘Mairi's Wedding'. We said our goodbyes and thank yous for a ‘grand ceilidh' and were rowed out to the boat which was already loaded with its additional cargo of hazels and illicit salmon. The night was quiet except for a few muted gall cries and the water was still, though patterned as if it was covered with wire netting.

‘Where's that bundle of cordite you found on the shore?' Marie's voice came clearly and we saw her run to the byre and return with a bundle which she hastily distributed among the crowd gathered to see us off. They lit the bundles and waved flaring farewells. To the strains of ‘Will ye no come back again' echoing from the shore the boat chugged Bruachwards through a sea that was the colour of smoked glass. It was cold on the water and I was glad that Sack of space necessitated our huddling together. Tearlaich's breadth was on one side of me and Behag's comfortable rotundity on the other. Erchy, who was again at the tiller, crouched behind us.

‘I'm thinkin' that Marie's a big woman to be as light on her feet as she was,' observed Behag thoughtfully.

‘Mmm,' I agreed. ‘They often are, these big women. She's good-looking though, isn't she?' I went on. ‘And her voice was beautiful and so was her hair …'

‘Aye, her hair,' interrupted Tearlaich eagerly. ‘Now Marie's hair's the sort of hair I'd want a woman of mine to have. An' did you see when she snatched off that net she had on the way it all fell as soon as it was loosed?'

‘I saw,' I told him. ‘And I noticed how overcome with admiration you were.'

‘Indeed that's true,' he agreed fervently. ‘I'll never forget the way it just dropped round her shoulders as soft and brown and easy as shit from a mare's behind. Bloody lovely it was.' He mistook my expression. ‘Honest,' he repeated earnestly. His eyes closed but his own expression remained ecstatic as he apparently dozed off to sleep.

‘Well, are you glad you came on the trip?' demanded Erchy from behind us.

‘I wouldn't have missed it for the world,' I assured him. ‘Meeting Marie and hearing all Calum's stories. It's been a wonderful evening altogether.'

‘Indeed I don't know when I've enjoyed myself so much,' corroborated Behag.

‘I've fairly enjoyed myself too,' Erchy admitted. ‘But I'm thinkin' I'll be best pleased with it when I come to eat my dinner.' He nodded to where the box of salmon was hidden under a sack.

Behag said, ‘I wonder will Calum remember to bring you the apples from that tree?'

At the mention of Calum's name Tearlaich became alert again. ‘Calum?' he repeated. ‘He'll not be remembering tomorrow what he's said today.'

‘He has a good enough memory for some things,' I pointed out. ‘All those stories he told us tonight. I loved listening to them.'

‘Aye, I noticed that,' he murmured non-comittally. There was a glint in his eyes which I put down to my use of the word ‘loved'. Bruachites ‘like fine' something. The word ‘loved' in such a context they looked upon as amusing exaggeration.

‘He seemed pretty certain he'd seen those fairies, too,' I said. ‘Did you believe him about that?' I taxed him. ‘Believe him? What, that fellow? I'd as soon believe a drunken tinker,' he scoffed. ‘Ach, you mustn't believe any story Calum tells you,' he added half seriously.

‘Not any?' I repeated with a slight feeling of dismay.

‘Not a one,' reiterated Tearlaich. ‘That man!' His face broke into a broad approbatory smile. ‘I'm tellin' you, Miss Peckwitt, he's the most beautiful liar God ever put two boots on.'

Fergus Beag (Little Fergus) had died suddenly at the age of eighty-two and, as was customary, the women of the village were calling at varying times before the burial to condole with the widow, Ina. Morag, her niece, Behag, and I went together after the chores were done and evening was beginning to soften what had been one of the summer's really hot days.

‘Hector was gimin' again about him goin' so sudden,' confided Behag with a hint of apology. ‘He was sayin' Fergus will be one of the heaviest corpses they've had yet to carry to the burial ground an' him havin' no illness to weaken him first.'

Little Fergus had in his prime been one of the biggest men in the village—over six foot tall and with shoulders as broad as a door. Even at eighty-two he had been no lightweight but because his father had been ‘Fergus Mor' (Big Fergus) the son naturally had been dubbed ‘Little Fergus' and ‘Little Fergus' he had remained despite the subsequent inaptness of the description.

‘Ach, Hector will soon stop his girnin' once they have the grave dug an' a good dram for their pains,' Morag comforted with a sly smile at me.

‘If they ever have it dug,' murmured Behag dubiously.

Morag gave her a searching glance. ‘An' why will they no'?'

‘Did you net hear Hector complainin' this mornin' that his leg was troublin' him?' asked Behag.

‘Which leg was that?' demanded Morag as if Hector had a selection. ‘The one he left behind him in the boat when he twisted his foot?'

A baffled expression flitted across Behag's face. ‘I believe that was the one,' she admitted.

‘What happened?' I asked.

‘Ach, Hector was steppin' out from his boat to the dinghy with his hands full of fishes,' scoffed Morag. ‘He had one of his legs over the side when didn't a floorboard slip an' jam his foot under it. It was no more than if a cow had stepped on it but to hear Hector shoutin' you'd think it was on crutches he'd be for the rest of his life.'

‘But his ankle was as big as a haggis for a day or two an' sore right up his leg,' defended Behag.

‘But that was more than a week ago,' protested Morag.

‘It was so but he was feelin' it again this mornin'. Did you not hear him sayin' that?'

‘I did,' responded Morag with a grim smile. ‘An' I heard Erchy swearin' he'd make sure Hector dug his share of the grave supposin' he has to stand on his head to do it.' Behag sighed acceptance.

Bruach graves were dug not by an official grave digger but by any relatives of the deceased fit enough to accomplish the task and Hector and Erchy, being Fergus Beag's two nearest male relatives in the village, had been called upon to do their duty. Erchy could always be relied upon but Hector's aversion to physical labour and his habit of developing agonising back or stomach pains or even disappearing altogether for a day or two whenever there was a chance of his being compelled to wield a spade was so well known in Bruach that even the loyal Behag was at times hard put to it to find excuses for her husband.

Our path to the late Fergus's cottage wound sinuously over the heather-covered moors and was wide enough for only two people to walk abreast so that Behag and I, who were barelegged and wearing shoes, had appropriated it for ourselves, while Morag, who persisted whatever the weather in wearing gumboots on weekdays, scuffed her way through the bristly heather, scattering drifts of moths as if she were scuffing her way through autumn leaves.

‘I'm thinkin' it's no' like Fergus to die so sudden,' she observed. ‘But ach, he was always the queer one right enough.'

‘What took him d'you think?' asked Behag.

‘His heart, likely,' returned Morag. ‘The doctor was sayin' that people livin' in hilly places like this always has hearts.'

‘He was a good age, after all,' I pointed out.

‘Aye,' Morag allowed, ‘he was a good age but indeed I never seem to mind that Fergus was ever young. Not to my way of thinkin'.'

‘Why do you say that?' Behag asked.

‘Well he was that religious an' that ages a man,' Morag explained. ‘An' another thing, even as a child he used to have a lot of these premunitions. That always made him seem older than he was.'

‘Premunitions?' echoed Behag. ‘What sort of premunitions?'

‘Did you never hear how he knew Old Farquhar's house was to go on fire weeks, but no, months, before it happened?' demanded Morag in an incredulous voice.

‘No, I never did,' denied Behag. I also shook my head.

‘Nor of him premunising the death of his daughter?'

‘I did not,' said Behag, sounding as indignant as if she had been denied food at a banquet.

‘I remember your telling me his daugher had been killed in an accident but I didn't know there'd been any warning of it beforehand,' I disclosed.

Morag was so astonished at our admissions that she stopped in her tracks, staring at us as if trying to divine some reason for our imperfect tuition. ‘Well, indeed, it was so,' she reiterated as she started walking again.

‘Tell us about it,' I coaxed. We still had the best part of a mile to walk and I knew from experience that if Morag would regale us with stories of past happenings in Bruach the journey would not seem half so long.

She needed little encouragement. ‘Fergus an' Ina, now they had none but this one child, Alex they used to call her. Aye, an' she was always a queer kind of lassie too, to my way of thinkin'; not what you'd expect from folks like Fergus an' Ina, for though Fergus was queer himself he was a good man for his work an' for his church. Indeed,' she added parenthetically, ‘maybe she wasn't rightly Fergus's child at all for he was often away at sea an' Ina was always one for the lads. Alex grew up hatin' the croft an' wouldn't settle so she left home when she was gey young an' went to be a servant. Folks were after sayin' it was Fergus's religion that drove her away an' I doubt myself that was the reason.' She permitted herself a small sigh. ‘Ach, right enough he was awful hard on the girl.'

‘Did she not come home at all?' asked Behag.

‘Aye, she'd come home maybe for a holiday now an' then, an' for her mother to make a great fuss of her but she never stayed long. A week or two an' then she was away again. Fergus used to grumble. A “gogaid”—that's a flighty one—he would say she was for he was wantin' she should stay an' help her mother on the croft, though she'd have none of it. As she got older she came home less an' less an' she hadn't been home for a while when one evenin', an' it was an evenin' like this one.' Morag waved an arm at the quiet moors and the lustrous sky. ‘Fergus was comin' home from the moor after milkin' the cow an' suddenly he hears the sound of weepin' comin' seemingly from behind a peat stack. He goes to look but there's no sound nor sight of a thing an' he's just makin' back to the path when the weep-in' begins again, only louder, an' he's sure it's his own daughter an' she pourin' her grief on to the heather. He's that upset he stands still an' calls, “Alex, is it yourself?” At that the weepin' grows fainter an' more far away till he can hear it no more.'

‘An' was that when she was killed?' asked Behag, awestruck.

Morag tossed the interruption aside. ‘Fergus found he was shiverin' so much he made for home as quick as he could an' when he got inside, though it was a warm night, he piled wood an' peats on the fire till Ina thought the flames would be comin' out of the chimney an' she so hot she had to go an' sit in the door. “Whatever ails you?” she asks him. “You'll know soon enough,” says he, an' gets a blanket off the bed an' wraps it round his shoulders an' sits as close to the fire as if he'd been all day at the back of the hills in a snowstorm.'

‘Did he not tell Ina about hearing their daughter's voice?' This time the interruption was mine.

‘He did not,' confirmed Morag. ‘He told no one then, but Ina says she knew he'd had one of his premunitions to make him turn like that. Sure enough the next day there came a wire tellin' them their daughter had been killed in an accident. Then it was that Fergus told Ina what had happened to him while he was out on the moors.'

‘Did they ever find out when was the accident?' Behag's tone was meek.

‘They did,' replied Morag. ‘An' it was just about the time Fergus must have been comin' back from the cow.' Morag turned to see how deeply her story had affected us. ‘Now will you believe that!' she enjoined us.

Neither Behag nor I made any reply. Behag was the most credulous woman in Bruach and on a lonely moor in the company of Gaels I could shed logic as easily as I could shed a wet shawl.

‘An' another time I mind,' continued Morag, warming to her subject. ‘There was the time he was skipper of a boat for a rich man.' She paused. ‘You knew he was a skipper when he was young?' she asked us. We acknowledged that this fact we did know.

‘Aye well, the owner had decided they was to spend the night at moorings; strong, new moorings they were,' she emphasised, ‘an' they'd cost him a deal of money gettin' them laid specially by the firm that made them. But Fergus wasn't happy. He could sense a storm comin' an' though they'd all gone to their beds an' it wasn't his turn to be on duty he couldn't seem to settle. He was that worried he went an' woke the engineer an' told him to get up a good head of steam an' keep her at the ready. Fergus said the engineer was none too pleased to be got out of his bed since everyone had been sayin' the new moorings was strong enough to hold a battleship in a hurricane, but he did as he was told. When the storm broke it wasn't such a bad one as storms at sea go but they hadn't been ridin' it more than half an hour before those strong new moorings broke just as Fergus knew they would.'