Lightly Poached (7 page)

‘Now you've seen your tree is it not time we got away back to the house?' asked Morag.

‘Ach, there's plenty time,' argued Calum. ‘If the tea's cold the kettle will boil again.'

Morag was looking curiously at a ruined house nearby. ‘Is that not the place the filmies burned?' she asked Calum.

‘Aye, that's it.'

‘They really burned down a house for making a film here?' I questioned.

‘They did, but it was a ruin before they burned it mostly. They got my Uncle Alistair an' my cousin John to build up the front of it an' put a bitty thatch on so that it looked all right to the cameras but it was no more than a ruin for all that.'

‘Was it not your Uncle Alistair that let them have the house to burn?' pursued Morag.

‘Aye, it was him.'

‘I heard he got good money for it,' Tearlaich observed.

‘I believe he did,' admitted Calum. ‘Ach, an' why not?' he continued. ‘Those filmies were right daft with their money.'

‘That's what I was after hearin' myself,' said Morag enviously.

Calum chuckled. ‘Right enough, at first Alistair was makin' out his own father was born in that ruin an' so the old place meant a lot to him still.'

‘Was his father born there?' I asked.

‘He was not. Alistair just wanted to push up the price he could put on it but the filmies were that convinced they started askin' around for men to build them just enough of a place to fool the cameras. Alistair got so scared they'd do it he went an' offered the ruin to the filmies for fifty pounds so long as he and his son got the job of building it up for them. I believe he had to have a good drink on him before he could pluck up courage to ask such a high price but the filmies jumped at it. When he got home he was as sick as a dog for not havin' asked double.'

‘Were you home yourself the time the filmies were here?' asked Behag.

‘I was. Indeed I was in the film myself,' Calum replied.

‘You were?' exclaimed Behag admiringly.

‘Aye. I played one of these extras, they call them. We all did at one time or another. They paid us well for it too. I tell you they was daft with their money. In the evenin' when we went to draw what was owin' to us they paid everybody that was in sight whether they'd been workin' for them or not. Hamish Beag came ashore in his boat one time, just, after bein' out fishin' but when he passed the place where the man was payin' out the money he was called over an' handed the same pay as the rest of us, I've never seen a man look as surprised as Hamish looked then, I can tell you.'

‘Why would they do that?' asked Morag, puzzled.

‘Ach, they didn't seem as if they could tell one from another of us no more than I can tell one black man from another.' He chuckled again reminiscently. ‘We got a good laugh out of those filmies an' all.'

‘An' good money,' Morag reminded him again. ‘There was a few in Bruach would have come over to work for the filmies if they'd got the chance. Why, they tell me even old Kenny Mor, him that was so religious he wouldn't so much as boil a kettle on the Sabbath an' yet he was earnin' money for himself makin' tea for them.'

‘He was so,' agreed Calum. ‘An' Kenny fairly enjoyed himself doin' it until the missionary came over one Sunday an' preached that films was sinful an' anybody that worked for them would go straight to hell.'

‘An' did anybody take any notice?' asked Morag.

‘Only Kenny Mor,' rejoined Calum. ‘He gave up the job an' the money for fear of goin' to hell.'

‘Ach, the missionary was just jealous,' summed up Tearlaich. ‘I doubt he wanted to make the tea for them himself.'

‘Where are you takin' us to now?' demanded Morag as Calum led us on through a narrow strath of swampy ground so liberally tasselled with bog-cotton it looked as if an eider-down had burst over it.

‘Just a wee way yet,' he told her.

We followed, pushing our way through a tough little corrie black with waist-high dead heather; over wide slabs of weathered rock and then along a poachy path, rumpled with hoof prints and leading into a miniature birchwood which in turn petered out as it met the rocks and shingle of the shore.

‘Who can that be?' asked Morag, stopping in her tracks. A man and a woman were coming away from the beach, the woman bent under a burden of driftwood that was roped to her shoulders while the man carried only a few short lengths of wood under his left arm. In his right hand he held a slim pole which he was using as a walking stick.

‘That's Dolina an' Mata,' Calum told her.

Although it was impossible for our paths not to bring us face to face, Morag immediately began to shout greetings in strident Gaelic which diminished in volume as the distance between us decreased. By the time we did meet all the initial pleasantries were disposed of and they were ready to converse in English. Dolina, whose tall, utility-built body seemed to be packed full of bones, was obviously delighted to see us. With strong hands and in no way constrained by the load she carried she pulled first Morag, then Behag, then myself into a warm embrace which was intense enough to make me gasp, and in the brisk whisper that was her normal speaking voice she begged us to be sure to take a strupach with her before leaving the island. Here, however, Calum stepped in, jealously guarding his mother's privilege, and advised her of the proposed ceilidh, whereupon Dolina declared that nothing save a cow calving or the end of the world would keep her from joining the company. ‘Is that not; so, Mata?' she addressed her husband.

In contrast with Dolina, Mata looked as if he had been expertly filleted; his handshake was flabby and his bulging grey eyes looked about as ardent as two water blisters on the point of bursting, but he managed by a swift raising and lowering of his eyebrows to convey that he too would be coming to the ceilidh.

‘We'd best not keep you back,' said Morag after a while and having been thus politely dismissed Dolina and Mata went on their way.

‘I wish to goodness he'd carry her load for her,' I said as soon as they were out of earshot.

‘Indeed Dolina wouldn't allow it,' stated Morag.

‘He'd never have married her if he thought she'd let him,' added Tearlaich.

I murmured something about his being a shirker.

‘But poor Mata doesn't enjoy good health,' Morag excused him.

‘Damty sure he doesn't,' Tearlaich rejoined. ‘That man only enjoys himself when he's sick.'

‘Oh, whisht, now,' chided Morag, chuckling in spite of herself. ‘All the same,' she added after a pause, ‘there's somethin' about that man I canna help mislikin'.'

‘I mislike him myself,' Tearlaich agreed and added, almost confidentially, ‘I'll tell you, he's a disgustin' bugger that one.'

‘I haven't seen him do anything positive enough to be disgusting,' I told him. ‘Except, of course, leaving Dolina to do all the heavy work and he's not the only man around here who's guilty of that.'

‘It's the way it's always been since I remember,' interpolated Morag. ‘An' right enough that's the way many of the women want it to be.'

‘I wasn't thinking of him being disgusting like that,' Tearlaich denied. ‘But I was on the bus with him once and he started shouting he wanted to pee. He made the driver stop and he got out but instead of going some place where he wouldn't be seen he just stood and peed beside the bus like a tracehorse. Honest to God! And there was tourists aboard too. I didn't know where to look I was that ashamed of him.'

‘That was ignorant of him,' Morag agreed. ‘Poor Dolina would have died had she seen him.'

‘I can't help feeling sorry for Dolina,' I said.

‘I feel sorry for her myself,' concurred Tearlaich, ‘but all the same I was near laughing when I saw her hugging you three as if you were children.'

‘An' isn't it because she has no children of her own that makes her want to hug people,' Morag reproved him. ‘A woman like Dolina ought by nature to have children at her skirts.'

‘Aye, right enough, but not you three grown women.' From his expression I guessed he had been about to say ‘old women' and had only just caught himself in time. ‘It's not Highland,' he added, much as an Englishman would have said ‘It's not done'.

‘Mata didn't marry Dolina to give her children,' asserted Calum. ‘The reason he married her was to quiet his sister.'

‘That's not what I heard then,' Morag rebutted his statement indignantly. ‘Surely his sister was that jealous of Mata takin' a wife if it hadn't been for Dolina's good nature they would have quarrelled every day of the week—except the Sabbath,' she added.

‘She was jealous all right,' confirmed Calum. ‘But all the same it was her that made him take Dolina.'

‘Why did she insist on his marrying?' I asked.

‘Because she'd never in her life laid in a bed by herself till her mother died. She had another sister an' they slept together until that sister died. Then she moved into her mother's bed an' when she died there was no one to share her bed so she girned at Mata to find another woman to lie beside her.'

‘But shouldn't she have got married herself or at least found someone to share her bed?' I asked. I could not seriously believe that a man would get married simply to provide a sleeping partner for his sister.

‘Aye, but you see she claimed it was her home as much as Mata's, which is right enough seein' she was born there. Mata got the croft but the house belongs to those born in it, so she said. Anyway Mata's such a poor thing he just took a quick look around an' there was Dolina who'd have thrown herself into a bog for any man. It was easy as that an' it kept his sister quiet.'

‘An' has Dolina never shared her man's bed?' expostulated Morag.

‘Never,' averred Calum. ‘Mata told me so himself.'

‘He must have an orra chomais on him,' quipped Tearlaich, and we all laughed.

‘He's a detestable fellow,' I commented.

‘But Dolina loves him like the sun,' Morag reminded me simply.

‘Aye an' that's why she's glad to do the heavy carryin' to save Mata doin' it,' said Calum. ‘Seein' she's not allowed to do the little things for him that a wife likes to do for her man. The sister does the cookin' and washin' his clothes an' puttin' out his slippers in an evenin'. Dolina just washes the dishes an' does most of the work of the croft.'

‘An' never a word of complaint on her lips, I doubt,' added Morag.

‘St Dolina of Rhuna,' I murmured.

‘Aye, if you believe in saints she must be one,' agreed Calum.

‘Now we're here why have you brought us here?' Morag stood looking about her curiously.

‘I have a thing to show you that I found down on the shore,' replied Calum. ‘Wait you now till I get it.'

He made towards a pile of boulders and crouching he appeared to be extricating something from a deep crevice. Having retrieved it he came back to us. ‘See this!' he said, holding up a small canister with a screw top.

We had all been expecting Calum to produce some really unusual or valuable find and our disappointment at seeing such an apparently uninteresting object was plain.

‘What is it?' asked Tearlaich.

‘It's a body!' announced Calum dramatically.

‘A body?' Behag's question came out in an incredulous squeak.

‘Aye, see this now. Can you read it?' Calum held the anister nearer towards me as I backed away. ‘That says somethin' about a crematorium, does it not? That's where they cremate bodies.'

Tearlaich took the canister and examined it. ‘Aye, you're right,' he said. ‘Did you open it yet?'

‘I did,' Calum admitted. ‘But open it yourself an' take a look at it.'

Tearlaich did as Calum suggested and tilted the canister so as to see inside it. ‘It's full of stuff like that guano we had one year for the potatoes.' He handed the canister back to Calum who emptied out a little of its contents on to the palm of his hand.

‘Are you sure it's a body?' asked Behag doubtfully.

‘Sure it is,' declared Calum. He licked his forefinger and dipped it into the powder. ‘Here,' he held his finger towards her. ‘Taste it if you like,' he invited without the ghost of a smile.

Behag turned away and I was not sure whether she was giggling or vomiting.

‘What are you goin' to do with it?' asked Morag.

‘Damned if I know,' said Calum.

‘Ach, give it to Miss Peckwitt for her garden,' Tearlaich proposed. ‘It'll make good fertiliser.'

Calum screwed back the top and was about to hand me the canister but I recoiled away from it. ‘D'you not want it?' he asked in surprise.

‘I do not,' I said firmly. ‘I'd never sleep at night if I thought someone's body was spread out among the flowers in my garden. I think you should throw it back in the sea,' I advised.

‘It'll only get washed ashore again,' said Calum, shaking the canister with absent-minded vigour. ‘Maybe you're right, though,' he continued after a few moments. ‘I might just as well throw it back seein' the tide's goin' cut anyway. It'll maybe take it to someone else's beach.' He went down to the tide's edge and hurled the canister away into the sea.

‘I don't know why you didn't take it for your garden,' Tearlaich rebuked me. ‘Bone meal's one of the best manures you can get.' I tried to quell him with a look.

Calum rejoined us. ‘I know a woman once whose husband was very fond of growin' roses,' he told us. ‘When he died she had him cremated an' his ashes put on his favourite rose bushes.'

‘Never!' Morag's voice was a disapproving groan.

‘It's true,' he asseverated. ‘She used to go out an' talk to them every night. Said it was like havin' her husband there out in the garden, an' when she used to prune them she used to pretend she was cuttin' his toenails for him like she always used to when he was alive.'