The Hills is Lonely (15 page)

Though in the opinion of the crofters the doctor's medical skill was negligible, his presence in the sick room was as welcome as it was at the ceilidh. He drank their tea, capped their jokes and criticised their cattle—he was generally considered to be a better vet than doctor—and probably his camaraderie contributed as much to the recovery of his patients as anything he might give them from a bottle. Personally I found the doctor refreshing, for, whatever his faults may have been, he had at least retained a character. He was clever and he knew it: he liked whisky and he drank it—in quantity; he ate his food with more gusto than grace and the evidence of it could be seen all down the front of his waistcoat. His sense of humour was puckish, and his contempt for the English, despite the fact that he had married an Englishwoman, permeated much of his conversation; before I had been acquainted with him for half an hour, he had embarked on a story of his student days in which he claimed to have got the better of a supercilious Englishman.

It was during the university vacation, he told me, and the doctor was roaming the hills herding his father's cattle, when two tourists, a man and a woman, approached him. The doctor was barefooted and bareheaded and was clad, as he himself put it, ‘in a well-ventilated pair of breeks and a shirt with more front than back in it'.

‘Hello, young fellow!' said the Englishman condescendingly.

‘Good afternoon,' answered the doctor politely.

‘And do you live around here?' asked the man archly.

‘I do,' replied the doctor.

‘And do you go to school?'

‘Sometimes I go,' the doctor admitted.

‘I see you have a book under your arm. Can you read?'

‘A little,' said the doctor hesitantly, though the book happened to be an advanced medical textbook.

‘Ah!' The man turned and conferred in low tones with his companion and then addressed the doctor once more. ‘And can you count?' he asked.

‘Er, yes.' faltered the doctor.

‘Very good!' exclaimed the man. ‘How much can you count?'

The doctor looked puzzled.

‘Tell me, my boy, how many people there are here just at this moment. You, myself and my wife. How many is that?'

‘One hundred,' answered the doctor after a struggle. The man and his wife laughed derisively. ‘Come, come, my boy. How do you make that out?' they remonstrated.

‘Well.' explained the doctor, turning to go, ‘there's myself, that's one.'

‘Yes?' the couple waited in amused expectancy.

‘And there's yourself and your wife—you're the two nothings. Good day to you both.'

Never before or since, it seemed, had the hill been so strangely quiet as it was in the following moments. Whether or not the story was true I cannot say, but I do know that the doctor possessed an enviable gift for disconcerting people whom he regarded as being impudent, and I am forced to admit that my countrymen seem to regard themselves as having the right to interrogate the Islanders much as a policeman might interrogate a suspicious character.

Of all the intractable patients that we helped to nurse during the epidemic, Murdoch was by far the most difficult. He was by turns haughty, mischievous, crafty and ingenuous. One day he would decide he was at death's door and would be amenable to every suggestion; the next he would not only be out of bed, but visiting a neighbour's house to read the newspaper. When he had exhausted the news he would crawl back to his own home and would again make rapid strides towards death's door, where, moaning piteously, he would remain until the time for delivery of the next newspaper. Why Murdoch would never go to the length of buying his own paper I do not know, but then many of the crofters' little economies are entirely incomprehensible to the outsider.

Murdoch's two elderly sisters had also been taken ill with the influenza at the same time as himself, but they were all three fairly well on the road to recovery when I called one day to milk their cow and to make their tea. As soon as I pushed open the kitchen door I could hear voices coming from Murdoch's room, one of which belonged to the doctor. After a word to the sisters I set about preparing the tea-trays and was engaged on this task when the door leading from Murdoch's room was opened and the doctor, winking furiously, beckoned me to accompany him. His expression prepared me for some sort of joke and as I followed him through to the bedroom I wondered what it could be.

‘Well, Murdoch,' said the doctor, ‘I'll be away now as Miss Beckwith's come to make your tea.'

Murdoch lay back on his pillows and greeted me with a benign smile.

‘Just you see and keep on taking your medicine,' the doctor told him.

‘Aye, that I will, Doctor, I feel the better of that medicine indeed,' replied Murdoch earnestly.

‘Did you take it in the morning?' asked the doctor.

‘Aye, I did,' said the old man.

‘And after your tea?'

‘To be sure I did.'

‘And did you take it last night after supper?'

‘Certainly I did,' nodded Murdoch solemnly.

‘Murdoch!' accused the doctor suddenly, ‘you're a b——liar!'

Murdoch sat bolt upright and fixed the doctor with a pair of startled eyes.

‘Doctor,' he declared with touching dignity, ‘wouldn't I swear before God I did as you said. I'm tellin' you I took it three times yesterday and twice this day already, and there's no more than half the bottle left now. I swear it indeed.'

Murdoch lifted up his hand as though taking the oath and I was sure that even the doctor would be convinced that the old man was telling the truth.

‘Murdoch,' repeated the doctor sternly, ‘I'm telling you you're a liar.' He produced a bag of peppermints, offered it to me and then popped one into his own mouth. Murdoch scrutinised the doctor's face.

‘Am I indeed a liar?' he asked, an unrepentant smile beginning to touch his lips and eyes.

The doctor extracted a bottle of medicine from his bulging jacket pocket and set it on the table beside the bed. ‘There now,' he announced triumphantly, ‘though I brought your medicine along with me on Tuesday. I forgot to leave it for you, and when I got back home I found it still in my pocket. You old rascal, you didn't even miss the stuff so I know fine you're a liar.' He folded his arms across his chest and stood smiling down impishly at his patient's discomfiture which was brief indeed.

‘Why then I must be a liar,' admitted Murdoch equably. ‘But fancy me been suckin' at an empty bottle these three or four times. It just shows how poorly I've been.'

‘Empty bottle!' exploded the doctor with feigned wrath. ‘You old bodach, you've never sucked at an empty bottle in your life. I'll guarantee that any bottle you've sucked was more than half full; but, you devil, you'd sooner take your medicine from the barman than from the doctor.'

Murdoch chuckled appreciatively. ‘I'd take the medicine all right if you'd dose me with the right stuff,' he retaliated.

The doctor grunted non-committally. ‘If you're quite comfortable I'll be on my way,' he said.

‘Comfortable!' echoed Murdoch. ‘I'm comfortable enough except for my feets.'

‘What's wrong with your feet?'

‘Indeed my feets and my legs is as red as the dove's with the cold,' the old man said plaintively. ‘I canna' seem to keep the warmth in them.'

‘You must be dyin' from the feet upwards then,' retorted the doctor callously.

‘That wouldn't be true now would it?' pleaded the old man.

‘And why not?' asked the doctor, indifferent to Murdoch's sudden woebegone expression. ‘It's well over seventy you are, isn't it?'

‘Just a year or two over,' muttered the patient with a sidelong glance at me.

‘Ah well, maybe a hot-water bottle will save you this time,' said the doctor with a laugh. I laughed too, but more with the desire to comfort, and Murdoch, taking courage, joined in wholeheartedly.

After seeing the doctor to the door and collecting the tray from the kitchen, I returned to the invalid to find him eyeing the bottle of medicine distastefully. ‘I wonder what's in that?' he asked me.

‘You'll soon find out,' I told him.

He removed the cork, sniffed once or twice and then, carefully replacing the cork, offered the bottle to me, in case I should catch the influenzy and be in need of a dose. Upon my refusal he respectfully bade me to throw the bottle in the sea on my way home.

‘But you should take it,' I argued, ‘it will do you good, otherwise the doctor wouldn't give it to you.'

‘Ach, that joker!' Murdoch said scornfully. ‘It was for my sisters I had to send for him rightly; they was that bad with the influenzy; and if they'd gone and died on me, and me not after havin' the doctor to them, they'd have been grumbling at me for the rest of their lives.'

He reached for his pipe. ‘Whisky's the stuff for me.' he resumed. I'd be dead many times over if it wasn't for the wee dram I take every night of my life.'

I did as much as I could for Murdoch and his household and was on my way home when Morag's voice hailed me from a neighbouring cottage.

‘Can you give me a hand in here?' she beseeched. ‘There's all of them sick and not a body to do a hand's turn.'

I followed her into the cottage and into the one and only bedroom where ‘all of them'—father, mother, nine children and the daughter-in-law—were compressed into three beds. The father and mother along with two of the younger children occupied one of the double beds; the other was shared by three girls and three boys, head to tail, while the married son and his pregnant wife looked almost comfortable in the comparative spaciousness of a single bed. All the beds were littered with paper-back novelettes and tattered comics, which some of the occupants had been reading avidly as we entered, despite the fact that there was little light filtering through the deep, yellow, lace-screened window. The room was sickeningly hot for it was impossible to open the window and Morag had a big peat fire blazing in the grate. By the time we had tidied the beds and I had collected several bruises from the iron bedsteads I was feeling that I should soon be in need of attention myself.

‘Why d' you cramp yourselves like this?' asked Morag. ‘Why are you no usin' the recess bed in the kitchen?'

‘But it's more fun when we're all together,' the mother replied evenly. ‘It's kind of lonely for those in the kitchen.'

‘Fun' seemed a strange description of their plight but those who were not too ill to appreciate it were obviously quite content.

I was glad when Morag suggested that I should make some tea, and escaped thankfully to the relative coolness of the kitchen, where, as I buttered scones already baked by Morag and waited for the kettle to boil, I marvelled at the crofter's ability to endure discomfort, which is as often due to choice as circumstance.

I was in the act of setting the teapot to warm when a shout took me back to the bedroom. One of the younger invalids wanted to vomit and while Morag held the child away from the bed I was requested to seek the necessary receptacle. Going down on my knees I drew from under the bed what I imagined was the chamber, only to discover it to be a tightly packed bowl of salt herring—part of the family's winter supply. A burst of hysterical laughter greeted its appearance and, pushing back the bowl, I tried again. Gingerly I slid out another bowl of a slightly different shape. This was the cause for further merriment.

‘That's the milk settin' for the cream,' shrieked the lady of the house joyously. ‘Annie promised she'd come and make butter for us tomorrow.'

I replaced the bowl of milk and again poked warily under the bed; my explorations being accompanied by gusts of unrestrained laughter from the beds. My fingers touched a bundle of clothes, a small barrel, some wood, a pile of books and then, thank heaven! earthenware. This proved to be the utensil I was seeking and drawing it forth with a flourish I thrust it towards Morag. But the pantomime of my attempts to find it had reduced the small invalid to such a state of helpless mirth that all thoughts of being sick had been banished.

‘My, that was as good as a tonic,' gasped the patients feebly as they wiped away tears of laughter with the edges of blankets.

An hour or two later, after we had made our happy family as comfortable as we could, Morag and I set about for the home of ‘Padruig the daftie'. The word ‘daftie' in the islands covered a multitude of mentalities. It was applied to the repulsive, misshapen imbeciles who were capable of nothing but vice, but also included the innocuous souls like Padruig who, if his income had been five thousand pounds a year instead of five thousand pence, might have been classed as merely eccentric. My acquaintance with Padruig was slight, for, though I had at various times noticed him shambling in and out of the houses of the neighbours, he was very shy and reserved and had seen to it that we never came within speaking distance. I knew, of course, that he lived in a tiny two-roomed cottage which he shared with his halfwit brother Euan. I knew that until three months previously they had been looked after by their very attractive sister but, on her marriage, she had left them to fend for themselves. Padruig was reputed to be immensely strong and to do those jobs which he was capable of doing remarkably well. Despite his simplicity he was well behaved and was, except in moments of excitement, an upright and devout Christian.

His brother Euan was a different character altogether, for, on the death of his parents, he had had the misfortune to be sent to live with a reprobate old uncle who had taught the boy nothing except a comprehensive vocabulary of vulgar abuse and profanity. The uncle had possessed such a violent temper that no one had felt inclined to interfere, and thus it was that Euan acquired a language peculiarly his own. For instance be referred to a man quite inoffensively as a ‘he-bugger', a woman as a ‘she-bugger', a dog as a ‘hairy-bugger', and a bird as a ‘feathery-bugger', and so on. After the death of his uncle Euan returned home and Padruig, whose vocabulary was extensive enough when occasion demanded, set himself the task of thrashing the evil out of his poor brother. So effective was his punishment that Euan, instead of refraining from the use of oaths, found it easier to refrain from speaking. This he did whenever possible, substituting a rapid blinking of the eyes for the words he did not utter.