The Hills is Lonely (22 page)

There is no point in brooding over insults in Bruach. ‘So there's going to be a concert and dance,' I managed to say pleasantly.

‘Oh yes indeed,' admitted the grocer, and with an obvious shock of recollection he reached into the window and discreetly turned the notice front to back so that the advertisement should not profane the Sabbath.

‘I'm glad they've given us due warning,' I said.

‘They'd need to do that' he answered with complete seriousness. ‘Folks has to make their plans.'

‘Why the soap flakes?' I asked.

‘To make the floor slippery,' he explained; ‘though I'm thinkin' it's whole bars of soap they'll need for fillin' up the holes where the rats have eaten through.'

I wondered why they did not use french chalk.

‘French chalk?' he echoed. ‘I don't sell that. What like of stuff would that be?'

I enlightened him regarding the properties of french chalk but he was not impressed. Soap flakes, he maintained, were the best thing in the world for sticking to the men's tackety boots. ‘Makes them lighter about the feet,' he added. It was my turn to be supercilious.

The prospect of a dance where one's partners were likely to be wearing tackety boots was not inviting to me, but it acted as no deterrent to the rest of the village. Very soon after the appearance of the notice and the announcement that voting for the Beauty Contest was to be left entirely to the men, the lassies, with smiles and coquetry, were beginning to woo the male population as assiduously as a prospective M.P. woos his constituency. If the grocer could be believed, there was a noticeable increase in the cosmetic trade, which hitherto had been a despised and slow-moving sideline, relegated along with the picture postcards, toilet rolls and souvenirs, to the umplumbed (except in the tourist season) depths of the shop. If Lachy could be believed, five damsels had already offered to pay for his ticket if he would promise them his vote and with placid impudence he expressed his intention of accepting all five offers. Even the Gaffer, who was a case-hardened bachelor if ever there was one, complained of being disturbed by the nightly serenading of female voices, while even the village half-wits claimed to have discerned a strange tendency to amiability in girls who had previously greeted them with sarcastic reflections upon their shortcomings.

The lassies taunted one another mercilessly with the sole design of calling attention to one another's imperfections. They posed; they hung on every word their menfolk uttered, contriving to be gay, alluring or brazen as occasion demanded; they frizzed their hair; they rolled their eyes and batted their eyelids; they studied dress catalogues intently; they experimented liberally with lipstick and face powder and, not forgetting the time-honoured way of ensnaring men's hearts, they concentrated a little of their attention on the baking of scones and oatcakes. And the men, well aware of what was going on, and the reason for it, watched the artifices and subterfuges of the aspirants with cool, enigmatic smiles.

As the day of the dance drew nearer I was constantly coming upon people of all ages and sizes, and of both sexes, furtively rehearsing dance steps. At the peats one day I watched from behind a convenient hillock while a hefty maiden in gum boots and tattered skirt tripped awkwardly round the stack, gathering up the peats and throwing them into the creel as she went. As the creel on her back filled the steps became less recognisable but even when it was quite full she refused to give in and my last glimpse showed her striving to strathspey her homeward way across the sucking bog.

Some days later, when rounding a bend in the road, I came upon a gang of lusty roadmenders who, despite enormous iron-shod boots, were jigging and posturing their way through a ‘Dashing White Sergeant', their shovels and picks deputising for female partners. The music was being supplied by the Gaffer, who performed with less skill than enthusiasm on a miniature mouth-organ, while a short distance away a forsaken steamroller panted its indignant chorus of protestation. When the musician tired he announced that it was past five o'clock, whereupon the men, ignoring his energetic denunciation of their desertion, abruptly abandoned their ‘partners' in a clattering heap beside the road and melted away. Sourly the Gaffer pocketed his instrument and walked over to the steam-roller. There was a final puff from its tiny chimney, a long-drawn-out sigh, and then silence.

‘Are you going to the dance?' I called out.

‘Not me,' replied the Gaffer scornfully. ‘There's too many women and too much beer drinkin' at them dances.'

The latter part of this remark corning from a man who so recently had been too drunk to know whether he was sitting on a lighted Primus stove or a thistle was confounding.

‘Don't you believe in drinking?' I asked him.

‘Not beer,' he replied. ‘Beer drinkin' will kill a man quicker than anythin' else.'

‘Is that so?'

‘Surely it will,' he said authoritatively. ‘Just the other day for instance I had word from two of my friends tellin' me they was dead. Two of them mind you and beer drinkers both of them.' He shook his head sadly. ‘Yet look at me,' be continued as we paused for a moment beside his little hut: ‘I bin a whisky drinker since I was twelve. Gallons of it I must have drunk in my time and never a minute's pain or illness as a result.'

As he bent to open the door of the hut my attention was caught by the vivid circle of tartan which provided the seat of his otherwise drab trousers.

The day of the concert was cold but dry; the night was even colder. Dusk was only beginning to creep over the mainland hills and only one star twinkled faintly as Morag and I, having decided not to risk being crowded into the ramshackle bus, set out to walk to the ‘Public Hall'. We took a short-cut across the crofts; past low thatched byres where cattle chains clinked companionably; past crude little sod huts where hens questioned and ducks quacked apprehensively; past a potent-smelling dung heap—at least I should have gone past it had I not been lost in contemplation of the night sky and had not my companion been engrossed in the contents of a neighbour's clothes-line. Morag skirted the dung heap by inches. I ploughed into the middle of the beastly thing.

‘Oh dam!' I ejaculated crossly, peering down at my filthy shoes and stockings.

‘Ach, dinna' be frettin',' comforted Morag. ‘Likely it'll keep your legs warm.' She giggled. ‘Keep your chin up. Isn't that what the English say when they're in trouble?'

I admitted it was and kept my chin up, but it was not fortitude but the stench of the manure which forced me to take her advice so literally.

Reaching the high road we met the postman's sister who was also on her way to the concert. The meeting reminded me that I had been expecting a letter to which I particularly wished to send a speedy reply, but the excitement of the evening had ousted it from my mind until this moment.

‘Goodness!' I said in dismay. ‘I should have waited for the postman. I was expecting a letter.'

‘I don't suppose there'll be any mails tonight,' the postman's sister explained kindly, ‘or only very few, anyway, for my brother's intending to go to the concert.'

‘Oh,' I said with some surprise, ‘doesn't he deliver the mails when there's a concert then?'

‘Why, no indeed, how could he get the mails done and the concert beginnin' at eight o'clock?' she asked reasonably.

I admitted that it would of course be impossible. ‘But' I persisted foolishly, ‘what happens if someone is depending on a letter? I mean, what if there should be something really important? How would he know?'

The contempt of her glance withered me from the top of my permanently waved head to the toes of my manured feet.

‘Well then,' she reproached me icily, ‘do you think, Miss Peckwitt, that my brother has never been to school? D'you think he is not able to read?'

I grovelled abjectly, denying that I had intended any such implication, and Morag, rushing to my aid, reproved the woman for believing that Miss Peckwitt would suggest such a thing. Why, didn't Miss Peckwitt know fine the post could read, and write too? Didn't she know he always signed the receipts for her registered parcels himself instead of troubling Miss Peckwitt to do it? Slightly mollified by Morag's words, the sister condescended to change the subject. Her manner, however, remained frigid and I believe that she never really forgave me for what she considered to be an outrageous reflection upon her brother's education. Morag explained later that the present postman's predecessor had in actual fact been unable to read and this perhaps had led the sister to be slightly touchy on this point.

‘How did he manage to deliver letters if he couldn't read?' I asked.

‘Surely he just used to give us the bundle and we'd choose our own,' replied Morag.

Despite the mishap at the dung heap we were in good time for the concert the hall being only about half full when we arrived.

‘Come and we'll get a good seat,' said Morag and hurrying forward she laid claim to two portions of a long wooden bench with drunken-looking legs, on to which we lowered ourselves experimentally. I thought I had seen the benches somewhere before.

‘They're the seats from the church,' explained my companion.

‘I'm surprised the missionary allows them to use the church seats for a concert,' I said. ‘Does he approve of this sort of thing?'

‘No, no, indeed,' responded Morag, ‘and they wouldn't have got them if he knew anythin' of it.' She went on to explain that the ‘Committy' had just helped themselves to the seats without so much as a word to the missionary; an undertaking which, considering that the Mission House lay on the road between the church and the Hall, must have been accomplished with a good deal of stealth. I said as much to Morag. Her expression as she turned to me was a remarkable blend of pity and mischievousness.

‘Sure you can trust the missionary to keep his eyes shut if there's a thing he doesna' want to see,' she said, and added guilelessly: ‘He's no bad really like that. I'll say that much for him.'

We continued to sit on our unsteady ‘pew' for a long time; Morag rising every now and then to wave a greeting to some friend on the other side of the hall; but it was not until about a quarter of an hour after the concert was due to start that the place began to fill with any rapidity. People began to gather in groups and, indifferent to the compelling pianoforte chords which issued from time to time from behind the stage curtains, became absorbed in conversation. Without warning the curtains suddenly swept apart and the audience prepared to give the stage a proportion of its attention. After a moment, however, the curtains swung purposefully together again, a performance that was greeted with piercing whistles and derogatory Gaelic phrases from the back of the hall where the gossiping groups showed little sign of subsiding.

‘Ach, they're only practisin' to see will the curtains work.' A cloud of hot peppermint and whisky assailed us as a large, fiery-faced youth leaned forward to give us this titbit of highly confidential information. His statement was borne out by the fact that for the ensuing ten minutes the curtains continued their career of advance and retreat, achieving with practice and a little lubrication a performance which ranged from the weightily majestic to ecstatic abandon, and disclosing to the interested spectators nothing more inviting than a deserted stage. Everyone was the more startled therefore when, after a particularly impressive meeting, the curtains were parted by a bowing figure, resplendent in full Highland garb, who announced that the concert was about to begin and that the first item on the programme was to be a song entitled ‘Blast you, Euan, can't you leave that alone!' This title was later corrected to ‘The Bonnie Bonnie Hoose o' Airlie', the mis-statement apparently having been caused by the sudden decision of the curtains to recommence their cavortings—presumably at the instance of one Euan—coupled with the misfortune that the announcer happened to be standing on the hem of one of them and had narrowly escaped being precipitated on to the bald head of the illustrious chairman, who sat, rigid with importance or terror, in the centre of the front row. It was also explained that their own pianist having been taken ill, we should accord a warm reception to the local cobbler who had volunteered to act as accompanist. At this juncture the stocky figure of the cobbler who, according to Morag, had ‘picked up the piano' during the war, burst with flaming cheeks on to the stage and, ignoring the grateful plaudits of the audience, commenced to manœuvre the piano into a suitable position much in the manner of a guncrew manœuvring a bogged gun. Satisfied at last, he struck a few chords in a very professional fashion—his own profession—and thereafter pounded away with such violence that he had perforce to pause every now and then to suck his bruised fingers. There was no doubt about the warmth of the cobbler's reception. The audience cheered themselves hoarse (judging from the voices of some of the singers, I rather think they did too), and did not desist until the first artiste appeared on the stage, when they settled themselves into their seats with a thoroughness which was, under the circumstances, definitely risky.

It surprised nobody I think when, after the first couple of songs, the rest of the artistes decided to perform unaccompanied, and the cobbler thus released shambled to his seat, explaining to his admiring supporters that he'd have been better if he hadn't been loadin' the sheep these last few days and gettin' his hands soft with the fleece grease.

The singers, most of whom were attired in Highland dress, delivered their repertoires with serious concentration, and the audience except for the unquenchable groups at the back of the hall, listened with rapt attention until in the middle of a spirited rendering of a ‘waulking song' a strident scream from Anna Vic shattered our ears. The interruption revealed that Murdoch, who was trying to accustom himself to a new pipe, had been so carried away by the performance that he had thoughtlessly knocked out his pipe on the low collar of Anna Vic's dress; thus sending a stream of hot ash down the unfortunate woman's neck. Still exploding volubly the fat woman was escorted from the hall by her two daughters, one of whom, encouraged by titters and advice from all sides, tried unavailingly to hold the dress away from her mother's ample back. The singer, undeterred by the wandering attention of his audience, continued valiantly, and it was not many minutes before the maltreated Anna Vic was back again, casting indignant glances on a highly amused Murdoch but seeming little the worse for her experience. She stubbornly refused to resume her seat and remained standing for the rest of the concert, but whether her determination was due to apprehension or blisters I could only conjecture.