The Hills is Lonely (26 page)

‘My, but you do come in handy,' Morag exclaimed admiringly after one of my artistic orgies had transformed the drab brown staircase into a glistening and unsullied white.

After the house, the next objective was the ‘park', which besides half a dozen tall rowans and what Morag described generously as a ‘seeds mixture grass'—though ‘weeds mixture' would have been my more fitting description—boasted only a few ancient blackcurrant bushes which to my knowledge had never produced anything more attractive than curled leaves and earwigs. Ruari, having been persuaded to lend a hand, mowed grass steadily, and just as steadily emitted a comprehensive stream of expletives as his scythe came up against an appalling number of stones which, if he could be believed, had been hidden there with deliberate and spiteful intent. It was a thrill for me to watch the superb effortlessness of Ruari's rhythmic, graceful swing; it was an education for me to listen to the effortlessness of his abuse. In desperation Morag went out to him.

‘Ruari, shut your noise,' she implored. ‘Miss Peckwitt's after hearin' every word you say.'

‘If she don't like it she can come out here and cut the grass herself,' replied the undaunted Ruari, and carried on swinging and swearing without noticeable pause.

Gradually, our labours showed their effect. The garden no longer resembled a garbage dump, and after I had enjoyed the privilege of seeing Ruari ‘wash down with lime' the house itself looked as spick and span as it was possible to make it.

‘Everythin' in the garden's lovely,' trilled Morag inspiringly, the evening before Mary's expected arrival, but I was glaring at the ‘wee hoosie' whose garish pinkness had, by my efforts, now been modified to a sober green.

‘I wish,' I remarked testily, ‘that you had left the “wee hoosie” where it was beside the hen house instead of having it moved to its present position.'

‘In that case, I'll tell Ruari to shift her back as soon as he has a moment,' promised my landlady confidently.

‘Oh no!' I entreated hurriedly, mentally coupling Ruari's deafness with his genius for doing the wrong thing at precisely the wrong moment. ‘I beg of you, please leave it where it is.'

‘Ach, but he'll do the same as he did before, I expect,' rejoined Morag. ‘He'll just up with her in his arms and away.'

That was exactly what I was afraid of.

‘No,' I replied firmly. ‘Please don't mention it to him at all.'

‘Just as you like,' agreed Morag with resignation, and so the ‘wee hoosie' with its dado of nettles remained where it was.

The following day I made the trip to the mainland to meet Mary, whose determinedly optimistic mood was reassuring. Her arrival coincided fortunately with a spell of fine though blustery weather, but unfortunately with the breakdown of the only available hire car. The driver, though promising to do his very best to provide a substitute, had not been particularly hopeful, so it was an immense relief on our arrival at the pier to see his smiling face blooming above a flamboyant suit of dissonant checks. I introduced him to Mary and this being accomplished he condescended to busy himself with our luggage, only pausing to suggest cheerfully that he would not mind waiting while we took a cup of tea at the nearby tearoom. I could see that Mary was already favourably impressed, and was quick to point out that this willingness to oblige was a common trait among the Islanders. Our tea was excellent, the waitress who served was smiling and efficient, and I congratulated myself that Mary would soon come to understand the fascination the Island held for me. Feeling refreshed and full of pleasant satisfaction we were emerging from the tearoom when a funeral hearse, sombre and stately, drew up at the door. Mary gave it a startled glance and I managed to recollect that in England one does not expect to see a hearse parked outside a café while the driver goes for a cup of tea. I felt a little explanation was necessary.

‘I told you they're very unsentimental about funerals, didn't I?' I began, ‘and this hearse has probably come all the way from Glasgow. You never know how far they may have travelled and I expect the driver …' The rest of my words died away for it was at that moment that I beheld the driver. Eager and effusive, he climbed down from the driving-seat and greeted us for the second time that day.

‘Enjoy your tea?' he asked hospitably, and without waiting for an answer turned to Mary. ‘I've put your luggage aboard, miss,' he told her happily. ‘There's nothing I might have forgotten now, is there?'

I turned to my companion. Never, ‘while the Lord spares me', shall I forget the expression on Mary's face as she stared, not at the coffin she expected to see, but at her own suitcases and parcels piled neatly among the silver appointments. I experienced a moment of dismay as I realised suddenly the full force of the shock she was about to receive when the driver should fling open the glass doors and wait courteously to give us a ‘leg up' inside. Of course it was all my own fault for I had taken great pains to impress upon the driver the necessity of providing some alternative form of transport to the broken-down taxi. I was prepared for a journey by lorry, by the cattle float, or even a borrowed horse and cart, but never in my wildest moments had I dreamed that anyone would think of substituting a hearse for a taxi. No doubt at first my own expression was equally tense, but having grown accustomed to the unorthodoxy of Island transport and the general indifference to death. I was very quickly able to accept the situation with something approaching equanimity, even to see the humour in it.

‘There's nothing else for it except Shanks' pony,' I whispered urgently to Mary.

‘Does he expect us to go in that thing too?' she demanded in outraged tones. I nodded.

The driver discerned our hesitation. ‘You two ladies can just sit in front with me,' he said, accompanying his invitation with a grin of ineffable superiority. ‘It's only the wife's old mother I have there and she'll go in the back with the luggage easy enough.' He motioned blithely towards the cab of the hearse and, after a circumspect peep, I was able to confide to Mary that the ‘wife's old mother' was neither coffined nor embalmed, but, on the contrary, appeared to be exceedingly agile. As if the words were a signal the old woman bustled obligingly out of her seat and, though I felt rather doubtful as to the propriety of allowing one obviously so much nearer the grave than myself to go joy-riding in the back of a hearse, I was relieved when she refused to accept my half-hearted suggestion that I should take her place.

‘It's quite comfortable, my dear,' she told me, her old face wreathed in smiles. ‘You see, with it bein' for the corpuses it has to be nice and bouncy.'

‘Come on,' I muttered inflexibly to Mary. ‘It's our flat feet if you don't.'

Yielding reluctantly, she allowed herself to be handed with decorous solicitude into the front seat where she stayed, stiff and straight, for the whole of the journey. The hearse, after an
arpeggio
on the horn for the benefit of the crews of several fishing-boats, started off at an irreverent speed, and as he accelerated the impenitent driver discoursed upon the superiorities of the hearse above all other forms of transport, remaining callously indifferent to the rigid anxiety of Mary's face and a silence between the two of us which could only be described as deathly.

Morag, her face expressionless, was waiting for us as we drew to a majestic stop beside the wall. She eyed Mary uneasily, but I hastened to explain in an aside that my companion's aloofness was due not to hauteur but to the shock of having to travel in a funeral hearse. The uneasiness was instantly replaced by a smile of warm welcome. While Mary was being introduced to Ruari, I paid the driver (the exact fare) and, while Morag and Ruari were wrestling with the luggage, I turned to the ‘wife's old mother', who by now had been hauled out of the glass doors and was ready to resume her place beside her son-in-law. I hoped she had been comfortable.

‘Och aye, nobody could mind dyin' for a ride like that,' she replied.

‘That one,' commented Morag sourly as the hearse disappeared, ‘she'd say anythin' just to get folks to hire the hearse for their funerals. And as for that driver fellow, he's after swankin' round the place in it ever since he bought it. Indeed you'd think it was for takin' folks to Heaven itself instead of to the burial ground.'

She examined our clothes closely. ‘It's to be hoped he cleaned it out after takin' yon calf to the sale in it this mornin',' she said.

‘Oh surely not!' protested Mary.

‘Surely indeed,' asseverated Morag. ‘And isn't he after takin' the scholars to school in it these three days past?'

The experience being safely over Mary was able to smile wanly. We negotiated the wall with an adroitness that was on my part due to long practice and on Mary's part to long legs, and soon the two of us were eating bacon and eggs and oatcakes and chattering away as though it was only yesterday we had said goodbye. Eagerly we fired question after question at each other, and outside in the whispering rowans a thrush echoed us interrogatively. Sleep overwhelmed us before even a tenth of our confidences had been exchanged, and as soon as we woke the next morning our tongues were at it again. Mary was still tired after her long journey and the two of us sat lazily beside the open window after a late breakfast, our conversation outrivalling the scandal-mongering of the starlings on the chimney pot.

Suddenly Ruari's bellow assaulted the walls of the house like a battering ram.

‘My, but that man shouts loud enough to wound a body,' we heard Morag complain, as she opened the door. The two voices continued in high altercation for some minutes and then a momentary quiet was followed by a perfunctory tap on the door. Morag burst into the room, but as she never allowed distress of any kind to interfere with good manners, she began by hoping we had enjoyed our breakfast. We assured her that we had.

‘Is anything the matter?' I asked.

Morag looked apologetically at Mary. ‘It's yon man,' she said plaintively, ‘they're after tellin' me he's runnin' all over the place stabbin' all they cattle.'

‘Good gracious!' Mary and I ejaculated together.

‘I'm wonderin' if you'd help me take my own beasts to the hill?' Morag went on. I nodded assent.

As I have said earlier, Bruach possessed more than its fair share of mental defectives but I had not so far heard of one who was afflicted with bovicidal tendencies. That the position was serious we judged from Morag's manner, so I jumped up from my chair and pulled on gum-boots (necessary because of the inevitable bogs which, unreasonable as it may sound, are always more numerous the higher one climbs). Mary watched me with wide-eyed astonishment.

‘Shall I come with you?' she asked in a voice that invited refusal.

‘No,' I told her. ‘You lock the door after us and you'll be all right. He won't come here.'

I was not in the least apprehensive about her safety but was in fact secretly rather pleased that she should so soon learn how ‘handy' I had become with the cattle.

Morag had already reached the cow byre and there I sped after her. A slam of the house door indicated that Mary was following my instructions.

‘If you'll take the stirk, I can take the cow,' said Morag as she deftly untied the two beasts, and in a jiffy we and the animals were out of the dark byre. I assumed that as the stabber was beyond control we should be taking the beasts to some appointed place in the hills where the men of the village could combine and act as a bodyguard until the maniac was got under control.

‘Which direction?' I called, as the stirk, his tail stiff as a poker, galumphed impetuously across the ‘park'.

‘To the glen,' she answered.

With an ominous bellow the beast bounded forward and as I grasped his head-rope firmly our memorable trek began. To say that I took the stirk to the glen that day would be an utterly erroneous description of our journey. It would be more correct to say that the stirk took me, for, winding the cattle on the hill, he raced off like a thing demented, and, like something equally demented. I careered after him, resolutely hanging on to his rope. Behind me I thought I heard Morag shout, but it was quite impossible for me to check the beast in his mad flight. Out of the corner of my eye I saw old Murdoch wheeling a barrow-load of manure from his byre and as we flashed past him he nearly overturned the barrow in his astonishment.

‘Where are you away to?' he shouted.

‘I'm taking the beast to the glen,' I yelled back, as I panted in the rear of the stirk's exuberant rushes. The echo of a cynical laugh fell upon my throbbing ears.

Over the hill my charge and I tore with heedless abandon, plunging through intimidating bogs, vaulting lightly over ruined dykes and sailing airily over peat hags until I began to feel that one at least of my progenitors must have been a deer. Never before had I been conscious of possessing legs that moved like wheels, but like wheels they worked that day. Round and round they went as though they were jointless and muscleless, until I was doubtful if I could ever stop them from going round and round. It would perhaps have been an exhilarating experience had I been in the mood and training for it, but I was in far too much of a panic about the stabber for there to be the faintest possibility of enjoying myself. To me the trek was a nightmare, though to Bruach it subsequently became an epic: one eye-witness relating that ‘Indeed I didn't know it was a woman at all he had with him. It looked like some cow flyin' one of they big kites.'

At length we reached the glen where a motley collection of cavorting cattle were mooing and lowing in every key from double bass to falsetto, and a number of conspicuously idle men squatted in the heather. The stirk, his flanks heaving, stopped dead in his tracks, lumbering only a couple of paces forward when I, having half his number of legs and consequendy less efficient braking power, cannoned forcibly into his stern. Gasping, I collapsed on the ground, my throat feeling like emery paper. Ruari's thundering voice penetrated my exhaustion.