The Hills is Lonely (29 page)

‘Salt!' I shouted, rushing into the room, ‘plenty of salt to dout the fire.'

‘My God!' whimpered Morag. ‘I used the last pailful of it only yesterday for the herrin' and I havena' as much left as will salt the potatoes.'

Ruari appeared, and with a determination born of panic Morag seized his ear.

‘Salt!' she yelled in her turn. ‘Get me salt, plenty salt!'

Ruari shook his head. ‘We have none,' he replied flatly, ‘we hadna' enough for all the herrin' we got and the grocer has none either.' His hand went to his ear as though to protect it from further savagery.

Morag's expression was tense. ‘We'll need to sacrifice the salt herrin',' she decided heroically.

I shook my head doubtfully, for though I am at all times only too willing to sacrifice salt herring I wondered if salt in this form would serve the same purpose. Before I could voice my doubts Ruari had charged off into the shed, had heaved the heavy barrel from its corner and, spurning my inefficient help with an untranslatable growl, was stumbling with it back into the house.

‘Clear oot the way!' he warned Morag and she, dodging nimbly into a corner, only just managed to avoid the cataract of herring, salt and liquor as Ruari hurled the contents of the barrel on to the fire. There was a fierce sputtering, and choking smoke billowed out once more into the room; the house began to smell worse than a kipper factory, but the fire was considerably quelled and by the time a strangely attired Bella arrived with more water and wet sacks, the steady roar had become fretful and was gradually, but unmistakably, subsiding. Daylight was breaking as we carried more water to douse the hot walls and the charred linoleum and Ruari climbed up on the roof to ram wet sacks down the chimney from above.

‘Why did you start that?' he demanded truculently as soon as we were able to breathe again.

‘Indeed wasn't I in such a fret to get Miss Peckwitt's breakfast, and then this spiteful old fire goes sleepy on me,' exclaimed Morag with a malevolent glare at the red-hot grate. ‘I was wantin' her to have a nice bitty warm before she went out, so I dosed her with plenty paraffin and bless me but puff! the old bitch went and flies away up the chimbley.'

Summoning a wan smile, I glanced at the clock, and Morag, seeing the direction of my glance, climbed on a chair and rubbed the coating of soot from the glass with a corner of her apron. It was exactly the time my train should have been leaving the mainland station. ‘Why, you've gone and missed your train,' she remarked superfluously.

‘So I have,' I agreed as I wearily surveyed the sooty contents of my suitcases, and collected my freshly ironed crushables for relaundering.

‘Oh well,' said Morag comfortably; ‘that's the very first time I've felt sure that old chimbley was really clean.'

No further calamity occurred to prevent me from setting off for England the following day and after an uneventful journey the train drew into the station of my home town where Mary was awaiting me. The return to town life was exciting and I revelled once more in ‘all modern conveniences'; in the wearing of light shoes; in nice peaceful church services, and in eating thin bread and butter. My shopping expeditions were amazingly successful, though the pink frilly garters necessitated some diligent seeking. We unearthed a sumptuous pair at last in a decaying little shop in an insignificant side street; they were speckled with rose buds, bordered with lace, and tufted with swansdown, and I could be very certain that the bride-to-be would be enchanted with them. Kirsty's ‘debutante's dream' was purchased and despatched to her in a debonair hat box. The bridesmaids' head-dresses, very blue and very beguiling, were packed safely in the bottom of one of my cases. Eventually all the items on my fist were scored through—Lachy's wife and Euan's donkey excepted—and I could safely concentrate on my own plans.

For some time I had been toying with the idea of purchasing a small car for use in Bruach, and now I set about putting my plan into action. As I explained to Mary, I was tired of being allotted a space in the cattle float or distorting my body to fit into the backs of inadequate vans on the very frequent occasions when the Bruach bus was unfit for service. The hearse too was still a disturbingly regular feature of Island transport and, though up to the present I had always been fortunate enough to have the seat beside the driver, I could not help feeling a little apprehensive that the time might come when this would prove impracticable. I was lucky enough to purchase an old Morris two-seater car which we promptly christened ‘Joanna', and at once I embarked on a course of driving lessons from a reputable instructor. At the end of a few weeks I was confident of my prowess and. saying goodbye to England, ‘Joanna' and I set off, a little uncertainly to begin with perhaps, on the four-hundred-mile journey to Bruach, intending to reach our destination rather less than a week before the wedding.

The sensation of homecoming which I experienced when I drove ‘Joanna' off the ferry boat and introduced her to the Island—the crossing was mercifully calm—was strange indeed for a town-bred Englishwoman. The charm of the Island struck me afresh and, although it was December and what slight breeze there was stroked my cheeks with icy fingers, I drove with both windows of the car lowered, and drew deep, eager breaths of the fresh, invigorating air. To the left of me the loch stretched out, placid and still, reflecting the dark, rain-washed hills, the anchored fishing-boats, and the slow flight of the homeward-bound gulls. The setting sun was no more than a sliver of vermilion above the horizon, while to the north the rapidly purpling sky was laced with brilliant green. I was glad to come upon the first thatched houses of Bruach looking for all the world like sturdy brown mushrooms that a snail has eaten its way through; from the snail hole curled the now familiar blue of peat smoke mingling its fragrance with that of scorching flour, reminding me that it was Saturday evening and the Sabbath baking would be in progress. Bringing ‘Joanna' to a stop beside the wall, I jumped out, and a beaming Morag came hurrying to greet me. It would have been churlish to try to avoid the embrace she had so obviously determined upon and, before it was over, Bella had appeared, to bestow upon me similar evidence of affection, while a flushed and smiling Ruari waited impatiently to shake my hand with ferocious warmth. The fervour of the welcome from all three of them was impressive and made that which I had received in England seem frigid by comparison. It was difficult to repress a feeling of elation, for the geniality of the Gael, despite its lack of sincerity, is an endearing trait. While the women prodded my limbs to see if I had lost weight, and enthused over ‘Joanna' and over my new clothes, Ruari busied himself with my cases. Back again in my own room I was fussed over and petted and repeatedly assured that my company had been very much missed, and by the time I was ready for bed that night I was feeling so flattered by their attentions that I experienced no regrets at all that town life was once more behind me.

My return was the signal for a chain of visitors who came to welcome me, to inspect me, and to hear the latest news from England. Among the first were the bride and bridesmaids. All three professed themselves delighted with the purchases I had made for them and were eager to tell me that the bridesmaid's dresses had arrived from the second-hand shop. Though neither the shade nor the style of the dresses was identical, as they had been hoping, the girls were plainly thrilled. ‘One is a sort of pink,' they told me, ‘and the other is a sort of orange'—a colour combination which filled them with rapture and me with regret. Not far behind the bridal retinue came Kirsty, no less enamoured with the hat I had sent her from England, which I was to be permitted to see her wearing on the following Sunday. Hard on Kirsty's heels came Padruig and Euan. Once again I had to endure the former's description of his visit to ‘Buckram Palace', and during the recital Euan, apparently bearing me no ill-will after my failure to bring him a donkey, sat watching me with eyes full of dog-like devotion.

‘Euan doesn't seem to be fretting that I haven't brought his donkey,' I observed to Morag after they had left.

‘But he thinks you have brought him one,' she replied.

‘What!' I exclaimed feelingly. ‘How can that be?'

‘Indeed havena' the boys been after tellin' him you brought one back for him and that he's to come to Ruari's croft here tomorrow to practise will he ride it?'

‘That really is the limit,' I said angrily. ‘Goodness only knows what they've let me in for now. I shall be having the fellow trailing me all over the place.'

‘Ach, they've let you in for nothin',' she soothed. ‘The boys has borrowed a park deer from over the other side of the Island and they're after tellin' Euan it's an English donkey. That was the idea when they put him up to askin' you for a donkey in the first place.'

I discerned a touch of the combined genius of Lachy, Angus and possibly Johnny in the ludicrous plan, and vowed vengeance on all three of them.

‘It'll be all right,' continued my landlady, ‘Euan's never seen a donkey.'

Having emphatically refused to stay and witness the meeting of Euan and the deer, I have only my landlady's narrative as to the eventual outcome of the escapade. She, almost delirious with laughter, described the spectacle vividly and, as may be expected, in language peculiarly her own. It appeared that while a few of the men—Angus, Lachy and Johnny prominent among them—held on to the deer. Euan was persuaded to throw his leg over the saddle. As soon as he complied the men let go their hold and the deer, with prodigious leaps and bounds, made for the hills. Miraculously, no one attempted to explain how the jockey had managed to cling on and, accompanied by the vociferous encouragement of the onlookers, was carried fully a third the length of the croft before he slid over the beast's stern and landed flat on his back in the mud. The deer fled precipitately and was soon out of sight and Euan, after slapping the mud from his trousers and retrieving his cap, flew in pursuit. He too was soon lost to sight and it was two hours later that the gamekeeper reported having seen him—still running.

It was a relief to me to hear that Euan had eventually returned and to know that the poor fellow was in no way hurt.

‘He'll never forgive me,' I complained.

‘Forgive you? Why should he forgive you?' argued Morag. ‘He thinks it's a wonderful donkey. He's done nothin' but boast and swank of his English donkey ever since.'

I groaned. ‘What is going to happen now that it's gone then?' I asked.

‘Ach, stop frettin'. He thinks it's run all the way back to England and he's quite certain you'll get it for him when next you go,' she returned placidly.

Though it was difficult to believe such a hoax could have been carried through as successfully as the perpetrators claimed, I must admit that Euan seemed to be in no way disappointed with the performance of his counterfeit donkey. On the contrary, he continued to regard me with an embarrassing devotion which showed not the least sign of diminishing.

‘As the great wedding day drew near, the Bruachites bent themselves to the task of writing congratulatory telegrams.

‘What are you goin' to put in your own message?' asked my landlady one evening, and when I replied that, as I had every intention of being present at the ceremony, it seemed unnecessary to send a telegram, she was genuinely surprised, and insisted that it was the custom for telegrams to be sent whether or not one would be there in person. It was also the custom, she told me, for some of the self-styled bards of the village to compose congratulatory messages in verse, and suggested that one Peter would ‘make a verse' for me if I so wished. I shook my head; my acquaintance so far with local compositions had forced me to the conclusion that, provided rhyming, metre and grammar could be discounted entirely, their work might be tolerably good—certainly not otherwise. My landlady's cousin, a master in a Glasgow secondary school, had, she confided, supplied ‘a grand verse' for her own telegram. ‘My, but he's right good at them. Just wait till you hear it,' she exalted with a girlish gleam in her eyes, and added coyly: ‘I shan't tell you now though for fear of spoilin' it.'

I murmured something about contenting myself with the prosaic ‘congratulations and best wishes', whereupon Morag stared at me with the stricken expression of a child who has been punished for a sin it is not aware of having committed; and abruptly changed the subject. She did not mention the telegrams again.

A belated dawn heralded the wedding morning itself and after rubbing a clear patch on my window I saw that it promised to be a dull, depressing, typical December day. Downstairs my landlady was humming Gaelic airs to herself as she scuttled about her morning chores, for she was intending to leave early, having promised to lend her assistance in the kitchen for the major part of the day. The cows were to be left in the byre instead of being turned out on the hill as usual, and I had promised to give them their evening feed before setting out for the church after lunch. When Morag had gone, I spent the morning in polishing ‘Joanna' who, in spite of her age, was in remarkably good condition. At lunch-time I cooked and ate a rather frugal meal—the frugality being in anticipation of the menu for the wedding feast proving somewhat onerous. I was on my way, in gum-boots and mackintosh, to give the cows their feed before changing into my wedding finery, when the vehement blasting of a horn made me look round, and I beheld the taxi-driver in an opulent new taxi signalling furiously in my direction. I crossed the park to the road.

‘Isn't that fellow the biggest fool in the Island!' he burst out passionately, without making even the expected allusion to the weather. I sensed instantly that something was seriously wrong.

‘Which man? And what has he done?' I asked, puzzling as to why I had been chosen as confidante.