The Loud Halo (11 page)

Bruach normally saw the last of its tinkers well before the end of September but this year a company of them had decided to stay for the winter and had built for themselves a substantial hut of sods, covered with tarpaulins which were weighted down with boulders from the bed of the burn. Although the encampment was a good two miles from the village the Bruachites at first seemed to find the presence of the tinkers a trifle disturbing, partly, I suspected, because they could never completely dissociate them from the stories of witchcraft and magic with which a Hebridean child is surrounded. It soon became obvious from the blue smoke that sprouted from a hole in the tarpaulin that the tinkers were burning peat, so peat stacks were examined frequently, though even had pilfering been observed it is unlikely that anything would have been done about it except to carry all the peats home to the safety of the shed at the side of the house. When two of the more incautious of the villagers reported that the tinkers had opened up a couple of hags close to their encampment the relief was general. No one really wanted to have any cause for complaint against the tinkers. Of course, they admitted, they had no right whatever to cut peats without permission from the village. ‘Ach, but what's a few yards of peat in hundreds of acres of the stuff!' they exclaimed in tones that would not have been half so tolerant had it been one of themselves who had so flouted tradition. It was exactly the same with the driftwood on the shore. In Bruach the men went regularly to the beaches, putting up above high-tide mark all manner of flotsam and jetsam ranging from small pieces of driftwood which would make good kindling to large hatch covers which might provide solid supports for a new byre or shed. All along the shore these dog-in-the-manger piles of wood were dotted, constantly being added to, rarely being depleted. Sometimes the larger pieces would have initials roughly scratched on them to proclaim the finder but this was unnecessary, for in the village it was an unwritten law that a man owned whatever he put above high-tide mark and it was considered to be the depth of treachery for another to lay a finger on it, even if it had been lying rotting there for much of the claimant's lifetime. They were able apparently to memorise not only each heap they had garnered but each individual piece and I have witnessed an old man who had not moved from his fireside for several years describe after a few moments' meditation a piece of wood of a particular shape and size and then give an importunate relative reluctant permission to abstract it from one of his caches on the shore. Yet now came the tinkers who with smiling indifference and without a sign of remonstrance from the owners indulged in day-long sorties, looting the stores of wood with a rapacity that, had they been ordinary villagers, would have resulted in months of bitterness and recrimination.

There appeared to be at least a dozen of the ‘sod-hut tinks' and from the sounds of laughter one could always hear in the vicinity of their abode they seemed to pack a great deal of jollity into their unfettered lives. The grocer reported that they were ideal customers in that they bought unstintingly, paid cash and carried their purchases away with effortless good humour. The barman was quoted as having said much the same thing.

‘Which of them is going to marry which?' I enquired of Morag, being as much enchanted with the news as she was.

‘I believe it's yon little one Erchy's after sayin' has the “come-to-bed eyes” ' She gave a wry chuckle. ‘Aye, an' I mind our own Hector tellin' him, “Well, Erchy,” says he, “if it's come-to-bed eyes she has then I'm thinkin' it's a been-to-bed walk her legs has.” '

‘Oh, that one.' I exclaimed, recalling a young girl with rather bandy legs, bounteous chestnut hair and shadowed lazy eyes, who had called at the cottage a couple of times and with liquid mendicant chant had tried to flatter, wheedle and coax me into buying bowls and ladles made from dried milk tins, roughly soldered.

‘Aye, that one,' confirmed Morag.

‘And who is she marrying?' I demanded.

‘And who but that one they call “Hairy Willie” ' she declared with great satisfaction.

‘Hairy Willie!' I ejaculated. ‘But he's too old for her, and anyway he's in Canada.'

‘He may be too old for her but he's not in Canada,' contradicted Morag with smug emphasis. ‘He's back at the sod hut.'

I was overcome with curiosity. The rumour a month or so earlier that Hairy Willie's sister in Canada had sent him the money for a three-month trip by plane to visit her had caused a great sensation in the village. No one had at first believed the story but gradually signs of unusual excitement became apparent among the tinkers themselves. Several bachelors in the village reported having been asked for cast-off underwear to fit a ‘big, big man'. (Hairy Willie was a clothes-bursting six foot two.) Others were asked if they could spare a suitcase. Then when interest had been whipped up to its peak Hairy Willie himself did Erchy the great honour of appearing, at his door and asking ‘would he be havin' a kind of tie or two he wasn't wantin' to go to Canada?' Erchy had obligingly produced a couple of cherished ties and in return for the gift had asked Hairy Willie point blank if the story of his flying to Canada was really true. Hairy Willie had been delighted not only to show Erchy the letter from his sister (he himself could not read) but also the money order she had enclosed for his fare. (‘An' the size of it near knocked me over!' Erchy confided afterwards.)

One day the following week a bevy of tinker children was seen climbing over and under, inside and outside Hairy Willie's ramshackle old van, racing each other with pails of water from the burn, washing it and polishing it and making it fit for the journey down to Glasgow where he was to catch the plane. The very next day Hairy Willie, dressed in a lovat-green tweed jacket which had come from the Laird via the gamekeeper, a pair of homespun trousers, furtively supplied by the shepherd's tender-hearted wife; a pious black hat begged from the minister, and a pair of ex-R.A-F. flying boots from an entirely unaccountable source, had climbed into his van beside a battered portmanteau and amidst a chorus of good wishes, spurts of delighted dancing and waving of arms and hats started on his adventure. Since then the village had heard no news of him and it had been assumed by everyone that he was safely in Canada with his sister. Now, here was Morag saying that he was already back at the encampment.

‘Didn't he like Canada?' I asked.

‘Indeed the man never got to Canada,' she replied. ‘You mind he was drivin' himself down?' I nodded. ‘Well, they're tellin' me he collected that many drunken drivin' summonses on his way to Glasgow that all the money for his fare had gone on fines before ever he got there.' Morag was outraged by my laughter. ‘A waste of good money,' she scolded, and then added thoughtfully, ‘not but what it was a waste, anyway. How did she know he was her real brother? You canna' tell with tinks.'

‘So now he's proposing to get married,' I said.

‘Aye, an' it should be worth seein'. She's been around tryin' to find somebody will give her a dress for the weddin'. Indeed she was at my own house yesterday but I had nothin' would do for her.'

‘Poor kid,' I said. ‘I wish I could help her.'

‘Ach, she's no needin' help,' replied Morag. ‘Mary Anne's promised her a white dress she has by her.'

‘Her own wedding dress?' I asked.

‘Ach, no, mo ghaoil, it's just a dress of some sort she inhabited from her granny when she died. It's been up in a box in the loft long since.' I felt even sorrier for the girl. ‘It's queer all the same,' Morag went on, ‘the likes of them tinks wantin' to get marrit in a church.'

‘Why?' I asked. ‘How do they usually get married?' I was thinking of the traditional gypsy ceremony.

‘Indeed I'm thinkin' they don't usually bother themselves,' said Morag.

There was sudden thump on the door and it flew open, revealing a group of masked children clad in a variety of old seamen's jerseys, yachting caps, long black skirts and tattered dresses. They blundered into the kitchen and silently stood in an aura of mildew and excitement, waiting for us to guess their identities, greeting our deliberately wrong guesses with anonymous snorts and giggles and reluctantly acknowledging correct ones by removing their marks. Eventually all the masks were removed and we gave them each a threepenny bit. I put out a bowl of water in which lurked quartered apples and rolling up their voluminous sleeves the children ducked for them with eager deliberation. When the apples were finished they put on their masks again and securely tucking up flapping skirts and trouser legs ran off gaily to repeat the performance at the next house.

‘I'm thinkin',' said Morag, ‘the tinks will be after some of them dresses the children was wearin' tonight if they see them. They'll want to be dressin' themselves up for the weddin' as well as the bride.'

A few days after Halloween the prospective bride called at the cottage. Trying to conceal her excitement she told me wistfully that she had tried ‘everywhere just' (she implied by her tones every reputable store in town) but could not get a pair of white shoes to fit her. Had I such a thing as a pair? She would be so full of thanks to me if I could but just find her a wee pair. I knew I had absolutely nothing suitable. I also knew that she would not believe me if I told her so. I invited her inside to inspect my shoe cupboard to see if there was anything else that might do. There were no light shoes at all, my Bruach footwear being limited to gum boots, brogues and carpet slippers. She smiled at me ingratiatingly. She understood, of course, I wouldn't want to part with them; they were nice anyway and that cool in the summer for the feets. I wondered at first which particular pair of shoes she was going to try to win from me and then I saw that her glance kept going to a pair of grubby old tennis shoes in the bottom of the cupboard. I bent down and rooted them out. There was a small hole in the toe of each.

‘These?' I asked incredulously. ‘You want these?'

Ach, it was too much to ask of me. She tried to look contrite, but her eyes returned greedily to the shabby shoes I was holding. I handed them to her.

‘Have them by all means if you want them,' I said, and poking about found a tube of whitener not completely hard which I also pushed into her hand. Full of smiles and dramatic predictions of good luck that would follow my generosity she rushed off clutching the shoes to her and leaving me with an inexplicable sense of guilt which was not dissipated until Morag told me that she had heard the bride's mother only that day pestering the grocer to get her some coloured toilet rolls.

‘Aye, I thought that would surprise you, I was surprised myself,' she told me, with cheerful disapproval. ‘Toilet rolls for tinks!' she scoffed, ‘and coloured ones at that! “What's wrong with a handful of grass the same as we use ourselves?” I says to her, and do you know what she was wantin' them for?'

I shook my head and waited.

‘She said she must have coloured paper for makin' the flowers for the bucket the bride was goin' to carry.' She snorted. ‘Fancy that now. Not satisfied with a white dress my fine lady must have a bucket to carry like brides in the papers and her mother's havin' to make her the flowers for it.'

An ancient dress, a pair of old tennis shoes, a bouquet of paper flowers!

I announced my intention of going to see the wedding, and Nelly Elly was quick to say that she would come with me if she could get someone to see to the Post Office for her. Mary Anne, delighted at the possibility of seeing the bride in her grandmother's dress, planned that she too would come if Jamie would get back from the cow in time. Morag indicated that she would come if the Lord spared her.

The day of the wedding brought a sunwhite morning encircled with gull cries and harried by a bluster of wind. The wedding was to be at twelve o'clock in a church some twelve miles distant so there was time only to rush through the morning's chores before embarking on a wrestling bout with Joanna, my car, who with age was becoming an increasingly slow starter. I was late and all three of my friends were walking along the road towards the cottage when I met them.

‘My, they're sayin' there's tinks come from as far as Inverness for this weddin'!' exclaimed Morag as soon as we had started off.

‘Indeed and so they have,' agreed Nelly Elly. ‘Did you no' have them round yesterday just? Beggin' me to buy they were, just so they could give the bridegroom a wee bitty somethin' for his weddin'.'

‘I'm knowin' fine what the wee bitty somethin' would be, too,' observed Morag sagely. ‘It'll be a rough weddin' if there's many from Inverness there.'

‘There's a dozen came from there yesterday,' reported Nelly Elly. ‘An' I'm after hearin' that the little boy they brought with them was a wee monster. He was swearin' that bad on the train they had to lock him in the guard's van all the way.'

She sucked in a horrified breath. ‘Folks was sayin' they'd never heard anythin' like it.'

‘If there's a dozen of them from Inverness there's as many from other places,' put in Mary Anne. ‘There must be near forty of them all together in that sod hut. Dear knows where they're all to sleep.'

‘Ach, they'll no' be carin' where they sleep,' said Morag disdainfully. ‘An' they'll have that much drink inside them they won't know where they are anyway.'

‘Erchy was past their camp yesterday and he was sayin' there was good smells for a mile either way,' supplied Nelly Elly. ‘They were after cookin' the chickens they got. He says they had three or four fires goin' and he reckoned they had about fifteen birds there of one sort or another. They're doin' well out of it. I know the cockerel my mother gave them was near as big as a goose.'

‘My own was as big,' countered Morag with pride. ‘I was thinkin' maybe I'd keep him till the New Year, but ach, when they asked me would they get somethin' for the weddin' feast I felt I'd best give it to them.' She smoothed her gloves complacently. ‘All the same,' she went on, ‘I believe they've done well for meat from Lachy's cow that fell over the cliff a day or two back. He says they were runnin' back and fro with pails and basins to it all day long till the tide took it away.'