The Loud Halo (24 page)

‘Where are Erchy and Hector and the rest?' I asked Morag as we handed round refreshments.

‘Indeed I don't know at all,' she replied, genuine mystification in her voice. ‘I don't believe they got back from the funeral yet.'

‘Trust Erchy,' I said with some asperity. ‘It was he who insisted on my going ahead with this party.'

‘Here, mo ghaoil, there's plenty of time for them yet,' she soothed.

After an hour or so had gone by and there was still no sign of the younger men the girls, except for Mora who was flirting modestly with the lorry driver, were beginning to look anxious, and though there was plenty of chatter and laughter it was possible in odd moments to hear the hiss of the pressure lamp which, to me anyway, meant that the party was not as successful as I had hoped it would be. However, Morag coaxed Murdoch into giving us a song and soon we were all joining in the choruses rapturously, the girls throwing back their heads and swaying and the old people beating their hands into their laps in time to the music. It was nearing midnight and we were in the middle of a particularly nostalgic Gaelic air when the door was flung open and Erchy and Hector and a bevy of the young men of the village tumbled in, their eyes shining, their caps pushed back on their heads and the pockets of their best suits bulging with bottles of various sizes.

‘I thought you'd been to a funeral,' I commented as they sat themselves on the floor, their backs against the wall and tucked hungrily into the food that was offered them.

‘So we have,' responded Erchy happily. ‘An' a right time of it we had too.' He looked at Hector and they grinned at each other with amiable understanding. ‘We got that much of a surprise when we saw it was a bus that came to take the coffin to the funeral,' Erchy confided in a voice that effectively silenced everyone else in the kitchen. ‘We was thinkin' it would be only a small car just to take the coffin and maybe one or two folks along with it. When we saw it was a bus an' we could all go, we rushed away home to get a pound or two to put in our pockets. Seein' we was all dressed up anyway we thought we might as well go an' have a good drink.' He filled his mouth with a sandwich and spoke thickly through it. ‘I'm tellin' you, Miss Peckwitt, if it hadn't been that I remembered about your party there's not one of us would have been back yet.'

‘How did you get back?' I asked.

‘We hired a car from that Farquhar man,' Erchy told me. ‘I believe we started off fairly early but Farquhar would have us keep stoppin' for a drink. Honest,' he said in awestruck tones, ‘I've never known a car that does more pubs to the mile than that one of his.'

‘Aye,' chimed in Hector, ‘and tse more Farquhar's had to drink tse slower he drives. Indeed I was tsinkin' we'd get back sooner if we pushed. You'd tsink it was goin' to a funeral we was instead of comin' back from one, tse way he was drivin'.' He held his cup of tea at arm's length and looked at it with much the same expression of distaste as I have seen on the face of a publican when he looks at a glass of his own beer.

With the arrival of the virile men the girls shed the last remnants of lassitude and the inevitable teasing and chaffing began. Bottles were flourished, glasses were demanded; the singing became progressively louder and less tuneful until at two o' clock in the morning everyone was complaining of a dry throat and clamouring for tea again.

‘Well,' said Yawn, as we relaxed for tea drinking. ‘I'm thinking it's a good thing you got over all those colds and fever you had when you was tryin' to lift those stones. We wouldn't be after havin' such a good ceilidh as this one.' It was the first allusion he had made to my having been observed defying his warning.

‘I've left them now, anyway,' I admitted ruefully.

‘You should never have touched them at all,' reiterated Yawn, ‘for you went to look real poorly after it.'

‘Indeed so she did,' agreed Morag. ‘I didn't like the look of you at all,' she said to me.

‘Ach, I don't believe myself it was anythin' to do with the fever,' put in Behag with surprising conviction. ‘I think Miss Peckwitt just got herself a good cold and that was the start of it all, likely.'

The old men shook their heads, knowingly.

‘Ach, these colds,' grumbled Ian. ‘I never had no trouble with all this catarrh an' sinuses as the doctor says I have until I started to use a handkerchief.' He darted a lugubrious glance at his sister, a very refined lady, who was sometimes to be heard chiding him for not using one. ‘It's my belief it's handkerchiefs that's the cause of all colds that are going about nowadays.'

‘Anyway,' interjected Morag, evidently deciding there had been enough censure for the time being, ‘Miss Peckwitt's all right now, are you not?' She turned to me for confirmation.

‘More or less,' I replied. ‘I'm still having trouble with my chest, though. It's pretty uncomfortable at times.'

‘Well then,' commented Erchy. ‘You know what you must do for that?'

‘No,' I said, hurriedly trying to recollect some of the old cures about which I had heard from time to time during my residence in Bruach. ‘What should I do?'

‘You should get yourself a bottle of Stallion Mixture and rub yourself with it. It's the finest thing in the world for bad chests.'

‘Stallion Mixture?' I echoed blankly, and one of the girls giggled.

‘What would Miss Peckwitt be wantin' with Stallion Mixture?' demanded Morag, indignant on my behalf. ‘It's her chest that's troublin' her not her horse.'

‘I know that fine,' retorted Erchy. ‘But you mind my cousin Ruari had awful trouble with his own chest? He tried everythin' for it just, until he found he had a bottle of Stallion Mixture left in the house from when his horse was sick. He rubbed himself with that every day for a week an' he's never had a spot more trouble since.' He turned to me. ‘You should get a bottle from the grocer tomorrow,' he urged me. ‘That'll see your bad chest off for you.'

‘I shouldn't like to risk rubbing myself with Stallion Mixture,' I told him, smiling.

‘What's the risk?' he demanded. ‘It never did my cousin any harm. Indeed,' he resumed with increasing enthusiasm, ‘you should have seen the way the hair grew on his chest with the stuff. Just like a Highland bull he was, an' he fathered three fine sons after it.'

‘Surely it must have dribbled a bit, then,' observed the irrepressible Morag, while several of the girls shrieked with coy appreciation.

Yawn stood up stiffly. ‘I'm away home to my bed,' he said, and there was a murmur of assent from the rest of the old folk that the younger people affected not to hear.

‘I'm sure Miss Peckwitt must be tired,' announced Katy, with a solicitousness that was belied by the mockery of her smile.

‘I am,' I admitted unashamedly, well accustomed by now to being teased about my habit of liking to go to bed on the same day as I got up. There was a general if reluctant movement to go, the old folk saying good night with seeming abruptness as they were met by the icy air that came in through the open door. Apparently impervious to the cold the lassies clustered round the doorway waiting for the men to arouse themselves from the alcoholic drowsiness into which they had fallen. Becoming impatient, they grasped the men bodily and pulled them to their feet and together they all stumbled out into the night, singing and arguing their way along the road into the darkness. I waited only to tidy the room before going to bed where I fell into a deep and contented sleep from which I was aroused somewhere around six o'clock in the morning by the sound of the coal lorry being driven away.

‘Well, I enjoyed my ceilidh fine last night,' said Morag, and then she went on to pay me the Hebridean's supreme compliment, ‘I didn't feel the time passin'.'

‘Good,' I replied.

‘Was that the coal lorry I heard away at the back of six this mornin'?' she enquired.

‘I believe it was. I wonder where he was until that time?'

‘He'd be with Mora,' said Morag with complete certainty. ‘My, but she's the one for the lads all right.' She made a disparaging noise in the back, of her throat. ‘You'll no' go short of coal for a while till she's tired of him,' she added.

‘Well, that's good to hear,' I said. We were nearing the entrance to my croft and Morag could now see the heap of coal the lorry had dumped. It looked pitifully small.

‘Here, but that's surely not half a ton,' she declared.

‘It's supposed to be,' I told her, though I too had been suspicious about the quantity when I saw it by daylight.

‘It's never half a ton,' she insisted. ‘You should tell him that when you see him next. You know how it is with these lads at the yard?'

I nodded. The loading of coal, unless it was being delivered direct from the boat, was a homely affair. As each half hundredweight of coal was decanted on to the lorry from a large scoop a stone was placed on a convenient window-sill and when there were twenty or forty stones on the sill there was considered to be half a ton or a ton of coal in the lorry. This method generally worked quite well but as the loading was rarely conducted with much seriousness on the part of the loaders it was not wholly reliable. Any distraction, such as an incipient dog fight might be prevented by someone picking up a stone from the sill and hurling it at the combatants; or perhaps a wandering child, unnoticed by the loaders, would appropriate a couple of the more interesting-looking stones. In either case you got jolly good measure for your money but, as it was just as likely that the child might decide to add a few stones to the array on the window-sill or even that one of the ubiquitous loiterers would take an impish delight in surreptitiously adding a stone or two to confuse the loaders, your delivery of coal might be quite seriously short.

‘I'll tell the driver about it next time I see him,' I said to Morag. ‘And you'll be able to corroborate, won't you?'

‘Indeed I will,' she promised.

It was only two evenings later, but well after dark, that the lorry driver turned up at the cottage.

‘Morag's after tellin' me you got short weight with your coal,' he began.

‘Yes, I'm sure I did,' I told him. ‘I honestly don't think there was more than about six hundredweight in it. Here,' I handed him my big torch, ‘go and have a look for yourself.'

He went, and came back sucking his breath disapprovingly. ‘I was kind of thinkin' that it was short myself at the time,' he acknowledged. ‘I suppose it was the lads got larkin' about. I was takin' my tea at the time.' There was a deep frown between his eyes and he seemed a little uncertain what to say next. I asked him inside for a cup of tea but he refused it hastily. ‘I'll tell you what I'll do,' he said, making up his mind. ‘If you'll take another half-ton of coal I'll load it myself and see there's extra put on to make up for last time.'

As I have said, coal had been in short supply for some time and the prospect of another half-ton was extremely attractive. ‘Of course I'll take it' I told him, unable to disguise my eagerness.

‘Right then, I'll try will I bring it out tomorrow.' He jumped into the lorry and drove off and, much to my amazement, about the same time the following evening I heard the lorry approaching and soon another load of coal was being added to the heap on my croft. The sight of it glistening in the light of the torch filled me with satisfaction.

‘It's wonderful to have a nice stock of coal,' I said. ‘I've had so many colds this year and I've found it impossible to keep warm with just peats no matter how high I build the fire.'

The driver looked sympathetic. ‘How long d' you reckon it takes you to get through half a ton of coal?' he asked me.

I thought for a moment. ‘About six weeks,' I told him.

‘Then that lot you have will no' last you very long,' he pointed out. ‘Twelve weeks at the most.'

‘That's true,' I agreed.

‘I'll not be makin' any promises but if I can get you more coal will you take it?' he asked.

‘I'll be only too glad to,' I said rashly.

‘Right then. Cheerio, I'll be seein' you,' he called and was away again, racing his lorry over the bumps of the road and leaving me to wonder why I had suddenly become such a favourite. It took Morag to put me wise.

‘Didn't I tell you you'd get plenty coal after your ceilidh?' she asked. ‘I could see then the way it was goin' to be between him and Mora.'

‘Oh, I don't think it's just Mora who's bringing him out here so often with coal for me,' I said. ‘I think he feels sorry for me because I've been so long without coal.'

Morag smiled compassionately at my ignorance. ‘Sure it's Mora,' she averred. ‘The only way he can get out to see her at night is on the lorry an' the only way he can get hold of the lorry is by sayin' he's bringin' folks coal. Indeed isn't he after everyone in the village swearin' that it's the hardest part of the winter to come yet.'

‘Oh, I see,' I said. ‘But,' I added brightly, ‘good luck to him. I've told him I'll take all the coal he can bring me.'

‘Maybe you'll be sorry yet, then,' she said, but I laughed her warning away. I could always use more coal, I told myself with a feeling of light-heartedness. In that way I differed from the rest of the crofters for they used little coal, some of them none at all, and they seemed to find all the warmth they needed in a few peats smouldering greyly in the grate, but then they wore much the same clothes indoors and outdoors, even leaving on their gum boots. I, who felt a slattern unless I changed when I had finished my outside chores, liked to stoke up the fire lavishly in the evenings so that I could move about the room without finding myself in a cold corner. I had told the lorry driver half a ton lasted me about six weeks. Half a ton lasted most of the crofters a year or more.