The Loud Halo (25 page)

The obliging driver turned up with another half-ton of coal the following week and within a few days there was yet another half-ton. Gloatingly I regarded the growing heap. My winter's supply of coal secured within easy reach of my cottage! The weather could do its worst now and I need not worry. I was extremely grateful to the driver. So much so that the following week I was confronted with yet another half-ton of coal. I began to feel faintly perturbed. Although I told myself it was a good idea to have a reserve of coal against the time when it might be unobtainable—a circumstance that was all too familiar in Bruach—I had to face up to the fact that coal cost money and my own resources were strictly limited. It was with dismay that I heard the coal lorry turn on to the croft the very next week and, like ‘the sorcerer's apprentice', I began to wonder when the flow was going to stop.

‘Look,' I told the driver, with affected joviality. ‘I'll take up to five tons and then you must marry the girl or else give her up. I can't afford to buy any more.'

He grinned self-consciously and when he bade me goodnight his voice was distinctly regretful.

‘Here,' said Erchy some time later in the month. ‘You want to be glad now you've plenty of coal. You'll not be gettin' any more for a while. The lorry driver's quarrelled with his boss so he's not workin' for him any more.'

I felt a sense of relief, which was shortlived for, not many evenings later I again heard a lorry approaching with a very familiar rumble and on going outside I found myself confronting my driver friend. My heart plunged to my boots.

‘Not more coal?' I asked apprehensively.

‘No, indeed,' he assured me. ‘I've finished with that man.' He came into the kitchen and sat down uninvited. As he seemed prepared to stay for a while I offered him tea and as he drank it he described to me the various jobs he had tried. When he had finished his tea and was about to leave he asked, ‘Did I no' hear you sayin' somethin' at the ceilidh about wantin' a new peat shed?'

‘You might have heard me say that I was wanting to strengthen the one I already have,' I told him.

‘Aye, well, what I was thinkin' was, I'm workin' now for a fellow has good slabs of wood—you know, the outside of the trees, I'm meanin'. They're good and cheap and if I brought you a load out here in my spare time the carriage would cost you nothin' at all.'

He was an exceedingly persuasive young salesman. It seemed a good idea, and I fell for it. A load of slabs was soon delivered and Erchy went to work on the shed.

‘You know,' the driver told me, ‘you should take advantage of these slabs while they're so cheap and get yourself another load. You could build yourself another shed with them and make new stalls for your cow byre. There's no end to what you can do with them and you won't be able to get them for much longer.'

The stalls in the byre were sketchy indeed; I succumbed and ordered another load.

‘Well,' said Morag, when she saw them lying on the croft. ‘You only just got your slabs in time. He's quarrelled with the slab mannie, so he's not workin' for him any more.' She shook her head, lamenting upon the fickleness of the young driver.

‘Who is he working for now, then?' I asked.

‘Indeed, I'm hearin' he's gone to that place that's sellin' the lime,' she told me.

During my residence in Bruach the village had been visited by one expert after another, all sent by some official body to advise on methods of improving croft land. Lime they had invariably insisted, was the basic and most urgent necessity. Lime, lime and lime again, they adjured us. The crofters were frankly disbelieving, lime cost money, so they preferred to retain their faith in dung and seaweed. I think I was the only person who accepted the findings of the experts at that time, so that when the lorry driver eventually presented himself at my door with the offer of a load of lime brought out at cheap rates in the evening I was not too unwilling to accept. He generously offered to help me spread the first load, an offer which, had I suspected the reason for it, I should not have accepted with so much alacrity. The experts had said two tons to the acre but the driver spread his share so prodigally that the ton he had brought out did not cover nearly half that area.

‘Ach, but I'll be bringin' you out another ton tomorrow,' he comforted. ‘You can't give this land too much lime,' he added with an air of superior knowledge.

‘And anyway,' he added shrewdly, ‘you'll want to qualify for the subsidy on it.'

We spread another ton the following night.

‘You would be the better of twenty tons of lime on this croft,' the driver observed briskly flapping his overalls.

‘I'm liming only two acres of it for a start,' I told him with a firmness that was no doubt accentuated by my chalk-white face. ‘That means I'll need four tons altogether. I'm not taking any more than that.' But after he had brought me the third ton the deliveries ceased abruptly.

‘I'm thinkin' you'll need to wait a good whiley for the rest of your guana,' Morag crowed. Everything used to fertilise the land that was not recognisable as seaweed or honest dung, Morag persisted in describing as ‘guana'.

‘Why?' I asked. ‘Has he quarrelled with the lime merchant now?'

‘Indeed he has,' she replied.

‘Oh, well, I suppose he'll soon get a job with someone else and be out here again coaxing us to buy things at cheap rates,' I laughed.

Morag gave me an odd look. ‘An' he's after finishin' with Mora, too,' she said.

‘Really?' I exclaimed.

‘Aye, so he has,' she told me. ‘An' it's glad you ought to be for that, mo ghaoil, for the new job he has is with the undertaker.'

The woman in the bed next to mine swung her legs cautiously over the side while the nurse waited, holding her dressing-gown.

‘They're letting me home on Friday,' she told me.

‘Where is home?' I asked her and she described to me a little village, the name of which, along with many others, I had glimpsed so often in the
Oban Times
.

‘Where's yours?' she asked, and when I told her she was immediately sympathetic. ‘That's an awful way away,' she said. ‘No wonder you don't get many visitors.'

My one and only visitor had come the previous evening and then it had been well past visiting hours. The evening meal had been served and there had been the usual period of comparative inactivity before we were bedded down for the night. The patients were meditative and only the rustling of paper as presents were inspected and the light quick footsteps of the nurses broke the lazy silence of the ward. All at once we became aware of the heavy, unsure tread of rough boots. Everyone turned to look at the tall, embarrassed man, clad in homespun suit and cloth cap, who stood at the entrance. With a glow of pleasure I managed to lift my arm in an attempt at a wave and he came towards my bed, hesitantly at first and then with clumsy haste, his boots skidding on the highly polished floor.

‘Hector!' I said, and my eyes filled with tears. ‘Hector, this is wonderful.'

‘Why, Miss Peckwitt,' he said, obviously dismayed at my wasted appearance. ‘I just couldn't believe it was you till you spoke just.

Oh dear, dear,' He shook his head and looked so distressed that I had to smile reassuringly.

‘I'm getting along fine,' I told him, though so far he had been too overcome to ask how I was. ‘But tell me, how did you get here, Hector?'

‘I heard the carrier was comin' wiss some sheeps tsis way, so I said would he give me a lift and here I am.' He gave me a rueful little smile. ‘Behag said I was to get you tsese.' He put a bag of fruit down on my bedside table. ‘An I tsought maybe you'd like tsis.' He laid a copy of the
Football Times
down on the bedcover.

‘Tell me all the news,' I begged, when I had expressed my pleasure over the gifts. He rubbed his hand over his chin and frowned with concentration. After a few moments the frown lifted.

‘Tsere's a lot of people told me to tell you tsey was askin' after you,' he said and reeled off a list of names. ‘An' Morag said to tell you your cow and hens is doin' fine,' he finished up.

I nodded gratefully. ‘And how is everyone in Bruach and what have they been doing?' I asked him.

‘Ach, tsey're fine,' he said. ‘An' tsey're just where tse tide left tsem when last you saw tsem. I don't know tsat tsey've been doin' anytsing at all.'

I had been in hospital for some weeks and even in Bruach I was sure something would have happened in that time. Surely someone had bought a new cow, or lost an old one. Or someone's hay had blown away or someone's horse had fallen over a cliff?

‘Have the storms been very bad?' I prompted.

‘Och, aye. Some of tsem. Daft Donald lost his dinghy in tse last one. Smashed up properly she was. Mind you, she was as rotten as shit.'

‘Poor Donald,' I commiserated. ‘He'll miss not having the
Swallow
to fuss over, even though he never went out in her.'

‘Aye, but he has anotser one already,' Hector said. ‘He got it from a man on tse mainland a few days ago just, an' he was round tse otser day askin' my aunt what name would he put on it.'

‘And did she suggest one?'

‘Aye, well all she said was, “What's wrong wiss callin' her
Swallow
again, Donald?” So tsats what he did. I was down on tse shore yesterday and tsere across tse transom of his boat he's painted
Swallow Again
in big letters.' He smiled a swift, urchin smile. ‘It kind of gives you a funny feelin' in your tsroat just to see it,' he said, and we exchanged a grin of understanding.

‘No cows died? No calves born?' I asked.

‘No, but tse stallion was out tse otser day for Tearlaich's mare—tse one tsat didn't die. Tse mannie tsat brought him was sayin' he was pretty fed up, too.'

‘Why?'

‘He was girnin' because he'd had to walk all tse way from tse pier wiss tse beast an' he'd be after havin' to walk all tse way back again tsat night for tsere was no place to keep him.'

‘I should think he would be fed up,' I murmured.

‘Aye, well tse minute tse stallion had served tse mare tse mannie grabbed a great bunch of nettles an' rammed tsem under tse mare's tail. My God! he was quick about it too. An' he needed to be, for she kicked up her heels to witsin inch of his head. “Tsere now,” he says to Tearlaich an' givin' him a wink, “tsat'll make sure she holds an' I don't have to come back here again.” Tearlaich turns on him. “Man,” he says, “you're lucky to be alive not to have to come back again.” ' Hector's eyes were wide. ‘An' I can tell you he was, too.'

Hector had not taken off his cap when he came into the ward and now, becoming conscious of the questioning looks of the night nurses just coming on duty, he pulled it down over his eyes so that he should not see them.

‘Has no one died or been ill?' I asked him.

He shook his head and sucked in his breath, trying to remember something that might interest me.

‘Hamish's sister is back,' he suddenly recalled.

‘Is she really? Is she any better?'

Hamish's sister had developed, in addition to other peculiar habits, one of hiding behind any convenient shed or house whenever she saw anyone approaching and giving a very lifelike imitation of a duck quacking. A few months ago she had been taken to a home to be treated.

Hector pondered my question. ‘Well I don't know tsat she's better,' he said doubtfully. ‘She's different tsough.'

‘How different?'

‘Well, she doesn't quack any more, but now whenever she sees you comin' she gets behind sometsing and crows away like a cockerel. She's damty good at it, too,' he said with an appreciative smile.

The nurse came to the foot of the bed and though Hector gave her his most enraptured smile she was not to be beguiled. He shrugged and cast a furtive glance along the rows of interested faces. I thought he was going to kiss me goodbye but his courage failed him. Instead he patted my hand.

‘Never mind,' he said, ‘you'll be better off for tsis operation, you'll see. Our own Hamish had an operation on his stomach at one time an' he never had any more trouble wiss it till he died.'

He lingered a moment or two longer. ‘You'll be home for New Year?' he predicted questioningly, and when I shook my head he made a grimace of sympathy. I watched him with great affection as he skidded out of the ward and turned to wave to me before disappearing along the corridor. Then I lay back on the pillows, reflecting on his parting words.

Would I be home for New Year? Not, I planned, if I could help it. Out of hospital, I hoped, but not in Bruach where New Year was just a drinking orgy in which, because I loathe undisciplined drinking, I had perforce to play the part of observer. The first New Year I had spent there in Morag's house I had been so nauseated by the intemperance of the crofters that I had resolved when I got a house of my own I would withdraw completely from the celebration. Morag, who always had my interests at heart, had then made it her duty to come and explain to me how much New Year meant to them and how important it was that I should take a drink with my friends even if it was only a ‘wee tastie'. I was never able to understand the Scots' preparatory bracing up for their complete abandonment to sottishness on this one night of the year but I was made to see how churlish and unsociable was my own attitude. So I had relented and bought a bottle of whisky and stayed up to entertain such revellers as were sober enough to stumble to my cottage. It was for me a long night of unmitigated boredom but since then I had become more acclimatised and had found that the best way of coping with the celebration was to set out myself just before midnight and go the rounds of my friends' houses taking my own bottle and wishing everyone a ‘Happy New Year' and accepting only a ‘wee tastie' in return. It still meant a long and tedious night but I preferred it to sitting at home and perhaps being surrounded by limp carcasses singing, praying, crying or just being horribly sick.