The Sea for Breakfast (11 page)

‘She's wantin' it right away if you'll give it to me.' The boy's voice was edged with intolerance.

‘Are you sure it has to be a clean sheet?' I mocked, fully expecting to hear a burst of giggling from his cronies who I felt sure were bolstering him with their presence out there in the dark.

‘Yes indeed.' His expression grew tense as I still made no attempt to go upstairs. ‘Must I go back and tell her you'll no give me a sheet then?' he demanded testily. ‘Will I tell her she must come and get it for herself?'

Against my better judgement I went up to the wee room and taking a fresh-laundered sheet from the drawer I thrust it into his waiting hands, resigning myself to the fact that if it was a hoax it would be all over the village by morning. I could, of course, have gone over to Ruari's and made discreet enquiries but as my presence would doubtless have added to the complexities of the situation it seemed unfair to pester them with my doubts. Morag had still not returned when I went to bed that night and the next morning when she brought in my breakfast she was looking as dishevelled as if she had spent the night outdoors in a gale of wind.

‘Well, Ruari has a fine bull calf for himself after all the trouble,' was her greeting. I murmured suitably, waiting for the teasing which I was sure would soon begin. ‘An' fancy Bella never havin' a clean sheet that would do the calf's bed,' she exclaimed disgustedly.

I answered her with a look of easily simulated amazement.

‘Wasn't all she could find an old cover that the colours leaked out of when it got wet,' she enlarged. ‘It would never have done for the beast. I would have been ashamed of myself.' She shook her head sadly over her sister-in-law's shortcomings.

‘I thought the boy was playing a hoax on me when he came and asked for a clean sheet for the calf's bed,' I confessed ruefully.

‘You did? Right enough he told me you didn't seem as if you wanted to give it to him. Why was that now?'

‘I just couldn't imagine a calf being put to bed between sheets,' I told her. ‘I still can't. It sounds so utterly unlikely.'

Morag suppressed a snigger. ‘But, mo ghaoil, a calf's bed is what me beast lies in before he's born. What would be the English for it now?'

‘The womb, you mean?'

‘Aye, right enough, the womb. Well, that came away with the calf last night and we had to try would we push it back in again with a sheet. Some folk use a bag of straw but Ruari, he would have none of it. A clean sheet, he said, and nothin' else it had to be.' As she went into more gruesome details I realized that my appetite for breakfast-haggis and egg – was wilting rapidly.

‘And you say everything's all right now?' I cut in desperately.

‘Ach, aye. The vet had to do a wee operation on the calf but this mornin' when I sees him he was skippin' around on his legs as though there'd never been a thing wrong with him.' She poured herself a cup of tea and sat down. ‘My, but that vet was tired before he was finished and that was at the back of four this mornin'.'

‘It was a bitterly cold night too for this time of year,' I said, mentally experiencing the discomforts of the average Bruach byre.

‘Aye, we was all complainin' of the cold though the vet was sayin' he was warm enough where he was.' She ended in a little hiccough of laughter.

‘Why, where was that?' I asked innocently.

‘Half-way inside the cow for the best part of the time, mo ghaoil,' she informed me with great relish.

So Bonny awaited her confinement on the comparative lushness of the croft, becoming more of a household pet daily. She was the nearest thing to the real old Highlander it had been possible for me to buy: shaggy, red-haired, with a black-ringed snout. Her horns were crooked.

‘One of her horns points to Heaven and the other to Hell,' my neighbours said when they saw her. ‘You'll find she's half angel and half devil.' But she was mostly angel. I could perhaps have regularized her appearance if I had taken Morag's advice which was to bake a large turnip in the hot peat ashes and clap it quickly on to the crooked horn, gradually coaxing it into position as it softened. I doubted if Bonny would take kindly to the treatment and secretly I was glad of her cock-eyed appearance because it made her more easily distinguishable from the scores of other Highland cattle out on the hill. I had embarrassed memories of volunteering to feed Morag's cows and of standing calling forlornly in the gathering dusk unable to tell one cow from another, until one of them had had the good sense to recognize me.

When Bonny did calve she accomplished it uneventfully. I went to pay her my usual morning visit and found she had a tiny replica of herself snuggling into her flank. Her eyes were dark and dilated with love and she lowed softly as I approached, but though she shook her wide horns at me in a cautionary way when I started to fondle the calf she was careful to ensure that they did not touch me. The first thrill of having a croft of my own had come when I held in my hand the first warm egg from my hens. Then had come the acquisition of Bonny; the first turned earth, and now Bonny's calf which was a sturdy little thing with a tightly curled light brown coat that reminded me of aerated chocolate.

Once all the village cows had calved, milk, which was always scarce in winter, became super-abundant. Crowdie was offered with every strupak and cream was not only served at every meal but was smoothed on the skin as an emollient for sunburn. As the days grew warmer and we discarded winter coverings, the clegs became aggressively familiar; weeds seemed to appear in full stature overnight, imperilling the young potato plants; the grass on the crofts grew long enough to ripple in the wind; the midges which outrival Glasgow bread and lavish Public Assistance as the curse of the Highlands, came in their hordes, vanquishing the clegs no doubt in the manner of ‘greater fleas,' and tormented us as we hoed and earthed up our potatoes. The rainy spell of July came and went leaving behind it a lush carpet of growth that effectively camouflaged the stony soil and when, just about the time in English churches the harvest festival hymns were being rehearsed, scythes were brought out and sharpened: the hay harvest had begun.

All hay in Bruach was cut with scythes by the men. The spreading and cocking being left to the women and children until the hay was cured and ready to be built into winter stacks when the men again took charge. I had learned to scythe inexpertly but I could not keep up the steady swing hour after hour which is necessary to cut an appreciable amount of hay. If I were not to have to buy in for Bonny's winter feeding I had to have help. Erchy, on whom I could always rely for croft work, cut most of the hay aided by oft-promised, perfunctory and Morag-goaded assistance from Hector, but even so I began to find the spreading, raking, turning, cocking and re-spreading every fine morning rather more than I could manage alone. I discovered to my dismay that I was lagging behind my neighbours and though everyone assured me periodically that there was no hurry because haymaking could go on until the New Year if necessary, I went to see Peter's mother, Sheena, to ask if she could spare him to help me sometimes.

Sheena and Peter, though they worked the croft adjoining my own, lived at the farther end of the village. Sheena was old, totteringly agile, but thoroughly indomitable and she managed to keep Peter who, despite his simple-mindedness was possessed of exuberant strength and way-ward fancies, in complete subjection. Her home with its heavy-lidded thatched roof was one of the oldest in the village and her dim kitchen exuded friendliness as uninterruptedly as its sagging stove exuded smoke. The door was open, letting the blue peat smoke, tinged with the smell of newly scorched flour, breathe out into the serenity of the evening air and I waited for a few moments before making my presence known, listening to Sheena reading aloud to Peter from the newspaper in a hairing baritone. She jumped up as she heard my voice, dragged me inside and bustled around in her stockinged feet making a ‘strupak', pausing every now and then to clap me on the shoulder to tell me how hardy I was and to ask Peter if she had not been saying to him just that day how she loved me like a sister. She began rooting under the recess bed in the corner of the room and disinterred a brown paper parcel tied with string. I realized with despair that I was once again going to have to swallow a piece of special presentation shortbread which Sheena had once been sent from Edinburgh and which she had since hoarded for honoured guests. The firm claimed on their tins to have been making the shortbread for over a century and when, on the occasion of my very first visit to Sheena, I had unsuspectingly accepted a piece, I was immediately convinced that Sheena's tin was one of the original ones. Since then, despite repeated invitations and a genuine affection on my part for the old lady, I had purposely made my visits rare ones, always in the hope that enough honoured guests had called on her meantime to ensure my never being offered the shortbread again. It appeared, however, that the supply was inexhaustible and I wondered how many more tins reposed in the scarcely explored territory beneath the bed. Sheena's eyesight was poor and I could easily have secreted the shortbread in my pocket had it not been for Peter, whose gaze followed my every movement like that of a mesmerized sparrow.

‘Peter, take your stare off Miss Peckwitt this minute!' Sheena admonished him and thrusting the newspaper into his hands with a gesture that made him wince she bade him look at the pictures. Peter obliged with goggling eagerness until his mother, suddenly suspicious, looked over his shoulder and snatched a double page of bathing beauty photographs from him and substituted a veterinary catalogue. Above its staid pages Peter's gaze fastened despairingly on my feet. Peter's habit of staring fixedly at me was one of the most disconcerting things I had to endure. Though I had lived in Bruach for some years I was acutely aware that my activities were still a source of unflagging interest to the inhabitants but they at least watched me covertly. Peter had not the wit to conceal his curiosity and whenever I appeared in sight he became so obsessed with watching me that he completely forgot whatever he was doing until his mother reminded him of it by boxing his ears. Though his attention was embarrassing the inevitable result was that watching Sheena and Peter trying to work together whenever I was at all visible was as entertaining as the antics of a couple of members of the Crazy Gang. Only that afternoon I had gone out to turn my hay and Peter, who had until then been steadily raking hay while his mother gathered it, suddenly caught sight of me. Immediately his raking had become so wildly abandoned that he had raked poor Sheena's tottery legs from under her and tumbled her into the hay before her shouts had penetrated his excitement and he had stopped long enough to allow her to pick herself up and rush at him to box his ears. The previous day they had been building a cock in a rising wind and Sheena had been running here and there gathering up bundles of hay in her arms and bringing them into the lee of the cock. So tired was she and so intent on getting the job finished that not for some time had she noticed that Peter, whose eyes of course were fixed undeviatingly on me engaged on a similar task, was grabbing each bundle of hay as she brought it and was flinging it ecstatically to the top of the cock so that the wind caught it and scattered it again for Sheena to gather afresh.

After the necessary preliminaries had been gone through I made known to Sheena the purpose of my visit.

‘An' indeed Peter shall come and help you, mo ghaoil. Indeed he shall. He's a good boy though he is what you say in the English, “softly up the stairs”. But you shall have him with pleasure, Miss Peckwitt. Just as soon as he can be spared from our own hay.' She did not consult Peter. ‘An' he loves you, Miss Peckwitt,' she continued ardently. ‘Is that not true, Peter? Are you not after tellin' me near every day how much you love Miss Peckwitt?' Peter nodded startled but vigorous acquiescence and under cover of their protestations I thankfully transferred the piece of shortbread to my pocket and embarked upon a fresh-baked girdle-scone, the appetizing smell of which had been filling the kitchen when I had first arrived. I cut short what seemed to be developing into a panegyric on my attractions and Peter's abilities by complimenting Sheena on her scones.

‘Ach, mo ghaoil, but I threw them together just when I came in from the hay for the bread had grown such a beard with the mould that was on it. Indeed, I was sayin' to Peter it looked just like myself after yon hot spell we was havin'.' She struck her mouth with her hand. ‘Ach, but I wish I had the right words and I could tell you. I could make you laugh if I had more English,' she said regretfully.

‘But you are always making me laugh, Sheena,' I answered with perfect truthfulness.

‘Well, glad I am to hear it, mo ghaoil, for laughter is as good for folks as a plate of porridge, and just like porridge everybody should have some every day.' She squeezed my shoulder emphatically. ‘Well, I was tellin' you, my face got that sore with the sun and the wind that I just splathered the cream I'd been savin' for the butter on it and I sat out at the front of the house in the shade for I was gaspin' like the birds with the heat. I must have fallen asleep for mercy I, when I woke up and put a hand to my face it was covered with hair like a goat's. “Here,” says I to myself, “what in the world has happened to me?” But then I see the hairs has come off in my hand.' She laughed noiselessly. ‘What did I find with it all that my fine fellow Peter here was after tryin' would he cut his hairs and he'd had to come and sit out beside myself to do it, and the wind had blown his hairs all over my face so that the cream had stickled them.' She had been squeezing and patting my shoulder repeatedly while she was relating the incident and when she had finished she bent herself double with spasms of laughter that had worn themselves to shreds before they reached her throat. I laughed delightedly at her story but Peter, no doubt remembering the punishment he had received on that occasion, only watched his mother warily. ‘Ach, mo ghaoil, but if only you had more of the Gaelic, I could tell you better the sight I looked,' she lamented again. So I laughed immoderately to please her.