The Sea for Breakfast (21 page)

If the Bruachites had shown more spirit of co-operation they might have achieved a Public Hall of some sort. They might even have managed a piped water supply instead of one house in three having an abundance of water while the rest depended on moody springs. Though the inability to work together appeared to be congenital with the majority of the villagers yet it rarely developed into anything more serious than peevish wrangling. The two main causes of perceptible friction in Bruach were centred on the boats in the tourist season and in the herring fishing season, though if there was a glut of either tourists or of herring the crews managed to work together with the utmost cordiality, the idea being that it did not matter much which boat netted them so long as they were not allowed to get away. It was when there was a scarcity of either that any trouble flared up.

Between
Wayfarer
, Hector's boat, and
Seagull
, the boat of which Erchy and deaf Ruari, Morag's brother, each had a half share, there was at times bitter rivalry. They each took tourists for trips in the season. They each fished herring when it came into the loch. Their battles over tourists not only provided much entertainment for the rest of the village but more than once resulted in neither boat getting a trip because the passengers were afraid to risk going on the water with such fierce-sounding men. Deaf Ruari was mainly responsible for their apprehension for though he was an extremely forbearing old man normally, the power of his lungs undoubtedly increased in proportion as his wrath and the sparse white hairs on his face could bristle most aggressively. At such times one could not wonder at the tourists preferring to admire the scenery from the safety of the shore.

As the tourist season came to an end so the boat crews gradually became more amicable, helping to haul up each other's dinghies, respecting each other's lobster ground and frequently reporting where good catches were to be obtained. Then the herring would come in and the antagonism would spring up again.

Herring appear to be creatures of habit and they usually shoaled into Bruach waters some time in April for a couple of weeks and then disappeared until the autumn. The Bruachites took little interest in April herring. They wanted their fish for salting and the autumn herring, being less oily, took the salt better. Round about September the previous year's supply would be finished, or, if it were not completely finished, the fish that were left would be thrown out on to the croft for the cows, so that one became accumstomed to the sight of a cow standing chewing at a herring as a man chews at a cigar. The empty barrels would then be placed under a convenient waterfall to get thoroughly clean. (In an Island where the hills are full of streams there is never any difficulty in finding at least a cascade of water for each family's barrel.) The herring nets would then be taken down from the rafters where they had been stored since their ‘mothproofing' at the end of their last season. The Bruachites mothproofed their nets by the simple method of leaving them in sacks or boxes for a time at the back of the house where the men could urinate on them. This very effective method of mothproofing is not, it seems, confined to herring nets; I know of one lady who gave away her hand-woven tweed suit after spending a winter holiday in a small weaving village and deducing the reason for the weaver's daily collection of pails of urine from their neighbours.

On calm, cool, moonlit nights with the sea lisping on the shingle shore, the noise of herring playing in the loch is a beautiful and exciting sound. A sound to be evoked on hot, parcel-burdened days in town or when enduring the stuffy torture of a long train journey. It is as though the shoal tickles the surface of the sea and makes it bubble with laughter. On just such a night of calm I was returning home from a ceilidh with Morag when Erchy's voice hailed me.

‘We'll be thinkin' of ceilidhin' with you tomorrow night,' he said.

‘Good,' I replied with polite warmth. ‘Who's we?'

‘Me, and Johnny and maybe one or two others,' he enlightened me generously. ‘The loch's teemin' with herrin' and we'll need to get after them before it's away for the winter.'

‘The herring's in already?' I exclaimed.

‘Surely! Are you no hearin' it?' I had to admit that until he had mentioned it I had not heard any unusual sound. ‘Aye, but the noise of herrin' is like that,' said Erchy. ‘Unless your ears is tuned in to it you can miss it altogether.' I paused now, and listened rapturously.

The following morning when I rowed out to lift my lobster creel two groups of men were busy preparing their nets for shooting in the evening. Erchy, Angus and deaf Ruari comprised one group and Hector and Duncan, the son of the postmistress, the other. The distance between them emphasized that the period of camaraderie was already beginning to wane. I went over to talk to Hector.

‘No lobster, I see,' he greeted me.

‘None today.'

‘Nor yesterday, I'm tsinkin'.'

‘No, not yesterday.'

‘No indeed, when tse herrin's in tse loch it drives everytsin' away. I've seen whales in here, killers at tsat, and a big shoal of herrin' has come in and frightened tsem away out of it for tseir lives. It's as true as I'm here.'

I was pondering this unlikely information when Nelly, the daughter of Elly, and consequently known as ‘Nelly-Elly', came hurrying down to the shore. Nelly-Elly ran the post office.

‘They're wantin' you to go to the hills with the pollis,' she panted. ‘There's been an accident.'

‘I'll bet you tsat will mean a corpse,' said Hector glumly.

‘It does so. A man's fallen and killed himself.' She paused for a few moments while we reacted to the news and then continued irately: ‘I don't know whatever came over that Tom-Tom. Just because he finds a corpse he feels he should be able to tell me how to do my work. He kept ringing me up at the kiosk when I had a long- distance call occupyin' the line and tellin' me I was to cut short the call because he had an urgent message for the pollis. Urgent, he said! I refused to do it. “It's no urgent at all,” I told him, “the man's already dead.” '

We approved her assessment of the situation by nodding our heads. ‘The pollis will be down in half an hour,' she added soberly.

‘Is Tom-Tom goin' back with them?' asked Duncan.

‘No, he says he's not fit to go.'

‘Do tsey know where tse body is, tsen?' demanded Hector, who was still very sulky with the police because he had recently been fined for carrying more than the stipulated twelve passengers in his boat. ‘I'm no waitin' about for tsem while tsey go lookin' for it. I'll take tsem tsere and leave tsem, just. Tsey can walk home.'

‘You'd best tell them that yourself,' said Nelly-Elly with a toss of her head. ‘Or if you don't want the job I can give it to Erchy.'

‘To hell with tsat,' responded Hector. A great bone of contention between the two boats was that since the wily Hector had taken Nelly-Elly's son, Duncan, to work with him he had naturally fallen in for all the telephoned boat bookings, there being only one telephone line to Bruach.

‘I'd been tsinkin' I'd get home to my dinner and take a wee snooze tsis afternoon,' Hector mumbled lugubriously. ‘We'll be up all night at tse herrin' and I didn't get to bed tsis mornin' till tse back of four.'

‘Four o'clock isn't all that late for you,' I retorted. ‘Behag tells me you're reading until about three every morning.'

‘Aye, it was no awful late right enough, but I'm feelin' a wee bitty tired just tse same. I tsink I'll come up to tse cottage with you, seein' we can't get home, will I? And you'll make us a strupak?'

‘What about you, Duncan?' I asked. ‘Are you coming for a strupak too?' Duncan was large-boned, thin and dark, with a metallic-looking moustache. Whenever I spoke to him he looked at the ground. I got the impression that he thought his eyes so bold and bright that he conscientiously dipped them as one dips the headlights of a car.

The two men accompanied me to the cottage and while they drank tea and munched thick slabs of fruit cake I packed a few sandwiches for them. The way the Bruach men were inclined to go out in their boats for long spells without taking any food distressed me. I could only assume that their tummies had been too maltreated to be sensitive to mealtimes, for they just did not seem to notice hunger. Hector, who was wandering in and out of the kitchen with his half-full cup of tea, suddenly perceived the silver buttons of the policemen and went off, cup in hand, to meet them.

‘Tsere tsey are, nice as you like to me today,' he muttered when he came in to deposit his cup and collect his sandwiches. ‘Fine you one day and hire your boat tse next day to sweeten you. Tsat's tse pollis all over. But I'm damty sure tsey're no keepin' me away from. tse herrin'. Corpse or no corpse, I'll be back for tsat.'

I watched the weather as anxiously as the men. I loathe salt herring, but the crofters consider it not only a necessity but a delicacy. If it blew up there would be no herring fishing and the excitement that had threaded its way through the village with the coming of the shoal would the away. All morning the sun and the rain argued with each other while the wind played a bustling arbiter, but with the afternoon the sun finally triumphed and calmness again spread itself over the loch. As I fed the hens in the evening,
Wayfarer
, seeming downcast by her mission, struggled up the shadowed loch leaving an arrowed wake and, soon after she had moored up, a lorry which had been waiting at the shore juddered past the cottage with its gruesome burden, covered in tarpaulins. Another lorry full of glowing, gaily waving men, presumably members of the rescue party, followed shortly afterwards, and then the car with the policemen. Hector and Duncan called in at the cottage on their way home. Duncan looked a little white and strained, Hector merely looked smug.

‘You see all tsat load of men goin' up tse road in tse lorry?' he demanded of me. I nodded. ‘Well, every one of tsose men I brought home in my boat in one load, and tsere was over twenty of tsem without tse pollis.'

‘How did you get away with that?' I asked him.

‘Well, tsey came down to tse shore and tsey had tse body so tsey put tsat on board. Tsat was all right. Tsen came tse sergeant. “All aboard, we've finished for tse night, lads,” he told tsem, nice as you like. When eleven was on se boat I held up my hand. Says I, “I'll have to come back for tse rest of you, I'm no allowed to carry more tsan twelve on tsis boat, I have no licence.” “Where's your twelve?” asks tse sergeant, and he looks cross. “Eleven of you and him in tse tarpaulin,” says I. “Tsat makes my twelve.” Tse sergeant looks at me and he says, “Tsat's a fine big boat you have tsere, Hector, and tsough tse law says twelve it's a daft law.” “It was no so daft a few weeks back,” I told him. “Why, tsat boat's safe enough with fifty aboard,” he says. “On you get with you, boys.” “It's your responsibility,” I says. “My responsibility entirely,” he agrees, so off we go, happy as you like. Ach, but tsey'd been trampin' the hills and climbin' around all day lookin' for tse body and they didn't want to be left tsere in se dark. Tsey knew I'd take my time before I'd go back for tsem.'

‘The sergeant was quite friendly, then,' I said with a smile.

‘Friendly!' echoed Hector. ‘He was tsat friendly when I offered him a sandwich he near bit tse hand off me. Aye, but I know what I'll do if tsey catch me with more tsan twelve again. I'll say all tse rest over twelve is corpses.'

I mentioned to Hector before he left that Erchy and his friends were expecting to ceilidh at the cottage that evening.

‘We'll maybe be tsere ourselves too,' he promised. I was perfectly well aware that it was not my company that was being sought but only the convenient shelter of my cottage. The Bruach herring fishing was done from dinghies and the net was set and reset every hour or so, the crew coming ashore between settings. My cottage, so close to the shore and to their nets was ideally situated for them, and I resolved that as soon as Morag and Behag, who were also coming to ceilidh with me that evening, had left for their own home I would retire to bed and leave the herring fishermen in possession to brew themselves tea and make themselves comfortable as they wished.

While Morag and Behag were still with me the first lot of fishermen trooped in and flopped down on the available chairs and on the floor. There were Erchy and Johnny and Angus, nearly always an inseperable trio in any evening ploy; there were Tom-Tom and a cousin from Glasgow. Their eyes were shining and they all looked drunk, but they were drunk only with the excitement of the occasion.

‘The loch's stiff with fish of some sort,' pronounced Erchy.

‘If Hector catches herrin' tonight I'll no get him to bed for a week,' mourned Behag.

‘No mart needs to sleep when he's catchin' herrin',' Erchy told her. ‘I've stuck at the herrin' for a week near enough without gettin' a wink of sleep and never felt tired. So long as you're catchin' them it's all right. It's when you're not you get tired.'

I noticed the absence of deaf Ruari whom I had expected to be there as skipper of the
Seagull
. ‘Doesn't Ruari go herring fishing at all?' I asked.

‘Ach, he cannot come because Bella's afraid to sleep by herself. Honest, the way that man looks after his wife you'd think there was a subsidy on her.'

‘How come you to be here then, Angus?' asked Morag. ‘Isn't Ishbel on her own and in no fit state to be left?'

‘I got my brother to stay beside her tonight,' Angus excused himself.

There were noises outside and soon Hector, Duncan and Sandy Beag were adding their voices to the general teasing and argument which inevitably accompanies an impromptu ceilidh like this.

‘You'd best see to your nets,' said Morag as she tied a scarf over her head in readiness to go home. ‘You've been in here over an hour, Erchy. You'll no catch herrin' in Miss Peckwitt's kitchen.'