The Sea for Breakfast (25 page)

I smiled to myself, recalling the autumn day when I had met Erchy, looking very harassed, making for his home at the double, his scythe over his shoulder. Only a short time previously I had seen him scything the com on his croft so I called out to him, teasingly, that he was leaving off too early.

‘Indeed it's no that at all,' he had replied breathlessly. ‘But that Sadie and her friend is down there in the grass shoutin' to me and I'm damty feart they'll have the trousers off me if I stay much longer on my own. I'm away to get my mother to work beside me.'

‘An I'll look after all the bairns …' he was saying now, as he patted her knee with befuddled repetition.

We reached the relative quiet of the kitchen.

‘Janet, what has happened to your visitor?' I asked. ‘She should be here tonight, shouldn't she?'

‘Indeed, mo ghaoil, she's away to her bed long ago.' Our eyes met and we exchanged a grin of understanding. ‘Aye,' Janet added, smiling, ‘she's gone to bed with a Gaelic dictionary.'

Johnny, coming in to replenish glasses, overheard the remark. ‘That's a damty funny thing for a woman to want to go to bed with,' he commented.

By midnight the house was thick with tobacco fumes and resonant with song and laughter, shrieks and shrill argument. Cups were being hooked and as quickly unhooked from dresser shelves as a chorus of steaming kettles was whisked from the stove to wash dishes or to brew tea and then to be refilled for yet more tea. My head had begun to throb with the heat and I felt I could unobtrusively slip away. Outside, revived by the frosty air, I loitered for a few moments looking through the windows, curtained only by condensation, at the happy throng within. The old men were singing tranquilly, with half-closed eyes, their joined hands lifting and falling to the beat of the tune. The old women chattered animatedly. The young people teased one another and giggled disproportionately. On the bench Erchy was still sprawled, still making the same earnest proposals, still patting a knee—but it was a different girl!

Long after the wavering ‘Vs' of geese had passed over on their way-south and advertisements in the national newspapers had begun to draw our attention to the ordering of Christmas cards, some of us in Bruach were still making hay, pulling with numb fingers the frosty, wet patches from cocks which had taken in the wet and scattering it to dry on days of intermittent and glacial sunshine. Hallowe'en, which normally sees the end of the harvest, overtook us and still there was hay to be gathered in. Only the children exulted, Hallowe'en being the one day in the year which they could really call their own. From about mid October they were preparing for it, designing for themselves masks of painted cardboard on which they sewed fearsome quantities of unwashed fleece, and rooting under beds and in lofts for discarded garments so as to further disguise themselves. The clothes they unearthed were almost invariably black and reeking of mildew or manure depending upon where they had been stored and as soon as it was dark on Hallowe'en, the children arrayed in their masks and stumbling about in voluminous skirts on rolled-up trousers and booking more like guys for a bonfire than revellres, banded together to visit each house in turn. There, not speaking or unmasking until their identities had been guessed correctly, they waited in musy groups to receive an apple or a sixpence before rushing off on their rounds. Once all the houses had been visited and perhaps some apple-drinking indulged in at one or two of the more cordial homes, the children threw away their masks, abandoned their old clothes beside the road for collection later and embarked on the really exciting business of the evening.

It was a strictly honoured tradition in Bruach that at Hallowe'en nothing is ever ‘stolen'. If spades or forks disappeared from a shed overnight, or a wheelbarrow from a byre, it was just part of the fun. If you were unlucky enough or lazy enough to have potatoes still in the ground and you found them uprooted and scattered over the croft, or if a hay rake disappeared completely because the children could not remember what, in their excitement, they had done with it, their it was ‘Ach well, we was all young once'. A wheel barrow or a cart might suffer damage during its nocturnal journey, but what else could you except? ‘It was too heavy for the children to manage of course.' Bruach did not have child delinquents. They were allowed to get it all out of their system in one glorious Hallowe'en spree.

As a result of the late harrest many implements had not been stored away for the winter and the revellers, sometimes reinforced by their elders, made the most of their opportunities. I awoke next morning to find my garden gate had been replaced by Peter's harrows and that Yawn's barrow was hidden beneath a pile of discarded clothes in my byre. When I set out to locate the gate, which the smiling grocer had discovered at the back of his ‘wee hoosie', I was joined by many of the neighbours, all grumbling good-naturedly as they searched out their belongings in all sorts of unexpected places. In company with them I found myself staring stupidly at a colourful array of ladies' underwear pegged out on the clothes-line at the bachelor home of Farquhar until I recognized it as some of my own which I had forgotten to take in the previous night. By midday, everyone seemed to have reclaimed his property and even the most irascible sufferer had been soothed by the laughter of his neighbours. Only Sheena, who had made the mistake of sending the children away without reward or invitation to enter, because the previous year they had managed to secrete a live hedgehog in her bed, still nursed a grievance, for the children had repaid her churlishness by climbing on to the roof of her cottage and placing a sod on top of the chimney.

‘Me and Peter was sittin' in the kitchen and I was readin' the paper to him when the smoke started to come down the chimbley as though it was on the funnel of a ship we was,' she told me, her red-rimmed eyes still moist with indignation. ‘Of course it's no a right chimbley at the best of times but, “Peter,” I says, “we must get some heather up here tomorrow,” I says. Mercy!, but the smoke got that thick I can tell you I was takin' bites out of it.' She bit the air demonstratively. ‘ “Peter,” I tells him, “for the dear Lord's sake open up that door for fear we'll be like the kippers with the smoke.” Peter goes to open the door. “It's stuck, cailleach,” he tells me. “Never!” says I, not believin' what he was sayin', but when I tried would it open it was stuck right enough. “Help !” I shouts, for by this time me and Peter is coughin' our stomachs near into our throats. “Help!” I calls again, though who would be after hearin' me I'd not be knowin'. Then I hears them childrens laughin' outside. “Help! Open the door for us, childrens,” I calls to them, but they just laughs and shouts back at me and mocks me and they bide their time till they think we've had enough before they cut the string that's tyin' the door and scramble away. Peter and me, we just fell outside with the coughin' we was doin', and there in the moonlight Peter points up and he says to me, “There's no smoke comin' from the chimbley, cailleach,” and I looks and I see what's happened for fine I remember the boys doin' it when I was young. “You get up on that roof right away, Peter,” I tells him, “and get that sod off the chimbley.” He went up, tremblin' and shiverin', for he has no head for the heights, mo ghaoil, and I was shiverin' myself with the cold before I was able to go back inside again, and this mornin' I see my bed's all yellow with the stain of it.' Sheena sighed noisily and shook her head over the brutal treatment she had received.

After Hallowe'en was over, there was nothing for the children to look forward to except the spectacle of their elders getting drunk at New Year, which they considered vastly amusing. Christmas, as I had soon found, was ignored completely. The only time I can recall feeling lonely was when I had gone for a walk on my first Christmas morning in Bruach and had gaily wished everyone a ‘Happy Christmas'. Not one of the people I met had returned my greeting with a trace of enthusiasm, their response being an embarrassed ‘Yes, it's a nice day,' as though I had said something out of place. I learned later that though one religious sect did in fact condemn the celebration of Christmas, most of my neighbours had not returned my greeting simply because the unexpectedness of it had left them at a loss for a conventional reply.

It seemed to me that a children's party at Christmas would be a good idea and I set about planning one. My motives, I regret to say, were not entirely unselfish, for I love the tinsel and glitter and the festivities and bustle that go with Christmas, and a children's party would provide the excuse for plenty of it and so do much to enliven the day for me. The cottage was far too small for entertaining more than one or two people at a time but I had now had built a new shed of corrugated iron with a concrete floor. Assessing with Dollac and her friends the suitability of the shed for a party, it emerged that it was a pity there was to be only a celebration for the children.

‘We could have a grand dance here,' said Dollac, and began humming as she danced across the floor.

‘I don't see why we shouldn't put on a pantomime in this village,' I said without much seriousness.

‘A what?'

‘A pantomime.'

‘What's a pantomime?' They turned to me with faces that were bom puzzled and amused.

‘Oh, you know what I mean,' I said, thinking there was probably an obscure Gaelic word for pantomime. ‘Plays like
Cinderella
and
Mother Goose
and
Aladdin
.'

‘Who did you say? Cinderella? Mother of Goose? What are they? What was a lad in?

I found it difficult to accept that they really had never heard of any of them. ‘Well,' I began to explain. ‘You know the story of Cinderella, don't you? The poor little girl with the two ugly sisters and the fairy godmother.…' Their expressions were revealingly blank. So I told them the story, adding that in pantomime the male parts, except for the dastardly villains, were usually played by females and that the comic female parts were usually played by men. They thought it a splendid idea and it was decided there and then that we would celebrate Christmas, first by having a children's party to be followed by a pantomime at which the children could be present and then, after the children had gone home, by a dance for adults. The children were obviously delighted at the prospect: the adolescents greeted the news of the pantomime and dance with restrained enthusiasm and the older people, after praising me for my generosity, predicting great success for each of the entertainments planned and fervidly assuring me of their intention to be present, retired into their cocoons of Calvinism and waited to see what everyone else would do about the whole affair. Remembering the fiasco of the pilgrims' party, I knew that I too must wait and see.

I wrote a pantomime that I thought would amuse the village, which meant that I could unashamedly use all the chestnuts I had ever heard. I also, perhaps a little cruelly, gave one or two members of the cast the opportunity of openly criticizing my early attempts at crofting, which I knew had caused much humorous comment locally. Buttons' haircut was supposed to look ‘as though Miss Peckwitt had been at it with a scythe'. A rickety chair was to collapse ‘like a Peckwitt hay-cock'. My intention was to try to convey to them that I accepted their criticism ruefully but as well deserved, but the cast defeated me by courteously ignoring such lines, even when the text did not make sense without them. To my surprise rehearsals were not only well attended but were enormous fun and those few weeks leading up to Christmas were, I think, the most hilarious I have ever spent in my life. On three or four nights of every week we assembled at the cottage to read our lines and no one, I think, was serious for a single moment of the time. The roadman and the shepherd capered through the parts of the ugly sisters lustily: Erchy, as the stepfather, was impressive when he could remember not to read out all the stage directions with his speeches; he was an absolute riot when he forgot. The postman, who was playing Buttons, used to come in the middle of his round, sling his half-empty mailbag into a corner of the hall and, with his mobile face creased in anticipation and his eyes shining conspiratorially, read over his part with prickly voiced diffidence. The postman's presence was vital, for he was also providing the melodeon music for the chorus to dance to until we could get suitable records.

‘What about the mails?' I asked him one time.

‘Ach, they know where I am,' he replied with supreme indifference.

I tried to insist that rehearsals should cease at midnight but the Bruachites, who regard midnight as an hour to begin enjoying oneself, had other ideas. They would put back my clock while I was out of the room or put back their watches and swear my clock was fast so that more often than not it was two or perhaps four o'clock in the morning before I could seek my bed and then only because the pressure lamp had defiantly put an end to proceedings by running out of paraffin. As Christmas bore down upon us excitement mounted visibly, more particularly among the children from whom I had begun to receive adoring looks as soon as the party had been announced. ‘Tea-parties' became a new game and Fiona, who had been taken by Behag and Morag for a day out on the mainland and who had, as a matter of course, given them the slip, had excelled herself by being discovered in the comparatively urban graveyard engrossed in a game of ‘tea-parties' with a grave for a table for which she had collected a bevy of decorative urns and jars from the surrounding graves.

A great disappointment for me was that a box of decorations which I had ordered failed to arrive and two days before Christmas Eve I was faced with the prospect not only of baking all the fancy cakes needed for the parry and for the light refreshments at the dance but also with the decorating of a bare corrugated iron shed to which, by hook or by crook, I was determined to give a festive appearance. The solution came unexpectedly when Behag and Morag, who had not been able to finish their shopping on the mainland because of having to search for Fiona, asked me if I would look after the child for the day whilst they went off on their own. I visualized myself spending Christmas Day in bed recuperating from twelve hours with Fiona, but she had not been in the house for more than half an hour before she was demanding paints. I was so relieved she had chosen such an innocuous way of passing the time that I hastened to indulge her.