The Sea for Breakfast (26 page)

‘You can paint some Christmas decorations for me,' I said, giving her some sheets of thick paper and a particularly robust brush. I went back to my baking.

‘I'm needin' more paper,' Fiona ordered briskly.

I rummaged in the cupboard and found more paper which she had covered with splodges of paint almost before I could return to my bowl. It was her incessant demands for paper that gave me the inspiration. I brought out a toilet roll.

‘You can paint the whole length of that,' I told her firmly. ‘Use lots of bright colours and don't you dare ask for more paper until you've painted every bit of it.' Even Fiona was momentarily daunted by the task I had set her but determinedly she set to work, singing with preoccupied tunelessness to herself as she daubed her way along the whole length of the roll. The table top was covered in plastic; Fiona was enveloped in an old overall; there was plenty of paint—and toilet rolls. I carried on blissfully with my cooking and when I could spare a few minutes from it Fiona and I cut up the daubed paper into decorative garlands which we later carried out to the shed. When Hector came to collect his daughter we showed him the results of her artistic skill which the child, as though ashamed of my own rapture, dismissed with adult coolness as being ‘no bad at all'. Hector immediately volunteered to come next day and hang them for me and with uncharacteristic fidelity he came, bringing a curious Erchy along with him. They were each carrying big bundles of holly and ivy. I had run out of flour and was getting ready to go over to Sarah's to borrow some when the two men arrived so I left them to their work, telling them that if I was not back by the time they had finished they could make themselves a cup of tea and help themselves to scones. The kitchen was luxuriant with trays of tarts and cakes and buns of every kind but, I warned, they were strictly party fare.

‘My, but they make my teeths water,' said Erchy, looking covetously about him. ‘I believe I could eat the lot.'

‘You must promise not to eat anything but the scones,' I told them, and they promised cheerfully.

Before I closed the door I turned to look back at the kitchen, making sure that everything was safely stacked and that I had not left anything in the oven. The sight gave me a great deal of pleasure. On the dresser, already gay with its poppy and blue china, were three trays of sponge cakes waiting to be crowned with a whirl of cream. Eclair cases ready to be filled and iced were piled on the top of the trolly: cream horns wanting their insides stoked with jam and cream covered the bottom. Beside the stove a large sponge cake, roughly shaped like a boat waited to receive its cargo of children's names in coloured letters. On the kitchen table, with its black and white chequered plastic top, reposed trays of blackcurrant and lemon curd tarts, making a colourful centrepiece. My own teeths began to water and I shut the door firmly.

When I called, Sarah was herself preparing to bake girdle scones, while Flora watched impassively. ‘Surely, mo ghaoil, but I've plenty of flour,' Sarah assured me as she swung the girdle to one side and pushed the whispering kettle on to the peats. ‘Just sit now and rest a bitty while I make a wee strupak.'

I had hoped that she would be busy about the sheds and that I should escape without having to wait for a strupak, but when I sat down I found I was glad to do so. Having spent the whole of the previous two days baking, I felt I was going to enjoy the sight of someone else doing some. Sarah spread a newspaper over the table and floured it liberally. My neighbours made wonderful girdle scones but despite repeated demonstrations I had never been able to achieve just the lightness and texture in my baking that they unfailingly achieved in theirs. Perhaps it was because I used a well-floured baking board to press out my scones instead of a well-floured newspaper. She reached down a small pudding basin from the dresser—another essential for baking good scones seemed to be the use of a too small bowl so that the flour could spill over when mixing began. She brought out a tin of cream of tartar and a tin of baking soda from the cupboard and then stopped in her tracks to peer with a puzzled frown about the kitchen. Several times I had thought I could hear the plaintive miaow of a cat but I had refrained from mentioning it, suspecting that it was quite possibly entombed beneath Flora's skirts and that if this were the case it would only be a matter of time before it burrowed its way out again. Sarah went into ‘the room' and brought out a jug of sour milk which she set on the table.

‘I can hear that cat somewhere,' she said, looking all round the kitchen again. She picked up the basin and went over to the large wallpaper-decorated barrel which stood beside the fireplace. As she lifted the lid a startled exclamation burst from her and an albino cat leaped on the rim of the barrel and then down to the floor where it sneezed, shook itself vigorously and revealed itself as tortoise-shell. ‘Well,' said Sarah, ‘so that's where he's been hidin' all this time; in my flour barrel' She gave a little self-conscious chuckle, dipped the basin down into the flour barrel and began to mix her scones. The cat continued to miaow and rubbed itself against her boots.

‘She seems glad to be out again,' I said.

‘I expect the beast's hungry,' said Sarah. ‘Dear knows how long he's been in there.'

I hurried home, clutching my bag of flour and salving my conscience by recalling some of the less hygienic practices of my neighbours. I could, I told myself, keep back the cakes baked with Sarah's flour and produce them only if and when everything else had been eaten. There was no sound of hammering or of voices when I reached the cottage and I went to the shed to see what was happening. The decorations were up and, betraying not the slightest sign of their humble origin, looked ‘beautiful just'. The holly had been nailed in bunches along the walk: ivy cascaded from the roof. In one corner, a tub (an old salt-herring barrel) already filled with peat waited to receive the Christmas tree which was due to arrive the following evening. With a sigh of relief I closed the door. The silence everywhere coupled with the non-appearance of either Erchy or Hector made me wonder if they had already gone home and as I passed the kitchen window I glanced inside. The two men were sitting at either end of the kitchen table with cups of tea beside them. Their chins were resting on their left hands, their right hands held cigarettes from which they flicked the ash periodically into their gumboots. They were looking down at the checked table top with the dedicated air of keen chess players and neither noticed my presence outside the window. I waited a moment before announcing myself and saw Erchy push something a little along the table towards Hector. To my horror I saw it was a blackcurrant tart! Hector retaliated by pushing a lemon curd tart one square towards Erchy. I peered closer and suddenly divining the reason for their absorption I bounded inside.

‘Hector and Erchy!' I upbraided them. ‘What do you think you're doing with those tarts?'

They both looked up in pained surprise. ‘Only playin' draughts,' said Erchy mildly, as with a triumphant flourish he passed a blackcurrant tart over a lemon curd and drew the spoils towards him.

‘But you promised not to touch them,' I reminded them petulantly as I hurried forward to retrieve my precious baking.

‘We promised not to eat tsem and we haven't,' said Hector earnestly. ‘Honest, we haven't touched a one.' He disentangled a couple of ‘crowns' as he spoke, examining their jammy bottoms, ‘Look!' he insisted, ‘tsey're as good as new.'

I loaded the tarts back on to the trays, sourly ignoring their pleas to ‘let's finish the game out'.

‘Ach well, I near had him beat anyway,' said Erchy, getting up. ‘My but those scones of yours was so light it was like bitin' into a cloud,' he added with awkward flattery.

‘Indeed tsey was beautiful just,' supported Hector fulsomely. ‘I was after sayin' to Erchy, if only we could eat our draughts when tse game was over, I wouldn't mind losin'.'

Early in the afternoon of Christmas Eve the tree arrived, a magnificent specimen generously contributed by the estate manager. Morag and Dollac were with me at the time helping me to put the finishing touches to the fancy cakes, and we all left off to go and see the tree installed in its barrel. Erchy, Hector and deaf Ruari who, though he claimed to be too old to be interested in such frivolities, was just as curious over the preparations as were the younger generation, had appointed themselves to escort the tree, and inevitably there was argument as to which branches must be cut off and whether the barrel was suitable and whether it was sufficiently stable, but at last they reached agreement and the tree stood gracefully awaiting our attention, its fresh resiny smell filling the shed.

I sniffed appreciatively and winked at Morag.

‘Ruari!' scolded Morag loudly. ‘You must send your dog out of here. He's throwin' smells.'

‘Aye, I got some new meal for him yesterday an' I don't believe it's agreein' with him right,' Ruari submitted by way of explanation when he had ordered the dog outside.

Morag and Dollac and I returned to the kitchen to finish our preparations there before starting to decorate the tree.

‘Did I ever tell you?' asked Morag as she painstakingly halved cherries to top the cream cakes, ‘I worked in a bakery once and I used to watch the baker decoratin' the cakes with halves of cherries just like I'm doin' now, but my fine fellow wouldn't bother himself to cut the cherries in half. Oh, no, he just would bite them in half.' I wondered fleetingly if she was suggesting she should do likewise and was immensely relieved when she continued, ‘I've never eaten a cake with a cherry on the top since.' I debated whether to mention the cat in the flour barrel, but decided against it. I had already taken a bite of one of the cakes made from the flour and though I had come to the conclusion that the cat had been in the barrel for quite a long time, the cake was, I felt, far more palatable than, for instance, Sheena's shortbread.

Midnight had already chimed before we had finished the tree and the long tables which had been borrowed from the school canteen had been covered with wallpaper that had originally been intended for stage decoration but which, due to the non-arrival of the previously mentioned parcel, was to serve a dual purpose—once the children's tea was finished it would have to be whipped off and used for papering Cinderella's kitchen. There had been so many late nights since the hectic preparations for Christmas had begun and when I had managed to get an early night in the hope of catching up on some sleep it had resulted only in catching up on dreams, so I was utterly weary by the time Morag and Dollac, after repeated ‘beautiful justs' as they surveyed the evening's work, departed by the light of a reluctant moon. It was still dark on Christmas morning when I began to lay the tables in the shed. As I carried out the plates of cakes and pastries, Rhuna emerged duskily across the water, its string of lamplit windows dim as tarnished tinsel against the brilliant flashes of the lighthouses. When the sun rose it was smudged and angry and with it wakened an aggressive wind that swept the rain in from the sea. Some of the children lived a good distance away from the village and I had promised to collect them in Joanna if it was a nasty day. Accordingly, about four o' clock in the afternoon, I drove through the slatting rain to collect the first of my guests. Marjac, whose five children were all bobbing about just inside the door, greeted me with shrill querulousness.

‘What on earth am I to do with Shamus?' she demanded. ‘He was out on the hill this mornin' and got his trousers soakin' wet so he had to put on his best ones. Now hasn't he caught himself on John Willy's harrows and torn the seat out of them.' Marjac darted back to her sewing machine and turned the handle savagely. ‘I'm after makin' him a pair from one of my old skirts,' she said disgustedly. Shamus, a little shamefaced, went to the solid wood kerb in front of the fire and sat down, carefully arranging an old meal sack over his lower half. The rest of the children were ready and impatient to be off. ‘There you are,' his mother flung the trousers at Shamus, and clutching at the sack he hurried away to ‘the room' to put them on.

‘Ian, did you wash your teeths like the nurse told you?' Marjac arrested another of her brood with the question just as he was about to slip through the door.

‘No, I didn't yet,' Ian replied.

‘Then if nurse sees you she'll ask you and be vexed with you,' his mother warned. ‘She'll be at the party, won't she, Miss Peckwith?' I nodded. ‘Nurse says he's got bad teeths and she's given him a brush and some paste to try will he keep the rest from goin' too,' Marjac explained as Ian reached at the back of the dresser for his toothbrush, moistened it by dipping it into the kettle and proceeded to attack his teeth with as much energy as if he were attacking rusty iron with a file.

‘What a good dung you were able to run up a pair of trousers for Shamus', I complimented Marjac during a lull in the activity.

‘Ach, I just threw them together out of my head,' she disclaimed.

Shamus came out from ‘the room' looking a little perplexed. One trouser-leg was skin tight; the other hung loosely about his thigh. He looked beseechingly at his mother.

‘It'll have to do,' she told him. ‘Miss Peckwitt cannot wait here all day while I see to it.'

I might have offered to wait, but I doubted if there was much Marjac could do to the trousers except to cut down the wide leg to match the tight one and thus immobilize the mobile half also. The children packed themselves into the car, Shamus rather stiltedly, and I was soon decanting them into Morag's care and rushing away for the rest. By five o'clock all the children had arrived and were waiting tensely in the cottage for what was going to happen next. It is rare for even very young Gaelic children to betray excitement noisily and so it was a very decorous procession indeed which followed me to the shed. There, they seated themselves at the tables as they were directed, not scrambling for places but scolding one another in loud whispers whenever they detected signs of stupidity or slowness. When they were settled they regarded the heaped-up plates of delicacies with prim dignity. I insisted that everyone should begin with bread and butter or sandwiches and these they accepted demurely only when Morag and I pressed them to do so. We offered them cakes, for which they reached out cautious hands. Remembering their zest for school meals I found their apathy when confronted with my cooking dispiriting. I began to wonder if, not being accustomed to fancy cookery, they had not developed an appetite for it, but in view of their consumption of sweets, jam and biscuits, it seemed highly improbable. I knew there was nothing wrong with my cooking and every now and then I caught the gleam in their eyes as they stared along the length of the loaded tables. I signalled to Morag to come to the door with me and there I turned.