A Breath of Autumn

by Lillian Beckwith

  ‘She seems a nice enough girl,’ Kirsty conceded. ‘And she looks strong and sensible enough to cope with life here if she has a mind for it.’

  ‘She has a mind for it right enough, if that’s what Euan Ally wants. I’m telling you her old man’s tryin’ to push her into marrying old Murdoch McLeod who has the next croft to his. It’s a good-size croft and the bodach reckons the souming’s more than twice his own. He thinks he’ll get rich running the two crofts so he’s mad keen for Enac to marry the old fellow. He tried to get Enac’s sister Ealasaid to say she would do it but she got clean away.’

  ‘What does the lassie herself think of the idea?’ Kirsty asked.

  ‘Ach, she’s dead set against it,’ said Jamie, ‘and why wouldn’t she be? Murdoch’s a dirty old bodach just, a salachar they call him with his beard always matted with stale brose. No, Enac wants for her and Euan Ally to get married as soon as they can to stop her father always goring at her.’

  ‘She told me she had to stay home to look after her father since her mother died,’ Kirsty said.

  Jamie mumbled an oath. ‘Her father can marry the red widow who’s always giving him wee drams and strupaks whenever she sets eyes on him. She’s keen enough to have him,’ he finished disdainfully.

  ‘Has the red widow a croft?’

  ‘Right enough she has but it is no more than half the size of old Murdoch’s croft. But the widow herself is comely enough even if she has the name of being on the flighty side. She’ll do well enough for him.’

  ‘Doesn’t it seem odd that almost on the same day we should hear of two very different couples wanting to come and live on Westisle,’ Kirsty said. ‘It puts me in a bit of a pickle.’

  ‘Euan Ally’s had it in mind for some time,’ Jamie disclosed.

  ‘I gathered that for myself,’ responded Kirsty.

  ‘He’ll no doubt give you a wee while to talk to Enac about it and then put it to you tomorrow.’

  She frowned. ‘I am fearing there would be responsibilities in having other people here on the island. I really should take some time to think about it.’

  ‘You could tell Euan Ally about the English couple and maybe he would help you to make up your mind,’ Jamie suggested.

  ‘I’d like fine for you to be here with me when he speaks to me of his plan,’ she said. Rousing Wee Ruari she packed him off to his bed.

  ‘I’ll be hereabouts,’ Jamie promised.

  She expected to be pondering the situation much of the night but the hard embrace of the unfamiliar mattress dissuaded her and she slowly drifted into a deeply relaxing slumber.

  Chapter Six

  The following morning being the Sabbath, Wee Ruari, as was his custom, placed the Bible on the table as soon as they had finished their porridge, and waited impatiently for his mother to begin the weekly ritual of reading a chapter aloud. Jamie went outside, but Euan Ally and Enac remained in their seats, their heads slightly bowed as if they too were conditioned to the ritual. When the reading was over, Wee Ruari put away the Bible and ran outside. Almost as if it might have been a prearranged signal, Jamie came back into the kitchen.

  ‘Will I away and milk the cow for you this morning?’ he offered Kirsty. ‘I’ve filled a sack of hay.’

  ‘Indeed, that will be very welcome,’ she allowed, and went to get the milk pail.

  ‘I was thinking me and Enac would come along with you,’ suggested Euan Ally. ‘We could maybe take another look at the old settlement.’

  ‘Why don’t we all go,’ suggested Jamie. ‘It’ll do no harm to have a good look at it. Maybe it’ll help you to make up your mind whether you want to do anything with it.’

  They called Wee Ruari and set off in the direction of the old settlement, Euan Ally and Jamie exchanging frequent comments as they walked together, Wee Ruari running in front and calling everyone’s attention to everything, which he maintained had altered in one way or another during the week he had been away at school. Kirsty and Enac trailed a little in the rear and Kirsty, wanting to hear what Enac might have to say about Euan Ally’s plan to move to Westisle once they were wed, felt it was time to broach the subject.

  ‘So you think you would like to live on Westisle once you and Euan Ally are wed?’ she queried.

  Enac seemed startled momentarily and looked down at her feet before replying.

  ‘Euan Ally has told you we wish to marry?’ she asked searchingly.

  It was Kirsty’s turn to feel embarrassed. Euan Ally had not spoken to her about his plans for marriage. It was Jamie who had made her aware of them and, though she suspected Euan Ally had spurred him to do so, she felt momentarily flustered as she realised she might have revealed what had been meant to be a secret between them. ‘Not yet,’ she rushed to admit. ‘But once Jamie had spoken to me of Euan Ally having a sweetheart who was wanting to visit Westisle I guessed something was afoot; and since island men are not ones for wasting time once they have an idea it needed little enough thinking of.’

  Enac smiled. ‘We’d like to get married before the potato planting,’ she said simply.

  ‘And you would like the idea of a house here on Westisle? You would not find yourself wanting for company?’

  ‘I believe I would be kept too busy to want for company.’

  ‘You would be for bringing over your mother’s loom?’

  ‘That is what I would wish to do. My mother was always saying her loom was to be mine from her own mother so my father must not take it away from me.’

  ‘Would he wish to do that?’ Kirsty probed.

  ‘My father would not wish me to marry Euan Ally.’ The tinge of regret in Enac’s tone belied her grim expression. ‘Euan Ally would like to ran a few sheep on the hill,’ she continued, ‘and after the first shearing we could perhaps set up my loom. And there is plenty of crotal to be scraped off the rocks here he tells me. I could start gathering it and storing it ready for the dyeing. We found plenty of whelks which I could gather when the tide is right.’ She paused and darted a swift glance at Kirsty. ‘You will be thinking I am too far ahead with my plans seein’ that you have not told us of your own thinking,’ she said contritely.

  Kirsty only smiled a vague reply since by this time they had reached the settlement where ‘the boys’ were enthusiastically inspecting one of the ruined houses. She stood for a moment and with a wide gesture that took in the whole of the bay said, ‘If I’d been the laird, this is where I would have chosen to build a house for my son rather than over the other side where he did build it. See Enac, there is a good well for water near at hand; a fine level beach for hauling up a boat; a burn close at hand for the blanket washing and flat land for planting and sowing and no distance at all for carrying kelp from the shore. Oh indeed, how happy my own granny would have been to have a croft with so many advantages.’

  ‘Indeed, I see that fine,’ agreed Enac, ‘but the laird would have wanted his son’s house to be distant from the houses of his crofters, surely?’

  ‘I believe that would be the way of it,’ acknowledged Kirsty ruefully.

  They stood gazing down at the bay, Kirsty relishing the sight of the white gulls riding the furrowed water; the diligent oystercatchers patrolling the shore; the customary heron at the mouth of the burn.

  ‘It looks a good enough shore for a boat,’ observed Enac unsentimentally. She swung round. ‘Would there not be good fishing from the rocks over-by?’ she asked, nodding towards the tumbled boulders that partly screened the far end of the shore from the savagery of the periodic east wind. ‘Good creagach fishing I’m meaning,’ she explained.

  ‘There might be just,’ Kirsty agreed. ‘You’d best ask “the boys”. I, myself, have never been over fond of creagachs so I’ve not tried my hand at it and I’ve not encouraged Wee Ruari to come this way without me.’

  ‘Trodhd.’ The shout came from Jamie who was beckoning them closer. ‘Euan Ally’s after thinking it would take his Uncle Lahac no more than a week or two of fine weather to make this place f
it enough for a beginning,’ he told them. ‘Is that not so, Euan Ally?’

  ‘Aye, indeed,’ confirmed Euan Ally. ‘Once past the New Year and the better weather is here he could come and make a start. We can clear out one of the bunks on the boat so he’ll have some place to sleep when we’re ashore.’

  ‘Your Uncle Lahac could have part of the empty loft at the house if he’d bring his own bed,’ Kirsty surprised herself by offering, aware that she had seemed to have acceded to Euan Ally’s request without it having been directly put to her. She caught the glance that was exchanged between Euan Ally and Enac, wordless but easily interpreted. She saw Jamie’s expression of approval and experienced a warm feeling of having bestowed a much longed for favour.

  ‘I’d best go and get the cows milked,’ said Jamie, picking up the bag of hay and the milk pail from where he had put them. ‘Are you for coming with me and we’ll take a look at Brechty’s udder and see if it’s healed rightly?’ Kirsty nodded agreement. The sting on Brechty’s udder had healed a day or two previously but Jamie must want to speak to her about her thoughts on the settlement, and this was a way he would be sure of her undivided attention.

  ‘So you’re going to let Euan Ally take over a croft on Westisle,’ he remarked as soon as they were out of earshot. ‘I reckon you’ve done well enough for the island and for yourself,’ he added.

  ‘You reckon?’ she echoed.

  ‘Aye indeed, Euan Ally will make a fair enough crofter and shepherd and I believe Enac will be a hard-working wife for him.’

  They plodded on silently until Kirsty said, ‘I’ll need to come across with you in the morning when you take Wee Ruari back to school. I will then take the bus to the factor’s office. He will tell me what I should do about granting Euan Ally a croft with a fair souming and a fair rent.’

  ‘You’re reckoning on seeing him tomorrow?’ Jamie seemed surprised.

  ‘Now I’m of a mind I wish to get things settled,’ she told him.

  ‘And the English couple? Will you speak to him about the English couple?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘I believe it might be a good idea,’ she allowed.

  Jamie gave a little chuckle. ‘An English couple alongside an island couple,’ he chaffed. ‘You think they will make a good match.’

  She permitted herself a faint smile. ‘We shall have to wait and see what they themselves make of it just,’ she said.

  She was put ashore in Clachan, along with Wee Ruari, the next morning and caught the bus to the factor’s office where things were settled with surprising speed. The factor was helpful, though plainly sceptical at the idea of the island becoming repopulated after so many years. He disinterred an ancient map with the area of the old crofts vaguely indicated along with ideas of past soumings and rights of grazing. He also advised her about fair rents, offering to collect them for her annually, as he did for the laird of Clachan. Feeling well reassured she left his office, caught the bus back to Clachan then took the opportunity to call on Mhairi Jane for a strupak and a ‘wee crack’ while she waited for ‘the boys’ to collect her and take her back to Westisle. Mhairi Jane’s reaction to her news had been entirely as she had expected.

  ‘Ach, mho ghaoil is mhath learn sin,’ she had enthused, reverting to the Gaelic in her excitement. Grasping both Kirsty’s hands, she shook them feelingly. ‘I will be sleeping in my bed the happier for the knowing of it.’

  ‘I’m hoping that it will also make me happy,’ Kirsty riposted, a little less enthusiastically.

  She and ‘the boys’ sat until the early hours of the morning looking at the old map the factor had given her.

  ‘They were mighty small crofts in those days,’ observed Jamie. ‘Euan Ally will need three or four of them to gather enough hay and corn for the cattle and sheep he has in mind.’

  ‘We will work that out between us when we are not so tired,’ Kirsty insisted on a half yawn. ‘I shall write to the English couple in a day or so and tell them what I have to offer.’

  They said their ‘Oidhche mhaths’ and, rising from her chair, Kirsty went to close the partly open outer door where she stood for a few moments listening intently to the quietness of the night; a quiet so unusual that the softly clear cries of golden plover sounded almost as if the birds were on the roof. She’d always thrilled at the sound of golden plover calling in the dark. They seem to be staying kind of late this year, she reflected.

  Chapter Seven

  The news of Euan Ally’s plans to take a croft on Westisle brought much unfavourable comment from the Clachan crofters.

  ‘An island that’s once been forsaken by crofters is no place to start a new life,’ some said, and when it became clear that Euan Ally and Enac planned to get married and live on Westisle the comments became scathing. ‘Euan Ally’s a right loon to be thinking of taking a young wife over there. Shell never settle in a place that has no company enough for a ceilidh and no post office. Isn’t life gey hard for women even here though we have a mail bus twice a week that will take us to the ferry and a post office telephone no more than a mile away. Enac’s just as much of a loon to say she’ll go with him to my way of thinking.’

  Euan Ally was defiant. ‘There’s safer anchorage for a boat on Westisle than there is hereabouts and the land’s no worse for grazing and what’s more there’ll be a landlord that’s likely to be fairer by far than the one you have here,’ he told them.

  ‘But you have no church there,’ one or two of the more pious pointed out.

  ‘Can we no speak to the Lord under our own roof then the way we have to on the boat?’ demanded Euan Ally, but by then they had dismissed him as one of the godless and had shut their minds to his arguments.

  Kirsty herself heard little of their criticism. ‘They’ve taken a good look at what I’m offering, and seeing they think it’s fair enough they’ve made up their own minds to it,’ was her retort if ever the matter was mentioned in her presence.

  ‘I believe Enac’s father will be near off his head when he’s told of the arrangements to his face,’ chuckled Mhairi Jane impishly. Enac’s father was not a well-liked man in Clachan and, much as they might deplore Enac’s decision to move to Westisle, there were not a few who looked forward to the pleasure of witnessing the bodach’s chagrin when he would at last have to face the fact that he was to lose Enac and the prospect of a large croft, and content himself with taking on the ‘red widow’ and the smaller croft she would bring him as an alternative.

  When Euan Ally had first spoken to his Uncle Lachy about wanting to do up one of the old houses on Westisle his uncle had scoffed at the idea. ‘The Dear knows but it’s plenty years since those old dwellings have had life in them,’ he’d responded. ‘Even if there’s good stonework still there’s not a reed nor a spar of an old roof left.’

  Euan Ally was not too disheartened. ‘Ach that’s the like of the man just,’ he confided to Kirsty. ‘Always arguing with himself when there’s no one else to argue with. I’ll have to wait and see just. He’ll haver for a while but I believe he has a mind to come over and take a look at what needs to be done. He’ll be telling folks how impossible it is at the same time as he’s telling himself how much there’d be to do and the time it will take him to do it, and before he goes back to Clachan I doubt he’ll be reeling off a list to me and Jamie of all the stuff well be needing to bring over for him from the agriculture store on the mainland.’

  ‘Did you say to him that if he cares to do the work there will be room for him to bide up in the loft here at night so long as he will bring some sort of bed for himself to lie on?’ Kirsty asked.

  ‘I did indeed!’ exclaimed Euan Ally, his hand wiping away the beginnings of a smile. ‘An’ didn’t his wife, that’s my auntie Meggie just, near shoot the eyes out of her head with the glare she fastened on him at the idea of it. “No indeed, you’ll not bide a night under the same roof as a lone widow,” she warned him, so I reckon me and Jamie will have to bring the boat in each night after the fishing so
he can have the spare bunk.’

  ‘He’ll be wanting me to feed him just the same?’ she asked.

  ‘Aye, right enough and I doubt hell be bringing over young Padruig Mor when he’s likely to be needing a hand.’

  ‘Young Padruig Mor?’ she queried.

  ‘Aye, him that has the bowed legs and strength of a bull, and the brains of an empty bucket,’ said Euan Ally. ‘But he’s a good worker though he’s the most beautiful liar God ever put two boots on. His mother’s forever greerin’ that he eats as much in a day as would an army in a week.’

  ‘I expect that I’ll manage to satisfy him,’ Kirsty observed passively.

  A short time after Euan Ally’s uncle agreeing to come and do the work ‘if the Lord spared him’, ‘the boys’ began to bring over some of the materials he required from the crofters’ agricultural store. First, however, they had to contrive a shelter sturdy enough to protect these from the weather, and yet to be as near as possible to the settlement. Materials which would be useless if once soaked by rain, Kirsty allowed to be stowed in the loft of her house. It was not an ideal solution since, as not even a wheelbarrow could cope with the rough terrain of the moorland between house and settlement, it would necessitate their having to be transported by means of a hand barrow or, more likely, on the backs of men. It was ever so, Kirsty reminded herself with a sigh, recalling childhood memories of crofters – both men and women – labouring up the brae with full bolls of meal and flour on their backs as well as drums of tar and coils of rope after the bimonthly steamer had unloaded its cargo.

  Once all the materials had been brought to the island and stowed and when Uncle Lachy had been informed they were there ready for him, he still delayed his appearance. It was understandable. Euan Ally had reported that once the autumn potato lifting was finished his uncle had started to get himself ready for the New Year celebrations, and after New Year he was needing time to recover from his excesses. He wouldn’t be fit for much building for a whiley just, his nephew accepted resignedly. Also, there were two more conditions to be observed in addition to the one forbidding him to sleep beneath the roof of a lone widow, but they were by no means unexpected. When he was not ‘on the whisky’ as Euan Ally put it, his uncle was a devout man and he must cease work early on a Saturday so as to give him time to prepare himself for the Sabbath and secondly, even though the missionary might not be able to get over to Westisle to keep an occasional eye on him, Lachy must not so much as look at or lay his hands on a tool on the Sabbath day. Euan Ally and Kirsty accepted both conditions as a matter of course. It was Jamie who murmured dryly, ‘Clachan folks believe their God is eyeless.’