The Loud Halo

by Lillian Beckwith

  ‘Ee, luv,’ she said in a voice that was so coarse it made me feel dishevelled, ‘whatever made you come to live in a godforsaken place like this after England?’

  She said, ‘I think I’d go daft if I had to live here among a lot of strangers.’

  She said, ‘You know, luv, just seein’ you come through that door and knowin’ you’ve lived near Manchester, it’s just like a breath of fresh air to me.’

  Erchy said the next day when I was down on the shore giving my dinghy a coat of paint: ‘Here, I’ll take back what I said about the English yesterday, I’m thinkin’ some of them aren’t so bad after all.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, with anly conventional curiosity, ‘and what has changed your mind?’

  ‘Yon woman that’s come to stay this week.’

  ‘Not,’ I interrupted him, ‘not surely the woman from Manchester?’

  ‘No, but the one who’s come to stay with Kirsty. Now she’s what I call a nice woman. We took her for a trip in the boat this mornin’ an’ she gave us a good tip on top of her fare.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘I’m glad we’re not all to be condemned.’

  ‘Ach, some are all right, I suppose,’ acknowledged Erchy grudgingly.

  Hector sprackled up to us. ‘Tsat Englishwoman’s wantin’ a boat for tomorrow to take her to see tse caves just by herself,’ he said. ‘She says she’ll hire tse whole boat.’

  Erchy looked startled. ‘Did you tell her how much it will cost her?’ he asked Hector.

  ‘Aye, I did so, but she just said “money’s no option”.’ Hector rubbed the back of his neck. ‘I’ve never heard anybody say tsat before in my life.’

  ‘She’s away with Ruari this evening in his boat,’ I observed.

  ‘Aye,’ agreed Erchy. ‘She told us she likes goin’ about on the water so she’s goin’ to share out her trips between the different boats. That’s partly what I meant when I said she’s a nice woman,’ he explained as he moved away.

  The children came out of school in a rush and with barefooted nimbleness picked their chattering way along the road. The day quietened as the boats disgorged their last passengers and the noise of labouring coaches receded into the distance.

  ‘Did you get a tip from yon woman that’s stayin’ with Kirsty?’ Erchy called out to deaf Ruari as they were making fast their dinghies for the night.

  ‘Aye, I did that,’ responded Ruari with all the power of his stentorian voice. ‘I got a whole crown from the bitch.’

  ‘I do envy you being able to understand the Gaelic,’ said the ‘nice woman’, who had paused to watch me as I put the last touches to my dinghy and who was screened by a rock from the sight of the two men, ‘it’s such a qaint-sounding language.’

  I do not know if Ruari’s voice had diffused the sound so much that she had not been able to distinguish the words or whether she had chosen this way of saving all our faces but when Ruari and Erchy came abreast of the dinghy and saw her still there she talked them easily out of their confusion and was still talking to them with great animation as she walked between them to the brae.

  ‘Here,’ said Erchy anxiously when I next met him. ‘D’you think that woman heard what Ruari said last night? Honest, I thought she was a mile away or I would never have asked the man.’

  ‘I don’t think she heard,’ I assured him.

  ‘I wouldn’t like to think she was offended,’ he said, ‘she’s such a nice woman.’

  Whether or not she had heard the remark it seemed to have given no offence, for she continued to patronise the boats and to tip generously. In return the boatmen greeted her warmly whenever she appeared and even bestowed on her the accolade of an invitation to go with them on the free trips they sometimes ran in an evening for their friends. She confided to me one day that she had never before in her life had such a wonderful holiday and her praise for the boatmen was unstinted. When at length her holiday came to an end she astounded them by presenting each of them with a bottle of whisky.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you she was a nice woman?’ demanded Erchy when I congratulated him on the gift. He took the bottle out of his pocket and gazed at it with great reverence. Then his voice changed and he seemed to recoil from the shock of his own words. ‘A nice woman, did I say she was?’ he questioned, with another fond glance at the bottle, ‘No, indeed, but I should have said she was a nice lady!’

  The Election

  ‘Did you get a bit of venison from the Laird last week?’ enquired Morag as we were returning from milking our cows one frost-still autumn morning.

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Did you?’

  ‘Surely we did,’ she informed me. ‘I thought everybody got a bit.’ We parted company for a moment, she to pick her way round one side of a patch of bog while I went round the other. ‘It makes a laugh the way he gives us a wee bitty venison as if he’s givin’ us a five-pound note,’ she continued as our paths rejoined. ‘ “I hope you’ll find this nice and tasty, Morag,” says he, thinkin’ likely that it’s a rare treat for us.’ She giggled. ‘An’ so it would be I doubt if all the venison we got was when he had a mind to give it to us.’ Her face wrinkled in an allusive grin. ‘Indeed, many’s the whole stag of his I’ve eaten if he did but know it,’ she confessed shamelessly.

  ‘Why the generosity?’ I wondered.

  ‘Likely it’s the Election,’ explained Morag with her usual astuteness. ‘Maybe you didn’t get a piece because he thinks you’re a Socialist,’ she added.

  Until the announcement of the forthcoming General Election politics had rarely cropped up as a subject for conversation at the ceilidhs and when it had it had always been in a bantering and inconclusive way. Even after the announcement there was no vestige of what could be termed ‘election fever’ in the village. Old men ventured to make sketchy references to such subjects as tariffs and free trade, and Murdoch, the village’s only militant Tory, was once or twice reduced to stuttering inarticulateness by the tauntings of a couple of the younger blades with professed leanings towards Socialism, but invariably the skirmishes ended if not in complete agreement then in good-humoured laughter. The Bruachites did not have much time for subjects from which they could not extract some fun one way or another.

  As the Election drew nearer it became apparent that Bruach was going to vote almost exclusively Tory, for in contrast to their normally uncompromising individualism the Bruachites displayed a curious desire for conformity in superficialities. How often have I heard the wily tinkers successfully inducing people to buy a child’s dress or a woman’s overall simply by exaggerating the number of identical ones they had already sold in the village. And when the biannual request for donations to the church came round the sum shown against the first name on the list was always dittoed for all the rest of the names. Similarly, when the hospital appealed for eggs everyone was careful to give the same number as his neighbour. Except for one uncomfortable occasion when the Grazings Officer sent round a list asking for the dates of bull servings and got it back with so many dittoes that a hundred and twenty-seven cows were shown as having been served by the same bull on the same day, the duplication appeared to be perfectly acceptable to everyone.

  However, when it came to deciding at the ceilidhs what advantages they wished the Government to provide the Bruachites reverted to their usual policy of amiable disagreement.

  ‘What we’re needin’ before anythin’ is a pier,’ declaimed deaf Ruari with a combative look in the direction of any dissenters.

  ‘We’ve been promised a pier by every government since I was a lad,’ returned Yawn easily. ‘But I didn’t see it yet.’

  ‘It’ll come. It’ll come yet,’ soothed old Murdoch amidst grunts of disbelief.

  ‘No, but what we’re needin’ first is a good road, the way we won’t have to get the heavy things on the steamer and then have to carry them all the way up the brae,’ argued Big John between gulps of baking-soda from a tin on the mantelpiece.

  ‘Aye,’ seconded the irascible Donald, w
ho as the owner of a tiny motor boat chose to believe there existed between him and the steamship company as much rivalry as exists between competitors for the Blue Riband. ‘We could finish then with Messrs. David MacBrayne and Company, nineteen twenty-eight limited,’ he exulted with his accustomed preciosity. During the summer Donald ran trips in his boat to local places of interest. The steamer did likewise but with far more comfort and a great deal less hazard—hence the antagonism.

  ‘If we got the watter we could ask them for a lavatory for the public,’ piped up Sheena, who was unfortunate enough to live in a cottage which adjoined the road near a spot much favoured in the season for disgorging busloads of tourists. Glassy eyed with discomfort after the rough ride and too urbanised to trust themselves to the privacy of the moors, the tourists’ first thought was to prospect for some shed they might break into and foul. ‘I canna’ gather but a handful of peats from the shed without there’s dung or piss on it,’ Sheena complained.

  ‘Aye, that’s the way of it,’ confirmed Morag, with a nod.

  ‘If it’s a lavatory we’re wantin’ then it’s in the burial ground we should be gettin’ one first,’ asserted Erchy. ‘Never mind the tourists.’

  ‘A laventory? In the burial ground?’ expostulated old Murdoch. ‘Whatever for, man?’

  ‘They have them in other places,’ Erchy told him. ‘Two of them sometimes: one for men and one for women.’

  ‘God knows what for, then,’ said Murdoch, shaking his head bewilderedly, ‘Surely they’re not believin’ the dead got up and walk?’

  ‘It’s for the folks who go to the funerals,’ shouted Erchy above the tittering, and Murdoch’s brow immediately cleared. ‘You know how it is when you’re at a funeral,’ Erchy went on, ‘you always feel you can’t wait to drop your pants. If it’s outside the gate you go then it’s likely one of the women will get a hold of you so that you can’t get away. If you try inside the damty place is so full of graves somebody starts shoutin’ at you for defilin’ his grandfather or somebody.’

  It struck me that in contrast to the demands of the more cosseted townsman they seemed to want very little from their government. There was no appeal voiced for factories to provide regular employment, no general desire for larger crofts, no agitation for higher pensions. Perhaps it was because in the cosy atmosphere of the ceilidhs the Bruachites were entirely honest with themselves. They did not want the discipline of industry in addition to that already imposed on them by storms and rides. Their crofts were as large as they could comfortably manage without mechanical aids. On the matter of pensions they kept wisely silent for in Bruach there was no pride about receiving Public Assistance. Rather was it a source of rivalry to see who could wheedle the most out of the authorities and at times one got the distinct impression that the recipients regarded the payments as in the nature of prize money for the best storyteller. Their avarice was both shocking and amusing and I well remember an occasion when, as I was waiting to board the train at the mainland station en route for a visit to Glasgow, I had suddenly been hailed by a lady whom I knew had been drawing Public Assistance for years. She was dressed neatly in black with touches of that sparkling whiteness I believe only Highland rainwater can impart to a fabric, and had I not known her I should have thought from her dignified bearing and the quiet authoritativeness of her manner that she was at least a duchess. We greeted each other cordially and agreed it would be nice to travel together.

  ‘There are some empty compartments down there,’ I said, including my head towards the rear of the train.

  My companion gazed at me with sorrow and surprise. ‘Oh, but those are all second-class compartments down there,’ she told me. ‘You’ll surely not be travelling second class, will you, Miss Peckwitt?’

  ‘Why, yes,’ I replied, ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘Oh, no, mo ghaoil,’ she responded without a trace of embarrassment. ‘I always think one meets such common people travelling second class.’ She scanned the train and then turned to me again. ‘Will you not change your ticket?’ she begged with affected concern, for she had just spotted a more desirable acquaintance who was beckoning to her from the genteel end of the train.

  ‘No,’ I said firmly. She shook her head in mock reproof but her mouth relaxed into a lenient smile as we parted, she to step regally into a first-class compartment while I wilted into a second.

  I recall too the time when there came to reside temporarily in Bruach an old lady whom the Bruachites invariably referred to as ‘yon rich old fool’. However when the ‘rich old fool’ had been in the village for some months she revealed, with a discernible pride in her achievement, that she too had joined the ranks of those receiving Public Assistance. The crofters were scandalised and her revelation was tossed from person to person along with comments that were as disparagingly hostile as if she had gatecrashed an exclusive club. Of course they never for an instant believed that she was not still a rich old woman; but I never again heard anyone refer to her as a fool!

  Though I once heard of a crofter who was too proud to accept Public Assistance or to allow his wife to accept it whilst he was alive, the story was accepted by the rest of the Bruachites with the same mocking half belief as they accepted such tales as of the man who had grown a third leg and of a child who had been buried out on the unhallowed moor because it was born with two heads.

  It was not long before we began to hear of various election meetings being held in neighbouring villages more accessible from the mainland than Bruach itself, and if there was a pub and the owner of the bus could be persuaded to run a cheap trip then there was always a fair contingent from Bruach willing to listen courteously to anyone who might care to practise his rhetoric upon them. They would titter at all his witticisms, they would murmur appreciably at the aspersions cast by party on party, but they rarely heckled and it was quite impossible for a stranger to guess in which direction their loyalties lay.

  Inevitably the Election began to impinge on our lives. The postman arrived later and later. ‘These bloody election letters,’ he explained. ‘Honest, they keep me back worse than the pools.’ Eventually our ballot papers arrived.

  ‘Here,’ said the postman conspiratorially as he followed his bulging mailbag through the open kitchen door. ‘Just you take these from me and put them under the kettle.’

  ‘What are they?’ I asked him, immediately suspicious.

  ‘Ballot papers,’ he replied. ‘Put them under the kettle, I’m tellin’ you.’

  ‘I daren’t!’ I told him.

  ‘Ach, they’re only for my cousin Tearlaich,’ he explained, ‘and the bugger will only be after spoilin’ them by votin’ Socialist.’ He held the envelope towards me, but I drew back shaking my head, and when he moved as though towards the stove I stopped him firmly. It was then that I caught the glint of laughter in his eyes so that I was not deceived by the air of disappointment he assumed as he slipped the envelope back into his bag.

  ‘What would you have done if I’d snatched those papers out of your hand and put them under the kettle?’ I taxed him.

  He met my enquiry with a broad, delighted grin. ‘Damned if I know,’ he admitted unregenerately.

  A brief spell of crisp bright days ended with bitingly cold winds that flung great sloppy raindrops at the frost-skinned earth. On the moors the bracken, so stately in its youth, so wanton in maturity, now lay brown and sad among the rocky outcrops while in the boglands the peat hags filled with dark water. It was while we were enduring this sort of weather that there came word that a representative of the Socialist candidate would be holding a meeting in the village schoolroom the following evening. Bruach was a little staggered.

  ‘We must be gettin’ well known,’ said Yawn facetiously. ‘Why else would they be botherin’ to come out here when they didn’t before?’

  ‘Didn’t come before?’ ejaculated Morag. ‘Indeed they did so.’

  ‘I never mind them comin’,’ maintained Yawn.

  ‘Aye, well they did so,
’ reiterated Morag. ‘Murdoch will tell you, will you not, Murdoch?’

  Murdoch, thus appealed to, looked thoughtful for a moment and then said with great confidence, ‘Aye, of course I mind fine them comin’ here.’ He turned to Morag. ‘Was that no’ the year we salted the herrin’ before we cut the corn?’ he asked her.

  ‘It was indeed,’ confirmed Morag. ‘An’ it was good herrin’.’

  ‘Aye, aye, it was good herrin’,’ agreed Murdoch, removing his pipe. There was a recognisable moment of nostalgia while Murdoch’s spittle sizzled on the glowing peat.

  ‘Will you be goin’ to listen to the mannie tomorrow if you’re spared?’ Morag asked me as we were saying good night.

  ‘I suppose so,’ I replied. ‘We should go and hear what he has to say.’

  ‘Well,’ said Morag, ‘it would no’ be very nice for him if people didn’t go and take a look at him after him goin’ to the trouble to come out here for us.’

  So the following evening, braving the inexorable rain, I went along to the schoolroom which, by the time I arrived, was already nearly three-quarters full of chattering, chaffing adults interspersed by a sprinkling of sober, wide-eyed children. The mingled smells of damp peaty tweeds, stale dogs, dungy boots and pipe smoke, all shot through with the sharp, clean smell of wet oilskin, met me as I stood by the door looking for a suitable seat. Morag caught my eye and beckoned me over to a spare desk between herself and Behag and even as I compressed myself into it there was a chorus of warning coughs from the porch and a purposeful middle-aged man attended by two smug confederates made his way to the teacher’s desk. A courteous hush fell as he was introduced to us by one of his aides.

  ‘Here, but I know that man well,’ confided Morag, who, I believe, attended all such gathering as much to exercise her quite remarkable memory for faces as for any other reason.

  ‘Who will he be, then?’ whispered Behag with a sudden spurt of interest.