The Loud Halo

by Lillian Beckwith

  ‘Why, but that Willy John. His father used to live up at…’ She and Behag went off into a mixture of reminiscent Gaelic.

  ‘What does he work at now, then?’ enquired Behag, obviously far more curious about the man’s pedigree than in what he had to say.

  ‘Ach, well, I believe he was a cobbler one time, but then he went away to the war,’ Morag recalled. ‘He was wounded in the hand I was after hearin’ and he couldn’t carry on with his cobblin’.’

  ‘Poor soul,’ said Behag. ‘What does he do now?’

  ‘Ach, they sent him off to one of these places where they rehalibutate people and now he’s a fish buyer,’ Morag told her. ‘They’re sayin’ he’s doin’ well at it.’

  ‘Whist you, Morag,’ some of the people behind enjoined us after they were satisfied that Morag had completed her identification. The representative was standing up and we composed ourselves to listen to his address, but from the moment he opened his mouth we felt ourselves stiffening as if we were being coerced into a conflict, bewildered as to its cause and with the certainty of our own defeat. His words smote us; the breath he occasionally paused to exhale seemed to sear us, and when the meeting came to an end we found ourselves feeling curiously sorry for him for having given us such a bad time—and wishing he would soon go so that we would have time to feel sorry for ourselves. Nevertheless we sat and clapped him dutifully and with confident smiles he left us.

  ‘My, my!’ exclaimed Morag as we emerged from the schoolroom, feeling bruised with politics and cramped and chilled after our damp contortion in the tiny desks, ‘that man’s voice was that rough I believe I could have struck a match on it.’

  The following morning I awoke with all the signs of a vicious head cold and although I heard that the Liberal candidate was sending a representative to the school that evening I put out my light early to discourage ceilidhers and went to bed. My cold was little better the next day, so that I missed also the representative of the Tory candidate, who, not to be outdone, had arranged to hold a meeting that evening. By the evening of the third day I was feeling thoroughly wretched, my cold obstinately refusing to yield to my usual remedy (‘It came itself, it can go away itself’), and I had resolved that as soon as my chores were finished I would take myself off to bed with a couple of aspirins, a large glass of hot milk and some extra blankets and try to sweat it out of my system. It was therefore with some dismay that I found Ishbel, the elderly spinster half-sister of Katy, the shepherd’s wife, waiting for me when I returned to the cottage, but I managed to sniffle a tepid welcome. She seemed satisfied and sat down on the edge of a chair with her usual nervous hesitancy that reminded me of a fledgling just before it launches itself from the nest.

  ‘I mustn’t stay,’ she demurred.

  ‘Of course you must.’ I tried to infuse some decision into my voice.

  ‘No, but I heard you had taken the cold so I thought I’d best come along and see if you needed help.’

  I thanked her warmly but assured her that it was really only the discomfort of the cold that worried me.

  ‘It’s that Socialist fellow gave it to you,’ she declared with more asperity than I had ever heard in her voice. ‘I knew the moment I heard him speak he’d brought the cold to us.’

  ‘Possibly,’ I agreed. In Bruach once the holiday season was over colds were infrequent and when one ravaged the village it could invariably be traced to someone who had ‘gone to the mainland for a cold’ or to some infected visitor.

  ‘I’d never vote for him after that,’ threatened Ishbel, whose childish rule of exacting indiscriminate retribution, however trivial the incident, was something of a joke in the village; she had once slipped on a piece of orange rind and broken her arm so she had never eaten an orange since.

  ‘Are you takin’ anythin’ for your cold?’ she asked, reverting to her normal timidity.

  ‘Just hot milk and aspirins,’ I told her.

  She delved into her bag and brought out a half bottle of whisky which was at least two-thirds full. ‘Now, I want you to take this,’ she adjured me. ‘A good glass of this tonight before you go to your bed an’ it’ll see your cold away by the mornin’.’

  I was overwhelmed by her kindness. ‘Thank you very much indeed,’ I said, ‘but really——’

  ‘No, but I want you to have it,’ she interrupted me. ‘I’ve had this stuff in the house since I took the cold myself near thirteen years ago now. I didn’t take the cold again to this day so I’ve not had but the one dose of it.’ She put the bottle down on the table. ‘Whisky keeps all right though it’s been opened,’ she assured me.

  ‘Of course,’ I murmured and thanked her again. ‘But,’ I objected, holding up the bottle to the light, ‘I shan’t want all this. I’ll just take out a dram and you take the rest back with you.’

  ‘No, indeed I will not.’ She stood up, clutching her bag as if to prevent any attempt to foist the bottle back on her. ‘I’ll away now and let you get to your bed but you’ll see and take a good dram of it before you go?’

  I promised.

  The following morning I was still snuffling when Erchy called to give me a bundle of dried carragheen and also the startling news that the Socialist candidate was proposing to address a meeting at eight o’ clock in the Bruach schoolroom.

  ‘The man himself,’ Archy emphasised. ‘You’d best come an’ listen to him.’

  ‘Not unless my cold clears up a bit during the day,’ I replied.

  ‘Ach, but you shouldn’t have a cold today,’ he remonstrated. ‘I was after hearin’ you got some whisky from Ishbel last night to take for it. You couldn’t have taken a right dram if you still have a cold. The whisky would have killed it.’

  ‘I didn’t take much of a dram,’ I confessed with an involuntary shudder. ‘And neither would you if you’d been in my place.’

  ‘Why not?’ enquired Erchy.

  ‘The bottle had been opened thirteen years ago,’ I began, but he cut me short.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Whisky keeps all right,’ he assured me with an authoritativeness that I felt sure could only have been based on hearsay.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I agreed. ‘I’ve no doubt whisky keeps all right but it also takes up the smell of mothballs.’ I grimaced. ‘It was the foulest-tasting mess I’ve ever tried to swallow. She must have had the bottle packed round with camphor for all of thirteen years.’ I picked up the bottle and held it towards him. ‘Here, smell it yourself.’

  Erchy took a cautious sniff and then groaned. ‘The daft old cailleach,’ he commented.

  But apparently one small mouthful of camphorated whisky had its effect on my cold for by evening my head had improved wonderfully. When eight o’ clock came I wandered down to the school. There was not an empty desk to be had and I had to insert myself into the knot of men who were packed around the door. The candidate had already begun speaking, wooing the crofters with glib promises of prosperity but completely alienating them, if only he knew it, by predicting the setting up of rural industries so that they could supplement their croft incomes without recourse to Public Assistance. Nevertheless, he left happily assured of their support.

  ‘I canna’ understand that man. They tell me he has letters after his name so he must be clever. You wouldn’t think he’d want to go spoilin’ himself with Parliament,’ opined Morag, who seemed to be under the impression that the nomination of a candidate was arrived at in much the same way as was the selection of the village ‘bull tender’ and that the field of choice was similarly limited to those with no aptitude for more exacting tasks.

  In the wake of the Socialist candidate came the Liberal, who also held a well-attended meeting in the schoolroom. I had a date with my wireless set that evening so I did not hear his address but I have no doubt that he too was completely convinced that he had won the confidence of the Bruachites. I asked Erchy when I next saw him how the meeting had gone.

  ‘Ach, that man!’ replied Erchy scornfully. ‘He didn’t seem to know what
to say to us at all. Indeed I don’t believe he was sure if he was goin’ to vote Liberal himself.’

  It seemed that the Conservative candidate did not consider the votes of Bruach’s small population vital enough to warrant a personal appearance and Morag and old Murdoch among others had to endure some innuendoes from those who feigned rebellion simply to take a rise out of the older folk. Then, on the afternoon preceding polling day, when I was mixing the evening mash for the hens, Morag came scuttling into my kitchen with the air of apologetic excitement that always assailed her when she had urgent news to impart.

  ‘The Conservative candidate is here,’ she burst out enthusiastically, ‘an’ he has a loud halo.’ She had predicted all along that he would come. ‘Come away outside and listen to him,’ she insisted. I put down the bowl and followed her out into the garden where the booming voices of the first loudspeaker van to visit Bruach could be heard wafting an invitation to everyone to be present at eight o’clock at the school that evening to meet the candidate in person.

  ‘Well!’ I ejaculated. ‘So you were right. But imagine Bruach having a loudspeaker van. They must think we’re important.’

  ‘Aye,’ agreed Morag, ‘but I wonder at them goin’ to all that expense when our own Ruari could have shouted it just as well without any batteries to work him.’

  Whether it was the ‘loud halo’ or the reputed wealth and social position of the candidate that animated the village I do not know but by a quarter to eight (unprecedented punctuality for the Bruachites) the school classroom was packed as full as only Gaels can pack themselves, and people overflowed into the porch and even, though it was a chilly night, out into the playground. Everyone appeared to be present from the oldest grandfather to the youngest child and the air shimmered with expectancy.

  ‘I see even Angus’s father has managed to get here,’ I observed to Morag, who had pushed her way to my side. Angus’s father was an obstinate old man who spent the periods of relative mobility between crippling attacks of rheumatism sitting on the grass verge beside the road and would not be cajoled or coerced away from it.

  ‘Aye, well, he’s no’ so bad when he’s on the flat bit of road,’ Morag told me. ‘It’s when he comes to the ingredients he canna’ manage.’

  The candidate was very late, but there was no audible discontent, and when he did arrive the company clapped him with a vigour that was strangely out of keeping with their normal show of reserve. As he rose to address us an almost servile silence descended and everyone listened with apparent avidity, though many eyes wandered frequently from his rather long hair to the casual dandiness of his clothes, only to be arrested again and again by his expansive gestures. At the end of his speech one or two people ventured to ask questions, but he answered them with nimble assurance and when the meeting officially came to an end he remained behind, still affable and approachable, ready to discuss the trials of a crofting life.

  ‘My,’ observed Erchy reverently at the ceilidh which followed, ‘that’s a nice fellow if only he’d get his hair cut.’

  There was exultation among the old folk. ‘That’s our man,’ they all agreed. ‘You mind what he promised us about the pier?’

  ‘What does it matter what he promised you?’ young Hamish demanded. ‘Once they get into Parliament they don’t bother what they said to folks before.’

  ‘Maybe so maybe so,’ admitted Murdoch, hurrying to prevent Yawn from voicing scepticism.

  ‘An’ supposin’ he does get us a pier from the House of Commons then it only needs the House of Lords to throw it out and we’re back worse off than when we started.’ Hamish was becoming eloquent in his dissatisfaction. ‘The first thing the Socialists will do is to get rid of the House of Lords,’ he promised. ‘There’s no damty good at all in that place.’

  ‘Here, no,’ Murdoch rebuked him.

  ‘Indeed, yes,’ responded Hamish, with increasing fervour. ‘What good does it do, anyway? Tell me that now.’

  Murdoch pondered for a moment or two, rolling his unlit pipe in the palm of his hands. ‘Well,’ he began, ‘what I say is, the House of Lords is just a big ceilidh house; sometimes they have a wee bit talk over things, sometimes maybe a wee song and maybe a dram at times or a wee strupak, just like ourselves here.’

  ‘An’ what the hell use is that?’ Hamish’s voice was shrill with derision.

  ‘Ach, well,’ said Murdoch. ‘I’m thinkin’ many’s the time there’s been troubles in this place but when they’ve been talked over at a couple of ceilidhs likely they’ve soon been sorted.’ It might be as well to explain here that in Bruach everything is ‘sorted’. You go to the dentist to get your teeth ‘sorted’. Similarly you go to the doctor to get your ailments ‘sorted’. And if the engine of your boat gives trouble you send for someone to come and ‘sort’ it.

  Hamish gave an ironic grunt and moved towards the door. ‘The trouble with you lot is you won’t give a man your vote unless he has plenty of money,’ he flung at them as a final taunt.

  Had he stayed he would have found me in wholehearted agreement with him, for I am convinced the crofters prefer their M.P. to be wealthy, their attitude seeming to imply that whereas there is a possibility of a rich man being satisfied with what he already has, a poor man is inevitably a greedy one.

  Polling morning brought a perceptible rise in temperature with a sun-tinted wind chasing a genial haze of rain through the glen. Voting was scheduled to start at nine o’clock in the morning but not until all the croft work was finished and the bus driver had taken his tea did the crofters trouble to get themselves ready. The polling station was in a neighbouring village at a tiny disused school and the bus was ready to take the voters at sixpence per head, but I chose to walk, for the uncertain day had matured into a perfect autumn evening with the hills hardly more than a murmur of golden serenity behind shrouds of gauzy mist. My path lay along the coast and below me the bay spread out like a broad blue apron, ruched with dark rocks and dotted with resting gulls like white French knots. Earlier in the year the evening would have been marred by swarms of rapacious midges so that one would have needed to smother oneself in protective lotion or envelop one’s face in fine veiling, but now the midges had disappeared and one could swing along heedlessly and rejoice in the beauty that was everywhere.

  Angus, short, wizened and briskly genial, called to me as he was shifting the tether of a cow to a fresh patch of grass. He was wearing polished shoes instead of his usual gumboots.

  ‘Are you away to the votin’?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Are you and Jeannie going?’

  ‘Ach, Jeannie’ll no’ be comin’, she’s near dead with the cold,’ he answered. ‘But I’m goin’ along myself.’

  ‘What about your father? Is he going to triumph over his rheumatics to vote?’

  ‘Ach, my father could get over his rheumatics right enough,’ said Angus, ‘but he says he’s no’ puttin’ in his teeths just to go and put a wee cross on a piece of paper.’

  The bus, packed with passengers who waved with decorous condescension, passed me, but it had to stop so often along the road to pick up hesitant or late voters that it arrived at the polling station only a few minutes before I did. The crofters, self-conscious in their best clothes, were just alighting and there were shouts and imprecations as ecstatic sheepdogs, who had chased after the bus all the way from the village, greeted their owners and tried to insist on following them into the school.

  The schoolroom was very small and was tastefully decorated with jars of white, strongly scented flowers which I had never seen growing anywhere but in the most sheltered corner of the burial ground. The two bored voting officers sat cuddled together at the teacher’s inadequate desk on which cups of tea, a plate of buttered scones and a dish of jam reposed hospitably between the box containing our voting slips and the official black ballot box. The polling arrangements would have made wonderful propaganda for an enemy. To mark our cards we were in turn directed to a cupboard which stoo
d against the wall at right angles to the window. The cupboard was just large enough for a small person to get inside but if one closed the door it was too dark to see what one was doing. If one left the door open then everything one did was easily visible to the prospective or spent voters who loitered with carefully assumed indifference outside the window.

  When I came outside again Big John, who stood six foot three and was of pugilistic build and yet the mildest of men, was leaning nonchalantly on the sill watching a confused Sarah peering in her short-sighted way at the voting slip which she held in her two hands. Sarah frowned; she pulled at her lips. John gave a commentary on her predicament and there was a stir of laughter. We all knew Sarah couldn’t read anyway. At last she held her card up to the window and her mouth framed a question. Big John pointed. Sarah nodded and smiled with relief and bent over her card, the pencil grasped in her shaky fingers. John rapped peremptorily on the window and Sarah’s perturbed head bobbed up. John gesticulated.

  Again Sarah nodded and bent over her paper. John relapsed into nonchalance.

  ‘Silly old cailleach nearly voted for the wrong fellow,’ he told us.

  Tinkers’ Wedding

  The following summer was drearily wet and was succeeded by an autumn that was distinguishable only by the shorter hours of daylight and by the waning appetites of the midges. For those of us who had not been hardy enough to ignore the constant rain (the less resilient under-sixties, it seemed) croft work dragged on interminably. Most of my potatoes were as yet undug. My peat shed was only a third full, the rest of the peats being still in their stacks on the moors waiting either for me to carry them home, creelful by slow and heavy creelful, which I had been endeavouring to do all summer, or for the track to dry out sufficiently for them to be loaded on to a lorry. I even had hay still out on the croft in sad, dark cocks which were so soaked with rain that they were able to resist the teasings of the strengthening winds.

  ‘I doubt a right gale will come before long an’ put your hay away for you, but not where you’re wantin’ it,’ predicted Yawn smugly as he passed the croft where I was working. I answered him with a feeble grin, recalling how savagely a gale the previous autumn had dealt with almost the whole of Donald Beag’s carefully made stacks of hay. Into a night of mist and calm the gale had come suddenly, announcing its arrival by a staccato rattle of the new tiles of my cottage roof. By the time I had shut the bedroom window and buttressed the front door with a shaft of wood it was already thumping against the window, blasting noisily into the chimneys and hissing venom at the leafless elder bushes. For two hours it had blown turbulently and then, with only two or three faint whispers of apology for the commotion it had caused, it had gone, leaving the unsettled night to be soothed by the dolorous tick of the rain. Daylight had revealed that all that was left of Donald’s hay harvest were the wisps and shreds that were caught in the wire netting of neighbouring hen-runs. The Bruachites secretly gloated. Donald was easily the hardest working man in the village and the fact that he made his croft pay caused some resentment. They had lost no time in seeking him out to witness his dismay whilst at the same time offering perfidious commiseration.