The Loud Halo

by Lillian Beckwith

  I shook my head.

  ‘Well then, it was Euan! Him that’s been sayin’ ours is a dirty old church an’ has been takin’ to goin’ to the other one at the far end of the village.’

  ‘Good gracious!’ I exclaimed. ‘What’s made him change back again, I wonder?’

  ‘That’s what I said to him just. “Euan,” I asked him, “why are you not at your own church tonight when you’ve been, sayin’ it’s so much better than ours an’ that the missionary student fellow is such a good man?” An’ do you know, Miss. Peckwitt, he just blinked his eyes at me an’ he said: “What would I be doin’ walkin’ all that bloody way on a night like this? Is it daft you think I am?” ’

  See The Sea for Breakfast.

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  The Nurse

  The nurse was extremely irate.

  ‘What I don’t do for these people here,’ she complained loudly in a voice that sounded to me to be permanently pitched to a tone of grievance. ‘And what thanks do I get for it? The way they treat me sometimes anybody would think I was trying to make them worse instead of better,’ she elucidated with unwitting accuracy.

  Our nurse was a fussy prudish little woman with an occupational flush on her face and a halo of springy white curls that were only partly repressed by the severity of her dark blue felt hat. She must, when she was young, have been extremely pretty. She was still, if you took her feature by feature, a pretty woman but at fifty she had already achieved an appearance of senility by her splayed-foot walk, her habit of peering over the tops of her spectacles and by the looseness of her pouting mouth.

  I tipped the pail of shingle I had just carried up from the shore on to the path I was making and invited her inside for a ‘strupak’, the resentment I felt at having to leave off just when I was full of energy for my work being somewhat mitigated by the prospect of a couple of hours of indiscreet but very revealing gossip about my neighbours.

  Though a Scot, the nurse was, like myself, a ‘foreigner’ in Bruach and despite the fact that she had been residing among them for over twelve years she was not perceptibly nearer dispelling the prejudice of the crofters than she had been during her first twelve weeks. Undoubtedly for a stranger the task of nursing Bruachites was a difficult one—they could be testy enough on occasion—but so far as the crofters were concerned the nurse’s chief disadvantage was that she did not speak their language: she ‘hadn’t the Gaelic’. If they became ill it might be too much of an effort to translate their needs into English, a complaint I felt was justified as it was obvious that however good their English they still thought in Gaelic and then effected the translation. Had the language difficulty been the only obstacle there is little doubt that time would have established a sufficiently cordial relationship, but time had elicited the fact that the nurse’s shortcomings included an insatiable curiosity and an incorrigible tendency to gossip, so that despite her assiduous attentions when she was called in many of the Bruachites preferred to keep quiet about their ailments and to recover or die without her aid in either direction.

  ‘Did you hear what Alistair Beag had the cheek to say to me yesterday?’ Nurse challenged me shrilly when she was seated.

  I had heard, and like everyone else had been secretly delighted at its aptness but, turning my back to her while I filled the kettle, I professed ignorance.

  ‘He told me I’d been here too long,’ she declared, her voice brimming with outrage, ‘in fact he shouted after me as I was leaving the house so that everybody could hear. “Away back to your bosses,” he yelled at me. “Away back and tell them they should change the nurse here every three years the same as they do the bull!” ’ Her rather guileless blue eyes filled suddenly with tears and I felt a great pity for her. It was my impression that she had come to the village originally with the genuine aspiration to become a loved and respected figure—an Alma Mater to whom everyone would unhesitatingly turn in sickness or in trouble. The mixture of tolerance, pity and open antagonism that she had achieved must have been for her a bitter disappointment.

  ‘I expect he was only saying it in fun,’ I consoled. ‘He says the most offensive things to me sometimes. It’s just the sort of man he is.’ I went on to tell her how a few days previously, having been particularly forgetful, I had been coming home from the village shop for the third time within a few hours when old Murdoch, who had been surveying the life of the community from the vantage point of his storm-damaged roof, had called out: ‘Why, Miss Peckwitt! What are you at? You’re here, there and everywhere today, just like the mavis.’ Even while I was bestowing upon him a grin of fatuous appreciation the voice of Alistair Beag, who was hidden from me by the stone dyke he was rebuilding, had corroborated chummily, ‘Aye, aye, she’s been dodgin’ about like a fart in a colander.’

  The nurse appeared to be shocked. ‘That’s what I dislike so about them!’ she exclaimed. ‘They’re so coarse! And they’re immoral,’ she went on. ‘They blaspheme something terrible, and if they get near a pub they drink themselves silly. And then when the missionary comes round they sit there with their bibles on their knees and pretend they’d never think a dirty thought nor use a bad word. They’re utter hypocrites!’ She paused only while I refilled her cup. ‘Of course,’ she added, ‘I see a lot more of what goes on than you do.’

  ‘Of course,’ I agreed.

  ‘Hypocrites,’ she repeated distastefully.

  ‘Some of them aren’t so bad,’ I demurred.

  ‘They’re still hypocrites, even the best of them,’ she insisted. ‘Look at Anna there. She’s what I’d call a really good woman. Yet you know she gets her water from the well out on the moor on Sundays instead of from Murdoch’s croft right beside the road.’

  I nodded. ‘I know that,’ I said.

  ‘Well, isn’t that sheer hypocrisy? She runs out of water but it’s wicked to carry water on Sunday. So, sooner than let folks see her, she goes to the well out on the moor.’

  I defended: ‘But Anna does get extra water in from the well on a Saturday night. I see her regularly. And,’ I went on, ‘there are so many righteous people with nothing to do on a Sunday except just to pop into Anna’s and have her give them tea. That’s why she runs short of water.’

  ‘Indeed it is,’ agreed the nurse emphatically. ‘But honestly, you’d think the Lord never knew a thing about what these folks do except what the missionary tells Him.’ She took two or three quick sips at her tea and continued. ‘You know Willy who I’m having to go and visit six and seven times a day? It’s cancer, of course, and he’s dying, as I daresay you know?’

  I admitted that I knew, the village having diagnosed Willy’s illness and assessed his probable expectation of life before the doctor had been called in, so that they were already speaking of him as though they were reading his obituary notice.

  ‘Well, here’s hypocrisy for you,’ went on the nurse. ‘Willy’s in dreadful pain and there’s no hope for him whatever but he’s a Seceder and their religion doesn’t allow the use of drugs. Every time I get near the door of that man’s room his wife waylays me. “Now, Nurse,” she says, “don’t you be givin’ him any of those drugs. We believe they’re wicked.” And then she leans over Willy. “Now, Willy,” she says, “don’t be askin Nurse for drugs, you know you’ll go to hell if you do.” As soon as she’s gone out of the room Willy turns to me with the tears and the sweat runnin’ off his face. “For God’s sake, Nurse,” he begs, “give me somethin’ to stop the pain, I canna’ bear it.” ’

  ‘How awful,’ I murmured. ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I give him a shot of morphia,’ returned Nurse without hesitation. ‘I’m not going to stand by and see a man suffer unnecessarily, religion or no religion.’

  ‘Thank goodness!’ I exclaimed. ‘It would be awful to think of dear old Willy suffering like that.’

  ‘His wife came in and caught me at it the other day—and nearly snatched the hypodermic from me.’ She gave a dry little chuckle. ‘She told me I was a vile and s
inful woman bent on sending her husband to hell. I’d have laughed at her if I hadn’t been so angry myself. Instead I told her to calm herself, it was only water I was giving him.’

  ‘Do you think she believed you?’ I asked incredulously.

  ‘No, I don’t think she did,’ replied the nurse, ‘but that’s what they’re like, these Seceders. They just want somebody else to take the responsibility of being the sinner.’ She blew her nose to show she was feeling happier.

  I said thoughtfully: ‘There must be quite a lot of doctors and nurses who are Seceders. What happens then?’

  She gave me a long knowing look from over her spectacles, ‘I’ve worked for one,’ she admitted. ‘And never again, I hope. Of course, if their patients aren’t Seceders they’re doomed for hell anyway, so they get whatever drugs the doctor thinks they need. It’s when the patient is a Seceder I don’t like it.’ She shuddered.

  ‘They just let them suffer?’ I prompted, hoping for her denial.

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you. Maybe you remember Ian Beg, who died not long after you’d come here? Now he was a Seceder, and so was the doctor we had at the time. When Ian was taken ill with cancer he said to the doctor, and I was there beside the bed at the time, “Now, Doctor,” he said, “I know I’m dying and I want you to promise me that no matter how much pain I’m in and how much I beg for relief you’ll not prescribe drugs for me.” The doctor warned him he would probably be in great pain, but Ian was adamant. So the doctor promised. Now I nursed that man till he died and there were times he nearly wrecked the bed in his agony and on a still night you could hear him moaning and crying with pain all over the village. It was terrible for his wife because she wasn’t a Seceder, And it was terrible for me. I used to beg the doctor when he came to let me give Ian a shot of morphia but he wouldn’t go back on his word. I’ve known me and lan’s wife to bury our heads in the hay in the barn to shut out the sound of his screaming when it was getting towards the end, and the hay would be wet with tears after it.’ She sighed a tired reminiscent sigh. ‘Dear Lord, how that man suffered,’ she said, ‘but not one shot of anything did he have throughout his illness.’

  She stared reflectively out of the window and for a few moments the kitchen was sad with our thoughts. ‘Mind you,’ she began again, ‘there aren’t many like Ian. Most of them are firm enough at denying others the use of drugs but when they get a wee twinge of pain themselves they’re soon after me to do something about it.’

  While we had been talking the still water of the bay had become progressively shadowed and I could hear my hens questioning the delay of their evening feed. I asked the nurse to excuse me while I attended to them. She looked at the clock. ‘I suppose I ought to be going, really,’ she said with obvious reluctance, ‘but I’m enjoying my wee ceilidh, and I’ve got to go and see to Willy again in an hour’s time. It doesn’t seem worth going home in the meantime.’

  I suggested she should stay.

  ‘Well, I’ll need to use your toilet,’ she said. ‘That is if you’ve got one.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, a little indignant.

  ‘There’s no “of course” about it,’ she retorted. ‘I had a friend of mine staying with me last year and I left her in one of the houses while I was attending to a patient. She’d been drinking a lot of tea of course and when she got uncomfortable she asked if she could use their toilet. The woman looked at her and said straight out “I’m afraid we haven’t one.” My friend was a bit put out and I suppose she couldn’t help showing it. “You haven’t one?” she gasped. The old woman gave her a haughty look and said, “No, we never felt the need of one yet.” Of course that made my friend think they’d only just moved into the house so she said, “Oh, I see, you haven’t been here long, then?” “Why, yes indeed,” the old woman replied. “We’ve been here twenty-five years.” I just got back into the kitchen then and saw the look on my friend’s face. We got out of the house and she turned to me. “Nurse,” she said, “that old woman’s just told me they’ve lived here for twenty-five years and they’ve never needed a lavatory. Aren’t they peculiar?” ’ Nurse laughed. ‘I had to hurry up and explain that their peculiarity wasn’t biological, it was just that they always used the calf shed.’

  ‘It amuses me the way they just cut a hole in the front and back of the little boys’ pants so that they don’t need to use nappies or train them to pot,’ I said. ‘It’s certainly very effective.’

  ‘Sheer bone-idle laziness!’ snorted the nurse, who had water laid on in her own house and so was not burdened with the task of carrying every drop needed for washing.

  I showed her my ‘wee hoosie’ as I rushed off to feed the hens and put out hay, praying that Bonny would be waiting at the moor gate when Erchy went to let in his own cows, so that she would come home alone without having to go looking for her in the dark after the nurse had gone.

  ‘My goodness!’ said Nurse admiringly when I came back into the kitchen. ‘You’re quite civilised with your toilet.’

  I laughed. ‘It seems a bit barbaric to me still.’

  The problem of sewage disposal in Bruach was, as it must be in every sewerless and waterless village, a difficult and distasteful business. Chemical lavatories are not the answer, certainly where there is no man available for emptying them. They are too heavy for a woman to lift when they are even half full and somewhat wasteful of time and chemical if they are emptied more frequently. I had solved the sewage problem by having two adjoining lavatories; an ordinary chemical one for serious visits and an invention of my own for the more flippant occasions. The idea had come when I had started keeping a cow and found that though she was put into her byre sometimes about four o’clock in an afternoon and not let out again until ten o‘clock the following morning the shingle bottom of the trench behind her was always completely dry. At first I had thought of calling in the vet but after being adequately reassured by Bonny herself I realised that from the byre the land sloped down to the shore so evidently her urine just ran into the shingle and seeped its way into the sea. I worked on this principle for my second lavatory. First I dug a hole in the shingle floor of my ‘wee hoosie’ and into the hole I lowered a section of chimney lining that I had begged from old Murdoch. An old galvanised pan with holes punched roughly in its bottom sat in the chimney lining and this was then topped with a substantial box seat. In the ‘wee hoosie’ I also kept a pail of sea water so that it could be ‘flushed’ immediately after use. It was a simple arrangement but it worked beautifully, and I use the adverb deliberately for on nights when the sea water was full of ‘noctiluca,’ those minute organisms which give the sea its phosphorence, I have waited entranced until the last of the scintillating water has gurgled down from the pail, leaving it transformed by a luminous coating that still glowed greenly as I shut the door.

  ‘I’Il be coming here more often now that I know you’ve a nice little place like that,’ threatened the nurse, ‘I usually have to wait until I get to Janet’s up the road there. She lets me use the toilet they have for the tourists in summer,’ she explained. ‘But you know, Miss Beckwith,’ she continued, ‘that’s where you have it with these people. They’ve gone to the trouble of building a “wee hoosie” so that the tourists have somewhere to go and they even keep a toilet roll in it. But they have the toilet roll fixed to the ceiling instead of the wall.’

  ‘That’s a funny place for it,’ I commented.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ agreed the nurse. ‘I said to her: “Janet,” I said, “why on earth do you keep the toilet roll up on the ceiling? It’s awful hard for a wee body like myself to reach up there when I want it.” “Well, Nurse,” she told me, “it’s like this. Shamus keeps his pet sheep in there at night and if I don’t have the toilet roll way up out of its reach the beast has eaten the lot by morning.”’

  ‘If they have a shed it mustn’t be wasted,’ I observed with a smile; ‘and really I suppose it’s understandable. A “wee hoosie” is only a status symbol that their children insist
on when they come home from university. You’ll notice that a house where there are no young folk doesn’t usually have even the crudest of privies. The old folk seem to find it unnatural to shut themselves up in a confined spaces to relieve themselves.’

  ‘Yes.’ The nurse nodded vigorously. ‘But when they’re getting older and they don’t want to face the storms, that’s when the trouble begins. Then it’s “Nurse, Nurse, I haven’t cacced for days, will ye give me a dose?” You’d wonder too at the amount of calomel it takes to shift them.’ She sighed. ‘Oh, well, I suppose I must go and give Willy his injection——’ She broke off. ‘Goodness, I’ve just remembered I’d promised the teacher I’d go’ down and inspect the children’s heads today. She’s been complaining about them.’

  I looked at her without speaking.

  ‘They were in a shocking state when I attended to them before.’

  ‘How do they get them?’ I asked. ‘Most of the houses seem to be pretty clean.’

  ‘It’s just the one or two that aren’t that cause the trouble,’ she said. ‘I always have to undress on a sheet when I’ve been anywhere near them.’ She moved a few steps towards the door, still loath to say good night. ‘Dear knows what time I’ll get home tonight,’ she said with her hand on the latch. ‘I have to go and see Barabal yet. I suppose you’ve heard about Barabal?’

  ‘No!’ I said with some surprise. ‘Is she ill?’

  ‘No,’ replied the nurse with a look that was meant to convey something out of the ordinary. ‘She’s not ill but the doctor went to see her last week.’

  ‘But why did the doctor go to see her if she’s not ill? I felt foolish the moment the question was off my lips.

  ‘Well, I mustn’t say in my position, must I? But you’d think she’d have had more sense at her age.’ The nurse’s mouth collapsed into a droop of disapproval but her eyes regarded me eagerly from above the spectacles.