The Loud Halo

by Lillian Beckwith

  ‘Ach, likely they’ll give him a dose of castor oil an’ send him home in a day or two,’ said Erchy. ‘I believe that’s an awful lot of what they do in hospital.’

  ‘Castor oil,’ said Donald reminiscently. ‘I mind when I had my arm off the surgeon said I’d had too much castor oil. Likely I had, too, for I used to take a couple of big spoonsful of it every few days then. I reckon that’s what kept me fit while I was at the war, anyway.’

  ‘A couple of spoonsful of it every few days!’ remonstrated Anna Vic. ‘Surely a body had no need of that amount at all?’

  ‘Aye, well, the nurses tried to stop me but I didn’t take any notice of them. Then when this surgeon was takin’ the dressin’ off my arm he said to me, “Donald,” he says, “have you been taking castor oil?” “Aye,” I told him, “I have a dose every now and then.” “Good God, Donald!” he says. “You’ve been taking that much you’ve got it all through your system and it’s comin’ out of your arm here. You must stop it right away or it’ll never heal.” He showed me the dressin’ with all this oil on it—you could see it plain as anythin’. That’s as true as I’m here an’ I’ve never taken another dose of castor oil since,’ Donald concluded, taking a hearty bite out of a scone.

  ‘Johnny wouldn’t be needin’ castor oil so long as he can get bakin’-soda.’ said Morag, when we had disgested Donald’s story. ‘The way that man eats it you’d surely wonder he had a stomach left.’

  ‘It’s a damty good stomach when you think what he puts into it,’ Erchy defended as he got up to go and resume work.

  Donald too stood up. ‘I’d best go an’ seek my arm,’ he told us, ‘for if I don’t find it I’ll need to get the doctor to give me a new one.’

  ‘Best get him to give you a new head, then, while he’s at it,’ suggested Erchy impudently.

  I was still thinking of Johnny Comic and of an article I had recently read which claimed that a Russian doctor had discovered that a daily dose of bicarbonate of soda prolonged life, and I mentioned this as we all straggled out Into the garden, Morag and Anna Vic to take up the burden of their creels once more and Donald to continue his search for his hook.

  ‘If that’s true then Johnny Comic should live for another hundred years,’ said Morag with a chuckle.

  The next day Bruach was dumbfounded by the news that Johnny Comic had passed away during the night.

  ‘An’ did you hear what Kirsty said when she heard it?’ Erchy demanded. ‘She said, “Ach, he was always the same, any little thing killed him.” ’

  We exchanged horrified glances.

  ‘Aye, well,’ resumed Erchy with complete matter-of-factness, ‘I’m glad he’s died in hospital so I won’t have to go and shave him.’

  ‘Why do you always go and shave people when they’re dead?’ I asked him curiously. ‘Is it some superstition you have?’ I was remembering that when Sandy had died Erchy had gone up to shave him on the day he died and then again on the eve of the funeral.

  ‘But the beard grows after they’re dead,’ Erchy explained. ‘An’ these Seceders don’t like the nurse to touch them once they’ve gone.’

  I asked when the funeral was to be.

  ‘It should be tomorrow,’ he told me, ‘but the undertaker sent word this mornin’ that he was at a dance last night so he couldn’t get the coffin ready in time. Now they’re goin’ to bury him on Thursday. We have to go tonight to dig a grave for him, though God knows where we’ll find a place for him.’

  ‘This village really does need a new burial ground,’ I agreed, ‘It’s more like a rabbit warren than a cemetery.’

  ‘Aye, an’ the way you can hear the rabbits runnin’ over the coffins in the graves there! It’s terrible just.’ He lit a cigarette. ‘Aye, well, I expect we’ll find a place for him up by the trees there. It’s a bit away from the rest but I daresay there’ll be others to keep him company soon enough.’

  Thursday morning was full of early mist and when it had dispersed the heather clumps still held their nebulous quota in innumerable spiders’ webs. Early mist usually presages a fine day and I hurried back from milking Bonny for, partly to see for myself Kirsty’s reaction to the death of her brother and partly to please Morag, I had promised to go to the funeral. It was arranged that I should call for Morag at eleven o’clock but as I turned in at the gate of my cottage there was an agitated flutter of starlings from the rowan tree and I realised that, funeral or no funeral, unless I gathered my rowanberries right away the birds would have stripped the lot before I returned. I put down the milk pail, grabbed a step-ladder and started to pick. There can be few sights more beautiful, more arresting, than a rowan tree in autumn with its profusion of red berries glowing against the tawny foliage. And Hebridean rowanberries seem to be so much more colourful than any others. As I harvested them I thought I had never seen them so vibrantly red as they were this year and looking at them in the palm of my hand I half expected to see their tiny pulses beating. When the basket was full there still plenty left for the starlings and when, at the garden gate, I turned to look back at the cottage, the roof was spiky with birds awaiting my departure before re-commencing their banquet.

  The first thing I noticed when Morag and I came in sight of Kirsty’s cottage was the patch of bright colour where Johnny’s garden had always been. I remarked on it to my companion.

  ‘Aye, well, you mind Kirsty’s cow has been that sick for two or three weeks past an’ she’s not had it stirrin’ out of the byre.’

  I didn’t ‘mind’ for no one had thought to mention it.

  ‘Poor Johnny,’ I said. ‘This must be about the first time he’s managed to get flowers to bloom in his garden and now he’s not here to see them.’

  ‘Aye, it’s a shame right enough,’ agreed Morag. ‘An’ it’s a shame about the beast too, for I’m hearin’ she’s not wantin’ to eat anythin’ let alone break into Johnny’s garden to spoil his flowers for him.’

  ‘They’re lupins too,’ I said as we drew near enough to identify them. ‘I remembered him telling me how the laird’s gardener had given him some plants and he was so thrilled about it at the time.’

  ‘An’ just look at them,’ Morag said. ‘It’s as though they know Johnny’s dead for they’re screamin’ out loud with their bloomin’.’

  The tiny kitchen of Kirsty’s house was packed and overflowing with women all supporting or being supported by one another for everyone had been exceedingly fond of Johnny. The older women were dressed in black but the clothes of the younger women made a startling knot of colour in their midst. In front of the house the coffin lay across two kitchen chairs and the men stood in a semicircle round it, chattering among themselves and hunching their shoulders against a brisk breeze that burned their cigarettes away too quickly and scattered fragments of glowing red tobacco from their pipes.

  A couple of sheep dogs kept a wary eye on their masters and scratched themselves dispassionately. There was no sign of Kirsty.

  A car drew up and the missionary got out and greeted the assembled crowd with what seemed to me to be unseemly levity. As he walked towards the coffin cigarettes and pipes were stubbed out. Swiftly there fell a silence that was broken only by the mournfully assertive song of a robin, the liquid call of an oystercatcher and the practised whimpering of a weep of Seceders who had detached themselves from the rest of the mourners.

  ‘Where’s Kirsty?’ the missionary asked.

  Everyone glanced about them as though they had not missed her until now and then someone spotted her coming away from the byre. She was dressed in black but her sleeves were rolled up and before she joined us she bent down and wiped her hands on the grass. We all guessed she had been ministering to her cow and there were whispers of enquiry to which she replied with a negative shake of her head. The missionary must have overheard them.

  ‘Is your cow sick, then, Kirsty?’ he demanded.

  ‘Aye indeed,’ replied Kirsty. ‘I’m thinkin’ she’ll not last the day out.’ Her voice was su
fficiently funereal to convince everyone of her utter dismay.

  ‘Oh, my, my,’ said the missionary in shocked tones.

  This particular missionary had often been described to me as ‘a good missionary but a better cow doctor’, so I was interested to see his reaction. He seemed to consider for a moment, and when he had made up his mind he snapped shut his book and laid it down on top of the coffin. ‘Johnny has passed on,’ he told us seriously, ‘an’ hell take no harm from waitin’ there while I go an’ take a look at Kirsty’s cow,’ and rolling up the legs of his good black trousers he picked his way across the dungy path to the byre. Everyone followed in that direction.

  ‘What ails the beast, d’you think, Kirsty?’ he asked her.

  ‘Indeed, but I don’t know. She must have eaten somethin’ strange, I’m thinkin’. She’s been stuck fast for the last five days now an’ nothin’ the vet’s sent will move her. I’ve been expectin’ to find her gone each time I’ve come out to look at her.’

  The byre was small and dark but we saw the missionary step over to the cow and feel her bones. Then he stepped back, pulled his black hat over his eyes a little and stared at the beast, biting his lips. Kirsty watched him intently and the mourners crowded closer to the door.

  ‘Kirsty!’ said the missionary at last, ‘you’re surely goin’ to lose this beast.’

  ‘Surely,’ agreed Kirsty philosophically.

  ‘Well then, as you’re goin’ to lose her in any case you’ll no mind takin’ a bitty risk with her?’

  Kirsty nodded.

  ‘Now, have you any Epsom salts?’

  ‘Aye, I have some,’ Kirsty told him.

  ‘Well, you’ll take two pounds of Epsom salts.’ There was a gasp from the crowd. ‘Now, repeat it as I say it so you’ll not get it wrong,’ the missionary instructed testily.

  ‘I’ll take two packets of Epsom salts,’ faltered Kirsty, with unaccustomed submissiveness.

  ‘Two pounds, woman!’ the missionary shouted. ‘Yon packets you get from the grocer is only about two ounces. You’ll need sixteen of them. It’s got to be kill or cure.’

  ‘Two pounds of Epsom salts,’ repeated Kirsty, meek as a child.

  ‘And four pounds of margarine.’

  ‘Four pounds of margarine.’

  I felt Morag gripping my arm and there was no sound from the tense crowd round the door.

  ‘Four pounds of treacle,’ the missionary continued inexorably. ‘An’ when you’ve mixed them all together you can make it into balls and dip them into oatmeal and give them to her.’

  ‘When will I give it to her?’ Kirsty asked.

  The missionary looked at the crowd and his eye lighted on Alistair. ‘Alistair Mor Ruari!’ he addressed him. ‘You have long arms and no wife to be girnin’ if you mess up your clothes so you can give her the dose right now while I’m here.’

  The crowd relaxed and some of the women rushed off to collect the ingredients for the medicine. It seemed only a short time before they were back with a sticky-looking mess in a pail which Kirsty moulded into balls and handed to Alistair who rammed them down the cow’s throat one by one.

  ‘Now,’ said the missionary when that was done. ‘See that the last thing before you go to bed, Kirsty, if the beast’s still alive, you’ll give her a quart of linseed oil mixed with a pint of turpentine. Now promise you’ll do that.’

  ‘Tonight,’ Kirsty said with steady emphasis, ‘if the Lord spares me, I’ll give her a quart of linseed oil and a pint of turpentine.’

  ‘You mean if the Lord spares the cow,’ murmured a familiar voice behind me. ‘’Tis no’ you, Kirsty, who’s takin’ the dose.’

  There was a faint titter from the crowd which was hushed immediately as the missionary rounded upon them.

  ‘I’m thinkin’,’ he said, with gruesome practicality, ‘if this beast dies in the night she’ll be that swollen by mornin’ you’ll never get her out of this narrow doorway without cuttin’ her to pieces first. You’d best just get her down to the bog where there’s plenty of soft ground that’ll make the buryin’ of her easy.’

  The men rallied round the cow and carried and pushed the poor emaciated creature down towards the bog. By the time they returned the missionary had reassumed an appropriately obsequial air and commenced to read the burial service.

  ‘I was wonderin’,’ said Janet hesitantly to Morag and me as we watched the men carrying away the coffin for burial, ‘Johnny bein’ so fond of his flowers, would we pick them and put them on his grave?’ As we approved her thought she suggested it to Kirsty who apparently agreed for a few moments later we saw them gathering armfuls of the blooms and then following the cortege down the road.

  We walked home in the September sun, discussing the remarkable ‘dose’ the missionary had prescribed.

  ‘I doubt the linseed oil alone will be enough to turn the beast inside out,’ Morag predicted.

  Early on Friday morning I began the rather tedious process of making rowan wine and was putting a great deal of energy into pulping the berries when Erchy arrived.

  ‘Come an’ we’ll get your cupboard while the tide’s high,’ he said. ‘It’ll not be so far to carry it down the shore.’

  On one of my beachcombing expeditions I had found washed up a very nice ship’s locker which I thought would do very well for a cupboard in my kitchen. It was much too big and heavy for me to carry home alone so I had asked Erchy if he would come with me some time and we would get it home by boat.

  We dragged the dinghy down the beach and while Erchy took the oars I huddled in the stern. The morning held the threat of rain over the grey water and the hills looked cold and snuffly with shreds of white cloud clinging about them, like discarded paper handkerchiefs. Erchy was uncommunicative and the boat nosed forward with only the squeak of the oars in the rowlocks and the splash of the blades on the water for an accompaniment. A few lethargic raindrops fell, pitting the slack surface of the sea like the enlarged pores in an old woman’s face.

  Erchy’s eyes suddenly became focussed on the land. ‘That looks like Kirsty on the shore there,’ he said. I twisted round on the thwart and espied a figure hurrying along the edge of the cliff and stopping every few minutes to peer at the shore. ‘I wonder what she’s after,’ Erchy mused.

  ‘I think she’s beckoning us to go in,’ I said. ‘Do you think she’s all right?’

  ‘We’d best go in and see, anyway,’ Erchy replied. He steered the boat towards the shore and Kirsty scrambled agilely down the cliff and came towards us. Erchy got out and held the dinghy, greeting her with taut interrogation.

  I was struck by her woebegone expression and the muted urgency of her voice. Only once before had I seen Kirsty looking so thoroughly discomfited and that had been when Erchy, stung by some innuendo she had made, had boldly taunted her in front of several people that he ‘didn’t believe she’d ever had a man up her skirts in her life’. Kirsty, utterly shamefaced, had admitted that she ‘didn’t believe she ever had’. Now it seemed, as she had not looked much affected by Johnny’s funeral yesterday, that something equally disconcerting had happened.

  ‘I’ve lost my cow,’ she informed us in a stricken voice.

  ‘Ach, well you expected to. The missionary told you that yesterday,’ retorted Erchy.

  ‘I don’t mean that. I’m sayin’ I can’t find her anywhere.’

  Both Erchy and I stared a her with extravagant surprises.

  ‘You cannot find her?’ Erchy repeated.

  ‘I’ve looked everywhere an’ I cannot find the beast. Come an’ see for yourselves.’

  We pulled the dinghy above the tide and followed Kirsty to the bog where the cow had been left the previous evening.

  There was no sign of the beast.

  ‘My God! What’s these?’ ejaculated Erchy, bending down to peer at some hoof marks scored deep into the bog. He scratched his head bewilderedly.

  ‘It’s as though somebody was after chasin’ the beast,’ suggested Kirsty.
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  ‘Indeed, if that dose has worked her I doubt she’ll think she had the devil himself chasin’ her,’ he vouchsafed.

  Together we followed the hoof marks and they led us strangely enough towards the burial ground. I think even before we came in sight of it that Kirsty and I suspected what had happened.

  ‘Somebody’s left the gate open,’ Kirsty said, and there was dread in her voice.

  ‘Them damty flowers!’ Erchy upbraided her. ‘I said yesterday it was a daft idea an’ I say it more so now.’

  We stood in the open gateway of the burial ground and looked towards Johnny’s grave, a little apart from all the other crowded graves. The cow stood beside it, sublimely chewing her cud. There was no sign of the lupins but all round and completely covering the grave there were seas and seas of manure, and the smell was appalling.

  ‘Look at that, now,’ said Erchy in an awestruck voice. ‘You cannot say she’s stuck now, anyway.’

  ‘The defiler!’ breathed Kirsty. ‘What will folks say of me when they see I’ve let my cow defile my own brother’s grave?’ She became almost human in her anguish. ‘What will the missionary say?’

  ‘Ach, if you say nothin’ the rain’ll get rid of the manure for you, but you’d best get the beast out of the way pretty quick,’ Erchy advised. Kirsty ‘stood not upon the order of her going’ and in a trice the cow was out of the burial ground and being driven up the road towards her byre.

  Without a word Erchy closed the gate of the burial ground after us and we returned to the boat. When he had rowed a few strokes he rested on his oars. ‘That’s the queerest dose ever I heard of to cure a sick beast,’ he said, his voice full of wonder. ‘Man! But that must be a good cow doctor.’ He resumed rowing again but his perplexed expression betrayed that he was still pondering the miracle of the cure.

  By the time we reached home with the cupboard the rain was pouring unstintedly from a sagging grey sky. It continued over the weekend and on Monday morning Erchy, who had been doing some careful reconnoitring, reported that there was no longer any trace of manure to be seen at the burial ground. The village, if they noticed anything amiss, refrained from comment but the next time the missionary came out for a funeral he was heard impressing on Kirsty what a good man her brother must have been because the Lord had made the grass grow so much greener over and around his grave than anywhere else. He likened it to a ‘green halo’.