A Little, Aloud

by Angela Macmillan

  ‘You said I might go, sir.’

  ‘But not without taking leave; not without a word or two of acknowledgment and good-will: not, in short, in that brief, dry fashion. Why, you have saved my life! – snatched me from a horrible and excruciating death! and you walk past me as if we were mutual strangers! At least shake hands.’

  He held out his hand; I gave him mine: he took it first in one, then in both his own.

  ‘You have saved my life: I have a pleasure in owing you so immense a debt. I cannot say more. Nothing else that has being would have been tolerable to me in the character of creditor for such an obligation: but you: it is different; – I feel your benefits no burden, Jane.’

  He paused; gazed at me: words almost visible trembled on his lips, – but his voice was checked.

  ‘Good-night again, sir. There is no debt, benefit, burden, obligation, in the case.’

  ‘I knew,’ he continued, ‘you would do me good in some way, at some time; – I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you: their expression and smile did not’ – (again he stopped) – ‘did not’ (he proceeded hastily) ‘strike delight to my very inmost heart so for nothing. People talk of natural sympathies; I have heard of good genii: there are grains of truth in the wildest fable. My cherished preserver, goodnight!’

  Strange energy was in his voice, strange fire in his look.

  ‘I am glad I happened to be awake,’ I said: and then I was going.

  ‘What! you will go?’

  ‘I am cold, sir.’

  ‘Cold? Yes, – and standing in a pool! Go, then, Jane; go!’ But he still retained my hand, and I could not free it. I bethought myself of an expedient.

  ‘I think I hear Mrs Fairfax move, sir,’ said I.

  ‘Well, leave me:’ he relaxed his fingers, and I was gone.

  I regained my couch, but never thought of sleep. Till morning dawned I was tossed on a buoyant but unquiet sea, where billows of trouble rolled under surges of joy. I thought sometimes I saw beyond its wild waters a shore, sweet as the hills of Beulah; and now and then a freshening gale, wakened by hope, bore my spirit triumphantly towards the bourne: but I could not reach it, even in fancy – a counteracting breeze blew off land, and continually drove me back. Too feverish to rest, I rose as soon as day dawned.

  TO ANTHEA, WHO MAY COMMAND HIM ANYTHING

  Robert Herrick

  Bid me to live, and I will live

  Thy Protestant to be:

  Or bid me love, and I will give

  A loving heart to thee.

  A heart as soft, a heart as kind,

  A heart as sound and free

  As in the whole world thou canst find,

  That heart I’ll give to thee.

  Bid that heart stay, and it will stay

  To honour thy decree:

  Or bid it languish quite away,

  And ’t shall do so for thee.

  Bid me to weep, and I will weep

  While I have eyes to see:

  And, having none, yet I will keep

  A heart to weep for thee.

  Bid me despair, and I’ll despair,

  Under that cypress tree:

  Or bid me die, and I will dare

  E’en death to die for thee.

  Thou art my life, my love, my heart,

  The very eyes of me,

  And hast command of every part,

  To live and die for thee.

  READING NOTES

  Most members of a young mothers’ group were moved by the full-blown, passionate love poem and compared this state with what seemed to be just the first stirring of love between Jane and Rochester in the chapter from Jane Eyre. ‘They don’t really know they are in love,’ Emma thought, and everyone then looked for evidence of something more than ordinary concern for each other. Emma wished someone would write her a love poem like Herrick’s and one or two members said that they had tried to write poetry, though never love poetry. The group took turns to read out their favourite verse, the final verse proving the most popular, though one mother thought it was ‘over-emotional and embarrassing’. Discussion then turned back to the story and in particular to what Rochester meant when he said, ‘I feel your benefits no burden, Jane.’ One person had seen a film version; no one had read the book; and there was speculation on who might have set fire to the bed and to what happened next.

  Loving

  THE FIGHT IN THE PLOUGH AND OX

  George Mackay Brown

  (approximate reading time 16 minutes)

  1

  The farmers in the parish were peaceable men, and they drank on market days in an alehouse, the Plough and Ox kept by a lady called Madge Brims.

  The fishermen’s pub was called the Arctic Whaler. There the fishermen drank when they came in cold from the lobster fishing.

  The men from the farms – the ploughmen and the shepherds – got on quite well with the fishermen. They met and mingled on the Hamnavoe street at the weekends, and sometimes exchanged a few bantering words. Once or twice a fight threatened, when the young ones fell to arguing, mostly about girls; but then the older men would come between the spitters and snarlers, and patch things up, and there was rarely ill-feeling.

  But the country men never darkened the door of the Arctic Whaler, nor did the lobster men stand outside the door of Madge Brims’s, the wall of which was studded with horseshoes, and think for one moment of going in there for a glass of Old Orkney whisky, price threepence.

  The men from the land and the men from the sea segregated themselves strictly, when it came to refreshments at the end of a day’s hard work.

  In the Arctic Whaler, you would hear talk of smuggled tobacco from a Dutch ship, whales, halibut so big they broke the nets, shipwrecks, seal-women.

  There was none of that kind of talk in Mistress Brims’s – it was all about horse and ox, the best way to train a sheepdog, oats and barley, whether it was better to grind one’s own grain or to take it in a cart to the scoundrel of a miller. Often, of course, the young men spoke about the lasses. The bonniest lass in the parish that year was said to be Jenny of Furss, the one daughter of a very poor crofter called Sam Moorfea of Furss. Sam was so poor he couldn’t even afford to drink in Madge’s place, where the ale was a penny the pewter mug. Sam Moorfea had to sit beside the fire at home and drink the ale he brewed himself, poured out for him by his beautiful daughter Jenny.

  ‘Oh, but she’s a right bonny lass, Jenny!’ said Will the blacksmith who, by reason of his calling, always drank with the farm men. ‘I would like well to have Jenny take me a mug of buttermilk, every day when I stand wiping sweat from me between the forge and anvil.’

  ‘No, Jenny deserves better than that,’ said John Greenay, whose father owned a big farm. ‘I can see Jenny with her arms full of sheaves at harvest time, and her long hair blowing brighter above them in the wind.’

  The young countrymen seemed to vie with each other, that summer, in praise of Jenny Moorfea. Their faces shone, with joy and beer. The old men shook their heads in the hostelry, as much as to say, ‘We thought that way once, too, before the sweet-mouthed lasses we married began to nag and rage at us . . .’ They winked at each other, the old men. ‘Ah well, but they’ll find out in time, the young fools that they are . . .’

  2

  It so happened that Sam Moorfea had such a poor croft, and three young boys to feed, that he kept a small fishing-boat on the beach, and fished inshore for haddocks whenever he had a moment to spare from ploughing and threshing. His wife was six years dead, and so Jenny did all the housework and brought up her three brothers well, and whenever her father caught a basket of fish, Jenny took them to Hamnavoe to sell to the housewives there.

  And so, Jenny got to know the fishing folk well too. And that summer, when Jenny had arrived at her full beauty, some of the young fishermen looked at her, and they thought they had never in their lives seen such a lovely creature.

  That first night, in the Arctic Whaler, the young men’s talk was all of J
enny of Furss. ‘My grandfather,’ said Tom Swanbister, ‘saw a mermaid on the Kirk Rocks and he was never done speaking about her beauty, but – poor old man – he died without setting eyes on Jenny Moorfea . . .’

  ‘I’m saving up for a new boat,’ said Alec Houton, ‘I have twelve sovereigns now in the jar in my mother’s cupboard. I would pour them singing into Jenny’s hands for one kiss . . .’

  Stephen Hoy said, ‘I’m going to call my new boat Jenny. I was going to call her the Annie after the lass next door, that I thought I might marry some day. But now I’ve settled for Jenny. I’ll get good catches with the Jenny.’

  There was a young fisherman called Bertie Ness. At the mention of the name Jenny, a look of purest joy came on his face. But he said nothing.

  The old fishermen at the bar counter shook their heads and turned pitying looks on the young fishermen. They had thought things like that too, in their youth, and they were still poor men, and they were nagged and raged at when they came in from the west with half-empty baskets.

  3

  It happened that year, that there was a very good harvest in Orkney, the most bountiful for twenty years. Even the poor croft of Furss was studded with golden stooks.

  It was far otherwise on the sea. From horizon to horizon, the sea was barren. It seemed that the lobsters had gone in their blue armour to fight in distant underseas wars. It seemed that haddock and cod had been drawn by that enchantress, the moon, to far-away trystings.

  It was a very hard summer along the waterfront of Hamnavoe.

  Week after week the boats returned empty from the west, to the shrieking of gulls and the mewling of cats and – worse – the tongue-tempests of the womenfolk.

  No wonder it drove the men, after sunset, to the Arctic Whaler, where they sat silent and brooding for the most part.

  One evening Stephen Hoy and Alec Houton quarrelled with each other in the Arctic Whaler as to which of their boats could sail furthest west. It began mildly enough, but soon they were snarling at each other. Other fishermen, young and old, joined in the dispute, voices were raised, old half-forgotten ancestral disputes were aired; it reached such a stage of anger that Walter Groat the landlord told them all to leave, get out, come back when they had some money to spend (for lately they had been sitting at the tables till midnight over one mug of thin beer, all they could afford).

  Out they trooped, like sullen churlish chidden dogs. The old men went home to their many-worded wives. The young men drifted by twos and threes along the street. At last they found themselves outside Madge Brims’s hostelry. Inside, merry rustic voices were raised. Tomorrow was Harvest Home; they were getting in good voice for it.

  The young fishermen did a thing never heard of before: they entered the tavern of the hill men, the farmers, the shepherds.

  A sudden silence fell. It was as if a troop of wretched penniless outcast beachcombers had trooped up from the shore, bringing the coldness of the ebb with them – and that was pretty much the way things stood that night, in fact, with the fishermen.

  But soon the country men returned to their drams and their stories and their loud bothy songs.

  One or two went so far as to walk across to where the bitter fishermen stood against the wall and give them a welcome. Will the blacksmith offered to buy them all a dram. ‘You look that miserable,’ he said.

  The fishermen looked at him coldly.

  ‘Can I do anything for you gentlemen?’ said Madge Brims to the young men from the salt piers. They answered her never a word.

  From then on, the boys from the farms, the crofts, and the sheepfolds ignored those boors of fishermen.

  They began to talk about girls. It was the high mark of every discussion or debate or flyting or boasting in Madge Brims’s hostelry – it was inevitable – it ended up with praise of bonny lasses.

  At last John Greenay, son and heir of the wealthiest farmer in the parish, his face flushed like sunset with whisky, said, ‘We all know fine who is the bonniest lass hereabouts, and that’s Jenny Moorfea of Furss. And now I’m going to tell you men something – I’m going to marry Jenny in October. I’m going to take her home to Netherquoy. She’ll be mistress there, some day.’

  Hardly was the last boastful word out of his mouth than it was silenced by the impact of a pewter mug. The mug had been seized from a table by Stephen Hoy the fisherman and hurled with full force.

  And at the same time Alec Houton yelled, ‘You yokel! You dung-spreader! Jenny Moorfea is coming to our pier to be my wife!’

  A trickle of blood came from John Greenay’s split lip. The pewter mug rolled about on the flagstone floor, clattering. That was the only sound to be heard for fully five seconds.

  Then the young farm men leapt to the defence of their companion. They didn’t like John Greenay all that much – he boasted overmuch about his gear and goods – and besides, they loved Jenny Moorfea more than he did (or so they supposed). But those young fishermen had challenged and insulted the whole race of farmers.

  It was the worse fight ever known in a Hamnavoe hostelry since the days of the whaling men a century before. There was a flinging and thudding of fists – there were shouts of rage, contempt, fear, and pain – glasses splintered against the wall – heavy pewter mugs rang like armour on the stone floor – noses were broken, eyes looked like thunder clouds. Will Laird the blacksmith spat out a tooth. Hands closed about throats. There was the flash of a fishing knife. A table was knocked over and twelve glasses and mugs and half a bottle of Old Man of Hoy whisky fell in ruins.

  It was the knife-flash that finally unlocked the petrified mouth of Madge Brims. ‘Police!’ she shouted from the open door of the hostelry. ‘Help! Murder! My walls are splashed with whisky and beer and blood!’

  What did our heroes care about the law and the disturbance of the Queen’s peace? The shouts of battle grew louder. It seemed, in fact, as if an element of joy had entered into the affray. Frankie Stenhouse the young shepherd kicked the sea knife out of Ronald the fisherman’s hand. It was to be a fair fist-fight – no heart-stabbings – no hangings for murder.

  And still the wounded fighters (for not one of them now but had a broken nose or a thunder-loaded eye or a fractured jaw) melled bloodily on the floor, and raged louder against each other (with, it seemed to some, a mounting access of joy and delight).

  Madge Brims had abandoned her tavern to go to the police station in the south end of Hamnavoe, a mile away, to summon the solitary policeman, Constable Bunahill.

  A cunning lazy rouge of a fisherman, Simon Readypenny, seized his chance when the battle was at its height to slip behind the counter and put a bottle of brandy into one sea pocket and a bottle of Jamaica into another. And he disappeared into the night, leaving the tumult and the shouting to the fools. (He was found, grey in the face, in a cave, the next morning.)

  The tumult and the shouting! It had now reached such a pitch that it could be heard in the granite houses of the respectable merchants and magistrates at the back of the town; and the shopkeepers got out of their beds and double-locked their doors. Indeed, a Graemsay man claimed to have heard the din in his island across Hoy Sound.

  Then, a sudden silence fell.

  The combatants disengaged themselves. They got to their feet, they made some semblance of wiping the blood from their faces with their shirt sleeves. Will Laird the blacksmith took a splinter of a whisky glass out of his beard.

  They would not look at each other. They shuffled their feet like naughty boys chidden by the headmaster.

  They were all on their feet now, in the wrecked hostelry, except young Bertie Ness the fisherman, whose kneecap had been cracked by a random kick.

  The warriors had become aware of a presence in the pub door. All the snarling heads had turned at once. Jenny Moorfea of Furss was standing there, looking lovelier than any of them had ever seen her before.

  Jenny Moorfea pushed her way through the wounds and the dishevelment, and she knelt down beside Bertie Ness, the stricken one,
the poorest of all the poor fishermen there, and she kissed him.

  4

  That is all that needs to be said about the celebrated battle in Madge Brims’s bar.

  Six men – three from the farms, three from the fishing-boats – appeared at the Burgh court the following week and were fined half-a-crown each for disturbing the peace.

  Then all six of them went from the courthouse into a neutral bar and pledged each other like battle-scarred comrades.

  The following April, Jenny and Bertie Ness were married in the kirk.

  They rented a little house at the end of a stone pier. Bertie Ness went to the fishing to begin with, with Stephen Hoy in his new boat, the Annie.

  They had such good fishing that summer, and for the two succeeding summers, that Bertie was able to buy a secondhand fishing-boat for himself, the Madge Brims, and also to buy their cottage.

  Now they have three children, and the two boys are as winsome as their mother, and the youngest – the daughter – is a delight to all the folk that live along that waterfront.

  MY LOVE IS LIKE A RED, RED ROSE

  Robert Burns

  O my Luve’s like a red, red rose,

  That’s newly sprung in June;

  Oh my Luve’s like the melodie,

  That’s sweetly play’d in tune.

  As fair art thou, my bonie lass,

  So deep in luve am I;

  And I will love thee still, my Dear,

  Till a’ the seas gang dry.

  Till a’ the seas gang dry, my Dear,

  And the rocks melt wi’ the sun:

  And I will love thee still, my Dear,

  While the sands o’ life shall run.

  And fare thee weel, my only Luve!

  And fare thee weel, a while!