The Hills is Lonely

by Lillian Beckwith

  ‘There’s a rat!’ I gabbled hysterically. ‘A rat! A rat! He’s taken your bread!’

  Morag pulled at my skirts; Farquhar stopped eating and stared at me; only the rat remained completely self-possessed.

  ‘Surely,’ answered Farquhar mildly. ‘’Tis for him that I’m after puttin’ it there.’

  ‘You put it there for a rat?’ I stammered in awed incredulity. ‘Is it poisoned then?’

  ‘Indeed no,’ replied Farquhar, ‘but I always put something out for him when I take my own food and he knows it well.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked weakly.

  ‘Because if I didn’t he would come up here and pinch mine,’ answered the old man philosophically.

  I gripped Morag’s arm as a second rat appeared at the opposite corner and took away the remaining slice of bread.

  ‘That’s his wife.’ Farquhar explained, but I was too upset even to pretend an interest in rodent relationships.

  ‘Is it just two pets you have?’ I asked, gingerly lowering myself to the seat.

  ‘Ach indeed no!’ Morag answered for him. ‘Sure all the rats in the village is welcome in Farquhar’s house.’ She turned to the old man. ‘I hope the rest are as well trained as those two.’

  Farquhar shook his head in sorrowful denial.

  I made desperate signs that I wished to go home, but courtesy forbade brief partings and so it was some agonising minutes before I made for the door with what Morag afterwards referred to as ‘indigent haste’.

  ‘Come again any time, Miss Peckwitt,’ Farquhar called; ‘and don’t be afraid of the rats,’ he chuckled. ‘Rats is all right. I always know what to expect from a rat, and that’s more than I can say of any other body in this village.’

  ‘What did you think of that now?’ queried Morag when we were a safe distance from the house.

  I made no reply.

  Morag laughed. ‘He’s got some sense though has old Farquhar,’ she said.

  ‘That’s not my impression of him,’ I retorted.

  It was now past midnight; the sky had cleared completely and a brilliantly full moon sailed placidly on an indigo sea. The distant hills were crested with silver and away to our right Rhuna Island appeared like a handful of crushed black velvet dropped carelessly on the water. We walked quickly, for the night was cold. A rabbit darted across my path and I jumped as though shot.

  ‘It’s no a rat,’ comforted Morag. I guessed that Miss Peckwitt and the rats would soon be making a good ceilidh story.

  As we neared the burial ground we saw that the bus still stood outside.

  ‘Good,’ said my landlady; ‘maybe we’ll be able to get a lift home.’

  A murmur of voices reached us and turning into the ill-kept graveyard we went towards them, picking our way through tufts of weed and evading the cluttering branches.

  Suddenly Morag pulled me to a stop.

  ‘Listen!’ she commanded.

  I listened with a quaking heart uneasy among the shadowed grey tombstones and the sibilant rustling of trees. The voices became distinct.

  ‘My, you near had that one.’

  With relief I recognised Lachy’s voice, for the second time that evening.

  ‘Try again.’ That was undoubtedly Johnny. ‘Maybe you’ll get it this time.’

  There was a sound as of a pebble falling, followed by an exclamation of disgust, and then Lachy’s voice again: ‘Your turn, Angus.’

  Morag held my arm tightly.

  ‘What on earth can they be doing?’ I whispered fiercely.

  Cautiously edging our way between drunken tombstones and avoiding innumerable rabbit burrows, we moved forward, guided by a strong aroma of whisky which had completely overcome the customary dank and musty smell of the graves, to come upon a spectacle as macabre as that of the graveyard scene from Hamlet. Lachy, Johnny and Angus were crouched together in a devout-enough-looking group and were staring as though hypnotised at a wooden cross about ten yards in front of them. I too stared at the cross, for spiked carelessly on top of it was a widely grinning human skull.

  ‘Throw!’ Johnny’s voice broke out imperiously into the temporary silence.

  Angus drew back his arm, a pebble hit the skull, and Lachy, going forward to inspect the target, gave a shout of admiration: ‘Good for you, man! That’s only five teeth he has left now.’

  ‘Good-oh!’ ejaculated Johnny. ‘We’ll finish him off tonight yet.’

  To come across three grave-diggers playing Aunt Sally in the moonlight with a human skull as a target was a shattering enough experience, but I had yet to appreciate the full horror of the situation. Morag stepped forward bristling with indignation.

  ‘Why! Johnny. Lachy, Angus!’ she addressed them with withering scorn. ‘I’m ashamed of you! Grown men like yourselves, and nothin’ better to do when you’re supposed to be diggin’ a grave for a poor man, than be playin’ games with a corpus.’

  The three men looked sheepish, but only for a moment.

  ‘We’ve finished diggin’ the grave,’ Lachy replied pertly.

  ‘Show me, then,’ demanded Morag.

  We followed them towards a clump of bushes a few yards away and looked down at a grave which was no more than two feet deep. Beside it lay a large sod of turf which had been rolled around a tree-trunk, Swiss roll fashion.

  ‘Surely if you don’t put him deeper than that the dogs will have him out by the mornin’!’ Morag reprimanded, throwing out her hands in a gesture of despair.

  ‘He’ll be all right there,’ said Johnny brusquely.

  ‘He will not,’ answered Morag; ‘why did you no put him over there where there’s more soil?’

  ‘Because it’s so boggy over there now that the first shower of rain will float him out,’ replied the undaunted Lachy.

  ‘It’s only one bottle of whisky we got and it’s only one grave we’re diggin’,’ put in Angus.

  Morag sighed heavily.

  ‘Anyway,’ continued Lachy, ‘even diggin’ that far we’ve dug up one body, so it must be plenty deep enough.’

  ‘Who would that be?’ asked Morag with sudden interest.

  ‘You remember yon fellow who was drowned in England about twenty years ago, and they did somethin’ to his body and sent him up here?’

  ‘So I do,’ replied Morag; ‘Euan Beag that was surely?’

  ‘Aye, well it was him.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Morag sucked in her breath impressively. ‘And what has he kept like?’ she asked, curiosity overcoming indignation.

  ‘He was just as good as new,’ answered Johnny, and the other two echoed his words.

  ‘And you had to bury him again?’ pursued Morag.

  ‘No, we didn’t yet.’

  ‘You didn’t? Then what did you do with him?’

  ‘Ach, he’s just there,’ answered Lachy, pointing; ‘in the bushes there behind where Miss Peckwitt is standin’.’

  Miss Peckwitt moved very quickly away from the bushes.

  ‘He’s kept so well all these years, he’ll keep a good while longer, so we’ll put Ian Mor in and then put Euan Beag on top of him. That’s the best way to keep the dogs out.’

  The logic of Lachy’s argument seemed to appeal to Morag, but she was a little disturbed in case someone might find the body under the bushes.

  ‘Ach, stop frettin’,’ Angus chided her; ‘we covered him over well with bracken and twigs, and there’s nobody will find him there unless they tread on him first.’

  I followed very closely on the heels of my companions.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Morag stopped and pointed to a mound that was conspicuous by its neatness.

  ‘That’s Donachan, that was,’ said Lachy in words strangely reminiscent of a famous petrol advertisement.

  When we returned to the site of the Aunt Sally Morag went straight up to the skull and, taking it down from its perch, examined it critically.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ she enquired.

  ‘Same grave,’ said Lachy nonchalantly.
‘We found three of them altogether. That one was on the top.’

  With renewed indignation Morag turned on the bus driver.

  ‘Why, Johnny! This is your poor great-grandfather, and indeed if he’d been alive this day, I’m tellin’ you, you’d no be darin’ to play skittles with his teeths.’

  This statement was received in a contrite silence which lasted perhaps three seconds.

  ‘Well. I wish I’d inherited his teeth,’ said Johnny with unseemly levity.

  Morag looked at the skull affectionately, turning it round in her hands as a fond mother might display a pretty doll to a child.

  ‘There’s not a mite of him you’ve inherited,’ said Morag tartly. ‘You’re no half, no, not a quarter the man he was.’

  Johnny shuffled uncomfortably from one foot to the other.

  ‘Where’s the rest of him?’ Morag demanded.

  Johnny pointed and Morag handed him the skull with the injunction that he must put it back with the rest of his great-grandfather.

  ‘Not till we’ve finished our game,’ insisted Johnny. ‘I’ve got twenty cigarettes on it, and he canna’ feel anythin’ now.’

  Morag clucked despairingly.

  ‘You shouldn’t make people dig graves if you don’t like what we do here,’ began Lachy argumentatively.

  ‘Why, people must die and graves must be dug,’ Morag interposed regretfully.

  ‘Why shouldn’t we just burn them?’ asked Angus.

  ‘D’you mean we should all be incriminated?’ Morag’s voice rose shrilly.

  ‘Aye indeed.’

  ‘Angus Mor Ruari! May the Good Lord forgive you for your words,’ prayed Morag with infinite pathos. ‘I hope nobody will have the wickedness to incriminate me when I die, or I’ll haunt them sure as I’m here.’ With this threat she drew herself up stiffly. ‘Why,’ she taunted them as she turned to go, ‘to incriminate anybody is as wicked as murderin’ them.’

  I followed her out of the graveyard, after one hasty glance over my shoulder which snowed me the target being replaced and the men preparing to take up their positions. Morag evidently saw it too, for she paused and shouted warningly: ‘Johnny! See and don’t leave your great-grandfather lyin’ around or the seagulls will have him for sure.’

  The next day, which was cold and blustery, we gathered at the house on the shore to see Ian Mor on his last journey.

  ‘It’ll be the minister himself to bury him,’ said Morag; ‘the missionary is laid aside.’

  ‘He’s dead d’you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘No, no, he’s just laid aside through illness.’

  By the time we arrived the coffin had already been brought from the house and had been placed on two kitchen chairs in front of the door. I recognised in the black-clad, bowler-hatted undertaker my friend the taxi-driver. He was moving with solemn decorum among the cluster of mourners, shaking hands, muttering greetings, and, to judge from the expressions of some of the people, indulging in some pretty humorous wisecracking at the same time.

  The minister, wearing a black overcoat and hat, a striking canary-yellow muffler and brown boots, arrived in due course and insisted upon shaking hands with everyone lengthily and boisterously. The preliminaries over, he took up his station behind the coffin, and the men, except for those not directly under the minister’s eye, doused their cigarettes and bowed their heads reverently, though only the undertaker removed his hat. The women began to leak out of the house to congregate in a colourful knot in the doorway. They commenced to knuckle their eyes with hard, work-coarsened hands and to sigh and moan, faintly at first and then louder, but their grief, despite quite genuine tears, seemed almost mechanical. Their expressions remained alert and watchful; their eyes, darting here and there, missed nothing of what was going on. Shortly after the service had begun, two latecomers—young girls dressed in blatant reds and blues—came galloping up, their faces glowing with the exercise and excitement. Without ceremony they pushed their way through the crowd of men and insinuated themselves into the huddled group in the doorway. They turned to face the coffin and miraculously their faces had become composed into masks of condolence.

  It was sometimes difficult to hear the words of the service above the rustle of wind in the trees, the plashing of waves on the shingle, the wailing of the women and the mocking chorus of the seagulls as they hovered and wheeled above us. There was a glut of herring in the loch and the presence of the seagulls caused much discomfiture to the mourners who, from time to time, lifted irreverent heads to glare with savage apprehension at the offenders. Imperturbably the minister droned on, though when he came to the words ‘and the years of our age are threescore and ten’ I got the impression, both from his tone and his countenance, that he was feeling rather cross with Ian Mor for having cheated him out of a job for nine years.

  The service over, the men began to form themselves into a long double line. The first six grasped the handles of the coffin and, with the nearest male relative of the deceased man to lead the coffin by a silken cord, the procession moved off at a leisured pace. The minister, after bidding everyone a cheerful farewell, jumped into his car, which, after a preliminary grumble of its engine, leaped forward impatiently to envelop the mourners in a cloud of smoke before it disappeared into the distance. Some of the women remained to comfort the bereaved relatives and to fortify themselves with cups of tea; others chose to follow the cortège at a discreet distance. Morag suggested that we should take a short cut to the burial ground and thus save ourselves the fatigue of following the winding road. This we did but though we were separated from the funeral procession by some distance it was not too far to disguise the fact that for such a procession it was decidedly hilarious. There was not, as I had been led to believe by some writers on the Highlands, anything in the nature of a quarrel or a fight at any time, either in progress or even brewing. On the contrary, joviality was the keynote of the day. The men, even those carrying the coffin, puffed unconcernedly at cigarettes and laughed and chatted as they walked; stopping at every telegraph pole to change bearers. At one time, when only a drystone wall was between us and the road, I heard one of the mourners call out: ‘Lachy Murdy says he’s cold.’ Instantly the reply came: ‘Let’s take out the corpse and put Lachy Murdy in—he’ll be warm enough in there I doubt.’

  Loud laughter rippled along the line, Lachy Murdy himself laughing louder than anyone.

  At the graveside there was no prayer or service whatever. The coffin was stripped of its ornaments by the undertaker and earth was thrown on top of it by any man who could find a spade. It was all done with as little ceremony as a dog inters a bone, and those not actively engaged in shovelling attended desultorily to the graves of their kinsmen, uprooting weeds and throwing them indifferently on to the surrounding graves. Old men, pipes in mouths, shambled among the tombstones, spitting recklessly.

  As the earth shovelling progressed I heard Lachy call a halt and point towards the clump of bushes beside which I had stood the previous night. I glanced at Morag. Her eye was fixed steadily on Johnny whom we had observed to pause once or twice and to cast furtive glances about him. I wondered if he had mislaid his great-grandfather.

  ‘Let’s go now,’ I implored my landlady.

  She turned a distasteful glance on the rest of the women who were hanging round the grave like voracious seagulls round a fish pier.

  ‘There, look at that!’ she said. ‘Ian Mor was a bachelor and there’s more women at his funeral than ever I seen before. Indeed,’ she went on pointedly, ‘they’ve been chasin’ him all his life and now they’ve chased him to his grave.’ The promptness with which she agreed to my suggestion that we return home made it plain that she herself was not going to be accused of such forward behaviour.

  That night both Lachy and Johnny were among those who dropped in at Morag’s house to ceilidh. Naturally funerals were the main topic of the conversation.

  ‘Come, Morag.’ said Lachy, pulling out a bottle of whisky from his pocket. ‘
Give us some tots and we’ll have a drink.’

  ‘What’ll we drink to?’ someone asked.

  ‘We’ll drink to the hope that the rest of the people to die here from now on will have been ailin’ for three months or so before they go.’

  ‘That’s a terrible thing to wish for,’ I ejaculated. ‘Surely you yourself would not care to be ill all that time?’

  ‘Indeed but I would,’ retorted Lachy.

  ‘But why?’ I asked.

  ‘Because I know fine how heavy folks are when they die suddenly,’ said Lachy candidly. ‘It’s no fair on the folks who have to carry when a corpse hasn’t lost a bit of weight first. Just look at Ian Mor,’ he continued, warming to his subject. ‘Seventeen stone that man was and ill less than a week. It’s no right I’m tellin’ you. It near killed some of us today the weight of him.’

  ‘That’s right enough,’ agreed Johnny fervently, and his words were echoed with approbation by every other man present.

  ‘You sounded as though you were being killed,’ I said drily.

  ‘We ought to have a bier that can be drawn by a horse in this place,’ said Lachy, ignoring my sarcasm.

  ‘A what?’ demanded Ruari, a hand to his ear.

  ‘A bier—a horse bier,’ vociferated Lachy.

  ‘There’s no enough beer for the men in this place without givin’ it to the horses indeed,’ roared Ruari amid laughter.

  Morag changed the subject. ‘Miss Peckwitt was tellin’ me she was awful shocked that none of you men took off his hat when the service was on,’ she told them, her lips quirking faintly.

  Several pairs of astonished eyes were turned on me.

  ‘Take off our hats?’ repeated Lachy foolishly. ‘Why now would we do that? Our heads were not hot!’