The Hills is Lonely

by Lillian Beckwith

  ‘Come on, girls, what about a song from you?’

  Giggle and Sniggle hung their heads shyly and of course giggled and sniggled in unison. They undoubtedly would have provided a long-drawn-out duet of giggling and sniggling had there been room enough on the chair for them both to breathe out at the same time. Persuasion having proved fruitless in their case, Elspeth was next entreated.

  ‘Come now, you Elspeth, you’re a good singer.’

  Elspeth too hung her head and giggled. ‘I can no sing,’ she disclaimed unenthusiastically.

  ‘You can so.’

  ‘Ach, I can no.’

  ‘Indeed you can so.’

  Thus the cajolery and contradiction continued and between each unconvincing denial Elspeth surreptitiously but very determinedly cleared her throat in preparation for the song she had every intention of singing throughout every one of its fifteen verses.

  As the night wore on the singing and the gossiping became more sporadic until there was only the voice of Anna Vic, who for the greater part of the evening had been regaling our patient hostess with shrilly despairing confidences regarding the shortcomings of the fat woman’s youngest son. Her affronted voice pierced a temporary silence.

  ‘Supposin’ I stand on my head he won’t do it for me,’ she complained. There was the echo of a sardonic laugh from Lachy.

  ‘Supposin’ you stand on your head, nobody would notice the difference. You’re the same shape either way up’

  His quip was received with a roar of laughter from the assembled company and the fat woman looked momentarily uncomfortable. The shepherd, still grinning widely, got up to go. He was tired, he told us, after having had such a heavy day, ‘there’d been that many docks chasin’ ships all over the hills’. He directed a meaning glance at Murdoch who was reputed to own the worst sheep-worrying dog in the district, but, affecting to be deaf, the old man continued to stare steadily, at the fire.

  ‘The merry dancers are puttin’ on a good show tonight,’ called Alistair as he went out; ‘it means a change in the weather one way or another.’

  Morag and I decided that it was time we also should be making a move, and Johnny, Lachy, Angus, Anna Vic and Murdoch, though loth to break up the ceilidh, made up their minds to come with us. The night was still clear and the slightly toothachy moon sailed serenely along through a froth of white cloud. From behind the hills rose the flickering green-gold cone of the Northern Lights, its apex directly above our heads.

  ‘Aye, aye, a change in the weather right enough,’ confirmed Murdoch as he minced along in front of us, holding his pipe to his mouth in the manner of a small child blowing bubbles. We three women followed, arms linked together, and behind us came Johnny, Lachy and Angus. The talk eddied from one to another and the background to our conversation was the sucking rasp of the breakers on the shingle and the infrequent cry of some night-flying bird. And then we became aware of another sound: a weird, rhythmic, burring wail which none of us could identify.

  ‘Good God! Whatever’s that?’ burst out Anna Vic apprehensively.

  After pausing to listen we decided that the noise was coming from somewhere along a stretch of road now under repair. The men turned their steps inquisitively in that direction and we followed, keeping close to their heels, dropping our voices to whispers. The noise grew gradually more distinct, and was now punctuated by an eerie, choking moan. Anna Vic clutched at my arm, but whether it was for her own comfort or mine I could not tell. If it was the former she was likely to be disillusioned, for after the evening’s ghost stories my nerves were not exactly steady. After walking for some distance the men halted and we were at once relieved and surprised to hear Murdoch’s asthmatic chuckle. Following the direction of his pointing finger, we saw, a short way in front of us, a dark mass which we soon identified as the small hut where the ‘gaffer’ of the roadmen lived. It was from the hut that the strange noise was coming.

  ‘My, but that man can snore,’ declared Johnny with grudging admiration.

  Anna Vic’s tightly held breath escaped in a thankful sigh and she slackened her hold on my arm.

  ‘He must be ill,’ I said.

  ‘Not him,’ replied Murdoch sagely. ‘It’s whisky that makes him snore like that, not sickness.’

  ‘How that man can drink!’ Angus observed in accents of awed humility.

  ‘You should have seen him on Friday,’ said Lachy. ‘He was that drunk it took four of us to get him over from the bus to his hut. And when we got him inside, Johnny here lights the Primus to make him some tea to try would it sober him up. There was no watter, so we had to take a pail and go to the burn and by God! when we got back we found the old bodach sittin’ on top of the lighted Primus itself.’

  ‘Indeed it was lucky for him he’d sat in a few bogs on the way home,’ said Johnny, taking up the story, ‘or he’d have been in a worse mess than he was.’

  ‘Was he burned bad?’ demanded Murdoch.

  ‘Burned? Him?’ asked Lachy incredulously. ‘Why, when we pulled him off the stove he said he must have been sittin’ in a patch of thistles some time. Thistles!’ went on Lachy. ‘Can you believe it? And the bottom burned out of his pants and his backside as red as a cock’s comb in spring. I’m tellin’ you that fellow has a skin like the sole of a tackety hill-boot.’

  Lachy’s enthusiastic description of the gaffer’s misadventure lasted while we retraced our steps to the road.

  ‘My, but he’s a character that one,’ remarked Murdoch. ‘And I’ve never in my life seen a man that’s wilder in his drink.’ he added respectfully.

  ‘He doesn’t have to get drunk to get wild,’ interpolated Johnny. ‘He wanted to smash my face in the other day because I told him the Government would lose the next election.’

  ‘Aye, aye, he’s a staunch Tory,’ averred Murdoch.

  ‘And so you are yourself for that matter,’ muttered Johnny sulkily.

  ‘And why shouldn’t I be?’ demanded Murdoch with some heat. ‘People that’s lived as long as I have is always Tory. You grow in sense as you grow in years you know.’

  Johnny retaliated with some incoherent remark reflecting upon the senility of the Tory party in general and the comparative youthfulness of Socialism.

  ‘Socialism! Why, I’d sooner have rheumatism than Socialism. It’s easier to c-cure,’ stuttered Murdoch, who had never felt the slightest twinge of either malady. ‘You young people,’ he went on, ‘shouldn’t be allowed to have a vote at all, and then Socialism would never have come to fret us in our old age. You have no sense at all,’ he finished disparagingly.

  ‘I’m no so young,’ objected Johnny. ‘I’m gettin’ on for forty.’

  Murdoch spat with elaborate contempt. ‘Forty!’ he exclaimed scathingly. ‘Forty!’ he repeated. ‘Chicken’s age is forty. You shouldn’t get your vote till you get your old age pension. You should qualify for the two of them together.’ Haughtily he resumed his place at the head of the procession and ventured no further remark until he wished us good night at his own bedstead gate.

  ‘So Johnny’s a red-hot Socialist,’ I observed when Murdoch had gone.

  ‘Aye,’ put in Lachy, ‘he’s been a good Socialist all his life except on polling days.’

  Johnny laughed self-consciously.

  ‘That was one of those social nosey parkers we had on the trip today,’ resumed Lachy.

  ‘You got a trip today?’ asked Morag with surprise.

  ‘Aye, we did, and the social woman was pretty seasick I can tell you.’

  ‘What did you do with her?’ asked Johnny.

  ‘There was nothin’ I could do with her,’ replied the other indifferently. ‘She was done for. All I could do was drag her up the beach and leave her above the tide.’

  ‘Oh, but you should have done more than that for the creature,’ scolded Morag. ‘Could you no have done somethin’ to try would you bring her round?’

  ‘Me? Bring her round?’ echoed Lachy. ‘Why should I try bringin’ her round?
’ And then apparently divining a reason for Morag’s admonition he added with materialistic reassurance: ‘It was all right, I didn’t need to bother, she’d already paid her fare.’

  The talk of sickness in humans veered to the far more important topic of sickness in animals. We reached the dyke and as I was about to ‘leap’ over it, Morag began asking minutely about a cow of Lachy’s which had been ailing for some time.

  ‘It’s no right for her to go on like that.’ he told her. ‘She’s old and she’s sick and I’ve made up my mind I’m goin’ to shoot her in the mornin’.’

  Morag agreed that it was high time the beast was disposed of and later, when I was filling my hot-water bottle, she emphasised, in reply to my question, that Lachy could be trusted to make a far easier and better job of putting the beast out of its misery than would the ‘Cruelty’.

  During the night, as Murdoch and the Aurora Borealis had foretold the wind changed its direction and brought with it a couple of hours of torrential rain from the west. By morning the ground was again sodden and the blackcurrant bushes stood sadly in the middle of a sheet of water.

  ‘And did you shoot your poor old cow?’ I asked Lachy when I met him.

  ‘No, I did not then,’ he replied morosely. ‘I believe I’ll have to be gettin’ the Cruelty to do it yet.’

  I felt that I understood. ‘It cannot be very nice to have to shoot an animal you’ve had all these years and grown fond of,’ I suggested sympathetically.

  ‘Ach, it’s no that at all.’ Hastily Lachy repudiated the suggestion that his failure to accomplish the deed had been in any way due to sentiment. ‘I was goin’ to shoot her right enough,’ be went on stoutly, ‘but when I came to do it I found she’d gone and got damp in the night and swollen so big I couldna’ push her into the gun.’

  He resolved this statement of patent impossibility by producing for my inspection an undeniably swollen, but far from effeminate looking, shot-gun cartridge!

  9 The Dance

  FIRST WARNING

  A Grand Concert with Artists from Glasgow followed by a

  dance and a Competition to find the Prettiest Girl is to be

  held on Friday 30th next

  Men 4s. Ladies 3s. 6d. & pkt soap

  flakesasusual (no splitting)

  Come on, lassies—Now’s your chance to shine

  In aid of charity

  (D.V.)

  I studied the carelessly scrawled notice in the window of the grocer’s shop; the black crayon lettering on a roughly torn sheet of white wrapping-paper looked like a child’s first attempt at printing. The poster was some what overshadowed by another one which advertised a ‘Grand Sale of Females’ on the following Saturday. This was of no interest to me personally as it referred only to a sale of heifers, but the dance ‘warning’ was definitely worth attention. I translated the ‘no splitting’ into a very prudent desire on the part of the organisers to avoid either the concert or the dance being a financial failure, as might be the case if a separate charge were made for each.

  The demand for the soap flakes was a little puzzling, but I had lived long enough in Bruach to appreciate that many of their customs had survived from Biblical times, and though I had not yet observed the practice it was not wildly improbable that solicitous hand-maidens would, with true Biblical courtesy, bathe the feet of all patrons on arrival. The ‘D.V.’ struck me as being anomalous, but from reports I had heard of the dance secretary’s flagrant misappropriation of funds, I knew that its position on the notice was significant.

  The organised social activities of Bruach were practically non-existent; a circumstance which was partly due to there being no public hall of any kind, and partly to the fact that both the head schoolteacher and the council representative were so Calvinistically opposed to entertainment that they would perjure themselves pink to prevent the schoolroom being used for anything but its everyday purpose. It was fortunate, therefore, that a neighbouring village which boasted a nebulous and often lethargic ‘Community’, and also a disused barn which was styled grandiloquently as the ‘Public Hall’, would occasionally exert itself sufficiently to sponsor a concert or a dance—generally in aid of some obscure charity —and would invite the patronage of any Bruachites who might feel so inclined. The prospect of such entertainment invariably aroused a good deal of interest throughout the district and almost every inhabitant, except those prevented by religious scruples or rheumatic twinges, could be relied upon to attend. In the present case the ‘Committy’ was evidently determined to excel itself and a beauty competition would undoubtedly prove an irresistible attraction for young and old.

  Pushing open the creaking door, I ventured into the poorly lighted shop where a boy in a threadbare brown kilt and dung-caked tennis shoes stood resting his face on the counter, while from behind the counter the grocer himself dexterously manipulated a pair of scissors over the boy’s dark head.

  ‘Well, well, well! Good afternoon, Miss Peckwitt,’ the grocer greeted me, in tones which tried to deny that

  I had, for the past five minutes, been undergoing his close scrutiny from between a pair of hand-knit socks and a showcard advertising warble-fly dressing. As he spoke the head on the counter jerked upwards, but it was instantly rammed down again by the grocer’s impatient fist.

  ‘Be still you, Johnny!’ threatened the amateur barber, vindictively grasping a handful of the boy’s hair. ‘You be tryin’ to turn round and stare and it’s this big bunch I’ll be after cuttin’ off.’

  The head, which I now recognised as belonging to my erstwhile fishing instructor, remained obediently rigid. The grocer treated me to a prodigious wink.

  ‘This is what comes of leavin’ your hair to a Saturday to get it cut,’ he muttered banteringly. ‘And then it’s such a rush you’re in to get it done for the Sabbath, eh, Johnny?’

  The head on the counter grunted and as the grocer diligently resumed his task I watched with fascination while an irregular-shaped patch of Johnny’s scalp was laid almost bare and the sheaves of crisp, black hair fell stiffly on to the counter. The grocer, stimulated by my interest and sublimely confident of my admiration, continued to snip and chat pleasantly until one half of Johnny’s head resembled fine sandpaper and the other half a gale-battered hay-cock; then I was treated to a second wink.

  ‘There now, what d’you think of that, Miss Peckwitt?’ he asked, laying down the scissors with an air of finality.

  ‘Does that not look handsome?’ And to the boy: ‘Run you away now, Johnny, I’ve finished.’

  Johnny, without raising his head, ran an explorative hand over his hair and let out a muffled groan.

  ‘Away with you,’ repeated the grocer, pushing the boy’s shoulder, ‘I’ll finish the rest on Monday.’

  The boy’s head did not move, but a snigger squeezed its way out from between it and the counter.

  ‘Very well.’ The tormentor relented with a smile. ‘But you’ll have to wait until I’ve given Miss Peckwitt what she’s wantin’.’

  The head nodded uncomfortable acquiescence but I insisted that the hairdressing should be completed before I was attended to. I was, I declared, in no hurry whatever. But, I pointed out, this could not be said of a diminutive fellow of about seven years of age who had darted breathlessly into the shop on my heels and who had since stood, studiously ignored by the grocer, tapping a half-crown discreetly on the edge of the counter. My reminder made the grocer fix the boy with a repressive frown.

  ‘What are you wantin’ all in your haste, Ally Beag?’ he asked sharply.

  ‘I’m wantin’ half a pound of bakin’ sody,’ whispered Ally Beag with a terrified glance in my direction.

  ‘It’s near seven o’clock,’ said the grocer severely; As the shop made no pretence of closing until around eight or even nine o’ clock. I was puzzled by this seemingly irrelevant remark. ‘What’s your mother wantin’ with bakin’ sody at this time on a Saturday night?’ he continued, still frowning fiercely.

  Ally
Beag wilted visibly. ‘She’s wantin’ it for bakin’ scones,’ he faltered.

  The grocer’s eyebrows shot up. ‘She is indeed?’ he asked superciliously. ‘Tonight you say?’

  Ally Beag nodded in awed confirmation.

  ‘No she is not then,’ gloated the grocer. ‘She’s goin’ out to ceilidh with Anna Vic this night, and it’s fine I’m knowin’ she’ll no have time for bakin’ scones as well.’ He paused, and stressing his words by tapping the scissors on Johnny’s head, continued: ‘It’s bakin’ scones on the Sabbath she’ll be if I give her sody tonight. Go you home and tell her I’ve no bakin’ sody till Monday,’ he commanded, and then added cryptically, ‘she’ll understand.’

  Ally Beag’s freckled face reddened, but as he made no attempt to argue it is possible that he too suspected his mother’s intention to desecrate the Sabbath. With eyes fixed despairingly on the grocer’s unyielding countenance he sidled slowly out of the shop.

  ‘If it had been her stomach she would have got it,’ the grocer excused himself virtuously as he resumed clipping. ‘I’m no a man to deny a thing when there’s real need.’

  After a few minutes had elapsed a crestfallen Ally Beag returned and silently helped himself to three damp-looking loaves from the cardboard box beside the counter. With eyes downcast he again proffered the half-crown and the grocer, with a righteous pursing of his lips, accepted the money and clapped the change on to the counter. The vanquished Ally clasped his burden of loaves to his chest and slunk out of the shop watched by the grocer who squinted at him from between the shelves of the window and nodded his head knowingly. I should mention that the grocer was an Elder of the church and the duty of an Elder (in addition to preventing the minister from becoming too secular) is to discourage the deviation of the flock from the path of righteousness. How he could reconcile his Calvinistic piety with the poster displayed in his window was one of the inconsistencies of Bruach which I never managed to fathom.

  When Johnny’s scalp was shining beneath what was no more than the merest suggestion of stubble, he was released and, while the barber surveyed his handiwork, the victim, with a sheepish grin at me, vigorously rubbed shape and colour back to his crushed apology for a nose. With his arm the grocer swept the dark mass of hair from the counter and, as Johnny skipped away, he turned to me with a smile of unctuous enquiry.