The Hills is Lonely

by Lillian Beckwith

  ‘Not on your life,’ replied Lachy. ‘Leave that one where it is for now. We’ll drink this one first—it won’t take long.’

  It certainly did not take them long and within a short time they were again borrowing my torch. How many bottles of whisky had been buried in the grounds of the hall that night I had no idea, but whenever I went in search of fresh air there was always one group or another busy digging.

  ‘How is it that there happens to be a spade at the hall?’ I asked Johnny. ‘Surely the committee don’t provide that, do they?’

  ‘Of course they don’t,’ he rejoined. ‘We picked it up from the burial ground on our way here.’ And misunderstanding my look of surprise he went on: ‘It’s all right, we’re goin’ to put it back on our way home.’

  ‘The trouble with these girls is that they canna’ dance,’ grumbled Lachy as we sat watching the progress of an aptly named reel. His wandering eye fixed briefly on a full-blooded young siren who had draped herself sinuously over a couple of chairs and was raking the ‘stag lines’ with hungry eyes. ‘That’s the only one here who knows how to dance properly,’ he finished. I recognised the girl as the missionary’s daughter.

  I pointed to an extremely pretty girl with a glorious mop of blonde curls. ‘Who is she?’ I asked.

  ‘Ach, she doesn’t rightly belong here at all,’ said Lachy, and after a few minutes cogitation whispered: ‘Not properly she doesn’t—one half of her comes from Glasgow.’

  The next dance was one which was utterly unfamiliar to me and though I studied the steps of the revellers I could see no two couples who followed the same pattern. ‘Tripping the light fantastic’ might have been a fair description of some of the steps executed by the more lissom of the damsels, but ‘fantastic’ was the only adjective applicable to those of the rest of the dancers.

  ‘Come and dance,’ invited Lachy.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m quite unable to do this one,’ I apologised.

  ‘Neither can anybody else,’ said Lachy; ‘but who’s worryin’ so long as we enjoy ourselves.’

  It was difficult to refuse Lachy because he was always much too ready to feel that he was being snubbed, so I suffered myself to be bobbed and bounced through something that might have been a jig but was more akin to a judo lesson.

  ‘I like the way you townsfolk seem to be able to dance on your toes,’ panted my partner admiringly.

  ‘You’re dancing on them too,’ I replied with a ghostly chuckle that was half irony and half agony.

  ‘Me? Dancin’ on my toes?’

  ‘No,’ I retorted brutally, ‘on mine.’

  ‘I thought I must be,’ said Lachy simply, and with no trace of remorse; ‘I could tell by the way your face keeps changin’.’

  ‘What did you think of the evening’s beauty?’ I enquired as we sank exhausted into our seats.

  ‘She’d make a damty fine heifer,’ he said dispassionately.

  ‘She wasn’t your choice, then?’

  ‘No indeed. It was the one with pink hair I voted for.’

  I had long since discovered that colour shades in Bruach bore no resemblance whatever to those recognised by the rest of the world. A red and white cow, for instance, is known as a ‘grey beast’; a black one will be described as ‘blue’; but pink hair was worth investigation. I asked Lachy to point out the freak. For a few minutes he scanned the weaving dancers and then he pointed to a young girl with pale, sandy-coloured hair who was at that moment engaged in executing a frolicsome schottische. She caught our glance, waved cheerily and continued dancing with zest. I was surprised to see her there for it was only recently that I had heard she had secured a good post as a lady’s maid in Edinburgh. I mentioned this to Lachy.

  ‘Oh, but she had to give it up and come home,’ he replied. ‘Did you not hear? She’s been on the club for a few weeks now.’

  ‘Is there something wrong with her?’ I asked dubiously, my eyes following the girl’s fast-moving, nimble figure.

  ‘Indeed there is!’ said Lachy. ‘Did you not know she has terrible rheumatics in her feets? My, I hear it’s that bad sometimes she can hardly put her legs under her.’

  The lassie had ‘her legs under her’ tonight all right, and it looked to me from the way she was skipping about the floor that she might have the legs of a few other people under her before very much longer. My own shins were already bruised after encountering her as a neighbour in a ‘Strip the Willow’.

  ‘How did you like the second prize-winner?’ I demanded of Lachy.

  ‘Oh, she wasn’t bad.’ he said. ‘Her hair was all right. That’s real Highland hair.’

  ‘That’s real hennaed,’ contradicted Morag who had just seated herself on the empty form beside us. ‘I’m tellin’ you. Miss Peckwitt, that second prize-winner is the girl Lachy has a fancy for marryin’.’

  ‘It is not,’ repudiated Lachy. ‘I’m after marryin’ nobody but an Englishwoman like Miss Peckwitt here. They’re good workers the English.’

  At five o’clock, the floor was noticeably clearer and even the younger dancers were beginning to show signs of fatigue. There being no more prizes to present, Morag and I decided we could unobtrusively withdraw from the festivities. We were tired, I more so than my landlady for she had done little but sit and ceilidh during the whole evening. Rescuing my coat from the packed cloakroom, I flung it over my shoulders, and was following Morag to the door when suddenly a wild-eyed figure burst into the room.

  ‘The hotel’s on fire!’ he bellowed. ‘Help! Help!’

  The response from even the most jaded dancers among us was immediate, and in less than a minute the hall was emptied of dancers, onlookers, officials and musicians and we were all racing as fast as we could in the direction of the hotel. The smell of burning soon met our nostrils, and, callous as it may seem, it was a welcome change from the pungent odour of soap flakes and sweat I had been breathing all evening. As we rounded the corner we came upon the hotel, where one of the garret windows sprouted fierce tufts of flame and billowing clouds of smoke.

  The policeman, hatless and jacketless, was already attempting to form the revellers into a bucket chain, assuring everyone meantime that he had despatched someone to ‘’phone for the Brigade’. His task was well nigh hopeless, for the Bruachites and their neighbours were nothing if not fierce individualists and they retained their individualism even in the face of fire. He might just as easily have tried to organise a chain of live eels as organise a chain of Gaels. His exhortations, entreaties and threats were in vain; the crowd obeyed their own inclinations entirely, clinging tenaciously to the belief that personal effort would always be superior to communal effort. The few who were not bewitched by the conflagration seized pails and ran to the loch, but the blazing lights of the hotel were so dazzling after the darkness that people and pails were constantly colliding and at least as much water was spilled on the ground as eventually reached the flames.

  ‘Them lights near takes the eyes out of you,’ coughed Morag as she came over to join the knot of women whom I had more or less coerced into forming a straggled and inefficient chain. But even with the eyes near out of her she was worth at least three of the other women. Her presence shamed them into action; her tongue stirred action to alacrity, and soon buckets and jugs were passing to and from the loch. Several men stood by, their admiration divided between the burning building and the bucket chain.

  ‘What can I do? What can I do?’ The distracted hotel housekeeper ran out from the kitchen and stood wailing, and wringing her hands, in the midst of the confusion.

  ‘Get me half a dozen darning needles to stick into some of these louts!’ shrilled a voice which I was faintly surprised to recognise as my own. From the way the spellbound watchers were electrified into activity it might have been supposed that the darning needles had been produced forthwith.

  ‘Get into the chain will you!’ the sorely tried policeman shouted as he descried an old man, the occupant of a thatched cottage dangerously near to
the burning building, returning from the direction of the loch.

  ‘I will not then,’ retorted the old man defiantly. ‘’Tis my own chamber I got and ’tis my own waiter that’s in it, and ’tis my own bit of flame I’ll be after quenchin’.’

  The reply typified the attitude of the crowd and, with a despondent shrug of his shoulders, the policeman watched the lone fire-fighter trotting purposefully in the direction of the cottage, his utensil held in front of him as though he was a competitor in an egg-and-spoon race.

  Tired as everyone must have been, we worked like Trojans that night but, though every utensil a hotel could provide was commandeered for fire-fighting, our efforts had only a negligible effect on the flames. If the helpers had directed their energies as efficiently as they wagged their tongues we might have accomplished more, but the Gael’s inability to co-operate is congenital and his loquacity is, if anything, increased by peril or panic.

  Over an hour later there was a cry of relief as a small, grey van slid elegantly towards the hotel and braked to a decorous halt. Then began a scene which could only have been described as high comedy.

  ‘He Breeah!’ The driver, who was in fireman’s uniform, greeted us all with true Hebridean politeness, unfailing though sometimes exasperating. He and his two mates alighted from the van, and, bestowing confident smiles on the bunch of sodden fire-fighters, seemed undecided whether to come and shake hands with each of us in turn.

  ‘My, but what a time you’ve taken,’ complained one of the onlookers peevishly.

  ‘Indeed, and you’re lucky we’re here at all,’ the driver responded with some heat. ‘Didn’t the fool who gave the message forget to tell us where was the fire?’ He turned to his mates. ‘What a job we’ve had knockin’ up folks all the way to find where we should go.’ (At that time in the morning I am quite sure that many of the crofters would have told them where they should go—and in no uncertain terms.) The driver’s mates nodded agreement and I wondered if, having now arrived at the scene of the fire, they had yet noticed it.

  At this moment the policeman, harassed and sooty, raced impetuously towards the fire engine.

  ‘Put everythin’ you can up there!’ he commanded. ‘It’s ragin’ like a furnace.’

  The fireman-driver, who was obviously also in command, looked through the policeman’s broad chest.

  ‘In my job,’ he retorted coolly, ‘it’s me that says what’s to be done.’

  The policeman received the rebuff in silence and turning to the bystanders, who, upon the arrival of the fire engine, had forsaken their utensils, he beseeched them to bring their pails and follow him. About a dozen men obeyed and tore after the policeman into the hotel, where, a short time later, we could see them charging in and out of the upstairs rooms, silhouetted like figures on a frieze.

  With a deliberateness that was probably thorough, but was nevertheless irritating to the onlooker, the firemen coupled up their hoses and started the engine of the pump. The youngest of them, a lean youth with a mop of cherubic curls peeping from beneath his stiff cap, lumbered heavily towards the hotel with a length of hose. By this time the policeman and his retinue were throwing linen and blankets through the open windows, to be salvaged by willing hands below.

  ‘Right?’ called the chief fireman to the cherub.

  ‘Right!’ replied the cherub. He positioned himself to direct a jet of water at one of the windows when, without warning, he went down beneath a large double bed mattress which hurtled from somewhere above.

  ‘Hi!’ yelled the crowd, while gesticulating rescuers ran to extricate the fireman.

  ‘Hi!’ they yelled again as the rescuers themselves were buried beneath a veritable shower of mattresses, all aimed with a precision that would under other circumstances have looked suspicious.

  ‘What’s happened?’ asked the chief fireman curiously.

  ‘They’ve flattened him,’ supplied an onlooker equably.

  ‘Flattened him?’ echoed the chief with a bellicose glance at the window where the policeman had last appeared. ‘What for? He’s done no wrong.’

  Meanwhile the second fireman ran forward with his own hose, but as he crossed the lawn he too was knocked for six, not by a mattress but by a large wardrobe which someone, in an excess of zeal and panic, had thrown recklessly from a second-floor window. Two anxious faces appeared at the window from which the wardrobe had descended but their concern was for the fate of the furniture, not for the unfortunate fireman who lay prostrate in the middle of the lawn; a lawn which his still-gushing hose was quickly transforming into a miniature lake.

  The chief fireman, furious at the treatment his men had received, was still standing beside the engine excitedly flinging orders at all and sundry. What the orders may have been nobody knew, for of course nobody took the slightest notice. The policeman reappeared on the scene.

  ‘Look here, man,’ he addressed the chief witheringly; ‘what’s the use of pouring water into the cellars when it’s up in the roof the fire is. A hose on the roof will have it out in no time.’

  ‘You’ve near killed my mates,’ retaliated the chief angrily. ‘Now what d’you expect me to do about your fire?’

  ‘Me? Killed your mates?’ demanded the policeman, who was quite unaware of the mishap to the firemen. ‘Well, it’s likely they’ll have more life in them dead than alive. But if you don’t get up there quick I’ll report you.’ he went on savagely.

  The chief fixed his adversary with a pair of horror stricken eyes. ‘Me?’ he expostulated. ‘Me? Go up on that bloody roof?’

  ‘Why not?’ returned the policeman with admirable restraint. ‘That’s where the fire is, isn’t it?’

  It looked for a moment as though the chief was about to dissolve into tears, but instead he hitched up his trouser leg and turned abjectly on the policeman.

  ‘Have you seen that?’ he asked piteously, displaying his wooden leg for inspection, ‘Can you righdy expect a man like me to go clamberin’ and climbin’ stairs, let alone roofs?’

  ‘Oh no, that’s different.’ At once the policeman was contrite. ‘You’d best give me the hose and I’ll go up myself,’ he offered.

  ‘Are you sure you’ll manage?’ asked the chief considerately.

  ‘I’ll manage,’ returned the policeman through clenched teeth, and ran forward to take up his duties as chief fireman.

  As he had claimed, a hose on the roof had the fire out in a comparatively short time. Within an hour the threatening flames were subdued and the charred and dripping ruin of the roof emerged from the pail of smoke. A fine drizzle of rain began to help along the good work.

  ‘Come round to the kitchen,’ said Morag. There’s tea for everybody there.’

  Thankfully we adjourned to the kitchen where we found the two injured firemen who having been rescued from their predicament and given first aid, were now reclining comfortably in easy chairs beside the stove and regaling themselves liberally with whisky supplied by a grateful proprietor. They were, someone explained, ‘waitin’ on the ambulance takin’ them to hospital’. They were obviously hoping the ambulance would be a long time coming.

  The policeman, with torn shirt, was hardly recognisable under his grime as he tottered into the kitchen and dropped into a chair.

  ‘I think I’ve sprained my wrist,’ he muttered. Someone pressed a roll of bandage into my hand and I bound up his wrist as well as I could. ‘God! What a night!’ he said as his chin sank wearily on his chest.

  The experience being safely over, cups began to clatter merrily and the night’s adventures were gone through over and over again in detail, as people sipped tea and poked whole biscuits into their gabbling mouths.

  ‘The sooner the ambulance comes and these men get skilled attention the better it will be for them.’ A high authoritative voice briefly silenced the hurly-burly of the kitchen. The two firemen directed baleful glances at the speaker and hastily replenished their glasses; the crowd resumed their chatter.

  ‘Oughtn�
�t we to get hold of the nurse?’ I asked the policeman.

  ‘Impossible,’ he replied. ‘The nurse is on holiday in Glasgow.’

  ‘Well, what about the doctor?’ I persisted. ‘Is he on holiday too?’

  The policeman permitted himself a grim smile. ‘In a way he is,’ he said. His smile broadened into an expansive grin. ‘I had to lock him up on Thursday—drunk in charge again.’

  It was long past breakfast-time when Morag and I set out to walk home, there being no sign of the bus anywhere.

  ‘I wouldn’t have minded bein’ a bitty crowded to save havin’ this walk on top of the night we’ve had,’ mourned my landlady, and as I dragged beside her along the stony path with the brittle heather stems rasping against the remains of my silk stockings I sincerely echoed her sentiments.

  The drizzle was by this time showing signs of developing into a real downpour and the newly turned potato and corn patches were speedily changing their pale dun colour for a moist blackness. The rain sizzled through the sparsely leafed bushes and in the grey murk above a skylark soared, pouring out melody as though compelled to rid itself of its jubilation before it could bear to seek shelter. The burn rippled sportively under the old lichen-patterned bridge.

  ‘Them’s voices,’ said Morag suddenly, and leaning over the parapet we beheld the ‘fiddle’ and the ‘melodeon’, one arm embracing their instruments and their free arms embracing each other. They were making repeated claims that ‘’twas my fault sure as I’m here’, and so engrossed were they in their new friendship that neither of them was aware of our presence. We thought it wiser not to disturb them.

  ‘They look very comfortable in spite of the weather,’ I said.

  ‘They should be comfortable,’ replied Morag. ‘Did you no see it was the piper himself they was sittin’ on? He’s one that won’t get wet anyway.’

  We did not go to bed when we reached home but busied ourselves with the sedentary tasks of the house. The letter I had been expecting was duly delivered by a red-eyed and befuddled postman, somewhere about lunch-time. I managed to summon up enough energy to take my answer up to the pillar-box. On my way home I perceived a group of tired men sheltering just inside the doorway of Lachy’s cow byre. They included Duncan the whisky drinker and, remembering his performance of the previous night and also the policeman’s remedy, I called out to ask him how he had liked his spell in prison.