My return was the signal for a chain of visitors who came to welcome me, to inspect me, and to hear the latest news from England. Among the first were the bride and bridesmaids. All three professed themselves delighted with the purchases I had made for them and were eager to tell me that the bridesmaid’s dresses had arrived from the second-hand shop. Though neither the shade nor the style of the dresses was identical, as they had been hoping, the girls were plainly thrilled. ‘One is a sort of pink,’ they told me, ‘and the other is a sort of orange’—a colour combination which filled them with rapture and me with regret. Not far behind the bridal retinue came Kirsty, no less enamoured with the hat I had sent her from England, which I was to be permitted to see her wearing on the following Sunday. Hard on Kirsty’s heels came Padruig and Euan. Once again I had to endure the former’s description of his visit to ‘Buckram Palace’, and during the recital Euan, apparently bearing me no ill-will after my failure to bring him a donkey, sat watching me with eyes full of dog-like devotion.
‘Euan doesn’t seem to be fretting that I haven’t brought his donkey,’ I observed to Morag after they had left.
‘But he thinks you have brought him one,’ she replied.
‘What!’ I exclaimed feelingly. ‘How can that be?’
‘Indeed havena’ the boys been after tellin’ him you brought one back for him and that he’s to come to Ruari’s croft here tomorrow to practise will he ride it?’
‘That really is the limit,’ I said angrily. ‘Goodness only knows what they’ve let me in for now. I shall be having the fellow trailing me all over the place.’
‘Ach, they’ve let you in for nothin’,’ she soothed. ‘The boys has borrowed a park deer from over the other side of the Island and they’re after tellin’ Euan it’s an English donkey. That was the idea when they put him up to askin’ you for a donkey in the first place.’
I discerned a touch of the combined genius of Lachy, Angus and possibly Johnny in the ludicrous plan, and vowed vengeance on all three of them.
‘It’ll be all right,’ continued my landlady, ‘Euan’s never seen a donkey.’
Having emphatically refused to stay and witness the meeting of Euan and the deer, I have only my landlady’s narrative as to the eventual outcome of the escapade. She, almost delirious with laughter, described the spectacle vividly and, as may be expected, in language peculiarly her own. It appeared that while a few of the men—Angus, Lachy and Johnny prominent among them—held on to the deer. Euan was persuaded to throw his leg over the saddle. As soon as he complied the men let go their hold and the deer, with prodigious leaps and bounds, made for the hills. Miraculously, no one attempted to explain how the jockey had managed to cling on and, accompanied by the vociferous encouragement of the onlookers, was carried fully a third the length of the croft before he slid over the beast’s stern and landed flat on his back in the mud. The deer fled precipitately and was soon out of sight and Euan, after slapping the mud from his trousers and retrieving his cap, flew in pursuit. He too was soon lost to sight and it was two hours later that the gamekeeper reported having seen him—still running.
It was a relief to me to hear that Euan had eventually returned and to know that the poor fellow was in no way hurt.
‘He’ll never forgive me,’ I complained.
‘Forgive you? Why should he forgive you?’ argued Morag. ‘He thinks it’s a wonderful donkey. He’s done nothin’ but boast and swank of his English donkey ever since.’
I groaned. ‘What is going to happen now that it’s gone then?’ I asked.
‘Ach, stop frettin’. He thinks it’s run all the way back to England and he’s quite certain you’ll get it for him when next you go,’ she returned placidly.
Though it was difficult to believe such a hoax could have been carried through as successfully as the perpetrators claimed, I must admit that Euan seemed to be in no way disappointed with the performance of his counterfeit donkey. On the contrary, he continued to regard me with an embarrassing devotion which showed not the least sign of diminishing.
12 The Wedding
‘As the great wedding day drew near, the Bruachites bent themselves to the task of writing congratulatory telegrams.
‘What are you goin’ to put in your own message?’ asked my landlady one evening, and when I replied that, as I had every intention of being present at the ceremony, it seemed unnecessary to send a telegram, she was genuinely surprised, and insisted that it was the custom for telegrams to be sent whether or not one would be there in person. It was also the custom, she told me, for some of the self-styled bards of the village to compose congratulatory messages in verse, and suggested that one Peter would ‘make a verse’ for me if I so wished. I shook my head; my acquaintance so far with local compositions had forced me to the conclusion that, provided rhyming, metre and grammar could be discounted entirely, their work might be tolerably good—certainly not otherwise. My landlady’s cousin, a master in a Glasgow secondary school, had, she confided, supplied ‘a grand verse’ for her own telegram. ‘My, but he’s right good at them. Just wait till you hear it,’ she exalted with a girlish gleam in her eyes, and added coyly: ‘I shan’t tell you now though for fear of spoilin’ it.’
I murmured something about contenting myself with the prosaic ‘congratulations and best wishes’, whereupon Morag stared at me with the stricken expression of a child who has been punished for a sin it is not aware of having committed; and abruptly changed the subject. She did not mention the telegrams again.
A belated dawn heralded the wedding morning itself and after rubbing a clear patch on my window I saw that it promised to be a dull, depressing, typical December day. Downstairs my landlady was humming Gaelic airs to herself as she scuttled about her morning chores, for she was intending to leave early, having promised to lend her assistance in the kitchen for the major part of the day. The cows were to be left in the byre instead of being turned out on the hill as usual, and I had promised to give them their evening feed before setting out for the church after lunch. When Morag had gone, I spent the morning in polishing ‘Joanna’ who, in spite of her age, was in remarkably good condition. At lunch-time I cooked and ate a rather frugal meal—the frugality being in anticipation of the menu for the wedding feast proving somewhat onerous. I was on my way, in gum-boots and mackintosh, to give the cows their feed before changing into my wedding finery, when the vehement blasting of a horn made me look round, and I beheld the taxi-driver in an opulent new taxi signalling furiously in my direction. I crossed the park to the road.
‘Isn’t that fellow the biggest fool in the Island!’ he burst out passionately, without making even the expected allusion to the weather. I sensed instantly that something was seriously wrong.
‘Which man? And what has he done?’ I asked, puzzling as to why I had been chosen as confidante.
‘Why, Sandy, the bridegroom, of course,’ the taxi-driver explained. ‘He’s gone off in his boat round to Lochnamor this mornin’ before they were up, they’re tellin’ me, and there’s no sign of him comin’ back yet. I’ve been waitin’ over half an hour on him.’
I looked at my watch. It said ten minutes past two and the wedding was timed to take place at three. Lochnamor was an hour away by boat, but there was a rough track across the glen which, if it proved to be negotiable all the way, should take ‘Joanna’ there in about twenty minutes. The taxi-driver’s expression was eloquent.
‘I suppose you want me to take my car through the glen and get him?’ I said.
‘Well, Miss Peckwitt,’ be answered humbly. ‘I’m thinkin’ it’s the only way to get hold of the man, and this thing’—he paused and glared with perfidious disdain at the front wheels of his luxury model—‘she’s too low in her body for me to think of tryin’ it.’
‘There’s precious little time,’ I pointed out, ‘and I have yet to feed the cows.’
The taxi-driver alighted quickly from the car. ‘I’ll feed the cows myself,’ he offered obligingly.
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br /> I thanked him and started off towards ‘Joanna’. ‘And you’ll have to water them too,’ I called as I ran. ‘The well is over there.’
‘Ach, I’ll put them outside for a while and they’ll drink their own water,’ returned the taxi-driver.
‘Oh,’ I said unhappily, but shrugging my shoulders I left him to do what he pleased, for there was no time to argue. I was glad that ‘Joanna’s’ engine had already been running that morning so that she responded to the first pull on the starter and I was quickly able to back and turn her into the road. Putting my foot down as hard as I dared, I headed her towards the glen. The track was sinuous and rutty; loose stones flew on all sides of us and rattled with distressing frequency on the car’s underparts. The bends were nerve-racking, but she skidded round them contemptuously with the air of a thoroughbred on familiar ground, and we eventually reached the spot where the track widened into the shore of a tiny, sheltered bay. The tide was well out. and high and dry above the line of surf was a fishing-boat on ‘legs’, beneath which two dungaree-clad figures crouched industriously scraping barnacles off the keel. They were far too engrossed in their task to notice my arrival and doubtless the noise of the sea had muffled the sound of ‘Joanna’s’ engine. I turned the car back towards the way we had come and then raced down to the beach.
‘Hey, Sandy!’ I addressed the bridegroom, gasping as I inhaled the strong smell of fish, seaweed and tar which hung around the boat. ‘You’re going to be terribly late for your wedding.’
‘Good God!’ burst out one of the figures as it squirmed from beneath the boat. It’s surely not today, is it?’
Sandy, a slim, brown-haired fellow, sporting a moustache that made him look as though he had just taken a bite out of a hedgehog, stared incredulously first at me and then at the other dungareed figure who had emerged from under the boat’s stern. It was obvious from their expressions that both had completely forgotten the wedding.
‘I did want to bottom her today,’ mourned Sandy, staring sadly at the half-scraped hull of his boat.
‘You’ll be bottomed yourself if you don’t turn up for your wedding,’ I threatened him with a smile.
‘I’ll have to go.’ Despairingly he turned to his confederate. ‘You’ll have to stay and bottom her by yourself,’ he told him.
‘But I’ll need to come. I’m your best man,’ expostulated the other.
‘Wedding or no wedding, we canna’ leave the boat like this for the tide to come up,’ objected Sandy.
‘We could rush back in time for the tide maybe?’ suggested his partner hopefully.
Sandy appeared to reflect for some moments on the propriety of rushing away from his own wedding in order to attend to a boat.
‘No, I might not be able to manage it’ he said, his tones betraying the degree of temptation he had been subjected to. ‘You’d best stay and see to it yourself.’
Reluctantly the best man resigned himself to his martyrdom and I set about coercing the vacillating tarspattered bridegroom into ‘Joanna’. Once again I drove at reckless speed through the glen and at ten minutes to three Sandy, impatient enough by now, tumbled out of the car and into the arms of his family who were waiting on the doorstep. His mother was holding his wedding trousers; his aunt was holding his shirt and his grandmother his jacket; his father, an old man almost crippled with rheumatism, hovered in the background meekly offering a collar and tie and a pair of shoes. Outside on the road the taxi-driver, his hair and shirt front decorated with stray wisps of hay, fretted uneasily beside the luxury model. How the family accomplished the feat of inserting Sandy into his wedding attire I have no idea, being intent on manœuvring ‘Joanna’ round and past the taxi; but as I drove away home I caught a glimpse of the bridegroom rushing down to the burn, both hands clutching at his trousers, followed by the taxi-driver-cum-cowman brandishing a pair of braces and a towel. I had pulled up outside Morag’s house and was scrambling out of my seat when the taxi, with engine revving and horn blasting merrily, surged past. A man’s white handkerchief fluttering from one lowered window of the car acknowledged my small part in the proceedings.
There remained still the task of making myself presentable and it was plain that, even if the wedding were delayed by the late arrival of the bridegroom, I should still be lucky not to miss the ceremony. With fumbling fingers I changed into my suit and, after a quick glance around the kitchen to ensure that everything was in order, hastened once more to ‘Joanna’. Just as I was settling into my seat a voice hailed from a distance and, fuming with impatience, I craned my neck round the door to see the rheumaticky figure of the bridegroom’s father toiling gallantly up the hill towards me. Breathlessly and with the sweat pouring from his furrowed brow, he attained the car and collapsed against it with a plaintive bleat.
‘Are you coming to the wedding?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he panted sorrowfully. ‘Somebody has to stay and see to the cows.’
‘Don’t tell me then that Sandy has forgotten the ring,’ I prompted, pulling at the starter.
‘No indeed. It’s worse than that.’
‘Worse?’
‘Aye, he’s forgotten this,’ announced the old man gravely, and produced from his pocket a small bundle wrapped in a white handkerchief.
‘What is that?’ I asked suspiciously.
‘It’s his teeths,’ he replied, ‘and he canna’ get marrit without them.’
‘Oh, they won’t really make any difference,’ I consoled, but the old man drew himself erect and spat with unexpected vigour.
‘It will to her,’ he said. ‘She’s always at him, at him, like a mouse at a taty, for not wearin’ his teeths, and if he turns up for the weddin’ without them, sure the bitch will turn on him even in the church itself.’ He spat again. ‘You’ll take them for him will you?’ he cajoled, and there was both distress and urgency in his voice. ‘You’ll haste, won’t you?’
I took the handkerchief-wrapped bundle and laid it on the seat beside me and then, bidding the old man goodbye, I let in the clutch. ‘Joanna’ screamed her way up the hill. By the time I had covered a few miles the humour of the situation had begun to strike me, but, even before I could raise a smile, a wildly gesticulating figure appeared in the middle of the road. ‘Someone’s been left behind,’ I grumbled to myself as I braked to a stop. An old man, whose attire was in no way suitable for a wedding, rammed at the window with fingers that must have been about as sensitive as skittles.
‘Ach, but it’s cold, cold, cold.’ he began conversationally as I lowered the window.
‘It is,’ I agreed shortly. ‘But I’m in a tearing hurry. What is it you want?’
He looked mildly hurt at my brusqueness. ‘Are you goin’ through the village?’ he enquired, leaning his elbows on the door of the car.
‘I am. Please tell me what you want,’ I repeated testily.
Shocked by my reply, his manner developed a certain hauteur.
‘She’s wantin’ to know will you take a chicken to the post for her?’ He nodded condescendingly towards the house where presumably ‘she’ was.
‘I can’t wait one second more,’ I told him, one foot already on the accelerator and the other on the clutch. ‘If it’s quite ready I’ll take it.’
‘She’s just after finishin’ pluckin’ it now,’ he said languidly. ‘Will you no be comin’ in for a wee moment?’
‘Look here,’ I replied exasperatedly, ‘I’m on my way to the wedding and I’ve simply got to get there in time because there’—I pointed—‘in that bundle are the bridegroom’s false teeth and he cannot get married without them.’
‘Can he no?’ queried the old man.
‘No he can’t,’ I replied tersely.
His countenance assumed an expression of mingled pity and curiosity. ‘Why can he no get marrit without his teeths?’ he enquired, and then giving me an immoral wink went on: ‘Sure, he’ll no be marryin’ her just to bite her, will he?’
Fiercely I let in the clutch and ‘J
oanna’, leaping forward like an outraged debutante, left him gurgling contentedly at his own witticism. The halt, though it had entailed only a few seconds’ delay, made me despair of ever reaching the church on time and I drove as I had seldom driven before. The minute hand of the clock on the dashboard seemed to race almost as madly as the car and it was pointing to nearly half past three when I at last arrived outside the church. Debating as to how I was to get the precious bundle to Sandy, I hurried into the porch where, pausing to take stock of the situation. I heard the minister intoning the marriage service in a voice that was suggestive of the spell-casting demons of pantomime. Hope sank, but rose again as I realised that the service had only just begun and that there were still some few minutes before the fatal moment arrived. Stealthily I tiptoed up a side aisle to the front pew, before which were grouped the young couple, the two bridesmaids, the sponsor and the taxi-driver who, having already acted as valet, driver and cowman, had now been pressed into service as groomsman. Taking a deep breath which served as an aromatic reminder that Sandy’s toilet had indeed been a sketchy one—the church reeked with the mingled odours of fish, seaweed and tar—and ignoring the faintly hostile glances of the occupants of the pew, I urged them to make room for me. The slight disturbance made the minister look up from his prayer book and direct upon me a frankly enquiring stare. I gazed with the utmost reverence at the hassock by my feet. Cautiously I nudged my neighbour. ‘Here are Sandy’s teeth,’ I hissed. ‘Pass them on; don’t drop them whatever you do.’ With bated breath I watched over the progress of the white bundle along the pew until a plainly audible ‘Hi!’ told me that it had nearly reached its objective. The taxi-driver stepped back a pace, reached behind him surreptitiously, stepped forward again and a moment later, after a barely perceptible movement of his arm, the teeth were safely deposited in Sandy’s pocket. It was just in time.
The Hills is Lonely Page 23