The Sea for Breakfast

by Lillian Beckwith

  All hay in Bruach was cut with scythes by the men. The spreading and cocking being left to the women and children until the hay was cured and ready to be built into winter stacks when the men again took charge. I had learned to scythe inexpertly but I could not keep up the steady swing hour after hour which is necessary to cut an appreciable amount of hay. If I were not to have to buy in for Bonny’s winter feeding I had to have help. Erchy, on whom I could always rely for croft work, cut most of the hay aided by oft-promised, perfunctory and Morag-goaded assistance from Hector, but even so I began to find the spreading, raking, turning, cocking and re-spreading every fine morning rather more than I could manage alone. I discovered to my dismay that I was lagging behind my neighbours and though everyone assured me periodically that there was no hurry because haymaking could go on until the New Year if necessary, I went to see Peter’s mother, Sheena, to ask if she could spare him to help me sometimes.

  Sheena and Peter, though they worked the croft adjoining my own, lived at the farther end of the village. Sheena was old, totteringly agile, but thoroughly indomitable and she managed to keep Peter who, despite his simple-mindedness was possessed of exuberant strength and way-ward fancies, in complete subjection. Her home with its heavy-lidded thatched roof was one of the oldest in the village and her dim kitchen exuded friendliness as uninterruptedly as its sagging stove exuded smoke. The door was open, letting the blue peat smoke, tinged with the smell of newly scorched flour, breathe out into the serenity of the evening air and I waited for a few moments before making my presence known, listening to Sheena reading aloud to Peter from the newspaper in a hairing baritone. She jumped up as she heard my voice, dragged me inside and bustled around in her stockinged feet making a ‘strupak’, pausing every now and then to clap me on the shoulder to tell me how hardy I was and to ask Peter if she had not been saying to him just that day how she loved me like a sister. She began rooting under the recess bed in the corner of the room and disinterred a brown paper parcel tied with string. I realized with despair that I was once again going to have to swallow a piece of special presentation shortbread which Sheena had once been sent from Edinburgh and which she had since hoarded for honoured guests. The firm claimed on their tins to have been making the shortbread for over a century and when, on the occasion of my very first visit to Sheena, I had unsuspectingly accepted a piece, I was immediately convinced that Sheena’s tin was one of the original ones. Since then, despite repeated invitations and a genuine affection on my part for the old lady, I had purposely made my visits rare ones, always in the hope that enough honoured guests had called on her meantime to ensure my never being offered the shortbread again. It appeared, however, that the supply was inexhaustible and I wondered how many more tins reposed in the scarcely explored territory beneath the bed. Sheena’s eyesight was poor and I could easily have secreted the shortbread in my pocket had it not been for Peter, whose gaze followed my every movement like that of a mesmerized sparrow.

  ‘Peter, take your stare off Miss Peckwitt this minute!’ Sheena admonished him and thrusting the newspaper into his hands with a gesture that made him wince she bade him look at the pictures. Peter obliged with goggling eagerness until his mother, suddenly suspicious, looked over his shoulder and snatched a double page of bathing beauty photographs from him and substituted a veterinary catalogue. Above its staid pages Peter’s gaze fastened despairingly on my feet. Peter’s habit of staring fixedly at me was one of the most disconcerting things I had to endure. Though I had lived in Bruach for some years I was acutely aware that my activities were still a source of unflagging interest to the inhabitants but they at least watched me covertly. Peter had not the wit to conceal his curiosity and whenever I appeared in sight he became so obsessed with watching me that he completely forgot whatever he was doing until his mother reminded him of it by boxing his ears. Though his attention was embarrassing the inevitable result was that watching Sheena and Peter trying to work together whenever I was at all visible was as entertaining as the antics of a couple of members of the Crazy Gang. Only that afternoon I had gone out to turn my hay and Peter, who had until then been steadily raking hay while his mother gathered it, suddenly caught sight of me. Immediately his raking had become so wildly abandoned that he had raked poor Sheena’s tottery legs from under her and tumbled her into the hay before her shouts had penetrated his excitement and he had stopped long enough to allow her to pick herself up and rush at him to box his ears. The previous day they had been building a cock in a rising wind and Sheena had been running here and there gathering up bundles of hay in her arms and bringing them into the lee of the cock. So tired was she and so intent on getting the job finished that not for some time had she noticed that Peter, whose eyes of course were fixed undeviatingly on me engaged on a similar task, was grabbing each bundle of hay as she brought it and was flinging it ecstatically to the top of the cock so that the wind caught it and scattered it again for Sheena to gather afresh.

  After the necessary preliminaries had been gone through I made known to Sheena the purpose of my visit.

  ‘An’ indeed Peter shall come and help you, mo ghaoil. Indeed he shall. He’s a good boy though he is what you say in the English, “softly up the stairs”. But you shall have him with pleasure, Miss Peckwitt. Just as soon as he can be spared from our own hay.’ She did not consult Peter. ‘An’ he loves you, Miss Peckwitt,’ she continued ardently. ‘Is that not true, Peter? Are you not after tellin’ me near every day how much you love Miss Peckwitt?’ Peter nodded startled but vigorous acquiescence and under cover of their protestations I thankfully transferred the piece of shortbread to my pocket and embarked upon a fresh-baked girdle-scone, the appetizing smell of which had been filling the kitchen when I had first arrived. I cut short what seemed to be developing into a panegyric on my attractions and Peter’s abilities by complimenting Sheena on her scones.

  ‘Ach, mo ghaoil, but I threw them together just when I came in from the hay for the bread had grown such a beard with the mould that was on it. Indeed, I was sayin’ to Peter it looked just like myself after yon hot spell we was havin’.’ She struck her mouth with her hand. ‘Ach, but I wish I had the right words and I could tell you. I could make you laugh if I had more English,’ she said regretfully.

  ‘But you are always making me laugh, Sheena,’ I answered with perfect truthfulness.

  ‘Well, glad I am to hear it, mo ghaoil, for laughter is as good for folks as a plate of porridge, and just like porridge everybody should have some every day.’ She squeezed my shoulder emphatically. ‘Well, I was tellin’ you, my face got that sore with the sun and the wind that I just splathered the cream I’d been savin’ for the butter on it and I sat out at the front of the house in the shade for I was gaspin’ like the birds with the heat. I must have fallen asleep for mercy I, when I woke up and put a hand to my face it was covered with hair like a goat’s. “Here,” says I to myself, “what in the world has happened to me?” But then I see the hairs has come off in my hand.’ She laughed noiselessly. ‘What did I find with it all that my fine fellow Peter here was after tryin’ would he cut his hairs and he’d had to come and sit out beside myself to do it, and the wind had blown his hairs all over my face so that the cream had stickled them.’ She had been squeezing and patting my shoulder repeatedly while she was relating the incident and when she had finished she bent herself double with spasms of laughter that had worn themselves to shreds before they reached her throat. I laughed delightedly at her story but Peter, no doubt remembering the punishment he had received on that occasion, only watched his mother warily. ‘Ach, mo ghaoil, but if only you had more of the Gaelic, I could tell you better the sight I looked,’ she lamented again. So I laughed immoderately to please her.

  The kitchen darkened as the sky composed itself for rain and stray drops came down the chimney to sizzle on the warm stove.

  ‘That old chimbley never did keep out the piss properly at all,’ Sheena explained pleasantly.

  ‘Well,�
�� I said, getting up from my chair, ‘I suppose we really need the rain.’

  ‘Right enough we do,’ she replied. Indeed, did you ever feel weather as hot as it was this last week or two back?’ she demanded hoarsely.

  ‘It certainly was hot,’ I admitted.

  ‘My, but poor Peter’s that burned through his shirt workin’ in the hay that he’s after goin’ every few minutes to rub himself on the dyke the same as the catties with the itchin’ it’s givin’ him.’ I caught a look of desperate appeal from Peter in time to stifle the sceptical comment I was about to make on the possibility of the sun burning through the thick flannel shirts which Peter wore perennially and recalled having seen him basking shirtless on a secluded part of the shore the previous Sunday when no doubt his mother had believed him to be in church.

  I said I must go before the rain became heavy and Sheena, leaving Peter sitting in the deep gloom of the unlit kitchen, escorted me part way along the road, asseverating earnestly that ‘the first fine day after the next,’ I would get Peter for my hay if the Lord spared us all. She had not put on a jacket to accompany me and I pressed her to return home before she got too wet.

  ‘Ach, a little rain will never wet me, mo ghaoil,’ she asserted airily, but nevertheless she allowed me to go on alone. It was not until she turned away that I noticed she was still in her stockinged feet!

  The rain continued all night, making it impossible to work in the hay the next morning, and I resolved to try to catch up on some of my house cleaning which had been neglected for the urgency of haymaking. I had just started to polish the floor when Sarah came to tell me that Bonny was bulling. She advised me strongly to take her to the bull straight away. I quailed at the thought of taking Bonny within a mile of any bull.

  ‘Would Yawn take her for me?’ I asked hopefully.

  ‘Yawn would take her right enough but he’s away on the bus this mornin’. His brother’s havin’ a funeral to himself today,’ she explained.

  Erchy and Hector would, I knew, be too busy with tourists and even if there had been no tourists Hector would have been too busy with all the pretty girl relatives who were staying in the village. I could not go to Sheena and ask for Peter because she had never permitted him officially to know the facts of life. I had to reconcile myself to the fact that if I was to have milk next summer I must take Bonny to the bull myself.

  Long ago, when I had first come to Bruach, I had once encountered a large, shaggy, Highland bull standing in the middle of the high road with ‘Monarch of the Glen’ impassivity and I had, some time later, been an astonished witness to the spectacle of a young girl coming up behind the bull, slapping its rump with her bare hand and commanding it to ‘get on there!’ The bull had trotted off obediently! When I had come out of my petrified trance and the telephone kiosk in which I had taken refuge at first sight of the bull, I had determined that someday I myself would do, or try to do, exactly as that young girl had done. It was a resolution which seemed destined to remain unfulfilled, perhaps because it has subsequently been my misfortune always to meet my bulls face to face, a situation which is intimidating enough to wilt far less feeble spirits than mine. Now, on Bonny’s behalf, I must go and scrape acquaintance with one. I led the docile Bonny on a short length of rope, experiencing increasingly the sensation that my torso was trying to disclaim kinship with my legs. At Morag’s I called in, partly for a brief respite, partly to enquire whether she could tell me the bull’s whereabouts.

  ‘Surely, mo ghaoil, but it’s lucky you are. He’s away tomorrow in the float and Angus has him in on the croft till the lorry will come and get him. You’ll only need to take the beast there.’

  Fiona, Hector and Behag’s little daughter, started to pull on her gumboots busily.

  ‘Where do you think you’re goin’, Fiona?’ asked Behag, with motherly indulgence.

  ‘I’m away to take Miss Peckwitt to the bull,’ announced Fiona firmly and neither Morag nor Behag appeared to find her intention at all extraordinary. Behag was always content to have Fiona in my company because apparently I was the only guardian the child did not try to elude. Fiona was a born roamer and tended to disappear for hours even when a strict eye was being kept on her. She was also the most intractable, unquenchable little bundle of independence I have ever come across and I most emphatically did not want her company today.

  ‘No, Fiona,’ I said. ‘You can’t come today.’

  Fiona ignored my refusal and struggled with childish maladroitness into a cardigan.

  ‘You heard Miss Peckwitt say you were not to go,’ said Behag, with a helpless look at me and Morag.

  ‘I’m away with her,’ said the child imperturbably.

  ‘Fiona!’ interjected Morag sternly.

  The only sign Fiona gave of having heard was to tighten her lips.

  ‘You must stay with Aunty and Mummy today,’ I told her, infusing decision into my voice. ‘I’ll take you for a walk tomorrow.’

  Fiona’s grey eyes regarded me implacably. ‘I’m comin’ with you,’ she announced. ‘Hurry now!’

  Morag gave me an apple as consolation. Fiona demanded one also and she had eaten hers almost before we were back on the road again.

  ‘I’ll put your apple in my pocket for you,’ she offered insistently as she threw away her own core; ‘you can tell me when you don’t want it.’

  The sun had broken through the cloud to disperse the dampness of the morning and it grew hot on our backs as we climbed the stony track; flies buzzed around my head incessantly, pestering me only a little more than Fiona’s unceasing questions. I was thankful for the temporary distraction of Angus’s dogs racing to meet us as we reached the house where Angus’s wife apologized for the absence of her husband and also for being unable to accompany us. She was leaning heavily on a stick, having, she said, cut her knee that badly she couldn’t put her leg under her. The bull, she told us, was away down in the far park, a fact which, judging from her sudden interest, Bonny had already discovered for herself. She bawled and rugged at her head rope, dragging me after her. There came an answering bawl from the bull and when we reached the gate of the park I let go her rope and drove her speedily through, closing the gate firmly after her. Bonny stood coquettishly; the bull came cantering towards her. I lay on my stomach on a stony hillock at a safe distance outside the fence and waited, content to study all the secret things among the heather that only the lazy know. The clouds had finally yielded to the sun and the air was full of summery noises: the drawled comments of leisured gulls; the preoccupied hum of insects; the sibilance of the sea. My attention was concentrated on a brilliant green caterpillar ingesting a leaf when suddenly Fiona’s voice broke into my absorption with shattering scorn.

  ‘That’s the silliest bull I ever see in my life,’ she said.

  Her interest in the proceedings was slightly embarrassing.

  ‘Fiona,’ I cooed, ‘come and see the way this caterpillar is eating his dinner.’ The lure was quite ineffective.

  ‘That bull is a silly bull,’ she repeated scathingly. ‘That’s not what he’s supposed to do. Take a look will you?’ She pulled impatiently at my shoulder.

  I turned round. Bonny was standing happily chewing her cud while the bull, with his tail thrashing ecstatically, was down on his forelegs like a calf sucking contentedly at her udder. I stood up and Bonny turned on me a look that was eloquent of bewilderment and pleading.

  ‘What will you do?’ demanded Fiona.

  ‘Wait and see,’ I said crossly, and stepping over the fence I gave the bull a series of slaps on his rump. ‘Get on with you!’ I yelled at him, but not waiting to test his obedience I climbed nimbly back over the fence where, shaken by my own audacity, I clung panting to a fence post.

  ‘That’s shown him,’ shrilled Fiona with untrammelled approbation. She turned to the bull. ‘Why did you no do that before, you silly old thing!’ she screamed at him derisively.

  There was still a long afternoon left for working in the hay wh
en I returned with Bonny so, after a hasty lunch, I went out and began shaking some of the dry hay from the smaller cocks into bigger ones. Peter, at work with his mother on their own croft, was picking the ‘stickybuds’ (burdocks) one of the hay and, catching sight of me, he flourished a large bunch of them in rapturous greeting. Sheena, who had been bending beside him, straightened herself just as his arm was descending from the greeting. The bunch of burdocks fastened themselves tenaciously to the old grey head. Peter’s hands went to his mouth as he saw what he had accomplished. Sheena stood stupefied for a moment and then her hands went slowly up to her own head to assess the damage and then swiftly to Peter’s head to administer a flurry of sharp slaps. So much achieved, the two retired to the dyke while Peter did, his trembling best to extract the burdocks. For a long and clamorous time the operation continued until finally all the burdocks were removed. Poor Sheena remained seated dejectedly on the dyke but Peter, recovering from the strain of his ministrations, started to re-gather the offending burdocks. I wanted to persuade Sheena to come and have a quiet cup of tea with me to restore her spirits and with this intention I crossed the croft towards the dyke. Peter, whose attention had been temporarily torn from me, became aware of my approach and in a spasm of delight he flung the burdocks he had re-gathered over his shoulder. I gasped. Sheena screamed huskily. Peter turned round and his mouth dropped open as he saw what he had again accomplished. He took to his heels. Sheena, jumping up tried to totter after him, calling his name savagely but, fearful of her wrath, he kept on running, with only an occasional backward glance. Sheena’s hands went up to her twice-tortured head.