The Sea for Breakfast

by Lillian Beckwith

  Midnight had already chimed before we had finished the tree and the long tables which had been borrowed from the school canteen had been covered with wallpaper that had originally been intended for stage decoration but which, due to the non-arrival of the previously mentioned parcel, was to serve a dual purpose—once the children’s tea was finished it would have to be whipped off and used for papering Cinderella’s kitchen. There had been so many late nights since the hectic preparations for Christmas had begun and when I had managed to get an early night in the hope of catching up on some sleep it had resulted only in catching up on dreams, so I was utterly weary by the time Morag and Dollac, after repeated ‘beautiful justs’ as they surveyed the evening’s work, departed by the light of a reluctant moon. It was still dark on Christmas morning when I began to lay the tables in the shed. As I carried out the plates of cakes and pastries, Rhuna emerged duskily across the water, its string of lamplit windows dim as tarnished tinsel against the brilliant flashes of the lighthouses. When the sun rose it was smudged and angry and with it wakened an aggressive wind that swept the rain in from the sea. Some of the children lived a good distance away from the village and I had promised to collect them in Joanna if it was a nasty day. Accordingly, about four o’ clock in the afternoon, I drove through the slatting rain to collect the first of my guests. Marjac, whose five children were all bobbing about just inside the door, greeted me with shrill querulousness.

  ‘What on earth am I to do with Shamus?’ she demanded. ‘He was out on the hill this mornin’ and got his trousers soakin’ wet so he had to put on his best ones. Now hasn’t he caught himself on John Willy’s harrows and torn the seat out of them.’ Marjac darted back to her sewing machine and turned the handle savagely. ‘I’m after makin’ him a pair from one of my old skirts,’ she said disgustedly. Shamus, a little shamefaced, went to the solid wood kerb in front of the fire and sat down, carefully arranging an old meal sack over his lower half. The rest of the children were ready and impatient to be off. ‘There you are,’ his mother flung the trousers at Shamus, and clutching at the sack he hurried away to ‘the room’ to put them on.

  ‘Ian, did you wash your teeths like the nurse told you?’ Marjac arrested another of her brood with the question just as he was about to slip through the door.

  ‘No, I didn’t yet,’ Ian replied.

  ‘Then if nurse sees you she’ll ask you and be vexed with you,’ his mother warned. ‘She’ll be at the party, won’t she, Miss Peckwith?’ I nodded. ‘Nurse says he’s got bad teeths and she’s given him a brush and some paste to try will he keep the rest from goin’ too,’ Marjac explained as Ian reached at the back of the dresser for his toothbrush, moistened it by dipping it into the kettle and proceeded to attack his teeth with as much energy as if he were attacking rusty iron with a file.

  ‘What a good dung you were able to run up a pair of trousers for Shamus’, I complimented Marjac during a lull in the activity.

  ‘Ach, I just threw them together out of my head,’ she disclaimed.

  Shamus came out from ‘the room’ looking a little perplexed. One trouser-leg was skin tight; the other hung loosely about his thigh. He looked beseechingly at his mother.

  ‘It’ll have to do,’ she told him. ‘Miss Peckwitt cannot wait here all day while I see to it.’

  I might have offered to wait, but I doubted if there was much Marjac could do to the trousers except to cut down the wide leg to match the tight one and thus immobilize the mobile half also. The children packed themselves into the car, Shamus rather stiltedly, and I was soon decanting them into Morag’s care and rushing away for the rest. By five o’clock all the children had arrived and were waiting tensely in the cottage for what was going to happen next. It is rare for even very young Gaelic children to betray excitement noisily and so it was a very decorous procession indeed which followed me to the shed. There, they seated themselves at the tables as they were directed, not scrambling for places but scolding one another in loud whispers whenever they detected signs of stupidity or slowness. When they were settled they regarded the heaped-up plates of delicacies with prim dignity. I insisted that everyone should begin with bread and butter or sandwiches and these they accepted demurely only when Morag and I pressed them to do so. We offered them cakes, for which they reached out cautious hands. Remembering their zest for school meals I found their apathy when confronted with my cooking dispiriting. I began to wonder if, not being accustomed to fancy cookery, they had not developed an appetite for it, but in view of their consumption of sweets, jam and biscuits, it seemed highly improbable. I knew there was nothing wrong with my cooking and every now and then I caught the gleam in their eyes as they stared along the length of the loaded tables. I signalled to Morag to come to the door with me and there I turned.

  ‘Look, children,’ I said. ‘Morag and I must go and see to things in the kitchen but there’s to be a competition and a shilling for the one who eats the most. Keep a check on one another and tell me when I come back and the winner will get a shilling and the next two sixpence each.’

  They whispered meekly that they would and we left them sitting like jaded gourmands before the feast. The moment the door closed uproar began, and I heard it with satisfaction. We left them for half an hour and when we returned the tables looked as though they had been swept by a hurricane. Shyness and stiffness were completely gone and everyone was clamouring to teil us who had won the shilling.

  ‘Johnny! Johnny’s won,’ they yelled. ‘He had twenty-four cakes and four sandwiches.’

  Johnny smiled angelically as he pocketed his shilling.

  Shamus was one of the runners up, and one of the youngest children was the other, though we found that he had eaten only the cream centres out of four of his cakes and disposed of the rest under the table.

  By eight o’clock the players were beginning to arrive for the pantomime and the ‘stage’, which was merely one end of the shed sketchily partitioned off and curtained, had to be set. Various helpers came, bringing old railway sleepers which they had collected from the shore and which they set up on old salt herring barrels to provide seating accommodation for the audience. The children, full, and tired after a series of games, were content to sit and watch preparations from the front stalls. Dollac, who naturally was playing Cinderella, rushed in, still wearing gumboots and an old mac, on her way back from taking the hill cows their evening feed. She had been caught in a hail shower and she looked so ravishing with her glowing cheeks and rippling black hair flecked with hailstones that it seemed ludicrous to attempt to make her more emphatic with stage make-up. The postman bustled in to become Buttons.

  ‘That’ll make some nice presents for the audience—when they get them,’ he said meaningly, indicating the bulging mail bag behind the Christmas tree. ‘See and put the postmistress on the back row all the same.’

  The pantomime frolicked along from start to finish. The players forgot their lines but the audience knew the play at least as well as the actors (the script had been passed round the village like a best-selling book), so that there were no embarrassing intervals of silence. The chorus tripped through their dances with earnest efficiency, rigidly following the beat of the music even when the gramophone ran down and was wound up again with the record still playing. During rehearsal I had tried, unavailingly, to persuade them to smile as they danced, but tonight they appeared to have great difficulty in repressing their amusement, the obliging little postman having overcome their impassivity’ by placing himself on the front row ready to make faces at them whenever they appeared on the stage. The audience were enchanted.

  ‘My, but I believe Dollac was as good as any of them fillum stars,’ said Morag admiringly when the pantomime was over and the children had gone home. We were in the kitchen hurriedly cutting up more sandwiches, making more tea and replenishing the dishes of cakes, while everyone who could was throwing out or rearranging the herring barrels and sleepers to clear the floor for dancing.

  ‘She�
�d make any film star I’ve ever seen look pretty sick,’ I said.

  ‘Indeed, yes,’ agreed Behag, who had glamorized herself for the occasion by putting on a new dress which became her, and by powdering her face inexpertly so that she succeeded in looking mildewed. ‘I was seein’ in the paper a day or two ago that some fillum star had just taken her fifth husband.’

  ‘She needs her bumps reading,’ I observed dispassionately.

  ‘She needs what did you say?’ asked Morag.

  ‘I said she needs her bumps reading. I mean, her head seeing to,’ I explained, seeing that she was not familiar with the expression.

  ‘A good dose of castor oil is what we always give them here, mo ghaoil,’ she said simply. ‘A girl or two hereabouts has got that way sometimes, but a good dose of castor oil works it out of them quicker than anythin’.’

  Hector came into the kitchen, sidled up to me and slapped my behind. ‘Tsere’s one of tsese hikers outside,’ he told me, having thus ensured my attention. ‘He’s wantin’ to know will you find him a bed for tse night?’

  Immediately I suspected a joke. A stranded hiker on Christmas Day in Bruach was too unlikely.

  ‘Why did he come here?’ I asked.

  ‘He says he couldn’t see any lights any place else.’

  Erchy shouldered his way in. ‘Here, it’s startin’ to snow,’ he said, ‘and there’s a fellow outside says he’s stranded. Come out here and talk to him.’

  I pretended to agree and went with him to the door. Outside stood a solitary figure huddled into a waterproof cape. A cap was pulled well down over his eyes and he had an enormous bundle on his back. The voice that addressed me was ripe Glaswegian. Dugan, I knew, was an excellent mimic of the Glaswegian accent. I darted at the figure and, exclaiming contemptuously, snatched off his cap and dragged him forward. ‘Come along,’ I told him. ‘You don’t fool me.’ He hung back, so laughingly I went behind and prodded him forcibly. Inside the lighted kitchen the figure stood shivering with, I hoped, cold, for I realized that he was a complete stranger. Erchy and Hector looked at me as though I had gone mad. Morag and Behag stopped with their knives poised and waited for an explanation. The situation hardly improved when I began to shake with laughter. ‘I’m sorry,’ I tried to explain, ‘but I thought someone had dressed up for a joke. We’re having a party here as I dare say you’ve guessed, and I just couldn’t believe there’d really be anyone hiking to Bruach at this time of year and in such weather.’

  The hiker’s face thawed into a timid grin and after a plate of hot soup he seemed to accept that he had not fallen into such wild company as he must at first have suspected.

  ‘I must go and see if I can get hold of Janet and ask her if she can give you a bed,’ I said.

  ‘Ach, put him in your own bed,’ advised Erchy. ‘Put a pillow between you and everythin’ will be all right.’

  The hiker’s face resumed its hunted look.

  Luckily, Janet had a spare bed and took the hiker off my hands. ‘Thank God’s my sister’s away to her bed with the cold,’ she murmured as she departed, ‘his trousers are soaked through.’ It was singularly unfortunate for the poor hiker that when Janet arrived home she found a party of her friends awaiting her. They had come, well provisioned, to begin celebrating the New Year. The hiker had gone off to bed, Janet told me later, but so noisy and so lengthy had been the ensuing celebration that it was doubtful if he managed a wink of sleep the night through. It was even more unfortunate that Janet had overslept the next morning and had not awakened until disturbed by the shouts of the hiker who was having a battle with Grace in the kitchen as to the ownership of the trousers he had left to dry there overnight.

  ‘Indeed, my dear,’ Janet said mournfully, ‘I believe that’s one man who’ll never come within sight of this village again so long as he draws breath.’

  Various whoops and bangs, interspersed by exuberant retchings of the melodeon, came from the direction of the shed. The dancing had obviously begun and Behag went to extricate Fiona from the throng so that Morag, who was not staying for the dancing, could take her home. It was already past eleven o’clock but the child showed no sign of fatigue. I pushed the kettles to the side of the fire and went to see how things were progressing. Dollac, who had been my staunchest supporter all through the preparations for the festivities, had hurried home to change into a party dress, promising faithfully to be back in time to help me and Behag serve the refreshments. I looked for her among the milling dancers but as yet she had not put in an appearance. The postman was playing the melodeon with a verve that was in some measure due to the bottle of whisky I had seen him furtively stuffing into the mailbag behind the tree. Some of the girls were teaching their partners to dance a St. Bernard’s waltz, the tuition consisting of kicking their partners feet sharply until they were in the required positions. They had pulled sprigs of mistletoe from the bunch Mary had sent me and this they wore in their hair, but the men seemed to be uninterested or unaware of the implied invitation.

  When the dancers paused there were complaints of thirst and after consulting with Behag I decided not to wait for Dollac’s arrival but to serve the refreshments straight away.

  ‘See and put a good tin of baking soda an’ a spoon handy, so folks can help themselves,’ Morag had warned before she left, and so I put a couple of pounds of it in a jar beside the tree and at frequent intervals the men resorted to it, swallowing down two or three heaped tea-spoonfuls at a time. Naturally, they had all brought their bottles and every few minutes purposeful groups of them disappeared from the shed and came back each time looking a little livelier or a little sleepier, according as it affected them. The night rushed on. At one time I noticed Shamus who apparently considered himself young enough for children’s parties and old enough for adult ones, dancing an alternately constrained and abandoned version of the Highland Fling which brought much applause. There was a respite for song and the roadman gave us one of his own composition. It told the story of a hen who had taken herself off to a secret nest where she had reared one chick—a cockerel. It was wholly derogatory and brought screams of laughter.

  Two o’clock came and there was still no sign of Dollac and as I had never known her miss a rehearsal or indeed any chance of entertainment, I started enquiring if anyone knew why she had not returned to the dance.

  ‘You’d best ask Adam,’ said Elspeth, with a little secret smile. ‘I believe he knows why she’s not here.’

  I collared Adam on his way to an appointment with a bottle. He was bubbling with fun and voluble with whisky and he was only too ready to tell me what had happened to Dollac.

  ‘Well it’s like this,’ he began. ‘Dollac promised she’d come to the dance with Duncan, and Johnny didn’t like that at all. He thought she should come with him. Ach, you know fine yourself how it’s been with Dollac and Johnny these three years back. I believe he’s been wantin’ her to marry him for a good while but she won’t just say that she will.’ As a matter of fact the relationship between Dollac and Johnny had never appeared to me to be anything more than platonic, but it seemed I was mistaken. ‘Ach, he’s crazy about her right enough,’ went on Adam. ‘Indeed I’m hearin’ he’s after buyin’ the ring a twelve month back and he’s been takin’ her old man buckets of fish heads for his creels for longer than that. Anyway, while she was out at the cows this afternoon what does Johnny do but climb in through her bedroom window and pinch all her clothes. Not a blessed thing did he leave her that she could wear for the dance. At least that’s what she was tellin’ me when I called in on my way here. You see, I had to nip up and put my mother to bed after the pantomime was finished,’ he explained. ‘Aye, but I felt sorry for Dollac, right enough. She’s been lookin’ forward to this dance more than anybody, and there she was sittin’ beside the fire in her workin’ clothes just like she was when she was Cinderella in the play,’ Adam chuckled.

  ‘Where is Johnny?’ I cut in, looking in vain for him among the dancers. Duncan, seemingly unaf
fected by Dollac’s desertion, was capering friskily through a ‘Dashing White Sergeant’.

  ‘I expect he’s at home, keepin’ guard over Dollac’s clothes,’ said Adam. ‘He was here at the pantomime, but he went home when Dollac did.’

  It was past four o’ clock in the morning and I was yawning undisguisedly, hoping to infect some of my spirited guests with a little of my own weariness, when the door was suddenly flung back and Johnny and Dollac stood on the threshold, grinning self-consciously at us all. Johnny’s eyes were glittering and he was brandishing a full bottle of whisky, inviting everyone to ‘come and celebrate’, an invitation to which Duncan responded with even more alacrity than the rest. Dollac was wearing a sea-green dress that had been depicted on the front page of the most recent mail-order catalogue and captioned ‘For Allure with a capital A’. The colour endowed her with a naiadic beauty so that it was not difficult to imagine she had swirled in on a cloud of spray.

  ‘What are you celebration’,’ called Adam. ‘Is it just that you’ve gathered in the last of your hay today or it is because you’ve gathered in Dollac at last?’

  ‘Both,’ retorted Johnny, with a flash of assertiveness, and with an enraptured look at Dollac he seized her left hand and held it up for us to see the diamond sparkling on the third finger.

  We congratulated, we hugged, we cheered and admired. The melodeon blossomed again into a ‘Strip the Willow’ for which Dollac and Johnny led off. Heaven alone knew now what time the party would end.

  ‘Hell!’ came Ercy’s muzzy voice in my ear, ‘the way I’m feelin’ now I think I must have been a bit in love with Dollac myself.’