by Ian Stephen
Fine.
But when the nurse lifted the lid she jumped three feet into the air. As you know, but they didn’t, that trolley was already occupied.
Like I said, they’re all sewn up but when you’re expecting an empty void in a covered trolley, the outline of a body in a shroud must be a bit shocking.
‘Oh well, they’ll be company for each other,’ the day porter said. And of course, with a fair number of chess-moves, everything got sorted.
Meanwhile, our group was finished doing its bit to save the rest of the planet by prayer and were tackling the cakes and savouries.
The state of mild euphoria lasted till I came in to start my rounds next day. I got called to Female Medical.
‘What were you thinking of?’
Some of the other sisters in that hospital would have gone straight to my boss. I might have been out the door and down the road that day. The red-haired one told me I’d nearly given her poor nurse her own heart attack but after that she had to say they’d all made a full recovery. Except for the two who were dead already.
The District
After a bit of a blow there’s lobsters too dizzy to sell. Alive but crippled. Not a commercial proposition. Bootlace conger, rockling and wrasse – they’re only a by-catch.
Put them all in the stock. The bony fish will hold together. Don’t flood them with too much liquid of any kind. Let it be intense. Bay leaves, a big onion, sticks of celery.
Let the pan tick over long enough. Drain and salvage white meat from the debris. Save it to put it back in, right at the end.
If you’ve tomatoes gone soft or not quite ripened, chop them small. Shallots, garlic, leeks, chives – whatever’s in season, sweat them gently in oil or butter. Pour in a half glass of fino. (A return trade for most of our shellfish.)
Add something fresh, maybe some well-scrubbed mussels. Adjust the seasoning but if you add any tomato puree, take it easy. You want it to taste of fish.
Some fine-chopped parsley can go in with the white shellfish meat.
Don’t leave any of the soup or you might get bad weather tomorrow.
Kirsty was something else at the funeral. She really looked after the olaid. They used to chafe a lot. Fathers and daughters. Mothers and sons. I think the olaid was a bit jealous of the way they’d stand and gab. I remember he’d walk out to the back door with Kirsty when there was a very clear night. He’d point out the belt of Orion and his dog, Sirius, following behind. Then they’d turn to the handle of the pan that led you up to bright Polaris. I was eavesdropping. The names stayed with me though I didn’t know what to look for.
All the arrangements were made for us. Ruaraidh was the go-between. Talking to the undertaker. We didn’t care which coffin or if there were to be flowers or anything like that.
But I heard the voices raised in the kitchen. It was Kirsty’s, quite strong, quite loud. Quite firm. Ruaraidh was talking about the done thing and offending people.
Kirsty said she wasn’t going to go back home and stir the soup for the men and neither was her mother.
They might have been the first women who went to the graveside at a Lewis funeral. Maybe they didn’t count because one was an East Coaster and the other half and half. But Ruaraidh’s wife, Sheena – she went along with them. She was the bravest one of the three.
I was that proud of them. At the time I still had a faith of a kind but it was out of step with the majority verdict. I could say a short prayer but only to myself. It didn’t help that much.
The service never said much about the olman. That was the usual then. I think they might have mentioned his name. They didn’t always do that. ‘We are here to bury our father and brother, husband, friend. This is the fate that awaits us all and none of us know the hour or the day.’
And that’s about it but it takes a bit longer.
The undertaker and his helper take the coffin from the church to the bier. It’s difficult, standing up in front, with the coffin. You get a cord to hold and later that’s what you’ll use to take your share of lowering it into the ground.
Ruaraidh and the rest of the male relations had the other cords. I nodded to the men I’d seen in their overalls at fanks. They all had black ties and white shirts so I had to look a few times to remember who was who.
The rest of the men lined up behind the bier which was chocked up ready, outside the church. Sometimes it’s outside a house, but that’s usually when the funeral is out of town.
So there were two lines forming, men who worked with the olman in the Mill, more distant relations, folk who knew him in the town. Guys I was at school with, showing solidarity. I didn’t catch Kenny F’s eye any time. But he might have been there. You don’t see the guys in the line when you’re holding the cord. Except at the hearse. They don’t come up to shake your hand then. That’s at the graveside. They don’t all come to the graveside. If they do, they share cars or take the bus that’s always laid on.
Before all that, the weight has to be shared between the two lines. It’s like two queues, walking slowly and slightly separate as the procession moves. When you come to the front, you nod to the guy you’re taking over from. Then your right or left hand goes to the front handle. The other guy moves back to the middle handle. And so on. They try to park the hearse according to the length of the lines so everyone gets a share of carrying the coffin.
Most guys have done their bit then. A lot of the guys in the lines won’t have gone to the service, in the house or at the church. They’ll just have arrived outside, to take their share of ‘the lift’. The undertaker says, ‘We’ll take a lift now, boys.’
At the cemetery, there’s another lift to the graveside. And this time there were three women standing, waiting. The olaid flanked by Kirsty and Sheena. Since then it’s been done quite a bit. It’s not the usual thing now but it’s done sometimes.
Kirsty had to go back to Canada to sort a few things out. I was holding the fort at home. No bother. In a couple of months she had things arranged – a temporary job on the District to come home to – a maternity-leave post. And she’d be staying with an old pal out of town. This was partly practical – a rural District. And partly because she knew it would be too much, the women nagging each other in the same house.
I wouldn’t say we got close exactly but there was one evening, after the olaid went to bed. Kirsty would stay the night now and again. She told me a story. Something that happened on the District. Something like this.
I’ve always wanted to be on the District and that’s what I’m doing. How many can say that? I’ve a neat red car, Essential Users Allowance and I see a fair bit of life and death as well as drinking too many cups of tea. I’ll probably go back at the end of the job, pick up my life in Canada. But this is fine for now.
So at home, I usually get my feet up by the box. But I always make sure and do a baking once a week. Sometimes I get a few visitors when they see my car outside. I was quite pleased at the company the first time Kenny F showed up on the doorstep.
I’ve seen your old mate a few times, lately. I know you’re out of touch, with you going to meetings and not drinking. At first I thought he was a relation, on the olman’s side of course. Then I remembered him from Westview.
His face is the sort that a photographer would find interesting. Quite a good-looking man in his way if you were looking for that. Weatherbeaten, I thought. Something quite kind in him. Just a year or two younger than myself. I remember us being only a year or two apart at school. I tried to make it clear I had no interest that way. My life was full but I was glad of the company. But Westview meant a lot to all of us.
I don’t suppose I’d seen him for five years or more. He said it all in a breath that he’d had a bit of luck with his job on a boat and there was a bit of fish going spare. How was the brother doing? He was sorry about the olman.
Hadn’t he heard, Peter was working in the hospital for a while. But on shiftwork. Out of step.
He said working on a boat was
a bit like that too. But Peter would be going back to Uni. That was for sure.
Kenny wasn’t going to come in but then he did. It was a job to get him to sit down. He was soon coming out with his yarn though and I felt his laugh was the sort you could trust. So I said he was to be sure and come back any time, fish or no fish. He left a good feeling behind him.
Well of course I went to see what was in the poly-bag then. It was one from the Mainland, Markies, I remember. The things you notice. How that was in circulation in the village.
It wasn’t white fish he’d brought but prawns, the quality you usually only see in the big hotels. Not tailed but still whole. I know all this because I used to clear up the leavings of ones like that for a couple of years before I went nursing. But of course Kenny’s offering would have meant the same supposing it was only a whiting or two.
It was more difficult with him next time. He sat for a while though he didn’t say much and I don’t believe we had a laugh once. That made me feel as if he was taking up more of the house. I didn’t really mind for myself, only I was worried for his own sake. You notice more in the quiet.
He said thanks for the tea, though he didn’t eat anything. The bag he left was cold. It was prawns again and as big as the last lot but they’d been in the freezer. Not that I minded, they taste the same and I could still take a few next door when they were thawed and boiled.
It was afterwards I heard he’d lost the job a week or two before that visit but he was keeping up appearances. I was annoyed he felt he had to put on an act where he was welcome anyway.
I asked him straight when he came again and he said yes, it was true, but he wasn’t bothered. He was out on his own now and here was the catch in the bag. He didn’t need any flashy boats bought with a big grant and a big loan hanging over them. He could fire up the old engine in the old boat and get out far enough to set a few creels.
So it was a lobster this time and still alive. That didn’t shock me. I’ve handled them before, in big stainless-steel kitchens. But the black berries disturbed everything. That’s what the lobster’s eggs look like. The fishermen are supposed to return ones like that to the water but some of them scrape the stuff off the shell and sell the lobster as good. That’s a waste of future stock. It would have been better that Kenny was honest at least and hadn’t bothered to disguise things. But he hadn’t even noticed the berries.
That seems strange, as if everything about him was numb. Of course it was obvious to me then and I wondered how someone in my job could have missed it for so long. You wouldn’t believe how good some people are at disguising that problem. They often drink vodka rather than whisky so you don’t notice it on the breath.
He wasn’t excited or staggering or anything like that but I was left feeling sick when he went. The waste of the black spawn didn’t help. I couldn’t scrape the lobster or boil it. I hadn’t even had a glass of wine so I ended up driving down to the jetty. The tide was out so I had to stagger over the rocks in the dark till I found the water. I don’t know if the creature survived.
I found out afterwards that this was all on the day that Kenny went missing. In the village I heard the word ‘disappeared’ as if they were making a meal of it. Even next door they were talking about dragging the harbour, in these hushed tones as if drowning was a judgment from above. Inevitable for a big alky like that, always near water. He was crazy for the fishing. The lochs too. Freshwater. Pity he didn’t drink more fresh water when he was alive, I heard someone say.
I lost patience at that and let go. I told them I’d seen a few recovered from the harbour when I was working in the Lewis hospital, before the midwifery. I’d to help wheel the breathing equipment and keep the manual cardiac massage going till they got all the electronic gear ready. Then I’d to keep the other fellow occupied, the one who’d dived in after his shipmate. You usually know if they’ve a chance of coming round. But sometimes you’re wrong. This casualty had been down for a while. He was swollen and blue. He wasn’t going to revive.
One night the consultant got called in to do the full resuscitation bit. Then had a cup of tea with me and told me, wherever else you die, stay clear of a hospital. Keep some dignity.
Anyway, it turned out that Kenny hadn’t ended up in the harbour. He turned up at my doorstep a couple of weeks after. He’d been coming off the drink. Away on his own in a hut out on the moor. Not that I’m saying he’s cured now. That’s the wrong way of looking at that problem. But he’d have a better chance if people hadn’t wanted to say so quickly that he must have fallen in the harbour.
Laws
Sexual repression gets that bit easier, with time, if the food is good and there’s plenty of exercise. And there’s a network – you’re on a train and a family sitting opposite recognises that the fish-pendant is a symbol. It was a gift, made in stainless steel by a craftsman cousin who was glad to see you at the right end of Kenneth Street. I suppose I was going along more now for the stories and for the sense of being in a congregation when that huge groundswell lifted to follow the melody offered by the precentor. I usually went to the Gaelic services. I’d picked up a bit but not enough to follow the sermons. That was maybe just as well. The rhythms of the whole thing swept you along. And then there was the warmth in the handshakes, as you went outside. The anticipation of the Sunday dinner, roast meat and gravy, almost a smell in the air already, like smoke over the town.
The olaid went now and again to her own church up the road, the moderate Church of Scotland. There were two of these to pick from. I gave that a try but it was just like I remembered. The olaid reminded me I used to kick my feet that much they won a dispensation for me to take in the gory volumes on the Bruces and Stewarts, Wallace and Montrose. The olman would go along too, to keep the family together and because the olaid wouldn’t trust him with the dinner and even himself didn’t have the nerve to go to the loom shed on the Sabbath. He’d hand out the pan-drops before the sermon.
Now these you could understand and they usually seemed quite sensible but they didn’t have the passion and the rhythms I was now experiencing in the Free Kirk Gaelic.
There were also letters to the Gazette, with names under them that you recognised. Sometimes an aspiring elder but nearly always from a male. Unless radical female evangelists from Lewis wrote under pen names, like George Eliot. The issues would alternate when the editor would come in to say that correspondence on the issue was closed for now. But they went in a cycle, with a few variations, as sure as a weaver’s pattern. The tyranny of Rome. The need for vigilance in protecting our youth from the appetites induced by the unscrupulous makers of immoral films. The condoning of homosexuality by those in Parliament with a duty to legislate for the safety of all. The demon drink, of course.
The best one though was the guy who blamed the Roman Catholic Church for the Vietnam War. See, we’re free-thinkers here. This guy was ahead of the game, dislodging the haloes from these Kennedys, of Irish background, lest we forget.
Once or twice another porter or a bored houseman doc, on the night shift, would ask me how I could go along to that church when these public statements were made. I’d just tell them I took the letters as entertainment, an extreme line to challenge and debate and most people on the pews would say the same.
There’s something about hospitals. People would just ask you what you really thought, on a regular bloody basis. That didn’t happen much at Uni. Take Transubstantiation.
I remember that one, watching the son of an ice-cream maker sip from the bottle of Bardolino along with the Spanish Basque priest, after I’d attended a Mass on the far, far end of Kenneth Street. I didn’t dare risk it in case I’d get a real thirst and seize hold of said bottle. I was getting used to the non-taste of water.
This is the crunch. These guys have to say they really believe the other wine, sipped in church, becomes blood and not just any blood. The wafer, no kidding, becomes flesh and not human flesh. There’s communion all right, even amongst the breakaways –
the Free Presbyterians and now the breakaways from the breakaways – but none of these guys believe that the stuff has changed its physical character. Both wine and bread are symbols.
I could see that but I still couldn’t bring myself to do the preparation for taking the step forward to take said bread and wine even on the understanding that you weren’t expected to believe it had changed its physical nature.
Doubts are good shit sometimes. Believers can be dangerous. Political ones too. But what must it have been like for a guy who fought in the Spanish war, as a communist, and lived to see the tanks roll in to Prague and then see footage of poor Jan who set himself alight. At what point do you say, this is not what I signed up for?
I’ve got to tell you about a book. It’s called the Kitáb-i-Aqdas which is Arabic for ‘The Most Holy Book’. This is the Bahá’í book of laws for a new age. An early critic of the Faith translated it but that was from a hostile standpoint. I was at a seminar where a keen young devotee did some research by way of just asking an Arabic speaker, present in the room, to translate some passages. The legal code was pretty Islamic.
And sure enough, not long after, a Synopsis and Codification of the book of laws was published. But not a translation of the contents. Not yet the time, the introduction said. It did say that the penalties for certain crimes were listed. But it didn’t say what these penalties were. Now one of the attractive things had been this phrase – ‘Independent investigation of truth’. Maybe I’d failed to ask the right questions.
Someone else asked exactly what the penalties were.
They were meant for a future state of society, not applicable now.
But what were they? What about that slander about Bahá’ís believing in the death penalty? An eye for an eye. If a man should set fire to another he should be burned?