A Rope--In Case

by Lillian Beckwith

  ‘Of course,’ I replied and hoped an explanation would be forthcoming without my having to do too much prompting.

  Obligingly she had enlightened me. ‘You see, Miss Peckwitt, the ambulance was to take my brother to the hospital but when he heard of it he would have none of it.’ She shook her head despairingly. ‘You know yourself how thrawn the man can be an’ if he says he’ll not do a thing then he won’t. Not supposin’ I stand on my head to ask him.’

  ‘How are you going to get him there?’ I asked, realising that it was going to be well nigh impossible to get an ambulance or a car across Farquhar’s rough and boggy croft at this time of year.

  ‘Well, you mind a couple of weeks back my brother an’ Hamish went shares in buyin’ that old lorry from the tinks that were here?’

  I nodded, recalling the amused astonishment of the village when it was learned that Farquhar, the least mechanically minded man in the village, had paid good money for a ramshackle vehicle that looked as if chassis and body were trying to shake loose from each other and sounded as if the engine would be relieved if they did.

  ‘They had this idea they was goin’ to make money for themselves out of it, though I doubt all they would make would be firewood.’ She gave a derisive snort. ‘Now my brother’s sayin’ if he cannot get to hospital on his two feets he’ll ride in his own lorry to get there.’

  ‘It might be the only way to get him across the croft,’ I admitted cautiously. ‘But surely he’s not thinking he can go all the way in it?’

  ‘He is so,’ affirmed Sheena unhappily. ‘That’s why we’re needin’ a few cushions to make him comfortable.’

  I had already picked up all the cushions I possessed but Sheena stopped me. ‘We’re not needin’ them till this evenin’, mo ghaoil,’ she told me. ‘I’d be feared the hens would dirty them if I took them now. If you would bring them yourself over to Farquhar’s house we could all see him away.’

  ‘Certainly I will.’ Evidently Farquhar’s departure was going to be something of an occasion. ‘What time?’

  ‘At the back of four,’ she replied and hurried away.

  At four o’clock I had started out for Farquhar’s croft, carrying the cushions under my arms. When I arrived the lorry was already waiting outside the cottage, an old-fashioned red plush armchair borrowed from Janet sitting in the back. Morag and Janet were among the seven or eight women who had come to watch and to help if help were needed, and three or four of Farquhar’s cronies were there to give advice. And of course Johnny and Erchy. The two younger men climbed on to the lorry and adjusted the position of the chair so that it was central with its back supported against the cab.

  They stood back and surveyed it with the same care and attention they might have given to the arranging of the village queen’s throne on a decorated carnival float. They called to me and I handed up my cushions. Morag also handed up two of her own. The men dumped them on the chair.

  ‘Not like that!’ expostulated the nurse fussily, and gave complex directions as to how the cushions should be placed. She could not herself climb on to the lorry without aid and had shrewdly rejected the men’s offer to hoist her up.

  Farquhar appeared in the doorway. He had become pathetically weak and thin but he waved aside attempts to help him. We all watched anxiously as, dressed in his best suit which now hung loose on him and sporting a new cap which intensified the sallowness of his skin, he tottered to the lorry. There, he rested for a few moments trying to gain strength to climb up. To the suppressed injunctions of ‘wait now!’ and ‘watch yourself, now, Farquhar!’ he lifted first one leg and then the other. Then his head went down on his arms as he hung on. There were indrawn breaths of silent sympathy as we contemplated the feeble body that until recently had been so strong. After one or two more vain attempts Farquhar at last allowed the men to lift him aboard, and this they did with infinite gentleness. Solicitously they escorted him to the chair, arranged the cushions for his comfort and draped him with rugs. Farquhar was seen to speak a few words to Johnny and the latter jumped down from the lorry and went back into the cottage to emerge in a few minutes with the pigeon in its cage. Farquhar gave the bird a loving glance. The nurse’s face turned bright red.

  ‘Take that bird away!’ she shrilled. ‘He cannot take a pigeon to hospital with him.’

  Farquhar’s head was sunk on his chest. He appeared not to have heard her objection.

  ‘Take it off the lorry at once, Johnny,’ she reiterated imperiously. ‘Whoever heard of taking a pigeon into hospital?’

  Johnny turned on her with a brusque comment which silenced her temporarily. The driver started the engine and the lorry chugged forward.

  ‘Cheerio, Farquhar. You’ll soon be back.’ There was a chorus of affectionate farewells and good wishes. Surrounded by my tapestry cushions, by Morag’s red paisley cushions and with his head resting on a bright orange cushion that had been one of Katy’s wedding presents, the old man surveyed us. With a wan attempt at acknowledgment he raised a regal hand in salute. We trailed along behind the slow-moving lorry ready to give a hand should it get bogged. The pigeon watched us with bright eyes and a curious bobbing head. The nurse forged ahead of us towards where her own car waited to escort the lorry to the hospital.

  ‘It’s me that’ll get the blame for that pigeon,’ she flung at Johnny bitterly as she passed him.

  ‘Ach, if you get blamed for nothin’ worse than a pigeon you’re not doin’ so bad,’ Johnny returned.

  The nurse rushed on, caught her foot in a rabbit-hole and fell flat on her stomach.

  ‘It’s me that’ll get the blame for that rabbit-hole,’ Johnny mocked. She darted him a murderous glance as she picked herself up. Vexed and dishevelled she struggled on ahead. The lorry reached the road and tentatively gathered speed. The nurse’s car followed decorously.

  ‘He was a nice man, Farquhar,’ said Erchy.

  ‘Aye, I don’t know that he ever harmed a man nor woman in his life,’ agreed Johnny.

  They spoke reverently as if they were already composing his obituary.

  ‘We’ll miss him,’ contributed Old Murdoch.

  ‘Good Heavens!’ I rebuked them. ‘You’re all talking as if the man’s going to hospital to die.’ I saw their expressions.

  ‘He’s only supposed to be going for a check-up, isn’t he?’ I finished haltingly.

  ‘Aye, aye, right enough,’ said Old Murdoch, but I caught his tone and knew that I had been shut off from something they all knew instinctively.

  The group dispersed. Morag and I walked back together.

  ‘They seem to think it’s more serious than just a check-up with Farquhar,’ I taxed her.

  ‘They think it’s cancer,’ she said.

  Aghast, I repeated the word. ‘Has the doctor confirmed it?’

  ‘Ach, indeed, I doubt the doctor wouldn’t know for certain yet but I’m feared it’s cancer the man has right enough. Folks was sayin’ they could smell it when he first took to his bed. There’s a kind of queer smell about cancer that there’s no mistakin’.’

  The lorry returned that evening with Farquhar’s pigeon still in its cage. ‘You should have seen the matron’s face when Farquhar said he was for keepin’ it under his bed,’ Hamish the driver reported gleefully. ‘Farquhar pleaded with her but she near shouted her head off about it.’ Four days later, although the pigeon was given its freedom during the day and fed along with the hens just as when Farquhar was there, the poor bird was found dead.

  ‘I believe it’s died of a broken heart,’ commented Morag.

  Now, three months later, Farquhar was dead—of cancer, as Bruach had diagnosed. The news had come through only the previous evening and all day there had been a constant stream of sympathisers calling on Sheena. The abundance of visitors and the consequent brewing up of strupaks was doubtless the reason why, at past five o’clock in the afternoon, Sheena was busy cleaning potatoes for the meal she and her son would normally have eaten around three o’clock.
However, it was with impeccable courtesy that she received me and betraying no sign that my visit was a further interruption she insisted that I sit down if only for a ‘wee minute.’ She herself sat down opposite me and after giving the kettle a glare that should have frightened it into an immediate boil she composed herself for grief.

  ‘Indeed it’s sad to lose one’s only brother,’ she said with a heavy sigh. I murmured obsequial agreement and was on the point of offering the platitude that her brother had lived to the good old age of seventy-five when I remembered that Sheena herself was the elder by five years.

  ‘He suffered too at the end,’ she said. I nodded in mute sympathy. ‘He would take no drugs, the matron told me, but I believe he chewed terrible holes in the blankets when the pain was bad.’ She shook her head sadly.

  ‘Did you ever hear, Miss Peckwitt, that my brother should have died a long time ago?’ she asked me with a sudden return of animation.

  ‘No, really?’

  ‘Yes, as true as I’m here. The doctor that was here then told my brother just after he was sixty-five. He’d been poorly then for a week or two an’ taken to his bed. “Farquhar,” says the doctor to him, “I must be honest with you, man, an’ tell you that you’ll not live more than six months longer”.’

  ‘What a terrible mistake!’ I exclaimed.

  Sheena gave an exasperated click of her tongue and jumped up to poke at the peats. She blew on them until they sent up a few desultory sparks before she sat down again.

  ‘How did Farquhar take it?’ I asked.

  ‘Aye, well, Miss Peckwitt, you know how it was with Farquhar. He was that deaf he didn’t hear what the doctor was tellin’ him so he just went on livin’ for another ten years.’

  I was glad at that moment that Sheena’s attention was distracted by the return of a curious hen which was pecking its way into the kitchen. She rushed at it, shooing it away with her apron.

  ‘He has a lovely coffin,’ she told me, settling herself down.

  ‘The latest fashion, the undertaker said it was.’

  I murmured conventionally.

  ‘Aye, I’ve not seen the like of it before but he says it’s from America an’ it has a little glass window in it so that folks can see where they’re goin’.’

  I asked her if she would like a lift in my car to the funeral but she declined, explaining that she had hired a ‘motor bust’, which was her description of a taxi.

  I managed to make my escape before the kettle was anywhere near the boil and continued on my way to the post office where I found the usual pre-closing cluster of dilatory customers. Erchy had just collected his mother’s pension and Johnny was buying a postal order for his football pools coupon. Janet was returning to the mail order store a box containing a hat she had chosen from the catalogue and found unsuitable. On the floor behind the counter Nelly Elly, the postmistress, was pumping at a hissing primus stove on which reposed a large pan containing fish for the hens’ mash. She explained that she always cooked it in the post office because if it boiled over it made such a terrible smell in the rest of the house. She rose and turned her attention to Janet’s parcel which she hung on the spring balance.

  ‘What like of hat is it?’ she asked eagerly.

  ‘Ach, it’s a sort of green cloth,’ Janet told her. ‘They said in the catalogue it was blue but it doesn’t look like the blue coat I have at all.’

  ‘Was it for the weddin’?’ asked Nelly Elly with increasing interest.

  ‘Indeed it was,’ replied Janet, ‘An’ I’m after tellin’ them in my letter that they must send me a right blue one by return of post or I’ll not buy from them again.’

  ‘Why I was askin’,’ explained Nelly Elly, putting down the parcel and the spring balance, ‘is that Elspeth was returnin’ a hat today just to the same place. She said it was blue they’d sent her in mistake for a red one.’ She lifted a parcel of a similar shape to Janet’s on to the counter. ‘This is it.’ The two women assessed it and looked speculatively at each other.

  ‘I wonder would it do?’ asked Janet hesitantly.

  ‘I daresay it might,’ replied the postmistress.

  ‘Elspeth wouldn’t mind.’ Janet sounded as if she wanted reassurance.

  ‘Of course not,’ encouraged Nelly Elly.

  ‘Why I’m wonderin’ is that I might not get another hat in time for the weddin’,’ Janet went on.

  ‘It would be a pity to risk that,’ said the postmistress. Janet’s fingers started on the string. ‘We can always tie it up again if I don’t suit it,’ she said.

  ‘I’m thinkin’ I wouldn’t mind tryin’ on your green one myself,’ said Nelly Elly. ‘I’d like a new hat but I couldn’t make up my mind what colour I should get. Wait now till I get my catalogue.’

  She disappeared into the room behind the post office and returned a moment later with a mail order catalogue folded back to a page depicting ‘hats styled for glamorous matrons’. She pointed to one.

  ‘That’s the style I fancy,’ she said, ‘but the dear knows what like are these colours.’ She handed the catalogue to me. ‘Perhaps Miss Peckwitt would know?’

  Johnny and Erchy came to look over my shoulder. Erchy read out: ‘ “Azure”, that’s blue, right enough. “Hyacinth”, you should know that, for aren’t the wild hyacinths blue “Walnut”—nuts is brown when they’re ripe an’ green when they’re not so that’s either brown or green. That lot’s easy enough.’ Erchy looked up but the two women were busily engaged in removing layers of tissue paper from the hat boxes.

  ‘That’s only three of the colours you’ve got sorted,’ Johnny told him. ‘What about this last one? “Ewer-dee-nil”. What like of colour would that be, now?’

  ‘Well, I know “ewer-dee-col-og-nee” means “smell of col-og-nee” so I would think “ewer-dee-nil” means it doesn’t smell of any thin’.’ He scratched his head. ‘That’s a damty queer name for a colour, all the same.’ He turned to me. ‘They don’t sell hats by the smell, do they?’ he demanded.

  ‘It’s the first time I’ve heard of it,’ said Janet with a chuckle.

  I explained the words and tried to describe the colour. ‘You know when the mackerel have been feeding on plankton and their gall bladder turns a lovely greeny-blue?’

  ‘Oh, aye, that’s a nice colour.’ They all sounded very impressed.

  ‘That might be just the colour to go with my coat,’ said Nelly Elly, ‘but I doubt there’s no time to send for it just now she added regretfully. She took Janet’s hat and demanded to know if we thought she suited it. We looked at her. Nelly Elly was tall and thin with a scrubbed red face. The brim of the hat flopped coyly over one eye. Janet and I approved.

  ‘You have the face for green,’ Janet told her admiringly. ‘Not like me. I’m that pale Lachlan told me I looked like a gooseberry when I put it on.’

  Nelly Elly went back into the kitchen, doubtless to study the effect in a mirror.

  ‘She doesn’t look like a gooseberry in it,’ Erchy said. ‘She looks more like a stick of rhubarb.’

  The session ended satisfactorily with Janet keeping Elspeth’s blue hat and the postmistress keeping Janet’s rejected green one. ‘I’ll explain to Elspeth on my way home,’ Janet promised.

  ‘It’ll save her the postage after all,’ Nelly Elly comforted.

  At that moment the fish pan boiled over, enclosing us in smell of fish guts and paraffin fumes. We fled outside and Nelly Elly bolted the door after us. It was now half an hour after official closing time but it came as no surprise to us to meet other potential customers making their way in the direction of the Post Office. As always their gait was unhurried. Indeed, they seemed to consider they had plenty of time to accost us and to enquire from Erchy and Johnny, how did the tupping go?’ and ‘Did you get your stern tube sorted yet?’ Janet and I walked on, exchanging reminiscences of old Farquhar.

  ‘He was very superstitious, wasn’t he?’ I said.

  ‘Superstitious!’ echoed Janet. ‘Indeed
there was no-one like him.’

  ‘You remember he once made a creel for me?’

  ‘I do indeed,’ replied Janet, ‘an’ many’s the use I’ve seen you put that creel to since you got it.’

  I smiled confirmation. ‘When he brought it to the house I naturally asked him in,’ I went on, ‘But before he entered he stooped and put two or three large stones in the creel.

  ‘Why the stones, Farquhar?” I asked. He shook his head at me. “Never take an empty creel into a house,” he told me. “It would bring bad luck.” ’

  ‘Aye, there’s a deal of things like that they believe in hereabouts,’ confirmed Janet. ‘Like never castin’ on knittin’ on Fridays or you’ll not finish it That’s one I stick to myself.’ We walked on a little way.