One afternoon, I had been put to work breaking ground on Lachlan Broad’s croft. Flora was sweeping outside the house and attending to her infant brother, Donald. Although I had my back to her, I became aware that she was observing me. I continued my labour for some minutes, all the time conscious of her eyes upon me. I paused and turned towards where she was standing. She was leaning on the handle of her broom and made no attempt to conceal that she had been watching me. I leant on the handle of my flaughter, imitating her stance, and stared back at her. We remained there for some moments, as if engaged in a game. Then she shrugged her shoulders and went inside as if she had suddenly remembered some pressing task there. Some time later, she emerged from the house and brought me a cup of milk.
‘I thought you might be thirsty,’ she said, handing it to me.
I took it from her and drained it at a single draught.
‘Thank you,’ I said. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. She took the cup from me and went back to the house, her hips swinging as she clambered over the furrows.
One evening some days later, I was coming out of the outbuilding behind our house. I had pulled the wooden door over and was winding the rope around the rotting jamb, when I became aware of the presence of another person. I completed the task of fastening the rope as if I did not know that anyone was there. I cannot say why I engaged in this small pretence, except perhaps that I did not wish the person to think that I had been engaged in any secret activity. I must have assumed it to be Jetta, although there was no reason for her to have been silently watching me. I knew it was not my father because, after supper, he had already taken his seat by the window and once there he rarely moved until he retired to bed. Certainly it was not Flora Broad I expected to see standing by the quoin of the Gregor’s house. My expression must have betrayed my surprise, because she giggled and put her hand to her mouth, as if it had all along been her plan to startle me and she was pleased with the success of her enterprise.
I did not know what to say, so I just looked at her. Flora had changed markedly since our schooldays. Her features had become less childish, her nose and mouth somewhat larger. Her hair was tied up in the way that the womenfolk wore it, rather than in girlish pigtails. Her figure had grown fuller and her bosom now filled out the bodice of her dress pleasingly. Her skirt reached within an inch or two of her ankles and the frilled border of her petticoats was visible beneath the hem of this garment. On her feet she wore a pair of neat black boots. I wondered if they had been bought with the shillings we were paying to her father in compensation for the sheep. She studied me with her head on one side, as if I was a curiosity in a travelling show.
Flora bid me good evening and asked what I had been doing. I replied that it was no business of hers what I was doing, and that I might ask her the same question. She said that if I would not tell her what I had been doing in the barn, I must have been up to some mischief. She then added that her father said I was a bad lot and had told her to keep away from me. I was not surprised to hear Lachlan Broad’s low opinion of me, but it struck me that Flora’s motive was less to cause offence than to convey that in seeking me out she was defying her father’s wishes.
‘And what would your father say if he knew you were talking to me now?’ I said.
Flora shrugged her shoulders and widened her eyes as if it was a matter of no consequence to her.
‘If I was your father, I would give you a sound thrashing,’ I said.
‘Perhaps he would give you the thrashing instead,’ she replied.
‘I have no doubt it would give him great pleasure to do so.’
Flora giggled, as if the prospect of seeing me beaten amused her. She then asked me for a second time what I had been doing in the barn. Feeling now that there was some bond between us, I told her I had been tending a fledgling which, two or three days before, I had found in the grass at the very spot where she was now standing. I pointed to a nest in the gable of the house above her head from which the little bird had fallen.
‘Why did you not put it back in the nest?’ she asked.
I did not know how to answer this question as had I merely wanted to save the little bird; this would indeed have been the simplest course of action. The truth was that I often nursed injured birds or animals, but I did so in secret as my father would regard my hobby as a waste of time, or, worse, as a defiance of God’s will. In any case, more often than not my charges died. Two years previously, however, I had reared a fledgling I found while bringing peats from the hillside. As it grew feathers I realised it was a crow and I named him Blackie. One evening when I went to the barn to feed my charge, he was gone and I assumed he had grown strong enough to make his own way in the world. I do not know whether these birds remain in the vicinity of their birth, but whenever I saw a crow strutting over the stubble of a croft or perched on the dyke by the Toscaig road, I wondered if it was Blackie and if there was some glint of recognition in his eye.
In these parts, crows are an unwelcome sight as they are thought to be an augury of ill fortune. The folk of Aird-Dubh, being mostly concerned with fishing, are particularly ill-disposed to these birds and the sight of a crow perched on one of their vessels causes great consternation among them. I have witnessed fishermen hurling sizeable rocks at an offending bird with no regard to the damage they might cause the boat, as if in repelling the symbol they will avert the misfortune it portends. Yet I have never known a native of Aird-Dubh, or elsewhere for that matter, to alter their course of action when thus alerted to danger. The outlook in these parts is that if one is to be visited by misfortune, there is nothing that can be done to avoid it. If a crew of men were to abort their fishing trip, it might be that one of them would later that day be struck on the head by a falling roof-tree in his house. It is not possible to know in advance what form the misfortune will take and it is thus futile to do anything other than what one intended in the first place. All of which renders the action of hurling missiles at the harbinger yet more mystifying. Crows are, moreover, very numerous in these parts and one might spend a good portion of each day attempting to ward them off. It seems to me that if a person is struck by misfortune, it is quite probable that he will be able to think back and remember that a crow was perched that morning on his gable, but this does not make it reasonable to believe there is any connection between the two events.
I asked Flora if she would like to see the injured bird and she replied that she would. I cast my eyes around to convey that what we were about to do was a secret to which she alone was privy. I then unfastened the rope and Flora followed me inside. I pulled the door to behind us. The only light came through the gaps in the slats of the walls and from a small window high in the gable. I had an impulse to take Flora by the hand to lead her to the rafter where I had hidden my charge, but I did not do so. Instead we stood close together, allowing our eyes to become accustomed to the murk. I could hear the soft sound of Flora’s breathing. I led the way to the corner and drew up the milking stool which I stood on to tend my charge. I indicated that Flora should stand on it in order to view the little bird. She drew closer and held out her hand to steady herself as she stepped onto the stool. She raised herself onto the toes of her little boots, which were laced neatly around her ankles. Her fingers lingered in mine for a moment before she placed both her hands on the rafter. I had built a makeshift nest from twigs and grass and lined it with feathers from the hens. In addition there were some strips of cloth which I had placed over the little bird to mimic the warmth of its mother. Flora gave a little sigh as she saw the fledgling’s head protruding from the bundle of rags and she remained there for some minutes, even though it was sleeping and not much to look at.
‘What do you feed it?’ she asked in a whisper.
‘Insects,’ I replied. ‘And worms from the croft.’
She held her hand out behind her, so that I could support her as she stepped off the stool. Then she made her
way back towards the door. I put the stool in the opposite corner of the barn so that my father would not see it and wonder why it was under the rafter. I would have liked to stay longer in the barn with her, but I could not think of any pretext for doing so. I pushed the door open and stuck out my head out to check that there was no one to see us, before ushering Flora out.
‘Thank you for showing me,’ she said.
‘I’m glad to have shown you,’ I replied.
She took a step away from me. ‘I had better be away. Father will be wondering where I have got to.’
‘You will be in for a good thrashing.’
‘If I tell him where I’ve been, it will be you that gets the thrashing,’ she said with a little smile.
Then she disappeared round the corner of the house. I secured the rope around the jamb for a second time and went to the front of the house. I sat down on the bench and watched Flora make her way along the village. She had a way of walking as if her body was singing a song. It was by that time getting dark and the reek hung low over the water. A little later, Jetta came out of the house and sat down next to me with her knitting. I listened to the pleasing clack of her needles in the still air and I asked what she was knitting. She ignored my question and asked me instead who I had been talking to in the barn. I felt my cheeks turn red and answered, ‘To no one.’
She laid her knitting on her lap and looked at me with a serious expression.
‘Now, Roddy,’ she said, ‘You know very well that you were talking to someone and you know very well that I know you were talking to someone.’
‘Then you must know to whom I was talking,’ I said.
‘But I would like you to tell me.’
I glanced towards the door of the house, and then said quietly, ‘To Flora Broad.’
‘Flora Broad!’ exclaimed Jetta as if this came as a great revelation to her. ‘Pretty little Flora Broad!’
I shushed her. ‘Father will hear you,’ I said.
‘So now you are running after Flora Broad,’ she continued. ‘Is Jetta not enough for you any longer?’
‘I am not running after her,’ I said.
‘But you must have noticed what a pretty thing she is and how nicely she now fills out her dresses.’
‘I have noticed no such thing,’ I said, my cheeks reddening for the second time.
Jetta laughed. I was glad of it, for she had not been much given to laughter these recent months. Then her face darkened in the way that it always did when she had an augury of some ill fortune.
‘Poor Roddy,’ she said, ‘I know you do not mean any harm, but I am obliged to tell you that no good will come of this and you must stay away from Flora Broad.’
I cast my eyes downwards, dismayed that she had so swiftly chosen to alter the mood between us. I did not doubt that her advice was based on some intimation from the Other World, but I could do nothing to alter the course of what was to occur, and nor at that point did I wish to.
* * *
Some days later, my father and I rose early to catch the low tide. It was a damp, still morning. The reek from the houses clung to the ground like a shroud. Dew lay thick on the broken ground of the croft. It was our intention that morning to gather the sea-ware which, along with the winter’s dung from the livestock, would nourish our crops. We made our way to the waterline, frequently slipping on the slimy rocks. My father was stiff with rheumatics, so it fell to me to cut the sea-ware from rocks and I set about this task. It was arduous work. The blade of my croman was blunt and each fistful of sea-ware I hacked from the rocks required considerable effort. My father leaned on his pitchfork, watching me work, passing frequent comments about how I should alter my grip on my tool or straighten my back while I worked. I made no response to his advice. After I had gathered a sizeable pile, Father began the task of shifting it above the high-tide line. He lost half of his cargo from the tines of his fork on each journey but did not trouble to stop and retrieve it. On more than one occasion, he completely lost his footing, sending the entire forkful flying into the air and himself into a bony heap on the rocks. Despite the waste of our labours, I could not help laughing when this occurred. My father resembled an upturned crab, limbs struggling uselessly in the air, until he managed to right himself.
Nevertheless, as the morning wore on we found some kind of rhythm. As the tide turned I worked continually further up the shore, so that my father’s journeys became ever shorter. Father even set to singing a little to himself. It was a weird kind of singing, more spoken than musical and comprehensible to no one but himself, but it was a singing all the same, and I was glad to hear it. By midday, we had gathered a pile four feet high, enough to cover half of our land. From there it could be transported to the croft by hurlie, a straightforward task. Father sat down on a rock next to our heap and took his pipe from the jacket of his pocket and lit it. This I took to signify the end of our morning’s work. We sat in silence for some minutes, feeling some communal satisfaction in what we had achieved. Father then instructed me to go to the house and bring some milk and bannocks.
As I made my way back down the rig I saw the figures of Lachlan Broad and his brother walking along the road towards where my father was sitting. They stopped and bid my father good day to which he made no response, or at least I did not hear him do so. He had his back to me and I could see a thin wisp of smoke rise from his pipe. As there was no wind, it lingered around his cap as the reek had earlier hung around the houses. I feared that Lachlan Broad was going to make a complaint about my association with his daughter, and hastened towards them as if this would deter him. I handed my father his cup of milk.
‘I see you are gathering the sea-ware,’ Lachlan Broad was saying.
My father did not say anything.
‘For what purpose, may I enquire?’
‘Now, for what purpose would I be gathering sea-ware?’ my father responded. He kept his eyes fixed straight ahead towards the bay. A seal put his head above the water and observed the scene for a few moments before silently arcing back under the surface.
Lachlan Broad made a gesture with his hand that seemed to suggest that there might be many reasons one might gather sea-ware. He waited some time before continuing.
‘Are you not going to answer my question?’
‘I know of only one reason for gathering sea-ware,’ my father replied. ‘As such, I see no purpose in answering your question.’
The constable turned to his brother with an air of bewilderment, as if he could not understand why my father was behaving so obstructively. Aeneas Mackenzie bleated like a sheep.
‘Since you oblige me to guess,’ he continued, ‘can I assume that you are gathering the sea-ware for the purpose of spreading it on your land?’
‘You are very astute, Constable,’ said my father, with a special emphasis on this last word.
Lachlan Broad now pursed his lips and nodded slowly, as if this answer troubled him.
‘You are aware, are you not,’ he said, ‘that the fruits of the shore, including its sea-ware, are the property of the laird?’
My father took his pipe from his mouth, but did not say anything. Lachlan Broad pressed his point.
‘Are you aware of this, Mr Macrae?’
My father took up his milk and drank it at one draught. The cream formed a yellow caterpillar on his moustaches which remained there for the remainder of the conversation.
‘And what would the laird want with a few forkfuls of sea-ware?’ he said. He kept his gaze all the time directed at the horizon.
Lachlan Broad shook his head, as if my father had misunderstood him, or rather as if the fault was his own for not making clear his meaning.
‘It is not that the laird might have use for the sea-ware, my point is merely that the sea-ware is the property of the laird.’ He paused for a moment. ‘I’m sure I do not need to instruct a devout man
like yourself that it is not for one man to be taking what belongs to another.’
Father’s eyes darted towards him.
‘As you well know, Lachlan Broad, the people have always taken sea-ware for their land, yourself and your father included.’
‘That is quite true, but it is only through the beneficence of the laird that we have done so. It is quite contrary to the terms of your tenancy to make use of the fruits of the land or shore without first having sought permission to do so.’
My father stood up from the rock he had been sitting on and took a step towards Broad.
‘Can I assume no such permission has been sought?’ asked the constable.
My father was a good six inches shorter than Broad, but he thrust his chin towards his face in a forceful fashion. His chest was only inches from Broad’s. Aeneas Mackenzie took a step closer to his brother’s shoulder and emitted a stupid snigger. I had no doubt that he would gladly lay my father on the rocks if he made any further advance.
Lachlan Broad appearing quite unperturbed by the proximity of my father.
‘Mr Macrae,’ he said, ‘when I became constable to these villages, I stated that observance of the regulations which govern our existence had fallen into a neglect which shamed us all. And since, if memory serves, you did not oppose my election, I must assume you are of the same opinion.’
‘I know nothing of these regulations with which you are so besotted,’ said my father.
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