Lightly Poached

by Lillian Beckwith

  ‘Aye, her hair,’ interrupted Tearlaich eagerly. ‘Now Marie’s hair’s the sort of hair I’d want a woman of mine to have. An’ did you see when she snatched off that net she had on the way it all fell as soon as it was loosed?’

  ‘I saw,’ I told him. ‘And I noticed how overcome with admiration you were.’

  ‘Indeed that’s true,’ he agreed fervently. ‘I’ll never forget the way it just dropped round her shoulders as soft and brown and easy as shit from a mare’s behind. Bloody lovely it was.’ He mistook my expression. ‘Honest,’ he repeated earnestly. His eyes closed but his own expression remained ecstatic as he apparently dozed off to sleep.

  ‘Well, are you glad you came on the trip?’ demanded Erchy from behind us.

  ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,’ I assured him. ‘Meeting Marie and hearing all Calum’s stories. It’s been a wonderful evening altogether.’

  ‘Indeed I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed myself so much,’ corroborated Behag.

  ‘I’ve fairly enjoyed myself too,’ Erchy admitted. ‘But I’m thinkin’ I’ll be best pleased with it when I come to eat my dinner.’ He nodded to where the box of salmon was hidden under a sack.

  Behag said, ‘I wonder will Calum remember to bring you the apples from that tree?’

  At the mention of Calum’s name Tearlaich became alert again. ‘Calum?’ he repeated. ‘He’ll not be remembering tomorrow what he’s said today.’

  ‘He has a good enough memory for some things,’ I pointed out. ‘All those stories he told us tonight. I loved listening to them.’

  ‘Aye, I noticed that,’ he murmured non-comittally. There was a glint in his eyes which I put down to my use of the word ‘loved’. Bruachites ‘like fine’ something. The word ‘loved’ in such a context they looked upon as amusing exaggeration.

  ‘He seemed pretty certain he’d seen those fairies, too,’ I said. ‘Did you believe him about that?’ I taxed him. ‘Believe him? What, that fellow? I’d as soon believe a drunken tinker,’ he scoffed. ‘Ach, you mustn’t believe any story Calum tells you,’ he added half seriously.

  ‘Not any?’ I repeated with a slight feeling of dismay.

  ‘Not a one,’ reiterated Tearlaich. ‘That man!’ His face broke into a broad approbatory smile. ‘I’m tellin’ you, Miss Peckwitt, he’s the most beautiful liar God ever put two boots on.’

  Family Silver

  Fergus Beag (Little Fergus) had died suddenly at the age of eighty-two and, as was customary, the women of the village were calling at varying times before the burial to condole with the widow, Ina. Morag, her niece, Behag, and I went together after the chores were done and evening was beginning to soften what had been one of the summer’s really hot days.

  ‘Hector was gimin’ again about him goin’ so sudden,’ confided Behag with a hint of apology. ‘He was sayin’ Fergus will be one of the heaviest corpses they’ve had yet to carry to the burial ground an’ him havin’ no illness to weaken him first.’

  Little Fergus had in his prime been one of the biggest men in the village—over six foot tall and with shoulders as broad as a door. Even at eighty-two he had been no lightweight but because his father had been ‘Fergus Mor’ (Big Fergus) the son naturally had been dubbed ‘Little Fergus’ and ‘Little Fergus’ he had remained despite the subsequent inaptness of the description.

  ‘Ach, Hector will soon stop his girnin’ once they have the grave dug an’ a good dram for their pains,’ Morag comforted with a sly smile at me.

  ‘If they ever have it dug,’ murmured Behag dubiously.

  Morag gave her a searching glance. ‘An’ why will they no’?’

  ‘Did you net hear Hector complainin’ this mornin’ that his leg was troublin’ him?’ asked Behag.

  ‘Which leg was that?’ demanded Morag as if Hector had a selection. ‘The one he left behind him in the boat when he twisted his foot?’

  A baffled expression flitted across Behag’s face. ‘I believe that was the one,’ she admitted.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘Ach, Hector was steppin’ out from his boat to the dinghy with his hands full of fishes,’ scoffed Morag. ‘He had one of his legs over the side when didn’t a floorboard slip an’ jam his foot under it. It was no more than if a cow had stepped on it but to hear Hector shoutin’ you’d think it was on crutches he’d be for the rest of his life.’

  ‘But his ankle was as big as a haggis for a day or two an’ sore right up his leg,’ defended Behag.

  ‘But that was more than a week ago,’ protested Morag.

  ‘It was so but he was feelin’ it again this mornin’. Did you not hear him sayin’ that?’

  ‘I did,’ responded Morag with a grim smile. ‘An’ I heard Erchy swearin’ he’d make sure Hector dug his share of the grave supposin’ he has to stand on his head to do it.’ Behag sighed acceptance.

  Bruach graves were dug not by an official grave digger but by any relatives of the deceased fit enough to accomplish the task and Hector and Erchy, being Fergus Beag’s two nearest male relatives in the village, had been called upon to do their duty. Erchy could always be relied upon but Hector’s aversion to physical labour and his habit of developing agonising back or stomach pains or even disappearing altogether for a day or two whenever there was a chance of his being compelled to wield a spade was so well known in Bruach that even the loyal Behag was at times hard put to it to find excuses for her husband.

  Our path to the late Fergus’s cottage wound sinuously over the heather-covered moors and was wide enough for only two people to walk abreast so that Behag and I, who were barelegged and wearing shoes, had appropriated it for ourselves, while Morag, who persisted whatever the weather in wearing gumboots on weekdays, scuffed her way through the bristly heather, scattering drifts of moths as if she were scuffing her way through autumn leaves.

  ‘I’m thinkin’ it’s no’ like Fergus to die so sudden,’ she observed. ‘But ach, he was always the queer one right enough.’

  ‘What took him d’you think?’ asked Behag.

  ‘His heart, likely,’ returned Morag. ‘The doctor was sayin’ that people livin’ in hilly places like this always has hearts.’

  ‘He was a good age, after all,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Aye,’ Morag allowed, ‘he was a good age but indeed I never seem to mind that Fergus was ever young. Not to my way of thinkin’.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Behag asked.

  ‘Well he was that religious an’ that ages a man,’ Morag explained. ‘An’ another thing, even as a child he used to have a lot of these premunitions. That always made him seem older than he was.’

  ‘Premunitions?’ echoed Behag. ‘What sort of premunitions?’

  ‘Did you never hear how he knew Old Farquhar’s house was to go on fire weeks, but no, months, before it happened?’ demanded Morag in an incredulous voice.

  ‘No, I never did,’ denied Behag. I also shook my head.

  ‘Nor of him premunising the death of his daughter?’

  ‘I did not,’ said Behag, sounding as indignant as if she had been denied food at a banquet.

  ‘I remember your telling me his daugher had been killed in an accident but I didn’t know there’d been any warning of it beforehand,’ I disclosed.

  Morag was so astonished at our admissions that she stopped in her tracks, staring at us as if trying to divine some reason for our imperfect tuition. ‘Well, indeed, it was so,’ she reiterated as she started walking again.

  ‘Tell us about it,’ I coaxed. We still had the best part of a mile to walk and I knew from experience that if Morag would regale us with stories of past happenings in Bruach the journey would not seem half so long.

  She needed little encouragement. ‘Fergus an’ Ina, now they had none but this one child, Alex they used to call her. Aye, an’ she was always a queer kind of lassie too, to my way of thinkin’; not what you’d expect from folks like Fergus an’ Ina, for though Fergus was queer himself he was a go
od man for his work an’ for his church. Indeed,’ she added parenthetically, ‘maybe she wasn’t rightly Fergus’s child at all for he was often away at sea an’ Ina was always one for the lads. Alex grew up hatin’ the croft an’ wouldn’t settle so she left home when she was gey young an’ went to be a servant. Folks were after sayin’ it was Fergus’s religion that drove her away an’ I doubt myself that was the reason.’ She permitted herself a small sigh. ‘Ach, right enough he was awful hard on the girl.’

  ‘Did she not come home at all?’ asked Behag.

  ‘Aye, she’d come home maybe for a holiday now an’ then, an’ for her mother to make a great fuss of her but she never stayed long. A week or two an’ then she was away again. Fergus used to grumble. A “gogaid”—that’s a flighty one—he would say she was for he was wantin’ she should stay an’ help her mother on the croft, though she’d have none of it. As she got older she came home less an’ less an’ she hadn’t been home for a while when one evenin’, an’ it was an evenin’ like this one.’ Morag waved an arm at the quiet moors and the lustrous sky. ‘Fergus was comin’ home from the moor after milkin’ the cow an’ suddenly he hears the sound of weepin’ comin’ seemingly from behind a peat stack. He goes to look but there’s no sound nor sight of a thing an’ he’s just makin’ back to the path when the weep-in’ begins again, only louder, an’ he’s sure it’s his own daughter an’ she pourin’ her grief on to the heather. He’s that upset he stands still an’ calls, “Alex, is it yourself?” At that the weepin’ grows fainter an’ more far away till he can hear it no more.’

  ‘An’ was that when she was killed?’ asked Behag, awestruck.

  Morag tossed the interruption aside. ‘Fergus found he was shiverin’ so much he made for home as quick as he could an’ when he got inside, though it was a warm night, he piled wood an’ peats on the fire till Ina thought the flames would be comin’ out of the chimney an’ she so hot she had to go an’ sit in the door. “Whatever ails you?” she asks him. “You’ll know soon enough,” says he, an’ gets a blanket off the bed an’ wraps it round his shoulders an’ sits as close to the fire as if he’d been all day at the back of the hills in a snowstorm.’

  ‘Did he not tell Ina about hearing their daughter’s voice?’ This time the interruption was mine.

  ‘He did not,’ confirmed Morag. ‘He told no one then, but Ina says she knew he’d had one of his premunitions to make him turn like that. Sure enough the next day there came a wire tellin’ them their daughter had been killed in an accident. Then it was that Fergus told Ina what had happened to him while he was out on the moors.’

  ‘Did they ever find out when was the accident?’ Behag’s tone was meek.

  ‘They did,’ replied Morag. ‘An’ it was just about the time Fergus must have been comin’ back from the cow.’ Morag turned to see how deeply her story had affected us. ‘Now will you believe that!’ she enjoined us.

  Neither Behag nor I made any reply. Behag was the most credulous woman in Bruach and on a lonely moor in the company of Gaels I could shed logic as easily as I could shed a wet shawl.

  ‘An’ another time I mind,’ continued Morag, warming to her subject. ‘There was the time he was skipper of a boat for a rich man.’ She paused. ‘You knew he was a skipper when he was young?’ she asked us. We acknowledged that this fact we did know.

  ‘Aye well, the owner had decided they was to spend the night at moorings; strong, new moorings they were,’ she emphasised, ‘an’ they’d cost him a deal of money gettin’ them laid specially by the firm that made them. But Fergus wasn’t happy. He could sense a storm comin’ an’ though they’d all gone to their beds an’ it wasn’t his turn to be on duty he couldn’t seem to settle. He was that worried he went an’ woke the engineer an’ told him to get up a good head of steam an’ keep her at the ready. Fergus said the engineer was none too pleased to be got out of his bed since everyone had been sayin’ the new moorings was strong enough to hold a battleship in a hurricane, but he did as he was told. When the storm broke it wasn’t such a bad one as storms at sea go but they hadn’t been ridin’ it more than half an hour before those strong new moorings broke just as Fergus knew they would.’

  ‘That was a lucky one,’ I murmured.

  ‘Lucky?’ echoed Morag. ‘Indeed if Fergus hadn’t made the man get steam up it’s likely the ship an’ all their lives would have been lost.’

  ‘What did the owner have to say?’ asked Behag. ‘You’d have expected him to give Fergus a good pound for that.’

  ‘Indeed the owner wouldn’t believe it at first when Fergus woke him to tell him but he believed it all right afterwards when he saw it for himself. They got some divers down to inspect the moorings an’ they found somethin’ wrong with them that had caused them to part. Fergus said the owner took the firm who’d made them to the law over it an’ won his case.’

  ‘Did he ever ask Fergus why he’d made sure they had steam up?’ I asked.

  ‘He did,’ declared Morag. ‘An’ when Fergus told him he shakes hands with him. “Fergus,” says he, “I’ve always laughed at your premunitions before but I never will again.” He never did an’ that’s the truth. He never forgot that night, either, an’ when he died he left Fergus a pension for the rest of his life.’

  ‘It’s nice to hear of that,’ I remarked.

  ‘Aye, mere’s some of these rich folk that do right by people,’ admitted Morag grudgingly.

  ‘I wouldn’t care to see the future,’ said Behag with a slight shudder.

  ‘Well, Fergus could without a doubt,’ Morag told her. ‘An’ that’s what folks will best remember him for when they’re speakin’ of him. Aye,’ she repeated, ‘they’ll remember his premunitions.’

  I did not divulge then it was in no supersensory way that I should best remember Fergus. I had been living with Morag for some time before starting to look around for a house and croft of my own and hearing of one which had been empty for years and might possibly be bought I set out one day to find it. I knew roughly where it was situated but I knew also that if I kept to the road it was going to be a long trek and as it was winter with short hours of daylight I took what I thought to be a short cut. Morag has assured me there was such a path but her instructions, always more colourful than correct, had led me into a deep, boggy valley. At that early stage of my initiation bogs terrified me and in mounting panic, visualising myself being sucked rapidly into miry mud with darkness coming on and no one to see my plight, I tried repeatedly to find a path back to firm ground but drew back each time as I went ankle deep in treacly mire. Common sense told me my panic was foolish. The day was mild for the time of year; the sun indicated it was around midday and except for one or two historic and easily identifiable bogs none was reputed to be dangerous except to cows and horses with their small feet and heavy bodies. All the same I was immensely relieved to see Fergus coming over the hill in my direction carrying a creel of peats. I hailed him and, still with the heavy creel on his back, he came towards me, testing the ground at every few steps. He guided me back to the path and asked me where I was making for. I told him and begged for directions.

  ‘You’ve lost yourself, have you?’ he said with mockery in his voice.

  I grinned and acknowledged I was a little lost.

  ‘Aye, aye, I thought that must be the way of it.’ With a hand that was as hard as a cricket bat on my shoulder he turned me in the direction I was to go. He raised his right arm. ‘Now look along the length of that,’ he instructed. Obediently I looked along the length of his arm. ‘Now you’ll see that,’ he went on, holding up a sturdy thumb that was as dark and wrinkled as oak bark. I assured him I could see it. ‘Now, Miss Peckwitt,’ he told me, wedging each word into the sentence as carefully as a mason wedging stones into a wall, ‘you’ll just take a line from the black of my thumbnail,’ he commanded. Heedfully I had done so.

  The three of us were now approaching the croft land as distinct from the moor and the ever-elusive corncrakes were cr
oaking in the unscythed grass down towards the bum.

  ‘I mind my father always used to say those birds made him think of the angels,’ observed Morag as I stopped to listen.

  I looked at her. The rasping of the corncrake might be music to the ear of an ornithologist but it was hardly what one would expect to hear from angels.

  ‘Aye, he’d say they’re all around you an’ yet you scarcely ever saw one,’ she explained.

  When we were within a few paces of Fergus’s cottage two women emerged wearing suitably staid expressions.

  ‘How is she?’ asked Morag.

  ‘Ach, she’s no’ bad. No’ bad at all,’ replied one of the women.

  ‘She’s frettin’ more about gettin’ her cow to the bull before her season’s over,’ added the other. ‘She’s wonderin’ if Angy will get here in time or will one of the men come an’ do it for her.’

  Angy, being Fergus’s nephew, was now Ina’s closest relative and was confidently expected to come from the mainland and take over both his great aunt and the small croft.

  ‘He’ll surely be here for the funeral,’ Morag asserted. ‘They’ll need him for the carryin’.’

  ‘The more the better,’ agreed one of the women.

  ‘I’m thinkin’ the men will be awful dry if the weather stays as hot as this,’ commented Behag.

  The sombre expressions on the faces of the women were wiped off as easily as dust from a mirror as we all turned to assess a setting sun so fiery that one expected the sea’s rim to hiss and bubble as they touched. The hills were clear except for a crumpled bunch of cloud behind their peak which looked as if it might have been a coverlet hastily thrown aside.

  ‘I believe this weather will stay with us for a whiley yet,’ predicted Morag with satisfaction. ‘Surely carryin’ Fergus is goin’ to make the men sweat worse than carryin’ a load of hay.’ A gloating smile creased her face. ‘Mind you,’ she went on, ‘I believe they’d as soon he died now as wait till they’re busy at the hay.’