Lightly Poached

by Lillian Beckwith

  The murmurs of agreement from the two women were cut short by a croaking voice calling from inside the cottage.

  ‘She’s hearin’ us,’ whispered Morag. ‘You two had best away an’ we’ll go in to her.’

  Despite the warm perfection of the evening Old Ina, Fergus’s widow, was sitting in a chair drawn close to the hearth, cherishing the fire as if, now that Fergus had gone, it was destined to become her mate. Behag and I settled ourselves on the bench and mumbled trite commiserations while Morag, going immediately to the old woman, laid a hand on her shoulder and crooned comfortingly in the infinitely more expressive Gaelic. Ina shook her head or nodded, making whispered denials and acquiescence and after a few minutes Morag came and sat on the bench beside us. Her voice became more matter-of-fact.

  ‘Would you say he had a premunition about it?’ she asked.

  ‘Indeed, I’m sure now that was the way of it,’ replied Ina. We leaned forward avidly. ‘Aye, an’ I should have known it,’ continued the widow, ‘for when he came in that evening for his potatoes he ate three sooyan along with them before he pushed his plate at me for more. “That’s a meal enough for a ploughman you’ve taken already,” says I. “Right enough,” says he, “but I don’t wish to go my way hungry.” “Go?” I asks him. “Go which way?” But he doesn’t say a word an’ just goes through to the room an’ lies on the bed an’ that’s the last speech I had with him till I went to tell him it was time to go to the milkin’ an’ found him gone.’ Her voice faltered and she struck her forehead with the back of her hand.

  ‘It’s sad, mo ghaoil,’ Morag sympathised when the widow had recovered herself. ‘An’ him such a strong healthy man all his life.’

  ‘Indeed he was so,’ agreed Ina, wiping the sleeve of her cardigan across her eyes.

  ‘An’ always so good to eat,’ prompted Morag.

  ‘Good to eat an’ good to sleep,’ the widow confirmed.

  ‘An’ never seein’ a doctor.’

  ‘He saw a doctor only once in these twenty years past,’ Ina replied, ‘an’ that was only to see how he was wearin’.’

  ‘Aye, aye,’ commented Morag. ‘An’ nothin’ artificial about him,’ she added.

  ‘Nothin’ but his teeths,’ corrected Ina.

  ‘Did he have his teeths?’ Morag’s voice was sharp with surprise. ‘I never saw them, then.’

  ‘Indeed they never came out of that little box you see there on the chimney shelf,’ confided the widow. ‘Never once but when he took them out to polish them.’ I glanced up at the exquisite little lacquered box which sat between what I had discovered on a previous visit to Ina to be a Georgian silver salt-cellar and pepper-shaker.

  ‘He polished them?’ asked Morag with a touch of scepticism.

  ‘He did so. The same time as he polished the other ornaments there with some stuff he got from the van. There should be a tin of it there now.’ She indicated a tin of a well-known brand of metal polish which stood tied in a duster at the end of the mantelpiece. ‘He liked to see things shine,’ she explained. ‘I daresay it was the boat in him still.’

  Ina picked up a pair of tongs roughly fashioned out of fencing wire and added a couple of peats to the fire.

  ‘You’ll take a cup of tea,’ she stated with shaky-voiced emphasis and shifted the kettle from the hob to the hook above the fire. While the kettle boiled and the other three women talked pious trivialities I studied Ina’s kitchen with its wood walls tanned by peat smoke; its bare wood floor dark as lichen with age and wear. Apart from the long wooden bench on which we sat there were two roughly made upright chairs, a table obviously knocked up from driftwood and a varnished dresser which occupied almost the whole of the wall opposite the window. The lower shelves of the dresser were loaded with plain earthenware basins of uniform size; brown glazed jugs of varying sizes, and an assortment of stone jam jars, while on the top shelf sat three fat brown teapots interspersed with such oddments as a pewter tankard, sporting an engraved coat of arms; a silver sauce-boat, and one of a pair of elegant silver candlesticks. The last time I had been in Ina’s house both candlesticks had been on display, as had also a pair of silver meat-dish covers which had hung on the wall on either side of the dresser.

  ‘Useless things!’ Ina had said when I had admired them.

  I glanced about me, trying to locate the missing items, and soon found the candlestick which was propping open the tiny window to allow the slight evening breeze to drift into the over-warm room. The meat-dish covers I could see nowhere and I sighed for Ina’s indifference to her treasures, wondering if Morag’s ‘anticsman’ had paid her a visit or if some travelling tinker had cast a covetous eye on them and had exchanged them for a couple of milk pails or even tin water dippers. It was so unusual to see such treasures in a crofter’s kitchen that I had once asked Morag how the old woman had come by them, imagining that perhaps Ina was descended from some once wealthy family and these were the remaining heirlooms or perhaps that at some time in her youth she had acquired a taste for fine things and had saved up her money and bought them on rare visits to the mainland. Admittedly neither theory fitted Ina’s present attitude towards her valuables but that could always be put down to age or the bludgeoning effect of a harsh crofting life.

  ‘An’ hasn’t she a box full of other things under her bed in the room?’ demanded Morag. ‘Dishes an’ spoons an’ little ornaments, all wrapped in pieces of blanket. She showed them to me one time.’

  ‘It seems so odd,’ I began, but Morag cut me short.

  ‘Ach, Ina doesn’t know they’re valuable,’ she said. ‘Nobody’s told her an’ it’s best if no one does.’

  ‘Why ever not?’ I asked, puzzled.

  ‘Well, you see, mo ghaoil, when Ina’s daughter was alive she used to travel about the country takin’ jobs as a servant in these big houses. She never seemed to stay in any place for long but she was always sendin’ her mother home some little keepsake or other. Ina thought she was buyin’ them an’ sendin’ them for her to keep till the girl got married.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said expressively.

  ‘Aye,’ agreed Morag. ‘So there they are an’ where they rightly belong the dear only knows but it’s certain it’s not in Ina’s kitchen or under her bed.’

  The tea was brewed, the girdle scones handed round. Ina was not eating and Morag began questioning the old woman as to what food she had taken that day.

  Ina shook her head. ‘I have no hunger,’ she said.

  ‘That’s no way to be,’ Morag told her severely. ‘Wait you now while I just switch you up an egg in a bitty milk an’ supposin’ you take nothin’ else till the mornin’ you’ll not starve.’ Bending down she extracted a pan from under the dresser and poured in some milk from the pail. She peered in various basins.

  ‘Where do you keep your eggs?’ She turned to Ina.

  ‘Indeed if there’s none in the basin there’s none in the house,’ replied Ina. ‘I mind now I didn’t gather them yet today,’ she added plaintively.

  ‘Did you feed your hens?’ enquired Morag.

  ‘Kirsty did that for me while she was here,’ admitted Ina.

  I volunteered to go to the henhouse to look for eggs.

  ‘You’ll take this an’ see an’ just lift the clocky hens while you’re at it.’ said Ina, showing signs of animation. From beside the fireplace she picked up a bowl of meal in which reposed a long-handled serving ladle. ‘You’ll just lift up the hens an’ throw them into the air,’ she instructed me. ‘They’ve been sittin’ that tight the last four or five days an’ they’re needin’ to come off or they’ll get stuck.’

  I assured her I knew how to deal with broody hens and, picking up the basin and ladle, went out towards the henhouse, casually inspecting the ladle on my way. It was heavy and dull but as I had expected the hall marks on the handle were plainly visible.

  There was a cluster of hens outside the henhouse all obviously questioning and counselling one another as to whether it was time to go and ro
ost. I shooed them aside and bending down entered the tiny, strong-smelling shed where the two clocky hens sat, screened by pieces of sacking, one at either side in nests only slightly raised from the floor. The first hen tried to peck me as I lifted her out and when I threw her into the air she came down with such a squalling and shrieking that the rest of the hens scattered in panic. The second clocky reacted similarly and I watched until they had muted which was what was required of them and then threw down ladles of food, fending off the other hens until the clockies had eaten their fill. Only then did I go back into the henhouse and after collecting the eggs from half a dozen laying boxes I crouched down to check that there were no broken hatching eggs in the two snug hay-lined nests near the floor. The neat shape of the nests intrigued me and pulling aside a little of the hay to inspect them I found my fingernail was scratching on metal. I lifted a little more hay, then sat back on my heels, shaken with a mixture of disbelief and laughter. I had found the two silver meat-dish covers. They were tarnished and speckled with excreta but undoubtedly they made excellent nests for the two clocky hens and their expected progeny.

  Wild Wander

  I awoke with the first flurry of wind around the house and lay drowsily listening and wondering if this was just an exploratory thrust of a breeze attendant upon the turn of the tide or whether it was in the nature of a rehearsal for a gale which, gaining proficiency, would stampede the calm spell that had been lulling us during the past few days. The flurry died briefly then came again, still indecisive. I tried to guess at the time. It had been day bright when I had gone to bed at my usual time and it was day bright now and I felt as if I had slept no more than an hour. I gave up guessing and stretched out an arm to pick up the alarm clock. It was a crippled clock; both its feet had gone so that it had to He prone and the minute hand had broken off, but as nearly all Bruach clocks were either crippled or wildly eccentric I saw no reason to waste money on a new one. Except for the postmistress, the schoolteacher and the bus driver ‘mechanical time’ was of little importance. In winter, day began with the very first glimmer of light which told the mothers of school-age children that there was time only for them to make a quick bowl of brose and murmur a bible reading before rushing the children off to school. It told the rest of us that though there might be time for a more leisurely breakfast this must be followed by a few brief hours crammed with disciplined comings and goings; carrying hay for the outwintered cattle; milking; mucking out and renewing bedding; bringing water from the well and peats from the stack; feeding hens, and yet more hay carrying until it was dark and we could recuperate with a long evening beside the fire until one decided for oneself that it was time for the day to end. During the spring and early summer when nights were transient enough to pass almost unnoticed the working day was not so easily definable. The children took their cue for school by the smoke which appeared from the schoolhouse chimney (the peat fire burned all the year round) and their mothers knew it was time to put on the potatoes for the evening meal when the returning scholars were sighted climbing the homeward path, but though these two daily events served as useful reminders to the rest of us no one appeared to notice the lack of them when the school was closed for the holidays. We would say, ‘It is time to milk the cows’, or, ‘It is time to feed the hens’, or, ‘It is time to take my dinner’, and even I, novice that I was, rarely glanced at a clock for guidance. Time became instinctive: a sense that developed with the constant observation of the sky and sun shadows and the behaviour of animals and birds whose promptings were less arbitrary and more reliable than clocks and watches.

  Confused now by sleep I stared at the clock. The hour hand had crept fractionally past four showing me that it was some three hours before my usual waking time. My body felt as if it was roped to the bed with the need for sleep but nevertheless I continued listening, trying to gauge the strength of the wind and almost whimpering a prayer that it would die away for just three or four hours so that I could finish my rest when, I promised, it could blow for weeks and I should not grumble. Since coming to live in Bruach I had found I was inclined to sleep less deeply on nights of calm and quiet than on nights of bustling storm, wind and rain being the characteristic pattern of our weather and calm spells merely an interruption. Like everyone else I rejoiced in the respite from the interminable battles with the wind but I was conscious that if they lasted more than a day or two they became seductive, luring me into negligence. Perhaps into leaving an empty wheelbarrow out on the croft; into forgetting a feeding bowl or some. garden tool that a strong gust could snatch up and hurl against a window; into omitting the extra tie on a barn door which, if the door were blown open, could result in the loss of the roof and though I might go to bed happily exhausted by all the extra work the calm spell had enabled me to accomplish there was always this subconscious awareness of more elementary chores neglected so that I was inclined to sleep fitfully, one ear alert for the first threatening rushes of a rising wind.

  The flurries were undoubtedly gaining strength, punching at the windows and the roof. A pail rattled over the cobblestones and a tub went bumping after it reminding me of yesterday’s big wash of sheets still on the clothes-line I jumped out of bed and slid into some clothes. As soon as I opened the door I could hear the noise of the sheets cracking like whips as they streamed in the wind and I hastened to rescue them. Some of the pegs had gone and the hems were already beginning to fray with long cottons plagued into tangles but I was relieved to see they were still whole. Once before when I had been slow to take in sheets left out in a gale I had found only the top hems still pegged to the clothes-line; the rest were white remnants clinging to clumps of spiky heather and decorating the barbed wire and netting fence around the haystack. At that time it had been a near disaster since my linen cupboard was not well stocked and I was expecting a succession of visitors. My only recourse had been to buy sheets from ‘Aberdeen Angus’, the cheerful Asian tinker, whose entire stock I discovered to have become stained along the folds with a most persistent brown dye which had leaked from the cheap and inevitably sodden portmanteaus in which he always carried round his wares.

  As soon as I grasped the sheets the remaining pegs flew out and I fought the wind for possession of my” bundle, crashing it against me as I trotted back to the house. Dumping it on the table I sped back to the croft, retrieving anything that might be blown away: a bundle of potato sacks washed in the burn and left to dry on the stone dyke; odd pieces of driftwood; a half-gallon tin of paint which I had been using to paint the barn door; a shovel; a broom, and a couple of pails. Even a creel of peats had to be taken to the safety of the shed since it had already been nudged over and some of the peats scattered thus making the creel light enough to be tumbled about and perhaps become airborne should the wind increase to a gale. Satisfied at last I returned to the cottage and while I folded the sheets, cool and fresh-smelling as the dawn wind itself, I debated whether it was worth while going back to bed. My sorties into the brisk morning had driven away the yearning for sleep and I wondered whether after a quick cup of coffee I should turn my back on work and make the most of the enforced early rising by indulging in what I liked to call a ‘wild wander’. Several times during the kindlier months of the year I liked to make these early-morning expeditions either along the shore or over the moors before there was much risk of other people being about and rarely did I return without the reward of having glimpsed some shy, wild creature or witnessed a thrilling example of animal behaviour the memory of which I knew would remain with me for the rest of my life. I had seen the elusive wild cat slinking among the bracken; I had observed at close quarters a family of otters playing like puppies at the mouth of a cave until, presumably winding me, they slid lithe as snakes across the rocks and into the sea. I had come at low tide within forty yards of a party of seals, lying out on the rocks and rolling and flopping their great bodies into first one position and then another while they expressed their satisfaction or otherwise by noises that were half
belches, half groans. I had been puzzled by a gathering of weasels, I counted seven in all, which appeared to be playing a game of ‘In and out of the bluebells’ on a mossy bank near the shore, and I had watched enchanted while a magnificent stag had led his party of hinds across a swollen burn, turning every now and then it seemed to reassure the more apprehensive among them. At almost any time there was a variety of wild life to be observed in and around Bruach but in the early mornings when it felt as if the day itself had only just begun to breathe there was more chance of surprising the more wily or more timid creatures which, once discerning the slightest stir of human activity, speedily retreated to the security of the hills or took refuge on unscaleable cliffs. Admittedly there were mornings when I saw nothing more unusual than a stag silhouetted against the skyline; a buzzard swooping on a rabbit, or a patient heron being attacked by a couple of gulls which coveted his fresh-caught breakfast, but no matter how common the sight for me the wonder

  and the rapture were always there. I had come straight to Bruach from the town and though the ensuing years had moulded me into a countrywoman they had not lessened my excitement on seeing creatures of the wild. So far as they were concerned I knew I should remain in a perpetual state of wonder.

  I opened the door and studied the great soft clouds that were moving serenely across the sky to join those already in ambush behind the hills. With this wind I should have expected them to be racing across the sky and I seemed to recollect that according to Bruach weather lore when there was ‘more wind low than high’ it was a sign that the wind would not last long. The morning was inviting. I made my cup of coffee and refused to think of work. As yet I could see no threat of rain in the sky but all the same I pulled on an oilskin, tied it round my waist with a length of rope and pushed a sou’wester into the pocket. In Bruach it was usually raining, had just ceased raining or was threatening to rain so it was as well to be prepared. In any case there was nothing so good as an oilskin for defence against the wind. Discarding my heavy workaday gumboots I slipped into a pair of shiny, thin-soled rubber boots, bought in an English town and kept exclusively for ‘wild wanders’. Ordinary gumboots had to be heavyweight to withstand the rough stony ground and had to be several sizes too big to allow for heavy socks in winter which resulted in their clumping noisily as one walked, warning anything within a hundred yards of one’s approach, but these lightweight boots, though I could feel every pebble through the thin soles, were excellent in that they kept my feet dry and yet trod as quietly as a pair of tennis pumps. Slinging my binoculars round my neck I closed the door and stood once more to assess the weather and decide which way I should go. The tide was well in and throwing great plumes of spray, wetter than any rain, over the shore so I made for the moors. As I passed the hen-run the hens came racing towards me with an expectancy that changed to puzzled murmurings as I ignored them. A feed at this hour of the morning would have upset their routine and might have affected their egg-laying. They would have to wait until I returned in about three hours’ time. Crossing the stepping stones of the burn I climbed into the wind and followed one of the sheep-tracks that would take me around the shoulder of the hill and eventually into a small corrie where I could peer down into a vast chasm of tumbled rocks, reputed to be a favourite haunt of hill foxes. In all my years in Bruach I had never glimpsed a hill fox yet I was constantly hearing the shepherd grumbling at the number of sheep they took and hearing the gamekeeper boast of the number he had shot. The shepherd claimed that hill foxes were far wilier than other foxes and described almost with admiration how one of them had got the better of him at lambing time. The shepherd had gone to check up on his ewes and found one in a sheltered corrie all by herself with newly born twin lambs. He noticed that the ewe seemed agitated and looking round for the reason soon spotted the fox stealing towards her. The ewe turned to face her enemy, backing away and trying to keep her lambs behind her but it was obvious that one of the lambs was much weaker than the other. Before the shepherd could get near enough to do anything about it the fox had nipped in and taken the weaker lamb. The shepherd scrambled quickly down into the corrie, throwing stones and shouting at the fox until it dropped its catch and made off, but he was too late. When he reached the lamb it was already dead. Just as he made his discovery he heard a sharp bleat from the ewe and turning round was in time to see the same fox slinking rapidly out of sight with the remaining lamb in its jaws. It had merely circled the corrie and while his back was turned had swiftly taken the other lamb. ‘If only,’ the shephered chided himself. ‘I‘d had the sense to let it get away with the weaker lamb I would have been able to get the strong one to safety, but ach, he was just too clever for me I doubt.’