Lightly Poached

by Lillian Beckwith

  ‘Did you see your waitress?’ asked Behag as we took our seats.

  ‘Aye, I did. But she’s cook now, that’s why we’re gettin’ such big helpings.’ Tearlaich regarded with approbation the four deep plates of steaming Scotch broth that were being put before us by a young waitress.

  ‘And did she mention the incident of the porridge?’ I probed.

  ‘Only that she didn’t hear of any complaints about it,’ returned Tearlaich lightly as he tied his table napkin round his neck. ‘You’ll be seeing her yourself in a whiley. She says she’s coming to drink a cup of tea with us when we’ve finished eating.’

  ‘Is she still keen on you, then?’ asked Angy.

  ‘Aye, I believe she is,’ replied Tearlaich modestly.

  As soon as the young waitress had cleared the table the cook appeared with a large tray of tea and biscuits. Greeting us with great cordiality she sat down and Tearlaich made the introductions.

  ‘Angy,’ she repeated when she heard his name. ‘Now would it be your father that had the half of the boat with my own Uncle Seamus at one time? Him that had the wooden leg?’

  ‘I believe you’re right,’ agreed Angy. ‘I mind my father speakin’ of workin’ with somebody that had a wooden leg.’

  ‘I could see the likeness,’ the cook complimented herself smugly. ‘An’, Behag,’ she went on, ‘Tearlaich was sayin’ you married Hector that was Morag McDugan’s sister’s boy?’

  Behag smiled and nodded confirmation.

  ‘An’ they were sisters to deaf Ruari, were they not? Him that was workin’ for a time over on the mainland along with that fellow that was always threatenin’ to commit suicide by stranglin’ himself with his own hands an’ then only died of the measles.’

  The trace of mockery in the cook’s voice kindled brief smiles from the two men but appeared to disconcert the gentle Behag who stared mournfully down at her tea. I was accustomed now to the knowledge that wherever Bruachites went they invariably discovered family connexions that had to be enthusiastically researched and confirmed and as always I soon began to feel excluded. My attention wandered to the innumerable stags’ heads that made a melancholy frieze around the room; the stuffed wild cat and the various fish in their glass cases. When the second pot of tea had been disposed of I made a move to go and after some hesitation and a good deal of whispering and chaffing between Tearlaich and the cook we were back again in ‘Joanna’ with the rain still falling relentlessly.

  At the hotel where Behag and I had booked for the night we parted company with Angy and Tearlaich. They, again on the principle that they would sooner be uncomfortable than lonely, proposed to call on a relative of Angy’s who, they felt sure, would insist on offering them a shakedown for the night.

  ‘See you at the roup,’ they called.

  ‘See you at the roup,’ we replied, though with such a selection of pubs to visit I doubted if either of them would recollect the ostensible purpose of their trip. ‘And if you’re not here by three o’clock tomorrow we go without you,’ I threatened.

  ‘I believe the bitch would, too,’ I overheard Angy murmur to Tearlaich.

  ‘What shall we do with ourselves tonight?’ I enquired of Behag. ‘The shops are closed but we could go to the pictures.’

  ‘Would you mind if we took a look round the shop windows first,’ Behag asked. ‘It seems so long since I could look at things that weren’t just drawings in a catalogue.’

  ‘Of course,’ I told her, and was glad she had suggested it.

  To dawdle round town streets in the’ pouring rain looking in the windows of closed shops does not seem such a crazy thing to do when like Behag and me your eyes have for years lit on no more an enticing display of merchandise than the confusion of biscuits, homespun socks, pot-menders and boiled sweets in the grocer’s window or the welter of garments in the bundles carried by the tinkers. It was more than three years since either of us had seen a real shop and we were perfectly happy, in our town wear of brogues, burberries and sou’-westers, touring the quiet, dripping streets. When Behag declared she was satisfied we had a meal in the cinema restaurant before taking our seats in the auditorium.

  ‘How long is it since you was at the fillums?’ asked Behag.

  ‘Oh, seven years at least,’ I replied after a moment’s thought.

  ‘It’s ten or more since I was there,’ said Behag. ‘I’m lookin’ forward to it more than I can say.’

  ‘I believe I am too,’ I confessed.

  We settled ourselves in our seats with a box of chocolates I had bought to celebrate the occasion and as the lights dimmed I remembered the excitement that moment always used to bring. But then the music started. Behag and I turned to each other aghast at the volume of the noise. We put our hands over our ears until the cartoons came on and the music was suppressed by other sound effects. The big film began. I believe it had what is generally described as a star-studded cast but I found every one of them lifeless and tedious. After the lilting Gaelic voices I had grown so used to they appeared to speak without inflexion and almost without moving their lips. The significant pauses while one character looked deep into another’s eyes were so dragged out that I found myself tapping my foot with impatience. I looked at Behag to note her reaction and saw she was fast asleep. After enduring for another half-hour I was cramped and hot and utterly bored and Behag still slept soundly. I prodded her.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I suggested. ‘You’re obviously tired and I’m bored and this blessed thing is going to continue for a couple of hours yet.’

  She made no objection. ‘I saw what happened in the beginning,’ she confided as we were walking back to the hotel. ‘But I wonder what happens at the end?’

  ‘I don’t know or care,’ I replied. ‘But I do know if I’d had to sit there much longer and watch close-ups of sweaty faces it would have spoiled my appetite for these chocolates and I’m damned if I’m going to let that happen.’

  Back in the hotel she said, ‘It’s funny, I used to like the fillums but now I seem as if can’t take to them at all.’ She yawned. ‘I think that’s what sent me to sleep, it all bein’ so slow.’

  ‘Slow!’ I exclaimed. ‘Why, they even sweated in slow motion.’ I proffered the box of chocolates. ‘I’m always hearing that life is lived at a much faster pace nowadays than it was even ten years ago but from what I’ve seen tonight I’d say the film producers haven’t noticed it.’

  In bed with the light out I lay and listened to the noises of the town and thought of life in Bruach and how slow that always seemed and I realised suddenly how quick and how constantly alert one’s mind had to be compared with people in town. Admittedly in town one had to keep a good look-out to avoid traffic or bumping into other people but at least that look-out was, or should be, reciprocal. In Bruach the sole responsibility for evading hazards was on oneself and no one else. We had to watch where we walked in case a foot went into a rabbit hole or a bog; we had to spot which clumps of heather would brush out of one’s path and which would tangle one’s foot and cause a fall; we noted cracks in hill paths that could easily become minor landslides; we watched the sky for signs of weather and the tides if we were going out in a boat, and all the time we had to look out to see which way the cattle were working in their search for grass so that we should not waste time when we went to milk or feed them; to watch them for signs of bloat or mastitis and sheep for signs of maggot or footrot or any of the many other ills which afflict them. We noted any gathering of crows which might indicate a carcase or at best a sick animal to be rescued; we plotted the source of smoke in case it was an incipient heather fire, and we kept an eye alert for moor gates left open, fences collapsed, tilting hay or peat stacks; stones among the grass that would blunt the scythe; the tracks of a rat near a potato store; a hen laying away from the nest; a loose stone in a dyke which if not firmly wedged in again could bring down a whole section of the dyke with the next storm or with the rubbing of an animal.

  ‘Ahhhhhh.’ From Be
hag’s bed there came a long musical yawn. ‘I’d like fine to know what happened in the end,’ she murmured sleepily.

  Pianissimo

  The hall where the roup was to be held was more full of people than furniture when Behag and I arrived and as we wandered deviously among the damp onlookers we watched prospective buyers bouncing on beds and setting into chairs like visitors at a ceilidh. I caught the sound of a piano and made my way in the direction from which it came, leaving Behag to admire a bundle of rugs which she was already coveting. A youth was prodding at the jaundiced keys of an old upright piano and I waited for him to tire of his play before I ventured with similar inexpertise to try them for myself. The notes sounded muffled with damp, several were completely dumb but when I wanted to inspect the inside I found I was prevented from doing so by two arthritic old men who had each appropriated an end of the piano and braced himself against it, with folded arms resting determinedly on the lid. I suspected the shock of being asked to move might prove too much for them and I remained standing nearby hoping they would detach themselves before the auctioneer got round to selling it. It appeared that the old men were not remotely interested in the sale.

  ‘Did you try the liniment I gave you for your rheumatics?’ one was enquiring of the other.

  ‘Aye, I tried it.’

  ‘Did you rub it on or did you put some in a basin of water an’ soak your feet in it like I told you?’

  ‘I did neither.’ The voice sounded a little startled. ‘I swallowed it.’

  ‘Oh God!’ The ejaculation was followed by a brief lull in the conversation and then the questioner began again. ‘An’ did even that not help your rheumatics at all?’

  ‘It did not. Indeed there’s nothin’ helps my rheumatics save a good prayer of damnin’ every mornin’.’ The morose reply was followed by a duet of wheezy chuckles.

  As Tearlaich had reported there were at least two pianos in the sale I went on searching for others but finding only one, which was a grand and therefore out of the question, I returned to my position near the upright. The old men were still in situ but now two women were trying simultaneously to pick out the tune of ‘Kathleen Mavournear while an attendant male alternately nodded and belched approval.

  ‘Oh God! Bridie!’ declared one of the women in indisputably Irish accents. ‘I can feel tears comin’ with the sound of it.’ She touched her eyes with the tips of her fingers.

  ‘Sure, Teresa, aren’t I the same myself?’ responded the other fervently and in an even stronger brogue. ‘I declare the last time I heard it played was in a pub an’ I had to rush off to the lavatory I was that affected.’

  ‘With the tears,’ suggested Teresa.

  ‘Just that. Rainin’ down they were.’

  ‘Ah, you’d be that touched,’ sympathised Teresa while Bridie nodded and murmured something about her ‘lovely land’ and the attendant male belched consolingly.

  At that moment the auctioneer appeared and made his way to the desk and after giving us a brief résumé of how he intended to conduct the sale the bidding began for the larger items of furniture. At this juncture I was only mildly interested in the goods being auctioned but I was thoroughly intrigued by the conversation of the old men which continued despite the penetrating voice of the auctioneer, the hammering and the constantly murmured comments.

  ‘Ach, he was a decent kind of man for all that, with a strong look of a minister about him when he was dressed,’ one of the old men told his companion.

  ‘An’ did they not get the doctor then?’

  ‘They asked him but he didn’t come except to help dig the grave.’

  This piece of information was followed by some mumbled comments which I could not catch but then the first old man was speaking again. ‘He never left no will. He was a man that enjoyed seein’ his relatives quarrel when he was alive an’ I daresay he wouldn’t want to give up his enjoyment when he was dead.’

  ‘Then the lawyers will get the most of it,’ concluded the second old man.

  The auctioneer’s men approached and G realised the piano was about to go up for sale. Mentally I had set a price over which I must not go but when the time came I continued bidding until I had exceeded it by two pounds and the piano became mine. Admittedly I need only have gone thirty shillings above my limit but at the crucial moment the Irish male behind me belched and the auctioneer went up ten shillings. The old men gave me congratulatory nods but still clung to it and I was glad that it would be the carrier and not myself who would have the job of prising it away from them.

  Some of the smaller items were now coming up for sale and I bought a set of copper bottles because I liked their shape and an old copper warming pan which I suspected would have to be useful as well as ornamental. Behind me the two Irish women were commenting on how cheap the last jumble of items in the sale were going. A lot comprising a step-ladder, a zinc bath and a sweeping brush was displayed. The auctioneer managed to push the bidding up from one shilling which was the minimum bid he would accept to two shillings.

  ‘Come on,’ he urged, ‘we don’t intend to give things away.’ There came a bid of another sixpence and he knocked them down for that amount.

  ‘Mother of God for half a crown!’ gasped one of the Irish women, and a few moments later when three bedroom chairs went for the minimum bid there was an ejaculated ‘Jesus Christ for a shilling!’ In fact the Jesus Christ bid had been my own and I glanced behind me half smiling at the two women. ‘You can’t lose anything on that,’ one of them assured me.

  ‘Well, did you get your piano?’ Tearlaich, Angy and Behag had threaded their way through the crowd to my side. The men’s breath was swamped with whisky fumes and their eyes were over bright but they showed no other signs of inebriation.

  ‘I did,’ I replied. ‘And several other things besides. Did you get your bed, Tearlaich?’ He nodded affirmation. ‘I got this rug.’ Behag unrolled the bundled rug she was carrying. ‘Will it go in the car to get home, d’you think?’ I doubted it.

  ‘I got a mangle,’ said Angy.

  ‘A mangle?’ echoed Behag in surprise. ‘Why would you be wantin’ a mangle?’

  ‘Aye, well you see my wife was thinkin’ if she could get a bit built on to the house she might start takin’ in bed an’ breakfasters. Her mother used to do it at one time an’ she tells me some of them leave the sheets that clean if you can put them through a mangle you don’t need to wash them before you put them back on the beds again.’

  At twelve there was a break for lunch so we went to join the queue where we were to pay for our purchases and when that was done we discussed arrangements for getting our goods back to Bruach.

  ‘We’ll be best hirin’ a lorry,’ advised Tearlaich. ‘I know a man with a lorry would do it for us and then we wouldn’t need to wait on the railway.’ It sounded a good idea so after arranging to meet us later for a meal Tearlaich and Angy went off to see the man with the lorry while Behag and I indulged in a modest, and, because it proved to be early-closing day, a hurried shopping spree. Behag bought a purse for her small daughter, a milk sieve for Morag and a box of cartridges for Hector as well as a frilly blouse for herself and a variety of cakes and ‘teabread’. I bought fruit and vegetables and, after a certain amount of hesitation, succumbed at last to permitting myself the luxury of a new alarm clock. We managed to snatch a quick cup of tea before the small café we chose slammed its doors and with an hour to go before we were to meet the two men we sought refuge from the unceasing rain in a nearby church.

  ‘Oh, it’s lovely to be off my feet for a while,’ sighed Behag. ‘I feel as if I’m wearin’ sandstone shoes.’

  ‘Slip them off,’ I encouraged.

  ‘Will I?’ She looked doubtful. ‘What will the minister say if he comes in an’ sees me?’

  ‘Town ministers are used to it,’ I assured her, ‘and anyway you’ll hear anyone coming.’

  She slipped off her shoes and leaned back in the pew, her eyes closed and a contented smile
touching her mouth. I wandered round renewing contact with carved wood and chiselled stone, refreshing my memory of skilled craftsmanship, and contrasting it with the utilitarian artefacts of Bruach with their total lack of ornamentation.

  ‘These kind of churches must cost a terrible lot of money,’ Behag said when I too went to sit down.

  ‘Yes, but they’re beautiful, aren’t they?’ I replied.

  ‘Morag doesn’t like them,’ she told me. ‘She says she doesn’t get the same feelin’ of religion in them as in our own.’

  We collected ‘Joanna’ and drove to the restaurant, ‘Now this is the way of it,’ Tearlaich explained as we were having our pre-departure meal. ‘This fellow says he’ll collect the stuff first thing in the mornin’ as soon as the sale room’s open an’ he’ll take it across the ferry in his own lorry an’ have it at Bruach by tomorrow evenin’.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound possible,’ I said.

  ‘Aye, it’s possible right enough. So long as there’s no hitch on the way,’ replied Tearlaich.

  ‘There’s sure to be a hitch,’ Angy put in. ‘The road to Bruach’s as full of hitches as a herrin’ net’s full of holes.’

  ‘That’s because we have to rely on botchers, half the time,’ retorted Tearlaich. ‘No, you can take it from me there’ll be no hitches this time. This fellow’s a professional.’

  ‘Is he going to charge a lot for it?’

  Tearlaich told us how much and after dividing the cost among us we agreed that though it seemed a lot we must accept that such speedy delivery naturally cost more than goods coming by train, ferry and carrier. We expressed ourselves content with our bargain.

  ‘Here’s to Bruach, with beds, mangles, pianos and rugs,’ proclaimed Tearlaich gustily as we set off in ‘Joanna’. ‘An’ I believe the rain’s lifting at last.’

  ‘An’ not before it’s time,’ said Angy.

  ‘I’ve been wet inside an’ outside for the past twenty-four hours,’ confided Tearlaich, producing a half-bottle of whisky. ‘I’m no’ wantin’ to dry out yet.’ He put the bottle to his mouth. ‘Are you sure you won’t take a wee drop yourself?’ he asked Behag and me for the second time. We both shook our heads.