by Jane Duncan
“No, you don’t!” said Sir Torquil. “Get these—er—ladies off that boat! And you, Campbell”
“Yessir!”
“You get them off the pier!” and with a step that said ‘I am not the local magnate to do my own dirty work’ Sir Torquil slipped under Betsy’s nose and was lost in grave discourse with Tom, with the horse and cart between him and the route that the evicted Miss Boyds would have to take.
How the Miss Boyds had got on to the boat I do not know—there was no gangway, as the cargo was swung over the side and the crew simply straddled the rail and then jumped—but a large number of men were involved in getting them off. They screamed and cackled and shrieked and giggled, while Betsy fidgeted, and Tom cursed under his breath, and Sir Torquil, cursing quite audibly, went to the head of the next horse behind us.
“I can’t! I can’t! I’m going to fall in!” shrieked the fourth Miss Boyd, with a leg on each side of the top rail and a foot on the second and a foot on the third, and clinging to the hand of Dominie Stevenson on the pier. At that moment there came the proverbial seventh wave of the incoming tide which is said to be more powerful than the preceding six, the boat swayed on its swell, the water lapped the pier and—Dominie Stevenson was a very wicked, mischievous, old man. The fourth Miss Boyd did indeed fall in, remarkably clear (when I think of it now) of both boat and pier, and was gallantly fished out, dripping, cold and covered with seaweed, by Dominie Stevenson, the doctor and Bella Beagle’s young cousin. After that all four Miss Boyds went home, while the three rescuers betook themselves to the Plough to ‘warm’ themselves after their gallant act.
The day was now made. Something always happened when the coal boat came in and we had got away to a good start and, too, the horses were now a little less lively, for Dick had had a ‘lesson’ in the field beside the Plough while Jet, from my uncle, had been having an equivalent lesson up and down the sand of the shore. The other horses, now that the ring-leaders were slightly subdued, decided to behave themselves, but every string that came in, the man in charge of it said that he had had unusual trouble with his horses that morning. At about nine o’clock, Tom remarked to me that it was funny that Johnnie Greycairn and Diamond had not got down yet, for by this time he and I had delivered a two-cart haul to Mrs Gilchrist’s Drapery Warehouse, and were back at the pier, but even as he spoke, across the crescent of the bay, on the road on the far side, was seen a remarkable sight. Johnnie Greycairn, like some devil-inspired Ben Hur, bolt upright in his little cart, with a long fir branch in his hand, was lashing old hairy Diamond along the road like a man demented. Even the sailors on the boat stood at gaze while Johnnie allowed the foam-flecked Diamond to stop at the pier-head.
“For God’s sake, Johnnie!” said my father. “What have you been doing to your horsie?”
“Horsie, you say!” squealed Johnnie, waving his fir branch like a claymore. “It iss a stallion he thinks he iss! It’s defying me that the boogger would do the-day—dancing and capering and running and chumping as if the very devil himself wass in him! And so it’s learned him that I did, with this bittie stick. He’ll maybe think a little before he’ll be trying to chump a gate again and him yoked to the cartie and a-all!”
Poor Diamond, panting and flecked with foam, looked as if he would never ‘think’ again, and Achcraggan heaved a regretful sigh, for, obviously, he was not going to liven the proceedings by diving off the pier today.
Sitting on Betsy’s shoulders, her reins in my left hand, my right hand holding the stick of toffee that Mrs Gilchrist had given me, while Tom and the men loaded the carts, I was in a fine point of vantage for seeing what was going on. The sun was fully up now, it was warmer and the hoarfrost was melting and running in streaks down the slate roof of the Plough. The Miss Boyds, Miss Violet none the worse for her early dip in the sea, were back and sitting like a row of birds on the low wall, opposite the inn, between the road and the sea, but they were less conspicuous now, for a number of the village and fisher women were about too, down to have a look at the boat. The policeman had relaxed his discipline, and some of the older boys were around the pier, now that the horses had quietened a little. It was probably the first frost of the year that had got into them all, Tom said, and he was probably right. I licked at my toffee, pressed my knees into Betsy’s comfortable hide and looked out over the Firth, thinking.
The Reachfar horses were always fresh and inclined to caper, for, as my father said, they did not have enough to do. It was because they were not crofters’ horses, like Johnnie’s little hairy Diamond, but big, heavy Clydesdales, as well bred as the Poyntdale and Dinchory horses. This was because, all his life, my grandfather had been accustomed to the well-bred animals of Poyntdale, and would have had ‘no pleasure’ in handling ‘a puckle hairy Shelties’ about his own little place. It had taken a lot of care with the Reachfar ‘pennies’ to get into the good class of horses and cattle, but now that we were in, it was paying us well at the markets. The ‘unctioneers’ were always ‘very civil’ now about Reachfar stock, as civil as if we were a big place like Poyntdale.
Up at the pier-head, Dick, even now, was still blowing off steam, tossing his head and stamping his big, hairy feet, although he had hauled several heavy loads into the village, and, behind me, while they were loading him again, I could hear my father telling the boys to keep well clear of him and threatening to take him down to Poyntdale, one of these days, and ‘sweat the hide off him’ at the turnips. Poor Dick! When he was taken down to Poyntdale to do a heavy week’s work, he was always so glad to get back home that he used his remaining energy to jump every gate in the place and annoyed everybody all over again. Dick, I thought, was a little like myself—he could get into Bother no matter how hard he tried to keep out of it.
It must be getting on for dinner-time, I thought, as I licked at my toffee. What a lot of ships there were in the Firth today too. There was a big cruiser away far up at the big pier near the naval base, and a line of big dreadnoughts down the deep-water channel, and all around them were destroyers and smaller craft, while just a short way west of Achcraggan I could see three of the submarines that could sail under the water like herrings. It was hard to believe that, but my father said that they could, so it must be true. And two aeroplanes came flying over, right across above Reachfar. Now that was a thing that Dick did not like when he was ploughing or anything. If an aeroplane came over, Dick would forget what a careful, skilled worker he was and begin to dance and trample his big feet over tatties, turnips or anything. Poor Dick, he just could not keep out of Both——
Suddenly, round the Point, east by the Fisher Town, a destroyer came dashing into the narrows of the Firth, and as she came past the village she began to blow a deep-pitched, booming horn. I had time to see her big, white bow-wave, her string of bunting from stem to stern, and the froth of her long wake, and then my toffee was in my pocket, both my hands on the reins that went past my sides and my knees holding on to Betsy’s neck for dear life.
“Hang on! Hang on, pettie!” Tom yelled as Betsy went up on her hind legs and he ran to her head. ‘Hang on, bairnie, for Christ’s sake!”
It was not difficult to hang on. Betsy’s big saddle was behind me, and the loaded cart was behind Betsy, and I had strong legs and strong arms. Tom got her down, but there was another outburst of noise and up she went again.
“I’m fine, Tom!” I yelled, catching the excitement as I went up in the air for the second time and saw all the ‘eyes’ of the ships winking at one another which made me think in a flash of Maddy Lou’s one-eyed wink. Down Betsy came with a clatter on the stone of the pier, and “Hang on!” came Tom’s voice as up we went again. The noise was something infernal. All the ships were now blowing sirens, whistles, horns and ringing bells, and the sound was going out to the surrounding hills to reverberate back redoubled, and the pier, the road at the pier-head and the yard of the Plough were full of plunging horses and shouting, struggling men.
I do not know how long it all
lasted, or how many times I went up and came down with Betsy, but I suddenly realised that we were at the pier-head, with Tom on one side of her head and Sir Torquil at the other, and that as Sir Torquil lifted me down My Friend Alasdair dashed past, waving a big yellow lion rampant flag and yelling: “The war’s over! The war’s over!”
“You all right, Janet?” Sir Torquil asked.
I gave my bottom a rub, I had got quite a bump when I went back against the saddle the first time up. “Yes, thank you,” I said, and reached for my toffee.
A few yards away, my father, the doctor and Dominie Stevenson were standing round Dick’s head, and a further few yards away my uncle and two other men were round big Dinchory Jet.
“Gawd be here, Janet,” called my ‘clown’ of an uncle. “It’s myself that thought the end o’ the world was in it! You all right?”
“I’m fine, George!” I called back, and he did his big laugh.
Gradually the last echo of noise died away up the Glen to the west at the foot of the Ben, and there was a strange silence, broken only by the now calming breathing of the horses. Then there was the clop-clopping of hooves and the Reverend Roderick came round the corner from the village in his trap.
“You heard the news?” he asked into the silence. Nobody spoke. He took off his black hat and his noble head and bearded face took on majesty as he looked up at the bright sky. All the men took their hats and caps off and I put my toffee back in my pocket.
“Thank God!” said the Reverend Roderick, and after a moment he looked out over the sunlight water. “My,” he said, “but it iss a peautiful day!”
He replaced his hat, gave his reins to one of the boys and climbed down from the trap. “Well, and the coal boat is in, I see. That’s fine, now, that’s fine! . . . Alasdair Mackay! Come down off that roof—you’ll break your neck, boy!”
“Yes, sir!” called Alasdair, but the lion rampant was now flying from the chimney of the Plough, and everybody began to talk about the war being over.
Shortly after that I was sent along to Miss Tulloch’s to have my dinner—the rest of the Reachfar people had theirs with all the other men at the Plough, or the manse, or the doctor’s or the school-house or anywhere, but Miss Tulloch always had only me, because she was far too busy with her shop, my grandmother said, to be feeding a lot of big hungry men.
“It’s yourself that’s in it, Janet!” she said, when I went into the shop, and I smiled and said: “Good day, Miss Tulloch.” This greeting given by my people had always amused me, and I used to wonder what they would think if, one day, I said: “No, I am somebody else today, Miss Tulloch.” Today, indeed, I felt as if I were somebody else, what with all the excitement and Betsy rearing and it no longer being dinner-time now but nearly ‘half-yoking’, which was the middle of the afternoon.
“I’m sure you are hungry, but there is a whole can of that beef you like and plenty o’ tatties and just you dig in. . . . I’ve had mine, and I’ll be back and fore to the shop all the time, for the people is just fair daft with the war being over and, indeed, I am feeling a little foolish myself.”
I ‘dug in’ to the block of tinned beef and the potatoes grown on Reachfar and was glad to know that Miss Tulloch, too, was feeling a little ‘foolish’. While she ran to and fro at the tinkle of the shop bell, and I sat eating at the table in her room, we conducted a broken conversation.
“And they tell me one o’ that daft Miss Boyds fell in the sea o’ the morning?” she asked.
“Yes.” I nodded, with my mouth full of beef. “Miss Violet. She fell right in with a big splash and the dominie and the doctor and Willie Beagle had to pull her out.”
“Lord be about us a-all! What will they do next, think you? They held a Hallowe’en party the other day, the foolish craiturs, and had some soldiers and sailors at it an’ Jock Skinner, if ye please, and them all with turnip lanterns and eating treacle scones off a string from the roof like bairns, they tell me. And they left one o’ their foolish lanterns oot in the back sheddie where they keep their paraffin and put fire till the sheddie and a-all their firewood and the week’s washing that was in there. They’re as daft as ha’penny watches, the whole lot o’ them. . . . Eat up that beef, lassie, for it will only be wasted—I don’t care for it, myself. . . . Och, aye, a right night of it we had at Hallowe’en with them. The party was over before the fire got going, and after the noise they was making—it’s a wonder you didn’t hear them up at Reachfar—after the noise was over, the village went to their beds, and the next thing I heard was Doctor Mackay galloping his pony down the street an’ bawling oot o’ himself something fearful. It seems he was called out at three o’ the morning for the baby at the Seamuir shepherd’s an’ wee Willie, the shepherd’s laddie, that had been put down to get the doctor was roarin’: ‘The Miss Boyds iss on fire! The Miss Boyds iss on fire!’ You never saw such a night in Achcraggan, with the weemen skirling an’ the men runnin’ doon the street tying the troosers on them as they went, an’ this one wi’ a pail, an’ the minister’s man wi’ yon fancy waterin’ can wi’ the wee spoot on it!” Miss Tulloch went off into a gale of laughter and began to mop her eyes with the corner of her white apron. “But it’s a-all very fine to laugh,” she added soberly, “but there’s something not dacent aboot them when ye think on it.”
“But what about the fire?” I asked. “Did they put it out?”
“Och, lord sake, aye. Mind you, the ootside sheddie is burnt till the ground. . . . And then the Miss Boyds was for the men to come intil the hoose to get a droppie tea for their work and apparently old Katie Beagle up and said: ‘Johnnie Beagle! If you set foot in that hoose o’ sin, ye’ll never come back to my bed!’ You know the loud way the fishers will be speaking—everybody heard her. Lord bless me, there never was such a night in Achcraggan!”
Miss Tulloch, who had been swept away in the drama of her narrative, suddenly realised that she was talking to me and not to one of her contemporary village cronies, wiped her eyes, rose and said: “Ach, the poor craiturs. It’s wickedness in us to laugh at them. To be right, it’s sorry for them we should be. . . . Well, if you canna eat any more you’ll have to be going back, for Tom will be needing you.”
When I went back to the pier, however, Tom was not, apparently, ‘needing me’. The horses were all unharnessed and nosing about among the bundles of hay in several of the Seamuir fields, the carts were all standing about up-ended, their trams pointing to the sky, and not a man was around the pier. A few groups of women were chatting here and there, the schoolchildren were playing with balls—the boys kicking them, the girls bouncing them—in the yard by the Plough, and the four Miss Boyds were sitting, as before, on the sea wall. Several trim naval launches were tied to the pier on the side opposite to the shabby coal boat, and the seagulls were planing in long swoops and screaming as the turned tide began to recede from the shingly beach. From the Plough came the sound of countless male voices raised in raucous song.
I went into the Plough, yard and joined in one of the ball games, but we had not been playing long when another naval launch was seen making in to the pier, so we all went over to see her made fast. The sailors in her were all of the peaked-cap kind, called ‘petty officers’, who did not wear the jerseys and wide trousers that I liked, and they took a lot of wooden boxes out of their launch and carried them into the Plough. Alasdair said that the boxes had gunpowder in them that was left over from the war, but I did not think so, for they made a sort of clinking noise like the basket did when I carried jars of jam to Granny Fraser, and what would they want with gunpowder in the Plough, anyway? Alasdair said they were maybe going to blow it up like Guy Fawkes with the Houses of Parliament, so we all sneaked round to the back of the Plough and climbed up and had a look in through the windows. I think every single man I knew was in there with a glass in his hand, and the petty officers were putting the boxes in behind the counter in a furtive sort of way, so I thought maybe Alasdair was right after all, and that these English-tongued
petty officers were nothing but a pack of Guy Fawkes’s after all. And there were all the men of my family and Sir Torquil and the dominie and everybody, just standing there, waiting to be blown to smithereens. I pushed my head in through the window and yelled: “Dad, Tom, George, Granda! Come out! Come out before they blow you up!”
All the faces inside turned upwards. “Ye wee limmer!” Tom shouted. “Get down out o’ that!”
But my father did more than that. He put his glass down on the counter and made for the door with a purposeful look in his eye, and, without words, I, Alasdair and all the lot of us sprang down from our perch and took to our heels, up the Seamuir field that was just behind the Plough’s back garden. We soon discovered, though, that we were not being pursued and stopped running and turned back to look. All the men were now pouring in a black stream from the door of the Plough into the road and over on to the pier.
“It’s going to asplode, sure enough!” said Alasdair, jumping with excitement.
But the Plough did not ‘asplode’. What had happened was that the tide had gone away and left the coal boat high on the beach, her rusty bottom well settled into the sandy shingle. When we children had gathered the courage to go down, the men were giving up the effort to refloat her, and Captain Greig, swaying a little, was standing at her stern with a glass in one hand and a black bottle in the other. He emptied the last drop out of the bottle into his glass, drank it off and broke the empty bottle with a crash over the stern of the boat. “Ah hereby christen ye the Cutty Sark, ye ould bitch!” he said. “And ye sittin’ flat on yer arse at Achcraggan Pier!”
All the men cheered like anything, and, led by Captain Greig, went back into the Plough.
Before they went, though, I got hold of Tom and asked him about the boxes the sailors had brought and he said: “Ach, no, nor gunpowder. It is chust a droppie beer to drink to the war being done.” So, after that, Alasdair and I had a few friendly slaps at one another and we went back and played some more ball games. The games were enlivened and varied periodically by a drunk sailor staggering out of the Plough, going down the pier and getting himself safely, by instinct only, into one of the launches which had now been moored down at the end of the long stone-flagged slope, but it must have been about tea-time when Jock Skinner’s wife arrived and went into the Plough (a thing no woman, not even the queer Miss Boyds, did) and the singing stopped and a lot of shouting started. We children, of course, gathered round the door, for, in spite of what Tom had said, Alasdair was still spreading propaganda about Gunpowder Plots. Again the Plough did not ‘asplode’, but out came my father with Jock Skinner held by the scruff of the neck, and out came my uncle with the screaming Bella held by both arms from behind, and my father said: “Now, be off, the two of you, and do your fighting at home!” and he and my uncle went back inside and shut the door. Then the fun began. Jock was reeling drunk, as he frequently was, and Bella was very angry, as she frequently was, and she picked up an empty bottle, swung it like club and began to chase Jock round the pier-head, shouting: “Home wi’ ye, home wi’ ye, ye drunken devil!” Jock tried to do as he was told and make for home, but she caught up with him, hit him over the head with the bottle and he collapsed in a heap by the sea wall, a little past where the Miss Boyds were sitting. Nobody moved or spoke except Bella, who, contrite now, hurled herself at Jock and cried: “Jockie, boy! Ah didna mean it! Are ye all right, Jockie, boy?” Jock gave a grunt and settled himself for sleep, and she rose to her feet. “Ye drunken boooger!” she said. “Chust you stop there an’ be sleepin’ yerself sober!” and, swinging her bottle-club defiantly, she strode away down the village street.