The Hills is Lonely (2 page)

This was undoubtedly an example of the dourness I had been warned to expect from the Hebrideans, but to me at this moment it seemed particularly uncalled for. Apprehensively I groped forward. There was a surging gulf of water between the boat and the jetty and I was terrified of stepping down into it.

‘Watch your step now!' commanded another voice, brisk and imperious, from the darkness, as I hesitated, waiting for the deck to leap high enough for me to clamber aboard without having to perform something in the nature of a gymnastic feat.

‘I can't see!' I wailed. Almost before the words were out of my mouth I was seized by two strong arms and propelled unceremoniously over the gunwale and down into the well of the boat. The calves of my legs came up against something solid and I collapsed heavily. I managed to gasp out my thanks but need not have wasted my breath, for the men, having seen me and my belongings stowed safely aboard, went about their own business. Miserable with fright, cold and vexation, every muscle strained and taut, I clung grimly to the seat to prevent myself from being thrown overboard with each lurch of the boat. There were no other passengers. ‘No one else,' I thought dully, ‘would be such a fool as to cross on a night like this.' The thought galvanised me into action.

‘I'm coming off!' I shouted. My voice shrilled with panic. ‘I'm not going to cross tonight. It's too rough.'

‘Ach, sit you down,' the answer came scornfully; ‘you canna' go jumpin' on and off boats for fun on a night like this.'

‘Fun!' I retorted angrily, and was about to tell them the extent of my pleasure when a suffocating stream of spray filled my mouth and effectively choked the words. The boatman may have intended his sarcasm to be reassuring, but before I could attempt further argument there was a staccato command, the men leaped aboard and the slowly ticking engine pulsed into life. We were off, and I must face whatever might come.

That we had left the jetty and were moving I could guess from the sound of the engine, but from the terrific impact of the waves on the bow I considered it more than likely that we were being driven backwards. The boat seemed sometimes to rear supplicatingly on her stern, and then nose-dive so steeply that I was certain each time that her bow could never lift through the water again. My agonised thoughts compared the performance with that of Blackpool's ‘Big Dipper', a thrill which I had endured once and subsequently avoided. This, however, was a succession of ‘Big Dippers' and my stomach tied itself into knots at each abysmal plunge. While the boat roiled and pitched dramatically the sea belched over each gunwale in turn. Icy water was already swirling and eddying around my ankles. ‘How much longer?' I wondered wretchedly. Soon I was sobbing and, in an excess of cowardice, praying alternately for safety and a quick death. I felt terribly sick but fear kept my muscles too tense to permit me to vomit.

A dark shape loomed up beside me, and quite suddenly I knew that disaster was upon us; that this man had come to tell me to save myself as best I could; that the boat was sinking. I smothered a scream and, wrenching the torch from my pocket, looked wildly around for lifebelts. I could see none. The man continued to stand, still and silent, and I guessed that he too was gripped by a fear as strong as my own. I was shaking from head to foot.

‘What is it?' I asked weakly.

‘Tenpence.' His voice was crisply matter-of-fact.

‘Tenpence?' My own voice burst from my throat, in an incredulous squeak and relief flooded through my quaking body like a nip of hot brandy. I could almost have laughed. Foolishly I loosed my hold of the seat and a sudden lurch of the boat threw me heavily against him.

‘Steady,' he reproved me.

‘Tell that to the boat,' I replied pertly. With a feeling akin to elation I fumbled for my purse and handed the man a shilling. Gravely he sought the twopence change and handed it to me along with the ticket. The latter I promptly lost; but the two pennies I clutched like a talisman. It seemed fantastic. Twopence change on a night like this! Twopence change when I had been prepared to abandon my all! I began to feel quite exuberant.

The man disappeared and again I was left alone, but now I could at times glimpse the island jetty with its single light and what looked like a pair of car headlamps piercing the darkness beyond. Though I still had to cling to my seat as the boat performed acrobatics more suited to an aeroplane; though I was not one whit less cold and wet than I had been a few minutes previously, the purchase of a tenpenny ticket had given me new confidence; for had I not heard enough about the character of the Scot to be certain that the tenpence stood a good chance of reaching its destination safely? Otherwise I felt sure the weight of the money would have been left with my body, not added to heavy oilskins and sea-boots.

Like a steeplechaser that had scented its stable that boat romped alongside the jetty and I was promptly hauled out with as little ceremony as I had been stowed in. The headlights which I had noticed earlier had vanished temporarily, but now they flashed on again, spotlighting my woebegone appearance. The slam of a car door was followed by a rich masculine voice.

“Would it be yourself for McDugan's, madam?' it asked.

‘It would,' I replied thankfully, almost ready to fall upon the speaker's neck.

‘Come this way if you please,' the voice invited politely. ‘I have the taxi you were wanting.'

A large overcoated figure picked up my two cases, shepherded me towards the headlamps and, with a flourish worthy of a Rolls, opened the door of an ancient roadster. It offered indifferent shelter, but I climbed in gratefully, and from somewhere in the rear the driver thoughtfully produced a rug which, though coarse and hairy and reeking horribly of mildew, was welcome if only to muffle the knocking of my knees. As we drove away from the pier the wind rushed and volleyed both inside and outside the car; silvery rain sluiced down the windscreen and visibility was restricted to the semi-circle of road lit by the headlamps. The driver, who chatted amiably the whole time, kindly informed me that the road followed the coastline most of the way, and I had to accept his assurance that it was a ‘ghrand fiew in fine weather'.

For some miles the car ploughed noisily on, then it turned off abruptly into a ridiculously narrow lane, bounded on either side by high stone walls, vaulted a couple of hump-backed bridges in quick succession and drew slowly to a stop. I wondered if we had run out of petrol, for there were no lights or houses visible; nothing but road and walls and the rain.

‘This is what you were wanting,' announced the driver, pushing open the door and slithering out from his seat. He could not have made a more erroneous statement. This was certainly not what I was wanting, but it looked, unfortunately, as though this was what I was getting.

Pulling his cap well down on the side of his face exposed to the wind and exaggeratedly drawing up his coat collar, he uttered a mild curse and flung open the rear door of the car, where he commenced to wrestle with my luggage. In the glare of the headlights the rain still swooped vengefully down as though each drop bore some personal animosity to each and every particle of the gritty lane. In all my life I had never seen such full-blooded rain!

With a despairing shudder I pulled my waterproof closer about my shoulders and peered anxiously over the driver's back, hoping fervently that he had stopped as near to the entrance gate as was possible. I was disappointed. On each side of the car the stone walls loomed up impenetrably, and I could see that it was not so much that the walls themselves were high, as that the road was a cutting, leaving an earth bank on either side thus forming a fairly inaccessible barrier of about six foot in height between the lane and the field.

‘I can't see any entrance,' I complained fretfully.

The driver paused in his attempt to lever my second case through the door of the car. ‘Oh no,' he assured me with nimble complacency; ‘there's no entrance at all here, but you'll just climb over the wall, d'y' see? The house is beyond there.'

I could not have been more astounded had he told me I must wait for the drawbridge to be lowered! I began to realise that acrobatics were a necessary accomplishment for visitors to Bruach.

‘I can't climb walls!' I protested, ‘and that one is a good sis feet high. Surely,' I went on, ‘there must be some other entrance.'

‘Oh surely, madam,' he replied in conciliatory tones, ‘but the tide's in just now, and you'd be after swimming for it if you were going to use that tonight.' He permitted himself a sardonic chuckle.

‘What a welcome!' I muttered.

‘Ach, you'll soon nip over the wall easy enough.' the driver assured me blandly. ‘I'll give you a leg up myself.'

Now while I do not wish to give the impression that my figure is in any way grotesque, I must disclaim that it is by any means the sort of figure which nips easily over six-foot walls. Agility is not, and never was, my strong point; my figure, though sturdy, being somewhat rotund for anything but a very moderate degree of athleticism. I viewed the prospect of climbing, even with a willing ‘leg up' from the driver, with misgivings.

Despondently I climbed out of the car. The wind caught me off guard and almost succeeded in unbalancing me, and the rain recommenced its furious assault on my waterproof. From the darkness beyond and uncomfortably close came the pounding and sucking of breakers on the shore. To add to my dismay I perceived that a fast-flowing ditch coursed riotously along the base of the wall. I positively yearned for town pavements.

The driver nonchalantly stepped over the ditch (his legs were long) and pulled himself upwards. He was a tall man and the top of the wall was on a level with his nose. He turned an enquiring gaze on me.

‘They'll be expectin' you likely?' he asked. I agreed that it was extremely likely, for I had sent Morag a wire announcing the probable time of my arrival.

Once again the driver turned to the wall, and gave a stentorian yell, the volume and unexpectedness of which outrivalled the storm and very nearly caused me to make a premature and undesirably close acquaintance with the ditch. Immediately a shaft of yellow light gleamed in the distance as a door was opened and a voice of equal power, though indisputably feminine, called out interrogatively. The driver answered and in spite of the violence of the weather a conversation was carried on, though as I could make out no word of it I concluded it to be in Gaelic.

The shaft of light was blotted out as the door was shut and then a lantern came swinging rhythmically towards us. A moment later a figure surmounted the wall and climbed quickly down to stand beside me. This then was Morag, my future landlady.

‘Well, well, Miss Peckwitt is it? And how are you?' My hand was lifted in a firm grip and shaken vigorously and I only just managed to evade a full-lipped kiss.

‘My, my, but what a night to welcome a body. Surely you must be drookit,' she lamented cheerfully. I thought that ‘drookit' probably meant ‘dead' and I agreed that I was—almost.

‘Almost? Sure you must be quite,' she asserted, I decided that ‘drookit' meant ‘drowned'.

‘Ach, but I have a nice fire waitin' on you,' continued Morag happily, ‘and you'll be warrm and dry in no time at all.' The softened consonants were very noticeable and to my Sassenach ears the rolled ‘r's' sounded as over-emphasised as those of some opera singers.

Morag held up the lantern so that for a moment we were able to study each other's faces and I was surprised, in view of her agility, to see that hers was dry and wrinkled with age, while the wisps of hair escaping from the scarf she had wound round her head were snowy white. She dropped my hand and turned to the driver.

‘Will we just swing her up and over between us?' she asked him.

‘Aye,' agreed the driver shortly. I bridled and stepped back a pace but, ignoring me, they bent and together swung my two suitcases up and on to the wall. They were swiftly followed by Morag who lifted them down to the other side; then, lissom as a two-year-old, she leaped lightly down again. I gasped at the effortless ease with which she accomplished the feat but her performance did nothing to allay my own apprehension.

‘Is there no other way?' I asked timidly.

‘No indeed,' she replied, and pointed down the road; ‘the wee gate's down there, but the watter's up and all round it at this hour. It's a pity you couldna' have come when the tide was out.' It occurred to me that tides were going to play a very important part in my new life. I smothered a sigh.

‘Ach, but you'll find this way easy enough when you put your feets to it,' Morag went on in an encouraging tone. ‘Now come.' Cautiously I stepped across the ditch and put my ‘feets' to it. ‘Now then,' directed my landlady with heavy pleasantry, ‘one fine feet here … now another fine feet here … that's lovely just … now another fine feet here .…' Undoubtedly Morag believed her new guest to be a quadruped. The driver who was waiting on the other side of the wall to haul me over also clucked encouragement. I felt a firm grasp on my ankle. ‘Now just another feet here and you'll be near done.' instructed Morag. She was right! In the next instant one of my ‘fine feet' slipped on the treacherous wet stone and I was left clinging desperately with my hands, my legs flaying the air, while the wind lifted my skirts above my head and the rain committed atrocities on those parts of my body which had not before been, directly exposed to such vengeance. The driver, seeing my predicament, came to the rescue and gripping both arms firmly hoisted me bodily over the wall. My feet landed on solid earth. Very wet earth admittedly, but I cared not so long as I had to do no more climbing. Instantly Morag was beside me. ‘You're all right?' she enquired anxiously; ‘you didna' hurt yourself?'

I assured her that I was in no way hurt; though I knew that, even if I had not suffered, my stockings at least were irreparably damaged.