The Hills is Lonely (21 page)

‘I'm no so young,' objected Johnny. ‘I'm gettin' on for forty.'

Murdoch spat with elaborate contempt. ‘Forty!' he exclaimed scathingly. ‘Forty!' he repeated. ‘Chicken's age is forty. You shouldn't get your vote till you get your old age pension. You should qualify for the two of them together.' Haughtily he resumed his place at the head of the procession and ventured no further remark until he wished us good night at his own bedstead gate.

‘So Johnny's a red-hot Socialist,' I observed when Murdoch had gone.

‘Aye,' put in Lachy, ‘he's been a good Socialist all his life except on polling days.'

Johnny laughed self-consciously.

‘That was one of those social nosey parkers we had on the trip today,' resumed Lachy.

‘You got a trip today?' asked Morag with surprise.

‘Aye, we did, and the social woman was pretty seasick I can tell you.'

‘What did you do with her?' asked Johnny.

‘There was nothin' I could do with her,' replied the other indifferently. ‘She was done for. All I could do was drag her up the beach and leave her above the tide.'

‘Oh, but you should have done more than that for the creature,' scolded Morag. ‘Could you no have done somethin' to try would you bring her round?'

‘Me? Bring her round?' echoed Lachy. ‘Why should I try bringin' her round?' And then apparently divining a reason for Morag's admonition he added with materialistic reassurance: ‘It was all right, I didn't need to bother, she'd already paid her fare.'

The talk of sickness in humans veered to the far more important topic of sickness in animals. We reached the dyke and as I was about to ‘leap' over it, Morag began asking minutely about a cow of Lachy's which had been ailing for some time.

‘It's no right for her to go on like that.' he told her. ‘She's old and she's sick and I've made up my mind I'm goin' to shoot her in the mornin'.'

Morag agreed that it was high time the beast was disposed of and later, when I was filling my hot-water bottle, she emphasised, in reply to my question, that Lachy could be trusted to make a far easier and better job of putting the beast out of its misery than would the ‘Cruelty'.

During the night, as Murdoch and the Aurora Borealis had foretold the wind changed its direction and brought with it a couple of hours of torrential rain from the west. By morning the ground was again sodden and the blackcurrant bushes stood sadly in the middle of a sheet of water.

‘And did you shoot your poor old cow?' I asked Lachy when I met him.

‘No, I did not then,' he replied morosely. ‘I believe I'll have to be gettin' the Cruelty to do it yet.'

I felt that I understood. ‘It cannot be very nice to have to shoot an animal you've had all these years and grown fond of,' I suggested sympathetically.

‘Ach, it's no that at all.' Hastily Lachy repudiated the suggestion that his failure to accomplish the deed had been in any way due to sentiment. ‘I was goin' to shoot her right enough,' be went on stoutly, ‘but when I came to do it I found she'd gone and got damp in the night and swollen so big I couldna' push her into the gun.'

He resolved this statement of patent impossibility by producing for my inspection an undeniably swollen, but far from effeminate looking, shot-gun cartridge!

FIRST WARNING

A Grand Concert with Artists from Glasgow followed by a
dance and a Competition to find the Prettiest Girl is to be
held on Friday 30th next

Men 4s. Ladies 3s. 6d. & pkt soap
flakesasusual (no splitting)
Come on, lassies—Now's your chance to shine
In aid of charity
(D.V.)

I studied the carelessly scrawled notice in the window of the grocer's shop; the black crayon lettering on a roughly torn sheet of white wrapping-paper looked like a child's first attempt at printing. The poster was some what overshadowed by another one which advertised a ‘Grand Sale of Females' on the following Saturday. This was of no interest to me personally as it referred only to a sale of heifers, but the dance ‘warning' was definitely worth attention. I translated the ‘no splitting' into a very prudent desire on the part of the organisers to avoid either the concert or the dance being a financial failure, as might be the case if a separate charge were made for each.

The demand for the soap flakes was a little puzzling, but I had lived long enough in Bruach to appreciate that many of their customs had survived from Biblical times, and though I had not yet observed the practice it was not wildly improbable that solicitous hand-maidens would, with true Biblical courtesy, bathe the feet of all patrons on arrival. The ‘D.V.' struck me as being anomalous, but from reports I had heard of the dance secretary's flagrant misappropriation of funds, I knew that its position on the notice was significant.

The organised social activities of Bruach were practically non-existent; a circumstance which was partly due to there being no public hall of any kind, and partly to the fact that both the head schoolteacher and the council representative were so Calvinistically opposed to entertainment that they would perjure themselves pink to prevent the schoolroom being used for anything but its everyday purpose. It was fortunate, therefore, that a neighbouring village which boasted a nebulous and often lethargic ‘Community', and also a disused barn which was styled grandiloquently as the ‘Public Hall', would occasionally exert itself sufficiently to sponsor a concert or a dance—generally in aid of some obscure charity —and would invite the patronage of any Bruachites who might feel so inclined. The prospect of such entertainment invariably aroused a good deal of interest throughout the district and almost every inhabitant, except those prevented by religious scruples or rheumatic twinges, could be relied upon to attend. In the present case the ‘Committy' was evidently determined to excel itself and a beauty competition would undoubtedly prove an irresistible attraction for young and old.

Pushing open the creaking door, I ventured into the poorly lighted shop where a boy in a threadbare brown kilt and dung-caked tennis shoes stood resting his face on the counter, while from behind the counter the grocer himself dexterously manipulated a pair of scissors over the boy's dark head.

‘Well, well, well! Good afternoon, Miss Peckwitt,' the grocer greeted me, in tones which tried to deny that

I had, for the past five minutes, been undergoing his close scrutiny from between a pair of hand-knit socks and a showcard advertising warble-fly dressing. As he spoke the head on the counter jerked upwards, but it was instantly rammed down again by the grocer's impatient fist.

‘Be still you, Johnny!' threatened the amateur barber, vindictively grasping a handful of the boy's hair. ‘You be tryin' to turn round and stare and it's this big bunch I'll be after cuttin' off.'

The head, which I now recognised as belonging to my erstwhile fishing instructor, remained obediently rigid. The grocer treated me to a prodigious wink.

‘This is what comes of leavin' your hair to a Saturday to get it cut,' he muttered banteringly. ‘And then it's such a rush you're in to get it done for the Sabbath, eh, Johnny?'

The head on the counter grunted and as the grocer diligently resumed his task I watched with fascination while an irregular-shaped patch of Johnny's scalp was laid almost bare and the sheaves of crisp, black hair fell stiffly on to the counter. The grocer, stimulated by my interest and sublimely confident of my admiration, continued to snip and chat pleasantly until one half of Johnny's head resembled fine sandpaper and the other half a gale-battered hay-cock; then I was treated to a second wink.

‘There now, what d'you think of that, Miss Peckwitt?' he asked, laying down the scissors with an air of finality.

‘Does that not look handsome?' And to the boy: ‘Run you away now, Johnny, I've finished.'

Johnny, without raising his head, ran an explorative hand over his hair and let out a muffled groan.

‘Away with you,' repeated the grocer, pushing the boy's shoulder, ‘I'll finish the rest on Monday.'

The boy's head did not move, but a snigger squeezed its way out from between it and the counter.

‘Very well.' The tormentor relented with a smile. ‘But you'll have to wait until I've given Miss Peckwitt what she's wantin'.'

The head nodded uncomfortable acquiescence but I insisted that the hairdressing should be completed before I was attended to. I was, I declared, in no hurry whatever. But, I pointed out, this could not be said of a diminutive fellow of about seven years of age who had darted breathlessly into the shop on my heels and who had since stood, studiously ignored by the grocer, tapping a half-crown discreetly on the edge of the counter. My reminder made the grocer fix the boy with a repressive frown.

‘What are you wantin' all in your haste, Ally Beag?' he asked sharply.

‘I'm wantin' half a pound of bakin' sody,' whispered Ally Beag with a terrified glance in my direction.

‘It's near seven o'clock,' said the grocer severely; As the shop made no pretence of closing until around eight or even nine o' clock. I was puzzled by this seemingly irrelevant remark. ‘What's your mother wantin' with bakin' sody at this time on a Saturday night?' he continued, still frowning fiercely.

Ally Beag wilted visibly. ‘She's wantin' it for bakin' scones,' he faltered.

The grocer's eyebrows shot up. ‘She is indeed?' he asked superciliously. ‘Tonight you say?'

Ally Beag nodded in awed confirmation.

‘No she is not then,' gloated the grocer. ‘She's goin' out to ceilidh with Anna Vic this night, and it's fine I'm knowin' she'll no have time for bakin' scones as well.' He paused, and stressing his words by tapping the scissors on Johnny's head, continued: ‘It's bakin' scones on the Sabbath she'll be if I give her sody tonight. Go you home and tell her I've no bakin' sody till Monday,' he commanded, and then added cryptically, ‘she'll understand.'

Ally Beag's freckled face reddened, but as he made no attempt to argue it is possible that he too suspected his mother's intention to desecrate the Sabbath. With eyes fixed despairingly on the grocer's unyielding countenance he sidled slowly out of the shop.

‘If it had been her stomach she would have got it,' the grocer excused himself virtuously as he resumed clipping. ‘I'm no a man to deny a thing when there's real need.'

After a few minutes had elapsed a crestfallen Ally Beag returned and silently helped himself to three damp-looking loaves from the cardboard box beside the counter. With eyes downcast he again proffered the half-crown and the grocer, with a righteous pursing of his lips, accepted the money and clapped the change on to the counter. The vanquished Ally clasped his burden of loaves to his chest and slunk out of the shop watched by the grocer who squinted at him from between the shelves of the window and nodded his head knowingly. I should mention that the grocer was an Elder of the church and the duty of an Elder (in addition to preventing the minister from becoming too secular) is to discourage the deviation of the flock from the path of righteousness. How he could reconcile his Calvinistic piety with the poster displayed in his window was one of the inconsistencies of Bruach which I never managed to fathom.

When Johnny's scalp was shining beneath what was no more than the merest suggestion of stubble, he was released and, while the barber surveyed his handiwork, the victim, with a sheepish grin at me, vigorously rubbed shape and colour back to his crushed apology for a nose. With his arm the grocer swept the dark mass of hair from the counter and, as Johnny skipped away, he turned to me with a smile of unctuous enquiry.

‘Half a pound of baking soda,' I said audaciously, though baking soda was not one of the items on my list. Perhaps I imagined the flash of chagrin which touched his heavy-lidded eyes. I think I must have done, for there was no trace of hesitation or reluctance as he reached up to the shelf and handed me a packet already made up. Apparently my soul was beyond hope of redemption.

‘You'll get some apples and pears if you're wantin' them,' he offered magnanimously. ‘They came yesterday on the bus.'

‘Good!' I exclaimed. ‘I love them both.'

‘Aye,' he agreed quietly, ‘I know that fine.'

I must explain that fruit of any kind could rarely be obtained in Bruach, and when it was available it was rationed like golden sovereigns.

‘It's queer about the pears though,' the grocer remarked conversationally as he lifted the basket on to the counter for my inspection. ‘D'you see there's somebody been and taken a bite out of each one of them.'

He held up the pears one by one. Every pear, though otherwise perfect, bore the indisputable imprint of teeth —and very good teeth too.

‘What a disgusting thing to do!' I commented, mentally reviewing the dentitions, both false and true, of the neighbourhood. The grocer, who had two front teeth missing, was obviously not the culprit.

‘Yes, indeed, it's a shame right enough,' he agreed as he carefully replaced them in the basket ‘But you see, Miss Peckwitt, the bus-driver swears they was perfectly all right when he took them on, so it can only have been someone from round about here who's been at them.' And as I was wondering why he offered that as consolation he added ingenuously: ‘Of course, if it had been anybody from the mainland I daresay I might not have been able to sell the half of them.'

I said I would take a pound of apples.

‘You have good teeth yourself,' he complimented me tactlessly as he weighed out the fruit.

Huffily I refuted the implication, whereat he protested with suspicious vehemence that such a thought had never entered his head. This assertion he immediately contradicted by letting slip the information that his enquiries had shown I had not been among the bus passengers, My innocence must, however, have been proved to his satisfaction for I would undoubtedly have been classed as a tainted mainlander and consequently the pears would have been totally unsaleable.