The Hills is Lonely (25 page)

‘My, but what a time you've taken,' complained one of the onlookers peevishly.

‘Indeed, and you're lucky we're here at all,' the driver responded with some heat. ‘Didn't the fool who gave the message forget to tell us where was the fire?' He turned to his mates. ‘What a job we've had knockin' up folks all the way to find where we should go.' (At that time in the morning I am quite sure that many of the crofters would have told them where they should go—and in no uncertain terms.) The driver's mates nodded agreement and I wondered if, having now arrived at the scene of the fire, they had yet noticed it.

At this moment the policeman, harassed and sooty, raced impetuously towards the fire engine.

‘Put everythin' you can up there!' he commanded. ‘It's ragin' like a furnace.'

The fireman-driver, who was obviously also in command, looked through the policeman's broad chest.

‘In my job,' he retorted coolly, ‘it's me that says what's to be done.'

The policeman received the rebuff in silence and turning to the bystanders, who, upon the arrival of the fire engine, had forsaken their utensils, he beseeched them to bring their pails and follow him. About a dozen men obeyed and tore after the policeman into the hotel, where, a short time later, we could see them charging in and out of the upstairs rooms, silhouetted like figures on a frieze.

With a deliberateness that was probably thorough, but was nevertheless irritating to the onlooker, the firemen coupled up their hoses and started the engine of the pump. The youngest of them, a lean youth with a mop of cherubic curls peeping from beneath his stiff cap, lumbered heavily towards the hotel with a length of hose. By this time the policeman and his retinue were throwing linen and blankets through the open windows, to be salvaged by willing hands below.

‘Right?' called the chief fireman to the cherub.

‘Right!' replied the cherub. He positioned himself to direct a jet of water at one of the windows when, without warning, he went down beneath a large double bed mattress which hurtled from somewhere above.

‘Hi!' yelled the crowd, while gesticulating rescuers ran to extricate the fireman.

‘Hi!' they yelled again as the rescuers themselves were buried beneath a veritable shower of mattresses, all aimed with a precision that would under other circumstances have looked suspicious.

‘What's happened?' asked the chief fireman curiously.

‘They've flattened him,' supplied an onlooker equably.

‘Flattened him?' echoed the chief with a bellicose glance at the window where the policeman had last appeared. ‘What for? He's done no wrong.'

Meanwhile the second fireman ran forward with his own hose, but as he crossed the lawn he too was knocked for six, not by a mattress but by a large wardrobe which someone, in an excess of zeal and panic, had thrown recklessly from a second-floor window. Two anxious faces appeared at the window from which the wardrobe had descended but their concern was for the fate of the furniture, not for the unfortunate fireman who lay prostrate in the middle of the lawn; a lawn which his still-gushing hose was quickly transforming into a miniature lake.

The chief fireman, furious at the treatment his men had received, was still standing beside the engine excitedly flinging orders at all and sundry. What the orders may have been nobody knew, for of course nobody took the slightest notice. The policeman reappeared on the scene.

‘Look here, man,' he addressed the chief witheringly; ‘what's the use of pouring water into the cellars when it's up in the roof the fire is. A hose on the roof will have it out in no time.'

‘You've near killed my mates,' retaliated the chief angrily. ‘Now what d'you expect me to do about your fire?'

‘Me? Killed your mates?' demanded the policeman, who was quite unaware of the mishap to the firemen. ‘Well, it's likely they'll have more life in them dead than alive. But if you don't get up there quick I'll report you.' he went on savagely.

The chief fixed his adversary with a pair of horror stricken eyes. ‘Me?' he expostulated. ‘Me? Go up on that bloody roof?'

‘Why not?' returned the policeman with admirable restraint. ‘That's where the fire is, isn't it?'

It looked for a moment as though the chief was about to dissolve into tears, but instead he hitched up his trouser leg and turned abjectly on the policeman.

‘Have you seen that?' he asked piteously, displaying his wooden leg for inspection, ‘Can you righdy expect a man like me to go clamberin' and climbin' stairs, let alone roofs?'

‘Oh no, that's different.' At once the policeman was contrite. ‘You'd best give me the hose and I'll go up myself,' he offered.

‘Are you sure you'll manage?' asked the chief considerately.

‘I'll manage,' returned the policeman through clenched teeth, and ran forward to take up his duties as chief fireman.

As he had claimed, a hose on the roof had the fire out in a comparatively short time. Within an hour the threatening flames were subdued and the charred and dripping ruin of the roof emerged from the pail of smoke. A fine drizzle of rain began to help along the good work.

‘Come round to the kitchen,' said Morag. There's tea for everybody there.'

Thankfully we adjourned to the kitchen where we found the two injured firemen who having been rescued from their predicament and given first aid, were now reclining comfortably in easy chairs beside the stove and regaling themselves liberally with whisky supplied by a grateful proprietor. They were, someone explained, ‘waitin' on the ambulance takin' them to hospital'. They were obviously hoping the ambulance would be a long time coming.

The policeman, with torn shirt, was hardly recognisable under his grime as he tottered into the kitchen and dropped into a chair.

‘I think I've sprained my wrist,' he muttered. Someone pressed a roll of bandage into my hand and I bound up his wrist as well as I could. ‘God! What a night!' he said as his chin sank wearily on his chest.

The experience being safely over, cups began to clatter merrily and the night's adventures were gone through over and over again in detail, as people sipped tea and poked whole biscuits into their gabbling mouths.

‘The sooner the ambulance comes and these men get skilled attention the better it will be for them.' A high authoritative voice briefly silenced the hurly-burly of the kitchen. The two firemen directed baleful glances at the speaker and hastily replenished their glasses; the crowd resumed their chatter.

‘Oughtn't we to get hold of the nurse?' I asked the policeman.

‘Impossible,' he replied. ‘The nurse is on holiday in Glasgow.'

‘Well, what about the doctor?' I persisted. ‘Is he on holiday too?'

The policeman permitted himself a grim smile. ‘In a way he is,' he said. His smile broadened into an expansive grin. ‘I had to lock him up on Thursday—drunk in charge again.'

It was long past breakfast-time when Morag and I set out to walk home, there being no sign of the bus anywhere.

‘I wouldn't have minded bein' a bitty crowded to save havin' this walk on top of the night we've had,' mourned my landlady, and as I dragged beside her along the stony path with the brittle heather stems rasping against the remains of my silk stockings I sincerely echoed her sentiments.

The drizzle was by this time showing signs of developing into a real downpour and the newly turned potato and corn patches were speedily changing their pale dun colour for a moist blackness. The rain sizzled through the sparsely leafed bushes and in the grey murk above a skylark soared, pouring out melody as though compelled to rid itself of its jubilation before it could bear to seek shelter. The burn rippled sportively under the old lichen-patterned bridge.

‘Them's voices,' said Morag suddenly, and leaning over the parapet we beheld the ‘fiddle' and the ‘melodeon', one arm embracing their instruments and their free arms embracing each other. They were making repeated claims that ‘'twas my fault sure as I'm here', and so engrossed were they in their new friendship that neither of them was aware of our presence. We thought it wiser not to disturb them.

‘They look very comfortable in spite of the weather,' I said.

‘They should be comfortable,' replied Morag. ‘Did you no see it was the piper himself they was sittin' on? He's one that won't get wet anyway.'

We did not go to bed when we reached home but busied ourselves with the sedentary tasks of the house. The letter I had been expecting was duly delivered by a red-eyed and befuddled postman, somewhere about lunch-time. I managed to summon up enough energy to take my answer up to the pillar-box. On my way home I perceived a group of tired men sheltering just inside the doorway of Lachy's cow byre. They included Duncan the whisky drinker and, remembering his performance of the previous night and also the policeman's remedy, I called out to ask him how he had liked his spell in prison.

Duncan grinned pallidly. ‘Prison's all right,' he said. ‘But them damty wardresses won't give a man a minute's peace and quiet.'

It had been, if I remember rightly, during breakfast one morning in our flat, soon after the proposal of my migration to the Hebrides, that Mary, with her customary bluntness, had raised the subject of sanitation. It was a subject which I had at the time been reluctant to discuss, largely I suppose because I knew instinctively that one could not expect such refinements as flush lavatories in isolated country villages, and just at that particular hour I recoiled from envisaging the only alternative.

On my arrival in Bruach Morag had soon introduced me to the niceties of rural sanitation, pointing proudly to a horridly conspicuous little hut, painted a torturous pink and almost surrounded by an abundant growth of nettles, which stood in splendid isolation at the far end of the ‘park'.

‘I empty her in the sea every day,' Morag had said, and I had immediately enlightened Mary as to the nature of the ‘refusals'. ‘When I knew you was comin',' continued my landlady, ‘I painted her all over inside and out and I got Ruari to shift her from where she was beside the hen house over to here.' She chuckled briefly. ‘And bless me, but the fool didna' realise the paint was wet, and he comes up behind her, puts his two long arms around her, lifts her up and carries her to where she is now,' she finished triumphantly.

I was a little confused by her recital and it must have seemed to her that I was not sufficiently impressed by her brother's feat.

‘If you dinna' believe me, just take a look at her behind and you'll see the shape of Ruari on her yet,' she assured me earnestly.

I at once feigned a convincing interest in Ruari's prowess, for the menacing appearance of the nettles completely overruled the impulse to ‘take a look at her behind'.

The ‘wee hoosie', as Morag called the lavatory in my presence—though when I happened to overhear her mentioning it to Ruari one day she referred to it by a far more robust name—looked exceedingly fragile and, I imagine, depended a good deal for support on the large heaps of stones which were piled anyhow against its sides; it was possible that the nettles also made some slight contribution to its stability. Ventilation was lavish, and at night one was thankful for the ubiquitous cycle lamp—a candle would not have remained alight for an instant in the fierce draughts. The door, I found to my dismay, could not be secured except by means of a piece of string looped round a rusty nail: a flimsy and far from reassuring arrangement but when in occupation the numerous ventilation holes gave advance glimpses of any intending visitor, and a throaty cough at an opportune moment was all that was necessary to divert the would-be intruder to the pursuit of an imaginary bird's nest or an industrious weeding of the garden. So far as Morag and I were concerned the arrangement worked admirably, but during a visit from one of my landlady's male relatives—a fellow utterly lacking in sensitivity—I so nearly coughed myself into an attack of laryngitis that I insisted on purchasing a handsome and effective brass bolt, and prevailed upon Ruari to fix it on the door. Ruari undertook the task with thinly disguised scorn but his subsequent remark that the door would be ‘the better for that bit of strengthenin' ' convinced me, in spite of Morag's silent criticism, that my one and nine-pence had been well spent.

The supply of toilet paper was erratic, the grocer receiving a consignment only once a year, at the beginning of the tourist season, and when that was exhausted Morag attempted to remedy the situation with an accumulation of well-thumbed periodicals covering an extensive range of subjects. I ensured an adequate supply of toilet rolls by post but I must admit that my education, during the summer months at any rate, was enormously improved by the regular perusal of the magazines. Before I had been in Bruach a year I was well versed in such subjects as: ‘How to prepare the ideal growing mash for newly weaned pigs'—this was wasted study as there were no pigs in Bruach, at least not the four-legged ones; ‘How to distinguish a pipit from a skylark'; ‘How M. S., Glasgow, could cure his headaches' and ‘Housewife in Perth' could avoid getting chilblains, and ‘How to make a scruggin cake'—though I never discovered what scruggins might be. I could even recite parrot-fashion the correct shades of make-up for blonde, brunette and red-head, and also reel off a list of the historic monuments of Scotland with hardly a pause for breath. I like to think that some day the information may prove valuable.

It was not until my second summer in Bruach that Mary decided to risk visiting me in my new home, and directly she announced her intention Morag and I began a belated but furious onslaught on the spring cleaning and the enhancing of improvements which had originally been undertaken in my honour. I had of course become inured to many of the crudities of Island life, but I could still recall my own repugnance on first coming into contact with many of the accepted arrangements, and I had no wish to give Mary the impression that I had become completely degenerate. Though Morag's house was one of the cleanest in Bruach, that which passes for cleanliness in the Hebrides would be looked upon as slovenliness by the average urban housewife, so my landlady and I scrubbed, polished and mended and at intervals wielded moulting paint-brushes with more vigour than skill.