Beautiful Just! (15 page)

The stalker gulped the breath back into his lungs and rested his shaking limbs, too overwhelmed by the miracle of his escape to notice his pain and when the strength had flowed back into his body he got up and continued to sidle his way steadily along. Safely at the end of the path he sat down and drained his whisky flask while he reflected on the incredible uniqueness of his experience and vividly recalled the memory of the stag's antlers against the background of sky and its breath blowing over his face.

He was too late to keep his promise to Jeannie and when he met her the next day to apologize for his neglect he found himself reluctant to explain the reason for it suspecting her disbelief would make her still more peevish in her attitude towards him. He told no one in fact. Not even the pretty nurse who dressed the contusions on his chest and thighs and who later supplanted Jeannie in his affections to eventually become his wife. But subsequently he had kept a keen eye on the wanderings of the grey stag as he now called him, associating the animal in his mind with a hint of feyness and always when the laird was about to embark on a shoot the stalker, on the pretext of ensuring good sport, would go out the day before to locate the stag and send him with a few judiciously aimed shots bounding over the hill into the far corries which he knew none of the laird's companions would have the stamina to reach. And so the grey stag had continued unmolested. Even when it had grown old and had in its turn been bested in fight by younger and stronger stags he could not bring himself to cull it but had left it to roam the hills in peace, sometimes with a hind or two as its companions, sometimes solitary.

‘Queer markings there on the leg,' remarked the ghillie, seeing the stalker's interest.

‘Aye,' agreed the stalker, inspecting the mottled grey foreleg. The ghillie slapped the pony.

‘I'd best be on my way if I'm to flesh this carcass tonight yet,' he said.

‘Aye, you'd best do that,' the stalker told him. He hobbled back to the gate of the cottage and stood watching the pony plod on with its flopping burden.

He was glad he had not been at the killing.

‘You have a good dung heap there,' observed Tearlaich thoughtfully. I acknowledged his remark with a smug smile. Having by this time acquired the crofter's and indeed the true farmer's attitude of near reverence to manure I was very proud of my large dung heap. I didn't know quite what I was going to do with it all but I was still very proud of it since theoretically the more muck one had the more crops one could grow. Being on my own with only a couple of animals and a few hens to provide for there was no need for me to grow large crops of anything; nor could I have harvested or stored or even sold them had I grown them and it might therefore have seemed the proportions of my muck heap were yet another instance of my growing Bruach acquisitiveness but since the cow byre had to be cleaned out regularly there was nothing else to do with the muck but to build it into a bigger and bigger heap and then in the spring spread as much as one's stamina would allow one to spread on the land. In Bruach the regularity of cleaning out the byre varied according to one's attitude to the task. Because I liked it less than most of the other croft work and because I found it less strenuous to take out a few forkfuls at a time I cleaned out my byre daily. Others preferred to clean theirs weekly. A few made the job an annual one, arguing that since a good layer of muck generated heat the cattle were warmer in the byre and thus needed less feeding while the vet had once told me of an old crofter who hadn't cleaned out his byre in fourteen years and when the vet went to attend his sick cow he had to climb up over a four-foot layer of dung to reach the animal.

When the spring came and it was time for the dung to be spread the crofters usually carried it in full creels on their backs, tipping out the manure by bending forward and letting it spill out over their heads. I knew that if I tried their method I should certainly have manure in my hair and ears and at least half way down my back so I preferred the wheelbarrow. I had been forking manure into the barrow when Tearlaich passed by.

‘You'll never use all that,' he told me.

‘No,' I said, shaking my head. ‘I haven't the energy to get all that lot out anyway. It's heavy work.'

‘Indeed an' don't I know that myself,' agreed Tearlaich. ‘I believe the creel is a lot easier on you than than the barrow all the same.'

‘Maybe it is,' I said. ‘But I still prefer the wheelbarrow.'

‘Right enough,' he rejoined. ‘A load of shit on your back can get pretty hot, I'm tellin' you. Even feelin' it through your clothes makes you sweat.' He watched me load until the barrow was as full as I could manage.

‘I believe Ian over yonder would take a load from you if you've a mind,' he suggested. ‘It would likely be worth a pound to him.'

‘Really?' The idea of actually selling one of the byproducts of my croft was, I thought, a step in the right direction but the idea of anyone actually wanting to buy manure struck me as strange: to come all the way from the next village to buy it sounded a little crazy. I wondered if Tearlaich was pulling my leg. ‘Will I tell him when I see him?' he asked seriously.

‘Oh, yes,' I replied, going along with him. ‘If he likes to come for it he's welcome to a load.' I looked at him quizzically. ‘Has he a big croft that he needs extra manure?' I enquired.

‘Aye he has three or maybe four crofts an' a good few beasts but he outwinters them mostly so he doesn't get the dung from them.' He slanted a smile at me. ‘He's one of you red-headed fellows they was speakin' of at the ceilidh the other night, you mind?'

‘Oh, one of them!' I exclaimed.

‘Aye,' responded Tearlaich. ‘It was Ian's father, Red Alistair, that had the three red-headed sons an' when a black-haired one came along he wouldn't believe the babby was his. He wanted rid of it but then the mother turned round an' told him the black-haired one was the only one he had fathered anyway.'

‘She must have had a penchant for red-headed men,' I murmured.

‘Ach, as I mind it she didn't much care about the colour of their hair,' commented Tearlaich knowledgeably.

‘What happened eventually? Did he get a divorce?'

‘How would he do that when he'd never married her in the first place?' asked Tearlaich reasonably.

It was nearer autumn than spring when a red-haired man who already smelled strongly of dung turned up at my croft along with a horse and cart and reminded me that I had sent a message through Tearlaich back in the spring that he could get from me a load of ‘manyer'. I showed him the heap and when he had finished loading he came to the house and offered me a pound note that was so caked with dung it looked like used toilet paper. My reaction to dung fluctuated according to the seasons. In winter when I myself was literally wading in it as I cleaned out the byre and in spring when the whole village reeked with the spread dung the sight and the smell of it did not revolt me but in summer and autumn because dung was ‘entirely out of season', the cattle being on the hill and the land having absorbed its mulch, I found myself recoiling if I so much as trod on an old cowpat. I overcame my slight reluctance to take the note in my hand, recalling how old Murdoch had washed his pound notes and hung them to dry on the clothes line after a low-flying gull had ‘spilled' on them and I decided that I could follow his example.

‘You still have plenty dung,' the red-haired Ian remarked enviously as he sat down to take the ‘strupak' Highland hospitality demanded I give him. ‘You must be wantin' to plant plenty potatoes come the spring.' His voice came out in blobs like thick sauce from a bottle and his blue eyes regarded me with only a glint of laughter. Morag, entering the room at that moment, heard his remark. ‘Ach, Miss Peckwitt's after wantin' to grow all her food for herself. I believe she has a fancy for livin' by herself on one of the un-rabbited islands out there.'

‘Is that so?' enquired Ian.

‘I wouldn't mind trying it some day,' I told him, half seriously.

‘Indeed you might just as well be in your grave as on one of them places,' he assured me. ‘It's no place for a man to be on his own, never mind a lady,' he went on.

‘Isn't that what I'm after tellin' her just,' exclaimed Morag, and Ian, seeing from my expression that I remained unconvinced, continued. ‘An' what if you get sick there? I'm tellin' you,' he warned, ‘in them places if whisky won't cure you then you have to die just for there's no help any place.'

I laughed. ‘That settles it,' I told him. ‘I'd welcome the one no more than the other.'

He turned an incredulous glance on Morag who nodded sad confirmation of my heresy and quickly changed the subject by asking after his wife.

‘It's fine,' he replied. ‘It's away to Glasgow next week to see its cousin.' I glanced at him in surprise. The Gaelic has no neuter and ‘it' was seldom used by the Bruachites even when speaking English. I wondered where Ian had acquired the habit. He rose. ‘Aye, well, I'd best be away. She'll be tired of waitin', likely.'

When he had gone I looked questioningly at Morag. Does he usually refer to his wife as “It”,' I asked.

‘I don't believe I've heard him ever call her anythin' but that,' she replied. ‘An' I'm tellin' you, mo ghaoil, I doubt it's no so bad as some of the names he heard his own father call his mother.'

‘Well, he did remember she was a “she”: when he said she would be tired of waiting for him,' I reminded her.

‘Indeed no, mo ghaoil,' she was quick to tell me. ‘That was his horse he was speakin' of.' She picked up a magazine and flicked through its pages, asking would she ‘get a read of it' when I had finished with it. I promised her she would. Then she said, ‘What I came for rightly was to know when Erchy is to build your winter cock for you.'

‘Tomorrow,' I replied. ‘At least he said he'd come tomorrow if the weather holds but knowing Erchy.…' My voice trailed off and I shrugged my shoulders.

‘If he comes then myself will give you a hand if the Lord spares me,' she vowed. ‘That way we might get her finished before the rain is on again.'

Although it was now October my hay was not yet stacked for the winter but still stood in cocks ready, when the weather was fine enough, to be opened up, shaken out and built into the big stack from which every day throughout the winter I would pull the hay in handfuls until I had sufficient to fill a sack. A winter stack needed to be as sturdy as a house and the prerequisite for that was a skilful builder plus at least one other helper to throw up the hay. In the shortening autumn days it was almost imperative to have yet another helper to spread the hay so as to give it its final airing before it was packed into what Morag called ‘the winter cock' and I was indeed grateful for her offer of help. That night when I returned from shutting up the hen house the land and the sea were quiet and still and I looked anxiously out across the bay where a trace of orange sunset lingered pinched between the horizon and a sky which was already studded with frost-kindled stars. It looked to me as if the weather would hold for tomorrow and I prayed that Erchy would keep his promise. The building of winter stacks of hay and corn was very nearly the climax of the year's toil. Only the clamping of the potatoes and the salting of the herring remained to be done before the winter closed in and I was eager to see my hay secured. I grew only a small amount of corn and between us Morag and I had managed to build the corn stack, but the hay was not only more abundant, it was more necessary. Corn was only a supplement and one's cattle could survive without it; they would be unlikely to survive without hay.

The morning dawned calm and cold but by ten o'clock a light frost which had brushed the grass was dispersed by mellow sunlight that poured over the crofts like melted butter. At eleven o'clock which, Erchy maintained, because of the dew was the earliest it was safe to start work, he arrived and after quickly estimating the quantity of hay he began to prepare the base for the stack using for this the damp caps of dry grass which Morag and I had already lifted from the cocks. The base is of paramount importance since it predetermines the shape of the finished stack. If the diameter is too wide for the amount of hay to be built upon it then it will be too squat to shed the rain; if it is too narrow it will be high and unstable. Once he was satisfied with the proportions of the base Erchy climbed on to it and standing in the centre called: ‘Ready now!' The real work began. Working round and round the stack Morag threw him forkfuls of hay which he spread and continuously trod down while I brought up supplies of hay from the surrounding cocks, fluffing it up in a circle round the stack not only so that it would sweeten in the sunshine but because I had been warned that it was essential no lumps of hay should be built into the stack.

There is something deeply satisfying about working in the hay particularly when it is wild, leafy, sweet smelling hay such as we made in Bruach and my satisfaction was enhanced by the fact that I was working to the accompaniment of rippling Gaelic voices backed by the trilling of the sea; the excited cries of gulls proclaiming their discovery of autumn herring; the barking of rutting stags echoing from the hills; the investigative ‘tlonks' of ravens and the delighted mewing of buzzards as both young and adult birds soared and planed in celebration of their autumn reunion. It seemed to me that there was joy all around us; on the land, on the sea and in the air and though after hours of continuous work my arms and shoulders were aching and I felt that I was labouring in a stupour of raking and shaking and forking I knew myself to be exquisitely content. Erchy's glossy red face rose above us as my stack climbed higher and higher and the number of small cocks diminished. It would not be long now, I was telling myself.