Read Online Beautiful Just! by Lillian Beckwith - Free Book Online

Angy seemed to enjoy the shocked expressions on our faces.
    â€˜It would be his heart likely?’ asked Janet.
    â€˜Aye, I would think it couldn’t be much else,’ agreed Angy.
    â€˜So you didn’t get your day’s fishin’ after all your rushin’,’ observed Erchy.
    â€˜Indeed we did,’ Angy assured him. ‘An’ a good day’s fishin’ it was too for all we were in early.’
    â€˜You were lucky then,’ Erchy told him. ‘I would think you’d be kept back with the doctor an’ everybody wantin’ to ask you what happened.’
    â€˜Ach we didn’t wait for all that,’ said Angy.
    â€˜You surely didn’t take a dead man to sea with you?’ challenged Janet in an outraged voice.
    â€˜We did not then,’ Angy told her. ‘What we did was wrap him up in a piece of tarpaulin we had aboard an’ then four of us carried him up to the fish store between us.’
    â€˜You put him in the fish store?’ Anna Vic squeaked.
    â€˜Aye, there was a slab there handy, you see. An’ there was some of these labels they put on the fish boxes, so we just wrote on a couple of them an’ stuck them on the tarpaulin.’
    â€˜An’ what did you say on the labels?’ asked Erchy.
    â€˜ “To be delivered”,’ said Angy. ‘I believe that’s what they usually say.’
    â€˜Oh, hear!’ whispered Janet.
    â€˜You didn’t even straighten the man out?’ exclaimed Morag.
    â€˜I tell you there was no time. We were near missin’ the tide as it was.’ Angy was entirely unabashed.
    â€˜Whatever would the fish salesman say when he came to unwrap what he would think would be a good catch of fish an’ finds a corpse just?’ asked Anna Vic. Angy only shrugged. ‘An’ what would they do with him supposin’ they found him?’
    â€˜I don’t know an’ I don’t care.’ Angy was becoming impatient. ‘All I know is they’d find him all right. We left him in a place where they couldn’t miss him.’
    â€˜Where was that?’ asked Morag.
    â€˜Didn’t I tell you, on the fish slab itself,’ retorted Angy. ‘An’ since they’d need to have the slab clear before they started filletin’ the fish, they’d have to do somethin’ with him. They wouldn’t just leave him there.’
    I found myself swallowing rather hard.
    â€˜The poor man!’ breathed Morag.
    â€˜Ach, he wasn’t much of a fellow,’ said Angy dismissively. ‘He was only a fisherman because he couldn’t keep another job an’ he was nothin’ but a bloody landlubber aboard. Honest, he was so scared of the sea he couldn’t pee from the time we left the harbour till the time we got back in again.’
    I stood up. ‘It’s time I was away home to my bed,’ I announced. There was a general move to go and as we stood outside assessing the night before we took our different paths Erchy said, I suspected with the intention of frightening me, ‘I’d like fine to know whether it was Neilly’s ghost you saw last night.’
    â€˜Ach, how could it have been?’ asked Tearlaich. ‘What would Neilly be wantin’ from Miss Peckwitt?’
    â€˜Did you say it was about nine o’clock when you saw him?’ Erchy would not leave the subject alone.
    â€˜Yes,’ I said resignedly.
    â€˜Then I doubt he was wantin’ in to have a listen to the news on the wireless,’ said Erchy.
    â€˜More like to listen to the weather forecast,’ put in Johnny. ‘He’d be wantin’ to know what like of weather he was goin’ to get for his own funeral.’

The Shenagelly
    I had been over to the mainland and had finished all my business there several hours before the bus was due to return to Bruach and since the inducements to linger on the mainland were limited to the