Read Online Bruach Blend by Lillian Beckwith - Free Book Online

weekend an’ there was this girl waitin’ for him. He’d been havin’ it off with her for a whiley an’ she wasn’t a bad looker either. Anyway, he brought her into the pub an’ after he’d had a good drink he goes out the back to open his trousers. When he comes back he’s lookin’ as vexed as if he’s lost his taste for whisky. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” I says. “Life’s hell, that’s what’s wrong with me,” says he. “I wish I hadn’t come ashore. I go to try an’ make a telephone call an’ the telephone’s engaged; I just go out to the lavatory an’ that’s engaged an’ now haven’t I got to make an honest woman of this lassie I’ve been goin’ about with so now I’m engaged. I tell you, Willy, life’s hell, an’ I’ll be damn glad to get back to the boat.” ’
    â€˜It’s yourself will be gettin’ marrit next then,’ said Mairi Tonag (Mairi with the broad bottom) when the laughter had subsided. There were renewed titters from some of the young girls but Willy ignored them.
    â€˜I might at that,’ he admitted. ‘I was nearly engaged myself once anyway.’
    â€˜You engaged?’ Mairi’s voice was sharp with mockery. ‘Who would be thinkin’ of gettin’ themselves engaged to you?’ she teased. ‘I don’t believe you would stay with one woman more than a week without she would be waitin’ on the quay to grab you every weekend.’
    â€˜There’s plenty would have me if I gave them the chance,’ countered Willy. ‘An’ this one I was speakin’ of was good an’ ready to have me.’
    â€˜Then she couldn’t have had much in the way of looks to her,’ Janet said with a wink at Mairi.
    â€˜That’s not true, then,’ Willy refuted. ‘She was a lovely girl an’ a lot of the fishermen was fallin’ over themselves to get her.’
    â€˜What did she do to you then?’ Morag asked.
    â€˜She did nothin’ to me,’ replied Willy. ‘But she used to work at the kipperin’.’
    â€˜The kipperin’!’ repeated one of the girls. She wrinkled her nose and there was a confirmatory chorus of ‘Ughs’ from the other girls.
    â€˜Aye,’ said Willy sadly. ‘That was the trouble. Every Friday night for a while I used to meet her for a drink an’ then take her to the pictures. She used to smother herself in that scent they call “Californian Poppy” so I wouldn’t notice the kipper smell. God! but she made herself smell lovely. Honest! I used to love that scent. But then as soon as the cinema began to warm up there comes the smell of kippers. Ach, I couldn’t get away from it. The time would come when I’d be thinkin’ of a nice hot cuddle an’ there on the film would be a lovely garden maybe with the heroine smellin’ at a rose before the hero gives her a nice smackin’ kiss, but when I turn to do the same to my girl up would come the smell of kippers. Terrible strong it was.’ Willy sighed. ‘Aye, she was keen enough on me, right enough, an’ she was a lovely girl but I never could bring myself to marry her. All the same, I miss her. Whenever I get the smell of kippers I think of her an’ what a nice girl she was.’ There was a reminiscent smile on his face.
    Main Tonag shook her head, and still teasing said, ‘I don’t believe she would have got to marryin’ you all the same. A woman wants a man that will stay with her an’ not be goin’ away with any woman that takes his fancy.’ Willy did not see her wink at us.
    â€˜I’m no’ the one for that,’ he protested indignantly. ‘Now if you were speakin’ of Thigh Jim that crews on a neighbour’s boat I’d agree with you. God! He’s a right one, that