Read Online Bruach Blend by Lillian Beckwith - Free Book Online Page B

between me an’ her.’
    â€˜I’m thinkin’ you deserved whatever you got,’ Kirsty told him righteously.
    Willy turned and bestowed on her an impenitent grin.
    Marjac put down the sock she was knitting and lifted the bubbling kettle from the chain above the fire over to the hob. Picking up the empty teapot, she fondled its shiny brown plumpness for a moment and looked a little vague as if she had forgotten something. We understood so well. This was Bruach’s famine period: the hens were having their winter rest from laying; most of the cows had gone completely dry in anticipation of the spring calving and even those which continued to milk yielded only a few squeezings, barely enough to provide milk for the family ‘strupaks’ and, as if to emphasize the scarcity, the weekly grocery van had disposed of its entire supply of tinned milk before it reached Bruach. ‘Milk in winter is like honey to the palate,’ the old crofters used to say and anyone who has had to endure winters of milkless tea and coffee and has had to eat porridge or cereal without even a dribble of milk to help it down will fervently agree. We all felt deprived by the shortages but to someone as naturally hospitable as Marjac it must have been truly distressing not to be able to offer her guests a ‘wee strupak’.
    With a sigh she replaced the teapot on the hob and again took up her knitting. A brief, slightly awkward silence was broken by an outburst of protesting shrieks and giggles, the result of young Uisden having furtively produced a dried ‘sea wash ball’ (the dried cases of whelk eggs) and scraped it along the back of Catriona’s hand. Erchy got up and helped himself to a drink from the water pail; Ian reached for a glowing peat from the fire to relight his pipe; Johnny flicked a cigarette across to Willy, and Ian then turned, proffering the glowing peat as a cigarette lighter. Two of the younger children helped themselves to dry peats from the pile beside the hearth and used them as seats. Outside the wind continued to thump against the walls of the house and roar full-throatedly down the chimney.
    Murdoch spat into the fire. ‘I’m thinkin’ there’ll be no much fishin’ if this weather gets any coarser,’ he observed.
    â€˜The Dear, but it’s wild, wild, wild,’ corroborated Padruig amid a rumbled chorus of assent.
    For ten days and nights the gale had been romping through the village, fortunately not with the near-tornado force of the severe storms which, during the next three months, were likely to beset us, but still with strength enough to make outdoor work at least three times more difficult and tiring even for the tougher Bruachites, who almost from the cradle had been learning the skill of combating the wind. This was a boisterous gale rather than a savage one; it had changed direction frequently and had sometimes been accompanied by a mixture of sleet and snow; sometimes by hard-driven rain that was as cold as snow, and sometimes by fusillades of hailstones that ranged from pill to mothball size, and we had now reached the stage of fretfulness when we longed for even a brief respite. But as yet there seemed little prospect of the wind abating.
    I tried to imagine what it would be like on the open deck of a fishing boat in such conditions, contending not only with the weather but with the merciless, unpredictable sea, and my gaze rested on Willy’s sturdy body, his weather-taughtened face and his hands, broad as wash-basins and with rough, stubby fingers that stayed permanently half clenched as if they could never quite relax their grip on the salt-hardened ropes.
    â€˜Ach,’ said Willy, dismissing Murdoch’s doubts. ‘The weather can do what in the hell it likes but it won’t make any difference to our skipper. That’s a man that’s mad for the fishin’.’
    â€˜Did you get good fishin’ last