Beautiful Just! (13 page)

‘Four o' clock,' I repeated. ‘I'll be ready.'

‘An' see you have a good stick,' he called after me.

Twice a year, once in the spring and once in the autumn a cattle sale was held in a village some fourteen miles from Bruach and it was a tradition that those crofters who were disposing of beasts should combine for the droving. The sale was always timed to start at nine o' clock and it was necessary to walk the cattle through half the night so as to be at the field in time for them to have a brief rest and a feed before the auctioneer arrived and the proceedings commenced. This autumn I myself had a beast to sell and I had been to call on Erchy to confirm the time for the start of the droving. There was no need for me to attend the cattle sale. Erchy or one of the other crofters would willingly have taken charge and done all that was needed to be done but I had elected to accompany them partly because though I had participated in almost every other activity in Bruach I had never before joined in the droving of cattle through the night and partly because I was proud of the beast I had reared and wanted to see for myself how he compared with others at the sale.

He was Bonny's first calf and I called him ‘Sucky', and almost from the hour of his birth we had been rivals for our share of his mother's milk. In Bruach there were three methods of calf rearing. You could leave the calf ‘at foot' which meant that you allowed it to remain with its mother and suckle all the milk; or you could take it away at birth, milk the cow yourself and feed the calf its share from a pail or you could compromise, as I had done with Sucky, letting him have a half share of his mother so that he sucked two teats while I milked the other two. It was not, I found, a particularly satisfactory arrangement because not only did Sucky bunt frequently thus knocking the milk-slippery teats and often the pail from my grasp but Bonny seemed able to control the direction of the milk flow so that he got at least twice as much milk from the two teats allocated to him as I got from the other two no matter how careful I was to milk alternate pairs of teats. But once Bonny was back again on the hill and enjoying the company of the other cattle and feeding on the young heather shoots she became less eager to return to her calf for the twice daily suckling and thus more inclined to let down her milk for me. So, like the other crofters, I was soon making the twice daily journey to the moors to milk her and, after keeping back enough for my own needs I fed the rest to Sucky from a pail. Although I told myself firmly that because he was a bull calf I must not allow myself more than an expedient affection for him I loved feeding ‘Sucky': the smell of the warm milk; the bawled greetings as I appeared with the pail; the cavorting about the pen; the excitedly thrashing tail; the blue eyes rolling with anticipatory greed; the feel of his rough tongue on my fingers as I guided his muzzle down into the pail and the sensuous half closed eyes as he felt the warm milk trickling into his belly. Even when the pail was empty his sucking mouth still sought my fingers and when, for the sake of his digestion, I eventually withdrew them he made little grunts of protest as he realized that his meal was finished. After a couple of weeks he no longer needed my fingers to suck and he would dive his head into the pail the moment I got near enough for him to reach it. While he drank the milk and then with his abrasive tongue licked the pail as clean as if it had been scoured I liked to slide my hand along his warm back, threading my fingers among the curls of his conker brown coat as I watched for the moment when I must rescue the pail before he started bunting at it with all the bony-headed strength he would have bunted at his mother's udder.

When he was three months old Morag had warned me that I must have him ‘cut'. It was an offence to keep an uncastrated bull beyond a certain age and in Bruach the time for ‘cutting' was in the spring ‘before the flies came', Morag explained.

‘What have the flies to do with it?' I asked in my ignorance.

‘Ach, flies would likely get at the wound the same as they do with the sheep,' she told me. ‘An' if the beast gets struck with the maggot the Dear knows but you could lose him altogether just.'

I shuddered at the idea of Sucky being ‘struck with the maggot' and resolved to get the operation over as soon as possible. ‘I suppose I'd better get in touch with the vet,' I said.

‘Indeed no, mo ghaoil!' she protested. ‘Why would you be wastin' money on a vet when Donald Beag will do it the same as he does for everyone else.'

In Bruach there were certain tasks which were always entrusted to certain men though whether this was because of aptitude or because their fathers had always done it before them or simply because they were self-appointed I do not know, but the fact that they were the only men who would be called upon to perform those tasks when necessary conferred on them a certain status. Erchy, though he grumbled about having to dig graves, was secretly proud of being the village gravedigger; Murdoch would have been hurt if it had been suggested that anyone but himself be called in to dose a sick animal and similarly Donald Beag would have been outraged if there had been the slightest hint that someone else could have attended to the castrating of a calf. He was proud of his job, so much so that when his own teeth had decayed so badly that he needed false ones he had been very particular that the dentist must understand how necessary it was for him to have perfectly fitting teeth sothat he could continue as the village bull cutter.

It was Erchy who made the arrangements with Donald since no Bruach man would have dreamed of discussing such a subject with an Englishwoman and it was Erchy who arranged for Tearlaich and Padruig to come and help hold down Sucky while the operation was being performed. Donald had insisted that I must not be present in case I should ‘put him off his aim' but when he arrived on the fateful morning and I pleaded with him to allow me to watch from behind a cow stall he agreed though he stipulated he must not be able to see or hear me.

‘Have you got some Tarrapin Balsam?' he checked with me. I had been advised when I had first taken over my croft always to have a bottle of Terrebene Balsam handy, the Bruachites firmly believing that if their own skill coupled with a dose of ‘Tarrapin' couldn't cure a sick animal then it wasn't worth calling the vet because the animal was doomed to die anyway. They used the balsam externally; they administered it internally; they even rubbed it on their own bodies when they had coughs or aches and pains and swore by its efficiency. I produced the bottle of balsam and handing it to Erchy led the way to the byre. Tearlaich who was the strongest of the four men threw Sucky on his side simply by pulling one of the calf's forelegs from under him. Padruig grasped one hind leg, Erchy the other and Tearlaich held the head, effectively quelling Sucky's struggles. In response to an annihiliating glower from Donald I dodged behind Bonny's stall and watched furtively as he took out his large clasp knife, wiped it clean on the leg of his far from sterile looking homespun trousers and took Sucky's testicles firmly in his left hand. With the knife he made a small cut, then bending over and putting his mouth to the cut he sucked gently and then bit. A moment later he lifted his head and, turning, spat something out. He bent and again sucked, then bit and spat; I glimpsed two pink round shapes lying on the straw beside him. With a satisfied grunt, he reached for the bottle of balsam and dabbed it liberally on the open wound. Then he stood up, wiped his knife on his trousers, folded it and put it back in his pocket. The three men also stood up releasing their hold on Sucky who scrambled to his feet. He had made no murmur of protest during the operation and now, though he looked sulky and dishevelled, he did not appear to be affected by his experience. I scratched his head between the budding horns and offered him solace for his lost virility in the shape of a potach before I followed the men outside where I was in time to see Donald throw something on to the manure heap beside the byre. Erchy immediately grabbed a fork and threw a forkful of bedding over it.

There was no payment for the bull cutting save the requisite dram and for this we repaired to the kitchen.

‘You have the makings of a fine beast there,' Donald complimented me. ‘You surely must have done him well.'

‘Too well,' grumbled Tearlaich, who was not noted for rearing sturdy calves. ‘There's no call for doin' a beast as well as that.' He turned to me. ‘You'll be after wishin' you'd not fed him so well when he gets that big an' strong you'll never manage to get a rope on him when it comes to the time of the sale.'

As soon as he was old enough I put Sucky out on the hill where he could mix with other stirks of his own age and like them fend for himself except for a daily bundle of hay during the winter. At least that was my intention but when the weather became really severe Sucky, who recognized his affinity with Bonny, tended to join her entourage and was quick to notice that whereas he was left out on the hill at night she was being brought home to a warm byre. He started to protest, following us right up to the moor gate and when I shut him out he would stand there looking at me through his fringe of hair and sounding so forsaken that after three nights I could withstand his pleading no longer and allowed him to come into the byre.

‘You're surely no takin' in a grown stirk an feedin' him,' scoffed my neighbours and when I merely smiled they warned, ‘Ach, but you'll make him soft. A beast like that has all he needs on the hill an' he has a good coat to keep him warm.'

Sucky certainly had a splendid coat. The conker brown colour had lightened to that of milky tea; the tight curls had grown into long hair which the frequent rain shampooed to softness and the gales combed into sleek strands. As my neighbours claimed he was well equipped by nature to be outwintered on the hill but Bonny was so pleased to have his company and I got so much pleasure out of hearing two mouths munching at their hay that I slept more contentedly myself for his being inside. The only drawback was that there was twice as much dung to clean out in the morning.

‘You should have sold that beast at the autumn sale,' Erchy told me. ‘There's no sense in keepin' him eatin' his head off all winter.' But I had plenty of hay that year and despite his now ferocious appearance Sucky was such a gentle happy beast that I put off the moment of parting with him.

‘I'll sell him in the spring,' I said and thought I meant it but when the spring came it was reported that prices at the sales were poor and I lunged at the excuse to keep him until the following autumn. Much as I hated the idea of parting with him I knew he had to go. He was now over eighteen months old, well grown and powerful, and even had the souming of my croft permitted it, which it did not, I could no longer keep a bullock which was just growing bigger and stronger and, I had to face it, tougher. There was no reprieve for him this time. Sucky had to go. And now on the day before the November sale I, like the other crofters who were selling their animals, had brought Sucky home from the hill. Unlike the other crofters however I had not needed to get helpers to round him up and corner him so that I could get a rope on him, for though he too had been made suspicious and apprehensive by all the chasing and shouting of humans and the wielding of sticks that was going on around him as the crofters separated their own beasts from the herd, he had come trustingly to me when I called; had stood quietly while I slipped the rope on his horns and had walked docilely beside me back to the croft. As he dove his head into a manger of sweet hay I tried not to think that this was probably the last time he would know such luxury.

I set the alarm for three o' clock the next morning and going out to the byre gave Sucky a final feed of hay. When I had eaten my own breakfast I returned to the byre and slid the rope once again round his horns. He was lying down and at first resisted my urging him to rise and when he eventually rose he had no wish to go out into the chill dark of the morning but I tempted him with a potach I was taking to give him at the sale field and he began to come unwillingly but without coercion. Once he had winded the cattle already assembled at the gate of the village, however, he became eager and I no longer had to drive but merely to follow in his wake.

The night was still and cold, lit only by a few stars and as I approached people called out interrogatively and we exchanged greetings identifying one another by voice. ‘It's time we were away,' someone said at last and as the gate opened the restless snorting cattle, goaded by abuse and sticks, burst through. We raced after them, keeping them to the road; preventing them from scattering; and whipping up the more reluctant animals. It took an hour before all the cattle had accepted the situation and ceased their attempts to charge their way past us and back to the familiarity of Bruach but then they settled down; their pace slowed; the voices of the men dropped to conversational level, and I allowed myself to lag behind and think of all that might be happening among the secret wildness of the moors and hills around us and listening to the noises of the droving: the small light hooves of the young calves; the firmer hooves of stirks and the slow plodding of old cows combining to form a percussion chorus that was interspersed with the thud of a horn into a cow's belly; the accompanying grunt of pain; the clashing of two pairs of horns as animals disputed over precedence; the shouts and thwacks of sticks as the men rushed in to separate the combatants.

We had covered more than half the distance before a slow dawn came sliding over the road, over the cattle and over us and as we humans looked at each other, literally in a new light, it seemed to me that we were all afflicted with a momentary trace of shyness. The sun appeared briefly, a half orb of fiery red above the mainland hills, but was engulfed so quickly by turgid dark clouds that it was as if a furnace door had been opened and then slammed shut. A chill breeze began to stir the pewter-grey water of the loch. With the increasing light the cattle seemed eager to increase their speed so that the drovers had similarly to increase their own pace to keep up with them. There was a mêlée of sorts when one of the more recalcitrant cows refused to cross a wooden bridge and turned in fright, charging the cattle and the drovers who thwarted her retreat and threatening to scatter the whole herd. The men tried beating her into submission but she dodged and charged until, realizing they would not give way, she jumped into the river and half-waded, half-swam across to the other side.