The Loud Halo (14 page)

There came a muffled flurry of wind threaded with snow-flakes and I hurried home to get the byre cleaned and hay put out in readiness for Bonny's evening feed, for she would need to be brought in earlier than usual. Despite the cold I was glad to be outdoors, for between the snow showers, which became more reticent as the day progressed, the sun smiled benignly, the snow shimmered and above the silence of the land came the tinkling whisper of the wind-ruffled water. Immediately after a late lunch I went to collect Bonny for, though the last snow shower had been hardly more than the flick of an angel's duster, as evening approached there was an increasing frostiness in the air and already there was a rasping under my boots as I slithered along the path from which my own and Bonny's footprints of the morning had been obliterated. It was a nuisance having to go out on the moors to bring home a cow, though there was solace in the beauty of the shadow-edged loch, coldly blue except where it reflected a few tatters of an elusive sunset, and in the sight of Rhuna tip-tilting its corners up from the water like a smiling mouth, an accepted sign of frost. But when one knew that nearly everyone else's cattle needed only to hear a once-bellowed invitation or even the clang of a moor gate to go hurrying through to their byres where shelter, hay and a warm ‘potach' awaited them, and that even those cows which did not enjoy the luxury of a byre would range themselves hungrily along the fence waiting for their owners to bring them hay, it was infuriating to have to go and seek my own cosseted cow. Cows are perverse creatures and for some curious reason Bonny and Morag's cow Milky and Tearlaich's Bracty had of late found a passionate attachment for one another, with the result that every evening, whatever the weather, we three unfortunate owners had to trudge out to the moors, separate three reluctant cows and coerce them homewards through three separate gates. Morag and Tearlaich were already making their way to wards the loving trio when I reached the moor and they waited for me to join them.

‘Ach, but there's no sense in this weather, no sense at all,' grumbled Morag as we got behind the cows and started them moving towards the fence. ‘Me feets gets that cold, though I have on three pairs of stockings under them an' it hurts to take off my boots. I'm wishin' sometimes I could be goin' to bed in them.'

‘You should put cow dung mixed with wee bitty straw in your boots first.' advised Tearlaich. ‘Aye, aye, aye, cow dung. That's what I said, cow dung.' Tearlaich was always known as ‘Tearlaich-a-Tri' because of his habit of repeating a thing three times before he could be sure he had said it.

‘Is that what you use yourself?' Morag asked him with a show of surprise.

‘Aye, I do, I do, I do,' he replied. ‘An' I'm no' after feelin' the cold a wee bitty, not a wee bit, I say.'

‘I wouldn't fancy washing your socks,' I murmured.

‘Socks? You dunna' need socks at all, at all; no, not at all.'

‘Then surely your feets must be awful tender,' suggested Morag.

Indignantly Tearlaich turned on her and proceeded to instruct her in the acquiring of a pair of warm and comfortable feet. I gave scant attention to their conversation, being engrossed in tracing the pattern of shrew prints that interlaced one another on the snow like the strands of a necklace. The three cows were lumbering along in front of us, their great bellies bumping from time to time and their protesting moos mingling wish the grumbling of the snow as it packed down beneath their hooves.

Suddenly I became conscious of a thick sucking splash just in front of us and of Tearlaich shouting in Gaelic. I looked up just in time to see the hind-quarters of Morag's cow disappearing into a bog. Panic-stricken I ran forward with the others, urging the cow to extricate herself before she sank deeper. The beast's two front feet were still on ground that seemed firm enough but as we tried to drive her forward by slaps and prods, by pulls on her horns and by continuous malediction from Tearlaich her hind-quarters only sank deeper and deeper. We bared our arms and plunged them into the bog, trying to grasp a leg and aid her in her struggles but despite our efforts the cow only seemed to settle herself until she was in the ludicrous position of sitting upright with her forelegs stretched out in front of her, like a begging dog.

‘I doubt we're only makin' things worse,' panted Morag. ‘We'd best go an' get help.'

We paused dejectedly for a moment, assessing the situation. It looked as if it should have been easy enough to extricate the beast when she already had two feet on firm ground but the bog was a narrow hole and by now her hind-quarters were deeply embedded. Morag, looking white and strained, swept the hair from her eyes with a peaty arm. The fight would not last much longer and by the time we got help from the village the cow might have lost the will to live.

‘You and Miss Peckwitt had best take your own cows home,' Morag advised in desperation. ‘You can get help then, while I stay here with my beast.' Tearlaich said he would put his beast ‘through the gate just', but I raced Bonny home in record time. However by the time I had made my first plea for help Tearlaich had told Morag's deaf brother Ruari who had simply raised his voice and acquainted the whole village with the news. When I got back to the moor there were half a dozen men with ropes and boards in attendance round the cow, who had become distinctly more apathetic than she had been when I left. With much excited Gaelic argument and much impedance from excited dogs, a rope was tied to the cow's horns and boards were pushed down into the bog to try and give her a firm footing. But by now the cow had lost the will to struggle and the position began to look hopeless.

‘Give her a dose of whisky,' suggested Ian. ‘I have some here in my pocket.'

‘Here, no,' said Murdoch. ‘I'll drink that myself. Wait till you get the beast out before you give her the whisky and make sure it won't be wasted.'

‘Ach, give her some anyway,' insisted Ian, and a generous dose was poured down the cow's throat. This was followed by several more fruitless attempts to heave her out, but the struggle became increasingly difficult as what had at first been firm ground softened under the continuous treading and slithering of many feet. Even the boards which had been placed under the cow's front hooves had become slimy so that they now provided only a treacherous foothold. The men were becoming tired.

‘I doubt we'll not get her out,' said Morag with weary despair.

‘She has such small hooves for the size of her, that's what's the trouble,' said Murdoch. ‘If she had a good big foot that wouldn't cut into the ground we maybe might get her out.'

There was a general shaking of heads in abandonment of the cow's prospects, and yet I knew they would not leave her while there was the remotest chance of her survival. I turned to see Johnny Comic, who must have been ceilidhing in the village and who now stood forlornly among the group of helpers. He suddenly looked about him, lumbered over to a small hillock and sat down. Then he proceeded to take off his very large boots. I was still staring at him perplexedly when he got up and walked through the snow towards the cow, holding out his boots.

‘Here,' he told the men, ‘put my boots on the poor creature's feets.'

Murdoch stared at him, bereft of speech for a moment, and Johnny, thinking they were going to refuse, bent down and struggled the cow's front hooves into each of his boots. ‘Give her a pull now,' he instructed and derisive but obedient the men pulled. There seemed to be a slight sound from the bog. Immediately everyone became excited. ‘Take off your own boots, Murdoch, you old bodach, you have the biggest feets here. See an' give us your boots an' we'll try will we get her out with them.' Almost bodily they carried the old man over to the hillock and took off his boots and then, returning to the cow, they plunged their arms into the bog once more and lifted. The bog seemed to release its hold a little more and the cow, feeling the firmness of Johnny's boots on her front hooves, heaved her body again. Everyone became cautiously jubilant. ‘Be ready with them boots!' shouted someone. ‘When, we give her another heave see can you get them on to her feets.' They heaved altogether, the cow responded and there was a shout of triumph as her hind-quarters suddenly came up out of the bog. Murdoch's boots were jammed on her hind hooves, and with boots on all four feet she was pulled and pushed to firm ground.

‘Ach, but she's in a pretty way,' said Ian, as the cow swayed from side to side and looked as though she would fall back into the bog. ‘Get her a wee bit further away and give her another dose of whisky, that'll warm her,' he instructed. With men on either side of her to prevent her falling over the cow was persuaded slowly forward. ‘Now, pour this down her throat,' said Ian. I think it was Erchy who seized the bottle and, making a pouch of the cow's mouth, poured down the rest of the spirit.

‘By God!' he said to Morag and me as we rubbed the cow with handfuls of the hay someone had brought, ‘that was a damty queer place for a cow to be. How did she get there?'

There followed a great deal of explanation until there came a shout from Murdoch who was still sitting on the hillock, trying to cradle first one foot and then the other in order to keep it warm. Johnny Comic seemed hardly to notice the loss of his boots.

‘How am I goin' to get home without gettin' my death of cold?' demanded Murdoch irately. ‘Somebody had best go and get my Sunday boots and bring them to me.'

‘Tearlaich will go, an' he'll till them with dung for you first,' returned Morag, laughing now with relief.

‘Here, no!' expostulated Murdoch. ‘They'll not let me into the house.'

‘You'd best get that beast movin',' Ian told us, seeing the cow shivering with cold and fright. ‘Miss Peckwitt, give the cow a wind to see will it start her off,' he commanded me.

‘A wind?' I repeated stupidly.

‘Aye, indeed so.' He leaped over the bog and pushing me aside seized the cow's tail which he began to crank as though it were the starting handle of a car. Whether it was the maltreatment of her tail or a sudden bellow from Tearlaicb's cow on the other side of the fence that provided the impetus I do not know but the beast gave an answering bellow, lunged forward and started to lumber erratically away from us.

‘By God, she's drunk! I must have given the beast too much whisky,' shouted Erchy with a jubilation that was tempered by horror.

‘By God, but she has on my boots!' shouted Murdoch.

‘Take them from the beast before they're lost to me.' But no one heeded him for the relief of tension had brought laughter and shrill comments and also an awareness of our cold and tired bodies.

If a stranger had seen our procession that night as it wound its way over the still moors that were silvered with moonlight and in the wake of a drunken cow wearing tackety boots, with one bootless old man being carried ‘piggy back' by big Ian and the other trudging in his stockinged feet through the snow, he surely must have thought we were engaged in some pagan ritual. As Erchy put it, ‘it's a damty good thing this didn't happen in the summer when there's folks about or they'd have said we was as mad as I don't know what.'

The snow lasted for nearly three weeks, and every day the sun shone brilliantly during the brief hours of daylight and then sank in an extravagant splendour of gold and crimson that rippled and pulsed across the sky.

‘How about a trip in Hector's boat tomorrow?' Erchy asked me one day as I was breaking the ice that formed each night on the water butts.

‘I'd love to,' I said with alacrity.

‘There's a message come through to the Post Office that the folks over at the Glen is gettin' short of food an' they canna' get to them by road yet. Nelly Elly was askin' would Hector take some there tomorrow.'

The snow had made it impossible to use any sort of vehicle even on the Bruach road and so Hector and Erchy and Duncan, the postmistress's son, were well loaded with parcels of every shape and size when they passed the cottage on their way down to the boat. Morag and Behag, grumbling good-naturedly, shuffled behind them carrying their own offerings of home-baked oatcakes and scones in a sack thrown over the shoulder and held there with one hand. The other hand shielded their eyes from the sparkling brightness of the snow. I plodded after them, resting my eyes from the brilliance of the land by looking out to sea where
Ealasaid
, Hector's new beat, lay serenely at her moorings, at this distance looking like an ivory carving set in a polished sea. On closer inspection the effect was spoiled by the girdle of old motor-tyres with which she was draped, for though boats are ever more elaborately equipped and piers are ever more elaborately designed the fishermen still raid the shores and village dumps for old motor-tyres to prevent the two from becoming too familiar.

It was bitterly cold up in the bow of the beat where I chose to stand, but had I gone aft I should have been forced to breathe the fumes from the fo' c'sle fire which Morag was already lighting. Erchy noticed my teeth chattering.

‘I don't know why you don't go in there with Behag and Morag,' he chided me. ‘You'll be after gettin' perished with the cold out here.'

I indicated my binoculars. ‘I want to keep a watch out for the deer,' I explained. ‘This weather will have driven them down to the shore, don't you think?'

‘Aye,' agreed Erchy morosely. ‘But what good is it goin' to do you to see the deer, anyway?'

‘I'm just interested,' I said.

‘I'll give you a shout if I see them.' he promised. ‘Now for God's sake, woman, go down into the fo' c'sle before you freeze to death in front of my eyes.'

The fo'c'sle was damp and odorous and untidily snug, the bunks full of a jumble of tarpaulins and sails and ropes, while two or three elegant whisky glasses co-existed happily with a collection of enamel cups and plates. Morag had the folding table erected so that she and Behag could sort through the more homely women's magazines which comprise the library of so many Scottish fishing boats. The table itself had intrigued me from the first time I saw it, for though it was made of only two rough and many-knotholed boards, six of the best-placed knotholes had been knocked out to provide the crew with some of the most stable egg-cups ever devised.