A Croft in the Hills (12 page)

In the morning we were all awake early and we lay, snug in our sleeping-bags, watching the fishing fleet sail into Loch Broom. The sea was a dazzling glitter of blue and gold. The sky was a
vast, crystal dome. It was a morning of ceremonial splendour. The normal climate of the west is damp and sunless, maybe, but, funnily enough, on nearly every occasion when we’ve been there,
we’ve come on these splendid, colourful days.

After breakfast we went down to the beach and dabbled in the water. Helen had a dip and we looked for agates among the pebbles. It wouldn’t have surprised us that morning if we’d
discovered gold! We gathered more driftwood and watched the gulls gliding over the sea, and the day slipped away over our heads.

We got into our sleeping-bags quite early in the evening and lay watching the sunset, till we could almost identify ourselves with each shred of cloud about the sky, each gleam of light, each
shaft of colour. All the petty aches and worries that ruffled the surface of our daily working lives were smoothed away, as we made contact with these remote, unearthly things. They were with us
all the time at home, but there we viewed them differently. When we looked at the sky, it was usually to try to foresee what kind of weather was in store—rain to swell the root crops or sun
to ripen the grain. Now, we could see the sky as sky, a law unto itself, not necessarily something which would further our own small ends. Moments of detachment and reassessment are vivifying. One
such moment, if it is sufficiently intense, may leave an impression on the mind that will withstand a lifetime of living. The universe is not a cosy place specifically designed to suit human needs.
If everyone could grasp that fact afresh every morning, perhaps we should spend less time thinking up ways to exterminate one another. We should be grateful, as the tinker is, for a blink of sun to
warm our bones in summer and the friendliness of a rock cave to shelter us from snow; we should be in touch again.

Sunday we spent wandering along the cliff-top to the next bay. St. Martin’s Isle lay green and deserted in the middle of it. Saints had a liking for islands and I can see the point.
It’s sometimes difficult to remain sufficiently an island unto oneself, but to live on one perpetually does seem rather like dodging the issue. The difficult thing is to stay in touch on the
land mass. There are many more saints than those recorded in the annals of holiness.

Helen skipped ahead of us on the springy turf. She was a small, lithe slip of humanity, all right, yet she was part of the blue morning, the curving wave, the gliding sea-bird, the withdrawn
sky. The sight of her made us feel clumsy and awkward, with our loads of living pressing on our shoulders.

We made for the beach and let the clear water swirl about our ankles. We found beautiful fluted, moulded shells, smooth coloured pebbles, swathes of glittering sea-weed. We gulped down lungfuls
of ozone. The world was one vast morning, brimful of light, and we understood why the Gael has for his promised land ‘T
IR NAN
O
G
’, the
land of youth.

As we came back within sight of our camp, in the late afternoon, three large, brown cows looked at us with startled eyes and went lurching off across the sward. What had they made of our
intrusion into their domain? we wondered. A moment later we knew the answer—they had certainly made the best of it. The pan that I had left filled with scrubbed potatoes, ready for our
evening meal, had been overturned and its contents had completely disappeared. A cow does love a tattie! And so do we, when we’re ravenous, after a long day in the air. There was nothing for
it but to fetch water and scrub another lot of potatoes for supper. Within the hour, we were sitting cross-legged round the fire, eating mashed potatoes and poached eggs and drinking gipsy tea.
There was magic in the air, the pure and simple magic of being alive and in touch with the moment.

Next day we decided to make for Gruinard Bay and spend our last night there, before pushing home. I remembered it from some twenty years before, as an enchanted place, where the green water came
foaming over dazzling white sand. It had been to me then a ‘faery-land forlorn’. There was a wide sweep of turf, I remembered, where we could make our camp. We went round by Dundonnell
and the shore of Little Loch Broom and we passed an alarming number of notices announcing ‘Teas’ and ‘Bed and Breakfast’, outside croft houses, which looked hardly big
enough to accommodate their owners, let alone stray visitors. I took a look at the map, though there could be no question but that we were on the right road. Then the cars began, and the caravans,
and the droves of cyclists. Twenty years before it had been an event to meet one crofter on the road, driving his cow or his sheep to pasture.

As we came round the last bend, into the sweep of the bay, we had to draw sharply into the side of the road, for a large sports car nearly had us ditched. The green sward was dotted with cars,
caravans and tents of every description. In the one clear space some youths were kicking a football about. At the roadside stood a large receptacle, clearly labelled ‘Refuse’. If it had
served its purpose one could have forgiven it for being there, but the refuse was all too obviously littered here, there and everywhere, on the sand, the grass, the road.

When my dismay had subsided a little, I began to appreciate that it was an excellent thing that others had discovered this place. One should, of course, never hug a haven to oneself. I saw the
fat, brown babies staggering about the caravans, the mothers lying with their toes in the sand. It was good that they should be there, but in my shared paradise I’d make a law that everyone
must bury their rubbish, under penalty of expulsion.

It was getting late as we drew into the only secluded spot we could find, at the far end of the bay, beside a burn. Helen sped across the sand and into the water. She was in Abraham’s
bosom still, and saw only what she wanted to see. The water was as clear, the sand as soft as it had ever been.

We had supper early, for mist was coming in from the sea, and crept into our sleeping-bags. Then the midges began! We swatted and slapped at them then tried to smoke them out. We covered
ourselves in lotion and buried ourselves completely under the covers. Nothing was any good; we lay scratching and tossing through the small hours. At last, at about five o’clock, we could
stand it no longer so we dragged on our clothes, flung everything into the van and made off.

We crawled up the long, steep rise to the next headland, where a delicious breeze met us. We stopped and let it play round our hot, aching limbs. Only then, in the lovely early sunlight, did we
really examine the damage we had suffered. Our faces, arms and legs were covered with lumps and blisters of a most fantastic size— it would have been funny if it hadn’t been so
infuriatingly irritating. We daubed ourselves with lotion again and as we were doing so, a shepherd passed by with his dogs at heel. ‘Aye, it’s a fine morning’, he said, and he
couldn’t quite manage to hide the astonishment in his eyes as he saw us doctoring ourselves at the roadside so early in the morning. He would never have dreamt of commenting on it, of course,
and after we’d agreed about the fineness of the weather we had a talk with him about the progress of his lambs and other shepherding matters. We could picture his wife enjoying the little
tit-bit of news he would relate to her that evening over his supper!

We made a fire, boiled our kettle and cooked our bacon in the lovely breeze on the headland. Our spirits rose, as our blisters subsided, and we began to look about us with calm eyes again. By
mid-morning we were at Gairloch and we had to stop for half an hour there to let Helen have a last scamper on the sand. Then we took the road along the side of Loch Maree to Kinlochewe, thence to
Garve and our own territory. All the way, with our backs to the west, we were wishing we could turn about at the next bend. But that’s the way a holiday should end; we’d caught it on
the wing and we knew it would be with us for good.

Billy met us with his usual, cheerful grin, and we saw at once that all was well. We went the round of the animals and cast a loving eye over the fields. Then, as it was wet, we made a fire in
the hearth and sat quietly at it, content to be hugged by our own four walls again.

CHAPTER X

‘GRAND LAMBS!’

A
FTER
that holiday jaunt of ours we found we had, from time to time, to indulge our urge to wander. We spent several long afternoons gathering brambles
at Loch Ness-side. I think they must be the most succulent brambles in the world, those that grow with their roots in the water. The loch-side is the ideal place for a gipsy meal: there’s
driftwood for a fire and natural shelter in the tangled undergrowth should it rain. An expedition down there never fails to yield treasure. In spring, there are primroses, willow catkins and
violets; in summer, bluebells and wild strawberries; in winter, holly berries. Autumn, of course, is the most fruitful season. There are sloes with a bloom on them like that on hot-house grapes,
and brilliant haws and rowan-berries. Under the trees grow many kinds of fungoids, including the bright red, white-spotted, fairy-tale variety. I often wish I could be sure which were the edible
ones, so that we could put them in our stew, as the French do. The brambles we make into jelly and jam and also, by simply steeping them in sugar, into wine, which looks, and even tastes, very like
port. The rowan-berries from our own trees we always make into wine. I have sometimes made jelly from them, but even with the addition of apple it’s rather bitter as a tea-time spread, and
really only popular as a relish with meat. The wine is child’s play to make. You simply pour boiling water over the berries, add a small piece of root ginger and let them steep for ten days.
Then—bottle! After a year or so maturing, this wine is really good, pale amber in colour and with quite a kick in it. A friend of ours was once given a glass of it and asked to identify his
drink. He took a sip, rolled it round his mouth, smacked his lips and solemnly pronounced: ‘Liqueur whisky!’ For a moment, I thought he was pulling my leg. When I saw that he
wasn’t I felt quite gratified! I thought of the skirmishings that went on in these hills years ago over the distilling of whisky. I remembered the subterfuges and the heartbreak that the
illicit business involved, the kegs which had to be thrown into the loch when the excisemen appeared on the horizon, the searchings that went on for years, though the precious stuff was never
recovered. Yet here was I, openly making my brew, with no kind of apparatus at all, gaily bypassing all kinds of tariffs and restrictions and offering a sup to all and sundry. There is something to
be said for living on one’s hump. It would be a pity if the easy world-wide exchange of produce, which lines many a middle-man’s pockets, should make us completely overlook the
resources that are to hand. In the press-button age, when a minimum of effort for a maximum return is the slogan for living, what will be the spur to enterprise? The creative efforts of the few
will leave the many gaping, incapable of wonder, blank-eyed with boredom. In these conditions, war might well appear a relief to the unending tedium. The thwarted child will revel in destruction;
it’s a means of drawing attention to his plight, if nothing else. Give a boy a mountain to climb and he’ll forget all about wanting to kick his neighbour on the shins. He’ll be
only too thankful the other fellow is there, hanging on to the other end of the rope to steady him.

In our own life we had to plan for a scrap of leisure. We found it was comparatively simple, if no emergency cropped up, to organise Sunday into a day of relaxation. The animals would be fed a
little later than usual, and by eleven o’clock all the necessary work would be done. Then six hours would lie before us, to be used as we liked. If we had had a heavy week at field-work, we
were sometimes more or less obliged to divide this spell into two watches, during which one of us would stretch out upstairs, with a book, while the other indulged in some quiet ploy with Helen.
Then we would relieve each other with a cup of tea at half-time. But most often, at any rate in summer and autumn, we would put an apple and a scone in our pockets and make off into the hills.

The more closely we lived with the hills the more compelling we found them. Away from them, we were never quite happy and a day in town had no real charm for us. Once our immediate business was
done we would wander round, look into shop-windows, buy a weekly paper, have a cup of coffee, think to ourselves, ‘This is a change, a relaxation, I’m enjoying this’. But we knew
quite well we weren’t, really. The moment of delight would come when we reached the top of the road again and saw the outline of the hills and smelt the tang of the high air.

On these Sunday expeditions we would get right into the folds of the hills. One of our best-loved places was the shore of a small, nameless lochan, half-way to Glen Urquhart. We would sit there
on a calm day listening to the stillness. Helen loved this game. She would crouch, ‘frozen’, like a young hare, her eyes round, ears on the stretch, waiting to catch sights and sounds.
We would watch a puff of wind rippling through the rushes and across the face of the water. A strange shape would come flapping across the sky towards us. ‘A heron!’ one of us would
whisper and we’d watch the gaunt, grey form wing slowly closer and settle at last on the far edge of the lochan. We would lose it among the sedge, then find it again, and watch it laboriously
probing the mud.