A Croft in the Hills (19 page)

We began to cast about for ways and means of making a little ready cash. There were quite a few grouse about, on our ground, but we never had time to go after them with the gun. We had heard
fascinating tales of how the crofters used to leave a few stooks out in the field, long after harvest, and set them with snares, to catch the grouse. The town butcher relied on the
‘parcels’ smuggled in to him, along with an old boiling fowl from the back of the crofter’s cart. We soon learnt to make the nooses of fine wire and to fix them on the stooks and
every morning we would go out early to look for our catch. We got about a dozen birds in this way and took them hopefully to the butcher, on our next trip to town, but he gave us very little for
them. No doubt many moors are commercialised now, and the shops are well stocked. We were only sorry we had not put the carcasses into our own oven.

The lambs were a poorer lot that year and didn’t look as though they would make more than moderate prices. We knew that we couldn’t expect things to go our way all the time, but we
would have given a lot for a lift during those anxious weeks. We had come to have a liking for life in the hills that amounted almost to a passion and the thought of having to abandon it was
intolerable. We must, we resolved, find some way of getting round our difficulties.

In mid-September a new arrival came along to take our minds off our worries. A new face about the place always cheers one up. The livestock marketing people, who had helped us over the buying of
the gilts, agreed to let us have a boar, on the ‘never-never’, that is, we put a small sum down and undertook to pay the rest of the purchase price when the piglets were sold. These
arrangements are disarmingly simple when entered into. With a few nods and smiles and flourishes of the pen, the bargain was made and McFlannel was among us.

There was no other name we could have given him. He was a good deal smaller than his intendeds and hadn’t a trace of pomposity about him. He was quite unspoilt, cheerful and anxious to
please. We housed him in an ark, in a field of his own, where he settled quite contentedly. He made overtures through the fence to a few inquiring sheep and he had no objection to the hens joining
him in his feed of slops. He was altogether a much more lovable creature than the haughty, pampered members of his harem. They, however, did agree to consort with him at the appropriate time and
thus, we hoped, another generation of piglets was assured.

Meanwhile, things were not going too well in the pig trade and prices were falling. It certainly began to look as though we had entered the field too late, as there had been over-production and
a glut was threatening. About the middle of October we decided to sell one piglet to test the market. He was a nice, compact little fellow, obviously off well-bred stock, and we felt quite proud of
him when we saw him in his market pen and compared him with others on offer. He fetched ten pounds. It was quite a good price, in the state the market was in and, a fortnight later, we got another
lot of piglets ready for sale.

The float was late in coming to fetch them; that is the price one has to pay for living in the remoter areas. The float-hirers always leave the difficult places to the last. They would rather
avoid them altogether, if they could, and they all have an aversion to loading pigs. The result was that our lot did not reach the market until the sale was almost over. They looked wretched,
having been cooped up for hours, and they made very disappointing prices. We decided to take the remaining pigs in individually in the van, but by this time there was a real landslide in prices.
The day we took one on our own demand was exceptionally slow, and we brought him home again rather than let him go for a song.

Then, about a week before Christmas, poor old McFlannel fell ill. The male of any species is never anything like as tough as the female. We laid him on a stretcher of planks and carried him,
inch by inch, to a warm place in a corner of the byre, where we made him a deep bed of straw and then sent for the vet. He diagnosed pneumonia. Next day, McFlannel died. Billy was nearer to tears
than I have ever seen him; I think he had a real affection for McFlannel. We buried him with heavy hearts. His widows looked flourishing enough, but we took extra care of them, just in case. A lot
depended on their bringing forth McFlannel’s offspring safely, in the New Year.

CHAPTER XV

WE WEAR THE GREEN WILLOW

O
NE
day early in January Jim, Billy and I were clearing mud from the yard. The weather had been mild and the accumulation of squelch was such that one
was liable to leave a gum-boot behind in it on one’s journey to the steading. Charlie stood patiently, while we filled the cart over and over again with the heavy, gluey muck. There can be a
touch of magic in a winter afternoon, but that particular one hadn’t a glimmer about it. The sky was overcast. The pigs and pullets looked dejectedly out from the mesh doors of their
dwellings. We were spattered with mud from head to foot, our backs and arms were aching, and still the wretched stuff never seemed to get any less. Yet the strange thing was we were perfectly
happy. I caught Jim’s eye: suddenly, for no reason that we could think of, we found ourselves chuckling!

In a flash it came to me—might not people who were forced to spend their working hours between walls like to hear about what went on in a hill-top croft, of how it was possible to get an
immense amount of fun and satisfaction out of lifting loads of mud into a cart, even though your boots were leaking and you knew there was not enough in the kitty to buy another pair? Would they
like to know about the way light could stream down a blue hillside on a spring noon, how a lark could suddenly leap into a pale, washed sky after a night of storm and make the air ring with song,
of how it was possible to get by every sort of difficulty as long as there was this knowledge that you were all in it together, this solidarity with rock and sun and bird? I believed they
would.

The next afternoon when everything, including ourselves, was fed and I had a couple of hours to spare before going to meet Helen at the burn, I sat down at the kitchen table and wrote a short
piece about the stillness of January in the hills, about the satisfaction of keeping the animals tended and biding one’s time till the earth swung round to the sun again, about the small
thrill of seeing the child of the house come safely home into the lamplight each evening, her cheeks glowing with the frosty air. The writing came easily, for I was talking about the things our
days were made of. I had always liked writing, though I had only had an odd story or two published many years before. Luckily, I still had my old typewriter.

The next evening I typed my sketch, attached a snapshot of the croft and sent it to the editor of a Glasgow paper. In Glasgow, I thought, there must be many Highland exiles, who might like to
read about the life they had once known at first hand. The typescript was back within the week, with a polite letter from the editor explaining about shortage of space and so on.

I posted it to the editor of the
Weekly Scotsman.
A few days later, back came the large return envelope I had enclosed. I took it from the post and had my usual chat with him about the
weather and the doings of the day. I opened the other communications he had brought—a couple of bills, a circular and a Government form. I picked up the ‘reject’ envelope and was
about to toss it on to the dresser with the others, when it struck me that it was surprisingly thin. I held it up to the light. There was certainly no typescript inside. I tore it open and drew out
a single sheet of paper. It was a letter from the editor, thanking me warmly for the article and the photograph, which he proposed to use in his next issue, and indicating that he would like me to
send one every month, for a trial period! I opened the door and called to Jim. He came into the kitchen and took the letter in his muddy fingers and we looked at each other with disbelieving
eyes.

Before the end of the month the article appeared, along with the picture of our house. I have gone on writing these little articles ever since, and I have found each one a pleasure to do. They
have brought us friends from places as far apart as Texas and Australia.

The kindly welcome given to my effort by the editor of the
Weekly Scotsman
I found most heartening. Every spare moment— afternoons in stormy weather, evenings when the day was
spent working outside—I gave to writing. I wrote a longer piece about remote living and sent it to the B.B.C. To my astonishment it was accepted: I could hardly believe in my luck. We
celebrated with a family Burns Supper and sat round the kitchen fire, with platefuls of haggis and mashed potatoes and turnips on our knees. Jim read bits of ‘Tam o’ Shanter’,
Helen sang ‘My love is like a red, red rose’ and we pledged the immortal memory in glasses of rowan wine.

That small mid-winter cheer did us good, but the worry of our financial position still kept nagging away at us. It was becoming clear that the pigs were going to turn out a liability rather than
an asset. We thought of selling the bungalow, with its steading and fields, and concentrating on producing eggs intensively, to carry us through till the sheep and cattle really began to show a
profit. But the demand for small places had fallen away, and a decrease in our securities would mean a lessening of our overdraft at the bank. There were already signs of a tightening-up of credit
facilities. Ready money was also extremely short, for the pullets which had started to lay so promisingly were slackening off.

In mid-February we sold the last of the porkers. The price they fetched was not reassuring. Two of the sows produced quite good litters of ten a-piece, but the third sow was, as we had feared,
not in-pig and we had to sell her empty. We decided to put the youngsters off as weaners. By the time they were ready for the market, prices had slumped so alarmingly that we could see nothing for
it but to go out of the pig business as quickly as possible. We sold the whole lot, along with their mothers, and just managed to repay the market people their advance.

It was now obvious that we should have to find an additional source of income quite soon. My writing would not be enough to bridge the gap. It was an uncertain business. I had had several short
stories, on which we had pinned hopes, returned. We put an advertisement in a Glasgow paper, announcing that we would welcome a small family to share our life during the summer months. We
emphasised the fact that we should like children, for this was just the place for them to run wild, and Helen was highly delighted at the prospect of having playmates in the house. But, of course,
the success of this scheme was problematical. Jim decided that he would have to take on a job, once the crops were sown. Many a crofter has done this before him and there are several round about
who go away to work as ghillies during the shooting season, returning in time for their late harvest. In some parts there is Forestry work available most of the year, but here, at that time, there
was none. Jim would have to work in Inverness, getting home when he could, and I would carry the place on with Billy’s help.

In April the man from the Board came to do the ploughing. Billy harrowed the ground with Charlie and they did very well together. We had some hectic weeks putting everything in order before Jim
went off. There was the corn and grass-seed to sow, the lambs had to be dressed and inoculated, the seed potatoes prepared. Somehow or other we managed to accomplish it all. The weather was not
helpful; we had one of the worst rainstorms we had ever known. One day the burn rose in a couple of hours to the size of a river, and Helen had to be kept at home till it subsided.

Then on the sixth of May we saw Jim off on the Inverness bus. It seemed very strange without him. Billy worked hard and cheerfully, but for me there was a blankness about the days. We had always
shared every job, from spreading muck on the fields to wiping eggs for the van. When you work as a team the job swings along however hard or monotonous it may be. Now the rhythm had gone out of
everything, and I knew Jim would be hating every moment of every day in town. Gradually, however, we adapted ourselves to our new circumstances. We each had plenty to do and the knowledge that we
were fighting to save our way of life kept us going.

The sheep were causing us a lot of bother; they had got a bite of spring grass in a neighbour’s grazing and were for ever breaking through to indulge their appetites, and every morning
Billy had to go to fetch some of them home. Most of his days were spent mending weak portions of the fence. I took Helen to school on the carrier of my old bicycle, so as to save time on the return
journey. I would leave the bicycle in the shelter of a ruined croft house near the road, to avoid having to haul it over the moor and across the burn.

Jim came home once a week. His first two days at home he spent furiously fencing with Billy. The sheep were becoming a menace. One night they raided the newly planted garden and ate a hundred
cabbage and kail plants. A man who leased some grazing land adjoining ours began to complain bitterly about their depredations. Jim worried about the situation, knowing that he would have to be
away some time. The banker was calling for a reduction of our overdraft, so the sheep had to be sold. We knew that this meant that the croft would never provide us with more than half a living, but
the fact had to be faced.