A Croft in the Hills (3 page)

Meantime, we besieged the local offices of the Department of Agriculture and loaded ourselves with pamphlets concerning grants, subsidies and so on. We discovered that we were eligible for a
grant of fifty per cent of the cost of an approved scheme of water installation for the house and steading of the croft; that some of the land would qualify for the ploughing-up grant of five
pounds an acre and that we could get help with the buying of lime and fertilisers.

We then called at the North of Scotland College of Agriculture, in Inverness, and were told that their expert would come out to take a sample of the soil in the various fields, for analysis, so
that the amount of lime needed could be accurately determined, and that he would draw up a complete cropping and stocking programme for us, all this without any sort of fee. Another expert, a lady
(later on referred to affectionately as the ‘hen wife’), would come to give us advice on all matters relating to poultry-keeping.

Everyone was most friendly and helpful and charming. Helen would sit on my knee during the various interviews and would almost invariably end up with a peppermint to suck or find herself carried
off to the typists’ room, to be beguiled with bangs on the typewriter, when business was not too pressing! All in all, we felt surrounded by a solid wall of encouragement and goodwill.

Once a week we set off early, to spend a long day at the croft. We cleared rubbish from the outbuildings and repaired the garden fence; we prospected for wells and picnicked on the moor, or in
the empty living-room if it was wet. We made the acquaintance of our nearest neighbours and began to get the feel of the place.

About this time, a piece of land to the west of our croft came on the market. It had been bought some years previously by an Inverness man, who meant to run Highland cattle on it. His plans had
fallen through and he wanted to dispose of the land. As it would give us some sixty additional acres of good rough grazing, we decided to make an offer for it. So, for ninety pounds, it became
ours.

The seller wished, however, to retain the mineral rights. This intrigued us. We made inquiries and discovered that when digging a drain he had come on several deposits of blue clay. He had had
an expert from London up to examine these and had been told that they might be of commercial value, but only if found in sufficient quantity to justify excavation. Later on we turned up quite a lot
of this blue clay when ploughing our own ground. We sent a specimen to the Geological Department of the Edinburgh Museum and the opinion we received on it tallied with that of the London expert. We
are still hoping we may find a use for it some day.

In the meantime this addition to our croft land has provided us, in addition to the grand grazing, with a supply of first-class peat—the black, well-seasoned stuff which cuts into hard,
stiff blocks and gives a much hotter fire than the brown, crumbly variety.

Another find on this newly acquired land was the ‘golden’ well, so called because of the brilliant marsh-marigolds which grow in the boggy ground all round it. This had always been a
death-trap for sheep and other animals. On a hungry spring day, irresistibly attracted by the fresh, green growth, they would plunge into the bog for a bite and get engulfed. During our second
summer, after we had lost a ewe lamb in this way, Jim cut a channel for the spring overflow and the ground round about is now quite hard and dry. Could a scheme be devised there is enough water in
this source to provide a piped supply for all the crofts lower down the strath.

Our search for water near the house had become almost an obsession. We grudged the expense of laying a long pipe-track from the existing well, even though we should have to bear only half of it
ourselves. Some further digging in the hole already begun revealed nothing, not even a trickle. We got in touch with another diviner and watched, goggle-eyed with fascination, while the stick
jigged and cavorted in his hands. It seemed there was water here, there and everywhere. At last he selected a spot above the level of the house, whence a supply could gravitate easily to a
downstairs tank. Our hopes ran high. The digging started but, after three days’ heavy work, all that we came on was a thin, muddy trickle which would not pass the analyst’s test.

We decided to seek Government approval for a scheme to install a pump at the existing well, which would raise the water to the level of the house. A sample of this water was found to be quite
satisfactory and the Department of Agriculture agreed to give us a grant of fifty per cent of the cost of the work.

As the profit on the sale of our town house had been a substantial one, we decided to have some plumbing installed at the croft and to wire the house for electricity. We had been assured that a
main supply from the Hydro-Electric Scheme would be available within the next few years. In the meantime the wiring could be connected to a cheap, wind-driven dynamo to provide us with light though
not with power.

We looked on this expense as an investment. It would increase the value of the property and it would pay dividends in other ways. Spared the drudgery of incessant water-carrying, we should have
more time and energy to give to productive work and I should be able to get quickly through my household chores and be free to take a proper share in the outdoor jobs. The electric wiring we
intended to extend to the steading, in part of which we were going to keep hens, on the deep-litter system, with a light to encourage winter egg-production.

It was difficult to find men to tackle the work on the house. Jim was still busy at his job and had only a very limited amount of time and the place was too difficult of access for men to come
out daily from Inverness.

Finally we accepted the quite moderate estimates of some young tradesmen, just setting up in business, who would live on the job if we would provide them with the necessaries for camping in the
empty house. We gladly agreed and they took up all the bedding, pots, pans, crockery and so on, we could spare, in a lorry, on the day of their preliminary investigation.

There were the usual delays, for material was still difficult to come by. Mid-October came, the time we could spend at the croft grew shorter as the days drew in, and still the main work had not
been begun. We were afraid the frosts would set in before the pipe-track was dug.

Jim packed up his job and we decided to move by the first of November. Then the men really got busy. On our last weekly visit we found the place reverberating with hammer-blows and cheerful
whistling and shouting and clanking.

The day of our arrival came at last. The removal people had sent too small a van with the result that two journeys had to be made. We had to spend an extra night in town, as it was too late to
make the trip ourselves that day.

Next morning, when we reached our destination, we were greeted by the sight of half our worldly goods standing stacked at the roadside. Furniture, books, pictures, pots and pans stood there,
looking forlorn in the chill, grey light.

We had arranged with a neighbour to ferry our belongings from the road to the house on his tractor-trailer, as the van could not manage to make the journey to the house with the access road in
its wintry state. Luckily this neighbour had had the good sense to cart all the bedding and really perishable stuff along to the house the day before, and the night had been fine, so no irreparable
damage was done.

We changed into gum-boots and started right away to rescue the most precious books, as the sky was clouding and rain threatening. At once we were overwhelmed with goodwill. The tractor came
lurching into view and strong arms soon had another load secured. Our eastward neighbour appeared at her door as we passed and offered to take charge of Helen for the day, so that we could get on
with the work as quickly as possible. They were already firm friends, she and Helen, and we gladly agreed. On arrival at the house we found a roaring fire in the kitchen, more cheery faces and a
welcome brew of tea.

All day the tractor plied back and forth with load after load of goods and chattels. There was hammering and singing and mud and plaster everywhere, but by tea-time we had everything under cover
and the beds made up, so we fetched Helen from our kindly neighbour. The men brought pail after pail of water from the well and we all ate an enormous meal of ham and eggs. I even managed to give
Helen her tub, as usual, before carrying her through the ‘burach’ to the safe oasis of her bed. Then we lit a fire in the great hearth in the living-room and sat round it, all six of
us, till our eyelids drooped.

Those were happy days as, slowly, our house began to take shape. The men were up at six and had a fire in the kitchen for me to cook breakfast. After dark they worked on by the light of
oil-lamps so as to get done and, as they put it, ‘out of our road’. Secretly, I think they were missing the pub and the cinema of their little home town. Certainly their singing and
whistling grew more light-hearted and obstreperous as they kept up their spirits till the time came for their release. But they were good sorts and did their best in what were, for them, difficult
and unusual conditions.

We celebrated Helen’s third birthday with a cake I had made weeks before. Our black Labrador presented us with a litter of pedigreed pups. At last the men completed the plumbing and wiring
and departed with cheerful waves and ‘rather-you-than-me’ expressions on their faces.

Then Peter, a young friend of ours who was waiting to start a new job, came to help Jim dig the trench for the water pipe. For nearly three weeks they dug, pausing only for meals and fly cups of
tea. Sometimes they would be lost to view in the mist, and only the ring of the pick and the scrape of the shovel told us they were still hard at it. But the job was accomplished, though we were
still to wait a long time before the water would flow from the tap.

Meantime, I was clearing rubble from around the outside of the house and making a gravel path to the door so that some, at least, of the mud would not be brought inside on the soles of our
boots. I got to know the ways of my new oven and I carried water, and more water!

At last, towards the beginning of December, when the house was more or less straight and Peter had departed, with a twinge of regret, I think, that he had to go back to the city treadmill, we
felt we were really settled in. That first evening on our own I went out after dark to get some washing-water from the butt by the back door. I stood, kettle in hand, staring at the sky beyond Ben
Wyvis. Great pale beams were moving, like searchlights, across the whole northern section of the heavens. I called to Jim and he stood with me, gazing at these incredibly beautiful northern lights.
Then we fetched Helen, wrapped her in a big coat, and held her in our arms, while we all three watched the spectacle. Jim and I felt very small and very humble but young Helen gurgled with delight.
At once we joined in her response: this was her inheritance, she had recognised it at once. It was the first of the joys she was to discover in and around the house on the hill.

CHAPTER III

WINTER AND ROUGH WEATHER

As though to put us through a lovers’ test our small domain soon took on its most forbidding aspect. We were hardly into December when the first snow came whirling out of
the south-west. We woke one morning to find the doors and windows plastered, as though some giant had hurled a vast white pudding at the house.

The first essential was to keep warm. Luckily, we had already got a good stock of logs sawn and split and there were some peats in the barn, left over from the year before, so we could be fairly
lavish with fires.

Normally we relied on the kitchen stove for warmth in the daytime and only lit a fire in the living-room in the evening, when we had leisure to sit at it, before bed. But we kept a blaze going
in the living-room all that day and, last thing at night, we carried shovelfuls of red embers to the bedroom grate. We put Helen’s cot in our room and unearthed all the spare blankets and so
spent quite a snug night.

By next morning the road was blocked with snow-drifts, and it was the day the grocer’s van was due. Over a steaming cup of morning tea I mentally reviewed the contents of the larder. It
was not very promising; we had been caught unawares. Having as yet no sources of supply of our own, we were certainly not equipped to ride out a storm.

The first thing to do was to get water. The pump was not yet connected and, if this weather were to continue, it looked as though the chances of our having water in the tap before spring-time
would be fairly remote. Jim took a pail and a shovel and went to dig out the well. Then we thawed out the tap on the water-butt and filled a big crock with washing-water. While I prepared a meal
with our last tin of meat, Helen, in snow-suit and gum-boots, went out to revel in her first snow and Jim knocked up a sledge.

In the early afternoon we set off, with Helen perched on the sledge, in search of eggs from a neighbour, half a mile down the road. It was heavy going but we returned home in triumph with all
the eggs intact. The sky was pure, deep blue and there was a sparkling silence everywhere. Our little house looked more snug and secure than ever in its winter setting and we felt the bonds that
linked us to it grow perceptibly stronger.