And I learned not to think.
There were so many skills I was taught in Scotland, but that one I had to learn for myself. I’d already made a start those early weeks at the croft, when Aunt Ethel didn’t want me, but that first winter I honed my non-thinking to a fine art.
Remember India, yes. Remember Apa – oh, yes, yes. But don’t think about the future, Eve – the future without Apa, the future with Aunt Ethel who was already so very old, the future when – . No, don’t think.
But the past could be dangerous, too. Apa himself had warned me of that – ‘You can’t forget the bad times, Eve – but learn not to dwell on them, or the memory of them will destroy you…’ So that first winter I learned not to dwelt on them. I learnt not to think. And as so often before, it was Apa who helped me to do that, with his insistence on living for the day, for the hour, for the minute – living in that minute, and no other.
Mistress McNiven and Annie Butterfield helped, too. They gave me something to concentrate on: a task in hand which must be performed, a task which must be thought about. And those thoughts excluded the others. So when I wasn’t at the manse or out with the boys, I diligently cooked pies and puddings, and equally diligently cleaned the croft.
But when it was spick and span, and Aunt Ethel had returned to her room and shut herself in with her books, and a long, dark winter evening lay ahead – what then?
Well, I did have Watt.
Sir George Watt’s ‘Dictionary of the Economic Products of India’, Calcutta, 1889-96. We’d had a copy in Almora – all six volumes – except there were really nine because Vol. VI was in four parts. I’d always enjoyed dipping into Watt – but now I clung to it as though it were a life belt. And so it was.
I didn’t have all of it – in the confusion before I left India some of Watt had been sold along with Apa’s forestry books, so I only had Vols I, V and VI/3: ABACA to BUXUS, LINUM to OYSTER and SABADILLA to SILICA. So as you can see I’d lost DEER (which included dogs, wolves and jackals), along with DRAGON’S BLOOD and the ELEPHANT – all in my favourite Vol III. And although I had BEES I didn’t have the BIRDS, because they were all under their individual names – so no peacocks. Still, Vol V offered some highlights: MANGO, MYRISTICA FRAGANS (nutmeg), NARCOTICS, OTTERS and OXEN – oh yes, and the all-important MANURES (animal, vegetable and mineral). This tends to be animal in Kumaon, where every village has its precious dung-heap – most unusual for India, where cow pats are generally burnt as fuel.
And VI/2, though mostly SUGAR and SALT, did offer SALTPETRE, SHEEP (plus goats), and that vital provider of railway sleepers, the sal tree (SHOREA ROBUSTA). I wasn’t too upset about having no VI/3, SILK and TEA – which was practically all about silk and tea! But the loss of VI/4, TECTONA to ZYGOPHILLUM, deprived me of TEAK, TIGERS, WHALES (including porpoises, dolphins and dugongs) and finally, ZYGOPHILLUM itself, a plant that smells so awful no animal except the camel will eat it. (They love it, apparently – which as Apa used to say tells you all you need to know about camels!)
Still, however much I missed the missing volumes, three Watts were infinitely better than two, or one – and none? It doesn’t bear thinking of. Each evening I drew one of the wooden armchairs up to the hearth, wrapped myself in my Bhotia blanket, turned up the oil lamp on its bracket above me, and read Watt. And didn’t think. Except about ABBIAS WEBBIANA, the Himalayan silver fir, which is sometimes exported to Tibet for roofing shingles, while its dried leaves can be turned into a stomach tonic, or used with its twigs as fooder for cattle. ‘This tree is called wúman, or wumbusing, by the Bhotias, but in Kumaon rágha, rao, ransla or raisalla…’ No, I didn’t think – but I did remember. Only sometimes the memories merged into thought – and then they became more than I could bear.
I read and worked all through that first long winter – but there was something else I did, too. When, just occasionally, the wind from the sea dropped and the temperature was not too cold on my hands, then I would go out and climb the Gob. Up – and down. And warm myself from a memory that had no edge of sadness to it: the memory of my triumph, and of the clapping, and of that voice, darker and more powerful than Apa’s calling, ‘Well done, youngster – well done!’
When I’d reached the bottom of the cliff again I would turn to face the sea, drop a curtsey to my imaginary audience, and then go cartwheeling off across the sands.
So I spent the winter diligently practising my new household skills and reading Watt. Then spring arrived at last and I put away my Watt and my diligence and danced at the cross-roads of an evening, or roamed with the boys practising the tiger calls to taught them – or those rather more useful skills Uncle Fergus had taught us.
With the outside world so enticing now I didn’t want to waste time cooking pies or haggis. Instead I boiled up a big pan of potatoes every third day on my Juwel, and we ate them cold with herring, rabbits, salmon, venison – living off the sea and off the land. Someone else’s land, usually.
Our other needs were supplied from the crate of oranges, the seemingly inexhaustible tin cupboard – and the porridge drawer. Every Monday I would make a huge cauldron of porridge and pour it into the grease-proof-paper lined top drawer of the dresser. Aunt Ethel and I would then cut ourselves a slice every morning. She was most admiring of my ingenuity, ‘Such a clever idea, Eve.’ I modestly disclaimed all credit. Mrs Fraser had given me that idea by talking of Uncle Fergus’s porridge drawer – in tones of horror… Such horror that I swore Aunt Ethel to secrecy over the existence of ours.
That was something else I learnt in Scotland – to be secretive. With no Apa to listen to my daily doings I began to keep them to myself – and to be much more selective in what I did tell people. Especially once the poaching season intensified, for as Uncle Fergus – who never parted with any information unless it was absolutely necessary – used to say, ‘You never know.’ So I led two different lives, and lived in two different worlds. The open, innocent world where I was Miss Gunn’s niece, Mistress McNiven’s part-time housemaid, Dancie Gordon’s occasional milkmaid – and that other, twilight world inhabited by ‘the Gunn boy with plaits’: the secret, lawless life of the poacher.
Aunt Ethel, who knew of both my worlds, applauded my daring. But then, she hadn’t succeeded in travelling all round China by always keeping to the rules. Apa had taught me to think for myself, and not to accept unquestioningly the rules of others, but Aunt Ethel and Uncle Fergus took matters much further than that. Especially Uncle Fergus, who saw no necessity for rules at all; a most attractive philosophy for a girl of my age and temperament. Apa would not have approved – but Apa was dead. I had to make my choices unaided now. And I did.
However, despite learning so much at Helspie, there were some things I did not find out – one in particular. Admittedly, it was knowledge not enjoyed by most other girls of my age, either. Though I suspect there were girls at Helspie – especially those in crofter families – who noticed the activities of animals and made certain – deductions. But they were shrewder than I was. The truth is, I simply wasn’t interested, so I didn’t think about the matter – being quite satisfied with my own theory of events. And a blind belief in one’s own theory is never conducive to discovering the truth, is it?
Mistress McNiven did give me a nudge in the right direction. We were turning out the manse linen cupboard one day when she offered me some discarded towels, with a quiet, ‘If you hem these and stitch tapes on them you can use them during your monthly flow.’ I didn’t ask for an explanation – the boys were waiting for me – but later I asked Aunt Ethel, who told me the bare outlines of what I must expect before too long.
As you can imagine I was not pleased at the idea, and with the mental reservation that I would be the exception to the general rule I thrust the towels into an old trunk. Aunt Ethel did offer me one piece of advice, ‘It can sometimes be rather uncomfortable, Eve – if so, I always found it best to keep walking, until the discomfort dissipated.’ I was even more determined to be the exception after she said that!
With regard to any other knowledge, I was Eve still in the Garden. I was aware that babies initially grew inside their mother’s bodies, but on the question of how they got out – and, even more importantly, of how they’d got in there in the first place…
My theory was that the advent of babies was an event triggered by marriage – when a girl got married then they just happened. I did have same justification for this belief, since in Helspie they didn’t happen under any other circumstance, and they certainly didn’t in India, where girls married so young.
Confident in my ignorance, I saw no necessity for further investigation, so I made none. Foolish Eve, because I was aware that boys weren’t arranged on the same pattern as I was – I knew they pissed differently. But I assumed they were built differently so they could piss like that – it never crossed my mind that it might be the other way round!
It certainly never crossed my mind when I fell in love. Ah yes, I haven’t told you, have I? I fell in love again, that summer I was fifteen. He was a doctor, too. I have a definite partiality for doctors – because they’re the direct reverse of soldiers, I suppose – and this doctor was fair of face and merry of mien, and with the most entrancing golden curl that flopped down over his forehead and a motor bicycle. I was extremely taken with that, too.
He came as a locum while Doctor Lewis was ill and he sped past one summer evening as we were dancing barefoot at the crossroads to Iaian Finlay’s accordion. Then, turning his motorbicycle in a wide arc he came clattering back. He braked, propped his machine up against the signpost and joined us for half an hour. He partnered Jessie MacAlister in the Lancers, and then asked me for The Flowers of Edinburgh. Oh bliss. He wasn’t actually a very good dancer, but he had the most wonderful blue eyes.
Two days later he saw me coming out of the manse – I only did three mornings a week now, Mistress McNiven had a new girl in training – and I heard this phut-phut – and he stopped, and offered me a lift on the back of his machine, ‘If you’re going my way.’
‘I am, I am!’
He grinned. ‘You don’t know what my way is, yet!’ I exclaimed, ‘Oh, but I’ve never been on a motorbicycle before.”
He was laughing, now ‘Hop on the back then, and take firm hold of my waist.’ His waist! Oh bliss upon bliss. ‘Right?’ We were off, speeding up the main road all the way to the cross-roads. A great sweeping circle round and we sped back.
With trembling legs I dismounted. ‘Oh, thank you, thank you!’ A cheery wave and he was off again.
A week later Dr Lewis recovered, and my hero left. Just as well, probably. I’d spent so much time mooning round those cross-roads that I’d nearly been mown down by a charabanc – not to speak of my narrow escape from the hooves of the Wick-Helmsdale mail coach.
So I returned to my other love, the harbour. There was always something there to see or hear or do. Even if the weather was bad and the men couldn’t go to sea they’d be busy down at the harbour – mending the nets, or perhaps barking them or the sails in the huge iron cauldrons – it keeps them from rotting at sea. And as they laid the now brown sails out on the grassy slope to dry someone would be sure to say, ‘Sails – they’ve had their day. We should be thinking about steamers, now. With a steam drifter you can get your catch back fast even if the winds against you.’
A head would be shaken in disagreement. ‘Steamers, they cost too much – and then there’s the price of the coal. Now the wind, that’s free’
‘But it doesn’t always blow the way you want to go.’
‘You can tack, can’t you? ‘Sides, a drifter drifts – you don’t need steam for that.’
A third voice would butt in. ‘What we do need is a new harbour.’
Everyone was agreed on that, and the whole crew would turn their heads a moment to look at that jagged, broken end. ‘Took long enough to get the railway down to Lybster – there’s never going to be one built to Helspie.’
‘That’s for sure. So we need a harbour that can take the bigger coasters.’
There’d be nods of agreement all round ‘It’s the only way forward, a new harbour—’
Another day I’d come running down the hill to the sound of the women singing at the farlins. I’d tie my old oilskin round my waist, bandage my fingers, take out my knife – and be in time to join in the first line of the chorus: ‘S comadh caileng bhoidheach—’ There’s many a bonny lass…
Or a voice might call, ‘Eve, Mrs MacLeod was wondering if you’d kindly do her round for her – with her being so near her time, and her elder lass over-young to carry the creel—’
I wouldn’t carry the creel, either. I’d tried it once and found the strap bit cruelly into my upper arms – but I had the long, strong legs of the mountain-born, so I’d split the load, put half on my head in a basket lined with oil-skin, and when that was sold I’d come racing back for the rest.
Sometimes I played the role of fishwife on my own behalf, carrying my basket far inland where fish was a rare delicacy and duly prized. Money rarely changed hands on these trips, instead I’d return bearing a new load: eggs, cabbage, butter, apples, maybe a couple of turnips – and if I wasn’t too far from home, some oatmeal to supply our porridge drawer.
And just occasionally, if I happened to be down at the harbour at the right time, I managed to get to sea. That wasn’t easy – no Helspie fisherman wouid take me on his Fifie or Zulu, since for all I sometimes wore breeks they knew I was female, and females were BAD LUCK on fishing boats. Rules they might be prepared to break, but superstitions, never.
However, there was a small German cargo steamer which sometimes called with salt and timber and coal. They’d let me hitch a ride up to Wick, or down to Helmsdale. I’d chatter in German all the way, and then alternately walk and canter back, late on into the light summer eveningm until on the breeze I’d hear the lilt of Iaian Finlay’s accordion, and go running down the last hill to join the dancers at the crossroads. And so we’d dance until midnight, when Mr Fraser would come out and chase us all off home.
There is a saying in Kumaon, that if you have once dwelt in Almora, then you will never be happy anywhere else. It’s not true, I was happy in Helspie. And sometimes, just sometimes that summer, I danced in Paradise again.