Yarns

My grannie with the Spangles was always telling stories. So was my uncle Ruaraidh. He’d get his mother started and then something she said would get him going. My aunty Sheena said they were like collie dogs chasing each other out on the hill.

Usually my uncle took me out in the green Austin van. I liked its badge. It matched the chrome of the stick-out indicators which showed other drivers where you were going. Better than sticking your arm out the window in the rain. Ruaraidh showed me how to save petrol. He’d turn the key as we took the left fork, off the Ranais road, down the hill. We’d see if we could coast all the way to my grannie’s door.

It wasn’t like our house. You could see the stones it was made from. Some of them were huge. It was easy to see how the lower ones would get moved but how could they get the big ones up when the walls were already high? There were never any cranes out here. I never got a proper answer to my question.

The mantelpiece was wood, not tiles. It had china dogs, big as real ones, not collies but terrier-sized. It was usually just myself, the uncle took along. The sister would be helping the olaid, baking and things. There wasn’t an open fire like our house but a creamy Rayburn. If it was cold weather, my grannie opened the bottom oven door and told you to stick your feet in for a while. We’d have a cup of tea to start with. Then Ruaraidh would say, ‘This won’t pay the rent, a bhalaich. Nor put bread in the mouths of the bairns.’

Fanks were best. Other people would come and then there would be two or three dogs and a smell like Dettol. I liked that smell. So did most of the people. One man put his dog in to the bath when the sheep were finished. Another said, well if he hadn’t gone bald he’d give his own hair a wash now. But when he took off his caydie his head was nearly as shiny as my olman’s. I wondered what had happened to him.

At first, my grannie came out to help a bit. She got carried away when she was shooing the sheep. She always said, ‘Kirie, Kirie, Kirie.’ Maybe the sheep know that means to go on ahead, the same way the dog knows to crouch down or to start chasing, from a word or a whistle. Then my grannie stopped coming out but she still made scones, stacks of them. They came off a thing like a heavy frying pan. They didn’t come out of the oven. She always timed it so there was a pile, still warm, when we came in. ‘Help yourselves now, you’ll get no waitress service here.’

People always started off with the weather then the news.

A coorse, coorse winter this, worst one for snow I can remember and I wasn’t born yesterday. That Eichmann was found guilty on all counts. The world’s getting smaller. You can’t run away forever. That was a terrible plane-crash in Rhodesia. The Secretary General on his way to talks on the Congo. Was it an accident? A man swam the Channel both ways, an Argentinean. Must be all that corned beef. Get some of that down the wee fellow. Even if he is a Catholic that President Kennedy is a lovely man. Aye, some would say the first lady is a fine specimen too. It would take more than pretty speeches to stop them building that wall in Berlin. Will Real Madrid take it again this year? Big challenges. At least we can’t do much worse than last year. We’ll need to watch that Charlton fellow. And Greaves is deadly.

I didn’t always know what they were talking about. But I got pictures in my mind, like listening to the radio. The Secretary on the Congo – you could see people typing letters, really fast while they were sitting on cushions floating on a wide river with jungle on each bank.

Then they’d get laughing, jumping back and fore between Gaelic and English. ‘I’ll tell you after,’ Ruaraidh would say but I’d tug at my grannie’s sleeve while she was laughing away. ‘A ghràidh, it’s not the same in English. Here, do you like Spangles?’ Each one was wrapped separately in the packet. Sometimes it was fruit ones and sometimes it was sharper ones.

You only got the other kind of stories if it was getting dark early. My grannie would sometimes ask Ruaraidh to tell me one of his yarns, so I wasn’t left out, with all the political talk and the Gaelic. A story. For himself – that was me. Ruaraidh or someone else would say, ‘Listen to herself trying to stir it up. What about one of your own Mac an t-Sronaich stories?’

‘I don’t want to frighten the townie,’ she’d say. ‘They only go to the pictures to get scared. They don’t hear the real stories any more in Stornoway.’

So of course I’d to push out my chest. Proud because I’d done my share at the fank. Even got blood on my hand when the ram pulled me against the fence and they all said I’d seen too many Westerns at the Playhouse.

My grannie with the Spangles would top up everyone’s tea then Ruaraidh might start.

‘Did you hear now, the Ranais seaman’s story about the coffin?’ So of course everyone laughs and asks which of the thousand and one stories about a coffin this is. ‘The true one,’ he said and they all laughed again, but once my uncle was in full flight they’d all be leaning over to catch every word.

Someone said these yarns were better when the Tilley lamp was whirring away. But my grannie said we were supposed to be moving forward, not going backward. ‘It wasn’t that long ago electricity and running water came to this house. Maybe you’d rather just go out the back to the old chemical toilet but you can all use my WC if you ask nicely.’