A Rope--In Case by Lillian Beckwith Page A

husky warnings he ushered his mate and brood away. A little farther out a great northern diver rested on the water, seemingly motionless except when it lifted its beak to utter its strange wild cry. Each spring the solitary bird, known locally as ‘the Widow’, came to the bay to wait expectantly for the mate which Tearlaich had shot three years previously. Each year it lingered long after the experts claimed it should have left our shores. Even as I watched she lifted her beak and the haunting despair of her cry was strangely affecting. The Bruachites were touched by the constancy of the bird and Tearlaich had to endure acrid references to his cruelty.
    â€˜It was good eatin’,’ he defended himself ‘An’ it’s daft to feel like that when a bird’s good for the pot.’
    â€˜There’s folks that say it’s ill luck to kill them,’ they warned him.
    â€˜Ach, that’s nonsense.’ Tearlaich tried to make his voice sound indifferent but despite the remaining bird offering itself as a perfect target he never made any attempt to shoot it. If he was working near the shore and the diver’s sudden cry startled him he would jump and mutter malediction.
    Though there was no perceptible rise in the line of water around the rocks I knew the tide had turned. Living and working in close proximity to the sea one acquires an awareness of such things, so that a change of tide is more of a sensation than a observation. I sensed that there was a sort of brio, a small stirring of excitement in the water; that the slight breeze blew fractionally cooler on my skin. There was a new alertness in the attitudes of the sea birds which hitherto had been basking and preening themselves on the guano-spattered rocks; the excitement communicated itself to the life in the shallow pools far above the tide; tiny crabs heaved themselves out from the shell debris while sea anemones, which contracted looked like red sweets that had been sucked and spat out, now blossomed into rosettes of tentacles in expectation of their prey.
    Slowly I made my way up the shore. The warm rocks were speckled with winkles whose shells had bleached grey in the sun. I flicked off several, sending them to join their inky black kindred in the pools. I picked up a few stems of the seaweed which the Bruachites referred to as ‘staff’ and examined them. At the right stage of ripeness the weed was supposed to be very refreshing and Bruach children liked to munch a piece of ‘staff’ as town children liked to munch a bar of nougat. But first it must be washed ashore. After a summer storm the children would search along the line of sea-wrack looking for a stem which had embedded in its pith a particular kind of sea snail. Like the fanner who maintains that the best cheese in his dairy is invariably the one the mouse will choose, so the children claimed that the sweetest stems of ‘staff’ were the ones the snails liked to feast on. The stems I picked up were dry and untempting and I threw them down again.
    The men were still working at their boats but with less dedication now. Erchy was wiping his tarry hands on a bundle of wet seaweed. He acknowledged me with a nod.
    â€˜A lovely evening for a sail,’ I observed in passing.
    â€˜Aye, well, if that’s what you’ve a mind for you’d get with Hector. He’s to take that lady tourist for a run to Rhuna as soon as the tide’s up far enough.’
    I shook my head, having no mind to go. Rhuna was some miles away and having met the tourist in question I knew her to be irrepressibly garrulous. It is not only to the watcher on the shore that a small boat appears to diminish in size as it moves out to sea: the occupants are also aware that its confinity increases in proportion to the distance from the land and that any incompatibility among them will increase correspondingly. I did not seek an invitation from Hector but instead continued