Bruach Blend by Lillian Beckwith Page B

these along with tales of life aboard the fishing boat and of his own and his mates’ frequently bawdy escapades in the various fishing ports ensured him an avid audience, recriminative though the reactions to some of his disclosures might be.
    It was at a ceilidh we were gathered now: a homespun, lamp-lit ceilidh in Marjac’s house where the room was warmed as much by the number of bodies as by the unstinted fire of peats. Outside a gale was blowing; a gale which we had struggled against as we made our various ways to the ceilidh and now, tight-packed in the small room, we were relaxed and glad to be indoors, grateful for the company and the warmth which cocooned us against the wildness of the night.
    Willy was described in Bruach as being ‘always the good man for a laugh’, but his stories were not always about the lighter side of life and his announcement that he was soon to return to the fishing had been tossed into the shocked silence which had followed his horrifying story of a tinker family on the mainland. He could vouch for the truth of the story, Willy assured us, because the tinker woman concerned had been in the same hospital as the wife of one of his fishing mates. In fact he had seen the woman for himself, ‘no more than thirty years of age if she was that an’ about as white as her bandages an’ so thin you’d think she’d snap in two at a touch’. According to Willy, the tinker family had been living along with others of their kind in an encampment some distance outside the town and one night the husband, a habitual drunkard, had returned home and set fire to the tent in which his two young children were sleeping. The children had perished in the fire and the wife, in attempting to rescue them, had been severely burned about the legs and arms. The husband subsequently vanished from the scene and before proper enquiries could be made the rest of the tinker encampment quickly disappeared. ‘An’ now she has nothin’ an’ nobody in the wide world to do for her,’ Willy told us. ‘An’ there she was in the ward of the hospital, propped up with pillows with not a soul to visit her an’ her shrivelling like a snail that’s had salt on it when anybody so much as came near her as if she would be expectin’ a blow from them.’
    â€˜Ach, the man must have been a monster, surely?’ said Ian, amidst several more compassionate exclamations and head-shakings.
    â€˜The poor woman!’ Morag said feelingly, and spoke for everyone present.
    â€˜Aye, indeed,’ agreed Willy, who had clearly been touched by the plight of the young tinker woman. ‘My mate’s wife what I was visitin’ at the time was sayin’ herself would have gone over to talk to her only for the woman bein’ a tink.’
    â€˜I believe I would have made myself go to her, all the same,’ mused Morag.
    â€˜Ach, what would be the use of it?’ asked Willy. ‘There’s not much you can say to a tink.’
    His statement was accepted unquestioningly and in the ensuing silence I suspected each one of us was composing a mental image of the tinker woman, injured, bereft and alone in her hospital bed. Willy, reckoning we had been given sufficient time truly to absorb the story, deliberately changed the subject by announcing his imminent departure and there was a perceptible lightening of mood.
    â€˜Were you after sayin’ one of your mates was marrit then?’ asked Morag. ‘I thought I minded you sayin’ once you were all bachelors aboard your boat except for the skipper.’ Morag’s memory was like a bulging file.
    â€˜I did say that. But one of them got married about a year since an’ now there’s another got himself engaged or somethin’ like it,’ said Willy. He gave a short bark of laughter. ‘He’s no very pleased about it either,’ he went on. ‘I was ashore with him one