The Sea for Breakfast by Lillian Beckwith

Author:Lillian Beckwith [Beckwith, Lillian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781447216841
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

Happy Band of Pilgrims?

Bruach suffered from the misfortune of having no public hall and, though the education authorities were not averse to its use, some local demigod was always sure to raise objections if the school were suggested for any social function.

‘We canna’ even have that W.R.I. here,’ Morag told me and Behag indignantly, ‘just because some folks thinks, it’s too sexular.’

As a consequence the only communal relaxations for the crofters within the village were the church services or Sundays; the biannual communions; an election meeting once in five years and an even less frequent lecture by the poultry adviser, more familiarly known as the ‘henwife’. During the winter months our evenings were sometimes enlivened by the visits of young lay preachers, locally termed ‘pilgrims’, who, with varying degrees of fanaticism, would exhort us poor sinners —who listened with varying degrees of perplexity—to forsake our evil ways and return to the paths of righteousness. Some of the pilgrims stayed for as long as a week amongst us and every night we would endure the hard benches of the church while they, with white strained faces, tear-filled eyes and voices that not only grated with emotion but also implied chronic deafness of the congregation if not of the Almighty, besought for us forgiveness and salvation. Mouthing the name of the Diety with expletive violence they would adjure us to give up our pipe-smoking, our church socials and our concubines. (Curiously enough I never heard alcoholism specifically mentioned as a sin but I suppose even the most zealous of pilgrims must recognize the hopelessness of some tasks.)

‘What’s a concubine?’ Erchy asked, after one such meeting.

‘It’s a woman a man takes to live with him but who isn’t his wife,’ I explained.

‘A mistress, like?’

‘Yes.’

‘Indeed we don’t do that sort of thing hereabouts,’ refuted Erchy. ‘Why would we take them to live with us when they have homes of their own already?’

But, at a ceilidh a few weeks later at Morag’s house, Erchy referred again to the subject of concubinage.

‘I didn’t think when those pilgrims was here that I knew of anybody hereabouts that was livin’ with a woman who wasn’t his wife, but I remembered afterwards about Dodo.’

‘He’s no from Bruach,’ someone contradicted.

‘No, I know fine he’s not, but he was livin’ with a woman, right enough. And what’s more he’s had three children by her.’

‘That fellow!’ ejaculated Morag with righteous scorn.

Dodo was a shiftless, happy-go-lucky, slow-witted character who lived in a nearby village. His house was patchily cement-washed and his croft work was never quite finished because he was for ever neglecting it to start on some new job which in its turn was dropped before completion because some other project had taken his fancy.

‘Well,’ went on Erchy, ‘when the pilgrims left here they went on to Dodo’s place and they must have got a good hold of Dodo for I’m hearin’ now that he and that woman slipped off quietly to Glasgow and he’s married her.’

‘Married her? After all these years?’ we all echoed incredulously.

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