A Rope--In Case by Lillian Beckwith

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

Winter Food

The quiet November evening was pierced by the full-throated blare of the steamer’s siren. I hastened to pull back the curtains and set a lamp in the window to indicate to the crew that someone was making preparations to meet them. While I drew on gumboots I searched the darkness for the port and starboard and masthead lights which should soon detach themselves from the star-studded night. The steamer was scheduled to call every six weeks bringing us bulk supplies from Glasgow but circumstances made her visits erratic. She might be delayed for days at some other port of call; the captain might be deterred by the weather conditions off the always inhospitable Bruach shore but round about the time the boat could be expected we had to be constantly vigilant. As soon as we heard the siren’s warning of her approach it was necessary to indicate in some way our preparedness, otherwise the captain, seeing no sign of acknowledgment, would head straight out to sea again without pausing, leaving us to watch our much needed and long anticipated supplies being withheld for another six weeks or so. Sometimes our goods lay on the steamer for six months before we had an opportunity to collect them.

Down at the shore dinghies were already being launched amid a clatter of Gaelic and a scuffle of shingle; torches flashed over wet stones and dark seaweed; the rhythmic sound of oars in rowlocks receded as the boats drew away from the shore. There was no pier at Bruach where the steamer might come alongside and so she lay about a quarter of a mile offshore, her position marked by her lights and their spilled reflections. The waiting people ashore heard shouted instructions and exhortations from the steamer’s crew coming with ringing clarity across the water. Lowering heavy goods like drums of tar, bolls of meal and weighty tea-chests over the side of the ship and down into the dinghies that clung alongside was hazardous enough in daylight. Darkness increased the risk of accident.

I leaned in the shelter of a boulder and relished the excitement which the arrival of the steamer always injected into the village, though rarely was anything but the most mundane of cargoes discharged. Townspeople might find it difficult to believe that such things as a tea-chest full of basic foodstuffs or a roll of wire-netting could cause any stirring of excitement but in Bruach life was stark and pared to necessities; luxuries were neither envisaged nor demanded. It was the arrival of necessities that gave us our thrills. We could be as excited over the delivery of our winter stores as a town housewife might be at the arrival of a longed-for suite of new furniture. Similarly the appearance of a new roll of wire-netting or a bundle of gleaming corrugated iron sheets in a village where sheds and fences were mostly contrived of driftwood and rusted wire was likely to cause as much interest and admiration as the appearance of the neighbour’s sleek new car in a suburban street.

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