Lightly Poached by Lillian Beckwith

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

Wild Wander

I awoke with the first flurry of wind around the house and lay drowsily listening and wondering if this was just an exploratory thrust of a breeze attendant upon the turn of the tide or whether it was in the nature of a rehearsal for a gale which, gaining proficiency, would stampede the calm spell that had been lulling us during the past few days. The flurry died briefly then came again, still indecisive. I tried to guess at the time. It had been day bright when I had gone to bed at my usual time and it was day bright now and I felt as if I had slept no more than an hour. I gave up guessing and stretched out an arm to pick up the alarm clock. It was a crippled clock; both its feet had gone so that it had to He prone and the minute hand had broken off, but as nearly all Bruach clocks were either crippled or wildly eccentric I saw no reason to waste money on a new one. Except for the postmistress, the schoolteacher and the bus driver ‘mechanical time’ was of little importance. In winter, day began with the very first glimmer of light which told the mothers of school-age children that there was time only for them to make a quick bowl of brose and murmur a bible reading before rushing the children off to school. It told the rest of us that though there might be time for a more leisurely breakfast this must be followed by a few brief hours crammed with disciplined comings and goings; carrying hay for the outwintered cattle; milking; mucking out and renewing bedding; bringing water from the well and peats from the stack; feeding hens, and yet more hay carrying until it was dark and we could recuperate with a long evening beside the fire until one decided for oneself that it was time for the day to end. During the spring and early summer when nights were transient enough to pass almost unnoticed the working day was not so easily definable. The children took their cue for school by the smoke which appeared from the schoolhouse chimney (the peat fire burned all the year round) and their mothers knew it was time to put on the potatoes for the evening meal when the returning scholars were sighted climbing the homeward path, but though these two daily events served as useful reminders to the rest of us no one appeared to notice the lack of them when the school was closed for the holidays. We would say, ‘It is time to milk the cows’, or, ‘It is time to feed the hens’, or, ‘It is time to take my dinner’, and even I, novice that I was, rarely glanced at a clock for guidance. Time became instinctive: a sense that developed with the constant observation of the sky and sun shadows and the behaviour of animals and birds whose promptings were less arbitrary and more reliable than clocks and watches.

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