Four Ducks on a Pond Read online

  She put a new mineral-lick in the container, because perhaps it was boredom, or the kids they were expecting, that made the goats very eager to lick and lick at that red brick thing, which I had once tried and found horribly salty.

  Nicholas

  Grandpop was worrying in case the tons of lime he had ordered would arrive before Johnnie-the-Ploughman had been to plough the big field. Kitten blamed the rain for the fall in egg production, but she also blamed the hens, for she said it was time some of them were in the pot. Puddy made a few attempts at clearing up the garden, which was looking very battered and miserable, and which would look worse when the weeds began to grow. The rabbits had eaten the bark from the new apple bushes, which annoyed Puddy all the more because ever since the arrival of the polecat she had never managed to see a rabbit around at all.

  The doctor’s car often passed along the road, because there was a lot of influenza about, and sometimes the doctor came in to see the family, not because anyone was ill, but because he could have a hot cup of tea and a chat. And I often thought that he looked tired and could perhaps do with a doctor himself more than some of the people he visited.

  Sometimes, in the evenings, the schoolteacher, who was a great friend of the family, came in bringing her knitting or her embroidery, both of which she did very well, and there would be a lot of chatter because the schoolteacher had travelled a great deal and had much to say of wonderful places. Places that I had read about in some of the books in the cottage, but never even hoped to see. It seemed to me a terrible shame that a clever person like that should have only six pupils in her school. But this was all part of what I said at the beginning, about the declining population, so I hope that those few children will grow up to appreciate the lovely place they live in and will find work to do here and rear huge families so that the tumble-down cottages will be built up and prosperity will be here once more. I am sure Arnish, who is so political, would know just how to bring this about.

  At last, one day the rain stopped and the sun shone, and the puddles and the loch were covered in ice.

  When I walked along the road to the village, I saw that Ben More, which is the highest mountain on Mull, was capped with snow. It is a strange thing, but we have a small hill near us, in the east, and because of this hill we can’t see any of the mountains from the house. Curious, that what is so small can obliterate what is large. I suppose it is true of everything in life.

  After a few days it was not only Ben More that was covered in snow. It was everything. And through the snow peeped the first shoots of the daffodils, and the robin redbreast who had hopped about outside the garage all winter now came right to the back door for his food. But the snow didn’t lie long on the low ground, for it never does here, and one day Johnnie-the-Ploughman arrived with his tractor, so that Grandpop needn’t have worried about the lime arriving too soon after all.

  Puddy planted some willow cuttings inside the big field near the new gate which John had made. She thought these would help to soak up moisture from this wet corner of the field, and also that they would provide a windbreak. But Flora and Arnish soon slipped through that gate, which had been left open because of the ploughing, and they ate those lovely willows far faster than Puddy had planted them. And this, I thought, was unkind and unfeeling of them, but then, they are goats, whereas I am an affectionate cat that likes to please.

  Of course, it must be remembered that soon their kids would be arriving, so perhaps the goats were not quite themselves. Puddy was still unsure if there were to be any kids, for it is extremely hard to tell with goats, but I knew because the goats knew. Only unfortunately I couldn’t tell Puddy so.

  Puddy, however, tells Carla everything, and so it was that I learnt that Corrie’s foal was due next month, and that during the summer both Corrie and her foal were to be shown at the Royal Highland Show. And this time I was certain they would win first prize. Meanwhile Puddy busied herself repairing the boundaries of the paddock and making ready for Corrie’s return home, and excitement tingled down my back, right to the very tips of my whiskers, as I thought how I would soon be seeing my best friend again!

  All this time Kitten and Grandpop weren’t idle. Kitten had made many, many pots of delicious marmalade, the smell of which had permeated the house for days. And Grandpop, humming his little hum (which wasn’t about blessings any more), laid rattraps in the barn, sorted Florrie once more and won thirty shillings in the pools.

  And Carla, who at the age of four years, had not shown any interest in finding a mate, suddenly decided that she, too, would like a family, and she chose the coal-house, of all places, to make a nest. But I didn’t take her very seriously. Time has taught me that where Carla is concerned, it’s just a lot of bark.

  One evening, when Johnnie-the-Postman came, Puddy gave him a letter to post, addressed to the poultry breeder in Stirling, from where she had bought last year’s chicks. She was later in ordering them this year because of the wet weather. So soon another twittering box would be left at our gate by Neilachan, and I would probably be sitting on the wall when they arrived. Just like at the beginning of my book, which shows how, in the country, the wheel most surely goes full circle.

  But before the chickens arrived, news came of the death of dear, cosy little Miss Sarah, who lived with her dear, cosy little sisters in a house by the sea, a few miles away. All the family loved Miss Sarah and her sisters, and as the weather was too cold for Grandpop to attend the funeral, Puddy went instead.

  When Puddy returned, she said it was the loveliest funeral she had ever been to. And she described it so that I can write about it just as if I had been there myself, and I do understand, just as I hope you will, why she called it a lovely funeral, which seems such a peculiar thing to say.

  When she arrived at the house where Miss Sarah had lived, one of Miss Sarah’s sisters greeted her and took her into the parlour, where there was tea to drink and plenty of sandwiches and cakes. And while Puddy sipped her tea, Miss Sarah’s sister looked through the window at the blue sky and at the sun shining on the daffodils and sparkling on the blue sea at the bottom of the garden, and she said, in her lovely soft Highland voice, ‘It’s a wonderful thing, but Sarah said only the other day that she always gets lovely weather whenever she does a journey.’

  And presently Puddy, and all the other people who had gathered, were asked to go out into the garden, and there they found Sarah’s coffin, placed on two chairs outside the front door she had so often used all her life. The coffin was piled high with daffodils, and Puddy kept her eyes on these, as the Minister said the burial service and led the singing of the twenty-third psalm to the tune of Crimond. And all the time the sea lapped and foamed at the bottom of the garden, and Miss Sarah’s cosy sisters kept their chins up high, fortified in their knowledge that Sarah loved this sunny travelling day.

  Then the coffin was carried shoulder-high to the waiting lorry, which had superseded the old farm cart as a hearse, and Puddy got into Florrie and followed the cortege for miles and miles over an incredibly bumpy road until the burial ground was reached: a burial ground hidden right away among the mountains and so ancient that the bones of the very earliest Scottish Christians must be buried there.

  The grave was already dug. The coffin was lowered into it, and, after a brief prayer, the earth was piled back over it. Finally a trim green carpet of turf, which had been carefully dug away, was neatly rolled over the brown soil like a cosy, green blanket. And it was patted into place by the gravedigger, whose work-worn hands now had the gentleness of a woman’s. Then the wreaths were arranged over the grave, and the funeral was over. Only the long, difficult drive home remained.

  ‘It wasn’t like an end. It was like a beginning,’ Puddy said, adding rather unnecessarily, ‘like planting a bulb.’

  And that is why I have chosen the funeral as the last episode in my book, because life goes on and on, no matter what end, seemingly, we come to.

  A blackbird is singing his heart out fro
m a chimney stack. Grandpop is humming a hum as he makes sure that the paddock boundaries will hold against the onslaught of an inquisitive foal. Puddy is in the cottage clearing a place for the brooder, where she will rear the day-old chicks. Kitten is preparing Margie’s and Fionna’s bedrooms in readiness for the Easter holidays. And Carla has promised she will not allow Lottie to romp with the goats, since their kids will soon be born. And on the mantelpiece in the drawing-room is an airmail letter from John, saying that he has been posted back to Britain, so he’ll be home on leave, and please to lay out lots of FOOD.

  As for me, I am kept busy visiting my families, hunting and writing my memoirs, for I realise that, with so much yet to happen, there’s no telling when my memories will end. So maybe there will come a day when this will appear on your bookshelves, printed on India paper, vellum bound and bearing the words ‘Volume One’ in gilded capitals on the spine. Who knows?

  Afterword

  Nicholas recorded his observations during the early 1950s while Puddy, in addition to milking goats and tending hens, started to write a romantic novel and consigned the works of Nicholas to a drawer, where they remained for nearly sixty years.

  Many changes occurred on Mull during that time. Mains electricity followed by water on tap transformed the Ross of Mull. The road was upgraded, although still single track, and the long awaited pier was built at Craignure. The picturesque motor boats which plied between Mull and Iona were replaced by an ungainly but practical ferry conveying many more foot passengers, while benefiting the island farmers.

  Despite these improvements, the population continued to dwindle and the primary school closed in the 1970s. The granite building, which always served as venue for community events, thus became the village hall. Then a gradual change brought increased tourism and a level of prosperity. Incomers seeking the simple life restored tumbled-down cottages and developed holiday homes. New houses were built, and even the old church, once used as a byre, became a dwelling house. Meanwhile, descendants of that easy-going generation which willingly supported the family through thick and thin formed the bedrock of the community.

  On the domestic front, the goats produced four kids between them, while Corrieshellach gave birth to a filly and won first prize in her class at the Royal Highland Show. Over the years Puddy – Annabel Carothers – wrote two more romantic novels which, combined as a trilogy, became Kilcaraig, published in 1982. If Nicholas recorded Volume II of his memoirs, there is no trace of it. He died peacefully at Achaban House and was buried in the garden.

  Fionna Eden-Bushell

  February 2010