Free Four Ducks on a Pond by Annabel Carothers

that night. It’s not easy to boil a cauldron of water on a wee primus
stove, and it’s not easy to produce sandwiches, and to make cakes, when you are not well off and ingredients are scarce. But these women did it, and very well too, as all the people who ate
the supper afterwards told one another.
    The concert was advertised to begin at eight, because that was the only way to get people to come by half past eight. In fact it was getting on for nine before the audience had collected,
arriving by foot from the nearby cottages, and by car from further away. Puddy collected quite a number of people by doing trips back and forth with Florrie, who I am glad to say showed no signs of
her petrol trouble. This was luck, and no credit to her since, being inanimate, she doesn’t know things like we do.
    Some of the audience looked very uncomfortable. These were the ones who arrived too late to sit on one of the benches, so had to be squeezed into the school desks, suitable only for children
under eleven, as this was a primary school. I had a good seat myself, on a windowsill, and I didn’t attempt to conceal myself, as everyone seemed pleased to have me there and amused that I
had decided to come to the concert. Though why it should amuse them I don’t know. I’ve told you before that I’m a musical cat, but of course I hadn’t communicated that fact
to them.
    My word, how I enjoyed that concert! The Community people sang and recited, and even acted little plays which were funny enough to make a human laugh. But it wasn’t only the Community
people who entertained us, because coming from towns, they couldn’t play the bagpipes and they couldn’t sing in Gaelic, and our people do like to hear the pipes and the Gaelic songs. So
Hughie Lamont came from Bunessan, five miles away, and he brought his pipes, and he wore his kilt, and he played and he sang to us, and as he is very handsome-looking, and has won medals for
singing at the Mod, I don’t need to tell you how good he was. My word, how the floorboards shook as the people stamped out the rhythm of his tunes, and how the rafters rang as they joined in
the chorus of his songs! It was all I could do not to join in myself, singing meow of course, as I haven’t got the Gaelic. But I refrained, feeling that I might draw attention to myself, and
I never care to be in the public eye.
    Towards the end of the concert, dusk was falling, and somebody lighted a paraffin lamp and balanced it on the piano (on which Jimmy-the-Missionary had been playing accompaniments all evening) in
what I considered was a very precarious way. But don’t be alarmed. There wasn’t a terrible fire disaster or anything like that. The people here know how to manage lamps all right,
though they seem so vague about them.
    The grand finale (from the
Petit Dictionnaire
) was when all the entertainers stood on the platform together and sang ‘The Old Folks at Home’ in beautiful harmony. Somehow I
couldn’t turn my thoughts to Ealing, where I suppose they should have been, but I felt very sentimental all the same, and looking around the room, I knew that the people were thinking of
their old folks, some of whom I expect had been dead for years.
    It took only a few minutes to pack away the benches, which had taken hours to arrange, and very soon Hughie was tuning his pipes and Johnnie-the-Master-of-Ceremonies was shouting out,
‘Take your partners for the eightsome reel!’ I had stayed quietly on my windowsill, and someone had now put a lamp up beside me, so that I felt rather illuminated, but it didn’t
stop my enjoyment of the dancing, and now and again I ventured a wee ‘hooch’, which nobody would hear, as they were all hooching their throats hoarse. The floorboards shook and the
paraffin lamps quivered on their hooks, but they didn’t fall down.
    By midnight everyone was tired and thirsty after their exertions, for even the ones who were too old and stiff to dance had been