Free The Sea for Breakfast by Lillian Beckwith

dinner, so I went round to see his wife, and told her I wanted a wee bitty paper or a box to put somesing tasty in for her man’s dinner. She gave me a box and so tsat’s got rid of tsat lot.’ He sighed. ‘Well, I’d best be away,’ he repeated, but he had reckoned without the grateful attention of the policeman who now came hurrying towards the car. Hector beamed complacently as once again his hand was grasped and shaken. But this time it was the policeman’s hands that were covered in fish scales.
    When Hector returned from the service he asked me if I would mind very much following the hearse back to the burial ground instead of returning straight to Bruach, as we had originally intended. Behag’s uncle, he explained, had been something of a reprobate and had cut himself off from the family. As a consequence Hector had been the only mourner and he thought Behag would not like it if he left the old man to go alone to his final resting place. Though I suspected in this arrangement a design to await the evening opening of the pubs before returning home I fell in with it because it meant that I should be able to see part of the Island I had never seen before. While Hector supervised the actual interment, I thought, I could wander over the moors looking for wild flowers of which there might be some species not found in Bruach.
    When we arrived at the burial ground we were met by a trio of indignant grave diggers who roused themselves from their perches on listing tombstones to inform us that they had not received a word about preparing a grave until an hour ago. They had the cows to milk and other chores to do tonight and they couldn’t get the grave finished until morning.
    â€˜What’ll we do with him for tse night tsen?’ asked Hector
    â€˜We could put him in the church,’ suggested one of the trio. The grave diggers and the driver of the hearse carried the coffin into the church. Hector watched them impassively.
    â€˜You know,’ he said when we were seated again in ‘Joanna’ and heading for Bruach, ‘I tsink tsat’s likely tse first time tse old man has ever been in church in his life.’
    I dropped Hector at Morag’s cottage and because I was still feeling aggrieved over the business of the trout I made an excuse not to go in for a ‘strupak’. I supposed both Morag and Behag knew that it was a box of poached trout Hector had loaded into my car that morning but as no Bruachite really believes poaching in moderation to be a crime they would have assumed that I also knew and approved.
    I had barely finished feeding my poultry and having my own tea when Hector sparked in through the gate in a new electric blue and viridian pullover. He came with a saucer of fresh-made butter from Morag and really sincere offers to help me with one or two jobs which he knew perfectly well I had already done for myself. He sat on the bench watching me as I cleared the table and washed the dishes, too ashamed and embarrassed to keep up a conversation but humming every now and then to show me how much at ease he felt. I had some letters to write and I wished he would go but I could not bring myself to say ‘I mustn’t keep you back’, which is the accepted Gaelic way of telling anyone ‘For goodness’s sake, go!’ My expression must have been a little forbidding because he tried several times to draw a smile from me by telling me feeble jokes. At last he could bear it no longer.
    â€˜I wish I hadn’t made you cross with tse fish,’ he said miserably.
    â€˜Oh, I suppose it’s all right,’ I conceded stiffly.
    He got up and lumbered towards me, his arms outstretched. I remembered the cats, and capitulated.

Beachcombing
    One of the chief delights of living in Bruach was that there was always an excuse to go rambling along the seashore in search of drift wood for kindling. To negotiate much of the tide line one needed