Free The Loud Halo by Lillian Beckwith

dinghy and saw her still there she talked them easily out of their confusion and was still talking to them with great animation as she walked between them to the brae.
    â€˜Here,’ said Erchy anxiously when I next met him. ‘D’you think that woman heard what Ruari said last night? Honest, I thought she was a mile away or I would never have asked the man.’
    â€˜I don’t think she heard,’ I assured him.
    â€˜I wouldn’t like to think she was offended,’ he said, ‘she’s such a nice woman.’
    Whether or not she had heard the remark it seemed to have given no offence, for she continued to patronise the boats and to tip generously. In return the boatmen greeted her warmly whenever she appeared and even bestowed on her the accolade of an invitation to go with them on the free trips they sometimes ran in an evening for their friends. She confided to me one day that she had never before in her life had such a wonderful holiday and her praise for the boatmen was unstinted. When at length her holiday came to an end she astounded them by presenting each of them with a bottle of whisky.
    â€˜Didn’t I tell you she was a nice woman?’ demanded Erchy when I congratulated him on the gift. He took the bottle out of his pocket and gazed at it with great reverence. Then his voice changed and he seemed to recoil from the shock of his own words. ‘A nice woman, did I say she was?’ he questioned, with another fond glance at the bottle, ‘No, indeed, but I should have said she was a nice lady! ’

The Election
    â€˜Did you get a bit of venison from the Laird last week?’ enquired Morag as we were returning from milking our cows one frost-still autumn morning.
    â€˜No,’ I replied. ‘Did you?’
    â€˜Surely we did,’ she informed me. ‘I thought everybody got a bit.’ We parted company for a moment, she to pick her way round one side of a patch of bog while I went round the other. ‘It makes a laugh the way he gives us a wee bitty venison as if he’s givin’ us a five-pound note,’ she continued as our paths rejoined. ‘ “I hope you’ll find this nice and tasty, Morag,” says he, thinkin’ likely that it’s a rare treat for us.’ She giggled. ‘An’ so it would be I doubt if all the venison we got was when he had a mind to give it to us.’ Her face wrinkled in an allusive grin. ‘Indeed, many’s the whole stag of his I’ve eaten if he did but know it,’ she confessed shamelessly.
    â€˜Why the generosity?’ I wondered.
    â€˜Likely it’s the Election,’ explained Morag with her usual astuteness. ‘Maybe you didn’t get a piece because he thinks you’re a Socialist,’ she added.
    Until the announcement of the forthcoming General Election politics had rarely cropped up as a subject for conversation at the ceilidhs and when it had it had always been in a bantering and inconclusive way. Even after the announcement there was no vestige of what could be termed ‘election fever’ in the village. Old men ventured to make sketchy references to such subjects as tariffs and free trade, and Murdoch, the village’s only militant Tory, was once or twice reduced to stuttering inarticulateness by the tauntings of a couple of the younger blades with professed leanings towards Socialism, but invariably the skirmishes ended if not in complete agreement then in good-humoured laughter. The Bruachites did not have much time for subjects from which they could not extract some fun one way or another.
    As the Election drew nearer it became apparent that Bruach was going to vote almost exclusively Tory, for in contrast to their normally uncompromising individualism the Bruachites displayed a curious desire for conformity in superficialities. How often have I heard the wily tinkers successfully inducing people to buy a child’s dress or a