Beautiful Just!

Beautiful Just! by Lillian Beckwith Read Free Book Online

Book: Beautiful Just! by Lillian Beckwith Read Free Book Online
Authors: Lillian Beckwith
within a fortnight, began to question the delay. A few days later the explanation arrived in the form of a telegram. ‘Send no more whelks,’ it instructed. ‘Market glutted. All buying ceased temporarily. Letter following.’ The letter following upon the telegram brought even gloomier information. Their last two consignments had arrived at the height of the glut and as a consequence had had to be dumped.
    After the first exclamations of resentment the whelk gatherers, conditioned all their lives to frustration and disappointment, accepted the situation with philosophical good humour. But since it was the first time they had known the whelk market to become glutted they repaired to Peggy Beag’s cottage and drank tea while they discussed the possible reasons for the glut and mocked their presumptuous plans with hard-edged laughter.
    â€˜It was that otter,’ asserted Anna Vic. ‘Didn’t I say at the time that it wasn’t a good sign?’
    â€˜Ach, that’s nonsense just,’ repudiated Peggy Ruag. ‘It’s more likely it was those pyjamas Kirsty was wearing that put the ill luck on us.’ Kirsty smiled coyly and immediately wiped the smile away with her hand.
    â€˜Or maybe it’s just the fullness of the English bellies that’s at the back of it,’ continued Peggy.
    â€˜Maybe before the next tide they’ll be wantin’ whelks again,’ Kirsty suggested.
    â€˜We’ll take good care an’ find out whether they do or not before we send them off,’ Anna Vic insisted. ‘Gettin’ no money for our whelks is bad enough but payin’ to send them to London to have them dumped is a terrible thing.’
    Fiona looked across at her mother who, having gathered the largest quantity of whelks, would have the highest transport charges to pay and she knew that if the demand for whelks revived that season her first earnings would go not to buy ‘Janette’ but to help her mother.
    â€˜Aye well, I’d best be away,’ said Anna Vic. She stood in the open doorway looking out across the sea. ‘I was thinkin’ maybe with the money from the whelks I would get a bit of waxcloth for the floor,’ she told them. ‘What’s down now is as full of holes as a cod net.’ She giggled. ‘I wouldn’t care for ourselves but for my cousin that’s comin’ from Glasgow in the spring.’
    â€˜Aye, right enough, you could do with it,’ Peggy Ruag told her. ‘When folks come from Glasgow they think if you haven’t a bit of waxcloth on the floor you’re livin’ in a pig sty.’
    â€˜We all had our plans, I doubt,’ interposed Kirsty quietly.
    â€˜Plans?’ echoed Peggy Beag. ‘What wasn’t I plannin’ to buy? Why, I was for gettin’ one of them pressure lamps that gives such a lovely light, an’ I was for gettin’ some new overalls the way I’d look more respectable when the minister comes. I even thought at one time I might get one of them fancy quilts for my bed.’ She bubbled over with derisive laughter.
    â€˜Was the new quilt for when the minister comes too?’ Anna Vic shrilled.
    â€˜Oh, the Dear!’ remonstrated Kirsty, sucking back a threatening smile.
    Neither Fiona nor her mother referred to the subject of the dumped whelks and in her candlelit bedroom that night Fiona stuffed the mail order catalogue into one of the boxes under her bed. She wouldn’t be needing that for a while, she told herself and for a few moments she let her body sag with dejection. She looked at the grazed skin of her hands and thought of the hours she had laboured in the bitter cold and of the racking burden of the dripping sacks of whelks as she had carried them up the brae. She leaned her elbows on the chest beneath the tiny window of her room and stared at the dark peaks of the hills where silver ribbons of cloud were stretched tight across the

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