Storm Over Rhanna

by Christine Marion Fraser

  ‘But at my age I should be sitting with my slippered feet up the lum contemplating my old age pension.’ Shona laughed and threw the doctor a roguish look. ‘It’s what all the cailleachs are saying but I know you wouldn’t want to come into that category, would you now? You’re far too young for that – though on the other hand,’ she eyed the other woman thoughtfully, ‘you seem older somehow – och, I don’t mean that in a cheeky way,’ she added hastily, ‘it’s just, well, you do tend to take life a bittie too seriously – and if you don’t mind me saying so, yourself with it.’

  Megan’s flush deepened. She liked Shona McLachlan. She was like her father, straightforward and honest and often disconcertingly forthright. From the beginning she had felt at ease in the older woman’s company. There were no barriers here. Shona treated her not so much as a doctor but as a friend. Megan liked that very much. God knew she needed someone like Shona in her life. She had many acquaintances on the island but somehow it seemed to stop there, and she often felt lonely and uncertain in the new life she had chosen for herself.

  In the next few minutes she was to find out the reasons for that as Shona, taking her silence as a sign of disapproval, went rushing on, ‘Ach, don’t look like that, I aye did have too much to say for myself. If Father or Niall were here now they would be throwing me warning looks and Father in particular would be knitting his black brows and glaring at me.’ She stared into her cup. ‘If Mirabelle was here she would be reading the tea leaves. She’s that bonny plump lady sitting beside Biddy in Memory Corner. You would have loved Mirabelle, we all did. She looked after us McKenzies for years and when I was a bairn at her knee she often took my cup from me and told me the most impossible but wonderful things that would happen to me when I grew up. She taught me how to read them too . . .’ Reaching out, she seized Megan’s cup and, peering into it, murmured sagely, ‘Ay, there they are, the initials MJ interwoven round a big heart – but of course, these are your initials, Megan, yet, they could just as easily be those of Mark James.’ She caught a glimpse of the doctor’s crimson face and sighed. ‘There I go again, but this time I’m no’ going to apologize. I did think – we all thought – that you and the minister would get together and live happily ever after, but I can see it’s no’ going to be that easy – and, well, I have to say it, you only have yourself to blame. You’ve made good headway with the Rhanna folk, they all like, trust and respect you as their doctor but so far that’s all you are to them. You need friends as well as patients but, for some reason, you haven’t made them. No one can get through to you, and if Mark James doesn’t stand a chance what hope is there for the rest of us?’

  ‘You’re wasting your time here, Shona,’ Megan said dryly. ‘You would have made a fine psychiatrist. And it isn’t all my fault, you know. You islanders are a canny bunch and can be a regular clan when the mood takes you. I have tried, I tried very hard with Babbie Büttger but from the beginning I sensed a resentment in her because I dared to take Lachlan’s place.’

  ‘Ach, Babbie didn’t mean any of it.’ Shona smiled indulgently at the mention of her friend who was the district nurse on Rhanna. ‘She didn’t take kindly to you at first, not just to you but to the idea of a whole new way of working. She and Lachlan were a team for countless years, you have to take that into account. But she’s over that now and only too willing to meet you halfway, yet she was saying only the other day you won’t let her get near you, that it’s a case of work and nothing more.’

  Green sparks shone in the doctor’s hazel eyes. ‘Oh, so you and she have been discussing me, though perhaps talking might be a more apt word.’

  ‘Ay, we’ve been talking.’ Shona sighed, wishing now she hadn’t let her tongue run away with her. ‘It’s natural for people to talk about one another and with you being so new here – well – your name is never far from everybody’s lips.’

  ‘Woody’s got a big belly!’ Ellie Dawn turned a rosy face from the fire and shrieked with glee. She was playing with the cat who had rolled on her side to allow the child’s fingers to probe into her soft fur. Shona snatched her daughter from the rug and hid her giggles in the warm flesh of the little girl’s neck. ‘Nancy Taylor of Croft na Beinn was here this morning,’ Shona explained to her visitor, ‘and if you know Nancy and her mother, Kate McKinnon, then you’ll understand where this wee rascal gets her vocabulary.’ She rubbed her nose against Ellie Dawn’s and gazed into the child’s golden-brown eyes. ‘Woody is going to have babies soon – round about the time we’re going to have ours, is that no’ right, you wee whittrock?’

  Ellie Dawn leaned forward to pat her mother’s stomach with a chubby hand. ‘Baby,’ she stated with the utmost solemnity, ‘in Muvver’s belly.’

  They made a charming picture, mother and daughter, the rich red tresses of the one against the pale gold of the other, the infant’s small fingers innocently touching her mother’s body where they would.

  ‘You’re right, of course, I should have made friends by now,’ Megan spoke awkwardly. ‘I suppose I’ve been so intent in getting my patients to accept me that I’ve overlooked too much else. Could I – would you mind if I started off with you, Shona?’

  ‘Ach, I’ve aye been your friend, you were just too busy to notice, that’s all.’ Shona spoke easily, secretly relieved that the doctor hadn’t taken offence at her. ‘It’s difficult in a small community – to keep up the professional side yet to know just when to let the barriers down a bit. But Lachlan managed the two very well and with a bittie experience so will you.’

  ‘Lachlan again,’ Megan smiled ruefully. ‘A very difficult man to live up to. I wonder if I’ll ever be half as good as he is,’ she finished wistfully.

  ‘Och, of course you will,’ Shona reassured. ‘When he came first to the island he had the sacred memory of Auld McLure to contend with. An old rascal was McLure, he flirted with the de’il at every turn yet the rogue was beloved by the old folks. According to gossip he wasny much of a doctor but had the knack of putting people at their ease and was just as much at home taking a dram by a crofter’s fireside as he was downing brandy in the laird’s mansion.’

  Megan laughed. ‘God rest the ancient McLures of the world – and talking about rest, you have an uncanny ability for taking the talk away from yourself. I don’t know how on earth we got round to discussing Auld McLure but speaking as your doctor as well as your friend I want you over in Oban on the next boat, so start packing the things you’ll need and I’ll make the necessary arrangements.’

  ‘Oban!’ Shona was aghast. ‘But I’m not due for another three weeks yet and I’ve no intention of wallowing in a maternity bed when both Ellie and Niall need me here, and besides—’

  ‘Oban,’ Megan spoke firmly. Besides what she had heard from the gossips’ ready tongues, she was well enough acquainted with the McKenzies to know how stubborn they could be. ‘The winter gales are starting in earnest now and I’m not taking any risks with you –’ she paused and rushed on – ‘in your condition and at your age.’

  ‘You’re worse than Lachlan any day,’ grumbled Shona, her brow furrowed in what Megan had privately christened ‘the McKenzie scowl’. ‘Forbye that you sound just like Elspeth Morrison. She’s aghast at the idea of me ready to drop a bairn let alone still able to enjoy the lusts of the flesh, as she calls it.’

  At that moment Niall’s whistle sounded in the hallway and Sporran the spaniel, who often accompanied him on his veterinary rounds, bounded into the kitchen to pounce on Ellie Dawn and roll her over and over on the floor. Woody spat her disdain at the antics of the young dog and stalked away, both nose and tail high in the air, while from under a mound of russet fur Ellie Dawn yelled her delight at Sporran’s boisterous intrusion onto the scene.

  ‘I’ve fed the hens, they nearly flattened me when I got to the gate and I guessed there was a hen party going on in here.’ Niall smiled at the visitor as he spoke, his brown eyes sweeping over her trim figure with frank appreciation, a twitch of laughter lifting his m
outh on catching Shona’s grim expression. Cheekily, keeping one eye on her, he reached out and helped himself to a scone from the basket, grinning in anticipation of the rebuke he knew would follow his action.

  Shona rapped him smartly on the knuckles as she might have done a schoolboy and scolded, ‘Your eyes were aye bigger than your belly. You might have got away with it at Slochmhor but I’m no’ your mother and will no’ stand for your nonsense.’

  ‘Big belly, big belly,’ Ellie Dawn chanted, coming over once more to stroke her mother’s stomach and lay her little head on it as if it was a cushion.

  ‘You see,’ chuckled Niall, ‘you’re corrupting our bairn with your bad language and you’ve the cheek to talk about Nancy. And what a way to treat a husband whose only crime was to pop into his own home for a minute to see how his wee wife was faring.’

  ‘Oh, I know fine you’re keeping an anxious eye on me,’ Shona spoke rather sharply. ‘You’re all doing it. Father’s aye looking in on any flimsy excuse, no’ to mention Babbie and Kirsteen, Fiona and Ruth, even Phebie though I can thole her better because she’s the only one who doesn’t make me feel like a decrepit cailleach ready to drop into my grave at any minute.’ She picked up her basket and tossed her auburn head proudly. ‘Now I’m away with this stuff before it gets mouldy with age like myself. Fetch your coat, Ellie, you and me will have a lovely walk together down to Portcull.’

  ‘I’ll give you a lift,’ said Niall quickly. ‘I’m going down that way myself.’

  Shona glowered at him. ‘No you’re not. You said at dinner time you had to go to Portvoynachan this afternoon.’

  ‘I’ll give her a lift.’ Megan’s tone brooked no nonsense. ‘I’m just off home and will drop you off on the way, Shona. It’s a fair walk to the village and I’ve just told you, you’ll have to take things easier from now on.’ Turning her eyes away from Shona’s furious face she spoke appealingly to Niall, ‘I’ve just been telling your wife I want her over to Oban on the next boat. She’s rebelling at the idea, so do you think you could try persuading her it’s all for the best?’

  ‘Whoever tried persuading a McKenzie?’ Niall laughed. ‘Mirabelle used to say they were all as pigheaded as mules. But don’t you worry, Doctor, my wife will be on that boat even if I have to carry her to the harbour myself and tie her up in the hold.’

  Shona rushed after him as he strode out to the hall, catching up with him as he reached the front porch. ‘Just who do you think you are, Niall McLachlan?’ she demanded tearfully, rage almost choking her. ‘You’ve no right to speak to me as if I was a daft bairn – and – and in front of Miss High-And-Mighty too.’

  ‘I don’t think – I know who I am,’ he retorted, his own eyes flashing. ‘I’m the husband of a beautiful, stubborn, bad-tempered woman who is too – too glaikit to see that we are all anxious about her because we love her very, very much.’

  ‘Glaikit!’ she stormed. ‘Oh no, Niall McLachlan, that’s been your stamp ever since I first clapped eyes on you in the Post Office when I was a bairn of five and you called me names and was the cause of Mirabelle yanking my breeks down to my ankles and skelping me on the bare bum . . .’ All the fire went out of her suddenly as she saw the sparks of laughter starting in Niall’s eyes. ‘I’ll never lose my McKenzie temper, will I? But it was only because you and Megan ganged up on me after I had seen you looking at her and lusting after her with your eyes.’

  He gave a shout of merriment. ‘Now you do sound like a cailleach – Elspeth in particular. As for admiring Megan, well, I wouldny be human if I didn’t enjoy those nice legs she shows off to the world – but – I’ll tell you a secret, Mrs McLachlan –’ he nuzzled her ear with his lips making her shiver – ‘they aren’t a patch on yours and never will be and the rest of you is just as lovely.’ Tenderly he placed his hands on her stomach. ‘Particularly now, with our bairn growing inside you. You’re so soft and vulnerable-looking, with secrets in your eyes as if you know something the rest o’ the world doesn’t. You glow with an inner light, everything about you is bigger he smiled softly and his arms tightened round her, ‘and I don’t just mean physically. You radiate desire, warmth. I don’t know how I’ve managed to keep my hands off you this whilie back.’

  ‘It will be over soon.’ She melted against him, brushing his mouth with hers. ‘Then we’ll be back to normal and you can do as you will with me. I’m a wanton woman, Niall McLachlan, and never could hold myself back with you.’

  ‘And you will go to Oban as Megan wants?’ he breathed into her ear.

  ‘Ach, of course. I was going to say so anyway when you barged in and started pinching cakes. I want this baby to have the best possible start in life and would never do anything to jeopardize that.’

  He glanced outside. Fat yellow-grey snow clouds were piling over the peaks of the hills, the air was brittle with cold. ‘The wind’s dropped,’ he nodded, ‘it will snow soon.’ As he spoke the first wisping flurries whispered against the porch windows. ‘You take care,’ he told her, and giving her a final squeeze he went whistling out to the little Morris Minor that carried him on his rounds, leaving her to go back into the kitchen with a light step and the smiles back on her face.

  At sight of her, Megan’s heartfelt sigh of relief came out louder than she had intended and, giggling, Shona took Ellie’s hand and led the way outside with Sporran dancing at their heels. Megan’s car was an old but comfortable red Mini and into it they all crammed only to pile out five minutes later after countless abortive attempts to get it started. Megan tossed her hair back from her face and gave vent to a long drawn-out sigh of frustration. ‘It’s been playing up this good while back but I never had the time to get it fixed, and now the battery is flat as well as everything else.’

  ‘Never mind,’ consoled Shona, ‘Angus McKinnon will soon get it going again. He’s as good with engines as he is with house repairs.’

  ‘But,’ Megan eyed her doubtfully, ‘I heard that Angus has a reputation for putting more holes in a roof than he fixes, and Grannie Ann was telling me only yesterday she caught him sleeping off a hangover in her hayshed when he should have been mending her chimney.’

  ‘Ay, he is a bittie clumsy forbye being heart lazy,’ Shona admitted with a twinkle, ‘but he is the only motor mechanic this side o’ the island. No one really specializes in cars, folk like Angus just tacked them on to his jack-of-all-trades business as the need arose. We’ll likely see him at the bazaar. You can have a word with him there.’

  ‘Shona McLachlan, you’re going to get your own way after all! I wasn’t going to the bazaar and I didn’t want you walking to the village but now it looks as if we’ll have to, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Ay, you’re right there, Megan – and Niall just away in front o’ us too.’

  Shona’s sorrowful tones were wasted on the doctor. The sparkle in her eyes made them very blue, her cheeks were glowing, her nose a bright cherry red in the freezing air whistling through Downie’s Pass. An impatient Sporran was already bounding away ahead and Ellie Dawn was bouncing in her mother’s arms, chivvying to be let down and away with the dog.

  As they all walked along the winding glen road Megan found that she was thoroughly enjoying herself. Shona was in an abandoned mood. Despite her girth she skipped along, her hair a banner of flame against the grey sky, and her infectious enjoyment of the snow-harried day transferred itself to Megan so that she felt stimulated and alive as she hadn’t been for a long time. Soon her own face was frost-stung to the colour of the holly berries nestling among the rowans on the lower slopes of the hills. The River Fallan rushed along, the burns frothed down the rocky slits of the corries, the snow whirled about them in sluggish eddies that melted on their faces and clung to their eyelashes.

  ‘Oh, I love it when it snows!’ Shona cried ecstatically. ‘I hope it gets thicker and thicker so that we can play in it and give Ellie sledge rides.’

  Megan didn’t remind her of the forthcoming journey to the maternity hospital in Oban. Instead
she followed Shona’s example and seized Ellie Dawn’s free hand so that the little girl swung between them, her shouts of joy mingling with Sporran’s barks on the deserted road. At Slochmhor’s gate they were joined by Phebie, bearing a basket similar to Shona’s.

  ‘I must get this jam and stuff down to the hall,’ she greeted the trio, her plump face breaking into smiles as Ellie Dawn rushed to meet her. ‘Lachy offered to take me in that daft motor o’ his but I’d have frozen to death waiting till he got the damt engine started.’ She eyed the doctor in some surprise. ‘Forgive an auld wife for being nosy and impudent but it’s the first time I’ve seen you walking this road, Megan. Have you adopted the island ways and taken complete leave o’ your senses or has this wild lassie made you as daft as herself?’

  Megan smiled. ‘A mixture of both, I suppose, combined with a car as cantankerous as your own.’

  ‘Och well,’ Phebie said comfortably, falling into step beside them, ‘it’s nice to have a bittie company on a day like this. I’m past the age o’ enjoying the experience of skiting and slithering about on my behind, so if I get into difficulties you two can hold me up on the way.’

  In the high fields above Laigmhor, Fergus and old Bob, with the help of Davie McKinnon, were rounding up the sheep, bringing them to lower ground before the snow really settled on the land. The dogs were barking, running purposefully about, dark dots on the whitening hills.

  ‘I see Shell’s working again,’ observed Megan. ‘The pups must be ready to leave her now. I can hardly wait to get mine home even though I know the wee devil will wreak havoc in the house. At least it will give my patients something to talk about and might keep their minds off me for a bit.’

  She glanced meaningfully at Shona as she spoke. Shona shrugged her shoulders and smiled knowingly as she replied, ‘Oh ay, a pup will certainly provide a talking point – to your face, that is – behind your back the gossips will just say you’re getting to be an old maid before your time with naught but a dog to keep you company in the long winter evenings.’