‘You were not made to be skinny, liebling,’ Anton had told her that morning, his hands lingering on the softness of her breasts and she had kissed him and told him she wasn’t meant to be fat either.
‘Phew, I’m wabbit,’ she laughed, plunking herself into a chair and fanning herself with her hat. ‘And to think I struggled all this way only to find Lachlan here and you out of bed, Ruth. Who gave you permission?’
‘Me,’ dimpled Ruth mischievously.
‘Ach, you’re as well; it’s the thing now for new mothers to be up on their feet as soon as possible but if you’re thinking of going downstairs you can think again till I’ve made sure you’re fit enough.’ She glanced at Shona, a roguish glint in her green eyes as she observed, ‘It’s yourself, Shona McKenzie, slim as a yardstick. God, I’m jealous. When did you arrive by the way?’
Shona glared at her. ‘Today! Just now! Babbie Büttger! Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten I’m back to stay for good.’
Babbie ran her fingers through her red curls. ‘Is that so! May the good Lord help us all. We’ll never get a minute’s peace now.’ She jumped to her feet and hugged her friend affectionately. ‘Daft thing! Of course I remember. How could I forget with your father and Lachlan dinning it into my lugs at every opportunity? By the way, have any of you any idea about what’s going on in the village? I know Ranald and Barra have just opened their craft shop but I honestly didn’t think it would attract such a crowd so soon. There’s a queue more suited to Sauchiehall Street waiting to get in.’
Ellie covered her mouth with her hands to smother a shriek of mirth. ‘It’s the fart studio,’ she spluttered in delight. ‘All the towrists will be wanting to see what it’s like.’
‘The what?’ Babbie’s face was a study.
Shona plunged into another account of Tam’s handiwork and long before she was finished both Ruth and Babbie were helpless.
‘Come to Rhanna and get your education right enough,’ gasped Babbie at last. ‘I doubt Ranald hasn’t found out about it yet. He was standing at the door of his shop rubbing his hands when I passed and Barra was inside ringing the till fit to burst.’
Shona shook her head. ‘Tam has done them a good turn after all. He might think twice in future about trying to get one over Ranald.’
Fergus’s voice floated upstairs, announcing that dinner would be ready in five minutes. Shona looked at Babbie. ‘You’ll stay and have a celebration drink, I hope?’
Babbie’s eyes widened. ‘You don’t think I came all this way just to see you, do you? A droppy is just what I need to get my feets going in the right direction.’ She giggled. ‘Remember Biddy always said things like that as an excuse for a dram?’
‘I remember,’ Shona said, her smile faltering a little as Babbie lifted Lorna out of her cradle and kissed the top of her downy head.
Chapter Four
Ellie skipped away ahead of her parents and she was singing again as they made their way through Glen Fallan to the sturdy house set close to Downie’s Pass, a narrow cleft carved out between the hills. To everyone the house was still known as Biddy’s house and though the young McLachlans still thought of it as such they had christened it Mo Dhachaidh which was the Gaelic for My Home, hopeful that the passage of time would mark it down as the happiest of houses to all who entered it to ceilidh or strupak. Niall was whistling, the way he always did when he was particularly happy. Shona looked at him, remembering the young Niall who had gone away a lot from the island but whose return home was always heralded by that jaunty whistle. How eagerly she had strained to listen for it all these years ago and it had become so familiar to her it was imprinted in her heart.
Despite her happiness that fresh windy April day, Shona was aware that a strange sadness lurked under the surface and she was angry at herself because she felt that way. Yet she knew that poignancy was justified on such an emotional day and she smiled even as her eyes misted at sight of the tiny white hairs at the side of Niall’s head. His hair was so fair and shone in the rays of watery sun slanting through the clouds but the little white hairs shone brighter. Strange to think that he was forty now, she mused tenderly. She never gave much thought to his passing years. He was tall and strong with glowing tanned skin and a boyish way of laughing that reminded her of Lachlan, and when he made love to her it was with all the undiminished passion she associated with youth and vigour. He had never made a fuss about passing birthdays and seemed careless about the subtle changes each one made to his appearance yet he had surprised her on his fortieth birthday by commenting in dismayed tones, ‘Hell, I’m forty, I never thought it was that close. Where have the years gone? They’ve flown in and suddenly I’m no’ as young as I was.’
The mark of the scar he had received at Dunkirk stretched in livid pallor across the mahogany skin of his neck and she caught her lip on a sob. Niall stopped whistling and turned quickly to look at her, the hearing of his good right ear razor sharp. His brown eyes regarded her quizzically and he cocked his head in a typically enquiring gesture. ‘You are bubbling over with joy, I hope,’ he said with mock severity.
‘Of course I am, what else?’ she said quickly.
He took her hand and squeezed it. ‘I just wondered if you were feeling the same as me, that’s all. To tell the truth I’m feeling different to what I thought I would. We’ve come back to the island a hundred times since leaving but today we’re walking up Glen Fallan to our house, and I keep remembering things I thought I’d forgotten – things about us as bairnies. I was just thinking about the cave at Dunuaigh. In a way it was our first home really. Mind how we carried chairs over the moors on a June morning? And how we fell asleep after we had gorged ourselves on chocolate and liquorice?’ He chuckled at the reminiscence. ‘I was never away from the wee hoosie that day and Mother kept asking me if I’d been at the syrup of figs. In the end Father had to give me something to dry me up.’
‘Really?’ Shona giggled in delight. ‘I never knew that. I wish you’d told me for the exact same thing happened to me and Mirabelle was so worried she was all for taking me to see your father before I skittered myself away to a shadow. It’s a good job I was back to normal the next morning. If Mirabelle had carried out her threat your father might have put two and two together and made us eat more liquorice as a punishment.’ They both shrieked with laughter and Ellie came dancing back, splashing in the puddles, her long legs carrying her swiftly. Positioning herself between her parents she coaxed them to make a half-hearted attempt at skipping.
‘Ach, you’re both getting old,’ she taunted mischievously. ‘I’ve seen hens that could hop better.’
‘Old! Of all the cheek!’ spluttered Shona, tossing her mane of hair back from her sparkling face. ‘We’ll show you what real skipping is, you impudent wee wittrock.’ And suiting her actions to her words she took to her heels so swiftly the others had a job to keep up.
They arrived at the gate of Mo Dhachaidh in high spirits. Niall glanced up at the windows of the house and said softly, ‘We’re here, Biddy. The McLachlans have come home.’
‘Ay, we’re home, Biddy,’ echoed Shona. ‘And the first thing I’m going to do is tidy up the garden, it’s like a jungle.’
Niall winked at Ellie. ‘The first thing I’m going to do is take your mother over the threshold so that she can make us a cuppy.’ Without more ado he swept Shona into his arms and she shrieked with fright, clutching frantically at his head and covering his eyes in the process so that he charged blindly up the path, a giggling Ellie running to open doors, guiding him through with yelled instructions. Charging into the kitchen he dumped Shona unceremoniously into a chair before collapsing into another one to gasp for breath.
‘I’ll make the tea.’ Ellie swung the kettle over the fire which Fergus had lit that morning, anxious to make the house as welcoming as possible. ‘You two had better take a rest. I told you you were too old to be capering around and I was right!’
Later Shona went upstairs, following the sound of singing to
the room which was to be Ellie’s. She had chosen the wallpaper herself, white decorated with sprigs of green leaves and sprays of harebells, and she had helped to paint the doors and surrounds in a cool shade of forest green. Shona stood at the threshold, watching her oblivious daughter unpacking the cases that Lorn had brought up on the tractor.
‘You’re so happy, Ellie,’ Shona observed softly.
Ellie looked up in some surprise. ‘Of course I’m happy, I’m always happy when you and Father are feeling right with the world. Happiness is like the measles – it’s infectious.’
Shona sat on top of the bed and gazed out of the window. A perfect rainbow was arched against the hills, embracing the peaks in a shimmering mist. ‘Look, Ellie, a rainbow; make a wish before it disappears and one day you might find a pot of gold.’
Ellie left her unpacking and going over to the window gazed out in wonder. ‘Good luck,’ she murmured with conviction. ‘That will be our pot of gold. We’re going to have good luck in this house.’
‘I hope so, Ellie, I hope so.’
Ellie studied her mother’s lovely face and said thoughtfully, ‘Why were you so sad today when you looked at Ruth’s baby?’
‘Was I?’ said Shona rather sharply. ‘I don’t know what makes you think that.’
‘Ay, but you do know,’ Ellie persisted. ‘It’s because you’d like another baby yourself, isn’t it?’
An angry retort sprang to Shona’s lips but a glimpse at her daughter’s earnest face quelled it. Until recently she might have thought the child was being merely impertinent but lately she had noticed a change in her attitude to life. Her observations were more mature, she was growing up and anxious to show that she could take part in sensible discussions.
She took Ellie’s cool little hand and held it tightly. ‘Ay, you’re right, you wee wittrock,’ she admitted huskily. ‘I must be daft but I’d like another the same as you. Your father and I wanted a few bairnies.’ She smiled absently. ‘In the mad rosy idealism of youth we thought we had the world at our command and could make all our dreams come true – but real life isn’t like that, Ellie, things happen that none of us can foresee.’ On impulse she told her daughter about the baby who had died, as she talked her thoughts carrying her back to the dreadful day when she thought Niall had been killed at Dunkirk and like one demented she had run over the moors to the cave at Dunuaigh where her tiny son had been born.
Tears glinted in Ellie’s eyes. ‘What was his name?’ she asked in a faraway voice.
‘Niall Fergus.’
‘And what was he like?’
‘Fair, like your father, a teeny fair-haired wee boy. He would have been a young man now, at least twenty.’
‘I wish I’d known him.’ Ellie sounded wistful and Shona looked at her surprised. Never by word or by deed had she ever indicated loneliness but in that moment she gave herself away.
‘You would have liked a wee brother or sister, then?’
‘Ay, but it wasny to be.’ The child sounded wiser than her years, her golden-brown eyes filled with understanding as she returned her mother’s gaze. ‘Anyway, whenever I get lonely now I’ll think of Niall Fergus and imagine a big brother who sticks up for me all the time and always lets me get my own way.’ She laughed. ‘In real life he would likely have bullied me and called me a nuisance or he might never have bothered his head about me so in a way dreams are better than the real thing – you can make them go the way you want them to go.’
She glanced rather shyly at her mother, colouring a little as she asked, ‘Do you believe in dreams coming true – even though a lot of yours didn’t?’
Shona paused in the act of folding Ellie’s new school blazer over a hanger. ‘Of course I do, though some of mine didn’t, a lot of my nicest dreams became reality – your father was one and you were another.’
The child laughed. ‘I never thought of myself as a dream – I’m too noisy – no – I mean things that you want to do with your life but you’re not sure if you’re clever enough to make them happen.’
Ellie’s modesty about her abilities had always been one of her most endearing traits and the words were typical of her.
‘What is it you want to happen so badly?’ asked Shona persuasively. ‘Tell me and I’ll tell you if I think you can do it.’
Ellie’s eyes sparkled. ‘I want to be a doctor like Grandpa Lachlan. I spoke to him about it when you were all being drunk earlier and he says he thinks I might make it if I work very, very hard. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do but never said anything till I was old enough to be taken seriously.’
Shona smiled. How like Niall the child was. His ambition to be a vet had never faltered and despite difficulties with his hearing he had become a successful animal doctor though he was often doubtful of his abilities. It seemed the trait had passed on to Ellie and Shona was confident that she would become as brilliant as he was in her chosen career. ‘I would have taken you seriously if you had talked to me about it years ago because your father was determined to be a vet from the minute he knew which end of a horse was which and I’m delighted that you want to be a doctor like your Grandpa Lachlan – meantime, what exactly is that hideous thing you’re arranging on your dressing table?’
‘A sheep’s skull.’ Ellie patted the object fondly. ‘I found it on the verge. I’m going to be studying skulls and things from now on and while I’m home these holidays I want to visit Lighthouse Jack. He’s got a marvellous collection of skulls, mostly marine things like whales and sharks . . .’ She looked rueful. ‘The only thing I don’t like about us living on Rhanna is having to go away to school in Oban. I hope I’ll like it.’
‘Of course you will,’ assured Shona. ‘Just you tell them that your uncles, Lorn and Lewis McKenzie, went there.’
Ellie made a face. ‘Maybe I’d better not, Uncle Lewis was a bit wild, wasn’t he?’
‘Ay, he was that,’ agreed Shona. ‘A real young devil at times but everybody liked him just the same.’
‘What a shame he died so young.’ Ellie’s face had grown solemn.
Shona nodded and said softly, ‘Ay, it was a terrible tragedy.’
‘Sometimes I look at Uncle Lorn and imagine he’s Lewis and in that way I keep them both alive – sort of like looking in a mirror and seeing a reflection. Maybe Uncle Lorn does that too, he looks in the mirror quite a lot.’
Shona laughed. ‘That’s because he’s vain and because he doesn’t think a nosy wee madam like you is watching. It’s natural to look in mirrors, we all do it.’
‘I don’t, I’m not bonny enough.’
‘You will be, you’ll grow up to be quite a beauty, Helen McLachlan, all the boys will be after you and I’ll be a grannie before I know it.’
Ellie gazed at her mother’s face. ‘You’ll never be a grannie – even if you live to be a hundred, you’re too young ever to be old—’ She threw down a dress she had been folding. ‘I’m going down to tell Father about me wanting to be a doctor, if I talk nice to him he’ll maybe let me go on a trip with him these holidays – after all, a constipated cow is much the same as a constipated cailleach though I’m not sure if you would stick a suppository up a cow’s backside!’ She shrieked with laughter and left the room with alacrity, dodging the cushion Shona threw at her.
Some minutes later Niall’s shout of approval came from one of the downstairs rooms and Shona smiled.
She went to the top of the stairs and looking down saw her husband and daughter dancing in and out of all the rooms . . . She experienced a pang of pure joy. What a loving and happy relationship existed between the two people who were her life. From personal experience she knew that there was a special love between a father and a daughter and she was glad that Ellie had been brought up in such a happy atmosphere. Everything had gone quiet downstairs and she guessed that the two had collapsed with sheer exhaustion.
‘Father, can I come with you on one of your trips?’ Ellie’s voice floated upstairs clearly.
‘Ay, you c
an that,’ Niall acceded readily. ‘Only give me some time to get the hang of things. Wait till the summer, the sea is kinder then. Meanwhile you can come with me after tea to look at Todd’s cow and maybe diagnose what ails it.’
Ellie giggled. ‘It isn’t constipated, is it?’
‘The opposite – what on earth made you ask that?’ Niall sounded surprised.
Ellie’s giggles changed to a snort of uncontrollable laughter. ‘Och, I just wondered if you would give a cow a suppository, that’s all. I’ll just have to go on the rounds with Grandpa Lachlan and watch him doing the real thing.’
‘Father will have none of it!’ laughed Niall. ‘Can you imagine him letting a wee lassie like you see a thing like that?’
‘I have to learn sometime.’ Ellie sounded as if she was holding her breath. ‘Anyway, I’ve already seen it being done. I went with Babbie once and sneaked up to the window of old Jock the Fiddler’s cottage. It wasn’t a suppository but an enema which was even better because the noises he made into the bedpan frightened his dog so much it ran outside and had the skitters!’
‘You wee besom!’ Niall’s explosion of laughter was an even match for Ellie’s shrieks as she flew from him pleading for mercy, her breath wobbling in her throat all the way up the hall and into the garden.
They were having tea in the kitchen when Ellie wriggled round in her seat to look thoughtfully at the window set into the thick wall above the crofter’s bench. It was a deeply recessed window, with a view looking towards the rugged shoulder of Sgurr na Gill and the winding road through the glen. Its broad ledge shone with fresh white paint and was already adorned by a posy of wildflowers which Ellie had picked from the shaded banks of the River Fallan. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said dreamily, ‘I’d like to have a corner of this window all to myself.’
‘Whatever for?’ asked Shona as she dished steaming portions of shepherd’s pie.
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