Return To Rhanna

by Christine Marion Fraser

  ‘Nothing like a good hot cuppy to stoke the boilers,’ she greeted Shona affably, wiping away her drip with the corner of her flowery frock. ‘I canny bide the coloured water they serve on the boat and I am drinking enough now to keep me going for a whily.’

  Kirsteen managed a smile. Indeed it was impossible to be straight faced when in the company of Aunt Grace; one of the reasons Dugald had so enjoyed his visits to her croft on Coll. ‘I’ll give you a flask away with you, Aunt Grace,’ offered Kirsteen. ‘Though at the rate you drink tea a milk churn might be more suitable.’

  Shona wanted not to like the equable little woman who was going to take Lorna away, spoiling all the anticipated joys that should rightfully have been hers, leaving in their place a week that stretched interminably ahead, a week in which there would be no Niall, no Ellie. But instead she found herself smiling as Aunt Grace giggled at Kirsteen’s words and without haste helped herself to another cup of tea, her hanky fluttering over her nose as if in readiness for the coming drips.

  Shona caught Kirsteen’s eye, saw her ready smile. She smiled back, feeling petty and ashamed. She had vowed to help the older woman and instead she had come here today and behaved abominably, as if it was all Kirsteen’s fault, as if she was the injured party in a family crisis which called for patience and understanding, not angry words and an introspective obsession with her own needs and desires. It came home to her that Morag must be really ill for Ruth to dream of parting with her baby for even a short while.

  Aunt Grace put down her cup, wiped her mouth thoroughly with her hanky, straightened her hat, and with a beaming smile announced that she was ready to leave.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ offered Shona. ‘You’ll have your hands full.’

  Kirsteen threw her a grateful look and they set off, Shona holding the baby, Aunt Grace carrying the suitcases.

  ‘I am stopping by to see Dugald before I go,’ she informed Shona. ‘The poor mannie is having a hard time these days – and poor Morag too. What a way to end up, and her such an active body in her day. I mind o’ her when she was just a lass and though she was aye a quiet one, there was a contentment about her and she was kindly too in her own way. She has brought all this on herself, of course, the mind can do strange things to the body and lookin’ at her it is no’ hard to tell she has no will to live. Any other cratur’ might go on for years wi’ a failin’ mind, but Morag will no’ last very long. If she sees the month out no one will be more surprised than myself.’

  Dugald greeted his sister with quiet affection and they disappeared inside so that Aunt Grace could say goodbye to Morag. ‘Though it will just be a waste o’ time,’ Aunt Grace said sadly, ‘the poor soul doesny know one face from another, yet there are times when she looks as if she knows more than she lets on.’

  Ruth came out to cuddle her daughter and kiss her goodbye. She was thin and strained looking and Shona said sympathetically, ‘How is your mother today, Ruth?’

  ‘She ought to be better than she is.’ Ruth sounded puzzled. ‘Lachlan says she could recover completely from the stroke but she won’t make any effort to do the things that he and Babbie tell her; also she’s getting thinner by the hour. None of us can get her to eat a proper meal.’

  Aunt Grace appeared, her genial face quite sad, though she made her goodbyes cheerily enough. Once out of earshot of the house however she clicked her tongue and sighed heavily. ‘Ach me, thon’s a poor sickly cratur’ right enough. She has the look o’ daith on her and that’s a fact though I never said a word o’ that to Dugald. Mind you, I canny be sad about it for it’s what she seems to want and it would be a blessing for my brother too. I was never happy about him marryin’ the lassie, she wasny the one for him – but there you are – what’s for us will no’ go by us but he’s had to bear the brunt of a cratur’ like Morag for too long now. But of course the same rule applies to us all and that which is comin’ to Morag will surely no’ take any short cuts round about – no indeed.’

  She was puffing a little as they reached the harbour and Shona took her arm to help her over the various pieces of equipment strewn about the pier. They stopped at the gangplank and Shona reluctantly handed the baby over and on impulse stooped to give Aunt Grace a hug and a kiss on her warm cheek. The little woman beamed and patted Shona’s head as if she was a little girl, then turned to go up the gangplank. Her hat was rakishly awry, the cherries glinted in the sun, dangling and swaying in keeping with the bobbing of Aunt Grace’s head. Once on deck a good-natured galley-boy relieved her of her cases and led her to a seat near the lifeboat so that she would be in the lee of the wind when the boat turned.

  Shona waved and turned away, her steps taking her away from the harbour and up to the high cliffs of Burg where the wind soughed and the sheep cropped the sweet turf. Here it was lonely, wide and wild with the seabirds wheeling and swooping. Far below was the great curve of the bay with its golden sands and pink rocks, further out the black ragged reefs glistening with sea spray which toppled over the fat shiny bodies of the grey Atlantic seals sunning themselves on smooth niches. Further in, under the lee of the cliff, was the Well O’ Weeping, spouting up out of an underground cavern. The well, it was said, had been made by the tears of the widows who came there to mourn their menfolk when a ship was lost at sea and some of the womenfolk too had disappeared after a visit to the Well O’ Weeping and had never returned. The old folks maintained that the widows, demented with grief, had simply walked into the sea and drowned, though the younger ones scoffed at this and thought it more likely that they had been unable to bear living on the island with their sons and husbands gone and had left by the usual conventional means. But even the young ones listened when the Seanachaidhs wove their own special brand of mystery into the legend of the Well O’ Weeping. Gathered round a peat fire on a winter’s night with the wind howling and wailing outside it was easy to believe anything told by the Seanachaidhs.

  Shona’s gaze travelled again to the Well O’ Weeping, in her mind’s eye picturing the black-garbed womenfolk at the place of pilgrimage, never finding solace in that wild, forsaken spot with the wind shrieking into the caverns and the ever-present roar of the sea reminding them continually of its might.

  ‘How lonely,’ thought Shona, a mood washing over her that she couldn’t define. ‘How alone they must have felt knowing that they would never see their menfolk again – how very, very lonely.’

  Almost unwillingly she tore her gaze away from the oddly hypnotic spot and even more reluctantly allowed her eyes to sweep slowly over the coastline, her gaze travelling across the calm coastal waters to the broad deep blue ribbon of the Sound, sparkling spectacularly, embracing the pale horizon. The trawlers many miles away were mere specks, the steamer, well into the Sound, puffed out thin wisps of smoke from its funnels. Strange to think that Aunt Grace, to whom she had recently talked, was now some miles away – and so too was darling little Lorna.

  The Sea Urchin was captured unexpectedly in her vision. It was hugging the coastline, a tiny dot, only distinguishable by the route it was taking, set on a course for Hanaay which was a mere hazy blue blob far far away.

  ‘I should have gone with them.’ She spoke the words aloud, a continuation of the thoughts which had plagued her since their departure. ‘Kirsteen was right, I should have gone.’

  She put out her tongue, surprised to taste the salt of her tears. She hadn’t been aware that she was crying and it frightened her because she didn’t know why she was crying – except . . . The niggle of unease that had been with her all morning intensified, crawled deep in her belly so that she shuddered and turned her back on the sea, as if by doing so she could forget all the loved ones it contained on its wilful bosom.

  She arrived at Mo Dhachaidh in a pensive mood, trying to shut her mind to the silence of the house, feeding Woody and the hens, filling the time with a hundred and one small tasks with which she normally never bothered. At teatime she took her tray out to the garden and whilst eating her solitar
y repast occupied herself by mentally marking down all that still needed doing in the wall-enclosed suntrap. Things were slowly beginning to take shape. The rambling roses decked the wall in a bower of deep blushing pink; the lupins, recently flattened by the strong winds, had been resurrected and tied on cane supports, the fuchsia bushes were a riot of purples and reds; the yellow and orange trumpets of tom thumbs splashed their vivid colours along the foot of the wall, invaded by furry brown bumblebees whose legs were made comically clumsy by little sacks of pollen.

  Woody purred, the chickens clucked and she felt lazy and good – except for that odd little niggle of foreboding that was constantly at the back of her mind. After tea she resumed her belated paperwork and when it was finally complete she went upstairs to tidy Ellie’s room, sighing a little at the chaos which met her, smiling as she straightened the various skulls which decorated the dressing-table top. Not until she was about to leave the room did she see the note stuck into the grinning jaws of a conger eel skull hanging on a coat hook behind the door. The writing was untidy and it had obviously been written in a hurry as scant attention had been paid to the spelling.

  Mother,

  I’m glad I’ll not be here to hear you moaning about the mess. I couldn’t find my other shorts and pulled out every drawer before I remembered you had put them in my case yesterday. If you come with us you won’t find this note. I hope you don’t (find the note) because Father is planning some lovely things for us to do and see. His eyes were shiny when he told me about them – that lovely big shine that comes to them when he’s partic very happy (I can spell the other word but can’t be bothered looking in the dictionray). If you don’t come I love you anyway, if you do you’ll know I love you because I’ll bring you a cuppy every morning with the milk in first the way you lick it (I mean like!).

  Ellie

  She threw the note down and went quickly from the room, her throat tight. When she went into her own room and saw that Niall had half-packed a case for her, remorse tore her in two, mingling with a vague restlessness that wouldn’t be stilled.

  Chapter Nine

  The feeling was still with her next morning, and after breakfast she packed a picnic lunch and went round to the shed where Biddy’s ancient bicycle was housed. Niall had stripped, cleaned and oiled it and it squeaked only slightly as she made her way up Glen Fallan towards the moors. The morning had started cool with a mist shrouding the hilltops but now it was rolling away to reveal patches of cornflower blue sky. The grass verges were bright with clover and yarrow, huge clumps of dandelions the colour of ripe butter starred the banks interspersed with buttercups and purple thistles; the scent of wild thyme was heavy in the air merging with the delicate scent of pale blue harebells. The fields of Croynachan hadn’t yet been cut and the hay was a ripe yellow. Highland cattle browsed contentedly among the sweet clover-strewn grass; on the high ground a field of barley, silvered by the wind, swung its pearly fronds to and fro. The numerous reedy lochans that studded the moors were like deep blue sparkling sapphires set amongst the fresh spikes of heather growing on mossy knolls. The lochans were the nurseries for grey lag geese and Shona stopped for a while to watch the parent birds fussing around their fully fledged goslings.

  Shona laughed at the antics of the chicks, peeping at her inquisitively from the cover of the reeds, one or two of the more daring paddling out for a quick swim before darting once more for cover.

  Larks were trilling high overhead while peewits tumbled and frolicked across the endless acres, wild with the delight of the great empty spaces that were theirs to command. Pheasants strutted unhurriedly across the track, the bronze and purple of their plumage flashing jewel-like against the more sombre moor grasses. Shona breathed deeply, glad that she had come to a place where a sense of freedom, like no other on earth, breathed from panoramas of sea, sky, machair and moor.

  The peat hags were only just starting to be opened at this end of the island and several groups of people were busy, their spades raised in greeting as Shona cycled by, the wind lifting her hair, spurring the roses to her cheeks.

  She had no conscious idea of where she was going but it was enough for her to be out in the gloriously perfumed air, to feel the blood surging through her veins, awakening her senses to all the delights of burgeoning summer. When she finally arrived at the abbey ruins near Dunuaigh she propped her bike against a crumbling wall and flopped down on a heathery knoll to just sit and let the unearthly peace of the forsaken hollow soak into her. To some it was an eerie place, desolate, forgotten, but from childhood she had loved it, finding its stillness a balm to any mood she happened to be in. The old abbey itself was a place of wonder and mystery, there was an odd, poignant beauty in its mellow mossy stones which were held together by shrubby roots and by the twisted saplings that grew out of the walls. The secrets, the sadnesses of the past lay here, nothing that was of the present intruded, except for the odd pieces of earthenware left by the tinkers and which might have belonged to a bygone way of life.

  As children she and Niall had played among the stones, never tiring of it, always discovering something to fire their imaginations. Once it had been a pile of old bones in a burial chamber behind the altar stone, another time they had found a piece of roughly woven cloth hidden deep in the earth and well enough preserved to make them think it might once have been worn by the monks who had worshipped here.

  She had lost count of the times they had stood in the arched window apertures, shading their eyes as they stared into the distance, pretending alarm as imaginary bands of Viking raiders came ever nearer, murder in their fiery eyes, terror in their fearsome weapons. Sometimes she had been genuinely frightened by Niall’s vivid descriptions of his imaginary sightings and she had wanted to jump down and hide somewhere safe. But she had seldom given in to her fears. In those days she was continually having to prove to him that she was as good as or better than any boy, showing him a toughness she didn’t always feel.

  She cupped her chin in her hands and let her thoughts wander, smiling as she remembered the fun they’d had, sighing a little for those magical, far-off childhood days. Echoes of things she had thought forgotten came back to her and in her mind’s eye she saw herself as she had been, a skinny, leggy nymph with a mass of auburn hair and a brown, sunburned face more often than not streaked with dirt. By comparison Niall had been sturdily built, fair curls blowing in the wind, calm brown eyes regarding her thoughtfully, occasionally smouldering into anger when she threw one of her temper tantrums.

  How odd, how very odd it all was, she mused, she and Niall sharing childhood days, growing up to become man and wife, having a child of their own. Yet nothing in this place had changed, a bit more overgrown perhaps, but basically the same as it had been for hundreds of years. If she was to come back a hundred years from now it might look much as it did at present, slightly more weathered, a little less of the old stone left, but that would be all. It was so far removed from the modern world, conventions didn’t matter, there was no one to criticize, no one to watch, if she was to revert back in time for a little while it wouldn’t matter to anyone. In a mood of abandon she removed her shoes and stockings, carrying them as she wandered through the cool tracts of mossy ground between banks of wildflowers. A surge of excitement such as she had often experienced in childhood passed through her and she began to skip the way Ellie did during walks, revelling in a carefree method of locomotion that had been forgotten with passing years. Two streams came off the hill on this stretch of moor and without hesitation she paddled in, holding her breath as the freezing water tumbled over her feet. The peaty brown water was full of small trout which nibbled her toes whenever she stood still. With arms outstretched she played the game of the stones that she had so often played with Niall in the past, following the course of the burn by jumping from stone to stone, the first to get wet feet a cissy. She forgot time, forgot everything but the pure joy of behaving like a small girl again with no one about to make derogatory comments. So wrapped
up was she in her game, she didn’t notice where the stream was taking her till the mewing of a buzzard made her glance up. In front of her was Dunuaigh, the Hill of the Tomb, and more immediately a tall, twisted but sturdy birch tree, its branches bearing delicate fronds of tiny green leaves which threw cool shadows on the tangle of bracken and brambles beneath.

  She stared in wonder, her blue eyes mirroring her reflective mood. ‘Niall’s tree!’ she said, remembering how he had planted it to mark the entrance to ‘their’ cave, never dreaming it would survive one winter, let alone – using her fingers she ticked off the years.

  ‘Twenty-five.’ Her voice came out in an awed whisper. ‘Twenty-five years.’ She had thought that the tree would have died long ago, beaten down by the savage winter winds and rains hurtling over the exposed land from the wild Atlantic. She hadn’t been near the spot since she had left the island to make her home on the mainland, had almost forgotten Dunuaigh, the tree – the cave . . .

  Her breath caught in her throat and splashing out of the burn she ran to the tree, reaching up to touch its leaves. They were smooth and cold between her fingers and for a long moment she savoured the feel of them then suddenly and imperatively she began to pull back the undergrowth, but still she was unable to find the entrance to the cave that had once meant so much to her and Niall. Snagging her clothes, pricking her fingers, stinging herself on nettles, she eventually cleared a space through which she could crawl, then she was inside, standing up, dusting herself down, pulling bits of grass and fern from her hair. The tunnel she had made through the undergrowth allowed the daylight to filter in, letting her see that it was all as she and Niall had left it last time they were here. Her brow furrowed as she tried to remember exactly when that was – 1941 – July 1941 – twenty years ago. It was too long ago to recall the exact day but as soon as she got home she would look up her old diaries. Strange that she should come back, almost as if something had pulled her to the spot. She stared around; nothing had changed; the wickerwork chairs still stood, one on either side of the stone ‘fireplace’; the dolls that Mirabelle had made were lying on the shelves among cups and various oddments of kitchen utensils, all covered in dust and cobwebs.