Rhanna

by Christine Marion Fraser

  ‘I heard Father and Mother talking. It was at night and I couldn’t sleep I was so hot. Their room is next to mine and I heard my mother asking Father why they couldn’t have another baby and he said no, not after what happened to Helen.’

  Shona examined a piece of heather. ‘That’s a strange thing. My father cries out in his sleep for a lady called Helen!’

  Niall frowned, his child’s mind trying to grasp a mystery. ‘But Helen was your mother’s name. Didn’t you know that?’

  ‘N-no, I always just call her mother. It’s a strange thing about her because I don’t know very much at all. I ask Mirabelle and she tells me quite a lot but she’s so busy she often tells me to be quiet. My father tells me nothing at all – well almost nothing. Hamish says she was a lovely lady with hair and eyes like mine.’

  Niall glanced at Shona’s deep blue eyes and auburn locks but he was not yet of an age to appreciate feminine beauty.

  ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘my mother said, “Damn Fergus McKenzie! He knows he’s been wrong all these years but not man enough to apologize.”’

  Shona’s eyes flashed. ‘My father’s a fine big man! Say you’re sorry, Niall McLachlan!’

  He remained calm and plopped a stone into the glassy surface of Loch Tenee.

  ‘Wasn’t me that said it so I can’t say I’m sorry. Anyway, it’s true, your father never talks to mine and it’s nasty of him because my father’s the best in the world.’

  Shona’s eyes filled with angry tears. ‘He’s not – mine is! He is – he is – and he loves me the most in the world!’

  Niall looked at her fierce, sad, little face and knew he had gone too far. He jumped from the boulder and put an arm round her with an unconscious gesture of affection.

  ‘Look, Shona – over there by the bushes! Wullie McKinnon’s showing off again! He’s letting the lassies see how high he can pee!’

  She wiped her eyes and saw Wullie, his body arched forward, and a thin spurting stream rising into the air. Several girls watched avidly from behind coyly raised hands and, thus encouraged, other boys joined Wullie till a row of fountains arched at varying heights.

  Niall squeezed Shona’s hand and they collapsed in a giggling heap till Miss Fraser appeared and gathered her little flock together.

  Summer passed. The days were long and golden interspersed by fierce electric storms that threw rain on to the parched earth with such force that the grasses cringed under the onslaught.

  But the crofters and farmers welcomed the rain and it was a good harvest with everyone reaping till last light. Carts were piled high with sweet hay and children and adults rode home in the gloaming, the lilting sound of Gaelic tunes filling the evening till melody and summer, birdsong and laughter, all mingled and became one.

  It was the habit at harvest time for one farm or croft to help the other. Croynachan had been gathered and now it was Laigmhor. Heather and Thistle plodded up and down with the reapers and the air was thick with the warm fragrant smell of freshly cut corn.

  Shona loved this time of year and had looked forward to Laigmhor’s harvest. She raced home from school each day with Tot scampering at her heels and had a slice of freshly baked bread thick with jam and a drink of creamy milk before she went off to the fields. She knew her father would be there, big and strong, stripped to the waist while he worked. She loved to be near him, to watch his rippling muscles under his bronzed skin, and to smell him, the warm afternoon smell of him. His smells varied according to different times of day. There was his morning smell of shaving soap and freshness, his afternoon smell of earth and horses, hay and honest sweat, and his night smell of carbolic soap and wet hair, fresh breath and tingling skin. She wondered if he attached different smells to her and hoped they were mostly nice. She tried to stay clean but it was difficult. She loved to roll in the hayshed and get cobwebs and dust in her hair that made Mirabelle snort with disgust and bring out the bath tub.

  It was nice to be working beside the men and she was quite useful with the rake. She looked at Hamish on top of the cart, his red beard glowing in the sun. Mathew raked with Bob and Murdy, and Dodie, who enjoyed harvest time because he was never out of work, was turning and lifting. There was a quiet elation about him these days. The dearest thing to his heart was Ealasaid and she was at last expecting a calf. She had not been ready for the bull when Dodie thought she was and he had walked her back and forth through the Glen till both man and beast were footsore and disgusted. The laird of Burnbreddie heard of Dodie’s efforts to mate his broken-down cow with McKenzie’s bull and he sent word that Ealasaid had always calved in spring and June was her month for mating. Dodie had fumed and waited till the great day finally came and the bull had joined with Ealasaid.

  Dodie was now at the zenith of an excitement he had never known before. He owned a cow who was going to have a calf and for the first time in his life he really felt somebody. He was also in love with Ealasaid and spoke into her flicking ears in a mournful whisper which she seemed to understand because she bellowed in response. Certain other little riches had come his way. His greasy raincoat had been replaced by a smart navy macintosh and he had been able to solve a certain matter that had been on his conscience for some time.

  Biddy was touched and pleased when he appeared in Glen Fallan one peaceful summer morning and presented her with a surprisingly attractive hat. She had watched him coming up the Glen and wondered where he was going at such an early hour though it wasn’t unusual to see him at any time of day or night because he seemed to roam perpetually. The linnets were soaring and the wrens singing loudly and Biddy was enjoying her porridge when she saw the figure on the road. When it stopped at her gate and looked soulfully up at the stream tumbling down from Ben Madoch she knew the visitor was for her. Dodie never went straight to anyone’s door but hung about dolefully at gate or doorway till he was asked in. The islanders knew his ways and never offended him by letting him stand about too long.

  Biddy gave him the remainder of the porridge from the pan on the fire and he had supped, drank tea, and lingered till Biddy grew exasperated. She had been called to the other side of the island and was less able to hurry now. Sometimes a cart was sent for her or she met a trap going in her direction but on occasion she had to walk all the way and her varicose veins were getting no better.

  Dodie was acting suspiciously, clutching at something under his coat, opening his mouth to speak then shutting it again without saying a word.

  ‘What’s wi’ you, man?’ burst out Biddy finally. ‘Are you knowin’ someone with child and wantin’ my advice?’

  He blushed to the peak of his cap and his brown teeth showed nervously. Suddenly he pulled a bundle from inside his coat and pushed it at Biddy, overturning his cup with excitement.

  ‘It’s a wee thing for you,’ he gulped, his words almost unintelligible. ‘To make up for the one Ealasaid shat on! She couldny help it bein’ consumed but I was ay thinkin’ how she ruined your hat. It will be fine on you, sit nice it will! I know leddies like hats to sit nice. Not like the other in colour but nice, nice it is, ay nice just!’

  Biddy didn’t hear the rather confused explanation. She was already trying on the hat, preening in front of the mirror on a shelf. It was a fine velvet hat with a nice trimming and she was so pleased she stooped and kissed Dodie on the cheek. He blushed again and rising quickly, almost knocked over the table. He opened the door and loped hastily over the winding road till he was lost to view. Never, never in all the years he could remember had anyone kissed him and he put up his large fingers to touch the favoured spot on his cheek, his mouth opening wide with pleasure. Biddy hadn’t asked where he got the hat and he wasn’t going to tell her or anyone else. There had been so many hats in the attics at Burnbreddie. Trunks of them and clothes too. He shouldn’t have looked really because he had been sent up to clear out accumulated rubbish. But he had peeped and there were so many clothes – enough to keep the folk on Rhanna warm for years – the temptation had proved too m
uch. The laird didn’t pay him well for all the work he did, so the hat and the navy macintosh were a sort of bonus. He had worn the coat with a certain trepidation, savouring the warmth of it compared to his old one, yet dreading that it would be recognized by the laird and his leddy. But they hadn’t given him a second glance and he knew Biddy’s hat would go unrecognized too.

  So he worked and dreamed of Ealasaid and her calf, his dreams taking him into realms of fantasy where Ealasaid would provide him with enough offspring to have a herd of his own, one that would be the talk of Rhanna so grand it would be.

  Shona grew tired of raking after a time and Murdy helped her scramble on to the cart beside Hamish. She sank into the warm sweet hay and shaded her eyes to look at Slochmhor nestling in the hollow. She had wanted Niall to come to her father’s harvest but he had refused. He could be stubborn when he liked and had set his chin, adamant about the matter. He dearly loved his father and couldn’t understand anyone who didn’t. Shona too had her own brand of determination and she too adored her father though she was hurt and puzzled that he couldn’t show his affection the way Lachlan did to his child.

  ‘I go to your house but you never come to mine,’ she accused, trying to swing the argument in her favour.

  ‘Your father must say he’s sorry first!’

  ‘But what for? Och, I’m fed up so I am! Do you know what he should be sorry about?’

  ‘No and I can’t ask Mother because I wasn’t supposed to hear. Anyway, it’s a grown-up thing and they can be gey queer if you ask questions.’

  ‘Oh Niall, come to our harvest! We’ve been to all the rest together and I saw you working with my father quite contented. Mirabelle makes a grand harvest supper, She bakes piles of bannocks and fancy wee cakes and we haye chicken and ham on new-baked bread. You’d fairly love Mirabelle. She’s big and cosy with a nice smell of baking off her and though she cuddles a lot she doesn’t do it too much!’

  ‘I do like Mirabelle. She’s grand! I wish we had her instead of Elspeth but I’m still not coming to your harvest!’

  ‘Don’t you like my father even a wee bit?’

  ‘I’ve hardly spoken to him and when I did he sounded girny. He’s fine and strong and I like the way he strides like a giant but he’s still girny!’

  Shona’s face grew red because she couldn’t deny this and she knew she had lost the argument as she always seemed to when she was discussing her father with Niall. Harvesting wasn’t the same without Niall’s presence. Other boys and girls laughed and tumbled but they weren’t the same and she looked down at Slochmhor wistfully. Clothes were flapping lazily on the line and the tiny dot that was Niall ran in the garden. Two bigger dots were Phebie and Miss Fraser who was a regular visitor to the doctor’s house. Shona sighed. She wished Miss Fraser would visit Laigrnhor. The only people who ever came were for Mirabelle; no one seemed to visit her father. She looked at him, unaware that she wasn’t the only one to sigh for things out of reach. Fergus worked purposefully but one eye looked towards Lachlan’s house and Miss Fraser. She had occupied his mind many times during the long weeks of summer. In bed at night his thoughts whirled till sometimes he felt like one demented. There was so much he wanted to do. One of them was to apologize to Lachlan. He needed the friendship of the man he had wronged so badly. He knew he was a man apart from others but he had been in tune with Lachlan the way he was with Hamish. They both enjoyed the same things and they could be happily silent in each other’s company. Yet Lachlan was so different in many respects. He was outgoing and friendly, everyone liked and respected him. Fergus was treated with respect by most people but only a handful liked him and he was a lonely man. He was glad of Hamish and often sought solace in the cosy friendly cottage. There was an atmosphere of peace there. He could enjoy a dram and relax like the animals lying everywhere. Farm affairs could be discussed with unhurried demeanour and he could forget his loneliness. But Hamish had been rather preoccupied of late. It was rumoured he was ‘courtin’ steady’ but like most rumours on the island it had been lacking in concrete evidence. Word was passed from croft to clachan till original beginnings were lost in a sea of speculation and exaggeration. But this time fantasy turned to fact when Hamish was seen several times arm in arm with a lady, mature of years but attractive nonetheless. She was a widow who had come to Rhanna two years before for reasons of health. The hopefuls who had eyed Hamish for years fumed inwardly but smiled at Maggie McBain with admirable composure and hoped the affair wouldn’t last long. When it was rumoured that Hamish was making marriage plans, Mairi McDonald, the blacksmith’s daughter, cried for a week. She had adored Hamish for years and when he had reason to visit her father she stared at his red beard and fine figure with open longing in her rather vacant eyes. She was a plain young woman with none of the buxom quality the Rhanna men liked in their women but she had never cared for any other man but Hamish. She paid regular visits to his cottage when she knew he would be out and cleaned and tidied much to his annoyance because after one of her visits he could never find anything in its proper place. But more than Mairi were disappointed when it became known that Hamish had every intention of abandoning his long years of bachelorhood for Maggie McBain and those females who saw their years on the shelf becoming a near certainty sniffed and remarked disdainfully, ‘And she an incomer too. Why could he not have chosen a nice local girl?’

  Fergus was pleased for Hamish but while the big red-bearded man pursued his courtship, he had nowhere to go in the evenings and he had a lot of time for contemplation. He longed for a change in his way of life. He wanted to open his heart to his little girl who gave so much love which he found hard to return because the years of locking his love away made it difficult to turn the key of release. And he wanted Kirsteen Fraser so badly that at times it took all of his willpower not to go blundering down to the schoolhouse and take her in his arms. His evening strolls took him to Portcull, there to walk along the lonely stretches of shore past her house in the hope he might get a glimpse of her. He saw her several times but she was always with someone else, though she had glanced at him and smiled – a quick, shy smile that belied her racing pulse.

  He did not know of the nights she lay dreaming of him, her body tortured by longing and her mind throbbing with the remembrance of the meeting in the woods so many weeks ago. She visited Phebie more often than was necessary knowing she would have to pass Laigmhor and he might be about. Just to see him fed the love in her heart for one brief moment but knowing she had to pass him by made her ache for days. She went back to Loch Tenee where first they had met and relived each second of their few minutes there. The memory of his strong tawny limbs went with her everywhere but most of all the intense burning passion in his black eyes haunted her every hour of the day and night.

  PART THREE

  1929

  SIX

  The wind battered against Rhanna. Frothing white spume hurled on to the shore and the schoolhouse garden was awash with salt water and rain.

  Kirsteen looked in dismay at her daffodils and wondered how long they could survive the gale. She sat at her window eating a boiled egg laid by one of the hens she had been coaxed to keep by various islanders.

  ‘Nothing finer than an egg fresh frae the erse o’ one o’ your own hens,’ nodded old Shelagh wisely. ‘They give myself the winds but good they are for young folks ay just! I’m readin’ in one o’ they wimmen’s papers Mistress Behag orders from the mainland that eggs are a fine source o’ nourishment. If that’s the case then I should be well nourished just for my mither gave me eggs till they were droppin’ out my ears and I’m blamin’ too much o’ them in my young days for the farts I have now!’

  ‘I didn’t know you could read English, Shelagh,’ said Kirsteen, smiling at the wily old lady.

  ‘Ach well, just a wee bit. I picked it up when I worked to Burnbreddie though they never knew. It’s handy when folks are gabblin’ away and thinkin’ that you only have the Gaelic. You can find out a lot. After I could speak it
I learned to read it. But you won’t tell a soul, I’m sure. You have the two tongues yourself and you and I could have a lot o’ fine wee secrets, eh?’

  She nudged Kirsteen and twisted her wizened little face into a conspiratorial grimace.

  ‘The magazines are rubbish mostly,’ she continued with asperity. ‘I would never buy them but Mistress Behag gives them to me thinking I’ll like the pictures. I know what she reads in them . . .’ She lowered her voice a note below its usually boisterous bellow. ‘Prim is Behag on the surface but underneath she’ll be sensual they calls it and there’s a lot o’ that in they magazines but then . . . there’s some will read anything in place o’ a man!’

  Kirsteen had no time to answer because Shelagh confounded her still further in the next few minutes. She came closer and spoke in a confiding bass whisper.

  ‘There was a wee bit once on the doctor’s page. Someone wrote in about having a lot of winds and he gave a recipe for relief. I tried it and was worse than ever . . . skitters for a week and farts for a month. You’ve never heard the likes! I was never away from Auld McLure till he came back to my house and asked me to show him the recipe. Do you know what he discovered, Miss Fraser?’

  Kirsteen struggled to keep back her laughter and looked suitably interested.

  ‘I had put in liquorice powder instead o’ bakin’ soda and I was more generous than the recipe said. It said a teaspoonful and I just put in a tablespoonful for good measure. I just ignore the doctor’s page now and tear it up for the wee hoosie. It’s fine if you’re in a long time and nothing to hold your interest, you can read wee bits so you can, while you’re waitin’ for a miracle.’

  Kirsteen knew by now that the ‘wee hoosie’ was the name the islanders gave to the dry lavatories situated discreetly at the backs of houses amongst the bushes. Running water and indoor plumbing were unheard of on Rhanna. Except for Burnbreddie and the bigger farms with hand-cranked generators, it was a case of carrying water and suffering the ‘wee hoosies’.