Rhanna

by Christine Marion Fraser

  Shona and Niall, like many children before them, searched for signs of bounty but found nothing. Hopefully they also searched for parts of the legendary skeleton, one day unearthing an old bone which they excitedly took to Old Joe who was the leading authority on matters marine. He immediately identified it as a cow’s ‘knuckle’ probably buried and forgotten by a dog.

  As well as the excitement of the Creags there was swimming in Loch Tenee or in the calm little bay in which the harbour nestled. The latter was the best fun because the harbour was the heart of Portcull. Boats big and small plied in and out, and the fishermen let the children clamber aboard their boats to play among tarry ropes and lobster pots. Gulls screamed and old women leaned from rose-framed windows to chat with everyone who passed. Winter was the time for Ceilidhs but in summer, dances were held in hay-filled barns. The men got slowly but pleasantly inebriated while the young couples crept to haylofts to kiss and cuddle. Shona and Niall, with groups of other children, lingered at rickety doors and dared each other to rush in and grab handfuls of bannocks and fruit cake.

  It was strange to see Wullie McKinnon, now a lanky youth of fifteen, march into a barn with a girl on his arm. His hair was neatly plastered, his shoes polished but he still sniffed continually and had long ago got used to his nickname of ‘Dreep’. He had none of his sister Nancy’s roguish good looks but like her he was extremely fond of amorous pursuits. It was a favourite game with the youngsters to climb into a hayloft before the start of a dance, to hide and await the appearance of the courting couples. ‘Dreep’ was the favourite. The watching children choked back their laughter while he panted and sniffed between kisses. He was awkward with his girls but usually managed to undo a blouse, and grab a breast to which he clung like a tenacious lobster till he was slapped on the face.

  ‘Will we ever do things like that?’ Shona wondered. ‘It all seems a bit daft.’

  Niall, tall and handsome at twelve years, scoffed at the idea but grew red in the face and changed the subject.

  Shona was at the lanky stage, legs long and body shapeless though her plump cheeks were thinning, emphasizing the cameo features of her infancy. She was inclined to untidiness and preferred her long hair to fly loose but Mirabelle made her tie it back with ribbons which she detested because of their femininity. She was a tomboy, perhaps through long association with Niall or perhaps in an unconscious effort to be like a boy in his eyes. There were times when he had gone off with boys to fish in the abundant rivers or to sneak into Burnbreddie to poach a grouse or pheasant just for the devil of it.

  The first time he had deserted her she had sulked when next he sought her company. But Niall was not a boy to be trifled with and her mood had only served to drive him away for a much longer period and now she knew better than to have her girlishly subtle displays of disapproval, accepting him back from his manly sojourns as if they had never been apart.

  But now he had changed again and they had spent that whole summer together, if anything closer than they had ever been before. Sometimes he put an arm round her and gave her an oddly affectionate hug which made her feel queer and protected, the look on his tanned boyish face near her own making the feeling of love she felt for her father steal into her heart, only with Niall there was something different and she didn’t know why.

  She loved her father with a love that was deep, her heated words of four years ago forgotten, but it was a love without the displays of affection she had shown so freely in early childhood. Now she felt even closer to him.

  There were times when his strong arms reached for her, an indefinable longing in his dark eyes but something deep inside made her resist him, a pride, a stubbornness, she knew not what, but she recognized vaguely that it had all stemmed from the day she read her mother’s headstone and discovered the secret that had shrouded her simple child’s life for six years. She was happy but sometimes wondered what her life would have been like without Niall.

  They had married each other when seven and nine respectively, a simple ceremony with Agnes as chief bridesmaid and Stuart Simpson as the minister. It had been a hasty affair, the ‘marriage feast’ that awaited them on a ledge of the cave which was serving as ‘kirk’, a much more attractive proposition.

  Now they had found this other cave, stumbled into it really while playing amongst the Abbey ruins. The ruins dated back into the mists of time, nestling in a hollow and skirted by a rocky heather-covered hillock known as Dunuaigh which meant Hill of the Tomb. Because of the many ghostly legends attached to Dunuaigh the islanders usually gave it a wide berth but Niall and Shona found it an exciting place to play and defied the legends. They were children of whispering quiet places and anything with a legend to it enthralled rather than frightened. Niall had tripped and fallen on a tangle of gorse and bramble, then disappeared from view. Shona poised listening in the shadow of a crumbling wall, unable to pinpoint the direction of his calls. She went forward, tearing herself on the snagging bramble, then jumped when Niall’s head suddenly appeared from a gorse bush.

  ‘It’s a cave!’ he told her excitedly. ‘All big and airy with recesses like beds.’

  She crawled in beside him with difficulty. The cave’s entrance was thick with overgrowth and the only reason that Niall had stumbled upon it was because a big slab of rock had fallen inwards. It was dry and very quiet without even the buzz of a fly to interrupt the silence. Niall pulled back a clump of gorse and secured it to a crack in the rock. Sunlight filtered into the cave which went backwards into the hillside for twenty feet. Several rough recesses had been hewn into the shelves of rock and two large stones in the middle of the floor resembled a rough fireplace.

  ‘It’s grand,’ breathed Shona. ‘So warm and dry . . . not like the smelly caves at Port Rum Point. But . . . you don’t think it’s a tomb of some sort? It is in Dunuaigh!’

  ‘N-no, I think it’s been a hidey-hole carved out by the monks centuries ago. Long ago the Norsemen came in great Viking ships and raided the islands. The ships were like dragons and the Norsemen plundered and stole things. I think the monks who lived here made this cave to hide their food. When the Norsemen came the monks likely came into the cave to hide – maybe for days, and they would sleep in these recesses till it was safe to come out again.’ His eyes sparkled at the thought of the monks cowering in hiding while the mighty bands of Norsemen ravaged the island.

  Shona drew in her breath. ‘No one knows of it but us. It will be our wee house. We can come here to play, if it rains we have a shelter and if we want to hide from anybody we can come here.’ Her enthusiasm grew. ‘We can bring things to make it cosy. Mirabelle keeps a lot of old pans and dishes she’s forgotten about. You can maybe bring things too. We can light a fire and cook things on it!’

  Niall caught her mood. ‘That would be grand. We’d be like explorers and Mother’s always so busy with the baby she’d never notice if I took some bits and pieces.’

  He referred to his little sister of four months who, with her constant baby demands, had caused quite an upheaval at Slochmhor. But it was a happy upheaval and Niall knew the atmosphere had changed since that long holiday last summer when he had gone with his parents to Stornoway. Lachlan, worn out after a bout of pleurisy, and Phebie, an unhappy shadow of her former self, felt they had to get away from Rhanna for a time. Leaving a locum to the tender mercies of Elspeth they went to Lachlan’s brother in Stornoway.

  Two months later they were back on Rhanna, the old boyish bounce returned to Lachlan, and Phebie sparkling in a way she hadn’t done for a long time. In Stornoway, away from all the reminders of old quarrels, they had recaptured all the love and freedom of their early married life. Lachlan’s hurt heart healed and Phebie forgot her grievances. Slowly they picked up the threads of their troubled marriage and twined them together again. Lachlan regained his confidence in his powers of healing, of delivering life and letting it go when nothing further could be done to preserve it.

  Niall spent much of his time with his cousins, two
boys near his own age, and Phebie and Lachlan walked hand in hand through summer days, discussing their lives in the frank manner of their youth. And the nights – Phebie never forgot the long golden nights with the scented air of summer drifting through the window. Those nights of love without fear were not to be forgotten and the result was little Fiona, pushing and bawling into the world after a short though violent labour, delivered by her own father who held her tiny form as if it were the most precious thing in the world. Phebie sang about the house again and Lachlan’s manner was sure and firm.

  Niall was fascinated by his tiny sister. He played with her and even changed her nappy when the need arose. He kissed and cuddled her, feeling proud that she was his little sister, but when she cried her loud lusty cry he was glad to let his mother cope.

  Shona jumped into one of the recesses. ‘Sit here till we eat our pieces, I’m hungry!’

  She delved into the package Mirabelle had prepared that morning. Thick crusty bread with butter, apple pie, oatcakes and scones, nestled temptingly in their wrappings.

  ‘Mirabelle’s a great cook!’ praised Niall, abandoning his own lunch to savour a piece of pie.

  ‘I know and she’s learning me. I can bake scones and make bread but it always turns out a wee bit wizened.’ She sighed. ‘Mirabelle’s getting awful old – you know she was seventy-three the other day. I worry sometimes in case she dies because I love her so. I heard her telling Biddy she gets sick betimes and Biddy said it was like her heartburn and caused by old age. Biddy’s old too, she’s sixty-six and says she’ll go on delivering babies till she dies. She’s delivered nearly all the folk on this island except old ones like herself. She even helped give birth to my father.’

  ‘How could she give birth? She’s not your father’s mother!’ Niall’s tone was scornful through a mouthful of scone.

  ‘Och, you know what I mean. It must be funny to see babies you’ve delivered grow into people.’

  ‘Babies are people too, only little ones!’ snorted Niall in superior tones. His two years’ seniority put him on his mettle with her and just lately he had felt an impatience because she prattled on so childishly while his thoughts and feelings were becoming more adult. Sometimes he felt protective and strongly affectionate towards her, at other times she annoyed him but he couldn’t think of a life without her. Yet soon he must because his parents were sending him to a school on the mainland.

  His love of animals had helped him to decide his career. He wanted to be a veterinary surgeon. He would be a doctor like his father but instead of helping humans he would help animals. Phebie had shared her home with many strange, wounded or orphaned animals through the years. One of these had been a seal pup, fortunately weaned but hurt and unable to search for food. Niall, with a dozen of his contemporaries, had carried the seal from Portvoynachan, four miles over rough moor, to dump it in Phebie’s vegetable garden. It was a favourite trip for the Portcull boys, to hitch a lift aboard a fishing vessel from Portcull to Portvoynachan then to walk back to Portcull overland.

  For two months Phebie tholed the seal slithering in the kitchen door whenever it could. She didn’t even mind when the seal lay in pot-bellied splendour in the zinc tub out in the sun with Niall labouring back and forth from the burn to throw buckets of water over it. She even grew very fond of the young seal, indulgently christening it Salach because it smelled so strongly of fish. But when she found it snoring contentedly into Niall’s back one night, with its silky head planted firmly on a pillow, she insisted it be returned immediately to the deep. Salach was thus returned to her natural habitat, fully healed but her mind imprinted with all the little homely comforts she had experienced in the land of humans. Niall had moped for a week till it was reported a young seal was haunting the harbour at Portcull and for a whole lovely summer he, with crowds of other youngsters, swam with Salach till the autumn came and she deserted Portcull to seek a life with her own kind.

  Animals were Niall’s vocation and his father had encouraged him to become an animal doctor; but he knew that his education would have to be furthered for such a specialized career so in autumn he was leaving Rhanna, his parents, and Shona who had been such a part of his growing years. The thought softened him and suddenly he put an arm round her. Fondly.

  ‘You’re a funny wee thing!’

  ‘I’m not wee and I’m not funny!’ she said hotly. ‘And I’m going home because Uncle Alick’s coming today. I promised Mirabelle I’d help her get tea ready. I like when Uncle Alick comes! He lifts me up and gives me hugs. I wonder why his wife never comes with him?’

  ‘Because she doesn’t like getting her feet covered in dung,’ said Niall who had watched Mary on one of her rare visits picking her way daintily through a field.

  ‘Manure!’ corrected Shona primly.

  ‘Dung!’ spat Niall viciously. He was a bit wary of Alick. He hated the way he fawned over Shona and he didn’t like the way Alick laughed. It wasn’t real somehow. If anything he disliked Alick more than Fergus. At least Fergus was manly-looking and didn’t prattle like an old woman. Alick was good-looking and women liked him but he was too smoothly handsome for rugged Niall.

  ‘You’re a vulgar boy sometimes.’

  ‘I can be rude all the time if I want. Come on then, don’t keep Uncle Alick waiting!’

  They plodded through the heather and by the time they got to the hill track near Dodie’s cottage they were tired and stopped to rest. Niall sprawled untidily in the grass and Shona sat hugging her knees.

  ‘We’ll get ticks,’ said Niall uncaringly. ‘You’ll get them mostly in your bum!’

  ‘Bottom,’ she said evenly knowing he was egging her into a temper because he was still dwelling on Alick.

  ‘Bum!’ repeated Niall. ‘Bum! bum! bum!’ and feeling the laughter rising in his throat dispelling his mood, shouted daringly, ‘arse!’

  ‘Arse!’ echoed Shona and collapsed beside him on the grass where they both screamed in delight.

  ‘He breeah!’ Dodie’s doleful greeting made them sit up.

  ‘He breeah!’ they said together and Niall added, ‘Are you looking for your cow, Dodie?’

  ‘Aye and not findin’ her. She’ll he hidin’ from me. I have her potash ready and I’m wantin’ some milk for my breakfast!’

  ‘We’ll help you,’ said Shona promptly and ran off with Niall in search of Ealasaid.

  Dodie followed with his long loping gait. He had changed little over the years and no one knew quite what his age was, but the years he had spent on earth were the least of his interests. His first and foremost was Ealasaid whom he cursed constantly but loved with the same slavish devotion he had lavished on her mother. She was a cow with the wanderlust and all year round he tramped miles to feed her and milk her. He’d been unwilling to let her have a calf after what happened to her mother but Fergus had persuaded him that she was fit for such an event so he had succumbed, and Wee Ealasaid had arrived safely. But after a while Fergus had bought the calf from Dodie who couldn’t cope with a wanderlust cow and a stubborn young bullock.

  Dodie’s second interest was his tiny garden out of which he coaxed amazing vegetables. He sold the surplus to make a few pence and altogether lived in a self-sufficient little world. Ealasaid was forever bringing her four-legged friends from the hill in an effort to trample down the fence that surrounded the little garden. Once they had succeeded, making a tasty meal before departing, leaving the patch a trampled mess of cabbage leaves and manure.

  But Dodie wasn’t easily dissuaded and now the garden was like a fortress into which he alone could penetrate through a massive gate made of a tangle of wood, wire, and flotsam, all bound together with heather. The fence was high with a disconcerting array of wire round the top over which not even the deer could jump.

  ‘Only the sun gets in,’ said Dodie happily.

  Niall found Ealasaid in her shed behind the cottage happily munching a bundle of old hay.

  ‘Ach the bugger!’ cried Dodie. ‘Me trampin�
�� miles and her doublin’ back on me! Ach well, I’ll milk her now. If you go into the house I’ll bring you a stick of rhubarb to chew when I’m finished.’

  Niall and Shona were the only children that Dodie had ever honoured in this way. The island folk had seldom seen the inside of his cottage and few wanted to. Knowing his untidy ways they were sure his house must reek like himself.

  The first time the children entered the dim interior they held their breaths. But the tiny room was amazingly neat. The two upright wooden chairs were rickety and an old dresser was almost in pieces, but treasures, reaped from shore and woods, decorated every available space. A lump of driftwood shaped like a seal was nailed to the wall above the fireplace, sea urchins scraped clean were strewn among the pine cones on the dresser. A pot of wild honeysuckle stood in the deep recess of the tiny window. True, the curtains were like cobwebs, ashes spilled from the grate but there was no ‘Dodie’ smell in the room. A string of onions hung from the ceiling and Shona decided they were the magic remedy for all unwanted odours.

  ‘Sit you down now,’ instructed Dodie coming back from Ealasaid. ‘I’ll make the wee polkys then I’ll go and get the rhubarb.’

  He was a most mannerly host. Nothing would do till the children took the two chairs leaving him drooping in the middle of the room so that his head would not touch the low ceiling. He went to fetch the rhubarb and the children sat obediently. They longed to wander round the room and look closely at the ornaments but were afraid they would break Dodie’s trust and not be allowed back.

  Two paper ‘polkys’ were filled with sugar and handed to the children with plump sticks of rhubarb.

  ‘This is the best rhubarb I’ve ever tasted,’ appreciated Shona, licking sugar from her lips.

  Niall nodded in agreement. ‘It is the best, Dodie. My mother has a good patch, so she has, all the best manure goes on it but never is it anything like this.’

  ‘Not the best,’ mumbled Dodie blushing with pleasure.