Rhanna

by Christine Marion Fraser

  ‘Too damned well I know it! She wouldn’t tell anyone where you were! Even when she died she had everyone in circles trying to locate you.’

  He didn’t mean to deliver the blow so hard but the words were out. Her face went pale but she showed no emotion. ‘I – didn’t know. I haven’t written since we came down here last year but she knew this address. She didn’t write much so I didn’t suspect. I . . . this may sound hard but I can’t feel anything very much, pity perhaps and regret that things went the way they did but . . . that’s all.’

  Fergus stood up and looked deep into her eyes. He made no attempt to touch her. ‘Your mother was like me, Kirsteen – too much pride. It’s a heavy burden and she died with pride choking her. I’ve had to swallow mine and the taste of it was bitter and sour. Now I fear I have none left and you’ve a mite too much. I was too proud at one time to ask a lovely woman like you to be my wife, I drove you away. Now I’d go on my knees to you if you asked me.’

  She kept her eyes fixed on the grass at her feet because his nearness was turning her into an unresisting being without control of heart or mind. ‘It’s not that easy, Fergus. It wasn’t easy having a baby in London and finding a place where I could work and keep my son. He was the only thing that kept me sane. That first year away from you I had to fight not to go running back to Rhanna and you. I left the biggest part of myself on that island; the rest of me, the living shell that walked and talked, had to eat and sleep. I went from job to job and hated them all, then I found the Campbell-Elliots and for four years now they’ve treated me like one of the family. I work for them but they make it a pleasure and it’s not many would bother with a single woman and a young child.’ She inclined her head towards the house. ‘I can’t just go off and leave them after all they’ve done. Try to understand . . . my dear, dear Fergus.’

  He looked at her quickly, trying to catch her eye as she whispered the endearments, but she eluded him.

  He took a step backwards. ‘I’m – glad I saw my son, he’s a fine lad – Shona was looking forward to having a wee brother.’

  She turned quickly. ‘Oh, how is she? I’ve thought so much about her.’

  ‘She’s . . . been my life these years. She’s had sad times but they’re over now. Niall and she are to be together again when he comes home from military hospital. He was wounded at Dunkirk.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, but glad it’s turning out for them. In my heart I always thought they’d end up together, they were so close as children.’

  He was turning away from her and a beam of evening sun found the small white hairs among the jet black of his sideburns.

  ‘Oh!’ She strangled a cry and moved away. ‘I’d better see if Beatrice is managing.’

  He nodded, slowly and deliberately signalling his defeat. Then he remembered something and pulled a package from an inner pocket of his jacket. He held it out. ‘It’s a bit late but these were meant for you. I wrote them four months after you left Rhanna but your mother kept them back from you. I have to thank Mrs Travers for their return – she found them in a drawer after your mother died. They’re of little use to me now.’

  He pushed the letters into her hand and strode away seeing nothing before him.

  She stood where she was, tears coursing down her cheeks, clutching the letters like a drowning person clutches at a straw.

  Rhanna was determined to give Niall a hero’s welcome. They were all there at the harbour, leaving work behind for the occasion. Todd, with two horses to shoe, had simply taken them to an absent neighbour’s barn and let them have a feed of hay. Wullie the carpenter had left some newly cut wood to ripen nicely in the sun and Merry Mary, even Behag Beag, had closed their doors for a whiley.

  Canty Tam, with his peculiar leaning stance, grinned aimlessly at the sky and Dodie was lolloping anxiously from Glen Fallan. Biddy, Robbie, Beag, old Joe, Bob and Murdy, all the dour, loving familiar faces were there in the crowd, waiting with a subdued excitement as the boat bringing Niall foamed into the harbour. Hardly a cottage had an empty window, faces peered and the fishermen’s wives leaned ample arms on window sills and ‘cracked’ with each other to fill the time.

  Elspeth stood proudly by Phebie and Lachlan, holding the hand of an excited Fiona, and Shona waited quietly with her father. A little behind them stood Alick and Mary with the twins, on Rhanna for their summer holidays.

  Shona was wearing her blue dress, the one Niall liked her in best. Her copper hair, tied back with a blue ribbon, tumbled down her back, and her eyes sparkled blue in a face pale with excitement.

  Fergus puffed his pipe and the smoke curled in the haze of the autumn day. Behind him the hills were bronzed with bracken and the moor stretched, a sea of purple heather.

  The approaching boat brought a swelling tide of green which slopped and swirled against the piles of the pier.

  Fergus could sense his daughter’s tension and she caught his look and smiled, a quick nervous smile that wakened in him the usual responses of protective love.

  ‘Not long now, mo ghaoil,’ he whispered.

  ‘I’m – afraid, Father.’

  ‘I know exactly how you feel, I’ve been through it too but it’s to be sure your meeting will be happier than mine.’

  An involuntary little cry broke in her throat and she gripped his hand tightly. ‘I wish – oh how I wish . . .’

  ‘Weesht now, lass, it’s all meant for us. Things canny be changed.’

  The boat sounded its horn and the pier swayed with the bump. Ropes were thrown and tied. There was quite a crowd of passengers, the last of the summer people visiting relatives. Among them bobbed two heads of bright hair. At first Shona couldn’t distinguish Niall then an arm came above one of the heads and she knew it was him.

  ‘Niall,’ she whispered, then ‘Niall!’ in a shout of joy that echoed above the general hubbub.

  In a minute he was down the gangplank and in her arms, wordlessly clinging as if he would never let go. A cheer went up and he stared in amazement.

  ‘For you,’ she murmured, looking at him, seeing a very pale thin face, so different from the boyish contours she remembered, but still Niall, his brown eyes aglow with joy. ‘Why me, sweetheart?’ he said. ‘I’m no hero, just another soldier who got crocked up in the war.’

  ‘You’re a son of Rhanna and to them you’re a hero.’

  Phebie and Lachlan came over and Niall was smothered with the love of his family. Fiona clung to his neck and he was jostled and welcomed, the tongue of his native Gaelic sweet and dear to him.

  Fergus knocked out his pipe and was making his way to the core of the crowd when he stopped frozen, his black eyes looking in disbelief at Kirsteen coming uncertainly towards him, her hand clutching that of their little son.

  Fergus was immobile, unable to move while hope and love churned in his heart. She too had stopped. Grant was looking about him in a wonder of delight. ‘Mother, look at the caves!’ he cried. ‘Look at the mountains! Look at the seagulls!’ He broke from his mother’s grasp and ran, a sturdy little boy, filled with the magic of his new discoveries, ran to the screeching gulls perched along the harbour and chased them into the sky where they soared in silent majesty of flight.

  His parents beheld each other in a daze of longing then the years were bridged in one short moment. She was beside him and he was holding her so tightly she gasped and laughed before their lips joined in a kiss that swept away all doubts in a tide of love.

  ‘Was it the letters?’ he whispered in her ear.

  ‘Partly, but mostly because after you left I was so miserable and sad Mrs Campbell-Elliot asked me what was wrong. I told her I had seen you and she said I was to come to you at once. I waited till they had another governess – it was the least I could do. It seemed the longest month I’ve ever gone through in my life – except when I left Rhanna.’ She looked towards the mountains and breathed deeply. ‘It’s so good to be home . . . do you think it will work for us?’

  ‘My dearest Kirsteen,�
�� he said huskily, ‘how could it not? You’ll be my wife, tomorrow if possible.’

  She laughed. ‘Rhanna will be shocked. Fergus McKenzie with a wife and ready-made son.’

  ‘Let them,’ he said and kissed her again, uncaring about anyone or what they thought. He caught Lachlan’s eye and received a mischievous wink and he raised his hand to the doctor who had devoted himself to the people of Rhanna and who had honoured him with a friendship that was all the stronger the second time round.

  Alick and Mary were bearing down on them.

  ‘Welcome aboard,’ grinned Alick holding out his hand to Kirsteen. ‘Are you all coming along now? It’s high time we iad a bite to eat. Mary here will thraw a chicken for us.’ He put an arm round his wife’s waist and they laughed at the look of disgust on her face at the idea of killing a chicken single-handed.

  Shona had just spotted Kirsteen through the crowd and she gasped, ‘I can’t believe it!’

  Niall nodded with quiet satisfaction. ‘She came on the boat with me. I knew her but she didn’t recognize me – I was only a glaikit wee boy when she went away!’

  She smiled at the jibe but continued to look in her father’s direction. ‘That wee boy – the one with the black curls must be . . .’

  ‘Your brother,’ finished Niall before he was lifted to the shoulders of two brawny fishermen. The crowd sang a triumphant Gaelic air and Canty Tam shut his eyes and thanked the Uisga Hags for the return of a Rhanna man.

  Phebie and Lachlan each took one of Shona’s arms. ‘He belongs to the people for a wee while,’ said Phebie with a sigh of contentment.

  ‘Then he’s ours again,’ said Shona.

  Lachlan nodded towards Fergus and Kirsteen. ‘There will be at least one wedding soon,’ he prophesied. ‘We’ll Ceilidh for days.’

  A small boy came running, his face red with exertion. ‘Biddy – where’s Biddy? Mrs McPherson’s started!’

  Biddy broke from the crowd. She had lost her hat and her hair straggled over spectacles that were characteristically lopsided. ‘Will the folk on this damty island never stop havin’ bairns?’ she wailed indignantly but as she followed the small boy on legs that were spindly but strong from a lifetime of walking glens and moors, her face was serene and smiling. Nothing gave her more pleasure than seeing a tiny new life come bawling naked into the world.

  Dodie, his thoughts already taking him over the moors in a search for Ealasaid and his morning milk, loped after the crowd going into Glen Fallan. ‘He breeah!’ he shouted dismally to Morag Ruadh who was searching the beach for driftwood, then he wailed to the disappearing crowd, ‘Will you wait for me? I have a present for Niall so I have!’

  The harbour was quiet once again but for the sound of waves and the cry of gulls. Triumphant in the distance Niall’s head bobbed above the rest, a blob of gold against the wild yet dreaming hills of Rhanna.