Jon loved it all; he knew every nook and cranny, every creak and sigh of the old timbers, even the very smells of plaster and wood and cobwebby cupboards filled with household necessities. There was no fighting the spiders on Rhanna, the minute their webs were intentionally or accidentally wrecked, they immediately set to work, spinning bigger and better ones, so that you soon came to realize how pointless it was to keep brushing their nebulous threads away.
The bright face of the moon stared at him calmly as he lay there watching it. Slowly he turned his head on the pillow to look at Rachel. Moonbeams were spilling on to her tumble of black hair; he could see plainly the glossy sheen on the little curls at the nape of her neck and – his heart accelerated – her naked shoulders were like alabaster against the dullness of the patchwork quilt.
She moved slightly; he felt the heat of her flesh burning through the flimsy satin of her nightdress. Oh God! How he ached to touch her. He had waited so long for this moment of nearness and now this: her back hunched sullenly against him – no sign to let him know if she was awake or asleep, only that brief touch of her thigh letting him know that she was there, in the bed beside him . . .
All at once a mighty snore reverberated through the wall, followed by another and then another. Each one was louder than the one before, shattering the silence of the house. Jon couldn’t believe his ears. It was the first time that he had slept in such close proximity to his mother, and as he lay on his back, counting each explosive sound, a horrible conviction grew that, between one thing and another, there would be no sleep for him that night.
Beside him Rachel tossed, then she sat up, her whole attitude tense and listening. Mamma had settled down to a steady rhythm of snores. Rachel could picture her lying there on her back, like a mountain, her lips sucking inwards, outwards, in, out, in, out . . . and wasn’t there now a whistling accompaniment at the end of each rumble? In, out, whistle, in, out, whistle . . .
Rachel glanced at Jon, he gazed at her, a spurt of laughter escaped him. Two seconds later they had collapsed into one another’s arms, Jon helpless with mirth, she so filled with it her stomach ached and she could only find release in little gasps and grunts and funny half-sobs that made her throat ache too. Tears poured unheeded down their faces while they clutched one another in agony. Such laughter generated a lot of warmth and Rachel threw off the quilt, eager to feel the deliciously cold, moonlit air washing over her body.
She was very desirable lying there in the silver-blue light. Her nightdress shimmered, her supple limbs moulded themselves into the feathers. Jon forgot about Mamma, forgot about everything except the beautiful creature lying beside him, half woman, half child. Always he had thought about her in that way: compared to him she was so young, a mere girl of nineteen on their wedding day almost seven years ago.
But tonight she was all woman, all desirable, all tempting in that heavenly light spilling over the bed. She melted into his arms. At first her skin was cool under his hands but soon it burned with heat, the satin material of her nightclothes seemed to merge with her flesh, a combination that drove him so crazy with desire he forgot to be careful and tore away the thin restraining garment. Her breasts sprang out, full and ripe and so deliciously tantalizing he wanted to feel them under his teeth. It was always like this, she could bring out the animal in him with just a mere stirring of her lovely limbs, but tonight she too was awash with an untamed passion, the arms that urged him ever closer were fierce and insistent and with a helpless groan he succumbed.
They bruised one another with their kisses, kisses that went deeper and deeper till their tongues played and fought and brought them both to peaks of greater longings. He nibbled her lobes, she squirmed and pushed his head down to her breasts and made no protest when he gently bit her soft flesh and caressed her nipples with just the tips of his teeth.
‘Liebling,’ he murmured huskily, ‘you will always be mine, always.’
Rachel closed her eyes. She had imagined that she would feel oppressed having Mamma in the next room but instead the idea excited her. Here she was, with the old lady’s adored son in her arms, doing things to her that were for her alone. Jon loved her no matter what Mamma said or did, and nothing could take that away.
He was trembling with his need for her. His mouth moved down from her breasts to caress the soft flesh of her belly. She writhed beneath him till he gave a little cry of helplessness and pushed her legs apart with a mastery that thrilled every fibre of her being. Once upon a time he had been gentle and rather ineffectual during their lovemaking till he found out that that kind of treatment did nothing at all for someone with her kind of wild passions. Now he allowed himself to be completely free with her, which resulted in a relationship that was pleasurable beyond belief.
Roughly he drove himself into her; his sinewy body rippled under her hands. She bit her lip and allowed herself to climb to the crests with him till he cried out and fell back exhausted, bathed in a dew of sweat. A fiery warmth swept through her body; she felt totally relaxed and wonderfully fulfilled.
Twice more in the course of the night he took possession of her body, and each time they both reached peaks of ecstasy that pulsed in their loins till it seemed that nothing could quench the fires burning within them, and all of it was achieved to the tempo of Mamma’s snores in the room next door.
Rachel awoke late next morning. By the time she had washed and dressed it was later still, and when she finally made her way down to the kitchen she was horrified to see that Mamma Jodl had made breakfast and was cosily ensconced beside Jon at the table.
He raised his head to look rather sheepishly at his wife but neither she nor he had any chance to say anything, for Mamma got in there first.
‘Ah, Rachel, at last you have decided to join us. Jon could not wait for you to attend to his needs – a man must eat a good breakfast, and so I have the search in the cupboards – but . . .’ she spread her plump hands and shrugged, ‘no food there for a man like Jon. Where is the cold ham? I ask myself. And the cheese, it is fit only for kinder, too mild, too without taste; the bread it is too soft; the coffee, it is not in existence – and so, I have to go against my will and make the tea with the funny smell and the eggs with the shells that have still the hen’s schmutz upon. Yaa!’ she lifted her broad shoulders in an expressive shrug and glowered scornfully at her boiled egg.
Mamma didn’t have good English; she used her hands and her eyebrows to get over her many points – and in any case, most of the time she was displeased about something and only needed to grimace or utter ‘yaa!’, which was her favourite expression of disgust, to put over her opinions.
As she rose from her seat to fetch the bowl of eggs, Rachel was struck afresh by her size. Every bone in her body was heavy and big, her discontented face was large-jawed but handsome nonetheless. She had enormous feet, and legs like tree trunks; her well-corseted hips and stomach produced a trimness which only served to emphasize the magnificence of her bosom which swelled out in front of her like a great feather bolster. It was quite a daunting experience to see those vast proportions sailing towards one and Rachel never could make up her mind whether to duck or hastily dodge out of the way.
She seemed to fill every space in the kitchen, and Rachel’s resentment at having her here at An Cala boiled in her breast. The kitchen was Jon and Rachel’s favourite room, they had painted and papered it in sunshiny shades of lemon and white. The farmhouse dresser, the wooden chairs, the well-scrubbed table, the worn but wonderfully comfortable armchairs, even the brass fender and coal box, had all come from an old crofthouse in Nigg and blended well with the general decor. When Rachel and Jon were at An Cala together they lit the fire in the homely hearth and used the kitchen as a place to eat and relax in.
To. Rachel, Mamma’s presence in this room was a violation of everything that was private and precious in her life and she had to force herself to go to the table and watch as Mamma’s big hand scooped an egg from the bowl to place on Jon’s plate, a
fter which she turned to her daughter-in-law.
‘The schmutz eggs – you want?’ she asked in a flat voice.
Rachel shook her head and reached for one of the delicious oatcakes that Tina had recently given her.
Mamma scrutinized the girl’s face. ‘Like a bird, you eat – no wonder you are thin and pale of the skin. The eyes, they are black underlining, your mouth, it has the swelling lips. They are the only part of you with the fat that should not be.’
Rachel met Jon’s eyes, they flashed their secrets to one another. Mamma intercepted the look but chose to ignore it, instead she went on, ‘The sleep good you escaped, I too did not sleep well, all night I turn and toss about, and mostly I lie with my eyes open, hearing the noisiness of a strange house.’
Jon choked, Rachel rushed round to thump his back, her lips brushed his ear, he looked up at her and again their eyes sent out their messages.
As soon as the meal was over Mamma began immediately to gather up the dishes and pile them up on the draining board. She was already taking over, Rachel thought bitterly, before we know it she’ll be telling us when to go to bed, when to get up . . .
‘There is no hot water in the tap,’ Mamma complained loudly. ‘This morning I look also for the bathroom, there is none to find, so I take my wash in cold water from a jug in my room. Last night there were no lights to find, only an oil lamp and candle.’ She emitted a noisy sigh. ‘It is so different from Hamburg: there I have all the things I am used to having.’
‘Of course it’s different from Hamburg, Mamma,’ Jon explained patiently. ‘It is an island, many of the houses here don’t have electricity, we are lucky, we have a generator which hadn’t been cranked last night but I will see to it this morning.’
‘You have plenty of money,’ Mamma pointed out stubbornly. ‘You could have the electricians put in.’
A faint smile touched Jon’s mouth. ‘Piped all the way under the Atlantic ocean? No, Mamma, I think Rachel and I are not that rich. As for hot water, there is a back-boiler behind the fire here, when I have had a chance to light it you shall have all the hot water you need.’
‘That is all very well, Jon,’ Mamma was growing a bit red, ‘but what good is hot water without the bath, the washstand? I am a woman who is used to having the clean person.’
Jon remained calm; Rachel had always found his courteous manner towards his mother extraordinary. She had asked him once how he managed it and he had replied, ‘It is the only way to live with her. Look at how you and she war with one another, she believes the young should respect her at all times – and of course – she is my mother,’ he had added, as if that explained everything.
‘We fully intend to build a bathroom, Mamma,’ he told her soothingly. ‘Our trouble is we are never here long enough to see to such things. Not only that, Rachel and I like to be as natural as possible when we’re here and don’t mind the odd little inconveniences.’
‘Little inconveniences! Pah! And is it natural to go to a hütte in a field to perform there the needs of the body. This morning I go there, I sit, I jump off my sit when a large hairy kuh bellows at my elbow and when I step outside I stand in kuh dung!’
Rachel hid a smile, Jon too had difficulty keeping a straight face. ‘We call it the wee hoosie here, Mamma, and if you shut the little gate in the fence the cows won’t come in.’
‘The comedy I do not find!’ Mamma snapped. ‘You were never like this when you live with me in Hamburg, Jon.’ She looked meaningfully at Rachel who stared back and would have stuck out her tongue if it had been anyone else but Mamma. ‘You have there all the cultures, all the good tastes, it is not civilized to stand in kuh dung and wash from a cold water basin. Myself, I will not go to a hütte in the fields again!’
Then you’d better stock up on syrup of figs, Rachel thought gleefully. As my mother used to say, ‘you’ll get constipation and cramp if you keep it in.’
‘And what about the bath?’ Mamma wailed. ‘How am I going to give myself the wash, tell me that, Jon?’
Jon looked embarrassed. ‘We, Rachel and I, use a zinc tub, Mamma. We set it here in front of the fire, fill it with hot water and lock the door.’
There was a pregnant silence as each of them became immersed in their individual thoughts.
Vivid pictures flitted through Rachel’s head. A whale, she decided, lowering itself into a fish kettle.
Jon’s face grew as red as his mother’s as he imagined her getting stuck in the tub, leaving in her wake a great tidal wave that filled the kitchen, with himself and Rachel wading through the flood to go to her assistance . . . an appalling vision.
‘The humility, the indignity,’ Mamma whispered with uncharacteristic lack of fire. ‘I will not do it – I cannot.’
Rachel felt sorry for her – but not sorry enough. She knew Otto had a bathroom at Tigh na Cladach but she certainly didn’t want her mother-in-law poking her nose in there.
Jon was kinder, however. ‘My friend Anton, he has a nice bathroom at Croft na Ard; I am sure he and Babbie will not mind letting you have the use of it.’ He was growing tired of the subject and wanted to ask his mother outright why she had come to Rhanna when she must have known how different it would be to anything she had been used to, but, conditioned to a lifetime of subservience, he held his tongue. He was greatly relieved to see that his suggestion met with her approval, though he worried about how the Büttgers would react to his request.
‘I will go over there later today and ask them about it.’ His words came out rather woodenly but Mamma didn’t notice. Mollified, she filled a kettle and put it to heat on the stove for the dishes. Meanwhile Rachel, who was determined to let the other woman see that it was still her kitchen, made tracks to the table to clear it, leaving Jon to gather together kindling and coal in order to get the fire going and thus provide Mamma with her desired hot water.
The dishes done and the sink thoroughly cleaned, Mamma peeled off her apron. ‘I go now into town,’ she declared with determination. ‘Proper food you must get, Jon, if you are to keep up your strength to live the way of the heathens. First, the Bäckerei, pastries, yes, good solid bread; then the Fleischerei, red meat with blood running. You always needed blood running in your meat, Jon; from boytime I give you it to make you strong.’
Jon sighed. Here we go again, he thought, explanations! For her, on Rhanna, always there will be the explanations that will not be allowed to sink in.
‘Mamma,’ he began a trifle wearily, ‘there is a butcher on the island but there is no bakery – and it isn’t a town. Portcull is a small village with only a few shops; the women do a lot of their own baking, though Merry Mary does get in things like bread and rolls and a few stodgy cakes.’
‘Stodge! I will not have the stodge, no, I will tell this happy Mary to serve to me the apfelstrudel, and if that she has not got I go from there to here till I find.’
Jon gave up. Once Mamma set her mind on something it was useless to try and make her change it. She went to don her hat and coat, each of which was trimmed with grey fur, right down to the hem of the long coat.
Jon gave her directions to the village and off she swept, a string message bag clutched in one hand, a large leather handbag in the other. At the gate she turned and executed a regal wave and then marched down the road as if she had been doing it all her life.
‘She has certainly recovered from her attack of flu,’ Rachel observed rather sarcastically.
‘Perhaps it is the island air,’ Jon hazarded, not relishing further discussions about his mother.
But Rachel wasn’t in a mood for argument, she was thinking of Otto: he would be wondering what had happened to her when she didn’t turn up at Tigh na Cladach. She looked at Jon, dare she suggest that they both go over there so that she could introduce them to one another? But Jon had other ideas: she had forgotten his promise to Mamma over the question of a bath.
‘Come, liebling.’ He took her in his arms and kissed her hair. ‘It is a lovely morning, a
walk on the shore will do us good and then we will pay a visit to Anton. If Mamma doesn’t have somewhere to go and bathe we will never hear the end of it.’
She went to get her jacket. Mamma! Mamma! Mamma! Was that all she was going to hear for the next week or two? What Mamma wanted, the kind of things she needed to make her happy: because keeping Mamma happy was of paramount importance to both Jon and herself, otherwise they could forget any ideas of domestic harmony at An Cala. An Cala! The Gaelic for a safe and peaceful harbour! Rachel had to smile; she wondered how her mother-in-law would get on at Portcull – the villagers ought to have had some sort of warning of her impending arrival . . .
‘I wonder how she will get on with the islanders.’ Jon voiced his wife’s thoughts. ‘She’ll never make herself understood, not only that, she is only familiar with German currency and won’t be able to tell the difference between a mark and a shilling. She’ll argue, she’ll get red in the face – and she will start shouting.’
‘And she’ll make enemies,’ Rachel predicted. She hoped to herself that Mamma would meet Grannie Kate: Kate could sort anyone out, no matter their nationality. If the man in the moon himself came down to Rhanna, Kate would be able to deal with him and not take too long about it either. Rachel felt better; she hoped Behag and Elspeth might bump into Mamma as well. Behag would shrivel her with just one glower and Elspeth would beat her into the ground with a few painful lashings of her razor-sharp tongue.
Stranger on Rhanna Page 12
