‘Oh, that’s all, is it?’ Ruth returned tearfully. ‘Well, she doesny know me as well as she thinks she does, I would never stoop as low as Behag or Elspeth, or any o’ the other scandalmongers o’ this place! I’ll admit I thought she was growing a bit too fond of Otto but Jon’s home now and all that’s over and done with!’
But now Ruth wasn’t so sure – she saw what Jon saw, she thought what Jon thought – she glanced at him and noticed the flush of humiliation staining his thin face and her heart went out to him. She and he had been through all this once before; Lorn had come back to her, more loving, more devoted than he had ever been, but would Rachel ever be truly Jon’s? Could that exciting, beautiful, restless creature ever truly be any man’s one and only love?
A sudden burst of gypsy music filled the room, Rachel had seized her violin and she was playing in a fever of wild abandon, her black hair falling over her face, her dark eyes shining in passionate acknowledgment of music, and love and life.
Her roving, mischievous glance fell on Ruth. She smiled; Ruth didn’t return the smile, instead she pretended not to see it and turned away from it as if it was a wicked thing unworthy of response.
Rachel didn’t notice, her smiles didn’t reach her heart, she only played her violin to cover up for Otto who had gone upstairs to take the pills that would ease the spasms of pain that had suddenly seized him.
The minutes passed. All the attention was focused on her, her flying fingers, the evocative, carefree tunes spilling effortlessly out. When Otto came back, her bursting lungs let go of the air she had held in while she waited for him. He threw her a glance of reassurance together with a slight nod, signifying there was nothing to be afraid of.
She smiled at him, she wanted to take him in her arms and soothe away his hurt and his fears. Two people in the room saw the meaningful glances and they each felt sick at heart and terribly alone in their doubts and worries about the future.
Chapter Sixteen
It was official! Captain Mac was moving in with Elspeth! Bob the Shepherd, who owned a fine new van that he had bought from a win on the football pools, was there at the gate of Elspeth’s cottage, helping Captain Mac move in his few bits and pieces of possessions.
The old shepherd was wearing a grim expression on his weatherbeaten countenance because never, never, had he imagined that any man, far less one of Mac’s intelligence, could sign away his freedom in such a rash manner and to that sour-faced cailleach into the bargain.
Bob had never allowed himself to ‘fall into a woman’s clutches’, as he put it. When his win on the pools had become common knowledge, half the spinsters on the island had tried to ingratiate themselves into his favours but he was having none of that and had soon sent them packing with a few choice words.
The prospect of marriage had never entered his head until the advent of ‘Aunt Grace’ Donaldson on to the island, but she had gone and wed herself to Old Joe whose death last autumn had left the way clear for Bob. But out of respect for Joe they had decided to wait ‘a whilie’ and now the old shepherd was impatiently waiting for her to say the word. He had never met a woman like Grace: she was an excellent cook, she kept her home spick and span, yet she liked to see a man smoking his pipe and enjoying a dram. Her sense of humour was frank and down to earth, she never put on airs and graces for anybody, and more importantly, she was a warm-hearted, kindly little soul with a way about her of making a man feel he was the most wonderful being that the world had ever produced, yet she never cloyed or clung or did any of the things that other women of Bob’s experience were inclined to and he could hardly wait to leave his lonely biggin on the slopes of Ben Machrie and move with her to the fine house he had bought for her some time ago.
Ay, Grace was a woman any man would want in his home, but that Elspeth was a different kettle of fish altogether with her vinegary nature, her razor-sharp tongue and an inclination to deck and gossip about everybody’s business except her own.
Bob was not the only one to hold these views. In general, the men of the island were flabbergasted to think that any man in his right mind could willingly lay himself bare to the dangers of such an arrangement – and ‘wi’ that greetin’ faced cailleach too.’
‘She’ll chew him up and spit him out in wee pieces,’ said Tam in disgust. ‘Thon poor man o’ hers led a dog’s life and was aye glad to get back to sea just to get away from her endless nagging.’
‘Ay, I mind o’ the poor bugger drinkin’ himself senseless just so’s he could sleep away the hours on dry land,’ nodded Jim Jim solicitously, even though he’d had plenty of altercations with the deceased Hector in his lifetime.
‘It wasny all Elspeth’s fault,’ Robbie dared to say uncomfortably. ‘Hector aye had a drouth on him for strong drink, long before he ever wed himself to the cailleach. I mind when he was just a lad, drinkin’ himself sober at the ceilidhs, pickin’ a fight wi’ anybody he could and tryin’ to get the lassies into a corner wi’ just one thing on his mind.’
Tam grinned appreciatively. ‘Oh ay, Hector was aye good at gettin’ his hands up the lassies’ skirts. How he ever came to pick Elspeth for his wife beats me for I doubt he would get his fingers bitten off him if he tried that on wi’ her.’
‘I heard tell she was hot stuff in her time,’ Jim Jim murmured cryptically.
‘Ach, you’re blethering!’ hooted the men. ‘The only thing that was ever hot about Elspeth was her tongue!’
‘Na, na,’ Jim Jim insisted. ‘One time, when she was just a bit girl, she near went mad wi’ lust one night at a village dance. She had been having a wee fly tipple to herself and the whisky must have done things to her blood, for it was said she got this poor innocent lad into a hayshed and just about tore the breeks off him in her hurry to get at his equipment. In no time at all she had overpowered him and, by jingo!, she let him have it – the lot – everything was hangin’ out! She was plumper then, wi’ good rounded hips on her and breasts as fine and rosy as any man could wish for. She went at that poor lad till he was raw and done in and pleadin’ for mercy but she wouldny let him go till all her fire was spent and she lay back, laughin’ and gaspin’ like a hoor wi’ the croup.’
Jim Jim’s eyes were gleaming; the men looked at him. Tam’s big happy smile beamed out. ‘You fly old bugger!’ he said delightedly. ‘The innocent young lad wi’ the unwilling equipment! By God! Now I’ve heard everything! I thought I knew all there was to know on this island but it just goes to show, there’s aye some juicy wee titbit lurking about in the haysheds!’
Jim Jim had turned bright scarlet, he tried hard to plead innocence but to no avail. His cronies forgot the fate of Captain Mac and turned instead to ‘teasing the breeks’ off poor old Jim Jim who squirmed as his weak bladder filled up, and prayed that none of this would reach the ears of his wife Isabel who fondly believed that she had hooked ‘a virgin mannie’ when she had taken Jim Jim to be her lawfully wedded husband.
The womenfolk were generally more tolerant than the men and told one another that the pair ‘couldny do much harm at their age.’
‘Good luck to the sowels – Captain Mac needs somebody to look after him and Elspeth is just a poor lonely cratur’ who needs a good man about the place,’ Kate intoned magnanimously, even though she was hugging herself at the idea of being able to ‘torment the shat out the cailleach’ now that she had ‘a man biding wi’ her in sin.’
Behag was not one of those to wish Elspeth luck. She was beside herself with self-righteous disapproval of such an immoral arrangement, while inwardly a glow of excitement smouldered: she had waited a long time for this day and she went scuttling indoors to polish her spyglasses in readiness.
As for Captain Mac, he didn’t give a fig for all the speculation about his decision to live with Elspeth. He was heartily sick of his unsettled way of life and was actually looking forward to ‘putting his feets up in comfort’ and to sitting down at a table where the food was that good you were ‘feart to eat it in case it would disap
pear.’
His cousin, Gus, who was eighty and a worse cook than Mac himself, had not been an easy man to live with. At night his snores resounded through the house. He dropped food into his beard and ate the particles as and when he found them, hours or days later. He did terrible things with his nose: sometimes he pummelled it till it squeaked wetly, other times he picked it and wasn’t too fussy where he wiped his fingers afterwards, but mostly he drew it over the already glazed surface of his sleeve, and with that same sleeve he often took it into his head to polish the beer glasses.
He wheezed, grunted and cackled when he was listening to a wireless set that was as ancient as himself. It was powered by an accumulator and it crackled and groaned in unison with the old man. To make matters worse, Gus was half deaf, and kept the volume of the wireless turned up at full blast so that it was difficult to make out anything for all the noise.
He broke wind at the table – from both ends of his anatomy, great gusting burps, loud generous belches, combining so boisterously with the other sounds that Mac was frequently moved to wonder how anybody could produce such rip-roaring eruptions and still remain intact.
Gus kept three ferrets in his wee hoosie at the bottom of his overgrown garden. All his life he had kept ferrets to catch the rabbits which formed a greater part of his diet. But now he wasn’t as active as he used to be in that respect and the little creatures had become restless due to lack of employment. In their desire for action they rattled the spars of their cages and altogether combined to make such a din that Mac was loath to visit the place after dark, with the result that half of the time he was constipated and the other half he was running to the wee hoosie, several times in a day, owing to the laxatives he was forced to take to keep his bowels from ‘going out o’ business altogether’.
On one memorable occasion one of the ferrets had escaped and had bitten Mac on his well-rounded bottom just as he had dropped his trousers on one of his ‘cascara runs’. His yells had brought Gus running, a sight which in itself was well worth seeing as one leg was ‘laid up wi’ the rheumatics’ and the other was ‘seized up’ owing to a war wound from his Merchant Navy days. The resulting stilted gait had once been described by an observer as ‘a hirpling hen wi’ the gout’, which was an apt, if picturesque, summary of the old man’s condition.
He had been totally unsympathetic about poor Mac’s wounds, being more concerned about the safety of his ferret than anything else, and had yelled on his cousin to do something about catching ‘the buggering thing’. But all Mac could do was hop about from one foot to the other in a mixture of pain from his bites and frustration in knowing that his calls of nature were receding further and further into the distance till soon they would be lost beyond recall.
Gus had caught his buggering ferret, but Mac’s bite marks had festered and he had been forced to call out Megan and had had to suffer the untold humiliation of ‘baring his bum to the leddy doctor’.
The same lady doctor had only just managed to keep a straight face in the course of her administrations to Mac’s private parts, but the minute she stepped outside the house she had erupted into helpless laughter and had had to run to her car with her hanky stuffed tightly against her face just in case anybody should be looking from the window.
It had taken Mac a long time to forgive his cousin for that painful episode in his life. He hadn’t been able to sit down comfortably for days and was so afraid of going to the wee hoosie he had again become badly constipated and this time he’d had to visit Megan in her surgery on an embarrassing quest for ‘something to ease his blocked tubes’, which was the only way he could think of to describe his problem without too much damage to his pride. Megan, completely misunderstanding, had produced her stethoscope to solemnly listen to his chest, and he had left her surgery with a bottle of cough medicine, his ‘tubes’ becoming more blocked by the minute. Next day, in complete desperation he had gone back to her, and almost dying of shame he had blurted out the exact nature of his trouble, the red stain on his normally happy countenance concerning her so much she had taken his blood pressure and sounded his heart for good measure.
After that, Mac hadn’t spoken to Gus for a week but that didn’t worry the old man, he had a number of cronies the same age as himself who came to play cards till all hours and who drank rum the likes of which Mac would only have used to rinse out his chamber pot.
So all in all Mac was mighty glad to escape his cousin for a while, though the old man assured him his bed was ‘aye ready’, adding with a wicked chuckle, ‘fleas and all’.
Gus had never married, and little wonder was Mac’s opinion, no self-respecting woman would have put up with him for one minute – though, of course – and at this juncture in his musings Mac’s jolly bulbous nose turned a shade paler – he must have been young at one time and possibly quite eligible, which just went to show how dangerous it was for anybody to marry anybody.
Mac’s thoughts were rather garbled at this point and in his dismay he vowed afresh to keep Elspeth at a safe distance and never to let her think for one moment that theirs was anything more than a purely business arrangement.
Though Elspeth was absolutely overjoyed at having Mac in her home at last, not one muscle of her stern face gave away the fact. She was determined to show him that theirs was a purely platonic friendship – for the moment – and she allowed him to settle in at his leisure, giving him ample time to arrange his room the way he wanted, never saying a word when the smell of tobacco smoke filtered hazily downstairs and all through the house.
In fact, she stood at the sink and positively revelled in the manly odour. It had been many years since a pipe was smoked in her home and it was good, oh so good, to have a man about the place again and one that she was truly fond of into the bargain.
She spent the afternoon concocting a mouthwatering evening meal, a strange little drone issuing from her throat, which was the nearest she ever got to singing as she worked. Phebie had said she could have the day off, after they had come to an agreement that Elspeth should now only work part-time at Slochmhor, except when Mac went off on one of his frequent fishing trips or to his sister Nellie’s house on the island of Hanaay.
Phebie was secretly delighted that at last she would have her house to herself more often. When the children had been at home and when she herself had been kept constantly busy helping Lachlan run his practice, Elspeth’s help had been more than welcome, but though he was now retired and Fiona and Niall married with homes of their own, Elspeth still clung to the belief that she was indispensable and that no one knew how to look after Lachlan the way she did. There had been times when Phebie could have screamed with the frustration of being bossed about in her own kitchen but both she and Lachlan put up with it because Elspeth had been such a longstanding and faithful housekeeper and a staunch devotee of the entire McLachlan family.
To have turned her away in her lonely old age was simply unthinkable to the kindly McLachlans but now Mac had afforded them a way out and Phebie could have personally pinned a medal on his chest so relieved was she that he had provided a solution to her problems.
So quite a few lightened hearts went about their business that fateful day of Mac’s move. He himself began to feel more at ease as the day wore on and nothing very terrible happened to make him feel threatened in any way. Indeed, it was a pleasure to be in Elspeth’s home, which was clean without being clinical and tidy without being too orderly. Here there was no loud blaring wireless to contend with, just the nice rhythmic tick of the ‘waggit the wa” clock, the singing of peats in the cosy hearth’ – and no Gus picking food from his beard or picking his nose behind a crumpled edition of the Oban Times, which would later be torn into untidy squares for use in the wee hoosie.
Elspeth’s wee hoosie was a pleasure to visit, discreetly situated as it was behind a flourishing floribunda rose where bees buzzed and the perfume of the flowers invaded the air. The wee hoosie itself was a small, private world with a good big snib on the d
oor. Real toilet paper hung on a properly placed holder, a lavender-smelling air freshener dangled from the low roof and the floor was cosily covered in flower-sprigged carpeting. On a tiny shelf sat a basin and a jugful of water with a bar of white toilet soap nearby; behind the lavatory pan stood a bucket of water to flush toilet waste down into a pipe and from there to a crude septic tank that Hector had built in his more sober and visionary days. It was a unique arrangement, much envied by those neighbours who only had dry lavatories, which had to be laboriously emptied at least three times a week.
Mac was much taken by it and spent some time examining its structure before his eye took to roving once more. It was surprisingly bright in the small enclosure – white painted walls reflected light from a tiny muslin covered window. A picture of a kneeling, virginal-looking woman dressed in white, with tightly clasped hands held to her lips, hung in a strategic position. Mac gulped when he saw it. A small stab of anxiety pierced his contentment: he knew that Elspeth was a fairly religious woman but wasn’t this taking matters just a bit too far?
Then he chuckled, maybe she was like him, praying for a good deliverance as she sat in the wee hoosie, staring at the picture. Perhaps she found inspiration and hope in those praying hands – for all he knew, maybe she emulated the action and sang a hymn or two as well – anything was possible in a wee hoosie of any sort and the old sea dog thoroughly enjoyed his first visit to this tiny sanctum. He even remembered to wash his hands and place the towel carefully back on its hook, and when he emptied the pail down the pan he went dutifully to fill it again from the old well near the house.
At teatime Elspeth served up a delicious and filling meal, she was attentive to his needs without fussing and when it was over he sat back replete, telling her that it was the best food he had tasted for a long time and that she was ‘a grand cook’.
Stranger on Rhanna Page 21
