Kirsty had tried not to show her despair. She’d managed to say in a choked voice, ‘I don’t suppose I shall have much in the way of an alternative.’
‘But surely you’ve always been happy here at ISLAY haven’t you, Kirsty? Haven’t we both agreed that it’s been grand the way the two of us have worked together all these years and never a cross word between us? I want for nothing more than that you should continue to be happy here.’
Kirsty had at last managed to clear her throat. ‘I’ve always been very happy here at ISLAY with you, you must know that well enough.’ This time it was she who had reached out to squeeze her employer’s hand. The touch let slip their emotions and for a few minutes there was a sobbing silence.
When Kirsty had regained control of her voice she’d said, ‘You ask what ISLAY will be without me, but ISLAY without you can never be the same again. You have been to me what I would have wanted a mother to be. I cannot see myself ever being happy here again.’
‘I pray to God that you will be,’ the old lady had murmured. ‘And I just want you to believe that your position here will be as safe as ISLAY itself,’ she’d continued feelingly. ‘You need have no fear about that. Even though she’s my niece I’ve insisted the solicitor puts it into the lease. Isabel has to agree that you must be allowed to stay here on exactly the same terms as you’ve always been used to from me, for as long as you yourself wish to. The choice will be yours but I hope to God for ISLAY’s sake you’ll choose to stay.’ And there the matter had rested.
After Mrs Ross had departed to live with her sister, Isabel and Mac had immediately installed themselves as the new proprietors of ISLAY. It had taken a very short time for Kirsty to discover that, unlike her easygoing aunt, Isabel was a captious, ill-tempered and penny-pinching woman who not only lacked the experience but hadn’t the temperament to run a highly regarded guest-house such as ISLAY successfully. As for her husband, Mac, Kirsty relegated him to the lower class of boorish lout.
It had seemed to her extraordinary that Mrs Ross had allowed herself to be deluded into believing such a couple could be considered suitable to take over the running of the establishment which she herself had built up by hard work, and in which she had such pride, but there was no gainsaying that she had evidently been so deluded. How much had Isabel fawned on her aunt to obtain her consent to such an arrangement, Kirsty wondered. She was never to know. Six weeks after her retirement Mrs Ross had suffered a severe stroke which seemed to have virtually wiped out her memory and deprived her of the power of speech. Kirsty could only shrug her shoulders and reconcile herself to the sadness of change.
Throughout the months following their occupancy Kirsty had carried on trying as subtly as she could to counteract the many changes Isabel was keen to introduce but soon the evidence of ISLAY’s deteriorating reputation as a good class guest-house was all too plain. Enquiries and bookings became steadily scarcer while complaints from guests became more frequent.
Kirsty had to face the wretchedness of knowing that her own position there was unlikely to be as secure as she had hitherto envisaged it to be. Not for a moment had she let herself believe that Isabel would be foolish enough to imagine she could cope without her, at least for some time anyway but her own need to steel herself to overlook the changed atmosphere – the penny-pinching on food, Isabel’s archly dismissive manner to guests who dared to voice their complaints, her overbearing treatment of Meggy – and not least, her supercilious attitude towards Kirsty herself had alerted her to the limitations of her own endurance. Secretly she’d begun to cast around for other employment, but she was already thirty-nine years old and apart from being a good plain cook she had few other skills to offer in a city where women nearing forty were regarded as being of use only for scrubbing floors or for the scrap heap. Oh well, if the worst came to the worst, she could always scrub floors, she’d had to comfort herself. Until today …
Not until she’d heard the clatter of the trolley being pushed into the Smoking Room had Kirsty risen from her chair and poured herself a cup of tea from her flask. Taking a scone from the tray she again settled into her chair, and as she slowly sipped and nibbled her anger dispersed, her grim expression softened and a smile began to curve her lips. The smile spread until she was capturing her bottom lip between her teeth and pressing the palms of her hands against her cheeks in an effort to suppress the laughter that was threatening to convulse her.
When she had her laugher under control she lay back weakly in her chair, her eyes tear-bright, her head moving dazedly from side to side as if stunned by her own thoughts. Dear God, but today she’d done it! She might have acted rashly but she’d done it, hadn’t she? Yes, she convinced herself, she’d done something which only last week she wouldn’t have conceived it was possible that she’d even consider doing. And she was GLAD! The word seemed to shout itself into her mind nearly triggering off another burst of laughter. There would never again be a degrading scene such as that she had endured in the kitchen this evening. After today she had an effective rejoinder for Isabel and Mac. She had been strongly tempted to use it as soon as Isabel had shown signs of irascibility this evening but consideration for the guests had prevailed. Tomorrow was time enough, and then it would be the sort of rejoinder they deserved. The gasfire popped its warning that it needed sustenance. Guiltily she fed it a couple of pennies. She was averse to wasting pennies on gas but she knew that this evening it would take some time before she could compose herself to face her bed and sleep. Her thoughts were still swirling around the momentous happenings of the past few days, and she willed herself to pin her mind on the precise moment she believed it had all begun. The moment, ten days previously, when in response to the ringing of the doorbell she had opened the front door of ISLAY to admit the person whose name was recorded in the book labelled Expected Arrivals as Mr Ruari MacDonald, Westisle – due Friday p.m.
Chapter Three
On that day there had been a fierce wind and incessant rain.
‘You will be Ruari MacDonald, I’m thinking?’ she enquired of the man who stood on the doorstep. He answered the question with only a cursory salute. ‘Then come away inside now, do,’ she welcomed him with her customary civility, urging him into the vestibule while she hastily closed the outer door against the wind-whipped debris of late autumn leaves which were intent on soiling the clean tiled floor.
‘It is a cruel wind, is it not?’ she continued, ‘and more rain this one day than would disgrace a week.’ As she chattered on she appraised him swiftly, noting that he neither wore nor carried a waterproof. She’d gained the impression that he was totally untroubled by the weather and had immediately surmised he belonged to the Highlands or Islands where, she was only too well aware, wild weather was too constant to be much heeded.
In the vestibule he stood uneasily awaiting her further instructions, a stocky country-looking man of average height and, she’d judged, of middle age, clad in a thick homespun suit and cap. His only luggage was a stout canvas bag. Even after the door was firmly closed he was slow to move from the mat on which he was standing and, sensing his shyness, she held out a welcoming hand.
‘I’m Kirsty MacLennan,’ she introduced herself. ‘I’m sort of head cook and bottle-washer here as folks say,’ she explained with a friendly grin.
Eagerly he grasped her proffered hand and shook it vigorously.
‘Kirsty MacLennan,’ he acknowledged in a voice that was barely more than a whisper and then with growing confidence he repeated, ‘Mistress Kirsty MacLennan, is it?’ as if he wished to fix her name in his memory.
‘Oh, everyone calls me Kirsty, just,’ she told him. His manner relaxed and a relieved smile settled on his face. ‘Through here, if you please,’ she invited him, pushing open the door in the hallway. ‘Now Mr MacDonald, if you will write your name in the book there just,’ she indicated to the register lying open on the chiffonier. ‘Then I will show you your room, or maybe,’ she paused for a moment before going on to suggest, ‘may
be you would sooner leave your luggage down here and go straightaway into the room we know as the Smoking Room overby where there’s a good warm fire that will take the chill off you.’
She hadn’t liked to suggest he might dry his clothes there in case he thought she was referring to his lack of a waterproof. ‘There’s none of the other guests back yet so you’d have the room to yourself. The meal isn’t served until six-thirty but if you’ve a mind for it I can easily bring you in a pot of tea and a scone to put you on till then.’
He received her suggestion with a muttered ‘Aye, aye,’ that had sounded pleased enough, but he’d made no move. My, my, but he’s awful shy, she remembered thinking to herself. She indicated the register more pointedly and then he stepped forward. Taking a snowy-white handkerchief from his pocket he carefully wiped both hands before picking up the pen that stood in the inkpot but as he bent forward, a couple of drops of rain fell from the peak of his cap on to the page. She heard the slight catch of breath and noticed his oblique glance at her, almost as if he expected her to reprimand him for not having removed his cap. With a dismissive smile she stepped forward and blotted the page.
‘There now,’ she approved. ‘Now, will I take your cap and hang it in the vestibule where it can drip to its heart’s content?’ she offered.
He took it off carefully and handed it to her. When she returned from the vestibule she said, ‘Now?’ and looked at him enquiringly, gesturing first towards the stairs and then in the direction of the Smoking Room. He seemed so hesitant that it had crossed her mind that this could be his very first visit to the city. She felt a surge of compassion for him.
‘Perhaps I should show you to your room then,’ she decided for him, and led him up the stairs. ‘See and come down into the Smoking Room when you’re ready just, and I’ll bring you some tea,’ she instructed him.
‘Aye, indeed, I will be pleased to do that,’ he assured her and added coyly, ‘folks mostly call me Ruari, if you’ve a mind.’ She nodded understanding.
In the kitchen while she was occupied with the preparations for the evening meal her thoughts strayed from time to time to ponder on the reason for Ruari MacDonald’s visit to the city and, more pressingly, the reason why he had chosen to stay at ISLAY? To her knowledge, on the rare occasions when Island folk undertook a journey they were generally most careful to ensure that accommodation would be provided or arranged or at least recommended by relatives or connections of relatives, no matter how remote, where they could be certain of being in contact with other Islanders who spoke their language and, in Island parlance, ‘would not make a stranger of him’.
Had Ruari MacDonald been naïve enough to assume that because a guest-house bore the name ISLAY it would, without a doubt, be owned or managed by someone with strong connections with the Island of that name? If so, he would be quickly disillusioned. The truth was that ISLAY had been the name of the house when Mrs Ross had taken it over, and since she had seen no point in going to the expense of having the gold lettering on the fanlight removed, she had simply carried on using the same name. As for the probability of meeting other Gaelic speakers, he might just as well have chosen to stay at a boarding house called SHAN-GRI-LAH, which was the last house in the block, or even SAMARKAND which was situated in an adjoining avenue. Mrs Ross herself had no knowledge of the Gaelic language and indeed herself had never met an Islander until the day Kirsty had presented herself at the front door.
Was Ruari MacDonald perhaps pursuing some secret mission of his own and deliberately avoiding meeting anyone who might detect his secret, Kirsty asked herself. That, she thought, would be a typical way an Island man would go about it. Perhaps ISLAY was just a stop on what was to be a long journey. To Canada, perhaps or America or Australia? She shrugged, scolding herself for her curiosity. Ruari MacDonald’s presence was no concern of hers anyway and she would be wiser to simply slot him into the register of undistinguished guests who comprised ISLAY’s usual clientele.
When she heard the door of the Smoking Room open and then click shut she took in the promised tray of tea and scones. Ruari MacDonald was standing by the window when she entered. She noticed that he’d changed into a dry jacket and had slung the wet one over the guard in front of the blazing fire. Immediately she became aware of the mingled smells of bog myrtle and peat reek emanating form the steaming jacket; smells that evoked the moorlands of her Island childhood and although she had never fancied returning to the island where she had been born and bred, she experienced a few seconds’ waft of nostalgia as she was setting down the tray.
‘Indeed it’s a day to be hiding oneself from the weather,’ she observed.
‘It is indeed!’ he echoed. ‘It is not a good day at all.’ He turned round to face her but had not moved from the window. ‘You have no liking for the rain?’ he ventured to ask.
‘I have no liking for city rain,’ she told him. ‘And I would say neither will you yourself when you’ve seen more of it.’
‘Ach, but I’m used to far worse rain that I’ve seen today,’ he confessed.
‘I have no doubt that you are used to heavy rain in the Islands,’ she countered, ‘but compared to the stuff the sky throws down at us here which soils everything it touches. Island rain is as clean and fresh as a baby’s tears.’
He took a confident step towards her, his eyebrows raised in pleased surprise. ‘You know the Islands?’
‘Well enough,’ she admitted. ‘Was I not born on an island and was I not brought up there by my Granny until I was near ten years of age?’
He stared at her with undisguised delight, the shyness ebbing away from his smile. ‘Wasn’t I after thinking you had a kind of sound and look of the Islands about you,’ he’d responded promptly. There was a momentary pause before he probed coaxingly, ‘Then you would have the Gaelic, surely?’
‘I once had the Gaelic right enough,’ she corrected him, ‘but since I’ve neither heard nor spoken a word of it for over twenty years it’s myself would be surprised if I still have more than the bare bones of it nowadays.’
Eagerly he offered her a Gaelic greeting and when, with barely a moment’s hesitation she returned it, his eyes shone with keen pleasure and he continued addressing her in the language which in her childhood had been her native tongue. The effect on her was as startling as if she had been given a welcome though unexpected caress but he spoke too fluently, catching her off-guard, and she wasn’t sure she perfectly understood what he was saying. Too sensitive to risk making a fool of herself by giving an inept reply she thought it safer to acknowledge his attempt to converse with her with no more than a regretful shake of her head accompanied by a rueful smile.
‘My memory of it has gone from me,’ she admitted.
He was anxious to test her further but the ringing of the doorbell demanded her attention and with a pout of feigned disappointment she escaped from the room. Afterwards she managed to convince herself that she was glad of the interruption, yet at the same time she was conscious of a sense of mixed shame and regret that she found it difficult to recall her native language. All evening the brief exchange with Ruari MacDonald persisted in her mind and when she returned to her bedroom that night she set herself to recall how much she still retained of her native tongue, testing her memory and surprising herself by the degree of her recall. Why, she needed only to practise it, she decided, and it would soon come back. She began to hum softly the tunes she’d learned at the winter ceilidhs and with the tunes came the words and with the words came the images of the singers and of the old crofts where the ceilidhs mostly took place. The notion came to her then to enquire if there was a Gaelic Society near enough for her to attend their meetings so as to renew her acquaintance with the language and with the Islands from which she had allowed the city to wean her.
During the days that followed she and Ruari MacDonald had little contact, meeting and greeting each other casually only in the dining room when she was helping to serve meals or to clear away the tables. However
on the eighth day following his arrival she was collecting the morning mail from the post box on the front door, ready to sort it and place it in the racks for the guests when she noticed that one of the envelopes bore no stamp. Wondering why the postman had not rung the doorbell to demand the appropriate fee she examined the envelope more keenly. With some surprise she saw that it was addressed to ‘Miss Kirsty MacLennan, ISLAY’. That was all; no avenue, no street and no town. Since she herself rarely received letters she spent a few more moments conjecturing whether it was really meant for her and just who the sender might be. It must be for her, she decided. There was no one of that name at ISLAY except herself, nor had there been anyone named MacLennan for the past six weeks or more and he had been no ‘Miss’. Concluding that it was probably from a neighbour who was working for some charity and wished to enlist her help for some function she slid the envelope into the pocket of her apron with the intention of opening it when there were fewer demands on her time.
It was not until after the mid-day meal when she had the kitchen to herself, Isabel having gone off to a whist drive, Mac to a billiard hall and Meggy not yet due to report for her spell of evening duty, that Kirsty had time to sit down and make herself a pot of tea. Taking the envelope from her pocket she again scrutinised the handwriting, seeking some clue as to the sender but she had no success. Probably a hired helper, she guessed, and reached into the table drawer for a knife to slit open the envelope. It contained a single sheet of ruled paper and immediately she began to read the wording she was thankful she was sitting down.
‘Dear Kirsty MacLennan,’ it began. ‘After our little chat the
An Island Apart Page 3
