‘Jamie Eilidh will be staying here for a time at least,’ Kirsty told them.
‘Your husband’s sinfully begotten son,’ the missionary’s wife scorned. ‘Surely that would not be condoned by the church, would it, Lachlan?’ she appealed to her husband.
His mouth was full of scone and he answered with a barely perceptible nod.
‘What do you suggest I do?’ Kirsty demanded.
‘Of course you must leave Westisle. The two of you would be disgraced by such a scandal,’ she asserted, ‘And your brother-in-law would not be welcome at Communion which he has always tried to attend when the weather allowed.’
Ruari Mhor came into the kitchen. ‘The men are wanting away,’ he announced. ‘The tide is on the turn.’
The missionary and his wife shook hands with her, murmured an unintelligible blessing and followed him down to the boat.
Kirsty was resting her head on the table when Mairi Jane came into the kitchen. ‘Indeed, what use are they to anyone?’ she asked. ‘He puts his stomach before his soul and she puts her fancies before facts.’ She looked keenly at Kirsty. ‘They’ve not been unkind to you, mho ghaoil?’
‘No, no,’ Kirsty denied. ‘She just seems to think I’m much in need of her prayers – and not just because I’ve lost my man.’
‘Ach, her!’ Mairi Jane chortled her contempt.
When Ruari Mhor took Mairi Jane home next morning Kirsty went down to watch the boat crossing the Sound. The mist of the previous evening had cleared and, sitting on a knoll hugging her knees, she watched the boat receding. After it was out of sight she lifted her eyes to stare at the barren hills, their peaks black against the clear sky, putting her in mind of figures which had been suddenly petrified while leaping during an ecstatic dance.
A gull squawked as it swooped low. She felt acutely alone.
Chapter Twelve
That night Kirsty found herself worrying about the missionary’s wife’s sharp assessment of her position. It seemed to her she was once again facing a vague and improbably future. The house, the whole of Westisle, undoubtedly belonged to Ruari Mhon. Her own Ruari had said that he and his brother had inherited it jointly from their parents, so what now? But it was not the legal aspect that troubled her, it was the moral aspect as preached by the missionary’s wife. Ought she to live in the same house as her brother-in-law? Would Jamie be considered a suitable chaperone? Would Ruari Mhor blame her if he was excluded from communion? But where could she go? She was certain, since he knew she would soon be giving birth to his brother’s child, that he would not send her away but she must not come between him and his church. She decided to put the position to him as soon as he came back from the burial ground, but when he did appear he looked so anguished, so beaten, she could only follow his movements with aching, compassionate eyes.
When she did speak to him about the missionary’s wife’s criticism of their living in the same house he said, ‘You wish to go away?’
‘No. I have nowhere to go.’
‘Are you happy here?’
‘I am. But just as I did not wish to come between you and your brother, neither do I wish to come between you and your church.’
‘My faith is between myself and the Lord God. The missionary and his wife are outside it. But if you wish it I will offer to wed you.’ She was so astounded she could only stare at him speechlessly.
‘It would be a ceremony here at the house only. I would ask for nothing from you.’
Utterly flabbergasted she collapsed on a chair. ‘I hadn’t thought of that as a possible solution,’ she murmured.
‘Very well, I will speak to the minister,’ he said as he went out of the kitchen.
It was some minutes before she could get up from the chair.
‘I had a feeling that this would happen,’ said Jamie, when she told him.
‘You had a feeling? How could you have a feeling about it? He has never welcomed me to this place. When I first came here he wouldn’t speak to me for quite a while. Even now he prefers not to speak to me unless it’s necessary. Certainly I have never had any feeling about him marrying me. I must tell you Jamie, I consented to this wedding only because I wanted a home.’
‘But this is your home, surely?’
She told him of the missionary’s wife’s warnings, and that this was the way he had dealt with the problem.
‘She told you that you couldn’t continue to live here unless you married your husband’s brother?’ he asked incredulously.
‘No, no. She certainly didn’t suggest anything like that. She simply said I must leave Westisle. I daresay the idea of me marrying Ruari Mhor hadn’t occurred to her any more than it had to me. It came like a bolt from the blue when he offered to marry me.’
‘And this is my uncle’s religion?’ he queried scathingly. ‘I will tell you now, I have no respect for a religion like that.’
She said, ‘There are many different religions, Jamie, and we have to be tolerant when we speak of them. You yourself are of a religion that many folk despise.’
‘I have no religion,’ he said firmly.
‘You were born of a strong Catholic family,’ she pointed out.
‘I am no longer a Catholic,’ he said. ‘I discovered a relationship with my Maker which no man shall despoil. No. priest, no nuns, no minister, no bishop nor archbishop.’
‘Jamie!’ She was shocked. ‘You are young yet. You should not be so downright.’
‘Ach, bugger the lot of them,’ he almost spat.
‘You haven’t learned to use language like that in this house,’ she reprimanded him.
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘One learns to swear when one is at sea,’ he said.
Her eyes followed him as he went across to the barn. He was no longer the lonely boy he had been before he came to Westisle. His stammer was hardly noticeable now. Fishing and landwork seemed to have broadened his shoulders, Westisle was helping him grow into a fine sturdy lad, she thought.
‘The minister will be across in a day or two,’ Ruari Mhor told her one evening, and accepting that weather and tide would have to be taken into consideration she did not press for more precise information.
It was nearly a month later while she was busy about the house that Ruari Mhor and Jamie escorted the minister into the kitchen. Quickly she washed her hands and taking off her overall stood for the ceremony. Ruari Beag’s ring was used for a second time. Afterwards the minister took a cup of tea and some buttered scones with them all, drank a glass or two of whisky and then with warm wishes he shook hands and announced he was ready to depart.
‘I’m glad,’ Jamie said to her when they were alone in the kitchen. He kissed her. ‘It’s good to know you’ll always be here,’ he said.
‘It is to be only a semblance of a marriage,’ she explained to him. ‘Though it’s my belief that folks will make a scandal of whatever they wish.’ He nodded understandingly.
No mention was made of her pregnancy so she was surprised when Ruari Mhon came into the kitchen one day and asked unexpectedly, ‘When is your bairn due?’
She was a little taken aback by the directness of the question. ‘Oh, any time now,’ she told him. ‘Mairi Jane will be willing to come over to Westisle to see me through the birth. She assures me she has had plenty of practice.’
He went to the door and looked out to sea. He called Jamie who was doing some weeding in Kirsty’s vegetable garden and pointed out to him a large black dolphin-shaped cloud hovering in the pale grey of the sky. ‘I am not liking the look of it,’ he said. ‘We had best go now and fetch Mairi Jane.’
‘Not yet,’ she called after them, but they were already out of earshot.
By the time Mairi Jane arrived the wind was already tearing at the clouds and by evening there was a full gale.
‘My, my, but you did well to send for me when you did,’ said Mairi Jane, divesting herself of her oilskin. ‘This could blow for a week or more and I’m thinking you may not last that long.’
&nb
sp; ‘I didn’t send for you,’ Kirsty was quick to tell her. ‘It was Ruari Mhon himself who made up his mind to go for you. I couldn’t stop him.’
‘He is a wise man,’ said Mairi Jane. ‘He knows the sea and the sky and many another thing besides.’
Four days later when the gale was punching at the roof and lashing the sea to a white frenzy Kirsty’s son was born. There were no complications and when Mairi Jane put the child into her arms Kirsty experienced an undreamed-of rapture. Oh, if only Ruari Beag could have known! If only he could have shared this moment with her. Tears filled her eyes as she chided herself for not having told him earlier. She had cheated him of the knowledge that she was to bear his child and a wave of depression swept over her as she recalled the inadequacy of her loving.
Mairi Jane came into the room bringing a tray of tea and scones. She sat on the bed and asked tenderly, ‘What name is the bairn to have?’
‘I suppose I shall call him Ruari after his father but for his second name I will call him Donny, after my Uncle Donny who died when I was young. He was sent to a Home at the same time as I was sent to the city. He died at the Home and it has always troubled me that I was never able to say goodbye to him.’
Mairi Jane nodded. ‘Ruari Mhor will welcome another Ruari and Donny is a nice enough name,’ she approved.
Jamie was keen to greet his step-brother while Ruari Mhor, who had shown little interest in her confinement beyond making sure Mairi Jane was on hand to help, produced a beautiful cradle he had made from driftwood almost as soon as he’d heard the baby’s first cry; and thereafter he had doted on the child as if it had been his own. When the bairn outgrew the cradle he constructed a cot and also a harness so the child could be carried easily over the moors. He fenced a small area of grass which he kept well scythed so that when ‘Wee Ruari’ had reached the crawling and then toddling stage there was no fear of him wandering too far away.
Kirsty experienced a tremendous fulfilment as she sat in the sun one day watching her bairn calling babyishly to Jamie and ‘Yewyy’ from his enclosure. They were a family, she told herself, even if two of its members were a little spurious.
When ‘Wee Ruari’ had progressed to a fairly sturdy toddler it was Ruari Mhor he insisted on following about and, glimpsing the big man coming home with the boy riding his broad shoulders, Kirsty would sometimes be aware of a strange surge of tenderness towards her dour brother-in-law. But she thought it was because of his obvious devotion to her child.
‘He is growing fast,’ observed Ruari Mhor one day. ‘I am after thinking it will not be long before he will be needing to go to school.’
‘Oh, not for a year or two yet,’ Kirsty was quick to remind him. ‘He is only past five years old just.’
‘He’s mighty eager to learn,’ put in Jamie. ‘When I was mending the creels the other day he wanted to try netting and I tell you he soon got the knack of it once I’d shown him how it was done. I believe his fingers are near as nimble as my own.’
‘I believe he has the makings of a good scholar,’ Ruari Mhon remarked, his tone disapproving Jamie’s statement.
‘I don’t want to even think about him going to school yet,’ Kirsty said.
‘There are many things that need to be thought about,’ Ruari Mhon reminded her, ‘and time is for ever in a hurry. It will not wait.’
He spoke so solemnly that she flashed a curious glance at him, suspecting that his back might be troubling him. But she daren’t to make mention of it.
Following upon the death of his brother, Ruari Mhon’s zeal for fishing had flagged noticeably. It was to be expected, Kirsty thought. Not only had they been brothers but they had shared the close companionship of the sea. It would need the solace of time to mitigate his suffering.
Though he and Jamie had resumed lobster fishing it was not the compulsive occupation it had been in the past. Now it was Jamie who was the more eager to be off in the early mornings and as time went by it was becoming increasingly evident that it had become Jamie’s task to see to the maintenance of the boat. Weather which Ruari Mhor would have disregarded when he was fishing with his brother now frequently made him question the wisdom of going to sea. Even the trips to the mainland to dispose of their catch and to take Kirsty’s eggs, he sometimes murmured against disgruntedly.
Though, as Kirsty had hoped, the birth of her child had manifestly reanimated his spirits for a time and watching ‘Wee Ruari’ grow undoubtedly provided him with a good deal of pleasure, as the seasons passed it became plain that her brother-in-law was no longer the indefatigable man she had known. When the time for outside work on the croft came round he tended to lean on his spade and let Jamie do most of the digging, saying jokingly that it was high time the boy learned to use his strength, and though his manner towards herself still remained guarded he ceased to actually spurn her offers of help. She began to worry about him. After all, he was not an old man, she reminded herself. She voiced her concern to Jamie.
‘Your uncle seems to be falling back in health again, Jamie. Do you think he is relapsing into grief over Ruari Beag’s passing?’
‘He is not the man he was,’ Jamie conceded. ‘I too am worried about him.’
‘He wouldn’t have had any mishap on board the boat, would he? I mean he hasn’t strained himself hauling creels or anything like that?’
‘Not to my knowledge,’ said Jamie. ‘But I reckon he is poorly. He stumbles a lot and he has dizzy fits sometimes when we’re hauling.’ He looked at her. ‘A boat is no place for a dizzy man to be,’ he added meaningfully.
‘Would his back be troubling him again?’ Jamie nodded gravely. ‘Do you still walk his back for him?’ she asked.
‘As often as he asks me,’ Jamie confirmed. ‘And I hate to tell you how much bigger the lump is getting.’
‘Lump!’ echoed Kirsty agitatedly. ‘I knew nothing of any lump. What do you suppose is causing that?’
‘I don’t know. He says it’s nothing at all but I am sure it should not be there. I believe he is sometimes in great pain with it. He moans and groans during the night but when I ask him about it he says he was only snoring likely and that I must not speak to you of it.’
‘What can we do, Jamie? He is so thrawn and will not hear of me getting a doctor, nor even a nurse to take a look at him.’
Jamie misinterpreting her question said, ‘Myself will speak to Euan Ally about coming fishing with me. He’s a good fisherman and not lacking in strength.’
‘You don’t think your uncle’s illness is bad enough for that?’ she asked despairingly.
Jamie did not spare her. ‘I reckon the time is not all that far off when he will have to forsake the sea. I think he’s beginning to know that for himself. If not, one of us must tell him.’
She looked at him aghast. ‘Dear God!’ she moaned. ‘It will kill him to be told that. Who will tell him?’
‘I think you should tell him,’ said Jaime. ‘You understand him.’
‘Not I!’ she caught her breath, momentarily shocked. ‘I have never understood him, Jamie!’ she declared.
Jamie regarded her sadly for a few moments before saying, ‘If it will kill him to be told, it will, just as surely kill him not to be told,’ he warned her. ‘Together we must find a way to do it so that it will not wound him too much.’ He paused. ‘I am thinking I shall speak to Euan Ally about such things when next I see him.’
But it was Ruari Mhon himself who solved their dilemma.
A spell of wild weather followed their conversation, making fishing impossible. Kirsty was relieved since in such weather Ruari Mhor stayed in his bed for much of the day and though she knew he was ill the fact that he was in his bed was slightly less worrying for her than if he was out fishing. She was also relieved that she did not need to take hay to the cattle. When he was not at sea, Jamie always insisted on doing that and now they were a family of four they brought home two milking cows each night, separating them from their calves so she could easily milk them in the
mornings.
Kirsty was busy making butter one day during the wild spell when Ruari Mhon came into the kitchen and sat in his chair beside the fire. ‘Wee, Ruari’ immediately claimed his attention, anxiously offering him a mug of buttermilk. She’d seen her brother-in-law previously quaff a mug of buttermilk in one draught but today the hand holding the mug was trembling and he was drinking the milk slowly sip by sip. He looked across at her, and saw her watching him. With clumsy haste he attempted to put the mug down on the hob. There was a sizzle as some of the milk splashed on the fire.
‘Wee Ruari’ flinched away. ‘Ach now, see you’ve filled the mug too full for Uncle Ruari,’ Kirsty reproved him gently. ‘Just because you like full mugs it doesn’t mean everyone else does. You should have drunk some out of it first.’
‘Ach, no, no indeed,’ murmured Ruari Mhor consolingly. ‘It is just that my hands have got so used to hauling in creels they treat everything else the same way.’ He reached out an arm and pulled the child towards him. They smiled dotingly at each other.
A few minutes later they heard Jamie returning from the cattle and ‘Wee Ruari’ rushed out to meet him.
‘The lad is gey fond of Jamie,’ Ruari Mhor remarked.
‘He is so,’ agreed Kirsty. ‘And Jamie is gey fond of “Wee Ruari”. He has such patience with the boy. It does my heart good to see the care he takes of the child.’
‘And it is likely he will take great care of you when the time comes,’ he observed.
Jamie and ‘Wee Ruari’ came into the kitchen, ‘Wee Ruari’ proudly carrying a freshly shot rabbit.
‘You took the gun?’ Ruari Mhon looked at Jamie.
‘Aye, I did. There’s a deal of rabbits over by there. We could do with some guns from the mainland soon to take a few pots at them or we’ll get over-run surely.’ He shrugged out of his oilskin. ‘They’ll be keen enough to come I’m thinking.’
‘I doubt they will,’ agreed Ruari Mhon. ‘Euan Ally was asking me last time he was out with us on the boat just if I’d be willing for him to have a day’s shooting over here.’
An Island Apart Page 16
