Kirsty and Jamie exchanged a swift glance.
‘You’d be willing for him to come?’ Jamie asked his uncle eagerly. Ruari Mhon nodded. ‘Will I tell him next time I see him?’
‘You will tell him,’ said Ruari Mhon. ‘He is one that we can trust and he is wise enough.’ His voice seemed to scratch the syllables as he spoke slowly as if is thoughts were smudged by vagueness. But his meaning was clean enough.
Jamie went over and tapped the barometer. ‘The glass is going up,’ he reported. ‘We should be back at sea soon enough. Maybe tomorrow.’
Kirsty, bending down to pick up the churn and take it through to the scullery, thought she caught an expression of anguish flit across her brother-in-law’s face but he made no comment.
‘I will take the churn for you,’ Jamie offered. She followed him through to the scullery and when they returned to the kitchen Ruari Mhor was rising from his chair but seeing them he slumped back into it.
‘When you speak to Euan Ally tell him there is likely a job going on the boat. Myself is thinking of taking a wee rest from the fishing for a whiley.’ He tried a halfhearted chuckle. ‘I feel hard of leaving my bed in the early mornings.’
Kirsty and Jamie exchanged panic-stricken glances. Could Ruari Mhor have overheard their discussion? Nevertheless his admission gave Kirsty her chance to plead: ‘Ruari Mhor, you have a sickness and I am worried about you. You are having no medicine and I beg you to let me get you a doctor. You will not be able to go fishing until your strength is built up. Please, Ruari Mhor. You must not let illness take away your strength.’
His expression hardened. ‘You will not speak to me again of calling a doctor.’ His tone was reprimanding. ‘If the Lord chooses He will give me back my strength.’ Getting up from his chair he shuffled slowly out of the kitchen and as the door closed behind him she and Jamie stared at each other, helplessly shaking their heads.
‘He is throwing his life away just,’ Jamie croaked.
‘I believe that’s the way of it,’ Kirsty moaned, covering her face with her hands. ‘There is nothing we can do,’ she murmured.
‘I will bring Euan Ally across next time I see him,’ Jamie said. ‘I will tell him it is for a short time just but I reckon he already is wise to what is happening to my Uncle Ruari. Many folks have been saying they don’t like the look of him.’ He went to the door and stood looking at the unsettled sky. When he came back into the kitchen he asked her, ‘You will welcome Euan Ally?’
‘As well as I can,’ she said limply.
So Euan Ally came not only to fish but to share the work of the croft, while Ruari Mhor seemed relieved to spend more and more of his time in his room, venturing out only when warm sunlight tempted him to seek the bench at the end of the house or when the smell of cooking wafting from the kitchen proved irresistible. But the time came when even these small ventures were beyond his strength and since he refused to allow her to take meals to him she had to rely on ‘Wee Ruari’s’ services when Jamie was at sea.
‘Why doesn’t Uncle Ruari come into the kitchen any more and have his meals with us?’ asked ‘Wee Ruari’. ‘He didn’t even want to stay in his bed like he does now.’
She said quickly, ‘Uncle Ruari has a very sore leg and he has to rest it as much as he can.’
‘Will he have to have his leg cut off like Padruig Bhann?’
‘No, no. Nothing like that, I hope.’ She spoke comfortingly although the child’s innocent questions shook her.
‘If he has his leg cut off Jamie is clever enough to make for him a wooden one, isn’t he?’
She nodded assent and before she could prevent him he’d run off to his uncle’s bedroom. She hoped he wouldn’t ask the same question.
A few minutes later he was back in the kitchen, ‘Uncle Ruari wants you to do something for him,’ he gabbled quickly as he ran outside to see how Jamie and Euan Ally were occupying themselves.
Kirsty was startled. ‘Are you sure that was the message?’ she called after him. She had to be content with an exaggerated nod flung at her as he raced after Jamie. She brewed a fresh pot of tea and as she timidly approached Ruari Mhor’s room she realised she would be entering her husband’s bedroom for the first time. As she opened the door she saw that his bed was close beside the window and he had his back to the light. He looked momentarily surprised to see her and she wondered if he had already forgotten his message to her or if ‘Wee Ruari’ had interpreted it wrongly. She paused on the threshold.
‘ “Wee Ruari” said you wanted me to do something for you, so I have brought this mug of tea fresh from the pot,’ she said lightly as she moved forward. She saw his brow was wet and he was wearing spectacles. There was an open bible on the coverlet. ‘I’ve never known you to wear spectacles,’ she remarked.
‘Only for reading the Good Book,’ he replied. He tried to drink but the mug titled in his weak grasp and much of the tea spilled over the bedclothes.
Gently she took the mug from him. ‘I’ll take your mug and refill it,’ she told him as she mopped up the spill.
‘No, no, there is still plenty left,’ he insisted. ‘Stay now since I have something to say to you which must be said before I make my journey.’
She thought for a second he must be wandering. ‘What journey?’ she asked blankly, but he ignored or did not hear her question.
‘You must try to understand,’ he began gravely. ‘This Island of Westisle belonged jointly to Ruari Beag and myself. He willed his portion to yourself and Jamie, and I have willed my portion to yourself also and to your own “Wee Ruari”. When the Lord sees fit to change me everything I possess will be yours and your son’s to have. You will not want.’
‘I wish to take nothing from you,’ she said. ‘I am content with what I have. And I will not let you talk of being changed. You are still a young man and if you would let me call a doctor he would get you into the hospital and we would see you cured again in no time. Please, Ruari Mhon. Please,’ she pleaded desperately,
‘No!’ he almost shouted. ‘I have not long. I have prayed to the Lord and He will have mercy and not allow me to suffer this pain for many hours longer.’ She looked at him horrified.
‘No, no,’ she cried. ‘Please let me call a doctor.’ She sought for his limp hands and held them firmly in hers.
‘A doctor would tell you it is too late.’ He was breathing with difficulty. Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Now, I want you to go to the drawer and open it,’ he said.
Obediently she went across to a large chest of drawers. ‘This one?’ she asked, her hand resting on the knob of the top drawer.
‘That one,’ he affirmed. ‘There is a wee carved box in there. Bring it over to me.’ She did what he asked. ‘Open it,’ he bade her. She opened it and then handed the box to him. ‘See this now,’ he said, while his fumbling fingers removed a piece of cloth from inside the box to reveal a large brooch. ‘This was given to my mother by the old Laird’s wife and my mother gave it to me to give to my wife when I married. I never did marry. Not rightly,’ his eyes appealed for her understanding, ‘so, the brooch has stayed in the box. Now I want you to have it.’ He held it out to her with a shaky hand.
‘For me?’ she exclaimed incredulously.
He reached out to touch the hand with which she was holding the brooch and for a moment she thought he was reaching to take it away from her.
‘No, no,’ he said irritably as she tried to give it back to him. ‘I was not kind to you when my brother first brought you here.’
‘You were never unkind,’ she corrected him.
‘It was wrong of me. You were a good wife to Ruari Beag and you are a near mother to Jamie.’ Again he paused for breath. ‘Now I want you to have this and keep it in memory of my brother and of myself.’
‘I need nothing like this to keep the memory of either of you alive,’ she said. Half-blinded by tears she wiped the back of her hand across her eyes and studied the brooch. ‘It is a beautiful brooch,’ she enthused, �
��and much too grand a thing for me to wear.’
He held out his empty tea mug. ‘Get me another mug of tea,’ he directed her, trying to inject a tone of brusqueness into his voice.
When she returned to the room with another mug of tea he was lying back on his pillows. He said, ‘Your son will be a credit to Ruari Beag. I could wish that I too had a son from you but you belonged to my brother.’ She was staring at him with widened eyes. ‘You mind the day my brother brought you here and the wind blew off your bonnet?’ She nodded briefly. ‘That day I tell you your hair wound itself around my heart and so it has been since. Even today the glow of it warmed and brightened this room when you came into it. But you were my brother’s woman and I had to steel my heart against you.’ Kirsty was shaking her head in confused disbelief as she listened to him and suddenly comprehension flashed into her mind. She recalled how she’d yearned for someone’s arms to be around her when he’d told her of Ruari Beag’s death. And she knew now for whose arms she had yearned. In her mind’s eye she could see him clearly, standing in the doorway; just as clearly as she could hear the stark message he had for her, ‘the sea has claimed him’. And it had been because she dared not seek his arms that she had fainted.
Her knees weakened and she collapsed beside the bed. ‘Ruari!’ she whispered brokenly. ‘Ruari, mho gradh, a chiali mo chridhe,’ she cried, desperately grasping his hands and covering them with kisses. Through her tears she met his questioning eyes. ‘Ruari, don’t leave me. I need you. I need you.’ His eyes caressed her. His grim mouth softened and he reached to stroke her hair. She kissed his forehead, his cheeks and then pressed her lips to his mouth, but he made no attempt to reciprocate. ‘I must not betray my brother,’ he said, and again his eyes were pleading for understanding.
He lay back on the pillow, holding his spectacles. ‘Kirsty,’ he said, ‘I have always been able to read the Good Book but today I cannot do that. My spectacles seem to be dirty.’ He held them out to her and though they looked to be clear enough she polished them on the inside of her apron and helped him put them on his nose. Shakily he tried to pick up the Bible. ‘No, it’s no better,’ he complained. ‘It must be the window that is dirty. You will give the glass a rub.’
Jamie had cleaned the windows the previous evening and their clarity was plain enough. All the same she reached over the bed and made a pretence of polishing the glass.
‘There now, is that better?’
She held the Bible close to his eyes but they were slowly closing. He managed to say, ‘You never were any good at cleaning windows.’ His head fell back on the pillow and in the long moment that followed she knew that the only man she had ever loved was gone from her.
Copyright
First published in 1992 by Century
This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world
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Copyright © Lillian Beckwith, 1992
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An Island Apart Page 17
