‘That doesn’t explain Kathleen Swan,’ Shona probed relentlessy. ‘Who she is and why were you talking about her just now.’
It was Alana’s turn to wax eloquent. ‘Bonny, bonny, Kathleen Swan? It is only natural we should be discussing her. It was a terrible shame that the poor lass had to go and fall sick just as we were setting out on our travels. May the good Saint Patrick bless her and set her to rights for she has the wanderlust in her soul and will maybe die altogether if she has to bide too long in the one place.’
Shona still wasn’t satisfied. She gazed long and hard at all the faces but they were wearing an expression of studied innocence and she had to be content with the fact that she now knew a little bit more about Fern’s identity, which wasn’t much, considering that she had guessed all along that the girl was of gypsy stock.
Stink, never one for letting an opportunity slip by, showed his broken teeth in an apologetic grin and said placatingly, ‘There now, mavourneen, you are knowing all there is to be knowing about Fern Lee and Kathleen Swan. And to save us coming to your door, would you be buying something here and now from the fine selection you see here before you? A silk ribbon to tie up that bonny red hair o’ yours? Or a few safety pins to hold up your man’s breeks? Or how about treating yourself to a nice new set o’ pots and pans to brighten up your kitchen? You will never get anything as good or as cheap in the shops for they are just robbers, every one.’
Shona knew when she was beat. She glanced at Fern, who was smiling at her in that oddly winning way of hers, and she smiled back. She couldn’t help it, the sun was shining, the world was blue and bright, there was a strong sense of comradeship in the air, and she responded to it in her typically positive way.
‘Och, alright, you win,’ she conceded with a giggle, raking in her bag for her purse, catching Fern’s eye as she did so, knowing that she was drawing close to the girl in spite of herself, in the process feeling utterly glad to shake off the fetters of resentment and jealousy that had beset her ever since she had seen Fern ensconced in her bed, wearing her clothes, living in her childhood home, liaising with her father in a way that had brought out the cat in her and made her most bitter and unhappy.
All that was done with, in just a few moments of a scented summer’s day; in common with most other islanders, including old Elspeth, she had capitulated to the charisma of a gypsy girl’s sunny smile.
She felt truly happy to have at last buried the hatchet, to feel at rights with the world once more and – most importantly – to know that when next she came face to face with her father she would do so without any of the animosity she had displayed towards him for the last few unhappy weeks.
Stink was as good as his word, not by one whisper did he betray Fern’s true identity. The rest of his fellow travellers were also sworn to secrecy, which was as well, since this year they had pitched their camp nearer the village of Portcull, making it impossible for Fern to avoid them even if she had wanted to.
‘As long as we remember the new name that is on her,’ Stink decreed importantly. ‘If Johnny does come to Rhanna he’ll be looking for Kathleen Swan, and he’ll ask around for a colleen o’ that description. As long as we remember she is now Fern Lee all should be well. It might be wise also no’ to mention Johnny’s name to anyone here, they would maybe connect the two and then the fat would indeed be in the fire.’
Stink, however, did not hold his tongue on other matters concerning Fern’s background. Before very long the entire island knew her history.
‘She had a hard life as a child,’ Stink recounted sadly, holding court at every door he knocked on. ‘Her mammy and daddy were heavy drinkers and never cared what happened to their wee one. They went to early graves, pickled in drink, and after that the poor lass ran wild and never seemed to settle herself anywhere.
‘I myself lost track o’ her for a good long while, then the next I heard she had run away wi’ some good-looking rascal or other, the sort young women would lie down and die for. The pair o’ them must have gadded about quite a bit because there were sightings of them all over the land, then they just seemed to disappear altogether, and none o’ us knew where the lass was. After a while a wee snippet went the rounds, she and he were working in some gentry house, in wi’ the bricks it was said, allowed the run o’ the place.
‘I set off on my travels and heard no more and got the surprise o’ my life when I chapped on Fergus McKenzie’s door the other day, there was the very lass, straight out the blue, hiding from her rogue o’ a man, all hot and bothered in case he should find her and start beating the life out o’ her again.’
At this point, Stink would clasp his hands and say sorrowfully, ‘Ah, poor, poor lass, when she met that man he must have seemed the answer to her prayers, she likely clung to him for any morsel o’ love she could get for she got precious little o’ that from her mammy and daddy. It is indeed sad that she picked the kind o’ man that she did, but there you are now, there is no accounting for a young girl’s tastes, and he wouldny show his true nature to her till it was too late. She’ll be alright here, as long as we all watch out for her and do our best to protect her if he comes lookin’ for her.’
Stink had done his job well; his story only served to strengthen Fern’s position in the community. The islanders closed ranks; as long as she remained on Rhanna she was safe – or so they thought!
Part Three
AUTUMN/WINTER
1968–69
Chapter Twenty-two
Hector the Boat was growing restless. August was moving into September, the mellow days were warm and misty, and he hadn’t done any fishing worth mentioning since the day of the Hobgoblin of An Coire.
He was down at the harbour, tinkering with his boat, when Dodie appeared, looming above the steps, spending some minutes gazing fearfully into the green oily water before plucking up the courage to make his way downward, his wellington-clad feet slipping about on the greasy steps which made him ultra cautious till he had reached the bottom.
He had a mission on his mind that day. It had been a long while since he had vowed to go back to Camus nan Uamh to get the ‘nice shiny thing’ he wanted for Kalak Dubh. It hadn’t been for the want of trying; for the past few weeks he had harangued Hector to take him out in his boat, but Hector had shown no inclination to return to Rhanna’s eastern shores.
Today Dodie was lucky. The passing of time had dulled Hector’s memory of his near encounter with a fabled creature, his fears had diminished, and now he was dying of curiosity regarding further reported sightings of a beautiful mermaid who, it was said, was haunting the Bay of the Caves. He was therefore quite willing to capitulate to Dodie’s suggestion that they go out there that morning and it wasn’t long before the Queen o’ Scots was on her way out of the harbour, heading east, cutting steadily through the waves as if she was glad to have her head at last.
As before, Dodie was enthralled with everything he saw as they went along, pointing out all the familiar landmarks, growing so excited Hector had to tell him to, ‘Calm down or bail out, before the whole o’ the damt island gets out their spyglasses to see what is happening!’
Dodie subsided a little, the idea of stepping out of the boat in the middle of the ocean not appealing to him in the least. He could not, however, contain himself when they rounded a headland and there in front of him was the Bay of the Caves, the great black cliffs shearing up from the tiny sandy cove, the sheltered waters calm and peaceful, the colour of it turquoise and pink where it lapped the shore.
Hector’s little marker buoys were still where he had left them, and in a short time he was hauling up his pots to see if they had remained intact in his absence. One or two needed mending, all of them had to be cleaned out and re-baited, and while Hector was absorbed in his task, Dodie got busy with the last pot in the line, scooping out the remains of dead lobsters and bits of debris, his heart in his mouth in case he mightn’t find what he had come to seek.
He was overjoyed when he came upo
n the knobbly little drawstring bag that he had hidden all these weeks ago. It was covered in barnacles and green slime but the contents were all there, duller than he remembered, but he only wanted one of the items, and that he would soon clean up. Extracting it, he smuggled it inside the depths of his jacket and replaced the bag in the pot while Hector’s back was still turned.
For the next half hour both men worked in a harmonious silence till the pots had all been cleaned, freshly baited, and returned to the water.
And then they heard it, an angel voice singing in the black depths of An Coire, the most awesome of all the caverns, cathedral-like in its splendour, its great curved arch supported by pillars of black volcanic rock that had piled one on top of the other from some spectacular upheaval of past ages.
The acoustics inside An Coire were unparalleled, and to Dodie and Hector, the sounds that they heard just seemed to grow and grow in volume, echoing all round the bay and the caves, chiming, haunting, magical notes that made them stop and stare in utter wonder into An Coire’s yawning mouth.
Dodie was spellbound, he had never known anything so utterly enchanting; and then – his heart missed a beat, for there, in the shadows, was a misty female figure, sitting on a big rock, her hair flowing down her back like a thick dark curtain.
‘Kalak Dubh,’ he whispered, and again, ‘Kalak Dubh.’
That was when he stood up, forgetting everything in his excitement, for he knew, as sure as anything, that the mysterious dark-haired maiden known as Fern Lee, was really a mermaid, one who had come to Rhanna to live for a short while among its people, until the day she returned to the ocean – forever . . .
The boat rocked, Dodie’s foot slipped on the planks, Hector shouted, but before he could lift a finger Dodie had tumbled overboard, straight into the sea, screaming as he went, plunging down, down, into the depths, cold, cold, dark and dreadful, his lungs filling with water as he went under.
It had never entered Hector’s head to wear a lifejacket, never mind supply one for any passenger he might be carrying, but he did have a lifebelt, and this he threw as Dodie’s head bobbed to the surface.
Blinded by water, half drowned, terrified out of his wits, the old eccentric scrabbled desperately to save himself, but it was useless, his heavy clothing weighed him down like an anchor and once more he disappeared from sight, helplessly floating down through the choking depths to the sandy floor of the bay.
Half unconscious he was hardly aware of being grabbed and lifted, up, up, held in the embrace of some unknown being, breaking surface, coughing, spluttering, Hector’s hands reaching out to grab him and haul him unceremoniously aboard the Queen o’ Scots, before extending his hand once more to Fern Lee to help her out of the water.
‘Where did you spring from?’ Hector asked in surprise.
‘I was in that little dinghy over there,’ Fern pointed to a little craft bobbing about in the lee of a rocky outcrop.
‘That’s Peter Menzies’ boat!’
‘Ach, to be sure, I know all about that, didn’t himself lend it to me whenever I told him I wanted it. He knows how much I like being out alone on the waves.’
Hector didn’t doubt it, most of the menfolk of the island wanted to please Fern Lee and Peter, with his brawny good looks, would be one of the first in line when it came to doing her any favours.
Fern had dropped down beside Dodie who was lying on the deck, gasping like a fish out of water, his face a funny blue colour, his limbs twitching violently from shock and cold.
‘We’ll have to get him home and call the doctor,’ Fern decided, shivering a bit herself as she spoke. ‘Get something to cover him with. Hector, while I start up the engine.’
Hector wasn’t too sure about allowing some slip of a lass to handle his precious boat. Fern Lee, however, soon proved herself to be a capable sailor. In next to no time they were back at the harbour where many willing hands manhandled Dodie ashore and into Tam’s truck, after which he was speedily transported home to Croft Beag.
A greatly concerned Mairi was soon on the scene, undressing Dodie, rubbing him down with a big fluffy towel, tucking him into bed to administer hot drinks to him and apply hot bottles to his feet.
When Doctor Megan came she congratulated Mairi on her prompt attention and, after a thorough examination of Dodie, she prescribed a few days’ rest in bed for him together with plenty of loving care.
‘I’ll make sure o’ that, doctor,’ Mairi said willingly, ‘he’ll no’ want for anything as long as I’m here to see to him.’
But despite Mairi’s tender devotion, Dodie developed pneumonia and relapsed into a state of fevered delirium, never knowing what he was saying as he muttered away about the Bay of the Caves and the beautiful mermaid he had seen and heard in the great cave of An Coire.
Doctor Megan and Babbie tended him night and day, Mairi saw to his every comfort, and a regular stream of visitors came and went from Croft Beag, many of them to make mournful and useless comments.
Hector the Boat, ridden by guilt over the accident, could only stare wordlessly at Dodie’s blotched countenance, but his sister more than made up for his lack of eloquence.
‘Ach, he’s a poor soul right enough,’ she stated, peering ghoulishly at Dodie to see if he was still breathing. ‘I’ve seen a better looking corpse, and that’s a fact.’
‘Ay, he’s just like a bag o’ bones lying there,’ supported Winnie Nells, while Canty Tam, her son, leered out of the window to the restless sea lying beyond, and said with conviction, ‘It was the Uisge Hags that got him, they’re out there now, screeching wi’ rage because that lassie pulled him out their clutches. They’ll no’ rest till they get somebody else in his place, and the next time they’ll no’ be disappointed.’
‘I’ve never seen Dodie looking so ill,’ Isabel commented with a sorrowful shake of her head. ‘I hear tell he has the ammonia in his lungs and is having difficulty breathing.’
‘No, Isabel, you’ve got it wrong, it’s pneumonia,’ Mollie corrected her friend.
Isabel frowned; Todd’s wife was forever pulling her up about something and this time Isabel couldn’t hide her annoyance. ‘New or old, it will make no difference to Dodie!’ she snorted, and with that she flounced away without uttering another word.
There were other more cheerful visitors of course. Fern had called when Dodie had been at his worst, rambling and raving and never knowing one face from another or what day of the week it was.
This condition lasted for several days, and then one morning, when Babbie had finished giving him his bed bath, he opened his eyes, rubbed his stomach, and declared himself to be ‘dying o’ hunger’.
After that he recovered rapidly and was soon up on his ‘feets’, if only for a few hours each day. When he was well and truly on the mend, sitting on a chair by his bed, tucked up nice and cosy with a blanket, Fern came back to see him, bearing gifts of fruit and flowers and a big get-well card, inscribed with all the names of the McKenzie household.
There was also a small card from Fern herself, and when Dodie saw it he very nearly burst into tears and had to hide his anguish by burying his face in the cuff of the smart new dressing-gown that Mairi had wrapped him in.
‘Och, come on now, Dodie,’ Fern, a lump in her own throat, spoke to him soothingly. ‘There is surely no need for tears, you have all your good friends around you, thinking about you and caring about you, so just you be drying your eyes now and I’ll make us both a nice hot cup of tea.’
Dodie, in an agony of shyness, was trying in vain to stem his tears but it was useless, they just kept flowing down his sunken cheeks and Fern, near to weeping herself, glanced at the bedside cabinet, hoping to see a box of tissues. Seeing none she hastily wrenched open the drawer . . . and was frozen into complete and utter immobility at the sight that met her eyes.
‘Dodie,’ she whispered at last, ‘what on earth is this – and where did you get it?’
She withdrew her shaking hand. In it she held the plastic
wallet, with her own picture staring out at her from under the transparent covering. ‘These are my things, Dodie,’ she said through pale lips. ‘My own personal belongings, birth and marriage certificates, passports . . . surely to goodness you knew they were mine, I’ve hunted for them high and low ever since I got here.’
‘I never looked at any o’ these things!’ wailed Dodie, guilt and fear making him cry all the harder. ‘I canny read anyway and only ever wanted your photy to look at. I knew you would take it away if I told you I had it. I was helping Hector wi’ his lobster pots when I found it hooked onto one o’ the floats and though I didny know you then I liked your photy and took it home wi’ me. I didny do anything bad, don’t tell the police on me. I don’t want to go to jail.’
‘To be sure, they’re the last people I would tell,’ she said grimly. She looked at his woebegone countenance and putting her arm round his thin shoulders she said soothingly, ‘Hush now, Dodie, I’m sorry I was mad at you but it was just the shock of seeing my stuff in your drawer. It’s wonderful, you’ll never know what it means to me to have everything back again, I only wish I’d known about it sooner, it would have saved me all the bother and worry of looking for it.’
Leaning over she kissed his brow and in utter confusion he shoved his hand into the bedside drawer and withdrew a small package, carefully wrapped in the pink tissue paper from the fruit basket that Kate had brought him.
‘Here, take this,’ he gabbled. ‘I went wi’ Hector to the Bay o’ the Caves to get it and thought it had lost itself when I was drowning. But it was still in my pocket where I left it and when Mairi wasny lookin’ I got it out and gave it a wee rub wi’ soapy water. It’s for you, nice and shiny, like the stars. I know ladies like shiny things like that.’
With bated breath Fern peeled away the paper and gasped aloud when she beheld the exquisite sapphire and diamond brooch lying sparkling in the palm of her hand.
A Rhanna Mystery Page 23
