Rhanna at War

by Christine Marion Fraser

  Tam’s mouth fell open and Torquil said, ‘I think he’s asking for some o’ your whisky, Tam.’

  Tam grinned delightedly. ‘Well, damn me – and using the Gaelic name for it! These Jerries are clever right enough . . . here, Bullhead.’ He held out his hip flask. ‘Take a real good swig – you ugly big bugger,’ he added in rapid Gaelic and everyone roared with laughter.

  Ernst took the flask, but passed it to Jon. ‘You first, Jon.’ Jon took the flask and raised it high. ‘Slainte!’ he cried and the islanders took up the cry.

  Mrs Gray was coming into the drawing-room with a tray of tea. Behind her tripped a merry procession bearing plates of food. The room was in a happy uproar. An exhausted Andrew had handed his fiddle to Jon whose long, delicate fingers extricated tunes that were unknown on the island but were so irresistibly gay they invited hands to clap and feet to tap. The Commandos and the Germans had all partaken freely from the brown cough bottles such as might be found in any medicine cupboard on the island, and an air of comradeship existed between everyone. Only the Rev. John Gray remained soberly reserved and his mood wasn’t improved by his first sip of tea which Torquil had laced with whisky while it lay steaming on the kitchen table.

  ‘Hannah, this tea tastes terrible,’ he said tightly, but Hannah was beyond caring.

  ‘Well, John, if you don’t like it . . . away through and make some more,’ she told him flippantly, but he was of the breed who believed the kitchen was only a woman’s domain and he had no intention of domesticating himself now. Several minutes later he held out his drained cup and requested a refill.

  ‘Ach, you enjoyed that,’ Kate grinned, going off to fetch the teapot into which Tam had poured a good measure of whisky. ‘There now,’ she said, handing the minister the replenished cup. ‘It is tastin’ a wee bit funny but the water is that peaty the now it canny be helped.’

  Babbie’s face twitched and she let out a smothered laugh. Niall too could not contain himself and he let out a great guffaw of mirth that seemed to release all his pent-up emotions. ‘Will you dance with me, Babbie?’ he twinkled. ‘We might as well enjoy ourselves now that we’re here and if I don’t grab you Erchy or one of the others will do it for me.’

  They whirled merrily into the crowd while the minister, his face somewhat flushed after consuming three cups of tea, leaned towards Kate and gave her a conspiratorial wink. ‘Good tea, my dear, very good! I must say there’s something to be said for peaty water! By jove, it has really warmed me up and I am hoping you can squeeze another cup from the pot.’

  Kate obligingly ‘squeezed’ the pot and put her lips close to his ear. ‘There now, it’s as dry as a fart in a corpse!’ she imparted in a bubble of merriment.

  ‘Mrs McKinnon!’ the minister exploded, but the ghost of a smile hovered at the corners of his mouth. ‘You know, for the first time since I came to Rhanna I feel really close to you all. I am very glad I held this ceilidh tonight, very glad . . . Would you care to dance with me, my dear?’ he added as Jon broke into the wildly stirring Czardos.

  A hotch-potch of an Irish jig made the floorboards jump beneath the rugs; everyone had reached the stage when anything with a rhythm made their feet itch to dance. Nearly all of the men present saw to it that they danced with Babbie. She was wearing a dress of softest green wool which complemented her amber-flecked eyes and luxuriant red curls. She had a knack of making every man she danced with feel as if he were the only man in the room, and when Niall finally managed to get to her he said with a teasing little laugh, ‘You’re a flirt, Caillich Ruadh. You’ve got all the men making sheep’s eyes at you and all the women throwing daggers! I can see clearer than ever that it would be a very easy thing for any man to fall in love with you.’

  ‘I’m in no position for anything like that ever to happen,’ she answered, a little frown creeping into her radiant smile.

  ‘You like Anton, don’t you?’ he said curtly and unexpectedly.

  ‘Niall, for heaven’s sake, what’s got into you?’ she said in hurt bewilderment. ‘It’s perhaps just as well we didn’t know each other too well in Glasgow because I don’t like the Niall I’m getting to know better now. Don’t complicate matters any more for me! You keep on and on about Anton. I don’t like him and I don’t hate him! Does that satisfy you?’

  He shook his head as if to clear it and looked at her with the shadow of fear darkening his eyes to black pools of misery. ‘I’m sorry, mo ghaoil. I’m not myself, that’s for sure. I’m saying things I don’t mean to say. They just come out and I canny seem to stop them. Forgive me, mo ghaoil.’

  Babbie said nothing but squeezed his hand reassuringly. He smiled and put his lips close to her ear. ‘Would you look at our minister. That rascal, Tam, has been putting whisky in his tea!’

  The Rev. John Gray was snoring on a hard wooden chair, his hands clasped over his chest, his legs stretched like pokers; he was in danger of sliding off his perch. ‘The Lord is my – Psalm twenty-six – I have trusted also in the Lord; therefore I shall not slide – tea terrible . . .’ he muttered insensibly.

  ‘To hell wi’ Psalms,’ Robbie chuckled. He had arrived late at the ceilidh and was determined to enjoy the rest of it. ‘Away you go over to the Headquarters, Tam, and be bringin’ up some more of your cough mixture. It’s early yet and I’m no’ goin’ home to have Behag sniffin’ at me like a ferret and shoutin’ at me wi’ her eyes.’

  ‘Ay, I will that,’ Tam responded willingly, whereupon Kate set about collecting the bottles. Tam stuck out his large square palm and cocked his eye at the company. ‘Cross my hand wi’ silver and I’ll be bringin’ back full bottles.’

  ‘Ach, you’re worse than my Aberdeen cousin!’ old Angus exclaimed. ‘He looks for change out o’ a farthing.’

  ‘Well, it’s more than a farthing I’m after,’ Tam smirked, and though everyone grumbled they handed over their money willingly enough. Tam closed his hand and winked at Mrs Gray. ‘You won’t be saying a word in the wrong ears, mo ghaoil?’

  ‘Tam McKinnon!’ she said sternly. ‘If people want to buy your cough mixture it is nothing to do with me.’ She put her hand in her pocket and then slyly put some coins into his hand. ‘And I’ll be having a drop too. I think Morag must have passed her cold on to me. I’ll never get the chance of medicine like yours again.’

  Tam looked at her with reverence. ‘Mrs Gray, this will not be your last ceilidh on this island,’ he intoned in a respectful whisper. He stretched out his hand and dropped her coppers back into her pocket. ‘Be putting them in the kirk plate for me next Sabbath,’ he said benevolently, then turned to follow the sound of Kate’s clanking bottles outside.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Niall turned restlessly in bed and wakened abruptly at the sound of stealthy footsteps climbing the stairs. Then he heard a faint exchange in German and realised that the Commandos had taken Jon to Anton’s room to say goodbye. The three healthy captives were due to leave that morning, and Niall found himself fuming, unable to get back to sleep though he was still tired. Dawn was filtering over the night sky but his room still lay in darkness. He lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling, thinking about the German lying on the other side of the wall from him, comfortably lying under the roof of Slochmhor with his German companions coming to bid farewell to him. But hardly comfortable! Mixed up as Niall’s thoughts were he couldn’t deny even to himself that Anton most certainly must be suffering a good deal, though there was hardly ever a cheep of complaint out of him. ‘But why should there be?’ he argued with himself. ‘His set-up couldn’t be more perfect: a doctor at first hand to mend him with absolute skill and then to be right on the spot should anything go wrong; an attractive young nurse to tend him hand and foot, wipe his nose for him if need be; bed, board, all laid on with hardly even the snap of a finger to fetch him attention. The snap of a finger! The poor bastard had hardly any fingers left to snap!’

  The door opened softly and Fiona crept in, a ghostly little wraith in her long
flannelette nightdress. ‘Niall, are you awake?’

  ‘Ay, and you should still be asleep, you wee wittrock! What ails you at this hour of the morning?’ The next moment he felt the slight weight of her on his bed.

  ‘Ach, don’t grump at me, Niall. Mother and Father are still in bed and Father being so put upon this whily back I didn’t want to waken him in case he would grump at me too. In a way you’re the next in line as head of the house so I thought I would ask you if it would be all right for me to get up and go over to Aosdana Bay to see the Jerries off. I’d be back in lots of time for school and if I ran and ran I could catch up with the traps taking the Jerries from the Manse and get a lift. All my friends are going over—’

  ‘No!’ Niall bawled out the refusal even as his uninjured left arm shot out to grab his little sister by the shoulders and shake her till her teeth rattled. ‘Don’t you dare ask such a thing of me, you wee bitch!’ he gritted furiously. ‘Do you think it’s a picnic? Haven’t you had enough of Germans on the island without wanting to go and wave them goodbye? Wave them good riddance more like. Don’t you know what they’ve done! Do you never listen to anything? No wonder old Murdoch feels like belting you round the lugs sometimes! It’s likely you never take in a word of anything he tries to teach you!’

  Shock froze the child’s reaction for several stunned moments, but then she opened her mouth and gave her lungs full throttle. Fiona was a little girl who could throw tantrums at the drop of a hat. They were so devilish and noisy that Niall always dreaded them and was never quite sure how to handle them. He was usually the quiet one of the family, the complete opposite of self-willed little Fiona. Occasionally he smacked her bottom, mostly he simply left her to shout herself out of a temper. But this time it was neither temper nor stubbornness that made her cry. It was pure hurt at him for flying out at her for no reason that she could really understand. Her yells brought him swiftly to his senses and in a mixture of anxiety and shame he pulled her into the cradle of his strong good arm and crushed her soft little mouth against his face. She smelt faintly of lavender soap from her bath of the night before. ‘There, there, my babby,’ he soothed. ‘Weesht, weesht now. I’m sorry, I’m sorry I shouted at you. It’s just – some unpleasant things happened a few days ago in Glasgow and I can’t seem to forget them. I’m being an irritable old tom cat to everybody.’

  ‘Please don’t ever get like Elspeth,’ Fiona sobbed against his neck. ‘I know she’s lonely and that makes her peckle her nose into everybody’s business like an old woodpecker and snap at me because I’m the littlest in the house. I can stand it because I have Mother and Father and you when you come home. I look forward like anything to you coming back here because you smile a lot and like all my pets but you’re not smiling this time and I hate it!’

  He nuzzled her soft fragrant hair and cuddled her closer. ‘I promise I won’t get like Elspeth,’ he chuckled. ‘It would be too difficult anyway since she’s a woman.’

  She giggled. ‘Is she? I mean, you would never think it because she’s hardly got any bosoms or anything, has she, and she’s got whiskers growing, they stick out of her face like little stiff pins on a pin cushion. Still . . .’ she sniffed, ‘she’s better than that other old witch that’s come in Biddy’s place. She and Elspeth are becoming friends. Can you think what life will be like for me then? Old Elspeth biting my head off and Prune Face waiting around like an old Peat Hag for me to take an illness so’s she can jag me on the bum! She loves jagging people. Old Malky of Rumhor got bitten on the leg by one of his pigs and Prune Face has already jagged him twice . . . and always on the backside. He says it’s no’ decent, an auld wife like that looking at men’s private parts though I don’t know what he means by that ’cos with him being the father of six children his parts couldn’t have been all that private!’

  Niall choked with laughter into her hair. ‘You know too much, you wee devil. Look, hush now and coorie in beside me till it’s time to get up for school. You can bring me up a cup of tea when you go down.’

  As Niall and Fiona rested quietly and watched the day slowly dawn, a bleary-eyed and very subdued Rev. John Gray rudely awakened old Angus, sound asleep under the sofa in the drawing-room, to take charge of Burnbreddie’s trap. They were to take the prisoners and soldiers over to Portvoynachan when the Commandos returned with Jon. ‘Ach, but her leddy will be wonderin’ where I am lost,’ Angus grumbled, but the minister would have no excuses and Angus went stiffly to get the horses ready.

  When Angus was out of the house, the minister shuffled into the kitchen and sat down at the table, his voice full of self-recrimination and dismay as he divulged to his wife that certain parts of the ceilidh were a complete blank in his mind.

  ‘We all have our weaknesses, John,’ Mrs Gray intoned prudishly while her heart surged with delight. ‘You are only human after all.’ In a neat, grey wool dress, her hair in a prim bun, she was Mrs John Gray, the minister’s wife once more, instructions ringing in her ears about the church flowers and other such sober affairs. But nothing could keep the twinkle from her eyes. The ceilidh had opened doors that hitherto she had been too wary to enter, and now she knew that the cloak of convention would never again stifle her individuality.

  ‘But I drank only tea!’ His voice was almost a wail. ‘You know that, Hannah!’

  ‘Of course, dear, of course,’ she said soothingly but in such a way as to leave doubts in his mind which would never be dispelled.

  ‘Whisky was in that tea, Hannah,’ he said accusingly.

  She patted his arm kindly. ‘Then knowing that you shouldn’t have touched it, John. Take your breakfast now before it gets cold.’

  Soon after the Rev. had sullenly gulped down his meal, old Angus rapped on the door to say that the Burnbreddie trap and the minister’s own were ready to go. The Commandos and Jon appeared then and the minister insisted on squeezing the prisoners and all of the soldiers into the two vehicles for the trip across the island. Mrs Gray had prepared an early but abundant meal for the departing group, and she watched rather wistfully as the Commandos with their stomachs full and the Germans with theirs empty, for they had not felt like eating much on this uncertain morning, rumbled out into the hazy morning light. She had grown quite fond of her charges and would miss their presence – and the attention they had brought her.

  Early though it was, half the population of Rhanna had contrived to be at Portvoynachan on some pretext or other. Because school hadn’t yet opened, many of the children, too, were at large, and the normally deserted stretches round Aosdana Bay were reminiscent of a Sunday-school outing.

  ‘My, my, would you look at what’s coming now?’ old Joe commented, looking up from mending a fishing net draped over a large boulder near the edge of the cliffs.

  Jim Jim looked up, his netting needle poised in his hand. ‘Ay, ay, the Jerries must be goin’ away,’ he commented with a bewitching show of innocence.

  Canty Tam looked out to sea where, in the soft mist of morning, the grey ghost shape of a naval patrol vessel lurked. ‘I wouldny like to be goin’ out there in one o’ they rubber balloon things,’ he intoned, leering at the pearly turquoise of the early sky. ‘The Uisga Hags have long claws for tearing things up. Yon rubber is no’ safe, no’ like a real clinker, the Caillichs will just rip the bottom out on them.’

  ‘Ach, be quiet, man,’ spat Jim Jim. ‘Or it’s your bottom will be ripped. Get hold o’ one o’ they nettin’ needles and make yourself useful for a change.’ As the traps came nearer Jim Jim suddenly abandoned his task to move closer to Morag Ruadh. ‘You were a long time outside wi’ these soldiers last night,’ he said conversationally.

  Morag examined her long fingers with great interest. ‘Ay, you’re right there, Father.’

  ‘They wereny doin’ you a mischief, mo ghaoil?’

  ‘Indeed, hold your tongue, Father! You mind your own business!’

  Jim Jim looked crestfallen but pursued the matter grimly. ‘Now, now, Morag, as my daughter you
are my business. I am hoping you are remembering the identity o’ the men you were wi’ last night – just in case,’ he finished in a daring rush.

  Morag tossed her red head haughtily. ‘Your mind is blacker than the peats you damp all day. I will not be listening to another word!’ She flounced away down the stony track to the bay.

  Old Joe watched her and gave Jim Jim a conspiratorial wink. ‘She’ll have her man yet, Jim Jim. Look now, there she goes, straight to Dugald Ban. These two were more than a mite friendly last night.’

  Jim Jim looked at his daughter talking animatedly to Dugald and a smile creased his brown face. ‘By God, you’re right, Joe,’ he said happily, and leaving his nets once more, went down to join the crowds on the white sands below. When he arrived, the Commandos were retrieving the dinghies from the deep, dry caves that pitted the cliffs. Soon Dunn emerged, a frown creasing his brow.

  ‘One of the dinghies appears to be missing,’ he informed the crowd in general.

  ‘Ach, is that not strange now?’ Ranald shook his head sympathetically.

  ‘Are you sure you have looked right? It is easy to miss things in these caves.’

  ‘Hardly something so obvious,’ Dunn said dryly.

  ‘Maybe it was taken away by a water witch,’ Brown said with a smothered laugh. But he hadn’t reckoned with the islanders who immediately met the suggestion with an eager barrage of superstitious comment.

  ‘All right! All right!’ Dunn cried. ‘We’ll make do with what we have. C’mon now, lads, get cracking!’

  There was a general bustle to the water’s edge and the dinghies were lowered into the speckled green shallows. Dunn looked at Tam McKinnon whose undoubted popularity singled him out as the unofficial leader of the island’s Home Guard. ‘You will keep an eye open at the doctor’s house,’ Dunn instructed. ‘I am relying on you, Mr McKinnon. I know McKenzie of the Glen is the Chief Warden, but his farming duties take up a lot of his day. In a few days’ time the military medics will be back to see how the German officer is progressing.’