Heather Song

by Michael Phillips

  Most of them, that is.

  With Ranald’s participation at the castle still fresh, the day after I announced that the ensemble would meet at his cottage, Adela telephoned to say that she would be discontinuing her lessons and that either I or Nicholls could come round to collect the harp at our convenience.

  It was a sad turn of events, though now Fia was able to graduate from the Ring to the Shamrock while I awaited the delivery of the two new harps. The next day Alicia asked, since the Ring was now available, if she could begin learning on it. Naturally I was delighted.

  The others were concerned about Adela. But none wanted to turn back from their own newly energized pilgrimages of growth and wholeness. In some cases, sad to say, spiritual growth requires leaving friends behind. But all growth in life must be forward. To remain still is in fact stagnation and regression. I had been in that danger myself several years before. Adela was making a conscious choice not to move forward with what life had to offer. Her friends and I could only hope and pray that a time would come when she would make the choice to leave her past behind.

  One of the wonderfully unexpected consequences of Ranald’s increasing involvement in the lives of the ladies, and his weekly visits to the castle with his two instruments, was a deepening friendship between Ranald and Alasdair. They had obviously known each other all Alasdair’s life, and had enjoyed a relationship of camaraderie and increasing mutual respect during the years of our marriage. But now something deeper began to blossom. It is possible, I suppose, that on both sides the departure of Iain Barclay created a void that the other was able to fill. Yet there was more to it than that. It would have been different, perhaps, had Iain still been in the area, but I think it would have happened regardless. For reasons I was never quite able to identify, Alasdair recognized in Ranald a wisdom he could learn from, even at such a mature stage in his life. But he did not merely recognize wisdom, he wanted to partake of it—a unique quality in the world of self-sufficiency in which men often dwell. The hunger to grow and change and learn and become more than they are is not usually part of the masculine makeup. It is not always part of the feminine constitution either, as evidenced in the case of Adela. The relationship I observed between the two men I can describe only as between a mentor and a protégé, between an aging man of wisdom and a younger man in his prime, hungry and eager to glean all he could from him.

  This realization on Alasdair’s part had a subtle spiritual component, as any relationship with Ranald must develop eventually. Ranald’s entire existence was bound up in a thoroughgoing awareness of spirit life. But their new friendship was at first not primarily spiritual. Alasdair was not what I would call a spiritual seeker. At the same time, obviously connected with my own spiritual rebirth and growth of recent years, Alasdair was interested in my spiritual development and open to spiritual influences. Looking past the externals of his humble garb and unimposing station in the world, I think he came to recognize in Ranald a man of years and stature whom he could respect on many levels. It was not that he was reluctant to glean spiritual food, so to speak, from me because I was a woman and his wife. Not at all. He was wonderfully accepting of my faith and my own maturity as a person. He often asked questions about things that came up, even decisions concerning the estate. He gave weight and respect to my responses. If ever a man treated a wife as an equal, even ahead of himself, as more than an equal when it came to spiritual things, that man was Alasdair Reidhaven. He was truly a humble man.

  At the same time, in the same way that women need other women to talk to and share with and pray with and with whom they can explore what their womanhood means, men also need other men with whom to explore and develop their manhood together. In that process—perhaps more than do women, though being a woman I’m not sure of this—men need other men whom they can look up to with respect, whom they can learn from and whom they know are looking out for them and praying for them, men to energize and stimulate them in the right directions toward truth and wholeness, men who will help them see things in the right light, men who have been through the same manly struggles and understand the same manly thoughts and emotions and hardships, men to laugh with and cry with and question with and work with and be silent with…and with whom they can discover life’s meaning.

  Mentors…friends…comrades.

  All this Alasdair began to discover with Ranald Bain. At first they simply talked and visited when Ranald came to the castle. Gradually those conversations lengthened and became more substantive. Before long Alasdair was driving up the hill to visit Ranald on his own. Those visits became more involved. Alasdair helped Ranald with his next sheepshearing and had as much fun, he said, as he had helping the farmer Leith harvest his fields of grain. Afterward, with the oil from the wool mixed with the occasional stain of sheep’s blood on their hands and arms and messy clothes, they had laughed and talked until dusk. From Alasdair’s mood when he returned well after dark, I knew that he’d had one or two too many Stellas. I was glad he made it down the hill in one piece!

  Despite twenty-five years or more difference in their ages, Ranald truly became Alasdair’s best friend. Ranald filled the vacuum that had been left by Iain’s move. Yet it was more than that. Being of the same age and with a lifetime of a mixed and occasionally turbulent relationship—involving not one, but two women!—I wonder whether it would have been possible for Alasdair to receive the full measure of spiritual mentoring from Iain that he was now deriving from Ranald. The question was moot anyway. Iain was gone.

  More and more as time went on, I knew that Ranald and Alasdair were talking about serious things, life things, eternal things, God things. Ranald was being for Alasdair what I could never be. I was delighted for him.

  The relationship went both ways. I could tell that Ranald was equally stimulated to have a man-friend in these years of aloneness since the loss of his wife, a man to romp the meadows below Crannoch Bin with, to chop wood with, to look for a lost sheep with, to enjoy a lager with, to reflect on hard questions with and share doubts and frustrations with, to be serious with when the time came for that as well. I was as pleased for Ranald as I was for Alasdair. When I saw them together, and saw the occasional look of manly affection that passed between them, my heart glowed.

  Alasdair became the son Ranald had never had. Even more than a son of childhood, he was a son of strong and vibrant manhood with whom Ranald could share not mere sonship…but friendship.

  Chapter Twenty

  Happy Christmas in a Minor Key

  The auld dial, the auld dial,

  It tauld how time did pass;

  The wintry winds ha’e dang it down,

  Now hid ’mang weeds and grass.

  —Lady Nairne, “The Auld Hoose”

  After my acceptance of his proposal of marriage, Alasdair had taken me on a long drive to discuss many things. It was then he revealed that Gwendolyn’s illness was congenital and that in all likelihood she had inherited it from him.

  He explained that it hit hardest in the early teen years, as was the case with Gwendolyn. However, he went on, if one thus afflicted arrived in reasonable health to the age of twenty, at that point the chances became good that he or she had escaped the worst, and would live a long and healthy life. He wanted me to know, however, that in some cases symptoms resurfaced at forty-five or fifty. He had himself shown few symptoms as a child and had been but nominally affected during his late teens while at Oxford. His personal health history and Gwendolyn’s could not have been more different. Nevertheless, he wanted me to know the state of affairs. I must not marry him, he insisted, without full knowledge of the potential implications.

  As is often the case, love tends to blindly ignore such cautions. So did I. I told Alasdair that even if he had but a year to live, I would marry him just the same.

  He was obviously happy, adding that he had every intention of living to a ripe old age and growing gray with me.

  As it turned out, however, my words rather than his wer
e those that carried the ominously prophetic note.

  The first signs I noticed of things not being quite right came that third winter we were together as I was preparing my harp group for our first Christmas program, and coping with their variable responses to Ranald Bain as the newest member of our ensemble group. I couldn’t call them harp “ladies” now that we were integrated!

  As the cold of that winter set in, Alasdair often became chilled. Nothing could get him out of it. He wore layer upon layer of underclothing and sweaters and jackets, but still shivered most of the time. His headaches, always something of a problem, increased, both in duration and severity. The doctor prescribed migraine medication. That helped somewhat but did not eliminate them. He simply wasn’t himself.

  The Christmas party at the castle, however, was a wonderful diversion from my concern over his condition.

  I don’t know whether it was that he sensed perhaps he did not have many more Christmases left, or whether it was a continuation of his desire to be fully available and accessible and a part of every aspect of community life, viewing Castle Buchan as the possession and heritage of everyone in the community. Whatever the case, Alasdair was determined to invite—literally!—everyone in the twin villages of Port Scarnose and Crannoch to a lavish Christmas celebration at the castle. I had no more than mentioned my Christmas harp program in October and he immediately began making plans for five hundred or more guests.

  “Where will we put them all?” I laughed. “The castle won’t even hold five hundred people!”

  “Don’t be too sure of that, my dear,” Alasdair rejoined confidently. “The place is huge. We will stuff them in every nook and cranny! Let them fill the castle and grounds to overflowing. Hey, I’ve an idea!” he exclaimed suddenly. “Oh, this will be brilliant! We’ll use the church—with Curate Gillihan’s permission, of course. Then we’ll open the old tunnel that goes underground from the castle to the church!” he teased.

  “I thought all that about the tunnel was just a legend.”

  “Perhaps it is a true legend…dark and cobwebby and full of dead men’s bones!”

  “Ugh, Alasdair! I’m not sure I like the sound of that. Bones…​yuck! Whose bones would they be…I mean, if the legend were true?”

  “I don’t know—old monks who died, Catholics killed by the Covenanters…Covenanters killed by the Catholics. All I know is, as a boy I was terrified that I might stumble upon a human skull in the darkness of the castle somewhere, and trip and find myself lying on the floor with two vacant eyeholes staring at me from six inches away. Then Olivia would run away with the lantern and leave me not knowing the way out.”

  “Do you think a tunnel really does go under the basement of the church?” I asked.

  “It is certainly part of Castle Buchan lore. The legend says an old burial crypt lies beneath the church—but who knows if it is true. The floor of the church has been sealed over for centuries with great slabs of stone, with enough former lairds and dukes buried beneath it that no one has ever seriously proposed excavating it. The disruption and controversy would be enormous. You’d never get permission from the authorities anyway. The whole notion of an underground crypt may be a legend that emerged out of the fact that there were people buried beneath the present floor. On the other hand, the present church is probably the third structure built on the same site since the first chapel was founded in the twelfth or thirteenth century. Who is to say one of those earlier buildings didn’t have a crypt that was covered over when the present church was built in the early 1500s? As for the tunnel, it is well known that originally Castle Buchan had a monastery attached to it. All I know is that Olivia frightened me to death with her grisly ditties. I asked my father about the tales once. He just said that the tunnel between castle and chapel had been blocked up centuries ago, then scolded me for wanting to tamper with the ghosts of the past. The monks who had once occupied the castle, he said, and used the passage to go back and forth to the church, deserved to rest in peace. He said he knew nothing about it and advised me to adopt the same policy. But Olivia couldn’t resist all that ghostly kind of thing. It was in her blood ever after we made the visit to Skye. She positively thrived on stuff about crypts and burial vaults and bones and dungeons. All right, I’ve succeeded in convincing myself…It’s a stupid idea to try to find the tunnel for the Christmas party!” He laughed again. “But we’ll still invite everyone.”

  And we did! By word of mouth and by great posters placed in the town squares of Port Scarnose and Crannoch. Throughout all the month of December, the party was all people talked about. Alasdair also sent out invitations to many from the aristocracy throughout Moray and Aberdeenshire whom he hadn’t seen in years.

  The great Castle Buchan Christmas Celebration was scheduled for December 23. It snowed on the twenty-first, then a massive high-pressure cold front moved in off the Atlantic, bright, fair, windless…and freezing! More than freezing! The brilliantly clear skies, with temperatures in the teens at night and low twenties through the five to six daylight hours, ensured that four inches of snow still lay on the ground as the morning of the twenty-third dawned. It sounded even colder to track the weather in Celsius—from minus eight to minus four! It never even came close to the zero mark!

  We might not have room to fit everyone comfortably, but fit them we would—somehow…somewhere. The years of distance between himself and the people were over. Some of Alasdair’s closest friends were now the local farmers and shopkeepers and what few fishermen were left, as well as sheepherders from the slopes of the Bin. By midafternoon he was already having the time of his life, getting himself ready for the evening’s festivities in his full Highland regalia and kilt.

  The guests began arriving between four-thirty and five. Normally by then it would have long since been pitch black. But the clear skies kept the dying reds of the sunset twenty or thirty minutes longer than usual, and the sky, full of emerging stars and a half moon overhead, contributed enough light for most to walk to the castle. By six the castle was bulging to overflowing. It could not have suited Alasdair better. He was the perfect host, enthusiastically welcoming every guest at the door with handshakes and backslaps and a jovial word of personal greeting. It continually amazed me that he knew everyone’s name.

  An extensive buffet and tea was set out in the ground-floor Great Room as well as the formal dining room. It started off with Cullen skink, cock-a-leekie soup, and Scotch broth, followed with big bowls of haggis, platters of goose and pheasant, steak and kidney pies, and mounds of Scotch eggs and kippers. Then came the desserts—or “puddings,” as they called them. The buffet tables were cleared and refilled with Christmas and plum puddings, trifle, clootie dumpling and sponge cakes. Pitchers of double cream sat beside every dessert. The rooms became so crowded and loud that it felt like a church potluck and community social and carnival rolled into one. Many attempted to venture outside with their cups of tea and loaded plates, but the cold kept the flow as sort of a revolving door in and out, and many gathered in the entry hall or sat on the steps of the grand staircase with their tea and plates. No one minded the tight quarters or bumping elbows, or the occasional tea splash onto trousers or dress. The boisterous close press of happy humanity was part of the evening’s charm. I don’t know what some of Alasdair’s highbrow titled friends thought about mixing so close with commoners, but Alasdair obviously thought it was great.

  As strains of music began filtering down the grand staircase shortly before seven-thirty, a gradual drift upward to investigate ensued. That relieved the pressure of the crowd around the long buffet tables. While some remained behind to enjoy another round or two from the lavish spread, dozens, then a hundred, then two hundred began to swarm upstairs toward the Grand Ballroom, where the Duncan Wood Quartet was already in fine fettle and threatening to steal the show from my small orchestra of harps.

  Ranald joined in on his violin for several numbers. Before I knew what was happening, furniture was being scooted aside, and sud
denly the ballroom was alive with a hundred men and women dancing Scottish jigs and reels and strathspeys to the most rousing music imaginable—from Corn Rigs to Petronella to Strip the Willow and the Dashing White Sergeant and so many other dances that everyone knew as well as their multiplication tables. I had never seen anything like it—a gorgeous display. Everyone was singing along. Those who weren’t dancing swayed and clapped with the music. If anyone forgot the words to any of the songs, all they had to do was stand next to Danny Cook and they would soon come back to memory.

  As the dancers swept gracefully about the hard-oak floor, the quartet was joined in turn by Alexander Legge and John Simpson on their pennywhistles, Tom Johnston and Brian Slorach on their accordions, James George Addison and Alan McPherson crooning ballads in tenor duets, and Alex Hay and Leslie Mair drowning everyone out with their dueling bagpipes.

  Meanwhile, I scurried my ladies away to the Music Room—sans dividers—of my expanded studio. We set up our harps and music at the far end where we practiced on Thursdays, then brought in all available chairs to the sitting area. When we were ready, I returned to the ballroom. When Duncan finished the dance in progress, I went to the front and held up my hands. Gradually something resembling a quieting took place.

  “I would like to announce that in the Music Room at the eastern end of the north wing, several ladies and I—and Ranald Bain, if we can urge him to join us—will be playing an assortment of Christmas music on our harps. You are of course free to remain here enjoying Duncan’s entertainment as well. ‘Something for Everyone’ is our motto!”

  I turned back to Duncan and gestured for him to continue. Before I was even out of the room and on my way back, another dance was in progress.