by Leah Fleming
She had started off simply as Harry’s escort, his consort, and gradually become Brodie Lennox, his queen, his equal.
Any black market dealings were abandoned in favour of more respectable business acquisitions now. Harry sniffed out companies to be bought and sold on, developed transport and haulage links with the Continent. Harry had the knack of finding the right man for the job and placing him in authority, giving himself time and freedom to mix in the county: in the hunting, shooting and fishing fraternity who had contacts in London and within the right circles around Edinburgh.
Once she was his wife, she was invited to join the exclusive charity committees and the coffee-morning circuit, where she too could glean information to further their cause. Together they were a team and Harry adored his little girl.
In the early days she covered for him willingly, lied to keep his standing afloat, pretended and disguised their rickety finances when deals went wrong side up, flirted with disgusting men to keep them sweet. It had not been easy but Harry had delivered all his promises to her. He was a safe option and a sure bet. He would never let her down. The fact that she had never really trusted him was always pushed to the back of her mind. When his parents died within months of each other there was no reason to stay on at Pitlandry, but neither of them could bear to move south.
Sometimes she dreamt of Ewan and the gale of passion he could stir up within her. News of his wedding had only convinced her how right she had been to choose Harry, but she envied Johanna Macallum. The ring he had given her was confined to the back of her dressing table drawer in its maroon battered box. She could not bear to look at it. Anna would have it one day for her birthday.
In her eyes he had proved as unreliable as Ken Broddick. The fact that Ewan and Jo were staying on Phetray now terrified her more than facing her mother’s death.
*
Mother was lying in the box bed by the fire, with kind neighbours keeping the peat fire banked up and steaming pans of broth on her new stove, but she was too sick now to eat much. It was time for Minn to roll up her sleeves and see to her comforts to make the last days of her life more bearable. They had begged her mother to let them build her a bungalow on the machair but she had refused all help but a little extra money for repairs.
Now it was a dark November night and the gales were howling over the damp machair. Minn stared around the room, sniffing that familiar fug of smoke belching back out of the hearth, wondering how she had ever lived in such a hovel. She tried to stifle such shameful thoughts as her mother lay close to death.
The two of them had never been close, not even when she was young, for Mother had seemed so grim and downtrodden, having to kow-tow to Uncle Niall’s commands as if she was his servant, grateful for a roof over her head, not his sister.
In later years she had been in awe of Harry and Minn’s way of life and an uncomfortable visitor at Pitlandry, but no one could say that her daughter hadn’t been dutiful. She did feel guilty that she had not brought her down to Pitlandry to live in a modern cottage, to spend her last years in comfort, but Eilidh was stuck in her peasant ways and spoke such halting Highland English that it would have been painful for both of them. It would never have worked. In her heart she excused this lack of insistence because she sensed that Mother would have hated to be far from the sea and the people she knew, trapped in an alien land.
Sometimes it felt as if she had neglected her mother. All those years of poverty, of coolness and silence for being a bastard child of no consequence had driven a wedge between them. Now they lived in separate worlds. Now she wanted to cushion her from the pain and the draughts but it was too late.
‘Come… close… Minn, mo ghaoil… Don’t be weeping for me but for yerself… There’s something that I’ll be shedding from my soul afore I face my Maker…’ Mother whispered
‘Wheesht, Mother.’ The old language came back haltingly as Minn drew the wooden chair closer to the bed.
‘It’s time I spoke the truth to you. Hard have I been on you to protect you from the curses of leaving this island shore. Now I’m after thinking that ma task is done if I tell my story once only to you.’
‘What troubles you? What secrets are these?’ She could feel the heat of her cheeks as she thought of her own guilty secrets. What was there more to say on the matter?
‘Closer in, child, so the spirits hovering don’t catch my tale… About your father…’ Eilidh gasped.
‘Yes?’ she replied, hoping to find the truth would be aired at last.
‘It shames me to go to ma grave without unburdening the sorry tale of him. Don’t get hopes up. The truth of it is no very edifying.’
‘So who is the mystery man I’ve lived with all these years? I’d love to know his name.’ Minn bent to hear the whispering lips.
‘It is shaming me that I dinna ken his name. I was in service in Glaschu, a very respectable place in Kelvinside… in the West End. I was sent as a maid at just fifteen. They were a musical family with this big pianny. I had to polish it every day. They said it was one of the last to come down the water afore the Great War… a Winklemann. I can see they letters etched in gold. I had to sit underneath to polish its legs, big round curvy legs, fat as a beast. I knew every grain of wood on that wooden beast. I was the tweeny… You know how that is, up and down stairs, a wee dogsbody trying to keep out of sight of the mistress like some sea misty ghost on the stairs.’ The effort of talking was exhausting her but she drew a deep breath.
‘One night there was a concert at the St Andrews Hall and the pianny man came to tune the beast. Then the man came to practise on our pianny, to loosen his fingers on the keys, leaving his finger marks on all my polishing. He made fine music. I’ll give him that. I was polishing the legs when he came in and hid under the beast out of the way, with the bangs and crashes in ma ears deafening me like the crack o’ doom.’
Minn had never heard this tale before, and could picture how it was at the Crannog.
‘The house fell silent when they all went to hear him play and we were made to wait up and see to the fires and the supper on their return. I sat at yon pianny and tried to make it sing for me but it wouldn’t play. Then they came back with the pianny man and there was a fuss, more singing and playing and fizzy wine and they all said he was the maestro.
‘He patted the beast and said it was a fine instrument and well cared for.’ Eildih was swallowing and Minn gave her a drip of water from the little funnel cup.
‘I waited until they all went to bed to see to the fire in the music room. He was still pacing up and down, full o’ wine and praising. I saw he was an older man with a moustache, very tall. I bent down to see to the coal bucket. He took me by surprise.’
Minn’s heart was thumping as she saw the scene in her head in the half-light of flickering firelight and gas lamps: the rump of the young maid in her starched rustling skirt, round and inviting, the man watching her bend…
‘He took me on the floor under the pianny. I was trapped like a ship in a glass bottle. He forced me open… for his own relief, like a bull at a coo as if I was some beast of the field. I was so afeart. I shut my eyes to hide from this shaming under the roof of that damned pianny. Just a wee maid, I was, intact, innocent o’ the ways of men, but no more after that night. You heard o’ such things, but the shame of it… I’ll say no more.’
‘Oh, Mother, who was it who did this to you?’
‘I’ve no mind of his name… only his music and his pianny, but I ken he was from foreign parts. He spoke a gey queer English. His shadow was tall. I found golden hairs on my shirt. You must have his looks for they’re no mine. I was so shamed when I knew my condition that I wrote away home and begged for my fare. I told nobody.
‘He was the guest in the house, a stranger but no gentleman. So it makes no difference. I never clapped eyes on the beast again until you were born and I saw those blue eyes staring up at me. Gie me a sip of water.’
Minn poured from the stone jug into the invalid cup wi
th its tiny spout to aid the supping of liquid down her mother’s parched throat. ‘All this time I’ve let them think I fell to some fisherman as his whore. Then I hear you singing and carrying on, making music and growing like a beanpole. I wished you dead many a time but new life flies with its own wings, they say, and you’ve made your way despite your birthing to be a lady: one who can hold her head up in any company. I see you turn your nose up now at the bed on which you were born in such fear.’ Eilidh lifted her head from the pillow as her daughter wept at this sad tale.
‘All this time you’ve kept this festering in your heart. It wasn’t your fault. You should have told me before,’ she cried.
‘Would it make any difference, mo ghaoil? What’s for you will no go past you as you well know.’ Eilidh sobbed in gasps and Minn grabbed her bony hand and cried for all the pain her mother had held in her heart.
‘It tore at my heart to see you at a pianny singing and carrying on, knowing where you get all that music… What’s done is done and can’t be altered. I’ve said ma piece and that’s the end of it. I can go now and it’s time. I’ve had enough of this pain. It’s been a hard life but the Lord is merciful. The doctor has eased my pain away. Fetch the salt and the earth.’
Minn wept softly as she searched for a saucer and sprinkled on some salt and drew grit from the soil outside the door, mixing them together in the saucer to place on her mother’s chest to settle her dying spirit the old way.
Why wait until now to tell me all this? her heart cried out with shame and pity. If only we had been closer and not such strangers. Poor lonely Mother, these last words on earth explained her strictness, her shame and her reluctance to let her leave Phetray.
‘Has the tide turned yet? I shall go out with the tide into the sea without a shore…’ Eilidh lay quietly with her face to the wall, turning from life, breathing in rasps now.
Minn dozed by her side, jolting herself awake to see if there was any change, holding her hand. In the early light she saw that there was no more breathing and opened the door to release Eilidh’s spirit into the wind. The shoreline was littered with spoils from the sea and the tide was far out, carrying her mother’s sad soul to Tir nan og.
*
There would be much to see to, visits to make and a funeral arranged. She would wire Harry not to come to the funeral. She would see to it all herself. In death as in birth there had only ever been the two of them. So now Eilidh would have the best of funerals. It was the only way Minn could soothe her guilty heart.
Underneath her fine clothes, cashmere and silks, the mink coat and the diamond watch flashing on her wrist, the handmade brogues, nothing was changed. Here on Phetray she felt still that bastard child, conceived in lust and born in fear.
Why had they never understood each other until it was too late! If only she could have admitted how right mother was to fear her own fate, how ungrateful she had been. If only they had loved each other, but there was no touch of love between them, even at the end they had kept their distance.
In the days that followed she was busy making arrangements, ordering provisions and a hearse, until Uncle Niall and his shrimp-like wife, Mima, came on the first boat from Glasgow. As male head of the household he wanted to make all the decisions. She retreated into the local hotel sick of watching Mima claw her way through Mother’s trunk like a vulture, sifting out all Minn’s expensive gifts: silk scarves and lamb’s-wool cardigans, pretty stone brooches still unwrapped and unused, packing them in her suitcase to take home for herself.
Uncle Niall saw to the burial plot and the catering for the funeral tea. Harry sent a lavish bouquet by air from Anna. Mother might have been born in poverty but she was buried with no expense spared on Minn’s part. Her presence on the island did not go unnoticed and many, more out of curiosity than duty, called to pay their respects.
Uncle Niall was just as wizened and dour as she remembered as a child, and his wife tried to pretend all the tasteful catering arrangements for the funeral tea were their own idea.
It was easy to slip back into the role of useless girl, but a Lennox woman was not to be ignored. The marble headstone would be finely engraved and erected exactly to her specification. The bed was made up for Uncle Niall, but thankfully they preferred to stay at the local tavern to see his old seafaring shipmates.
There was a crumb of comfort in sitting alone with the body until the day the men came for their dram and took the coffin down to Kilphetrish kirkyard to be placed next to Grandfather Macfee and his line-up of ancient relatives. Here they were warmed with another dram and then on to the Tulloch for Niall’s wake.
The women in black and grey sat around the croft sipping tea and cracking to each other at a speed Minn was finding hard to follow. Her Gaelic was rusty, but fluent enough to overhear that Ewan dubh was back on the island with his wife.
Walking along the beach she bent westward into the wind, humbled by its force, pausing to catch her breath, heart thudding at the news.
Phetray was an island of winds that whistled, sang, roared as they pleased. ‘Isle of the singing winds,’ some bard had proclaimed. Now it was screaming into her ears, making them ache, ‘There is danger here!’
How she needed to escape. The coastal path was tarmacked where once her bare feet had skipped along the rutted sandy track chasing the hens. The narrow lanes still stretched from Kilphetrish like arteries pumping the daily gossip from the harbour in carts and traps to the four corners of the island. Nothing was changed: the shimmering outlines of the purple isles across the white sand bay, the roaring tide and waves. Yet everything was changed. Ewan was here on the island and she was afraid.
Visiting old haunts and looking out at the grey water with aching eyes, she had forgotten how depressing the winter months on Phetray could be. Now she longed for the safe warmth of Pitlandry and Anna: the warmth of the kitchen stove and the chatter of children bickering over toys. She yearned for the satiny quilt of her eiderdown, the eagerness of Harry’s embrace.
Pitlandry was her rightful home, where all things were possible because Harry was generous and careful for them. Ewan Mackinnon seemed like some far-distant ghost from a half-forgotten past. He had proved unreliable and cold. He was not the upstanding island son everyone thought him on Phetray where his praises echoed in every conversation. He was cruel and fickle and unreliable and she never wanted to see him again.
Four
Kilphetrish
There was a phone message left for Minn at the Phetray Hotel and a card with a small bunch of late roses from Mrs Ewan Mackinnon, which read: ‘We were sorry to hear of your sad loss.’
She picked them up with trembling fingers. So they were both here. Word would have gone round the townships. As if reading her very thoughts the young manager called out her name.
‘Mrs Lennox? A call for you.’
Minn ran to his office hoping it was Harry and Anna ringing to give her support after such a long day.
‘Minn… Ciamar a tha thu?’ said a familiar voice. How was she? After all these years, how could Ewan just pick up the phone out of the blue? There was no escaping this encounter and Minn’s voice trembled.
‘Ewan dubh? What a surprise.’ There was no warmth in her voice or the English of response.
‘Minn, it is you? I knew you’d come home… I was sorry to hear about Eilidh,’ he was continuing as if he hadn’t heard her coolness.
‘Thank your wife for the flowers. It was thoughtful of her,’ she said.
‘Johanna has a kind heart.’ There was an awkward pause. ‘How long are you staying?’
‘I leave tomorrow on the boat. I can’t face flying back at the moment,’ she replied, trying to sound cold and indifferent.
‘Mistress Macfee must have been glad you came to her at the end,’ he said.
‘I know my duty.’ She bristled at his insinuation. ‘What brings you back to Phetray after all these years?’
‘The call of the sea, the turn of the tide, a chance to take sto
ck and think about my work before we are off travelling again. I’ve always worked better in the open and on the move.’
‘Is Johanna happy to be back?’ Minn was keeping her voice smooth.
‘She’s resting. We’ve a child on the way. You know how it is in the early days,’ he offered.
Minn patted her own stomach and smiled briefly. ‘I do indeed. I can hardly keep anything down myself at the moment,’ she replied.
‘Are you still in the Borders?’ he continued.
‘Yes, we decided to stay on there. It suits the family,’ she added.
‘How many are there of you now?’
‘A little girl and one on the way. We are hoping for a boy this time.’ She was shaking. Why was he asking these questions?
‘Mr Lennox must be a proud man. It’s a fine spread you have there,’ Ewan answered.
‘How do you know? You’ve never seen Pitlandry,’ Minn gasped. What was Ewan hinting at?
‘I have so… I came to see you.’ There was a deafening silence. Minn felt her stomach churning and her legs shaking.
‘When was that?’ she said, suddenly feeling queasy.
‘Last year, in the spring after that dreadful winter. I was in Europe and missed most of it, but when I found your letter I sent you a telegram and came on the next train,’ he said.
‘I received no telegram from you. Not one word. You came up to Pitlandry and I was never told? Who did you see there?’ Even her voice was trembling now.
‘The chauffeur. He told me all about your pilot and your little girl… discreetly, of course,’ he answered, and Minn felt the shock waves down her body. She wrapped her fur coat around her to shield herself from this blow. His words were making no sense.
‘What chauffeur? There was no chauffeur then. In fact, I did most of the driving myself,’ she snapped.
