Storm Over Rhanna

by Christine Marion Fraser

  Tina had few rules in life but ‘the parlour for visitors’ was one that had been inherent in her from birth, a code of practice no amount of inconvenience would ever change.

  ‘Don’t worry so much, Tina,’ Mark told her patiently. ‘The cubby hole will do as a temporary study and it won’t be for long, Tam is getting the repairs done slowly but surely.’

  ‘Slowly more than surely, Mr James,’ she returned with mild sarcasm, ‘Tam McKinnon wouldny hurry if it was Buckingham Palace itself wi’ a tree in the roof and I never could abide a body wi’ no respect for their betters. If it was me I would have had you back in your own study long ago and myself back in my own kitchen.’

  The minister hid a smile. Tina was as sublimely unaware of her own shortcomings as she was the hands of the clock, two facts he found easy to overlook since her presence in his house had the same effect on him as a walk by the sea on a balmy summer’s evening.

  Tina’s worries and the minister’s inconvenience were solved from a most unexpected quarter when Megan appeared in the Manse one bright morning to say with an offhand air, ‘Eve has been telling me of your difficulties here. There are plenty of rooms at Tigh na Cladach, one of them just perfect for you at the back of the house with a view of the sea. You could work away in there undisturbed, it’s well away from the waiting room and surgery.’

  Mark was so taken aback that she had gone out again before he had time to make any sort of comment, though Tina, hovering nearby with a feather duster in her hand, made enough for them both.

  ‘Well, well now, there’s a thing, a very fine thing indeed. You will be taking her up on the offer, Mr James, that you will, then I will no’ have to be worrying about you anymore.’ She nodded lazily, the movement sending flyaway loops of hair cascading about her face together with a dozen kirby grips. ‘I aye said she was a good lassie, and though she has her wee tempers her heart’s in the right place.’

  Affectionately the minister ruffled her baby-fine hair. ‘Big words, Tina, but I know fine you’ve never forgiven her for lashing out at you that day of the bazaar.’

  ‘Ach, she had a demon in her at the time, Mr James, and still has for all she tries to hide it. It tears her heart, one way and the next and she’ll no’ get rid o’ it till her eyes are opened to the truth that’s starin’ her in the face.’

  The profundity of her words took his breath away. For a moment he was tempted to tell her she had been reading too many books, but one look at her serious face stilled his tongue. ‘What truth?’ he contented himself with asking.

  ‘Och, Mr James,’ she chided gently, ‘you’re as blind as she herself and I’m no’ going to waste my breath explaining. Just know this, she’ll go after it for a whilie and think she’s found it only to discover she’s chasin’ rainbows without substance. There is no pot o’ gold at the end o’ rainbows, Mr James,’ she assured softly. ‘The gold is where we can feel it and see the beauty wi’ our half-blind eyes.’

  ‘Tina,’ he shook his head. ‘You speak in riddles – and you’re also one of the greatest romantics I’ve ever met.’

  She laughed then, her dimples denting her smooth cheeks, ‘Ach, it was a poem Ruth McKenzie wrote in one o’ they wimmen’s magazines, but the rest is mine – from me myself.’

  ‘Ay, it sounds more like Ruth than Tina,’ he grinned. ‘Talking about Ruth, her first novel is to be published in the spring, I believe.’

  ‘Ay, that it is,’ Tina bubbled with enthusiasm, ‘I can hardly wait to get my hands on it for Ruth was after telling Shona a wee bittie about it and Shona was after telling me. Ach my, it’s that sad I had a wee greet to myself, I enjoyed it that much. ’Tis all about love and great passionate dramas—’ she caught his laughing eyes. ‘Och, there I go, blethering on and me wi’ half a day’s work yet to be done – you’ve kept me back wi’ all your nonsense,’ she giggled, ‘but it can all just wait till tomorrow now that you’ve decided to move your books and papers down to Tigh na Cladach.’

  ‘Tina, I haven’t decided anything yet!’ he protested, but it was to the generous proportions of her receding back. She was already away ‘sorting’ his things to take to the doctor’s house.

  There followed some of the happiest times he was ever to know for many a long day. Oh true enough, he disciplined himself to writing his sermons and visiting his flock in the daytime, but when the early darkness of winter afternoons gathered in there came that precious hour of the day he was to remember and treasure in all the black times that lay ahead.

  With the drapes pulled over the windows, he and Megan, Eve and Tina, would gather round the sitting-room fire to drink tea and eat the fluffy scones Eve and Tina took turn about baking. It was the easiest thing in the world to be greedy about these tempting titbits. Thick with creamy butter or oozing with homemade bramble jelly, they evoked memories of childhood summers when all the world was blue and busy with grazing cows and brown berry pickers whose laughter drifted over the green meadows. The fire blazed, the clocks ticked, animals snored serenely, Eve and Tina talked in soft voices about the island, the sea, men and boats, both mother and daughter occasionally breaking into song in their lilting, pleasant, out-of-key voices, which didn’t matter anyway because the songs were in the Gaelic and the music of that language is kind to less than perfect voices.

  To Mark James they were the finest ceilidhs he had ever known, with the sea lapping the winter dark outside and the fire-shadowed room wrapping them round in a shell of warmth. All time was forgotten, all enmity melted away, hurt and bitterness belonged to the past, nothing that was unpleasant intruded into the chintzy room. When Eve and Tina departed into the night it was just Mark and Megan, the house dark and quiet around them, the firelight playing on the soft gleam of her hair, dancing over the sweet planes of her face, caressing the chaste contours of her slender body.

  They hardly spoke, hardly looked at one another, they were just there together, Mutt and Muff draped about their feet, all warm, all safe from wind and storm. Never once did he touch her. He knew that if he did so he would break that spell of enchantment so precariously won. The man in him rebelled, longed to break out and enfold her, but his better sense warned him to be patient.

  All too soon reality intruded, the hands of the clock swung relentlessly round to the hour of evening surgery. Firelight was violated by paraffin lamps, flaring up, flooding out, but better that than the harsh glare of electric light. Megan had a generator but only used it when necessity called, particularly in the surgery.

  He always left before the first patient arrived.

  ‘I don’t want them talking,’ she told him rather defensively. ‘You know what they’re like.’

  ‘Ay, I know and I understand.’

  But he didn’t and all he could hope for was a day when she would cease to care what others thought and concentrate instead on him.

  He dreaded the day when work on the Manse would be finished, and he would have to go back to his lonely rooms with just his hopes to carry him through from one day to the next.

  But come the day did and with it came Tam, right pleased with himself as he presented himself in the little back room to stretch his feet to the fire and take his time over the strupak Tina brought him.

  ‘She’s as good as new, that she is.’ Tam’s referral to the roof was a fond one, though he had spent the last few weeks cursing the same structure upside down. ‘It was a bugger o’ a job mind –’ he grinned apologetically, more for his own lapse than for the minister’s benefit, for Kate had warned him to watch his tongue while working about the Manse.

  ‘But Kate,’ Tam had protested, ‘you allow your own to run riot in front o’ Mr James. I heard you wi’ my very own ears last Sabbath.’

  ‘Ach, that wasny swearin’,’ she had returned indignantly, ‘I just told him the kirk had more draughts than a tink wi’ holes in his breeks and the mannie agreed wi’ me for he laughed in that nice way he has.’

  ‘Ay well, as I was sayin’, it was a terrible job jus
t,’ Tam continued with an apologetic cough. ‘Every time we got a good section fixed the wind came in the night and blew her all down again but the bu . . . the slates are all back on now and she is tighter than a drum, better than she ever was and will no’ collapse again – except of course if another tree comes crashing in on top o’ her,’ he ended with a mirthful screech.

  ‘A balm to my troubled breast,’ Mark laughed.

  ‘You were sayin’, Mr James?’ Tam enquired politely.

  ‘You’re an optimist with a pessimistic tongue, Tam, in other words you have a way of saying the wrong things in the best possible way and I’m delighted to be watertight again, thanks to you and the others.’

  ‘Ach well, there is nothing to beat your own roof – though mind –’ Tam winked heavily, ‘you did no’ too bad for yourself while you were waiting. That’s one house will no’ blow away in a hurry even though her very feets are near steepin’ in the ocean. I should know for it was me put her to rights when Burnbreddie the Younger took over the estate. James Balfour, his father, just let everything fall about his ears and old Andy Devlin, who used to bide in Tigh na Cladach, was just as bad. He hadny even the gumption to set hammer to nail when bits o’ the house were blowin’ about his lugs and it’s thanks to young Burnbreddie the house wasny razed to the ground years ago.’

  Settling back in his seat he shoved a hacked thumbnail under the rim of his cap. ‘You never kent the old laird, did you, son? He was well afore your time, a rascal if ever there was one, as sinful as the de’il himself wi’ an eye in his head for big buxom wimmen and wee servant lassies alike . . .’

  Tam rambled on. Mark James was a practised listener. Outside the rain blattered, the wind whistled mournfully. No matter, his roof was on again, he was watertight – and no more those wonderful hours spent with Megan in the big old house so close to the sea, ‘her very feets were near steepin’ in the ocean’.

  The carts were down on Mara Oran Bay, loading up with gleaming orange seaweed tossed up by the last high tide. Crofters and farmers from all airts had congregated at the bay to reap the bounty of the sea. It was a long time since anyone had seen such thick banks of seaweed on the normally clean sands and one and all hastened to take advantage of it, for nothing was finer dug into the tattie ground. This was the best time, before the spring work got underway and spade had yet to be put to the soil.

  It was a warm, balmy day in the middle of March, the calmest day the island had seen since the onset of winter. The Sound of Rhanna was a deep blue under an azure sky; tiny far-flung islands were misted and unreal, and if one didn’t know they existed they might have been mistaken for delicate lilac clouds merging into the white cumulus on the horizon. Odd boat-shaped objects stood out on the skerries, and could have been an extension of the grey rocks but for occasional barkings and plaintive moanings that identified them as seals; seabirds mewed and muttered among the rock pools as they probed for molluscs; on the machair above the bay early lambs frolicked, glad of the warmth beating down on their tiny bodies after the soakings they had endured since birth.

  No one said much about the weather.

  ‘Better to talk about it in whispers,’ advised Hector the Boat, ‘else we might bring the wrath o’ the ocean down about our lugs.’

  ‘Ach, it’s no’ the ocean that hears,’ Canty Tam was scornful, ’tis the Uisge Hags who cock their lugs for the foolish talk o’ silly men.’

  ‘Ay, and you’re about the silliest to be born,’ Jim Jim spoke from his place on a hollowed-out rock just made for the convenience of men like him, too old to work but never too old to enjoy watching others doing it.

  ‘Well, only this very mornin’ my mother was after sayin’ that the Hags are no’ finished wi’ us yet,’ Canty Tam persisted smugly. ‘She says the worst storm has yet to come and with it will come strife and trouble that will affect many a man, woman, and child on Rhanna.’

  ‘Ach, yon mother o’ yours is a witch herself.’ Fingal McLeod paused in his labours and came limping over to join the little group by the rocks. ‘I’ve heard tell she brews all sorts o’ evil potions in thon big black pot she has, and feeds them to the towrists for good sillar.’

  ‘’Tis no’ evil potions,’ scorned Canty Tam, ‘and you’re the one who’s daft if you dinna ken that. She makes tablet and toffee that melts in your mouth. The towrists are just linin’ up at our door to have a taste.’

  ‘Ay, and it sticks to your teeths and rots them.’ Ranald pulled a rueful face as he poked a tarry finger into his mouth. ‘Between her tablet and Barra’s cakes my teeths are in a fine state and will have to be sorted next time thon dentist mannie comes to Rhanna.’

  ‘And when’s that?’ Jim Jim clicked his teeth experimentally and winced. ‘My own are needin’ replaced for every time I chew my meat a wee sharp corner cuts my gums.’

  ‘Ach, it will be your second set o’ baby teeths comin’ through,’ guffawed Ranald. ‘Isabel was after saying you are comin’ into your second childhood wi’ all the daft things you get up to these days. Anyways, the dentist will no’ be here till summer so you’ll just have to thole your teeths till then.’

  ‘I doubt it will no’ be soon enough for poor auld Dodie.’ Captain Mac tapped his pipe on a rock and made himself comfortable beside Jim Jim. ‘These rotten brown molars o’ his are giving him gyp this whilie back. His face is all swollen wi’ the pain o’ them.’

  All eyes turned on Dodie working away silently beside the tall, fair figure of Anton Büttger who gave the old eccentric employment whenever he could.

  ‘It’s no’ toothache that’s Dodie’s problem,’ Jim Jim shook his head wisely. ‘’Tis heartache. He’s no’ been the same man since he lost Ealasaid, and seems to greet all the time. I’ve seen him wanderin’ the moors, crying on her as if she was still alive, the tears pourin’ down his face as he goes along.’

  ‘Ay, it was a tragedy for a poor, simple cratur’ like Dodie,’ agreed Fingal sadly. ‘It will be a whilie before he can afford another. Yon cow was his bread and butter.’

  ‘Ay, and he was hoping to get an even better calf out her when Croynachan’s bull came to the island,’ nodded Jim Jim. ‘For all he’s supposed to be soft, Dodie has aye had his ambitions. There was a time he dreamed o’ having a whole herd o’ beasts to call his own.’

  Captain Mac ran his fingers through his luxuriant beard, his keen eyes fastened on Dodie’s bent figure humping seaweed into a cart. ‘Ay, he’ll no’ get that now. I doubt his days o’ dreaming are done with for he’s getting on in years and will soon no’ be able to do manual labour. Ach, ’tis sad, sad indeed, he’s a changed man altogether these days. You know the way he was? Never letting any event go by his notice, aye makin’ and takin’ a wee gift to somebody or other, yet when wee Shona McLachlan had her twins last Christmas there was nary a sign nor smell o’ Dodie. She was that disappointed she mentioned it to me, for Dodie was aye about her place wi’ his painted stones and wee presents o’ one sort or another.’

  ‘’Tis one storm he’ll no’ weather in a hurry,’ said Jim Jim. ‘He’s come through a lot in his day, but Ealasaid was his life and without her he’s just a poor lost cratur’ without hope.’

  ‘Talkin’ o’ storms,’ Captain Mac’s experienced eye was fixed on the horizon where a band of slate-grey cloud had swallowed up the distant islands, ‘I doubt this bugger is right after all. There’s another brewin’ over yonder. She’ll be here by nightfall or my name isny Isaac MacIntosh.’

  Canty Tam smirked. ‘Ay, trouble is comin’ right enough, I can feel it in my bones. My mother is aye right, she was hearin’ storms afore she was born and arrived in one in a wee blackhouse over by the cliffs of Burg.’

  ‘Ach, it was her own winds she was hearin’ for the wife is full o’ them,’ Captain Mac threw over his shoulder as he clambered from the rocks to resume his neglected tasks.

  As predicted, the storm came that night, preceded by a sullen early darkness. Mark James, his lamps yet unlit, wandered int
o his study and over to the window to watch the strange, yellow half-light gradually being swallowed into rolling black clouds that had hung threateningly over the sea since mid-afternoon.

  The little houses of Portcull sat round the bay, white pearls against the black hills, sturdy edifices that had withstood wind and tempest for the past hundred years and more. One by one lights flickered in the windows like amber eyes blinking open, till gradually a bright semicircular necklace ringed the throat of the bay and brought an illusion of warmth to the blackening night.

  Beyond the bay the sea heaved, restlessly chafing against the land, the oncoming waves showing white bellies as they rolled and broke.

  Mark settled himself into his favourite window seat to light his pipe, and to allow his gaze to wander down to Tigh na Cladach sitting so close to the waves that no one had ever needed to gather seaweed to fertilize its garden. It was tossed in naturally and if the tide was really high it draped itself everywhere, even over windowsills and once, it was said, actually to hang from the roof gutters in tattered banners. It was a wonder the house itself had stood the test of time but there it remained, as proud a structure as any house could be in that position, its garden walls taking the full brunt of the batterings so that they had to be repaired regularly though only when all fear of storm was safely past. Tam McKinnon was too wise in the ways of weather to risk anything undermining his efforts. He had warned Megan not to plant a single seed in her garden for weeks yet but she was an incomer and knew best, that was what everyone said when they saw her out there in her Wellingtons, lovingly tending the pale spikes of daffodils and tulips she had planted last autumn.

  ‘A miracle those Wellingtons,’ was the general opinion. ‘But you’ll no’ catch her in them out o’ her garden. She wears thon fancy shoes o’ hers everywhere – even to the wee hoosie before her plumbing went in.’

  ‘The boots were Kirsteen McKenzie’s doing,’ Elspeth pointed out knowingly. ‘She converted the doctor thon time o’ the awful snow when Niall’s twins were born – though mind, ’tis gey strange now that I come to think on it. She had her shoes clasped to her breast that time the minister came leapin’ in wi’ her in his arms. At the time I thought they were havin’ high jinks to themselves but maybe it was him converted her, though ’tis about the only thing he’s wanted to change for he seems to like her fine wi’ the rest o’ her fancies intact. Oh ay, I saw him sneakin’ away from her house in the middle o’ the night thon time his own house was injured.’