Storm Over Rhanna

by Christine Marion Fraser

  ‘It’s my red head,’ she threw the ridiculous explanation at him, ‘but I’m grateful to it, it lets me get things off my chest instead o’ bottling them all up to explode at a time when it’s no earthly use to me or anyone else.’

  With that she flounced out, bumping full tilt into Megan on her way up the stairs.

  ‘Babbie,’ Megan spread her hands in appeal, ‘please stay with me. I – I need some support. You remember what I told you about me and Steve.’

  Babbie paused. She remembered alright. Just a few nights ago, after Steven Saunders had been cleaned, stitched, bandaged, and tucked in bed, Megan had sat with Babbie in the kitchen drinking tea and pouring out her heart. She had been shaking, suffering from reaction. Babbie had made her drink brandy, had finally calmed her down enough to send her to bed before going home, exhausted, to her own. Crawling in beside Anton she had wished that she had normal working hours like everyone else. The responsibility of caring for other people at all hours of the day and night seemed a heavy one in those quiet, lonely hours of morning. But then Anton’s stirring arms had gone round her and he had kissed her sleepily, reminding her what it had been like all these years ago, loving him, parting with him, waiting for him to come back to fill the empty, aching spaces in her heart. She had determined then to be as sympathetic to Megan as she could, and now she placed a firm hand over that of the younger woman. ‘Megan, I know just how you feel, believe me, but it’s you he wants, you he’s asking for. He didn’t come all this way, half drowned, half dead, to have some strange nurse chaperone his big scene with you. He’s waiting for you so for heaven’s sake be a big girl and go to him.’

  Megan took a deep breath, nodded, and climbed slowly upwards, as if she was glimpsing heaven through the open doorway of the little spare room facing out to the sea.

  In the dimness of the hallway, Babbie glimpsed Daniel Smylie Smith. His animated back was to her, one hand nonchalantly placed on the wall above his head, the other, the plastered one, lightly resting on Eve’s small, supporting shoulder. Eve saw Babbie watching and guiltily hurried away. Daniel turned and smiled, that slow, easy smile of his that held just a hint of defiance. He had been here only three days and already he had beguiled everyone he had met. He was an easy young man to like, with his dark good looks and charmingly persuasive tongue. Those first flashes of arrogance had been born of fear, pain, and a certain defensiveness at finding himself in a strongly resentful situation. He was aware that the manner of his and Steven’s arrival had caused a lot of pain and distress, and without actually appearing to pour oil on troubled waters he had very effectively done so just by going out and mixing with the islanders, by making himself helpful and agreeable to Tina and her family, and doing everything he could for them in their troubled time. Already he was quite at home with the fisherfolk of the harbour and even Ranald, that sly, likeable money grubber with an ever open eye for chance, had willingly, eagerly, and without mention of any kind of gain, allowed the Mermaid to be winched up into his boat shed so that work could start on it whenever circumstances allowed.

  As for Eve, she hung on every word that issued from Daniel’s lips, seemed always to be hanging round him watching him with those big, sad eyes of hers. Now the pair looked to be on the verge of something more than just friendship, and Babbie sighed. Surely not that as well as everything else. Eve was terribly vulnerable just now, and this dark young stranger’s manly shoulders must seem a very tempting support indeed . . . Babbie brushed past Daniel and sought out Eve who was in the kitchen extracting a savoury dish from the oven and setting it down at Babbie’s place at table.

  Babbie sat down and drew in her chair to apply herself to her food as if there was nothing else at all on her mind. ‘Eve,’ she said with a deliberately absent-minded air, ‘please don’t think I’m interfering but it really might be best if you stayed away from Tigh na Cladach for a whilie. Your mother could surely be doing with your help at home – your grandparents too.’

  Eve raised overbright eyes, a dark flush stained her fair skin. ‘No, Babbie, you know fine there’s neighbours popping in on them every hour o’ the day but they’ll no’ be doing that here. There’s been a lot o’ talk about Doctor Megan and I canny just stand back and let her cope wi’ all this on her own. She just hasny the time to be cooking and cleaning and pays me well to do it for her. But it’s no’ the money, it’s me, whenever I sit still I think o’ my father and all I do is cry. At least here I can be useful and anyway, I canny bide all the gossip that’s going about the now. Father would be angry if he heard it and would certainly never have put the blame for what happened on these two men. It was an accident, Babbie, even Mother says so and you yourself have no cause to be banging yourself about, glowering at Dan the way you do. He’s been very kind to me and I enjoy talking to him.’

  Babbie ran a hand through her bouncy red curls, her smile unrepentant when she commented, ‘So, it’s Dan now, is it? Next thing you’ll be telling me he’s grown a halo and sprouted wings – och, alright,’ laughing, she held up her hands, ‘sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, I know, and I’m sorry but only for getting at you. Daniel Smellie Smythe is quite well able to take care o’ himself and I won’t be afraid to tell him so to his face.’

  ‘Babbie,’ Eve’s face was more crimson than ever, ‘don’t pronounce his name like that. It’s insulting and he doesny like it.’

  Babbie stopped eating to look up, the picture of perfect innocence. ‘What? Oh you mean Smythe. But I’m sure that’s how he pronounced it. Smith would be far too plain for the likes o’ him.’

  Eve had to smile, but at the door she turned: ‘Doctor Megan has asked me to stay here for a whilie to stop any gossip. I’m away home now to tell Mother and to get my things – so put that in your pipe and smoke it!’

  Such was the welter of emotions in Megan’s heart as she stood looking down at Steven that she was unable to sort out any one thought in those first trauma-laden moments, and could only say in an oddly remote little voice, ‘So, you’re awake at last. How do you feel?’

  His eyes devoured her face. ‘How do I feel? We haven’t seen one another for nearly two years and you speak to me as if I was some sort of stranger. Oh Megs, my darling Megs, don’t you know how much I’ve missed you? How often during our time apart I’ve asked myself why you left me – how you could bear to break away from me after what we meant to one another? Why did you leave me, Megs? Why did you run away and leave me with a broken heart?’

  ‘Oh Steve,’ her voice broke, ‘you know the answer to that.’

  ‘Megs,’ his voice was warm, gently chiding, ‘those others meant nothing. It was always you, only you. From the start you were special to me, darling, surely you knew that? If you say I still mean something to you I’ll promise never to look at another girl again. Say you love me, sweetheart, tell me that I haven’t come all this way for nothing. Tell me you’ve forgiven me for the others – if you don’t, I won’t be able to bear it.’

  But it was something more, something much more than that which had made her take the drastic step of fleeing from him. He must know what it was. Behind all the charm, the sensual good looks, there must be another Steve, one who knew how badly he had hurt her . . .

  ‘Steve,’ she began hesitantly, ‘I’m still the same woman as before, nothing miraculous has happened to me during my time away from you. I’m not perfect and never will be—’

  ‘Megs,’ he pulled her down beside him. His mouth against her ear was a mere sensation of touch yet the contact was enough to make her shiver with a pleasure that was very nearly pain.

  ‘Steve, I’ve missed you so terribly.’ She spoke the words on a tremble of tears. ‘Yet I wish to God you hadn’t come back to open up all the old hurts.’

  ‘Darling,’ his lips moved over her face, ‘there won’t be any more hurts, only love and pleasure, and happiness.’

  Quite suddenly, and without warning of any kind, Mark strode into her mind, strong, purposeful, yet his dark sensi
tive face full of a sadness which smote her to the quick. ‘Oh, Mark,’ she murmured the name on a half sob. ‘There will be hurts, there will.’

  Steven frowned. ‘Have you been falling in love with someone else, Megs?’

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered, ‘I think I was . . .’

  ‘Then I came back to you just in time, didn’t I?’

  His mouth was about the only part of him that hadn’t been bruised in some way, but it was all she needed just then. It was like a magnet, full, tantalizing, with that odd, cruel little half smile of his quirking the corners. She melted her own against it and knew again that wondrous thrill that had been missing for so long from her life. He allowed her to play with him for a little while before his lips quickened, hardened. Somehow his one good, unbandaged hand was on her breasts. She drew in her breath, the world spun away, and she was lost – lost as she had longed to be, yet had never wanted to be again – at least not with Steven Saunders.

  Chapter Twelve

  The sea never did give up Matthew’s body. Every morning Tina went down to the lonely shores of Burg, sometimes accompanied by Eve or Donald, more often to wander in solitary seclusion, eyes sore with weeping, heart heavy with grief. The winds of the ocean swept over her, harsh at first, but as the days of spring progressed they became softer, laden with the promise of kinder weather to come.

  But nothing could take away the bleakness in Tina’s heart. She thought of her man, of how it had been with him, of how well they had loved in their own carefree, uncomplicated way.

  He had been a good man, quiet, unassuming, hard working, never born to make a great mark in life but making it just the same in his own small world, in the lives of his wife and family.

  ‘You were my man,’ Tina whispered to the murmuring heartbeat of the ocean. ‘I loved you and now I’ve lost you and I haveny even the privilege o’ seeing your bonny body laid to its proper rest.’

  Looking back along the shore she could see the doctor’s house, chimneys puffing with busy smoke, garden awash with golden daffodils. Everyone had been wrong. Doctor Megan hadn’t been wasting her time. As the earth warmed so her garden bloomed, first with drifts of snowdrops spilling about everywhere, then with brilliantly hued crocuses bursting ebulliently over the gladed knoll to the side of the house. After them had come the daffodils, bullied by the cold winds of March, growing richer and thicker as a gentle heat came into a sun that not only drew forth the daffodils but also the first tiny, shy wild flowers growing low on the machair.

  Every other day Eve came home bearing sprays of daffodils and early narcissi, and when Tina asked after the crew of the stricken yacht the answer was always the same. ‘Oh, they’re getting stronger all the time but it will be a whilie before Mr Smith gets his plaster off and even longer for Mr Saunders.’

  Tina knew her daughter. The more evasive she was about ‘Mr Smith’ the more serious were her feelings for him. Men had always been attracted to Eve. With her happy-go-lucky nature, her fair good looks and comely figure, she had been twisting men and boys round her little finger since the age of fourteen. Those she had liked a lot had been constant companions for several months, affairs of the heart she had hugged to herself, as if by discussing them she was giving away some of the magic; the rest had been more pastimes, young men to go walking and dancing with, nothing more. Calum Gillies had been her latest companion but now his name was rarely mentioned, and Tina shivered and wondered how her bonny daughter would cope with a man as worldly-wise as Daniel Smylie Smith while her sore heart was in such desperate need of comfort.

  Quite often Tina glimpsed her daughter walking hand in hand with Daniel, their heads close together, their footsteps measured and slow in the twists of golden sand over yonder in the secluded coves of Burg Bay.

  One day Mark James sought out Tina as she wandered the seashore. She saw him coming a long way off, his tall, loose-limbed figure slower than she ever remembered, the steps of him unsure on the rutted sheep path twisting among the marram, his dark head bowed as if he wasn’t taking in much of the things around him.

  Tina’s caring heart wept more for him then than it did for herself. More than anybody else she knew that this was a time of great trial for her beloved minister. Doctor Megan’s demon was hard at work, closing her eyes to everything but the reality of Steven Saunders under her roof. She was too blinded by enchantment to either see or care what she was doing to Mark James, and Tina sighed heavily while she wondered where it would all lead in the end. People would get hurt, nothing was surer, Doctor Megan, the minister – her very own Eve . . .

  The smile the minister threw as he drew nearer couldn’t disguise the unhappiness in his eyes. ‘Tina.’ His hands came out to take hers. Warm hands they were, warm and strong. She felt his goodness flowing into her.

  ‘Ay, Mr James?’

  ‘Matthew – will not come back.’

  ‘I know that, the sea has him and will hold on to him.’

  ‘And – you accept that, Tina?’

  ‘I accept it – but – I’ll never forgive the damty bugger for keeping my man when I want him home here on Rhanna, in a place I can be visiting him wi’ a wee bunch o’ wild primroses or just a great big armful o’ buttercups. He loved buttercups did Matthew and used to say that for a humble wee flower they gave the greatest show on earth when they bloomed in their thousands all over the machair—’

  With a huge shuddering breath she laid her head on his shoulder and cried on it, her fine, fair hair descending in flyaway strands all over his jacket, a deluge of kirby grips raining down to catch in his lapels, one or two even landing in his pockets.

  ‘Tina,’ he said huskily, ‘you’re a good woman. I hate to see you like this, the Lord knows you didn’t deserve any of it to happen.’

  ‘And so are you,’ she sobbed, searching frantically for a hanky, grabbing his proffered manly square to scrub with embarrassment at her eyes and blow her nose soundly, ‘a good man. Och, Mr James, we’re both just two souls lost the now and it was lovely just, the way you let me greet on your shoulder.’

  ‘Tina.’ Straightening, he placed his hands on her shoulders and looked her straight in the eye. ‘The time has come – you know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Ay, Mr James, I know,’ she nodded, and one by one, as if playing for time, she plucked her kirby grips from the clinging, hairy tweed of his jacket.

  The memorial service was held out in the open, on the wide white sands of Burg Bay, with a gentle sea lapping the shore and the haunting cry of the curlew winging over from some hidden, lonely place.

  From all over Rhanna folk had come to pay their last respects to Matthew’s memory, the wide stretches of Burg had never known so many people crowding its wild shores. They stood waiting, a solemn band that wound round the great curve of the bay, their feet churning the golden sands, their voices hushed so that the crying of seabirds, the bleating of sheep, took precedence over all.

  A few less gregarious souls had chosen to wait seated on the pink gneiss rocks close to the sea, others stood in the lee of the cliffs where the Well o’ Weeping foamed up from an underground cavern. Though there was little wind that day, little eddies of air swept in and around the vast caves and black columns of rock that surrounded the Well o’ Weeping, causing a plaintive sighing wail to reverberate in the caverns and whistle eerily round the lichen-encrusted rock pinnacles.

  Shona, standing nearby with Niall, shivered as the sounds invoked in her a memory of the strange, lost feeling she had experienced last time she had been near the Well o’ Weeping. On that day she had stood atop the cliffs, watching a small boat sailing away up the Sound. In it had been Niall and Ellie, her eldest daughter, and the unease in Shona had been born of some odd premonition wrought in her by the Well o’ Weeping which legend said had been made by the tears of the widows who had come there to mourn husbands, sons, and brothers lost at sea.

  Taking Niall’s arm she pulled him away, over to where Kirsteen and Fergus were surrounded by their grand
children; Ellie Dawn; the twins sound asleep in their pram, watched over by five-year-old Lorna, the eldest child of Lorn and Ruth.

  ‘I was just thinking about the day I made Matthew Grieve of Laigmhor,’ Fergus greeted his daughter and son-in-law, ‘the lad was overwhelmed, he thought he wasny fit for the job – but by God! He turned out to be the best Grieve Laigmhor ever had after Hamish. He had a quiet authority about him that the men respected and a way with the animals that was a joy to see. I’ve been wondering who will I get to take his place.’ He looked at Lorn. ‘You will be running the farm one day soon, I’ll leave it up to you.’

  Lorn’s dark gaze sought out Donald, standing tall and fair beside his family. ‘He’s the natural choice, Father, he’s got the same qualities as his father and I know fine you’ve already picked him as the one.’

  Fergus smiled sheepishly. ‘You know me better than I know myself. Donald it is then, we’ll let him know after this is over.’

  Mark James arrived, going straight down to stand by Tina and put a kindly, supporting arm round her shoulders. ‘Are you ready, lass?’ he asked softly, his eyes dark with the solemnity of the occasion.

  ‘Ay, Mr James, I’m ready.’ Tina’s face was white and strained, she had grown thinner these last terrible weeks but there was about her a gentle dignity and an air of wonder at the sight of so many people crowding the bay. Her man had indeed been well liked. If he was here he would have smiled, that slow, bemused smile of his and voiced his astonishment that folk had taken time off from spring tasks for him. But he was here. Tina could feel the peace of him in her weary soul, calming her, soothing away her pain.