Rhanna

by Christine Marion Fraser

  Lachlan had been angry when he discovered she had felt ill for a long time and hadn’t come to see him before.

  ‘Ach, I was ay too busy,’ she answered placidly. ‘Besides I had too much to keep me occupied to have time to be ill. There’s the bairn, a handful at times but a bonny bright wee thing. I love her with all my hert, Lachlan and . . .’ She gave him a covert look. ‘There’s Fergus. If ever a lad was eaten up with loneliness it’s him. If only he’d marry Kirsteen I’d die happy so I would. Shona would have a mother. I’ve done my best but I’m too auld to be much use. Ach, what will happen to my poor wee lass when I’m gone?’ She gave a deep sigh. ‘As for Fergus, he’s my bairn too. I brought him up. Och, Lachlan! I wish you and he would make your peace. He’s sorry for everything, I know. He tried to tell you a long time ago but it turned sour on him. I only know he’s like a lost soul sometimes and my auld hert aches for him!’

  Lachlan put his hands firmly over her bent fingers.

  ‘Belle, Fergus nearly cost me my marriage. I think you can guess what I mean. That old windbag Elspeth must have overheard some tasty tit-bits and no doubt passed them on. But that’s all in the past now. I’d shake hands with the man tomorrow but he won’t give me the chance again. His pride has already been bruised and he won’t risk it again and I’m damned if I’ll go to him. But forget about Fergus for the moment! You must stop worrying that old head of yours! Time will tell all. You must rest more. I’ll give you something to take for the pains and I’ll come and see you from time to time.’

  But she rose in alarm. ‘Och no – no laddie! They’d find out then! I’ll come and see you.’ She winked. ‘Who knows, the gossips might put us together and hint we’ve a wee thing goin’ for us.’ She giggled girlishly but he wasn’t deceived by her jauntiness. He watched from the window and saw her heavy drooping figure go down the path, all attempt at gaiety gone now that she thought she was unobserved.

  Lachlan sighed and tapped a pencil on his desk. He had known great satisfaction in his life. He had plunged to the depths of despair and risen to pinnacles of glory and the joy of being able to save a fellow human was his euphoria. But when he had to tell people he knew and loved that their days on earth were numbered his heart plummeted to his boots. He had often been told that people who tended the sick became hardened to death but he had never found it so, he had simply learned to disguise his feelings in an effort to convey a strength he sometimes didn’t feel to the people who relied so much upon his opinion.

  ‘We’ll sneak in at the back of the estate,’ Niall instructed his three followers who were trudging through the heather at his rear. ‘Near the old iron gate that’s all overgrown. There’s a wee bit we can get through – eh, Stuart?’

  Stuart winked, the entrance being well known to most of the boys on their poaching expeditions.

  Shona felt she should have been in on this secret long ago and she threw Niall a reproachful glance but he was looking ahead, his corn curls dancing in the scented wind blowing in from the sea.

  ‘We could have climbed the stile and gone through the woods,’ suggested Agnes who, hitherto a tomboy, was now becoming more careful of her appearance and didn’t want her dress snagged. She was twelve, with black waving hair and brown eyes, and proud of her developing figure. She was beginning to giggle coyly at boys and Shona wasn’t so keen on her company now that she was growing from a sensible child into a ‘cackling yowe’.

  Stuart was a tall lanky boy of thirteen with a keen sense of adventure. He was the best guddler in the school and could swim faster and further than most of his age. He was not in the least impressed by Agnes’s efforts to gain his attention and at her suggestion he snorted: ‘We’d get caught going over the stile so don’t be daft. Do as we tell you or you’ll never come with us again.’

  They climbed to the top of a steep rise and could see for miles on either side. The sea sparkled in the distance, the deep blue contrasting breathtakingly with white sands and the green of hayfields. They were in Glenriach, behind them the steep crags of Glen Fallan misty blue against the heat hazed sky.

  ‘It’s bonny!’ cried Shona spreading her arms and breathing clover and bracken, heather and thyme. But the boys were anxious to get into Burnbreddie and marched down to an ancient gate set in a tangle of fir and ferns. Niall pulled aside some branches to reveal a hole large enough for them to crawl through. Shona and Stuart did so quickly but Agnes grumbled when a branch pulled at her skirt and when another tore a gash in her frilly knickers she wailed aloud, ‘I should never have come! Och, look at me! Mother will skelp me on the lugs! I think I’ll go back. What way should I watch auld Burnbreddie kissin’ and cuddlin’ anyway?’

  ‘Get going!’ growled Niall, wishing he hadn’t brought the vastly changed Agnes. He hoped Shona would never become all giggly and fuss about her clothes.

  The boys led the way through a dense thicket then skirted the cool waters of an amber river. To get to the courtyard and the haysheds they had to cross an open pasture and they were barely halfway over when they saw two riders: the laird was astride a gleaming chestnut mare and a glossy black pony carried the woman who fitted Dodie’s description because her bosom was bursting out of her costume and her high giggle carried across the field.

  Burnbreddie had visitors in all but the worst months of winter. Several island girls were employed by the laird and reported ‘terrible goings on just’ to the rest of the island. The honest people of Rhanna turned up their noses but listened avidly to the gossip. ‘These kind of folk make their own rules just,’ was the general verdict. ‘They’re a gey mixed bag so they are indeed. A lot to answer for they have, not decent in the eyes o’ God, oh no!’ But the pious words belied the veiled curiosity over Burnbreddie affairs. Annie McKinnon was a reliable source of information. She was as fun-loving as her elder sister Nancy and though she could speak English perfectly, constantly annoyed the laird’s wife by always conversing in Gaelic. One day she was busy with her duties when Mrs Balfour of Burnbreddie said tentatively, ‘Annie?’

  Annie turned, showing her white teeth mischievously. ‘Mo Bantigherna?’

  ‘Why is it you have never learned to speak English?’

  ‘Och, Mo Bantigherna why does it ail you so?’ grinned Annie. ‘English is a foreign language to me, remember. Indeed I could ask you why ’tis yourself has never learned the Gaelic. It is a far more civilized language than your own, begging your pardon. Funny it is the way the English always expect others to know their tongue but are too put upon to learn another. If you’ll be excusing me now, Mo Bantigherna . . . or would you prefer ‘my leddy’ instead?’

  She danced from the room and it took the laird’s wife several astonished moments to realize that Annie had just spoken in the lovely lilting English the island folk used.

  Stuart watched the riders from the cover of a bush. ‘We might just go home or . . .’ He brightened. ‘We could guddle some trout while we’re here.’

  Niall was shading his eyes. ‘They’re not going, they’re coming back. They’ll go to the stables with the horses so we’ve time to race to the big hayshed.’

  ‘How do you know they’ll go there?’ asked Agnes. ‘And why the big hayshed? They might go to a wee one. There’s a few up by the yard.’

  ‘The big one has the only doors that shut properly, I was told by a reliable source. Come on!’

  They scuttled along to the hayshed, arriving breathless and hot. It was a huge barn with sunlight slanting from the skylight to dance on dusty cobwebs that hung from the crossbeams. A mouse scurried and Agnes protested daintily.

  ‘You played with them last year!’ hissed Shona.

  ‘Not this year,’ returned Agnes primly.

  They followed the boys into the hayloft which was warm and sweet smelling.

  ‘This hay’s awful jaggy,’ complained Agnes who had been one of the happiest children on harvest hayrides.

  ‘Och, you’re a girny bugger!’ scolded Shona.

  ‘You swore!’ s
aid a shocked Agnes.

  Niall grinned. ‘You are a girnin’ bugger! Shut up!’

  Stuart lay on his back and watched the sunbeams. ‘It would have been a grand night for guddlin’,’ he mourned.

  Agnes wriggled up to him. ‘Stuart,’ she said in wheedling tones, ‘do you like the way I do my hair?’

  ‘It’s not bad,’ he said grudgingly.

  ‘Do you notice girls at all? Their bodies and everything?’ she asked gently, pushing out her growing bosom.

  Stuart was now less interested in the roof. ‘They’re shaped nice,’ he admitted placidly. ‘But they’re a bother mostly. My sister scunners me the way she giggles all the time. You’re like her! She’s older with bigger bosoms but you laugh the same.’

  Agnes smiled secretively. ‘My bosoms will get bigger, Stuart. Will you like me then?’

  Stuart wriggled uncomfortably and wished he was fishing. He yawned and folding his arms under head closed his eyes.

  Fifteen minutes passed and they were all growing bored. Then a giggle came from below and two shadows darkened the doorway. It creaked shut and a bolt shot home, the bolt that the laird had had specially fitted on the inside doors. He liked to bring his ladies to the hayshed. There was something primitive about making love in the hay that appealed to him. He wasted no time in preliminary small talk.

  ‘Come here, my bonny plump rose,’ he grunted, pulling the lady to him. He had changed from his riding habit into a hairy tweed jacket, kilt, and lovat green hose. His legs were fat and very hairy and Agnes gave an explosive snort.

  ‘Quiet!’ hissed Stuart but the laird was making so many of his own he was oblivious to any other. Before long he was red and sweating. The children stared in amazement when, with a speed astounding in one so lumbering, he had exposed the lady’s generous breasts.

  Stuart gulped and Agnes whispered, ‘I don’t want mine to grow just so big! They’d be awful heavy.’

  Stuart grinned. ‘They’d make your back all hunch up and you’d be like an auld Cailleach. You might grow a big nose to match and you’d have a hump on your head because your nose would be such a weight.’ He snorted into the hay in an ecstasy of silent laughter.

  The laird was beginning to babble as his hands wandered. ‘My kilt! Wore it specially – nothing underneath,’ he groaned in Gaelic. The children understood but the English lady didn’t. She was making sounds that fitted Dodie’s description of ‘an auld yowe bleatin’!’ and soon discovered for herself the laird’s urgent message. She threw back her head and giggled hysterically. Her mouth was large, painted liberally, and the children could plainly see her Adam’s apple wobbling above her voluptuous breasts.

  Dodie had likened the laird to a ‘ruttin’ stag’ and he had never been more apt.

  Niall blushed and wished he hadn’t come. It was all very well listening to the description of something but the reality was embarrassing and somewhat crude. There was no dignity about the old couple below and Niall, at a rather romantic and impressionable age, felt that love should have dignity. Even the young courting couples at the barnyard Ceilidhs had a certain respect in their attitudes towards each other. Niall felt he had cheapened himself and opened Shona’s innocent mind to the wrong ideas about sex. His twelve-year-old mind groped for an idea of what love should really be like. It couldn’t, just couldn’t, be like that lustful scene below. He stole a glance at Shona and saw with surprise she was enjoying the whole thing.

  ‘Look at his bum!’ she hissed gleefully. ‘It’s pink and hairy and jumpin’ the way the old boar does when he goes to the sow!’

  Niall breathed a sigh of relief. She saw the scene with the eyes of the innocent. She had witnessed the mating of animals all her young life and to her the laird and his friend were two human animals doing the natural thing. Her ten-year-old mind lumped all living things together and nothing was more normal than the mating of two living creatures.

  But Stuart and Agnes were different. They were older and more open to suggestive happenings. Stuart had forgotten about fishing and was fumbling playfully with Agnes, kissing her in an awkwardly eager boyish fashion and she was egging him on by twisting herself into all sorts of inviting poses. Niall watched them and wondered. Was Agnes an indication of all girls of her age, tormenting boys, teasing them, little witches who used their bodies like a commodity to entice, then to reject like the girls did at the dances? Would Shona change so drastically? Would she flirt and tease and boldly flaunt her body? He knew her so well but he was going away and each time he came home he would see the changes in her such as he wouldn’t if he stayed on Rhanna.

  She was too engrossed to notice his stare, her twinkling blue eyes showing her obvious amusement. He was free to study the long sweep of her lashes. Mirabelle had tied back her auburn hair; it was swept up from her face but tumbled down her back in a cascade of thick rich waves. A dancing sunbeam lingered on the tresses and turned them the colour of autumn leaves. Her ears were like small pink shells. Niall noticed them for the first time. They were exquisitely shaped, so delicate in the sun they were almost transparent. She was thin to the point of being skinny but he knew that one day her whole shape would change. It had happened to all the bigger girls in school and it was bound to happen to Shona. Would she be like Agnes? Would she taunt the Rhanna boys with him away and not able to do a thing about it? For years he had calmed her stormy tempers, soothed her troubled heart and scolded if she sulked. They had spent their childhood together but when he was away she was bound to turn to others for company. Would it be another boy? He couldn’t see the tomboy Shona playing dull games with other girls and the older she grew the more natural it would be for her to want a boy. Something churned in his heart but he was too young to recognize the bitter taste of jealousy.

  He couldn’t believe she would turn out like Agnes, he didn’t want to believe it. He knew she had a strength in her, a pride and a sensitivity that went very deep and somehow he knew she wasn’t going to be like other girls. She had confided so much to him but there had been times when the depth of her emotions shook him. She was usually so happy but sometimes he sensed a sadness in her that he was too inexperienced to reach. He knew the cause, of course, but who was he to turn the tide of time and make possible a more satisfying relationship between father and daughter. It was all too complicated for him. He had lost his dislike for Fergus McKenzie long ago – he admired his strength of character. It showed in every aspect of his bearing. He held his head high and ignored the gossips, his pride visible for all to see.

  ‘Och, Niall, that was the best laugh ever!’ Shona’s voice startled him out of his reverie. She leaned over and whispered in his ear, ‘Will yours be like that?’

  ‘My what?’ he said, puzzled.

  ‘Like his! The laird’s!’

  ‘They’ve gone,’ said Niall amazed.

  ‘Och, you’re silly and deaf, like Shelagh! They banged the door quite loud and you haven’t answered me. Will you have a big rooster like his?’

  Niall reddened. ‘Will you have big bosoms like hers?’ he countered.

  ‘Ach, I don’t think so, I’m too skinny. You’re all red in the face, Niall. You never used to blush when you went behind a bush to pee. You never really bothered to hide, and I saw your rooster. It was a skittery wee thing – not like his! I hope you don’t grow like that! You’d have to wear your kilt all the time because you wouldn’t have room in your trousers!’

  ‘Shut up!’ he snapped and she fell back in the hay in a fit of laughter.

  Stuart had become disenchanted with Agnes who knocked his hand away every time he became too personal.

  ‘Let’s go and guddle,’ he grunted, pulling hay from his hair. ‘If Robbie catches us we’ll tell him we’ll tell the laird we’ll tell his wife he’s a dirty auld man!’

  Niall gladly accepted the garbled suggestion and all four trooped rather thankfully into a perfect summer evening.

  EIGHT

  A week later Mirabelle went up to her room to res
t before tea. It was breathlessly hot. Not a leaf or heather bell moved and the sun shone faintly through a thick haze of heat. There was thunder in the air and Mirabelle felt tired and headachy. She sat on her rocking chair by the wide open window fanning her flushed face with a corner of her apron. Shona was in the garden. Mirabelle saw her pluck a red rose, sniff its glorious perfume absently before sitting down on the grass to hug her knees, her eyes gazing unseeingly ahead.

  ‘Poor wee bairn,’ sighed Mirabelle. ‘She’ll miss that laddie sorely when he’s gone.’

  Niall had told Shona because he couldn’t bear to keep the secret any longer. He had told her in ‘their’ cave, now made homely with various items they had smuggled from their respective homes. At first Shona thought him to be teasing but the look in his brown eyes quelled her laughter.

  ‘I want to be a vet,’ he explained, his hand in her small grubby one. ‘After school it will be a college like my father went to but there will be holidays, Shona. We’ll still see each other.’

  There was a long silence in which she sat like a stone, not even an eyelid flickering.

  ‘I’ll miss you like anything,’ he hurried on, his sorrow at having to impart the news making him babble slightly. ‘I’ll miss lots of folk. My parents and wee Fiona. Tot too, she was so much with us. I’ll miss Dodie and old Joe and even old Shelagh farting in kirk on the Sabbath. I’ll be staying with a lot of other boys but it won’t be like here on Rhanna. I’ll miss our caves and the sea and the fishing boats and those lovely scones Mirabelle makes. I wish I could have known her better because it seems awful to miss her scones more than her. It’ll be really terrible to wake up every morning and not look to the sea, because though it’s a country place it’s not near the water. There’s a wee town not far away so I can send you a postcard sometimes. Would you like that, Shona?’