Song of Rhanna (The Rhanna series)

by Christine Marion Fraser

  ‘Oh, she’s as happy as a wee lintie out there and has lungs on her as good as your own. She shrieked louder than the wind itself when she saw my two so I popped them in beside her and now they’re all shrieking together – even the puppy.’

  Shona lay back and groaned. ‘That dog! I mind fine when Hamish gave me Tot and poor Nancy seemed to do nothing but slide about the kitchen in platters and piddles. At the time I never gave it much thought but now I’ve to clean up after Sporran I feel as Nancy must have felt – like packing her up and sending her back from whence she came.’

  ‘Burnbreddie wouldny thank you for that. If I mind right he let Niall have the pick of the litter.’

  ‘Only because he saved the bitch’s life when she was in labour.’ Shona’s blue eyes grew dreamy. ‘Ach, I wouldny part with the wee rascal. She’s so like dear old Tot as a pup. Sometimes I look at her lying with her nose up the lum and I imagine I’m a wee lass again in the kitchen at Laigmhor, Tot snoring on the rug, Mirabelle rocking herself by the fire knitting, her old hands never still.’ She sighed and looked at Ruth. ‘They were such happy days – the days of childhood – don’t you feel that?’

  Ruth looked pensive and didn’t answer. Shona groaned. ‘They weren’t for you. I’m sorry, Ruth, I always did put my foot in it. Father aye said my blethers carried me away.’

  ‘It wasn’t all bad,’ Ruth said hastily, her fingers curling absently into Woody’s thick fur as he lay purring on her knee. ‘I had some good times with Father and Rachel was always there to make me forget Mam and the Temple – even my limp, it never seemed as bad when we were out walking over the moors.’ She took the letter from her pocket. ‘I got this from Rachel this morning – Erchy brought it together with some juicy bits of gossip concerning the McKenzies.’

  Shona laughed. ‘Good, you can tell me what it says over a cuppy.’ She made to jump up but Ruth pushed her back.

  ‘Sit you down, I’ll make it, you’ve done enough for one day.’

  ‘Ach, Ruth.’ Shona pushed her fingers through her hair, in the process removing the scarf and allowing the mass of rich tresses to cascade about her glowing face. ‘I know you’re just a bairn compared to me, but it doesn’t give you the right to treat me like an ancient cailleach.’

  Ruth held the kettle under the tap and raised her voice above the sound of the running water. ‘Hardly that! No wonder men look at you – I’ve even seen the minister at it, though he doesny do it in an obvious way like the others.’

  She turned and was surprised to see that Shona’s face had flamed to red. ‘You’re blushing!’ she accused teasingly. ‘Don’t tell me you admire Mr James as much as he seems to admire you?’

  But Shona did not discount what Ruth had thought was an amusing question, instead she said in a low voice, ‘He’s a very attractive man, Ruth. When I was so strange and horrible after Ellie died, Mark James was the only one who was able to reach through the ugly shell I’d built round myself and touch the real me I was keeping buried. I had always felt warmth for him but at that time I felt something more. I’ve never told this to anyone else and I don’t know why I’ve just told you – it just seemed to come out.’

  ‘But – but – you love Niall!’ Ruth burst out, shock showing on her young face.

  Shona nodded. ‘It’s because I love Niall so deeply that nothing happened to spoil our love – yet – for a long time afterwards I felt guilty because for one weak moment in my life I actually had feelings for another man. But remember this, Ruth; temptation often comes to us when we’re least strong and that’s about the only excuse I have for feeling as I did.’

  Ruth sat down heavily on the nearest chair. ‘But – you and Niall have always been together – like – like me and Lorn – there was never anyone else for you.’

  Shona sighed, wishing that she hadn’t spoken about the thing she had kept locked in her heart for so long. In many ways Ruth was immature for her age and entirely unworldly. She had so many young ideals firmly fixed in her mind and Shona searched for the right things to say, even when all she wanted to do was close the subject and try to forget about it.

  ‘Och, I don’t know, Ruth, maybe that was why it happened. I’d no experience of any other man but Niall – perhaps in all of us there’s a small craving to know what it would have been like with – with another.’

  Suddenly she remembered Lewis – Lewis and Ruth, Ruth who had loved Lorn, but had been intimate enough with his brother to actually bear his child, although it was perfectly obvious to Shona in those moments of truth, that that was an episode in Ruth’s life which she had managed to shut away so effectively it just didn’t occur to her even then.

  ‘Ach, don’t look like that!’ Shona chided with a forced laugh. ‘Nothing happened. I like Mark James, I’ll always like him, but it’s Niall I love and always will. I love him so much I often cry to myself thinking how I almost drove him away from me. It’s Niall’s daughter out there now and – and that’s proof enough of our feelings for one another.’ Even then it didn’t strike Ruth that while it was Niall’s child they were discussing it wasn’t Lorn’s daughter who ran outside now, her laughter drifting to them in carefree abandon. So successfully had Lorn accepted the little girl as his own it was as if the past had never been. He had never cast it up, not even during times of domestic argument, and gradually Ruth had allowed herself to slip into a relaxed state of mind and was quite content to let her affair with Lewis McKenzie drift into the obscure corners of her mind.

  Shona found herself feeling annoyed at Ruth’s self-satisfied righteousness and to stop herself from saying something she might later regret, she got quickly to her feet to take up where Ruth had left off abruptly, putting the kettle on to the fire, spooning tea into the warmed pot. ‘You haveny told me what was in Rachel’s letter yet,’ she said, her voice level as she handed Ruth her tea and set a plate of biscuits at her elbow.

  Ruth, still reeling under the shock of Shona’s disclosures, plunged into a rather reserved account of her friend’s correspondence. ‘She wants to come back for a long holiday,’ Ruth finished slowly, ‘and has asked me to book her into the hotel – only I don’t feel that’s right somehow – not when she has a home here, though I know she never feels really at ease there. I was wondering if I ought to ask her to stay at Fàilte with me. Och, it would be lovely to have her – like old times again – only I don’t think Lorn would be too pleased at the idea.’

  Shona said nothing for a few moments. She was remembering a certain look on Rachel’s face every time she saw Lorn. Shona had never been able to decide if the expression in the girl’s great luminous eyes was engendered by unease in his company or because the very sight of him reminded her of his twin brother, Lewis. Shona sensed a certain danger in a situation that would throw Lorn and Rachel together. Oh, he had always maintained a dislike for her, but that didn’t mean he would always feel like that. Rachel was too attractive, too magnetic, for any man to entertain ill feelings towards her for long.

  ‘I wonder if Annie knows that her daughter plans to come home for a whily,’ mused Shona. ‘I think we should finish our strupak and go over there to find out. Annie can be gey high-handed at times and she might not like the idea of Rachel coming back to the island and her not having a say in where she is to stay.’

  ‘Ay, that might be best,’ agreed Ruth slightly unwillingly. She set down her cup and went outside to fetch the children indoors.

  Sporran romped along beside them as they made their way outside, for Shona didn’t dare leave him in the house on his own, knowing only too well the havoc he could create in a surprisingly short time. Glen Fallan was a picture with snow on the hill peaks and the red of the winter bracken furring the lower slopes. The wind was keening low over the moors, making a strange, almost musical sound as it whistled through the heather.

  ‘Listen to it.’ Shona stopped suddenly, her blue eyes intent as she cocked her head in the direction of the moor. ‘It minds me of that lovely piece of music we’v
e been hearing a lot on the wireless this whily back. I canny get it out of my head and I’ve heard some of the islanders humming it in the village.’

  ‘Rachel composed it.’ Ruth’s voice was warm with pride. ‘The mannie on the wireless talked about her this morning just before he played it. It’s called Song of Rhanna.’

  Shona repeated the name, rolling it round her tongue as she savoured the sound of it. ‘Song of Rhanna,’ she murmured appreciatively. ‘And it is just that. Listen to the sounds around us, the burnie purling over the stones, the wind moaning in from the sea, the gulls crying. Rachel has captured the very soul of the island.’

  She bent to pick up Ellie Dawn and swing her high against the patchy blue sky, laughter and love lighting her eyes. ‘Wee Ellie, Wee Ellie,’ she chanted. ‘How do you like the idea of our island becoming famous and folks singing about it all over the world?’ The child gurgled and pointed a chubby finger at the clouds racing over the hills. Shona caught her breath. Never, never, could anyone take the place of the darling little daughter she and Niall had loved and lost. She had been a happy, sweet-tempered soul, so in love with life she had made others see the wonder in it too. There could never be another like her – and yet how could Shona help but see her in her baby sister’s enchanting small face with its upturned button of a nose and big golden-brown orbs in which the hectic March sky was reflected? They were sisters after all, and if the elder Ellie had lived she would surely have adored her tiny sister as she had adored all babies she had ever set eyes on.

  Ruth looked at the entrancing picture made by mother and child and something of Shona’s joyous mood transferred itself to her. Sweeping her little son off his unsteady feet she hugged him and grabbing Lorna’s ready hand she swung it to and fro and began to hum the Song of Rhanna. Shona also took up the refrain and they arrived at Annie’s cottage in a carefree mood.

  Annie’s face hovered at the window and, seeing the visitors, she lifted her hand and beckoned them inside. The cottage was warm after the cold and smelled strongly, due no doubt to a tiny mongrel pup who had just crept out guiltily from behind a chair. It greeted Sporran ecstatically and Shona lifted up both puppies and put them out to romp in the grassy yard at the back, well away from the carefully dug furrows in the garden. By the fire, her brown-mottled legs spread to the heat, was Annie’s older sister, Nancy, her good-natured face wreathing into smiles as the children clambered up beside her, Lorna to monopolize her knee, the others to squeeze themselves in at her ample sides.

  ‘Ach my, I just love bairnies,’ Nancy said through a mouthful of Lorna’s hair. ‘And fine they know it too for they aye make a beeline for my knee. If I was young enough I’d have more, that I would, but . . .’ she glanced down at the flatness of her chest where a double mastectomy had robbed her of the big breasts that had once been her pride, ‘the poor wee sowels would have nothin’ to sook and I was aye a believer in feedin’ my bairns myself – Archie used to enjoy them too, the sowel,’ she finished rather sadly.

  ‘Ach, never mind,’ comforted Shona. ‘I’m sure you have plenty of other things left to compensate him.’

  ‘Ay indeed,’ Nancy agreed in delight. ‘He was aye a one for bums too and he can still coorie into that. The Lord provided well when he created me.’

  ‘You will take a strupak?’ Annie asked the visitors, giggling at her sister’s frank self-assessment. She studied Shona’s face. ‘You are lookin’ well, Shona, mo ghaoil, no, more than that, you look as if you are burstin’ to tell us something and canny wait a minute longer.’

  Shona told them about Fiona’s expected baby and instead of putting the kettle on, Annie went to the cupboard and poured everyone a generous amount of whisky.

  ‘Here’s to the new bairnie,’ Nancy held up her glass. ‘As long as it comes into the world wi’ all its parts in workin’ order Fiona will no’ be carin’ if it’s a boy or a wee lass. The pair o’ them took long enough to start a family but sometimes, once the first one comes, they just keep on arriving like wee rabbits.’

  ‘Well, that certainly wasn’t the case with me,’ said Shona rather sadly. ‘I wouldny mind if it did.’

  Nancy’s expression grew serious. ‘Well, Shona, mo ghaoil, you are no’ exactly a spring chicken and if you get pregnant again you will have to ca’ canny if you are to come through it safe.’

  Shona turned an indignant face. ‘Havers! I’m only forty-one! Some of the cailleachs on the island don’t start a family till they’re forty, and go on to have a fair brood by the time they’re fifty. It’s their way of providing for their old age though that certainly wouldn’t be my reason for having more. If it just happens, the way Ellie Dawn did, and if I’m lucky enough for it to go on happening then so be it.’

  ‘Ay indeed,’ said Annie placatingly. ‘But what would Niall have to say about it? With the house full o’ bairns and ailing animals he would have no room left to swing a cat.’

  Shona had recovered her temper and laughed. ‘Ach, if it happens he will feel the same as I do. Wait till I tell him about his sister. He’s been away at Kintyre for a few days helping his old partner during a busy spell. It’s an arrangement they have during the winter when the beasts on Rhanna seem to go into hibernation. I was going to phone him but decided to wait and see his face.’

  Nancy sighed. ‘My, you and that bonny Niall are still as romantic as the moon. Archie and me are at the stage of comparing all our wee aches and pains and are so busy wi’ our corns and bunions we have no time for lookin’ into each other’s eyes.’

  Ruth had said little till then. Annie wasn’t the most methodical of housekeepers and the cottage was so untidy you could have stirred it with a spurtle as Kate told her youngest daughter often enough. The children’s clothes were draped by the fire, toys, books and cats littered the floor; a dejected-looking tortoise in a box by Nancy’s feet was’ stretching its neck tentatively towards a dirty, snail-pocked cabbage leaf watched over by a mangy-looking mongrel dog whose left ear was in tatters; the tea-stained table held the remains of breakfast and dinner; a pet hen was clucking round the floor looking for crumbs, its ample droppings trodden into the dusty carpet by many uncaring feet.

  Ruth shuddered slightly. She liked a house to be homely, but Annie’s was positively filthy and Ruth simply couldn’t imagine Rachel in such surroundings. It had been different when she was a small girl but the grown-up Rachel had travelled the world, lived in luxurious surroundings. It was no surprise that she didn’t like coming home to be faced with all this as well as her mother’s uncaring attitude.

  ‘Have you heard from Rachel at all, Annie?’ Ruth asked conversationally.

  Annie screwed her face. ‘Indeed no. The last time I had word was at Christmas when she sent all the bairnies wee gifts and myself a bottle of scent.’ She omitted to mention that her daughter had also sent her a generous sum of money, a sense of guilt making her feel that she had done nothing to deserve such generosity. ‘Rachel is too busy to be writing letters to the likes o’ me – even though I am her mother. Ach, my poor dumb lassie, she will be growing too big for her boots now and we will likely never see her back on the island again.’

  ‘She has no’ forgotten Rhanna,’ Nancy defended her niece somewhat indignantly. ‘Only this very mornin’ I heard a bit o’ music she had written played on the wireless. Song o’ Rhanna it was called and by God! That lass put all her memories into it as well as her heart. It was beautiful just. I had a wee greet to myself it was that nice. You should be proud o’ your bonny daughter, Annie, she’s brought nothing but good to the family name and fame to this island.’ A thought struck her making her chuckle. ‘If we are no’ careful we will be gettin’ overrun wi’ people wantin’ to see the place where all the famous people were born – Rachel wi’ her music, Ruth wi’ her poems and stories . . .’

  ‘Ranald wi’ his fart studio,’ Annie couldn’t resist putting in, her dimples deepening in her attractive face.

  Nancy threw up her hands. ‘Ach God! Do you mind t
hat time? My, was it no’ the talk o’ the town for weeks afterwards! Ranald was black affronted, but Barra just laughed. She’s a sporty wee soul is Barra. How is she and Robbie gettin’ on by the way? It’s a whily since I saw them. Barra is no’ about so much since she married Robbie.’

  ‘I hear tell she’s been helping Mairi to set herself up in this hairdressing business,’ supplied Annie eagerly. ‘Mairi has applied for permission to turn one o’ the rooms in her house into one o’ they fancy saloons.’

  ‘Oh here, that will be just the job,’ said Nancy, patting her unruly grey-black curls. ‘It will be fine to have somewhere to go for a hairdo, and a hairdresser is a good place to hear all the gossip.’

  ‘I had a letter from Rachel this morning,’ put in Ruth persistently, determined to get the talk back to her friend.

  Annie’s lips pursed. ‘Did you indeed? Ay well, you are her friend after all, and I am only her mother.’ She glanced round the untidy room and shrugged. ‘It is just as well my lassie has made her life away from the island. There would be no room here for her now. As it is, Torquill and me are havin’ trouble wi’ Jeannie and Iain sharing a room – and forbye, we wouldny be grand enough now for the likes o’ Rachel. She’ll be used to all thon fancy modern places – a house in Austria indeed! Hmph – she is hardly ever near the place. It will just be a piece o’ swank, somewhere to spend her money on.’