Stranger on Rhanna

by Christine Marion Fraser

  ‘Frau Kate,’ Otto spoke sternly, ‘I am not here for the fairy tales! My roots are here on this island of Rhanna.’ Leaning forward; he looked her straight in the eye. ‘My grandmother was born and bred here; she lived in Croy on the north eastern shores. Her house, it was thatched; her parents made their living on land and on sea. When she was seventeen she became pregnant by a young man from the same village. Her parents, they were scandalised – they sent her away to live with relatives in Canada. There my mother was born. My grandmother never came back to her native lands, she never married: she couldn’t forget her “dear young McKinnon” as she called him. Fortunately she was an adventurer, she loved to travel, and she took her daughter to many places in the world. My mother grew up, she too enjoyed to travel: she met my father in Germany. He took her back to his native Austria and there they married . . .’

  He had forgotten Kate; he was lost in the story as it unfolded from his memory. His voice was soft, husky, as he went on, ‘I was born in Vienna. My grandmother, she lived with us. All through the years of my boytime she tells me about this island and of the young years she spent here. She never forgot, she described it all so clearly: the ocean, the hills, the purple of heather in autumn, the miles and miles of golden beaches. She spoke of the summer shielings when she and the other young people of the island went up into the hills to mind the cattle. She sings to me the songs they sang, the stories they tell to one another when the gloaming steals over the hills and the sea is growing dark; she tells me how boys and girls sleep together, the bedclothes swaddled in such a way that they could not make contact with one another – they were trusted by their elders to behave in the proper way and few of them broke that trust. My grandmother was one of the few: when I am older she tells me of her love for a McKinnon boy. In here . . .’ he placed a hand over his heart, ‘she aches for this boy and he for her, but they are too young, they know their parents will not consent to their marriage – and so . . .’ he spread his hands, ‘you know the rest. My mother is begun, the young girl who was my grandmother is sent far away over the sea but she never forgets her beginnings. When she is old and her eyes are growing blind I see the tears in them as she remembers, and there am I, the young man now, my own heart yearning for an island I have never seen but vow to visit one day. She also said I got my gift for music from my grandfather, the young Magnus McKinnon. He writes songs for her, he plays an old fiddle, he sits by the sea and he serenades the girl he wishes to marry, and then one day she goes away and he and she never see one another again – and then she dies and leaves with me a legacy of music and memories that are as much an ache in my heart as they were in hers when she was alive and telling to me her wonderful tales.’

  He had brought a breath of pure romance into the homely cluttered room. Kate, her own eyes blinded by tears, buried her face into her apron and gave herself up to a ‘good greet’.

  ‘Ach, Mr Otto, that was beautiful just,’ was her shaky verdict when she had recovered sufficiently to trust herself to speak. ‘Never in all my days have I heard the likes . . .’ She raised a tear-stained face. ‘It will be Magnus of Croy that the lassie left behind. Och, it is sad, sad, to think o’ the heartache he and she suffered over the years, for he never wed either. Many’s the time I’ve listened to him talk o’ his bonny Sheena; he said he never could love anyone the way he loved her. Even yet I’ve seen his eyes grow misty and faraway when he talks o’ the old days. I’m no’ a body that is easily taken in by daft talk, Mr Otto, but when Magnus gets going wi’ his tales o’ the summer shielings and how himself and Sheena used to walk hand in hand over the heather braes, talking and singing, I just want to listen to him all day, for he is one o’ the finest seanachaidhs on the island. After Sheena went away he buried himself in his stories and music, and if you go over to Croy you’ll hear his music long before you come to his cottage . . .’

  She paused to stare at Otto in wonder as the full import of his revelations began to sink in. ‘He is your maternal grandfather, your very own flesh and blood – tis no wonder you love music for he is full o’ it . . .’ She shook her head and looked at him, her eyes sparkling suddenly. ‘I wouldny be surprised if I myself sprung from that particular McKinnon line for is not my very own granddaughter Rachel brimful o’ musical gifts . . .’

  She was completely carried away, so much so she forgot that she was a Uist McKinnon and that it was more likely Tam, Rhanna born and bred, who might have passed on any talents. But a notion like that would never have occurred to Kate, for when it came to music she maintained that Tam had bricks in his head, so untuned was he to melody and song.

  ‘Ah, Rachel,’ Otto said with a smile, ‘when I heard she was a McKinnon, I think of my grandmother telling me of all my Rhanna kinsfolk and it pleases me to know that this beautiful young woman is one of those I have waited so long to meet.’

  Kate frowned. ‘You seem always to think o’ your grandmother in connection wi’ Rhanna. What about your mother? Did she never hanker to know more about her Scottish connections?’

  Otto sighed. ‘There a generation was skipped. My mother was a society beauty. She flitted from one bright light to the next; it was beyond her to sit still for any length of time: my grandmother’s breath would have been wasted on her. No, I was the beneficiary of those memories, I was hungry all the time to know more, on every word I hung. My mother had not the time for me, she was a creature of gaiety and laughter; it was my father and my grandmother between them who encouraged my passion for music. I was still a boy when my mother died; my lovely, special grandmother led me into manhood, she guided and counselled me – without her I would be nothing. I still hear her voice, as soft as the Scottish mists I see here on the hills. She was the last of my family to die; my wife lives but she is no more in my heart. We part amicably, we were never in love but tolerated one another for as long as we could. There were no children – and so—’

  A wistful smile touched his face. ‘I retrace my grandmother’s journey, back over the sea. I wish first to know her beloved soil and so I follow her footsteps, I tread the earth she has trod. I rise up very early one morning when no one is about and I make the long tramp to Croy, there I sit on the heather and I gaze out to sea, feeling in my heart that I am looking at it through my grandmother’s eyes. Tina has already told me of one Magnus McKinnon of Croy and has described to me where he lives, I find his house, I look and I wonder, “have I at last come to my grandfather’s house?” It is early, there is no music, there is no life, and so next I seek the house of my great-grandparents, but there is only a ruin. The dry, grey ribs of the roof stick into the sky, the thatch hangs in tatters into rooms that once rang with the joy and the laughter of a young girl who used to live there. But it is not dead: for me, she is everywhere. Inside the ruin I find the fireplace where the family once sat; in the rubble there are some rusty pots and pans; on a small broken table there is an old bible, the pages are damp and stuck together but on the flyleaf there is an inscription, very faded but still discernible. It is in the language of the Gael . . . I have it here for you to decipher . . .’

  Reaching into an inside pocket, he withdrew the ancient book. It was falling apart but the gold tooling was still there on the threadbare spine. Kate took it, her hands trembling in case she should further damage the treasure. The brown leather casing was cracked and barely held together by the binding and she held her breath as she turned it over and looked at the inscription on the parchment-like flyleaf.

  ‘My specs, Mr Otto,’ she whispered, almost as if the very breath from her voice might turn the fragile pages into dust. ‘On the wee table by the fire.’

  He handed them to her, she perched them on the end of her nose and stared at the spidery writing. ‘It is very old Gaelic, Mr Otto, but I can still make it out. It says, “to Sheena, on her twelfth birthday, blessings be with you all the days of your life, from your mother and father, 14th June 1882.”’

  ‘Sheena,’ Otto spoke the name with reverence, ‘it was her
bible. I’ll cherish it always: she held it, she must have read it by the flickering light of a crusie. She told me about crusies, the fuel that was used was fish oil, they were crude and primitive but they served their purpose.’

  ‘Ay, indeed they did, Mr Otto. Some o’ the old folk still use them to this day only they don’t burn fish oil anymore. Old Magnus has several hanging from his fireplace – och, but you’ll have to go and visit him! I can just see his face, the pair o’ you will have that much to talk about, so many years to catch up on. It will be a bonny day for him when his very own grandson walks through his door, and himself thinking all these years that there was no kin left in the world to call his own.’

  She jumped to her feet. ‘This calls for a dram! I canny remember when last I felt so wobbly and queer inside. Fancy! Old Magnus wi’ a real flesh-and-blood grandson. He never even knew that he was a father, for Sheena’s parents never spoke o’ it. No’ till their dying day did they mention their lassie’s name again, but it was her who was in their hearts and on their lips when they drew breath for the very last time.’

  She poured two generous drams, gulping hers down without as much as a grimace. When Otto hesitated over his she tilted the glass to his lips, laughingly telling him he needed a hair of the dog and to get it down like a man.

  But several things were puzzling her, and the questions came tumbling out. Why, for instance had he left it so long to unveil his secret? And why did he choose her to tell it to when the island teemed with all sorts of McKinnons.

  ‘I canny understand why you didny tell Rachel first. You and she have been seeing a lot o’ one another.’

  ‘The answer to that is simple, mein Frau: you are the senior member of her family, it was your place to be told first. Naturally I wanted to tell you and Herr Tam together but he wasn’t here and I couldn’t waste any more time – also . . .’ he cleared his throat and went on tactfully, ‘you have lived more years than our little Rachel, the memories in your head go back a long time. You would hear things from your parents about the folk they knew in the old days.’

  ‘Oh, ay, right enough,’ she nodded, ‘they often spoke o’ Neil and Ishbel and the heartache they brought on themselves by sending their own lassie away but never telling anyone why she had gone, just that they thought she would have a better life wi’ relatives o’ theirs abroad. They never mentioned Canada; Magnus kept asking but they would never say and in the end he just buried himself in his croft and his music.’

  She gave Otto a mischievous look. ‘They were dark horses – like yourself, hoarding all their wee secrets, for you have still to tell me why you didny say right away that you were a McKinnon. Were you sizing us up, Mr Otto, checking first to make sure we were a worthy clan to belong to?’

  He gave a wry smile. ‘You have a devious mind, Frau Kate, but this time you do not guess the truth. I waited because I wanted to make sure I would be accepted. My grandmother tells me many times about the islanders’ mistrust of strangers who bulldoze their way in when they have only newly set foot on the land. So, I wait, I get to know Herr Tam, I meet others and have with them the ceilidhs and the drams. I make my music with Rachel, people become aware of me, they wish to get to know me better, gradually I become accepted and then I know it is time to show to everyone my true colours.’

  Kate grinned. ‘Ay, and bonny colours they are too.’ She extended one large, capable hand. ‘Welcome to Rhanna, Mr Otto, and a bloody great genuine welcome to a bloody great family . . .’ Refilling their glasses, she raised hers to the ceiling and shouted, ‘To the McKinnons! Slàinte Mhath!’

  Following her example with exuberance, he repeated the toast, adding, ‘And here’s to the clan gathering of all the McKinnons, here on Rhanna! It will be the finest, the biggest, in all of the Hebrides!’

  ‘A clan gathering?’ Kate’s eyebrows shot up, her face sparkled with interest.

  ‘A clan gathering, Frau Kate, but please leave the arranging to me – though of course I will need your help in spreading the news of it around the island.’

  Kate, who always made full use of ‘Highland Telegraph’, looked suitably modest. ‘Ach, you can rely on me for that, Mr Otto, just you say the word and I’ll . . .’

  At that moment Wullie came rushing in to convey to his mother that Erchy’s bus had just come into view. She stayed long enough to tell Otto to make himself at home and to be sure and put the cork back in the whisky bottle before he left, then she made haste to follow Wullie outside in time to flag Erchy down as he approached her gate.

  ‘What have you done wi’ the big German wifie?’ she demanded as soon as he had swung the door open on its one rusty hinge.

  Erchy scratched his head. ‘Done wi’ her? None o’ the things I would have liked to do wi’ her, that’s for sure. She nearly brained me wi’ her handbag when I suggested she wouldny find much to suit her in Croy, so I just left the besom to it. The last time I saw her she was sprachlin’ along the track towards Croy Beag.’

  ‘You’ll have to go back.’ Kate was clambering on to the bus as she spoke. ‘The daft cailleach thinks there’s a city out there on the moors and if we don’t find her she might drown herself in a peat bog.’

  ‘A city?’ The look Erchy gave Kate suggested she was altogether mad. ‘What way would she be thinkin’ there’s a city at Croy?’

  ‘Because I told her.’ Kate’s reply was succinct. ‘Just get goin’ and ask no questions for once in your life. Wullie, you come wi’ me, you might be needed in case o’ an emergency.’

  ‘There will be an emergency if I don’t find Dodie,’ Wullie grumbled, ‘and wi’ the luck I’m havin’ these days the emergency could easily be me.’

  Nevertheless he got in beside his mother, consoling himself that anything was better than tramping for miles in search of Dodie when he might just come upon him from the comparative comfort of Erchy’s bus.

  But Erchy wasn’t for giving in to Kate so easily. ‘I’m no’ going back to Croy,’ he stated stubbornly. ‘The Portvoynachan lot are waitin’ for me at the harbour and I’m no’ changin’ my route just for the sake o’ thon bossy big wifie. Everybody knows I’m a stickler for timetables and I’ll no’ have my reputation ruined for anybody.’

  ‘Reputation!’ Kate snorted. ‘The only reputation you have is for scaring the shat out your passengers, and if you’re no’ doin’ that you’re either snoozin’ or readin’ in your post van! You can pick up the Portvoynachan folk later; just tell them there’s an emergency in Glen Fallan for that’s the way we’ll be going. It’s the quickest route back to Croy and the road goes right to the clachan once you get past Croft na Beinn.’

  Erchy gave in. When Kate made up her mind about something she usually got her way – and he didn’t dare say that this mad notion of hers would cost her. Unbeknown to her he had recently borrowed ten pounds from Tam and had no intention of paying it back for some time to come. So if he did this favour for Kate, and she somehow found out about the loan, she couldn’t very well hold it up to him in the face of his undoubted magnanimity.

  Feeling very martyred and extremely hard done by, he tied up his door, vented his feelings by revving up with unnecessary vigour thus causing an extra large emission of diesel fumes and trundled along to the harbour to inform his would-be passengers that he had been ‘commissioned’ to do an extra run to Croy, which would only take ten minutes at the most and that he would be back ‘in two flicks o’ a lamb’s tail.’

  ‘The way he drives I wouldny be surprised at that!’ Malky of Rumhor commented, venting his disgust by spitting energetically on to the cobbles and rubbing it in with the toe of one stoutly booted foot.

  Chapter Thirteen

  In between outcrops of rock and great clumps of flowering gorse, Mamma glimpsed Erchy’s bus dipping and diving, climbing and clawing its hazardous way back over the cliff road to Glen Riach and Burnbreddie.

  The journey from Nigg to Croy Beag had been a hair-raising one for Mamma, who had imagined that there was not an
other road on earth that could possibly be worse than the one they had traversed from Portcull to Nigg. But there she had been wrong. The way through Glen Riach and the lands of Burnbreddie had been gentle and pleasurable. In those rolling silvan pastures Mamma had felt a deep appreciation for nature’s bounteous glories, which, for her, was unusual, as the countryside had hitherto never stirred a response in her heart beyond wishing that she could get out of it as speedily as possible since ‘all that space’ made her feel insecure. But she had had to admit to herself that there was something about the serenity of the purple-blue hills of Glen Riach that caught her imagination.

  The great undulating green and amber mattress that was the Muir of Rhanna also brought a sense of peace to her soul. Here the shaggy blonde Highland cows browsed peaceably amongst the heathery knolls, and in the distance, glimpsed between gaps in the rocky coastline, was the sea, unbelievably blue and beautiful, stretching on and forever into hazy infinity.

  Despite the bumps and rattles of Erchy’s bus she had been lulled into a sense of deep tranquillity that made the shock of the last part of the journey all the more terrifying. Quite suddenly it seemed, they left the moors behind as the vehicle plunged down a near-perpendicular pass between the hills and the sea. Just as suddenly they came to a sharply rising slope up which they crawled at a snail’s pace, enveloped by diesel fumes and the stench of red-hot metal.

  Up, down! Up, down! The lie of the land became predictable but never monotonous. One minute Mamma’s heart was in her throat, the next it had plummeted to her stomach. Looming ahead was a great lump of jagged rock and Mamma’s feet were rammed down hard on an imaginary brake – not for one minute did she think anything could get through the impossibly narrow gap, far less a bus. But without hesitation Erchy plunged through the crack, known locally as The Wedge for obvious reasons. After that the road became ever narrower till it was little more than a track winding above the cliffs. Down below, the sea boomed into subterranean caverns, great sprays of white foam burst over reefs and rocks and washed the black, slippery feet of basalt crags sticking up out of the waves.