Stranger on Rhanna

by Christine Marion Fraser

  At this point the roar of the ocean filled Mamma’s ears. It echoed and reverberated in every cranny of the bus. Erchy, who had recovered his good humour soon after leaving Johnny Sron Mor at Nigg and who had, incredibly it seemed to his one and only passenger, cheerfully whistled the rest of the treacherous miles away, informed Mamma that the road at this point was built on top of a vast underground sea-cave which was reckoned to have eroded the rock for at least two miles inland at a conservative estimate, for nobody had ever dared explore further.

  ‘There was no air, you see,’ he went on chattily, dodging a lamb that had leapt into his path in search of its sure-footed mother, who was browsing amongst the rocks above the cliffs. ‘It was a long time ago and they were using these paraffin torches. Two miles in and the lads were pantin’ and gaspin’ for air, the torches went out, the tide was comin’ in, and they would never have made it back if they hadny left a piper at the entrance. To the skirl and blast o’ the bagpipes they at last came tumbling out and no one has gone in since, though some say the caves at Dunuaigh, where the monks hid from the Vikings, join up wi’ this one, which in recent years has come to be known as Big Ben because o’ the boom it makes at high tide. If you look over there to your right you’ll see one o’ the blow holes where the water comes spoutin’ out from the force o’ the waves.’

  Sure enough, some distance away, a great spray of water was jetting into the air. It was an exciting, magnificent place to be, and if Mamma had witnessed it in different circumstances, she might have been more appreciative. As it was she was too busy ‘gaspin’ and pantin” for air herself to pay much heed to Erchy and his tales. She was tired of the whole episode and was wishing with all her shaky heart that she hadn’t made this perilous journey, shops or no shops, city or no city.

  As they left Big Ben behind, the way became gentler, and Mamma was just getting her breath back when ahead loomed another gigantic rock with only a tiny arched aperture leading to the other side.

  ‘Gregor’s Gap,’ Erchy threw over his shoulder, enjoying enormously his impromptu role as tour guide. ‘Poor old Gregor lost his life here one dark winter’s night. He had been having a wee bit o’ a ceilidh wi’ one o’ his neighbours and might have had one too many. Whatever the way o’ it, he missed the road and drove his tractor right into the rock and both himself and the machine went rolling down to the sea far below. It was sad, right enough, because he was normally a canny sort o’ man and had been riding this road ever since the days o’ horses and carts but, of course, an engine is no match for a good horse that would take a body home blindfolded over any sort o’ road.’

  Mamma made no reply; she cared nothing for the unknown Gregor who, in her opinion, had diced with death and had only gotten what he deserved. She was sick and tired of Erchy and his gory tales and when he at last brought his bus to a halt outside a five-barred gate, she could hardly wait to be rid of him and his dreadful contraption.

  ‘Tell me, where is this place of Croy?’ she demanded over the roar of the red-hot engine.

  Erchy scratched his head and treated her to a puzzled grimace. ‘Over there.’ He pointed vaguely. ‘You can just see the tops o’ the houses from here. You have to go through that gate – and don’t forget to shut it or Johnson o’ Croynachan will have something to say if his cattle get out – and follow the track which takes you right to the clachan.’

  Mamma made to squeeze past him but he stayed her by blocking her path. ‘If you don’t mind me sayin’ so, you’ll no’ find much o’ anything over yonder – unless, of course, you have relatives who’ll let you bide wi’ them till . . .’

  ‘Let me through at once.’ Mamma brandished her handbag, swinging it in such a way that it caught Erchy on the side of the head, so that the only things he saw for quite a few moments were stars.

  When he recovered his equilibrium Mamma was already off the bus and making her determined way through the gate.

  ‘How will you get back?’ he yelled. ‘The folk hereabouts only have tractors and pony carts and I’ll no’ be back this way for another three days!’

  To his amazement he imagined that she shouted something about getting a taxi, but he was in no mood to pursue the matter further. Let the old bitch discover for herself the problems of getting about in this part of the island. It was bad enough for people who were born and bred here but a townie like herself simply had no idea of the difficulties involved, and bloody well serve her right if she got her arse soaked in a peat bog in the course of her travels!

  With the feeling that he had done his duty as a good honest citizen of the island he revved up and drove away, his ruffled feathers gradually settling at the thought of the dram he would most certainly receive if he called in at old Meggie’s on the way back to Portcull.

  Mamma was fuming as she stomped along the track to the village. She could hardly believe that any road, in any part of the world, could stop at a five-barred gate leading on to the moors. But then, she had never experienced any of the roads in Scotland, never mind those on a Hebridean island. The roads on Rhanna had certainly been up-graded – if one could call the re-surfacing of the existing narrow tracks an improvement.

  Funds had not stretched to the more remote hamlets, with the result that Croy, which was divided into Croy Beag (little Croy) and Croy Mor (big Croy), had been left to its own devices, though the road did go as far as Croy Mor from the Glen Fallan side.

  Unfortunately for Mamma, she was on the Croy Beag side and her dismay on reaching the small handful of houses perched on a cliff overlooking the ocean was considerable.

  Here there was a sense of timelessness. Some of the houses still had thatched roofs; peat smoke hung lazily above the chimney pots; chickens poked and pried around the houses and spilled over into the heather; great shaggy Highland cows browsed and ambled about, so that wherever you looked you saw huge horns sticking out of gorse bushes or the feathery rear ends of hens lancing up out of the wild flowers growing in the ditches.

  Acres of buttercups and daisies smothered the green of the machair, blazing yellow and white all the way to the edge of the cliffs where they merged with the azure of the sky and the dark, deep blue of the sea.

  It was a small world of perfection, yet it was vast. The ocean rolled off into horizons unlimited, misty islands floated on the edge of the world, gulls, puffins, kittiwakes, and terns tumbled and dived in the great bowl of the sky and out on the distant waves white-winged yachts drifted on the dream-like reaches.

  Mamma, however, was in no mood to appreciate the scenery. The suspicions that had beset her on reaching the five-barred gate were now a near-certain reality. There was no city of Croy, nothing even resembling a town existed on this island, she was stuck here in the middle of nowhere with no shops, no transport, very little in the way of creature comforts, and it was hot, hotter than she had imagined a Scottish island could be. She had long ago peeled off her fur-trimmed coat and hat but even so she sweated – and her stomach was starting to rumble. She had a delicate constitution, she wasn’t yet fully recovered from the virus that had struck her down in Germany, she needed to take food regularly or she could get dizzy, or faint, or do any of the dozen and one things she usually did to get attention – especially to get Jon’s attention. But Jon wasn’t here, nobody was here who could possibly understand how delicate she was, how much she needed unrestricted care and comfort – how much she needed to make herself understood in a land that was so far removed from her beloved Hamburg.

  A bent old bodach was coming along the track. In one hand he carried a milk pail and a three-legged stool, in the other was a Harry Lauder walking stick, as full of curves and twists as the roads that the bodach had trod all his life. He leaned on it heavily, his gnarled old fingers clutching it so tightly they looked as if they might have been moulded into the wood. He had a thatch of white hair, nut-brown skin, a wonderfully wise face, blue, blue eyes and, when he opened his mouth to smile politely at Mamma, one tooth set in the middle of his otherwise t
oothless mouth.

  This was ninety-seven-year-old Magnus of Croy – respected, well-loved, a highly regarded member of the island community, storyteller, bard, musician, teacher, friend, a comfort to children and adults alike, a sympathetic ear to those in need of guidance, a font of wisdom to anyone who wanted advice on any subject, because his grasp on world affairs and general knowledge was legendary. All of his life he had studied music and books and newspapers, none of which had ever had the chance to gather dust in his house as even now, in his remarkable old age, he sought learning and retained what he had learned as easily as any man half his age.

  Mamma did not return his smile; she had not yet learned her lesson. If she had played her cards right she would undoubtedly have been invited in to the old man’s homely, comfortable cottage, to rest and partake of a strupak of tea and scones; as it was she saw him as just another eccentric ‘foreigner’ and showed scant gratitude when, after a very mannerly salutation, he enquired if he could help her at all.

  ‘Help! There is no help on this island!’ she snarled impatiently. ‘I come to look for the city of Croy, I find there is none, my feet, they are on fire! My head, it is spinning. I need to find someone of intelligence who can understand what I am saying. On this island there are only those who make the comedies and frighten me to my grave! I must have a car to take me to the house of An Cala but that is an order too tall for a backward place like this!’

  Magnus drew himself up, he had never been able to suffer fools gladly and this large woman, with her handsome, scowling face, gave every indication of being one of the most ignorant persons he had ever yet encountered in all the years of his long life. Nevertheless he was Scottish, hospitality was inherent in him. Only a slight coldness in his keen blue eyes indicated his contempt for her attitude, and he was big enough and tolerant enough to be able to say kindly, ‘If you would care to rest in my house for a wee whilie I will get one o’ my neighbours to take you home. He doesny have a motor car but he has a fine fast tractor which would get you over to Glen Fallan in no time . . .’

  ‘A tractor! Pah!’ Mamma, her face red, interrupted him most rudely and in her excitement she began to speak rapidly in German. Magnus looked at her, he was buggered if he was going to help her now, and to even things up he lapsed into Gaelic and, flapping his fingers, he indicated a track which snaked its way over the moors towards the Glen Fallan hills.

  Mamma stared horrified. She was wishing that she hadn’t been so hasty in her condemnation of the neighbour’s tractor, but it was too late to change her mind: Magnus had gathered up his stool and his milk pail and was off to milk his cow, never deigning to give her so much as a backward glance.

  With a great self-pitying sigh, Mamma heaved herself up from the boulder on which she had been sitting and began trudging along the mossy path that Magnus had indicated. Peaty brown burns burbled at her feet, bumblebees and heath moths flitted and droned in amongst the tiny wild flowers that starred the carpets of lichens and mosses growing over the stones; the sweet scents of warm grasses and heather hung agreeably in the sun-filled hollows.

  Mamma took a deep breath – these smells, they were good, she decided, and, just for a moment she found herself comparing them with the fumes of traffic she had become so used to in cities. The water of the little streams also had a clean, fresh smell; the sound of it purling over the stones had a special kind of music to it, as if it had gathered on its way the secrets of hidden places and was whispering them to the low, caressing breezes as they passed each other by.

  Mamma gave herself a mental shake. Such nonsense! She must be losing her senses. This great, lonely, wild place was her enemy. Her legs were itchy and sore where horseflies and midgies had bitten them. She hadn’t known such pests as midgies existed till she had come to this God-forsaken island and the sooner she could leave all of such horrors behind the better it would be for her.

  Still, the water looked tempting and her feet were hot and aching. She could do worse than stop for a minute to cool her burning flesh. A few minutes later she was sitting on a rock, her outer layers laid carefully over the bare branches of a dead bush, her shoes and stockings beside her, her feet planted firmly in a little moorland burn. The water slid over her ankles, ice cold, deliciously soothing. The sun had broken through a layer of cloud and beat down warmly on her back. It was a completely new experience for Frau Helga Jodl: she who had always been surrounded by people was now sitting alone in a great expanse of amber moors, divested of garments she had only ever before removed in the privacy of her own home; the curlews were bubbling out their golden song in the heather; the skylarks were spilling out their trembling notes above; and a corncrake sent out its sharp, imperative call from some hidden secret place.

  But Mamma was not going to give in so easily to such pure and simple pleasures: every fierce, city-fied fibre in her resisted the delights of this vast, perfumed wilderness. She wanted only to wallow in self-pity. She told herself that she was abandoned and alone in an empty, lifeless desert – birds were just birds, they didn’t count, flowers she could buy anywhere in any shop in any city or town, water was only natural when it came out of a tap – and only gypsies and the simple-minded took off their shoes and stockings to dip their feet in a wandering stream.

  The last thought made her hastily withdraw her own feet from the water, dry them as best she could in the grass and quickly don her stockings and shoes. A movement behind made her turn round to find herself looking up the wet and gleaming nostrils of a cream-coloured Highland cow whose enormous curved horns were outlined against the sky. Beside the cow stood a sturdy calf, front legs spread, head lowered as he stared with unblinking curiosity at the human object that was so obviously fascinating his mother.

  For the umpteenth time that day Mamma’s heart leapt into her throat. She shrieked and, scrambling upright, she stopped only long enough to gather up her precious hat and coat before backing off from both cow and calf and walking rapidly away. But as fast as she walked so too did the mischievous cow and her frisky offspring, who, every so often, took it into his head to butt playfully at the air and kick up his heels.

  ‘I say to you, go!’ Mamma commanded at one point, standing her ground and frantically waving her arms about. The cow also stood her ground, and, lowering her head, she emitted a series of grumbling bellows while her calf watched, his wet nose dripping health, his fur-fringed lips also dripping, in this case the slobbering residue of his mother’s milk quickly snatched from her teat while she was communing with Mamma in her own particular language.

  For the second time that day, Mamma wielded her handbag, this time in the direction of the cow, who stepped back a pace but who was not for relinquishing this unexpected game which had intruded into an otherwise perfectly ordinary day.

  Desperately Mamma’s gaze panned the landscape. Nothing! Just miles and miles of heather moor and then more of the same – but wait! There was something else! Smoke, drifting, billowing, perhaps a chimney – and where there were chimneys there had to be a house, and any house with chimneys that smoked had to contain human life of some sort. In those fraught moments she didn’t care what sort of humans might live there. People were people when all was said and done and what did it matter if they spoke in that queer singing language that had beset her ears since leaving Portcull. She would find comfort, shelter, perhaps even food. She would be pleasant, she would be grateful, she would get there as quickly as she could, even though her feet were once more giving her hell.

  She set off, the cow and her calf following along at her back, like two large dogs who expected a bone at the end of their travels. They mooed, they drooled, they skipped, and gambolled and played. They urinated in great steaming waterfalls, and they released alarmingly huge portions of manure, whose porridge-like consistency created semi-liquid platters that were immediately pounced on by armies of dung-flies that seemed to appear from nowhere.

  Mamma was heartily sick of her unwanted followers, yet, strangely, by the ti
me she topped a rise and saw distinct signs of habitation in the distance, she was no longer afraid of the animals, seeing them instead as nothing more than a nuisance who had taken a fancy to her and who had, for the last half mile . . . she had to admit it . . . made her smile against her will with their sly good humour, their natural curiosity, and their unstinting passion for following faithfully in her footsteps.

  When finally she arrived at the tink encampment it was hard to know who was the most surprised. She had imagined she was making for some sort of village. From a distance the tink tents had looked like little houses and, as she drew nearer, her mouth had fairly watered at the savoury smells drifting towards her on the breezes. Her face as she stood on the edge of the camp was a picture: shock, horror, dismay all registered on her countenance at one and the same time. She couldn’t decide whether to stay and make the most of the situation, or to turn tail and run, cows or no cows. But thirst, fatigue and hunger were powerful persuaders; here there was sustenance, here there was rest – and if she was lucky she might just satisfy all of her needs without being robbed or having her throat cut or a combination of the two. For to her uneducated city eyes the travellers looked a rough and ready bunch with not one jot of civilized veneer on their suspicious country faces to suggest that they were possessed of any social graces in their make-up.

  So she stood and stared and openly displayed her hostility, her disgust – and – let it be said – her contempt. She looked just what she was, a big, domineering, city-bred, well-dressed woman who gave the impression of having lived in a land of plenty all of her days and who was used to getting her own way how and when she wanted it. If she felt apprehension or fear she kept it well buried, for in reality Mamma was an exceedingly tough lady who had seldom suffered anything worse than occasional and convenient bouts of severe hypochondria.