Stranger on Rhanna

by Christine Marion Fraser

  Mamma had had enough of the house, so, squaring her shoulders, she set off briskly in the direction of Portcull. It was a beautiful day: Mara Òran Bay sparkled in the sun, the translucent green water was calm and peaceful though a lively breeze rippled the blue surface of the Sound so that it sparkled and shone in a myriad of breathtaking colours.

  The lapwing chicks had grown into downy speckled balls with long legs that carried them swiftly through the grass, but the parent birds were never far away and the minute they sent out their alarm calls down the chicks cooried till danger was past. Skylarks sang in the blue vault of the sky, a glorious tumble of sound that seemed never-ending, for as soon as one bird swooped to the ground another would rise up, warbling out a joyous melody that peaked to a crescendo high above the earth. The scents of summer perfumed the air – Anton was cutting his hayfields – the rich, sweet smell drenched Mamma’s senses as she walked along, wearing only a print dress and a cotton cardigan.

  Something about the wide, clean beauty of the Hebridean landscape touched Mamma’s awareness. She paused to gaze over the heat-hazed moors rolling away to the velvet green slopes of Ben Machrie; she looked with appreciation at the great cliffs of Burg in the distance, misty and blue, plunging down to meet the deeper blue of the ocean. The journey over those same cliffs in Erchy’s bus had paled a little in her memory; she hadn’t been back to the village since that day but had decided that morning it was now or never to take the bull by the horns and face once again those dreadful island women.

  Mamma was badly in need of some stimulating company. Jon was very quiet these days and was withdrawn and pensive; Rachel was also preoccupied with her thoughts and took herself off on long walks so that she was hardly ever in the house, and when she was she spent her time moping in her room and seldom played her violin, much to Jon’s bafflement. Relations between the two were somewhat strained, but for once Mamma didn’t dare say anything in case she got her head chewed off. She hadn’t yet forgiven Rachel for her rudeness – the girl was positively bad mannered, she had scant respect for her elders and seemed unable to tell the difference between right and wrong – but of course, what else could one expect, springing as she had from a background in which no one had much grasp of life’s little niceties.

  The dazzling white houses of Portcull were drawing closer; Mamma’s steps slowed, she stopped swinging her string shopping bag and clutched at it instead. Passing Ranald’s craft shop she received pleasant nods from one or two people she didn’t know and had no wish to know. The harbour was quiet with only some fishermen spreading their nets and a row of pipe-smoking old men sitting on the wall. From them she received curious glances together with a few friendly grins. The amount of teeth those smiles revealed depended on the age of the worthies: toothless gaps were much in evidence and some had no teeth at all. Mamma thought it disgraceful that anybody should appear in public without teeth – especially in this day and age when a good set of dentures were easily come by. She didn’t stop to consider that ‘a good set of dentures’ were rather difficult to procure on an island where ‘the dentist mannie’ only visited twice a year. This meant that for the rest of the time the islanders had to visit a mainland dentist, or, in the case of the old and infirm, keep their ill-fitting ‘teeths’ steeping in a cup, except for the purpose of masticating food, or for Sabbath vigils in kirk when they were given an airing for cosmetic purposes.

  ‘Sour-faced cailleach,’ muttered Hector the Boat as Mamma went on her unsmiling way, heading first for the butcher’s shop because she had heard that he kept very good home-grown meat.

  Holy Smoke’s eyes gleamed when he peered between a row of black puddings hanging in his window and saw her approaching. Quite unconsciously he rubbed his hands together: he hadn’t yet encountered Jon’s mother and saw only a ‘towrist’, a foreigner at that, no doubt with plenty of money to spend and only a hazy idea of the value of British currency. No one else was in the shop, they were too busy gossiping about some silly petticoats old Elspeth had hung on her wash-line, and for once the butcher was pleased to have empty premises, since the presence of Kate or Barra would only undermine his influence over this promisingly ignorant customer.

  But Mamma had had ample time to do her homework and she made mincemeat of Holy Smoke. With magnificent aplomb she sailed majestically into the shop, grimacing as flakes of sawdust worked their way into her open-toed sandals to irritate her feet. Wasting no time she demanded to be served with frankfurter sausages, when these weren’t forthcoming she flared her nostrils impatiently and turned her attention to the neat lines of black and white puddings dangling from hooks behind the counter.

  Holy Smoke’s confidence returned and he spent several minutes praising the merits of his home-made mealy puddings, but when he stopped to get his breath it was to the realisation that he might as well not have spoken at all, because his customer had completely lost interest in any of his puddings, be they black or white.

  In the end she settled for a large, juicy-looking haggis, three lamb chops, a pound of stew, two kidneys, a small string of plump beef sausages and a quantity of steak mince ‘for the cat’.

  Mamma didn’t have a cat, in fact she wasn’t keen on them at all but she wasn’t going to tell that to Holy Smoke. When he had deftly wrapped her meat into a bulky package and was toting up the price, Mamma stopped him when he mentioned how much it would be for the mince.

  ‘In my country, cat meat is cheap,’ she said haughtily. ‘The same applies here, does it not? I give you sixpence, no more, no less.’

  Holy Smoke’s face turned purple, Kate would have revelled in his discomfiture and would have patted Mamma on the back for turning the tables on him.

  ‘Sixpence!’ he cried. ‘My dear lady, I’ll have you know, I gave you the best mince in the shop! I’m no’ a rich man by any means and if . . .’

  ‘I am not your dear lady,’ Mamma said firmly, ‘and I take myself out of your shop with nothing if you persist in cheating me just because you see before you a woman who is not of this place. Cheap cat meat – or nothing.’

  It took the butcher all his time not to argue back but he had his reputation to think of and, muttering darkly under his straggly limp moustache, he marked up sixpence against the mince even though it went against his grain.

  Mamma, however, had not finished with him. When it came to counting the money into his hand she made him so thoroughly confused with her loud, verbal conversions of German and British currencies, he ended up cheating himself of ten shillings and was never so glad to see the back of a customer in all his life.

  She left him standing at the counter, shaking his head, his brow furrowed in puzzlement as he went through his list all over again, tapping his head with his pencil, counting with his fingers, growing more and more confused as he mumbled on about German marks and schillings.

  Mamma was feeling light-headed with triumph as she left the butcher’s shop. No one was going to get the better of her on this island, she had put the boot on the other foot, she had shown that dreadful little meat man who was the boss . . . She straightened her back and puffed out her vast bosoms. She, Frau Helga Jodl, was ready now for anything . . .

  Agnes McKinnon was coming along the street, all sixteen stone of her, marching stolidly towards the Post Office, which was situated on Mamma’s route. Mamma hadn’t forgotten her confrontation with Aggie in Merry Mary’s, she had no wish for another, and she shrank back a little as the young woman came thundering along. There was certainly no avoiding this magnificent McKinnon and Mamma girded her loins as she prepared herself for battle.

  ‘It is yourself Mistress Jodl,’ greeted Aggie, her round pink face the very essence of good nature, no sign of ill-will in her attitude or in her plumply cosy, lilting voice.

  Mamma was completely taken aback and more than a little relieved to be hailed in such a fashion, though she wasn’t too sure about the ‘mistress’ part of it. She had still to learn that in Scotland it was a form of address that freq
uently took the place of ‘Mrs’ and was considered a sign of respect in the homes of the gentry where it would have been impolite to refer to the lady of the house as anything else but ‘mistress’.

  Mamma, however, knew nothing of this but in view of Aggie’s friendliness she was prepared to let it pass this once.

  ‘I have been looking out for you,’ Aggie went on, ‘and I’m right glad we have met, for I have been wanting to say sorry to you for shouting at you in Merry Mary’s shop.’

  ‘Say sorry – to me?’ Mamma repeated the words in disbelief, no one had apologized to her for anything since her arrival on Rhanna.

  ‘Ay, you see, I was in a hurry, but that was no excuse to talk to you the way I did and you a stranger on the island,’ Aggie stated, beaming at the older woman in the most cordial fashion.

  Mamma was completely flummoxed. She drew a deep breath. ‘Myself, I was rude,’ she found herself saying, ‘I go first when first is not my place.’

  ‘Och well,’ Aggie continued to weave her spell, ‘we all make mistakes, and wi’ you being new here it must all seem a bittie strange.’

  Mamma shook her head sadly. ‘It is the same wherever I go: I am rude, I push in my way, I speak too much the mind. People, they tell me I am domineering and unkind.’

  It was like uncorking a bottle that had been jammed tightly for a long time but once unstuck it all seemed to pour out. The flow of self-loathing continued, she appeared only too anxious to lay the blame for everything at her own door. Aggie nodded and clucked sympathetically and wondered if she should get envelopes as well as stamps when eventually she got to the Post Office.

  Mamma paused for breath, her face crumpled. ‘No one likes me, Jon is the only one who has any time for me. My husband, he was the little man, he give in to me whatever I say – it was not good – I never did anything he wanted and now I find it very hard to listen to anything anybody has to say.’

  Aggie’s soft heart melted, she laid a plump hand on the other’s arm. ‘Och, there now,’ she soothed. ‘You mustny worry, it is never too late to mend your ways.’

  But Mamma would not be consoled, dismally she shook her head. ‘I am not wanted here, Rachel dislikes me more than anyone, I have given her good reason to behave to me as she does. I think, perhaps, I will go back to Hamburg.’

  ‘Oh no, you mustny do that.’ Aggie was beginning to feel she had bitten off more than she could handle. ‘Give yourself a chance, I’m sure you are a very nice lady underneath your – er – skin.’

  Mamma drew a shuddering breath. ‘It is no use, no one wants to know me. Jon has Rachel, I am shut out. The feeling in here’ – she placed her hands over her massive chest – ‘it is of loneliness. They have their music and the secret glances and the funny swaying they call dancing; they have no time for me and will not even play with me the penuckle. I learn it from the Americans after the war but Rachel has no liking for it.’

  ‘Penuckle!’ Aggie’s face lit up, she fairly shouted out the word. ‘Oh, I just love penuckle – poker too! Colin my husband is in the Merchant Navy and learned a lot o’ card games when he was in America.’ She gazed at Mamma with dancing eyes. ‘You must come to our house for a wee night wi’ the cards, some o’ the neighbours come in too and we have a dram while we’re playing. No’ for money, you understand, well, maybe just a bob or two for the sake o’ a bittie excitement. I’ll get Rab McKinnon to come over for you tonight in his tractor, you’ll fair enjoy yourself.’

  During this discourse Mamma’s handsome face had been alight with interest but it fell at Aggie’s last words, she was remembering that the young woman lived halfway along the cliff road to Nigg. The journey there had been bad enough in Erchy’s bus and she had vowed never to attempt it again in any sort of vehicle, far less one of those noisy monsters she had seen lumbering about the island.

  ‘A tractor?’ she repeated faintly, the appeal of a cosy evening with the cards diminishing suddenly.

  ‘Och, you need have no fear of that,’ Aggie assured her cheerfully. ‘It is a very comfortable tractor and Rab is a good careful driver who never touches a drop till he is home safe and dry. The journey won’t take long and the summer nights are good and light, and just think, you’ll get to play penuckle till it’s coming out your ears.’

  Mamma was weakening, and in a sudden burst of decision she relented and said she would be happy to come.

  Aggie nodded. ‘That’s settled then. If you care to wait till I come out the Post Office, I’ll see you along the road, for I have still to get some things in Merry Mary’s before the bus comes.’

  ‘Ah, yes, the bus,’ said Mamma, sympathy in her tones for anyone who had to travel that dangerous road in a vehicle that was, to her, equally dangerous.

  ‘Och, I’m used to it.’ Aggie laughed and made tracks for the Post Office, in that establishment avoiding a few curious questions as to her conversation with Mamma and making good her escape as soon as her purchases were made.

  The two women walked companionably along, heads close together as they chatted.

  ‘They have become bosom pals all of a sudden – in every way that I can see,’ said Fingal McLeod, who, in common with a lot of the island men, liked to see a ‘well-filled’ woman.

  ‘Ay,’ agreed Ranald, his gleaming eyes roving appreciatively over Aggie’s rear end as she passed by. ‘Our Aggie is lookin’ well these days – she is cheekier than ever.’ He snorted with laughter at his own joke and went on, ‘Colin Mor is taking a big risk leaving her as often as he does, there’s many a man on Rhanna would jump at the chance of a night o’ fun in her bed.’

  ‘Who is the other one?’ enquired Rab McKinnon, trying to keep his tone as disinterested as possible. He was sixty, a widower with a strong, weatherbeaten face that seldom gave anything away. His blue eyes looked out calmly on the world but there was a hint of steel in them and though he was mainly a silent man he was a tough advocate if he thought anyone was getting an undeservedly raw deal.

  ‘Jon Jodl’s mother,’ supplied Murdy readily. ‘She’s a real tartar from all I hear and played havoc in Merry Mary’s shop when she had only newly set foot on the island.’

  Rab nodded. ‘I heard o’ that. They say Kate McKinnon sent her on a wild-goose chase to the other end o’ the island where she lost herself on the moor and ended up supping broth at the tinks’ camp over by Dunuaigh.’ He frowned. ‘It wasny nice o’ Kate to do that to a stranger, she’ll be thinkin’ we’re’ all tarred wi’ the same brush.’

  ‘Ach, she deserved it,’ said Fingal heartlessly. ‘She near frightened the shat out o’ poor old Dodie when she rode home wi’ him in the tink’s cart. He said he would rather meet a spook than cross paths wi’ her again and hardly goes outside his croft these days in case he might meet her again.’

  ‘Here, talkin’ o’ Dodie, is Wullie McKinnon doing anything about the cockerels?’ asked Ranald. ‘I hear tell he canny sleep at night for the noise and is willing to pay someone to do something about it.’

  Ranald’s eyes were shining, if anything he was even more of a money grubber than Holy Smoke and was always first on the scene when opportunity presented itself.

  Rab left the men to their talk and went off to the harbour to wait for the bus, little dreaming that he had been earmarked to chauffeur ‘the tartar’ to Aggie’s croft that very evening, whether he liked it or not.

  Merry Mary, remembering her last encounter with Mamma, looked rather worried when that same lady came stomping into the shop with Aggie at her elbow. The little Englishwoman had spent most of her life on Rhanna and was so attuned to island ways, both in speech and manner, that only the very discerning observer could tell she wasn’t a born and bred Hebridean.

  She thought the same as any islander, her reactions to certain situations were the same, she felt and behaved like an island woman and even looked and sounded like one with her open, honest face, her whimsical speech and her big, cheerful smile that was never far from her mouth.

  But she did
n’t smile when she saw Mamma entering her premises. The shop, which only minutes before had been full of blethering woman, had emptied itself as one by one the customers dispersed about their business, so Merry Mary had no one to back her up should the big bossy German woman start any of her nonsense.

  But she needn’t have worried, something had happened to Mamma in the last half-hour, she had opened up, she had blossomed, she actually stuck out her hand to seize a hold of Mary’s and pump it up and down till the little lady felt sure her arm was about to drop off at any minute with muscle fatigue.

  Aggie made her purchases and the three women stood chatting. Mary began to feel so relaxed she was soon leaning her arms on the counter in a characteristic gesture, beaming and nodding so much her limp ginger hair fell over her eyes, giving her the appearance of a rather scruffy tabby who had just spent a harrowing night on the tiles.

  She even dared to ask Mamma about her adventures in Erchy’s bus, even though Aggie was making warning signs that told her to hold her tongue.

  But the change in Mamma, whilst anything but complete, was making rapid progress. She gave such a vivid and funny account of the episode, her broken English only adding spice to the telling, that she soon had the other two laughing and wiping their eyes and, thus encouraged, Mamma then plunged into a vivid description of the scene with Holy Smoke in the butcher’s shop.

  ‘You never!’ Aggie cried admiringly. ‘Oh, wait till I tell Kate, she’s aye taking the rise out o’ him herself but never has she managed to get one over him as good as that.’ She glanced at her watch and gave a little yelp. ‘Where has the time gone? The bus will be here soon so I’ll just go and wait wi’ Rab at the harbour and tell him about tonight.’

  Mamma got up from the sack of potatoes on which she had been sitting. ‘And I too must go, the dinner will be late in making but the cat, she will enjoy her meat all the more for waiting.’