Stranger on Rhanna

by Christine Marion Fraser

  Jon raised a trembling hand to his eyes, he removed his glasses to clean them but still a mist blurred his vision. His tormented emotions tugged him this way and that, insecurity tightened his nerves. He shivered and wondered if he could ever really leave the girl who had infused his timid world with inspiration ever since that fateful day, long ago, when a curly-haired child had captured his heart forever with the radiance of her pearly smile . . .

  He came out of his reverie with a start – that child had grown into a woman – one who had just told him she was expecting a baby . . . a baby. How he had longed for such news, how often they had both imagined what it would be like when the gift of a child came to them at last. But it wasn’t his. She had robbed him of everything that had been good and sweet in his life and he could hardly bear the hurt of her final betrayal.

  He turned away from the window. Let her go to him, let her stay here on Rhanna and have another man’s child. She could go to hell for all he cared . . .

  The years of his devotion were done with – it was finished.

  Only a few people knew of Rachel’s pregnancy; she was easily able to hide it since she was still at the stage when nothing much showed, except when she ran her hands over her belly and felt its taut roundness. She had always walked tall, her figure was superb, a flowing blouse was all she needed to deny her condition to the world and deny it she did. Jon’s rejection of his own child had done that to her. If he had accepted it as joyfully as she had imagined, everyone would have known by now; as it was she felt no exuberance and had decided to allow the passage of time to tell its own tale.

  Ruth only found out by accident from Phebie when they met one day in the village. ‘You and Rachel will have more in common than ever now,’ Phebie had said in a burst of cheery impulse. ‘It will be nothing but baby talk and, of course, wi’ you being an experienced mother, you’ll be able to give her a few handy tips nearer the time.’

  She saw the look on Ruth’s face and her own fell. ‘You didn’t know about it? Och, Ruth, I’m sorry, I should have held my tongue. Lachy did warn me to keep quiet and let Rachel blow her own trumpets but I thought – wi’ you being her friend . . .’

  Ruth had gone home to pour her indignation out on Lorn, so incensed by the fact that she had learned the news from someone other than Rachel she was beside herself with temper and in a mood to battle with anyone who got in her way.

  As it was she wasted no time next day in making tracks for An Cala. If Lorn had been there to make her sit down and talk things over in a logical manner she might never have made the move she would later live to regret, but Lorn was working with his father in Laigmhor’s fields, the children were with Shona at Mo Dhachaidh, and Ruth, with more time on her hands than usual, was in a mood to spend it dangerously, particularly since she had seen very little of her friend these last few weeks.

  And no wonder, she fumed to herself as she started up the little car Lorn had bought her to celebrate the publication of her first novel, she’s been too busy elsewhere to spare much time for the likes of me!

  An Cala was empty but for Rachel, Mamma was out, so too was Jon, the way was clear for Ruth to say what every unreasoning emotion forced her to say the minute she stepped over the threshold.

  Rachel looked up with a start at the suddenness of the unexpected intrusion. She was about to offer the usual hospitable cup of tea but got no chance to do so as Ruth, her fair face flushed with purpose, her violet eyes big with bottled-up indignation, went into the attack right away.

  ‘I finally heard about the baby’ – she said it like an accusation – ‘from someone who thought I must already know and was quite shocked to learn that I didn’t. In the normal way o’ things I would be the first to congratulate you, Rachel, but this isn’t the normal way o’ things and I think I know the reasons for your secrecy. I’ve seen how you’ve behaved wi’ Otto, how you run to him at every turn, leaving Jon to his own devices like you’ve left everyone else this summer. You’ve never even spared the time for your own mother. You never come to see us anymore, it’s always Otto, isn’t it? Right from the start it was Otto!’

  For answer Rachel merely stared in total amazement, so taken aback she could do nothing to defend herself and Ruth, taking the reaction as an admission of guilt, slowly nodded her head.

  ‘How could you, Rachel?’ she cried aghast. ‘How could you do this to Jon?’

  ‘How could you with Lewis?’ Rachel countered, her fingers spelling out the words, her eyes like black coals in the deathly pallor of her face.

  ‘That was different!’ Ruth flashed back. ‘Lewis was dying!’

  ‘So is Otto.’ Rachel swiftly relayed the message before her hands went still, fluttering to her lap like spent butterflies. She was appalled at herself for giving away such a confidence, furious at Ruth for having dug below the surface of her defences with just a few cryptic words.

  Stepping back a pace she sunk into a chair and covered her face with her hands, too overwrought to weep, too sick at heart to even be angry.

  There was a stunned silence in the room. Ruth stood there, hating herself, deflated and uneasy, horrified and afraid.

  ‘Oh, Rachel,’ she whispered at last, ‘I know it’s too feeble to say sorry but I am, truly I am, I . . . I don’t now what came over me. I know I’m guilty of being too quick to pass judgement, Shona pointed that out to me and though I was mad at her I saw later that she was right – also – I think I was jealous of the time you spent with Otto – I thought . . .’

  She stammered to a halt, unable to go on, Rachel looked up, and her eyes were black, and hard, and cold, ‘You can think what you like about me, Ruth,’ wearily her hands moved, ‘but never, never, must you tell anyone about Otto – not even Lorn. Otto plans to go back to Vienna to die but while he is here all he wants is peace – and peace is what he will have or you’ll have me to reckon with.’

  Desperately Ruth tried to make amends but it was no use, Rachel had withdrawn into herself, her whole demeanour was of one who had retreated into some inner world where no one could follow. She looked very alone sitting there and somehow so vulnerable Ruth wanted to rush forward and comfort her. But she didn’t, she was too afraid of rejection, too horrified at her own folly to even begin to forgive herself, let alone expect Rachel’s forgiveness.

  Turning on her heel, she walked out of An Cala, her foot dragging so badly she tripped and had to hold on to the gate to steady herself.

  She glanced back at the house. It looked empty somehow, as if no one lived there, neglected and sad and abandoned. It was only fancy, of course, but in her heightened state of awareness Ruth imagined that the spirit of life had left it, leaving it comfortless and bare where before, the very aura of Rachel’s presence had enfolded it in a vibrant shroud of light.

  ‘Oh, Lorn!’ she cried when he got home that day and found her sitting by the empty grate in the parlour. ‘Rachel and myself have had a terrible row! I think she might never speak to me again.’

  Lorn was weary after a day spent in the fields and was in no mood to listen to details of an argument that had taken place between two battling women. Ruthie had been temperamental that summer. She was always restless and keyed up when Rachel was on the island, as if she expected exciting happenings to occur every minute of the day, but this time she had been more than usually tense and he sighed and wondered if the water was hot for a wash and if his tea would be late with her in her present mood.

  ‘Where are the bairns?’ he queried, ignoring her look of tragedy. ‘I thought you were picking them up from Mo Dhachaidh.’

  ‘Shona said they could stay and have tea wi’ her . . .’ She eyed him in some annoyance. ‘Did you hear what I said, Lorn? Rachel and me . . .’

  He ran a hand through his black curls and sighed. ‘All right, what was the row about – this time?’

  She wasn’t slow to pick up his rather sarcastic tone and her golden head tilted stubbornly. ‘I’m sorry, I canny tell you, it’s something between h
er and me. One day you’ll know, one day everyone will know but for now I canny say.’

  ‘Women!’ he cried in exasperation. ‘What you really mean, Ruthie, what you aye mean when you’re like this, is you could say but you won’t.’

  ‘No, Lorn, this isn’t like that, it’s – well – it’s a matter o’ life and death – and could easily be my death if Rachel ever found out I had breathed a word to anyone.’

  Lorn bent to pull on his slippers, having left his mud-caked boots in the porch. His stomach was rumbling, his hands were callused from hoeing turnips all day, he wanted only to sit down and allow every tired limb to relax, but there was no chance of that or anything else till Ruth had had her say.

  Reaching out, he lifted her hair and let the silken strands slide through his fingers. ‘Ruthie, if it will make you feel better you can tell me what ails you, I’ll be very quiet and attentive and won’t interrupt once and nothing can be as terrible as you make out.’

  She shook off his hand and sat forward in her seat, her pupils huge and black with the enormity of the dark deeds she had done that day and which nothing she said or did could ever take back. ‘I’m sorry, I canny tell you, Lorn: Rachel made me promise not to breathe a word, no’ even to you – and you especially should know how frighteningly intense Rachel can be when she has a mind.’

  Resentment was in the glance she threw at him. She knew she was being unfair but she couldn’t help it, she was hating herself, hating everything she had done, and she was unable to stop herself transferring some of that feeling to her husband who had done nothing but just be there in the firing line.

  His eyes were on her, suspicion darkening them till they were just as black as her own. ‘This wouldny have anything to do wi’ Rachel’s baby, would it? Ruthie, I’m asking you a question and you’re avoiding my eyes which means you’re feeling guilty about something. You were in a funny mood when I left this morning, as if you had a burden on your mind and couldny rest till you had unloaded it on to someone.’

  ‘Ach! You McKenzies! You’re all the same! Too full o’ fancies for your own good and I haveny the time to listen to your blethers. There’s coal in the bucket, you can make yourself useful for a change and light the fire. If it wasny for me this place would go to rack and ruin and you would do nothing but stand back and watch it falling about your lugs!’

  She sounded exactly like Morag Ruadh, her red-haired religious fanatic of a mother, who had ruled her with a rod of iron, and who had finally taken to her deathbed in mortal fear of what the Lord would do to her for having indulged in ‘the sins of the flesh’ when she had conceived her daughter in a fit of drunken lust, and ever after had never been sure who had fathered her child.

  Ruth got up, she flounced away through to the kitchen, murmuring something about making the tea, adding under her breath that she was just a ‘skivvy’ who had no life of her own and it was a wonder she ever managed to find the time to write books.

  Morag too had believed herself to be indispensable and Lorn stared after his wife with apprehension clouding his face. But he knew he was being silly, Ruthie could never turn out like her mother, she was too soft and sweet, and romantic – except during times like these when he could gladly have taken her across his knee and given her a good skelping.

  ‘Home!’ Mamma’s face fell, she was thoroughly enjoying herself on Rhanna and had visualized a few more weeks on the island.

  ‘Yes, Mamma, home.’ Jon spoke firmly, the mood that had beset him since the row with Rachel had grown blacker and deeper with the passing days, leaving no room for him to easily deal with unnecessary trivia or to placate his mother in his usual patient manner. ‘Though when I say home I really mean London. I have much business to catch up on, I have also applied for a teaching position at the Royal Academy of Music and want to be on hand for any likely interviews. You could always stay here with Rachel, of course, she won’t be coming with us, she feels the need to remain on Rhanna for the foreseeable future, hence my reasons for wanting to take up teaching again.’

  Mamma looked warily at her son. He hadn’t told her about the baby, she only knew that all was not well between him and Rachel. The atmosphere had been very tense in the house and she had made herself as scarce as possible since all her old enjoyment of picking fault with her daughter-in-law had deserted her of late.

  Nevertheless she had no wish to remain at An Cala without Jon. His news of seeking a teaching post in the musical world had taken away some of the sting of having to leave Rhanna and waving a nonchalant hand in the air she said graciously, ‘With you to London I will come; Rachel has no need of me here but you, Jon, you must have someone to look after you. Rachel is not the type of woman to feel the obligation to carry out wifely duties, so I, your mother, will be happy to take them upon myself as I do not wish to go back to Hamburg, knowing you have need of me.’

  Her slightly martyred air didn’t fool Jon for one moment. He had seen a big change in his mother that summer: no more did she fret and whine and complain, she spent more time out of the house than in, she was cheerful, buoyant and happy, in fact her entire attitude and outlook on life had undergone a complete metamorphosis and sometimes Jon had to look at her twice to convince himself that this really was the same woman who had spent her entire life bossing people about and making things difficult for those who were nearest her.

  She not only behaved and sounded different, her appearance had altered too. Her eyes held a new sparkle, her face glowed, her downcast mouth smiled more often, she laughed readily and he had discovered in her a sense of humour that had hitherto only manifested itself in a somewhat satirical way. She had always been a handsome woman in a rather hard and mannish fashion, now she was softer, more feminine, more attractive altogether; she spent a good deal of her time in front of the mirror and she made regular trips to ‘Mairi’s hairdressing saloon’. She had even gone to the lengths of ordering some fashionable clothes from Aggie’s mail order catalogue, though oddly, and here even Rachel had to smile, along with all the finery had come a stout pair of wellington boots and a voluminous oilskin jacket, both of which items she had hastily explained away as being the only kind of apparel to wear in a place where it rained most of the time and ‘even when it stops it forgets to be dry’.

  That, of course, was only bluff. In due course the real reasons for the boots and the jacket became known, via that most reliable of communications, Highland Telegraph: quite simply, word of mouth – many mouths, all flapping away, exaggerating, elaborating, enjoying hugely anything and everything that held the merest whisper of interest.

  No one escaped, particularly visitors, who were always a great source of curiosity, and Mamma, with her reputation for doing and saying outrageous things, demanded an even greater scrutiny than most. And Eilidh Monroe, incensed beyond measure at Frau Helga Jodl’s monopolisation of Rab McKinnon, made very sure that the tongues were kept piping hot with conjecture.

  But it was that ubiquitous personage Erchy, in the course of his innocent travels, who saw, with his very own eyes, the incongruous spectacle of Mamma, ‘wrapped to the lugs in waterproofs’, over there at Croft nan Uamh (Croft of the Caves), helping Rab bring the cows in for milking, or rather, ostensibly helping him, since, like all good cows everywhere, they didn’t need much coaxing to plod through the gates into the byre to wait patiently for their udders to be emptied.

  ‘Hmph, as if she could ever be any good on a croft!’ was Eilidh’s verdict when the news filtered through to her ears. ‘Just wait till she has to help wi’ a difficult calving or has to put the fork to a steaming dung midden in the rain. She’ll no’ look so smart then wi’ her new welly boots covered in glaur and pig shit.’

  It was amazing enough for Frau Helga Jodl to have actually participated in menial croft work, but it was a miracle that she had actually done so on land situated high on the machair above a group of awesome caves known as Uamh na Mara, (Caves of the Sea). At high tide the ocean spumed and roared into the fearsome caver
ns and local legend had it that once, long ago, during an almighty storm, the ground above the caves had trembled so much with the boom and might of the waves that the very crockery inside the croft had rattled about as if in the grip of an earthquake.

  Despite all, Croft nan Uamh had managed to remain intact on the same spot for the last hundred years and more, and was so sturdily built it looked as if it could easily still be standing with the passing of another century.

  But that wasn’t all that Mamma had endured and enjoyed that fateful summer, there had been sightings of her all over the island – rattling along in Rab’s uncle’s old motor car, parked on the cliffs, the moors, the machair – anywhere and everywhere off the beaten track, though never far enough off it not to be espied by somebody.

  That was the thing that really had the steam coming out of Eilidh’s ears and she fumed and fretted and wished for the day when it would be exit Frau Helga Jodl from the island.

  Now that day was almost here and no one was more surprised than Jon when, on the eve of their departure, his mother confided some of her most personal feelings to him. ‘I speak to you first of Rab McKinnon,’ she began, an uncharacteristic hesitancy in her voice and a blush on her cheeks. ‘All of my life I look for a man like him, he does not let me have too much of my own way, the authority I like, the strong silence I respect, he tells me to be quiet when I have the verbal diarrhoea, if I show the solkiness he tells me he has no use of women with the moods and so I do not have the solkiness anymore.’

  Verbal diarrhoea! Mamma’s vocabulary was certainly expanding and Jon looked at her with a new light of affection shining in his eyes.

  ‘I have many good friends here on Rhanna,’ she continued, the revelations pouring out of her. ‘I was lonely when I live in Hamburg, here I am never alone unless I seek the solitude. Aggie has been kind to me, she befriends me when I think I have no friends, after that I find friendship with many people. At first I think they come from the moon, they have the strange language I do not understand, but then I see I also have the strange language and cross the bridges I must. Happy Mary always has the smile for me, Mairi is always ready to help and with her and Kate McKinnon I drink the tea and even grow to like it. Herr Holy Smoke never tries to cheat me anymore and always he gives me the cheap meat for my cat, on the road Erchy waves to me from his post van or his dreadful bus and I even forgive him for the knots I tie in my stomach when he took me to find the city of Croy that was not there. Yes, Jon, the people here I like very much.’