When an interval was announced for the musicians to rest and satisfy their thirst, guests were called by name to sing. Some were eager enough, though inevitably a pretence of reluctance was obligatory. Others had to be coaxed, even pulled up from their seats, while between each performance Mairi Jane regaled Kirsty with a brief outline of their genealogies, their circumstances and their rumoured idiosyncrasies. Kirsty was conscious that she herself must be a focus of discussion and responded by exchanging smiles and nods with everyone who smiled and nodded at her. She doubted if she’d remember more than two or three of them but was confident they would remember her.
When several singers had obliged there was a lull until the name of Jamie Eilidh was called, and it seemed to Kirsty that a discernible instant of tension descended on the room when a young boy of about fourteen years of age stood up and began to sing. It was an old Gaelic tune which she vaguely remembered her Granny singing at times when she was bent over the girdle. The refrain of the song was soon being quietly hummed by everyone in the room as hands beat into laps, feet tapped the floor and old heads swayed rhythmically. When the song had ended and the boy had sat down Kirsty remarked to Mairi Jane, ‘That boy has a truly lovely voice and that is a lovely old tune.’
‘It is an old tune and I have not heard it sung much for a long time,’ Mairi Jane told her. ‘I’ve heard it said that some singers find it too, too,’ she sought for a word, ‘too kind of fickle,’ she explained.
‘I can well understand that,’ Kirsty agreed. ‘It has a fair amount of warbling to be mastered. My Granny had the voice for it but I suppose her voice had grown fairly warbly with age.’
‘It is a pity that young Jamie cannot speak as well as he sings,’ Mairi Jane confided. Kirsty looked at her curiously. ‘Hasn’t he a stammer that will almost clamp his throat when he tries to speak,’ Mairi Jane went on.
‘How tragic!’ Kirsty exclaimed. ‘Could he not have had treatment to help him?’
‘Maybe he has, maybe he hasn’t,’ Mairi Jane shrugged.
‘He’s a very handsome boy,’ Kirsty observed. Mairi Jane looked slightly shocked. ‘I’m not fancying him if that’s what you’re thinking,’ Kirsty laughed. ‘But I do think it’s a shame he has such a handicap. Has he any brothers or sisters?’
‘No, nor will there be any,’ Mairi Jane declared. ‘See, I’m telling you, when Jamie was born his mother’s brain broke, just. There was nothing anyone could do for her so she was sent away to a kind of Home to be looked after by nuns. Mind you, she was young and her parents were queer enough folks that took little to do with folks here. Not that any of us wanted to do with them,’ she added haughtily. ‘They were Papists and wouldn’t have come to these parts only that he was a vet and was wanting experience.’
‘Papists?’ Kirsty echoed.
‘Fierce Papists,’ confirmed Mairi Jane. ‘Jamie was let to them to look after but seeing he was a bastard fathered by a Seceder they were ashamed of a daughter who had done such a thing. They left here pretty soon afterwards and nobody heard much of them except that the daughter had passed on and the boy had been sent off when he was hardly more than a bairn to some school where there were only nuns to teach him.’
‘What about the child’s father? Was he also a Papist?’ Kirsty asked.
‘He was not!’ Mairi Jane said vehemently. ‘He was as good a Seceder as his father and mother had been before him.’
‘I would have thought a staunch Seceder would have avoided any contact with a Papist,’ Kirsty reasoned.
‘Ach, but Papist women are said to like the boys and she liked them too much,’ Mairi Jane retorted. ‘And this one was known to be a wayward lassie. Going out at night in secret. Teasing the young fellows into taking more whisky than they were used to. It wasn’t all that long before she had a bairn in her belly.’
‘And the man did not marry her?’
‘How would a good Seceder come to marry a Papist?’ Mairi Jane derided. ‘And how would a fierce Papist come to marry a Seceder?’
Her tone made Kirsty feel guilty for having asked the question.
‘But it was his baby,’ she pointed out.
‘Aye, but the fellow was young and foolish and his father had been over-strict with him. No doubt when his father was changed the fellow went a bit wild for a time.’ Mairi Jane shook her head sadly. ‘The Dear is to be thanked for taking his mother a year or so before her son was named as the father of the lassie’s child. She was a fine woman, a good Seceder, a good wife to her husband and a good mother to her family and I believe she would be curdling in her grave still at the very idea of such a thing happening in her family.’
Kirsty, wondering how the time was going, had begun looking around for a clock when she was suddenly aware that her husband had entered the room and was peering around for her. She raised her hand and he responded by beckoning her. She had not seen a sign of either him or her brother-in-law since they had come into the annexe, and has assumed they preferred to be in the fresh air discussing cattle prices and fishing prospects with friends and colleagues, rather than taking part in the festivities in the closeness of the crowded annexe.
She took her leave of Mairi Jane, gave her warmest good wishes to the bride – the bridegroom had disappeared – included the guests in a cheery farewell wave and followed her husband down to the boat. The sea was ruffled now by only a whisper of evening breeze and when they reached the house the peat fire was still smouldering promisingly.
She said, ‘I will go to look at the cattle before I cook a meal, if that is all right with you.’
Ruari mumbled approval. Her brother-in-law said, ‘You will not be needing to cook a meal after all we’ve eaten this day, surely? A bowl of porridge will suit you surely, Ruari Beag?’
Kirsty gaped at him. He had actually spoken to her. Ruari Beag flashed her a cautious glance as if warning her not to show too much surprise.
‘I will go change my clothes ready to go to the cows,’ she said tonelessly.
The kitchen was empty when she returned and she headed straight for the moors. The cow she’d been anxious about was not with the herd but hearing a shout she looked towards a small hillock where her husband was standing and waving his arms to attract her attention. She made towards him as fast as she could.
‘See!’ he announced and as she approached him she saw the cow with her coffee-brown calf nuzzling at her belly searching for her teats.
‘A fine heifer calf,’ Ruari said delightedly.
‘Oh, you clever girl,’ cried Kirsty equally delighted, as she went to fondle the tight-curled coat of the calf. ‘What is to be done with them now?’ she asked.
‘Ach, she’ll be fine where she is,’ he said. ‘We’ll wait a minute or two just and make sure it’s sucking all right and then we can leave her here. The night is calm and she’s got good shelter here if she feels she wants it.’ The calf found a teat and started to suck strongly. The mother watched it with tender possessiveness. ‘Come away now,’ Ruari bade her and together they began to walk back towards the house.
After a little while Kirsty asked, ‘Ruari, your brother spoke to me in quite a friendly way tonight. What has happened to make him do that? Do you think he’s getting over his dislike of me?’
‘Didn’t I tell you he would come round before very long?’ he stated. ‘He has never disliked you, he just misunderstood you and thought you wouldn’t settle for the sort of life we have here. You proved him wrong when you said you would stay here rather than go to the wedding. He admitted it when we were coming out this evening to look at the cow.’
‘He was there, too? I didn’t see him.’
‘No, he left when he saw you coming. He took the other way back to the house.’
‘I don’t care about his avoiding me but it will make for a much pleasanter atmosphere in the house if the three of us can speak together.’
‘Aye indeed,’ Ruari agreed. ‘But you must mind he is not a man for much talk at any time,’ he warned.
‘I shan’t expect much talk,’ she rejoined. ‘Just a recognition of my presence.’ She began to feel lighthearted and started to sing quietly to herself thinking, because he was a few paces in front, he would not hear her. He paused until she caught up with him.
‘You were glad to be at the wedding?’
‘Yes, I enjoyed it much more than I’d expected to. What about you? I hardly saw you or your brother all afternoon but I suppose you heard some of what was going on even if you didn’t see it.’
‘Ach, weren’t we making sure the bridegroom was fit for what he had to do,’ he told her. ‘It’s kind of expected when there’s a wedding.’
‘You mean you filled him with whisky?’ she jested. He only winked at her.
‘You missed some good singing,’ she pointed out.
‘But there were windows open and we heard quite a bit of it,’ he claimed.
‘There was a young boy there who had a lovely singing voice but Mairi Jane was telling me he had difficulty in speaking. It seems a great shame. Did you hear him?’
‘No, I don’t believe we did,’ said Ruari noncommittally. ‘Maybe we were singing ourselves enough to drown him.’
When they got back to the house her brother-in-law was nowhere to be seen but he appeared in time to take some porridge she’d made. He was still his taciturn self; his gaze still excluded her but the atmosphere was noticeably less strained. Ruari Beag said, ‘The tide will not be right for an early start. That is so is it not, Ruari Mhor?’
‘That is so,’ his brother confirmed.
‘I will be as well off in my bed then,’ said Ruari Beag as he rose from the table and went through to the bedroom.
Kirsty took the used bowls into the scullery, washed them, measured some milk into a saucepan and returned to the kitchen. She’d expected her brother-in-law would have taken himself off to his own room as was his usual habit and was surprised to find him still sitting contemplatively beside the range. Ignoring him she heated her milk, poured it into a mug and sat herself down in the opposite chair. He appeared not to notice her and since it was the first time she had been alone with him she felt a little uneasy. As she sipped at her milk the desire to speak to him grew more insistent. At length she blurted out, ‘Ruari Mhor, please listen to what I have to tell you.’ He did not look at her nor did his expression change. ‘Please bear with me when I plead with you not to let me come between you and your brother. I have pleaded with him and he tells me everything will be all right, but let me tell you I would not have agreed to marry him had I suspected you would be so vexed by it, and I promise I will take my leave if you cannot find it in your heart to accept my presence here.’
He still did not speak. Her own voice strengthened. ‘I understand you believe Ruari Beag to have acted very foolishly in marrying me and bringing me hear, but I must tell you that your brother has been very kind to me and I have sworn to do my best to make him happy, but now I well know that this will be impossible if I am allowed to come between him and you.’ She drew a deep quivering breath, finished her milk and stood up. She felt so much better for having confronted him on the subject even if, as she suspected, he had not listened to a word she had spoken.
He stood up and went towards the door of the kitchen but there he stopped and turned round to face her. ‘Kirsty MacLennan,’ he told her sternly. ‘I believe my brother to have been foolish in marrying you and bringing you to this Island.’ He paused a second and then added, ‘It is not the first foolish thing he has done.’
‘But I am learning to love Westisle,’ she objected. There were tears in her eyes and she blinked them quickly away.
‘I say again it is not place for a woman,’ he stated, and went into the passage, closing the door behind him.
She piled dry peats on the dying fire and topped them with a few wet ones before she went to bed, and she was surprised when she entered the room to see that Ruari was still awake.
‘I thought you were tired,’ she commented, as she uncoiled her hair and twisted it into the usual two plaits. As she was getting into bed beside him as he pulled at one of the plaits playfully.
‘You enjoyed the weddings you were saying?’ her husband asked her again.
‘I did,’ she admitted, pulling the bedclothes around her. She tensed herself when he readied to pull them away.
‘I believe Willy and his bride will be enjoying themselves now,’ he muttered, his whisky-wet mouth on her ear. His face was bristly on her cheeks, his hot rough hands were urgently exploring her thighs. She told herself to yield. He was not gentle. She winced with the hurt of it but: the interlude was mercifully brief and when he’d turned away from her she lay still, listening to his steady breathing while she questioned her own mixed reactions to the experience. She hadn’t enjoyed it, she: concluded, but she was glad she’d had the experience. If there had been love between them, she thought, it might have been a more joyous experience for her but if it satisfied him she was content that it should be so. What a day it had been, she reflected. A red red-letter-day. First a new calf had been born, next she had been to a wedding, then her brother-in-law had broken his silence and now she was no longer a virgin. There was a smug smile on her face as she drifted off to sleep.
She rose early next morning and went to the cattle before Ruari was awake. She was searching for a missing hen when he appeared dressed ready to go to sea.
‘I’m away,’ he called, and gestured a farewells. She watched him go and wondered if he felt any lingering excitement after what had happened last night. He did not even glance her way. She continued her search for the hen, which she found eventually sitting on a full brood of eggs in a cosy nest inside an old barrel. Two days later she found another hen also sitting tight on a clutch of eggs. If they all hatched she realised they would soon have an overabundance of hens.
She mentioned the likelihood to Ruari when they were having supper one night.
‘We’ll not be wanting any more eggs. Haven’t we plenty already?’ he retorted.
‘Couldn’t we sell eggs on the mainland?’ she proposed.
‘It’s best to wring the necks of any we don’t need.’
‘Oh, surely not,’ she protested. ‘We can eat the cockerels but to wring the necks of the pullets seems a terrible waste to me.’
‘More eggs means more feeding,’ he pointed out.
‘But if I sell the eggs on the mainland the money would pay for extra feed. It isn’t as if we’d have to buy much extra because the flock here is almost self-supporting,’ she argued.
She left it three or four weeks before she mentioned the subject again, and by that time there were nineteen more chickens cheeping around their mothers.
‘Have you thought any more about taking eggs to the mainland?’ she asked.
This time it was her brother-in-law who answered her question. ‘We will take eggs to the mainland but we will not do the selling,’ he stated. ‘You must come with us to do that and what money you make by doing so you can keep for yourself. Hens is women’s work. We will not be concerned with such things.’
Kirsty was overcome with surprise. ‘I’m not wanting to take money for myself but maybe I can spend a little on cheering up this room? Maybe some new covering for the floor and also some curtains for the window?’ Her husband looked at her wide-eyed, obviously seeing nothing that needed improvement. Her brother-in-law merely grunted.
‘Will I do that?’ she pressed.
Ruari Beag looked at his brother before saying, ‘If that is what you wish.’
Kirsty grew quite excited about the prospect of going on regular trips to the mainland and selling eggs. It meant she wouldn’t be completely shut off from shops as she was on Westisle, and though the shops were small and scattered it would be a welcome break for her to meet and perhaps familiarize herself with the people. She’d been quite lavish recently in her use of eggs, simply so as not to see them wasted, but now she decided to be more frugal.
The weeks and months
went by. She encouraged more hens to ‘clock’ as the warmer weather came, and gradually built up the flock until she was able to take a full basket of eggs each time she made the trip to the mainland. She pored over mail order catalogues and sent off for material to make curtains and cushions. She bought new linoleum for the floor and bright new waxcloth for the table. Slowly the kitchen began to look a little like the room she had envisaged when she’d first seen it. She’d got the two brothers to move the dresser from the scullery into the kitchen and, after staining and varnishing it she’d filled its shelves with the plain, everyday pottery she’d found in the scullery. Then one day, when she’d mentioned she needed wool for mending his sweater, Ruari suddenly thought to look in one of the chests which has been in the bedroom but had since been stored in a room where Ruari Mhor kept his books and gramophone.
Kirsty gasped with pleasure. There was certainly mending wool in the chest, but much of it was interposed between brightly coloured cups and saucers, tea plates and fruit bowls.
‘The Laird’s wife left them to my mother. It was she who packed them away.’
‘But these would look lovely on the dresser,’ she pleaded.
‘Take them and do whatever you like with them,’ Ruari said, and when he came back that evening and saw them on the dresser shelves he congratulated her with an approving, ‘Aye, aye.’
She was thrilled. The kitchen had been transformed and the brothers had accepted it with never a single word of criticism.
Her life on Westisle settled into a fairly regular pattern. She cooked, cleaned, washed, mended, knitted and sewed. No matter the weather conditions she trekked daily over the moors to attend the cows, and though she would not have claimed the trek was invariably a rewarding experience, she came to look upon the task more as a mission she was glad to accomplish. She looked after the hens. In the spring she lent a hand at the kelp gathering, she helped with the seasonal planting and harvesting. She dug a piece of land for a vegetable garden and worked it herself. Whenever she looked it seemed there was always work asking to be done but her life was so satisfying she rarely felt tired. The two brothers neither cosseted her nor did they make any attempt to burden her with more work. Instead they accepted only what she volunteered to do. Kirsty counted herself more than lucky.
An Island Apart Page 13