A Rhanna Mystery

by Christine Marion Fraser

  Kirsteen was more puzzled than ever by all these cryptic remarks, but Shona gave her no opportunity to pursue the matter. ‘I’d better take the bairns home,’ she decided briskly, ‘you and Father will be wanting the house to yourselves and Ruth is missing Lorna as much as I’m missing Ellie Dawn.’

  ‘Och no!’ protested Kirsteen. ‘Let them stay till after tea at least. I’ve got presents for them and want to be here when they open them.’

  Ellie Dawn clapped her hands. ‘Like Christmas, Gramma?’

  ‘Ay, like Christmas,’ agreed Kirsteen with a smile.

  Fergus had had no chance to talk to Fern about her leaving, and over tea she played another of her trump cards. Leaning towards Kirsteen, she said beseechingly, ‘I hope you’ll be letting me stay here a wee while longer, Kirsteen. I promise I’ll be no bother and I’ll do everything I can to earn my keep.’

  ‘Of course,’ Kirsteen looked taken aback, ‘I’m surprised the question even came up. Where else would you go? And what made you think you had to move out because I’ve moved back in? It’s going to be nice having another woman to talk to and I’m looking forward to it.’

  She gazed out to the hills beyond the window. ‘It’s so wonderful to be back on Rhanna, I’ve missed it more than I could believe possible. But Glasgow’s a busy place, there was always so much bustle and things happening. It’s going to take me a whilie to get used to the quiet again so I’ll be glad o’ some company when Fergus is out and about.’

  Fern looked at Fergus, a triumphant smile lifting the corners of her mouth. The gleam in her black eyes was something more than just gladness to be staying on. She was silently daring him to contradict the things his wife had just said and he knew that she wasn’t going to let go of him so easily. Nothing was resolved, he was back to square one, and the look he threw back at her was a mixture of frustrated anger and growing defeat.

  Tea over, the little girls sat happily on the rug, playing with the toys Kirsteen had brought them, but when Shona and Niall arrived to take them home to their respective houses they set up wails of protest.

  ‘We have to stay here, Grampa and Gramma both need us,’ Lorna decided in her quaint, old-fashioned way.

  ‘Yes.’ Ellie Dawn supported this with a vigorous nod of her fair head. ‘Gramma’s tired and needs me to sing to her and Grampa likes the stories Lorna tells him.’

  ‘Hey!’ Niall swung his little daughter high. ‘Don’t you want to come home to your daddy? I’ve missed you pinching me awake in the morning and the twins need you to tell them about the three bears.’

  Ellie Dawn weakened at once and placing a hand in each of her parents’ she began pulling them towards the door.

  Not so Lorna, eyes swimming, lip trembling; she gazed at Fern and whispered, ‘I want to stay here, with you, Aunt Fern.’

  ‘Mavourneen.’ Fern folded the child into her arms and kissed her rosy cheek. ‘Your mammy and daddy have been awful lonely without you and want you back with them. Besides all that, I’m going to be here to look after Grampa and Gramma and there wouldn’t be room for us all. You can come and visit whenever you like and we’ll make pancakes and sticky buns for you to take home for your own daddy’s tea . . .’

  ‘Can I speak to you for a minute?’ Shona, her face like thunder, put a firm hand under Fern’s elbow to propel her through to the parlour, where she spun her round and glared into her face. ‘Just what do you think you’re playing at?’ Shona blazed, her blue eyes sparking fire.

  Fern’s own eyes glinted. ‘Sure now, I’m not playing at anything, you’re the one who seems to be doing enough of that for both of us.’

  ‘Oh, am I? Well, let me tell you this, Mrs Lee, you are playing a game, a deadly one at that! I don’t know what you’re up to and I don’t want to know because I think it’s something rotten! I’ve stood by and watched you teasing and tormenting my father and he wouldn’t listen when I warned him you were up to no good! All that’s finished now, Kirsteen is home and you can go somewhere else. You aren’t staying here to manipulate my family any longer. Whatever you have in mind is finished and I want you to stop wearing my clothes and to get out o’ my room, just as quick as you like.’

  ‘Ah now, so that’s it!’ Fern flashed back. ‘The truth of the matter is coming out at last. You’re jealous because your father let me sleep in your room and allowed me to wear some of your rags. Well . . .’ She tossed her hair back from her livid face. ‘I have no need of them now, Kirsteen has said I can use her things and I’ll be getting some of my very own just as soon as I can. I met Elspeth this afternoon and she has invited me to her house to have a wee look through her mail order catalogue. I’m getting on like a house on fire with that one and I am invited to her wedding which is more than you’ll ever get, you being a McKenzie and all. The folks on this island are getting to really know and like me and any one of them would take me in but . . .’ She laughed. ‘I’m staying put – right here. Was it not Kirsteen herself who said I could stay? For as long as I liked, and herself only too glad of the company. In the spare guest room too, which is bigger than yours, so you can have that back, just to let you see what a generous lass I can be when I put my mind to it.’

  Shona almost exploded. It took every ounce of her willpower not to strike out at the beautiful face before her. ‘You will get what’s coming to you, Mrs Lee,’ she ground out. ‘It might be sooner, it might be later, but it will come.’

  ‘Ah, mavourneen, you really do want to punish me, do you not now? But I’ll tell you one thing that might relieve your mind. I will be going from this island, sooner or later, I will be going, but not before I’m ready, mavourneen, not before that.’

  Shona could barely contain herself. Hands curling into fists at her sides, she turned and left the room without another word, leaving Fern to gaze after her, the victorious expression on her face quickly fading to one of terrible uncertainty.

  Part Two

  SUMMER/AUTUMN

  1968

  Chapter Eighteen

  It was the day of Elspeth’s wedding and no one could have wished for better weather. Tiny puffball clouds sailed serenely across the pale blue dome of the sky; millions of sun diamonds sparkled on an ocean that was a dazzling expanse of deepest ultramarine; a medley of little islands shimmered in the distance in softest shades of purple and blue and green; tall ships with white sails fluttered lazily over the waves; frothy wavelets lapped the white sands in the bays; seabirds drifted like snowflakes above the cliffs and everywhere the birds were singing ecstatic praises to a world that was new and fresh and young in its cloak of many colours.

  Elspeth had been up since the crack of dawn, anxiously rushing around and trying to do a hundred things at the one time till Mac laid a steadying hand on her arm and made her swallow ‘a wee taste o’ the cratur’ for her nerves. Elspeth did as she was bid, in her excitement downing more of the whisky than she had intended. For fully ten minutes she managed to sit in a chair and remain immobile and reasonably calm, but then Nellie, Mac’s sister, who had arrived the night before from the island of Hanaay, appeared in the kitchen in dressing-gown and curlers to seriously disrupt Elspeth’s composure by demanding to know the whereabouts of the iron so that she could smooth away the travel creases from her best frock.

  Nellie had never approved of her brother’s liaison with ‘the moth-eaten cailleach’ as she called Elspeth behind her back. When she realised for certain that Mac was hell bent on marrying the said cailleach, she had been outraged and even more outspoken than usual.

  ‘You have gone soft in the head altogether, Isaac McIntosh!’ she had told him on his New Year’s visit to the old family croft on Hanaay. ‘Our dear good mother and father would turn in their graves if they knew that you were wedding yourself to that sour prune o’ a woman. You had a good marriage to Mary, God rest her too, and her memory should have sufficed you till the end o’ your days. Now, here you are, full steam ahead on the road to hell. You know what they say, marry in haste, repent a
t leisure, ay, and you’ll repent right well, my lad, if I’m a judge o’ human nature.’

  ‘Ach, come on now, Nell,’ Mac had protested, ‘I’m no’ marrying in haste, as you make out. I gave myself a long time to think about it before deciding to take the plunge, and if you wereny so stubborn you would soon see for yourself that Elspeth isny the ogre you make her out to be. She’s a good woman, Nell, she looks after me right well and we’re that contented wi’ one another I canny think what I would do if she wasny there.’

  ‘Hmph!’ Nellie’s jaw jutted worse than usual. ‘Only time will tell us that, Isaac Mcintosh. Meantime, I’m that mad wi’ you I just don’t have the heart to give you my blessing and might decide no’ to come to your wedding when the terrible day comes.’

  Now the terrible day had come and Nellie was there alright, standing in the middle of Elspeth’s kitchen, as large as life and twice as formidable in her fearsome-looking spiked curlers and bilious green dressing-gown, splayed matchstick legs stuck into large brown-check bootees which had seen better days.

  Elspeth fetched the iron, she fetched the ironing board, she made the breakfast, and performed a hundred and one small tasks that would have been unnecessary had it only been herself and Mac to cater for. Over and above all that she couldn’t get Mac’s cousin Gus out of her mind, and imagined a hundred and one possible catastrophes that he might perform to ruin her big day.

  Halfway through the morning she was in a dreadful state of nervous anxiety. Her fingers were all thumbs, she couldn’t concentrate on anything, Nellie moaned and complained and generally made life difficult, and to cap it all Mac wasn’t there with his stout shoulder to cry on since he had taken himself off to Tam’s to get himself ready, it being bad luck for the bride and groom to see one another in their wedding finery prior to the ceremony, as Elspeth herself had told Mac when she had been whole and hearty and all in one piece before the advent of her future sister-in-law into her home.

  To make matters worse, she hadn’t been able to spare one single minute to do anything about her appearance; her hair was a mess, her nails were worse, she had bags under her eyes and a spot on her chin, her feet were aching from rushing about all morning in her slippers, and over and above all else she was experiencing such a sense of overwhelming hopelessness she doubted if she had the will to attend her own wedding, never mind get ready for it.

  After all her wonderful plans too, her happiness, her visions of Kate’s astonished face, Behag’s envy, as they gaped at her in all her glory. It was done, it was finished. Nellie had won. No one would miss her if she just went back to bed for the rest of the day to sleep away her misery and disappointment.

  Then Fern appeared; like a ray of sunshine peeping over a grey cloud she put her head round the door and beamed her radiant smile on Elspeth, who was sitting forlorn and drooping on a straight-backed kitchen chair.

  From that moment on Elspeth’s day took off. Fern carried her away on a magic carpet of energetic enthusiasm, straight to Mairi’s to sit her down beside the powder-blue washbasin where she was plied with strong hot tea to calm her nerves before the serious business of beautifying got underway.

  Mairi, at her motherly best, clucked and fussed and made soothing noises as she listened to Elspeth’s woes of the morning. Then she got down to work, enveloping Elspeth’s head in generous mounds of perfumed shampoo bubbles, rinsing it, enclosing it in a large fluffy towel, before busying herself mixing the Silver Cloud hair rinse in a chipped delft bowl. The rinse was then applied to Elspeth’s head, and while she was waiting for it to do its stuff, it was Fern’s turn to take over. Directing Elspeth to sit back and relax she got to work on her nails, manicuring them, buffing them, finally coating them in a tasteful shade of delicate pink nail varnish.

  ‘Now for your feet, mavourneen,’ Fern said with a little smile, knowing there would be a reaction of some sort to her words.

  She was right.

  ‘My feets!’ gasped Elspeth in utter shock. ‘You canny do my feets! Only hussies paint the nails o’ their feets and I’m no’ going to stoop that low. It’s no’ as if I’ll be taking off my shoes when I wed myself to Isaac. I would be the laughing stock o’ the whole place and what’s the use o’ painted toenails when no’ a soul in the whole world is likely to set eyes on them except myself!’

  Fern and Mairi looked at one another. ‘Are you perfectly sure o’ that, Elspeth?’ the latter said in her gentle way. ‘Tonight you’ll be two instead o’ one.’

  ‘To be sure you won’t be going to bed with your socks on,’ Fern added mischievously. ‘So just you be taking off your stockings and let me do my bit. I won’t be painting your nails unless you want me to, I’ve brought along some lovely herbal oil to massage your legs and feet and I promise you won’t regret any of it. You’ll be walking on air by the time I’m finished with you and will just float right into the arms of your new husband. Come on now, you know you can trust me, mavourneen.’

  Elspeth was silent for a moment as she digested all this. She had indeed come to trust Fern implicitly and wouldn’t hear a wrong word said against her, while Fern, in her turn, had developed a real liking for Elspeth, the result being that she had gained that woman’s confidence and extracted far more response from her than many who had known her all her days.

  ‘Ach, to hell!’ Elspeth’s face was suddenly animated. ‘Why no’ go the whole hog? I’m never likely to get married again so just you do as you will wi’ me, lass, and don’t spare any o’ it.’

  With that she rolled down her stockings and kicked off her shoes in a burst of total abandon. One stout brogue landed amongst the hairy hair rollers in Mairi’s trolley, the other whizzed across the room to attach itself by its heel to a hook on the wall where hung the protective shoulder capes. ‘I could never have done that if I had tried!’ gasped Elspeth, and all three women collapsed in a state of merriment that lasted all through the rest of the proceedings.

  The pedicure and the massage made Elspeth feel wonderful, and when she beheld the finished results of her Silver Cloud hair-do she stared at herself in the mirror and thought she looked like a film star she had once seen in a Hollywood movie. Mairi had done a really good job; the soft, wavy style softened the angular lines of Elspeth’s face, and the colour was perfect, even if one streak above her right eyebrow was more silvery than the rest. It didn’t matter, she would be wearing a hat anyway – and what a hat! She could hardly wait to show it off! Elspeth hugged herself with glee and was unable to take her eyes off herself.

  ‘Ach my.’ Mairi, delighted with her efforts, combed and patted Elspeth’s gleaming locks and enveloped them in enthusiastic jets of hairspray that made everyone cough. ‘I canny rightly believe ’tis yourself, Elspeth, you look just a treat and I’m that proud o’ myself I could burst.’

  The next stage of the beautifying process was soon under way as Fern got to work on the rest of Elspeth’s person, thoroughly cleansing her face, plucking her eyebrows, smoothing on subtle hints of rouge, powder, lipstick, eyeshadow, and a smidgen of mascara.

  The transformation was complete; anyone who knew the staid, colourless creature that had been the Elspeth of old, wouldn’t have believed it was the same woman if they had chanced to look in at that moment. She could hardly believe it herself. A metamorphosis had taken place. She was shining, that was the word best to describe her vastly changed appearance, yet Fern had done such a good job of making her up there was nothing that could be pointed out as being overly artificial.

  Elspeth was overwhelmed and with tears in her eyes she hugged first Mairi, then Fern. ‘Ach, my,’ she said huskily, ‘I don’t know what I would have done without you both, and that’s a fact. This morning I felt like Cinderella among the cinders, now I feel as good as the Queen herself and maybe a mite better, for I doubt if she could be as happy as I am wi’ all my good friends around me.’

  ‘My, my,’ Mairi wiped her eyes with a corner of her apron, but the emotional moments soon passed when Fern produced a sma
ll bottle of champagne and ordered that a toast be drunk to the ‘bonny bride-to-be’ and could it be quick as time was marching on.

  The bottle was soon depleted, the next customer was at the door, and Mairi, anxious that Elspeth’s Silver Cloud should not be exposed until the big moment, swathed it in the concealing layers of a chiffon scarf which she tied in a firm knot under Elspeth’s chin.

  At the last moment she realised that that lady was still in her stocking soles and, giggling, she retrieved the errant brogues from their unusual resting places, and after shoving them firmly onto their owner’s feet, she handed the whole bundle over to Fern.

  Elspeth, her head reeling and hardly realising what was happening, was hurried away from the hairdressing premises and back to a house in which reposed a smug Nellie, all dressed up in a frock of green and white daisies adorned by a buttonhole of pink carnations, her salt-and-pepper hair rolled into a tight sausage round her head, her generous feet encased in a pair of navy, double ‘E’ fitting, shoes.

  When she saw her future sister-in-law being smuggled into the bedroom, her head smothered in a diaphanous array of floral chiffon, the rest of her in everyday garb, her smug look blossomed into a triumphant grin and she settled back to await the first viewing of the apparition which would eventually emerge from the bedroom – not that it would be much, Elspeth’s idea of fashion was as out-dated as was castor oil for constipation, and twice as nauseating!

  Elspeth had chosen a lilac suit of fine linen material and a showy wide-brimmed hat trimmed with purple orchids. It looked wonderful perched on her Silver Cloud hair-do. The straight skirt of the suit was daringly short, the jacket figure hugging, but on her ultra-thin form the whole ensemble was elegant and utterly fashionable and there were gasps of surprise from the womenfolk as Lachlan’s car stopped at the harbour and the bride-to-be stepped out in all her glory.

  ‘Well, would you look at that now!’ gasped Kate. ‘I would never have believed our Elspeth could be so bonny. Her hair is a treat and the colour is nicer than anything I have ever seen. I wonder if Mairi could do that for me. The fly besom never mentioned she had anything like that in stock when I was in yesterday having my hair done.’