‘Would you look at that now, Mollie,’ whispered Todd in hushed tones, his mouth hanging open in his benign craggy face. ‘Is she no’ a beauty just? I never pictured the like.’
Mollie was momentarily speechless. It had never occurred to her that the motor car would be anything as grand as this. Rhanna boasted quite a few powered machines of one sort or another, but mostly they were dirty temperamental affairs that banged and rattled their way round the island roads. Everyone was speechless at sight of the sleek gleaming machine dangling against the blue sky.
Tam McKinnon was first to find his voice. ‘By God, it’s beautiful just! A body could live in a motor car like that. It’s near as big as my house!’
‘Ach, you’ll be sellin’ it,’ the money-conscious Ranald told Todd. ‘What good is a car like that to a cratur’ who knows more about servicin’ horses?’
‘No, indeed I will never sell her,’ Todd said with reverence. ‘She is so beautiful she is like a – like a . . .’ He fumbled for words to describe the car.
Old Joe, now ninety, his snow-white hair frisking out from his peaked cap, his sea-green eyes as serene as the sheltered waters of Loch Tenee, murmured gently, ‘Like a mermaid, all shiny and silvery and as slender as a birch tree with a shape to her that makes you want to touch her.’
‘You romantic old sea dog!’ said Fiona McLachlan who was standing nearby. A slender, bright-eyed seventeen-year-old, her bobbed hair shining in the sun, she was now at university studying marine biology, but had arrived home for Easter two days before. She took the old man’s arm and snuggled against him, remembering how as a child she had listened enthralled to his wondrous tales of the sea.
He squeezed her hand, smiling at sight of her fresh youthfulness. ‘You’re growing more bonny each time you come home, lassie. How many young men have you got dangling on the end of a fish hook?’
‘None,’ she stated emphatically. ‘Well, none that matter anyway. I’m a career girl, Joe. Boys can be a nuisance and I’m not taking any of them seriously.’
The photographers and newspaper reporters were following the progress of the car from crane to terra firma. The hubbub rose to a crescendo mingling with the screams of the gulls and the strains of old Mo’s fiddle. Fisherwives leaned ample arms from windows and watched the proceedings in comfort. Fishing boats began tooting their horns as two very distinguished-looking gentlemen joined the throng. It was difficult to make sense of the jumble of faces, but Grant had just spotted Fiona and he came pushing towards her.
At sixteen he had the face of a boy and the build of a twenty-year-old, with muscles that rippled from battling against the seas, for he had joined the fishing smacks at fourteen. His smooth skin was tanned by salt and wind; with his dimpled chin and black curls he was a young Fergus all over again. Often he was away from home for days at a time, and there was already about him a toughness that came from combat with the sea and from mixing with hardened sailors. A boy became a man quickly under those circumstances. He had just arrived home after a sojourn at sea and it was his first sight of Fiona for many months.
‘Well, well, if it isn’t cheeky wee Robin herself!’ was his rather cutting greeting. ‘Are you going to spend your holidays hunting for frogs and poking about in the water for things that normal folks canny see unless they are wearing microscopes instead of specs – or are you going to behave like a normal girl and be seen at a dance or two . . . wearing a dress?’ he finished, eyeing the slacks that had sent shock waves of disapproval through the community of womenfolk when first they had sighted them as she came off the boat.
‘Fiona McLachlan – wearing the trowser!’ they had told one another in round-eyed dismay. ‘Whatever next? That lassie! She was aye a wild one – peety her poor parents – they have a handful there.’
Fiona tossed her head and looked down her pert little nose. Every time she saw Grant McKenzie he seemed to grow bigger, broader, more handsome, more impertinent. From infancy they had bickered with each other, indulging in splendid verbal battles that made Phebie squirm and wonder if her daughter would ever become a lady – especially now she was ‘wearing the trowser’.
‘Ach, hold your tongue, lad!’ spat old Joe. ‘Is that any way to treat a lass with her feets no’ long on the island!’
But Fiona was more than a match for Grant. He might tower above her but the look of dislike she threw him made him visibly shrink. ‘As if you could tell a dress from a sack, Dimples McKenzie – or would know what to do with a girl if she was hanging naked in front of your nose! You should be in the pram with old Mo there! That’s the right place for big babies who sook the bottle still – only now it’s whisky instead of milk.’
Grant reddened, but hid his chagrin in a shout of derisive laughter. ‘I wouldn’t like you hanging naked in front of my nose! I doubt there would be anything to tell me you’re a girl.’
‘You McKenzies are all the same,’ Fiona said, her voice cold, ‘self-centred, hard, selfish – you should all go and live with Elspeth – you’d make a fine team.’
‘Even Shona?’ taunted Grant. ‘You should go and tell her that – she’s standing over there with Niall.’
Fiona walked away, very dignified, her eyes shiny. Disapproval flitted over old Joe’s face as he looked at Grant. ‘You shouldny be so hasty wi’ that tongue o’ yours, you young bugger. Fiona is too fine a young lady for you to be saying the things you do to her. The sea is making you hard already.’
‘It never did you any harm,’ answered Grant, sulky and abashed. ‘And Fiona was never a young lady – she was always more like a boy than a girl.’
‘Then you must be needin’ specs! Stop gabblin’ now and look at that old show-off Todd, gettin’ his photos taken inside the motor car as if he was the lord o’ the manor – ready to drive the damt thing away and him no’ even knowin’ where the petrol goes.’
Fiona ran towards Niall and Shona, the joy back in her eyes. ‘Niall! Shona!’ she yelled, and threw herself at them in delight.
‘I never thought I’d see the day you would look so elegant,’ Shona said, smiling in welcome. ‘And wearing trousers too. The cailleachs’ tongues will have had a field day.’
‘Red-hot!’ giggled Fiona. ‘You ought to wear them, give the old hags something to fuel their fires.’
‘Where did you spring from?’ laughed Niall. ‘I didn’t see a thing of you till this moment.’
‘I was in the crowd. How did you come? I didn’t see you getting off the boat.’
‘We came with Grant in the Magpie. He was tied up at Campbeltown and the chance was too good to miss. It was a smelly journey but this wee devil loved it – the smellier the better,’ Niall said, lifting his daughter up to the sky. She chuckled with glee, a rosy-cheeked bundle with deep brown eyes and fair hair touched with red.
Niall and Shona were now living in the Mull of Kintyre, a handy gateway for the islands. Until recently Niall had been assistant vet to his toothy senior, Mr Frank Finley, nicknamed ‘Fang’ by the mischievous Shona, but he had just been made a partner in the firm, and Fiona hugged him when she heard the news.
The ceremony of handing over the keys was over and Todd and Mollie now posed beside their benefactors, both in and out of the car. Their daughter, Mairi, together with her husband, Wullie McKinnon, was being asked to pose too.
‘Any more relatives?’ asked a beaky-nosed photographer rather sarcastically, and was immediately swamped by a deluge of the McKinnon clan. Tam and Kate rushed forward pulling with them numerous grandchildren. Reporters were jotting furiously, losing track of all the McKinnons who swarmed round them.
‘Get a hold of that little gypsy girl and stick her on the bonnet!’ cried one ambitious photographer, but Rachel was having none of it. She backed away and at a safe distance stretched her lips into a hideous grimace.
‘Little brat!’ cursed the photographer while the delighted crowd clapped and cheered. The scene was becoming shambolic. The reporters had spotted old Mo and they surrounded him,
cameras clicking, tongues wagging, as old Mo lay blissfully in his pram swigging at his whisky. One of the tinker women rattled her stack of colanders amidst the reigning chaos, and then Dodie came into the scene, his fascination of the flashing cameras getting the better of his shyness.
‘What’s these?’ he asked. ‘They’re no’ like the ones the towrists use to take pictures of my wee hoosie.’
‘Get that old boy!’ yelled an excited voice and a flashbulb popped in Dodie’s amazed countenance. The tinker woman rattled her colanders again and Dodie leaned over old Mo’s pram to touch the shiny objects with joy. ‘These is lovely just,’ his broken teeth flashed. ‘What are they?’
‘A new kind of po!’ shrieked the incorrigible Kate joyfully, but Dodie took her seriously.
‘Ach, they’d be no use at all.’ He shook his head and his carbuncle wobbled. ‘Everything would go straight through.’
Kate was bent double in a spasm of mirth but she managed to gasp, ‘Ay, you couldny trap even a fart in a colander, Dodie.’
‘Priceless, priceless,’ mouthed one reporter, scribbling furiously. Todd, feeling neglected and outdone, had climbed onto the bonnet of his new car, and with arms folded stiffly over his chest, one leg crossed over the other, he shouted, ‘Right, lads, here is the man himself, the fastest driver on the island. I tell you, I was driving cars afore any o’ you cut your milk teeths! Am I no’ worth a pop o’ these flashes in your wee boxes?’
‘The lying old cheat!’ Grant gasped, laughing so much Lorn almost fell off his shoulders. ‘If you asked him where to put the key he would stick it in a horse’s backside!’
Portcull had never seen the likes of such a day. The noisy squabbling of the gulls along the harbour walls was lost in the din; the children danced about, making faces at the cameras, their peals of mirth ringing out.
Ruth had laughed till she was sore. She had forgotten everything but the complete and glorious joy of the moment. To laugh like that, with such careless abandon, was a new and totally wonderful experience for her. It was good to laugh; it was life; joyous, bursting, bubbling life. She wanted to know more of it, to become familiar with it, to feel that laughter was right and good and not sinful.
Ever since she could remember Ruth had felt as if she had been in mourning over something she didn’t understand. The only times she came near to feeling like today were when she was with her father on his tramps over moor and shore. She loved him, the feel of her hand in his, his arms lifting her over rough or difficult ground, the gentleness of his fine ascetic face, the goodness burning in his grey eyes like the steady flame of a candle. His poems were beautiful, his stories, when he took her on his knee by the fire, so filled with sensitivity that often she cried quietly, the tears marking a slow course down her cheeks. She sensed the sadness in him, the loneliness brought about by visions lost, hopes long faded of a man who had dreamed of becoming a writer but hadn’t. She knew that he was unhappy but that in some way she brought him joy because his eyes glowed when she came home from school. He was the only reason she liked going home. It wasn’t a happy place. Other houses rang with laughter, with nagging and bickerings. There were no rows in her house, it was too quiet, too clean, too orderly. The atmosphere was oppressive, as if all the life the house had ever known was held down by an invisible force that had robbed it of light, shade, tears, joy, all the things that went on in normal homes. Her red-haired, quick-tongued mother did all the talking, she nagged, scolded, but in a strange quiet flat voice, as if she was afraid that someone, other than the occupants of the house, was listening. Once Ruth saw her on her knees in the bedroom, praying passionately, calling on God to cleanse her soul, to forgive her sins, vowing over and over to recompense for all the evil things she had done. She did all the things that other mothers did, like cooking, cleaning, sewing and weaving, often well into the small hours of morning, but she did it all mechanically. She didn’t gossip like other women, yet with a mere tightening of her lips and a toss of her red head, she could say more than all the gossipmongers put together. She tended her husband and daughter devotedly, saw to their every need, yet somehow she couldn’t give them the thing they needed most – her love. Occasionally she took Ruth to her bosom and stroked her hair, her long nimble fingers playing with the silken curls while she said over and over, ‘My babby, my babby,’ but the gesture, the words, conveyed no love, only a fearful sort of apology to someone unseen and Ruth always felt uneasy and knew there was something strange about her mother.
But these things were far from her mind that day at Portcull harbour and Lorn, sitting on Grant’s strong shoulders, felt an echo of her emotions touching a chord in his heart. Without knowing why, his eyes sought out Ruth, standing with her golden head thrown back, her usually solemn little face transformed into beauty by the light of sparkling happiness. She looked round and caught him watching her and the violet of her eyes darkened to purple, the dimpled smile remained fixed on her face for an eternal moment. Then the familiar flush spread over her cheeks and her features composed themselves into wistful solemnity.
Lorn wanted suddenly to go over to her and take her hand. She looked guilty, as if to laugh was wrong. He felt compassion turning to anger, at Ruth, at her mother, at the strangeness of life. He didn’t know why, but he was overwhelmed by the feeling and his heart pounded, the way it always did when strong emotions swamped him. He wanted to touch Ruth with some of his own joy, share some of the love he knew in his own life. His mother was so different from Ruth’s. She was beautiful, but not in an obvious way. Hers was a subtle beauty, natural and sweet: she loved without fussing, more with her deeds than with her hands. She conveyed her love through her eyes so that there was no embarrassment, just a warm glow brought about by knowing how much she cared. From his elevated position on top of Grant’s shoulders Lorn spotted Morag Ruadh emerging from her parents’ house and watched her walk swiftly along. Lorn opened his mouth to give Ruth a warning but Morag had easily spied her daughter’s bright head.
‘Ruth!’ she called imperiously. ‘Come you up here this minute.’ Ruth limped away up the shore, feeling that every eye was on her, when in fact the engrossed crowd hardly took notice of her, only those up by the bridge hearing Morag’s voice and seeing the anger burning her cheeks to red.
Rachel took Ruth’s hand in passing and both children gazed at each other in understanding before Morag’s arm shot out to pull Ruth away from the harbour. At a safe distance she whirled the child round so abruptly she stumbled and almost fell. ‘So – this is how you spend your time,’ Morag gritted, her lips a tight pale line in her ruddy face. ‘The de’il is in you and no mistake. Have you been mixing with those tinkers again?’
‘Ay, Mam,’ Ruth whispered, her own face flaming to crimson.
‘I thought as much! Well, I tell you now, my girl, it will be the last time. It’s that Rachel! Leading you astray. It won’t happen again – oh no – you’ve defied me once too often.’ Her blazing eyes fell upon Rachel, who had come further along the shore. She stood, straight and tall against the backdrop of the sea, arms folded behind her back, her dark, turbulent eyes boldly staring at Morag.
‘Ay, she’s a queer one all right,’ Morag said, her voice strangely breathless. ‘She gives me the creeps just to look at her. She is wild that one – like – like as if she had sprung from the very well o’ tinker blood. Knowing that Annie I wouldny be surprised . . .’ Her voice tailed off and she seemed to jerk herself back to reality, if such a state existed in her narrow, religion-bound mind. ‘You will never play with her again, Ruth, do you hear?’
Ruth slowly raised her golden head to look up into her mother’s strange glittering eyes. The coldness in them made her draw in her breath, and she was unable to answer. Morag shook her. ‘Do you hear me, girl?’
Rebellion, strong, deep, overpowering, flooded Ruth’s gentle soul. To give up Rachel was more than a punishment, it was a shattering of the only happy companionship in her life other than her father’s. Her mother
’s punishments seldom took physical form, always they were designed to test heart and soul to the limit of endurance. Ruth bit her lip. She couldn’t promise to relinquish the warm, stimulating friendship of fearless, exciting, untamed Rachel.
‘Defiance, eh?’ Morag’s face was pale now, her voice low and flat yet charged with seething rage.
‘No, Mam,’ Ruth cried. ‘It wasn’t Rachel, it was me. I wanted to come down to the harbour! I asked Rachel to come!’
‘A fine story, lies above all else!’
‘Ask Mrs McKinnon then!’ Ruth stormed tearfully. ‘I made Rachel go into the house and ask her mother.’
‘So, the minute my back is turned you go dancing about after fun. I won’t let the de’il take you, my lassie! ’Tis all the more reason you must promise me you won’t see Rachel again. If you don’t I will be forced to take your jotters and pencils away from you. You idle too much time away with your father, writing down all these foolish notions that are in your head. There will be no more walks with him unless you . . .’
‘No, Mam!’ It was the protest of a tortured soul. The little girl threw her head back in appeal, her eyes drowning in tears of pain. ‘I promise, I promise.’
‘As well for everyone’s sake, I’m thinkin’.’ Morag felt no triumph, only a flooding of shame at the sight of her daughter’s face twisted in agony, but she couldn’t relent, to do so was a sign of weakness, the first crack in the shell she had built round herself against softening influences that could so easily penetrate the unwary heart, make a body do things they lived to regret forever . . . She held Ruth’s hand firmly and led her up the path to the house. ‘Your grannie has had a bad turn,’ she told the child unemotionally. ‘It was lucky that auld Biddy was passing, for I could not leave the house and, of course – you never at hand to run and fetch the doctor. Your father was expecting me back for teatime, but I will have to stay here tonight. Folks have a duty to their parents, so they have. Erchy is going over to Portvoynachan with the mail and I want you to go with him. You must make your father’s meals like a good lassie. As a penance you will go without your dinner and mustny eat a bite till teatime – also you will go to your room when you have washed the teatime dishes and learn the Commandments till they are burned into your head . . . away you go now – you mustny keep your elders waiting.’
Children of Rhanna Page 9