Jon, sitting with his fiddle on his knee, saw the exchange and was minded afresh that Rachel was growing up. There would be boys – lots of them. And her need for him would grow less and less . . .
His musings were interrupted by Ruth’s arrival into the room. Her mother had dispatched her to read the Bible ‘for the salvation of Biddy’s soul’, but Ruth had slipped her notebooks into her pocket, and it was these she proceeded to read. Her face was pink and her voice shaky because she had never been good with an audience, but, as with Lorn and Lewis up by Brodie’s Burn, she soon forgot herself, and her sweet voice grew steady.
Everyone in the room was enchanted by her stories and poems. Biddy lay back with a little smile lifting her lips, and closed her eyes in contentment; Lewis once more sought Rachel’s hand; Jon looked from the window to the hills and tried to convince himself that Rachel’s cheeks were burning because it was stuffy in the room; Lorn gazed at Ruth’s bowed golden head and thought about a field full of ripe corn . . .
Ruth’s face flushed again as she glanced up and caught him watching her. She closed her books. ‘I think Biddy’s asleep,’ she said softly. ‘We’d better go.’
‘Asleep nothing.’ Biddy’s eyes popped open. ‘My magazine’s on that table; get it for me and read it, Ruth. Your voice is like a burnie purlin’ through the heather and I want to hear you readin’ your story from your very own lips. It’s no’ every day I get to hear a writer readin’ to me.’ So Ruth read Hebridean Dream, and half an hour later Biddy really was asleep, lulled by the girl’s musical voice.
Everyone looked at each other; something other than the sadness of being by a beloved old lady’s sickbed had touched them all, and they were each aware of it. The touching of hands had brought Lewis a step nearer Rachel; the arch of a slender neck and silken strands of hair had stirred something in Lorn’s heart that had never been there before; Jon glanced at the four youthful faces surrounding him and felt old at thirty-seven. Life to him was a magical wonderful experience. It made him walk with a spring in his step and a lightness of heart. But the sight of the flush on Rachel’s face made some of the magic go out of his life, with the result that his heart felt heavy inside him. Rachel glanced up and saw the sadness in his face, and she smiled, a vibrant radiant smile that told him of the new doors opening in her heart. He nodded and forced himself to smile back. She was so young. She had a right to every happiness that came her way – but he knew she would never find them in Lewis McKenzie, and he hoped she would discover that in time – before she fell too much under Lewis’s spell.
When Dodie first heard of the accident he galloped into Biddy’s house without any of his usual preliminary and went straight upstairs, his great wellingtons making sucking sounds in the hollows of the well-worn wooden stairs. For him to come straight into a house was unusual; for him to go into a ‘leddy’s bedroom’ was unheard of, but to him the old nurse was not a lady. In his eyes, her standing went far higher than that of any other mortal female known to him, and no title on earth had yet been created for the grumbling, lovable old woman he had known all his life. Dodie had little recall of his own mother – who had died when he was only thirteen, leaving him to fend for himself – and Biddy was the nearest to what he imagined a mother to be. She scolded, nagged, occasionally cuffed him on the ear – but she also conveyed her affection in many ways. When she met him she always gave him a sweetie; when passing her house on his solitary wanderings, he had often been invited in for supper or breakfast. At Christmas she gave him baccy and made him plum pudding, but most wonderful of all, out of everybody in his world, she was the only one who remembered his birthday, and every year, without fail, she presented him with a small reminder of the day.
‘I couldny forget the day you were born,’ she unfailingly told him. ‘Just like a wee squealing piglet you were, wi’ ears on you like those on the wally joog in my bedroom.’
Dodie was never offended by these comparisons. In fact, they delighted him. They gave him a feeling of having some sort of roots, and he blushed and smiled, never tiring of hearing such things from the only person who could, like a real mother, give him anecdotes of his babyhood.
When he beheld Biddy in bed, white-faced and hollow-eyed, her silvery hair brushed back and tied with a blue ribbon, he burst into tears. She appeared to have shrunk, and she looked very small in the big feather bed. But her voice when she scolded him was still as strong as ever. ‘Ach, what’s wrong wi’ you, laddie?’ she asked in disgust. ‘It’s me who’s the one should be cryin’ – lyin’ here waitin’ to see when will Lachlan arrive. Come over here this meenit and take this hanky to wipe your eyes.’
He shuffled over, and taking the proffered square of white cotton, proceeded to soak it in seconds. He stood over her bed, a figure of pathos in his threadbare coat, his stooped shoulders juddering with sobs.
‘Ach, laddie,’ she said, her voice soft, ‘you are a good kind soul, and the Lord knows you were put on this earth for a purpose like the rest o’ us. Dry your eyes now and take a sweetie. They’re Imperials, your favourites.’
He took the sweet and sucked it loudly, his watery gaze fixed on her tired face. ‘’Tis sorry I am for greetin’,’ he sniffed dismally. ‘It’s just I was feart when I heard you had been knocked down by a motor car. They are dangerous smelly things, and I was aye thinkin’ they would stay in the cities and never come to the islands . . . A horse would never knock a body down like that. Even when they are runnin’ wild they will make a circle past anybody in their road.’
Biddy nodded in thoughtful agreement. ‘Ay, you’re right there, Dodie. But times are changin’, and there will come a day when the likes o’ Todd will no’ be kept in business by just horses. Already he’s havin’ to take in bikes and make fancy gates to make ends meet – ach, these new-fangled ways will no’ make for a better world. I’m glad I’ll go out of it afore it changes too much.’
The tears sprouted from Dodie’s eyes once more. He scrubbed them with his calloused knuckles, and hung his head to hide his shame.
Biddy was growing very tired. She was grateful to the islanders for sparing their time to fill her daytime hours, but she was thankful when night came and she could be alone. Babbie had only been one of many who had offered to stay with her at night, but she had declined all such offers with the reasonable excuse of ‘being too weary come night to even hear a mouse fart’.
‘Dodie.’ She pulled herself up, almost knocking over her teeth in the glass by her elbow. ‘Will you stop your blubberin’ – or I’ll get out this bed and cuff your lug, and you will no’ be likin’ the sight o’ me in my goonie and woolly bedsocks. Now, dry your eyes and listen to me. I want you to do a wee thing for me.’
‘Ay, anything at all, Biddy,’ he whispered, keeping his head averted just in case she would keep her threat and get out of bed. He knew well that with Biddy anything was possible.
‘You like nice things wi’ patterns, don’t you, laddie?’
‘Ay, that I do,’ he agreed dismally.
‘Well, go over there to the kist and see me over the wee boxie right at the top.’
He did as she bade him, his pale dreaming eyes widening at sight of the wee boxie carved exquisitely in oak and inlaid with mother-of-pearl. The old lady fumbled for her glasses and her eyes grew misty as she touched the relief design of leaves and roses. In a husky faraway voice she murmured, ‘My grandfather made this for my fourteenth birthday, the finest jewel box any young lass could wish for – ay, fine I mind him goin’ to his wee shed and workin’ all the hours God made. It was carved wi’ love, for his auld hands were knotted like bits o’ driftwood warped by the tide. He died just a fortnight after my birthday, and I have treasured this boxie all my life. But now I’m no’ able to give it the care it needs. It has to be polished and kept in the manner it deserves, and you wi’ your love o’ treasures is just the one to do this for auld Biddy. Take it now and don’t be tellin’ a soul – you can use it to keep these bits and pieces o’ shel
ls and things you are aye gatherin’ together.’
Dodie took the box and touched it with reverence, his rough fingers whispering gently over the mother-of-pearl inlay. ‘My, my, it’s beautiful just,’ he said before he was overcome once more with emotion, his Adam’s apple working desperately in a bid to keep back the tears. ‘I’ll be bringing her back to you when you’re better able to look after her,’ he promised in confusion.
‘Ach, no, laddie!’ The rebuke was sharp, but the fire had gone out of Biddy’s voice. ‘I’m giving it to you – as a present. I will never have need of it now. It’s for your birthday when it comes, a special thing to make up for all the years I won’t be here to mind your birthday.
‘Get away home now, I’m tired o’ talkin’. Go you down and tell Mollie to send me up a cuppy.’
But Dodie was beyond speech of any kind. With the tears streaming down his face he laid something on the bed, and loped downstairs and out of the house.
Biddy reached out to the object Dodie had left lying on the counterpane, and as she held it against her bosom, the slow tears filled her eyes and affection for the old eccentric engulfed her. Wherever he went, whatever the occasion, he bestowed his unsophisticated gifts on people, and the uncanny aptness of them had touched many a sore heart. What had prompted him to bring her the thing she had pined for more than any other while lying in bed that hot summer’s day, gazing from the window to the heathery hills lying so serenely against the azure sky?
‘Oft, oft, have I walked these purpled hills and watched the sun go down.’ She murmured the words again that she had tossed aside so scornfully when the American woman had suggested she was delirious. Ah, how often had she walked these dear green hills, sniffing the scents of wildflowers, watching the sun rising and setting, diffusing the sky and sea with breathtaking colours beyond all description. All her life, as a small barefoot girl, and as a black-stockinged old woman, she had freely roamed, revelling in her surroundings even while she grumbled at real or imagined hardships. Now, here she was, too tired even to get up and go to the window to breathe the clean air. She closed her eyes and lifting Dodie’s gift to her nostrils she gulped in the scent of the moors. Dodie had made the sachet himself, a crudely sewn piece of muslin stuffed with wild thyme, bell heather, moss, meadowsweet, and an assortment of grasses. ‘Ay, you have a fine sensitivity about you, Dodie,’ she murmured. ‘You might be a poor cratur’ to some, but to me you are a child o’ God.’
Light steps sounded on the stairs and Babbie came into the room. ‘Talking to yourself you daft cailleach?’ teased Babbie in greeting, though her bright green eyes noted that the old woman’s condition had deteriorated. The young locum had confided in Babbie that he was amazed Biddy had lasted so long. Her pulse was weak and irregular, her respiration laboured, she hadn’t eaten for days – yet she was lucid and bright, and Babbie knew that Kate was right when she said, ‘She’s waitin’ to see Lachlan before she goes. I always said she would go when she was ready and no’ before.’
‘I am just sayin’, Dodie and all cratur’s like him could teach the rest o’ us a lesson. They come into the world innocent and go out o’ it the same.’
‘He’s been to see you then?’ Babbie asked, though there was no need for she could detect the vestiges of the old eccentric’s particular odour hanging in the air.
‘Ay, that he has, he’s left his smell but he also left this,’ Biddy said, holding up the sachet. ‘A wee bit o’ the moors sewn into an old bitty curtain – money canny buy what I have here.’
Babbie sat down on the bed to look quizzically at Biddy’s face. ‘You’re a blether – I wonder you have the breath for it. How are you today?’
‘Near drawin’ my last,’ Biddy replied candidly. ‘I will never get over the shock o’ being knocked down at my very own gate – but it wasny the wifie’s fault – it was this de’il here.’ Affectionately she rubbed Woody’s black head, then with sudden urgency she reached out and took Babbie’s arm. ‘My lassie, it’s up to you now. It will no’ be easy. There will be times you will feel like packin’ your bags and fleein’ away – but you have your man to help you and a fine loon he is too . . .’ Her dim eyes twinkled. ‘Betimes I forget he’s a Jerry at all – he’s that like ourselves now. Ay, you have your man to talk to and the best doctor on this God’s earth to work alongside.’ Her fingers dug into Babbie’s arm. ‘Is he home yet at all? I want to see him before I go.’
Babbie gathered the old woman into her arms and stroked her hair. Her eyes were wet but her voice steady when she said, ‘He’ll be home tomorrow and you’ll be the first on his list.’
Biddy gave a contented sigh. ‘The Lord be thanked, for I don’t know how much longer I can hold on. The motor car didny hurt my body, but I’m thinkin’ it knocked my auld heart for six. It feels gey shaky, I can tell you.’
Babbie didn’t repudiate any of this. To do so would have seemed trite in the face of such courage. Biddy was not afraid of dying, but even so, Babbie could not suppress a sigh of sorrow.
Biddy pushed her away to look long and searchingly at a face that had grown contented over the past few years. The uncertainty of early youth had disappeared; the green, amber-flecked eyes were peaceful; the wide generous mouth bestowed its radiant smile readily. Babbie looked rather weary and sad just now, and Biddy patted her hand. ‘You mustny fret for me, lassie, it’s your wee shoulders that are going to get the brunt now, and wi’ you bein’ married, your responsibilities will be even more than mine.’ She slid Babbie a sidelong glance. ‘I was aye wonderin’ – have you never wanted bairnies o’ your own?’
Babbie’s lips curved. ‘You’re a nosy cailleach if ever there was one.’ Her expression became serious. ‘It might sound selfish, but Anton and I always felt content with each other. I know the gossips talk and say it isn’t natural, but it’s what we want – besides,’ she said, and laughed, ‘how could I ever be another Biddy McMillan with a wheen of bairnies at my aprons? I’m too busy delivering them to have them. Now, where’s your brush and I’ll do your hair. You must look your best for all these men who keep sneaking up here to visit you.’
Biddy lay back and closed her eyes as the younger woman worked with her hair. A satisfied smile flitted over her face. ‘At least, I got to bring another bairnie into the world before my number came up. A bonny wee thing wi’ hair black as night. I hear his mother has given him McMillan as a middle name – ay – I’ll be remembered all right.’
Fergus came with Lachlan the following evening. Biddy gazed up at tall Fergus and she said dreamily, ‘You know what I’m lookin’ forward to most of all? Meeting Mirabelle again. She was a bonny woman and the finest friend I ever had. My, how she doted on you and poor Alick – the cratur’ – I’ll get to see him, too. You and him were like her very own bairnies. Mind, the pair o’ you were buggers betimes and sore tried that good woman’s heart, but she saw the good in you and knew how best to bring it out. You miss your brother, laddie?’ she asked gently.
Fergus nodded and said huskily, ‘Ay, that I do. When he was here I took him for granted, and as you know we didn’t always see eye to eye – but – on the night he died we had more or less called pax and then . . .’
His voice faltered and she took his big strong hand in her thin one. ‘Weesht, I know fine how you feel, McKenzie o’ the Glen – a grand title that, and it suits you, laddie. By God, the McKenzies – a stubborn bunch if ever there was one – wi’ tempers like that bugger Satan himself. But you blow more goodness than you do fire – especially my wee Shona – aye was a lovable bairn for all her tantrums – I’d like fine to see her, so I would.’
Fergus felt his jaw tensing. The realization that Biddy was dying hit him like a sledgehammer. He had heard all the gossip about how ill she was but this was the moment of truth: the pallor of her skin, the blue veins showing under the skin of her temples, the purple hue of her lips and hands. She was a part of his life – everyone’s lives – a part of Rhanna . . . ‘You’ll see Shona soon; sh
e’ll be home in a few days. She always makes a point of trying to be here when Grant’s on leave.’
‘She’ll be home for my funeral then.’ Biddy closed her eyes, and Fergus made to go out of the room, but she stopped him by saying softly, ‘The twins, they’re good laddies both of them – but Lewis – look to him, Fergus. He’s no’ strong like his brother. That sounds daft, I know, but there are different kinds o’ strength. He’ll need a lot o’ guidance, but he’ll shape up to a good man wi’ your help.’
‘Ay – I know that, Biddy,’ he said, and went quickly downstairs, leaving Lachlan alone in the room.
Lachlan had barely been able to conceal his shock at the change in the old nurse, but he turned from the window and, smiling down at her, managed to say carelessly, ‘Disgraceful! I turn my back for five minutes and you get into trouble. Come on, lift your goonie and I’ll have a look at you . . .’
But she threw off the suggestion with an impatient grunt. ‘Ach, leave me be, you and I know fine it’s a waste o’ time.’ She perched her glasses on the end of her nose and scrutinized his face. It was obvious his much needed holiday had done him good. He was tanned and well-looking; the hollows of his face had filled, and the tired droop had gone from his shoulders. She giggled coyly. ‘A peety I hadny been a younger woman – you and me could maybe had one o’ they doctor-nurse romances you read about in wimmen’s papers – eh?’
He sat down and took her hand, his brown eyes full of the compassion that had made his career as a doctor a unique success. ‘You old flirt,’ he said huskily. ‘Don’t you know I’ve always had a fancy for you? Who could help but love a lady who has given her life to tending others? When God made nurses he set one special mould aside for Biddy McMillan, and when you were created he threw away the design, for there will never be another one to match you. And if that isn’t romantic nonsense I’ll – I’ll eat my stethoscope.’ His voice broke and he turned his head quickly.
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