An Island Apart (14 page)

When they gained a view of a lochan, bleak and serene in a deep glen tended by a tangle of slim birch trees, she called to him to ask if this was the lochan which the wee folk had put a spell on so no cattle would drink from it. It was much a pretext for getting him to pause for a few minutes as to hear about the lochan.

‘It is indeed,' he told her. ‘The old folk used to speak of it as the Glen of the Wee Folk but my mother always spoke of this place as the Glen of Bluebells. It is a rare sight in the spring when there is a breeze from the sea racing up the glen, bowing the bluebells and fairly carrying the scent of them across the Island.'

‘Have you ever tasted the water of the lochan?' she enquired.

‘I swallowed some only once, when me and my brother decided it would be a good place for us to learn to swim. I went in too deep and was trapped by the mud from my feet to my shoulders and my brother had to haul me out with a rope.' He grimaced. ‘I got a good dose of the water then right enough and I've no wish to taste it again.'

He grinned. ‘The pair of us got a good skelping that night for going near the lochan and we had to promise not to go there again.'

‘But no ill-effects apart from the skelping?' she pursued.

‘I lost a fair bit of my stomach that night but whether it was the lochan water or my father's skelping brought it on I never knew. I never risked going there again, seeing the bottom was that soft that if my brother hadn't hauled me out I believe I would have stayed there.'

‘You were indeed lucky,' she commented.

They found the cattle near a shingle beach on the other side of the Island. ‘Aye, I thought this was likely where they'd be,' Ruari said, making tracks towards them. Kirsty's heart warmed to them and she paused to take in a sight she had not witnessed since her childhood. There were seven cows, each with its calf and there was a magnificent bull. They were all true Highlanders, with black-ringed muzzles, handlebar horns and wind-combed coats, and when they saw Ruari they came eagerly but still decorously towards him. The bull was more leisurely in his approach. Was it because he was more gentlemanly or more timid, she wondered, suddenly remembering her Granny's staunch belief in the amiability of Highland bulls.

‘Now can you still milk a cow, d'you think?' quipped Ruari. She turned on him with a challenging grin.

‘Wait and see,' she retorted. He brought the cow to her and Kirsty squatted down. The beast was surprisingly docile and the calf was not too demanding to deny Kirsty the milk from two teats while it sucked the other two. ‘There then,' she chuckled, standing up and showing him the contents of the pail. ‘How's that for a start?'

He fed each cow a ration of hay from his bag and then led the way along an intricate pathway which brought them out above another shingle beach, where she could see a fishing boat and a cattle float moored a little way off the edge of the tide.

‘These are your boats?'

‘Indeed.'

She was surprised, and turned to him with raised eyebrows. ‘But surely this beach is a good distance from the house, is it not?'

‘Ah, but here is the best shelter on the Island and it is not far when you know it,' he refuted. ‘There is a short cut that runs down the wee brae at the back of the house so if we need to we can reach the boats in only a wee while.' He pointed along the beach. ‘And there if you will look you will see a great boulder of rock and behind it the small boat is hauled up. It is safe there and it is very little trouble to drag it down to the water if it is needed.'

‘Has it an outboard?' she asked.

‘It has an outboard but I doubt you'll be able to manage it yourself,' he discouraged.

‘And where is the Island that you go to for your peats?' she wanted to know.

He turned her to look north where a tiny, sea-misted Island lay like a crumpled discarded duster on the water.

‘There,' he said. ‘That is our peat Island. The hags there are black and deep and the peat is good for the fire. Here on Westisle as I told you there are peat hags but they are shallow and the peats are slow to boil a kettle.'

‘It is certainly good solid peat you have in the stack by the house,' she agreed. ‘And it burns almost as well as city coal.'

They were nearly back at the house before she thought to ask, ‘Ruari, if I am to cook meals for you I need to know what food you like and what times you like to eat it. I noticed at
ISLAY
that you seemed to enjoy the food I cooked but that was mostly cooked in an oven.'

‘Me and my brother like the same sort of food, but mostly we eat fish and potatoes just. It is easy.'

‘Will you be willing to try other kinds of food? I mean, things like pies and tarts and say, potatoes roasted instead of boiled?'

‘Were those roasted potatoes you set beside the meat at
ISLAY?
' he asked.

‘They were,' she confirmed.

‘They were good. I fairly enjoyed them when I got used to them.'

‘Would your brother be prepared to try such tilings?'

‘I believe he would.'

‘And things like tarts and pies baked in the oven?' She was feeling her way carefully.

‘Aye,' he admitted.

‘There's an oven in the range at the house isn't there? Do you know if it works?'

‘It used to work for my mother,' he said.

‘What sort of things did your mother cook in the oven?' she probed, desiring to please him.

‘Oh, I mind she used to make a kind of gingerbread and a cod-liver loaf at times.'

‘Not pies or pastry?'

He shook his head. ‘We never ate such things in those days. We were satisfied to get scones and oatcakes and bannocks and a cloutie dumpling once or twice a year. That was the sort of food our father was best pleased with after he'd taken his soup or fish or rabbit. Was it not the same with yourself before you went to the city?'

‘Indeed it was,' she agreed. ‘There was an oven in the old range at my Granny's house but she claimed to have no knowledge of how to work it so it was never used. I don't believe it ever achieved a temperature higher than lukewarm no matter how many peats were piled on the fire. Apart from the girdle, I grew up with the idea that the only way to cook food was to boil it.'

‘You soon got a taste for oven food when you went to the city?'

‘Indeed I did. I got a taste for fruit, too. We'd not seen much fruit except for blueberries and brambles and hazelnuts but they had such short seasons. My Granny wasn't one for making jam.'

‘My mother made jam with the brambles and I'm saying it was good. There is good bramble picking on the Island here and blueberries too, in the summer. And there are nuts in the wood at the far end of the Island. We didn't go that far today but you will find them for yourself soon enough I doubt.'

‘I'm surprised your brother didn't try making jam,' Kirsty said. ‘He seems to have tried his hand at most things.'

‘Ach, no. He couldn't be troubling himself with that sort of thing.'

‘Well, as soon as the spring comes you will show me where the blueberries are and the brambles and I shall certainly make jam,' she promised him. ‘But when we get back to the house will you help me find out how the oven works?'

‘Ach, my brother will show all that to you,' he demurred. ‘I have never taken anything to do with it.'

‘Your brother?' she exclaimed. ‘He has not yet spoken to me nor shaken my hand nor noticed I am on the Island. He would never agree to show me how the oven works.'

‘Ach, give him time just.'

‘Your brother has no time to give me,' she retorted cynically. ‘You will not ask him to show me how the oven works, I will find out for myself.'

That evening she again cooked what she had decided was a ‘safe' meal of boiled fish and potatoes. To her it looked pallid and unappetising after her years of what was termed ‘good plain cooking' such as she had been accustomed to serving at
ISLAY
but her first forkful renewed her acquaintance with fish, fresh-caught that day and with potatoes bursting from their skins light as whipped flummery. She ate with relish. Her brother-in-law came into the kitchen while she and Ruari were eating their meal but, though she had laid a place for him, he did not sit down at the table. Instead he picked up his plate, took it to the range, helped himself from the pans and then left the kitchen. He had not glanced at her and no word had been exchanged between the two brothers.

Despondently Kirsty looked at her husband. ‘Don't let me come between you and your brother,' she entreated. ‘I would sooner go back to the city than I would let that happen.'

‘You need have no fear of that,' Ruari replied. ‘Though my brother is dour he is a good man. He will not turn against me nor I against him. Nor against you once he gets to know you,' he added.

‘But I can't live here like an outcast,' she protested. ‘That is how he makes me feel.'

‘He will change towards you. It is with me he is a little angry. He thinks I have been foolish in bringing a woman here without first preparing for her arrival.'

‘He could at least speak to me. For all the notice he takes of me I could be a ghost flitting about the kitchen,' Kirsty argued. ‘Can't you explain to him that I expect nothing from him and I will keep out of his way as best I can.'

‘In a wee whiley I will not need to explain anything,' he objected. ‘I see already he is taking to you.'

With a heavy sigh she rose and began gathering up the dishes and the debris of the meal to take through to the scullery. Ruari made no offer to help her and when she returned to the kitchen he was sitting on the bench mending a lobster creel. ‘Ruari, did you notice the window is almost smothered in salt? Will you tell me what you use for cleaning the glass and where I am likely to find whatever it is?'

‘I noticed it right enough, but it is too dark to clean windows, surely?' he ridiculed. ‘You will not know whether the glass is clean or dirty until the birth of the morning.'

‘No, I'm not daft enough to try cleaning windows in the dark,' she scolded him. ‘But you will be going to your creels early in the morning so you will not be here to tell me where to look for things. Try and understand how strange this house is for me and how loth I would be to pry into what might be secret places.'

He dismissed her worries with a brief grunt of amusement. ‘There are no secret places in this house,' he denied. ‘Save for my brother's room, the house is open to anyone.'

‘That big cupboard at the back of the passage,' she suggested. ‘Am I likely to find any cleaning things in that?'

‘Indeed that is where you will find them but I doubt you will find any tool for cleaning windows since it is my brother who always cleans them.'

‘I wouldn't expect to find a tool,' she reasoned. ‘Just cloth dusters.' She'd had no experience of cleaning windows. Uncle Donny had simply thrown a pail or two of water over the windows at her Granny's cottage and in the city there'd been a regular window cleaner. But he hadn't used a tool!

‘Ah, but my brother made himself a kind of tool that does the job better than any other thing,' he maintained.

She smiled sceptically. ‘For all the use I'm likely to get out of that I'd best try some wet cloths,' she said.

‘Maybe he would be pleased to give you a lend of his tool,' Ruari suggested. ‘Maybe he thinks cleaning windows is a woman's work.'

‘I'll wait until he tells me so,' she said submissively. They chatted desultorily for a while until it became impossible for her to stifle her yawns. ‘I am going to heat a mug of milk and take it to my bed,' she announced. ‘I am gey tired.'

‘You should take a dram of whisky with your milk,' he advised. ‘It will help take some of the tiredness out of you.'

‘I'm not sure I want the tiredness taking out of me except by a good sleep,' she declared, and noticing his sudden crestfallen expression, she wondered if he had been disconcerted by what she had said.

Paying her no regard he went through to the scullery and returned with a half-empty bottle of whisky and two glasses. Just at that moment her brother-in-law entered the kitchen. Ruari looked enquiringly at his brother and then spoke to Kirsty. ‘Kirsty, you will get another glass for my brother?'

‘There is no need for another glass,' she replied. ‘There are two glasses on the table and there are two people who want whisky, are there not?'

‘But will you not be taking a dram yourself?'

‘No, I will not.' She smiled as she shook her head emphatically. ‘It is a long time since I have tasted the good rich milk of a Highland cow and I am not going to allow whisky to spoil it for me. You enjoy your whisky, I shall enjoy my milk,' she said. She thought her husband looked a trifle downcast as she picked up her mug of milk, bade him a warm ‘
Oidhche Mhath!
' and went to the bedroom. She was asleep when he came to bed and roused herself only enough to be conscious of the distance between her body and his.

As on the previous morning Ruari rose early. Kirsty asked sleepily, ‘Will I get up and make the porridge?'

‘No, no,' he bade her. ‘We will take a mug of brose just and be off to the creels. We will take our porridge when we get back. It's the way we're used to doing it.'

As soon as she heard them leave the house she got up and went into the lamplit kitchen where again she found the peat fire glowing red and the kettle steaming gently on the hob. She made tea and porridge, ate her own breakfast and then got out the girdle and baked some scones. It was still too dark to try cleaning the salt-caked window but she went to search for suitable cloths and cleaning materials in the big cupboard. She found some roughly-made dusters which she guessed had come from a tinker's bundle and which, since they were still neatly folded, she suspected had not yet made the acquaintance of dust. She also found a scrubbing brush and a floor mop which, unlike the dusters, looked well used. She was wrapping a batch of the cooled scones ready to put into the oatmeal bin when she heard seaboots clumping on the cobbles and then stamping into the house. Immediately she brewed a fresh pot of tea and moved the porridge pan a little nearer the fire.