An Island Apart (15 page)

‘Good fishing?' she greeted her husband.

‘No bad,' he replied. ‘No bad at all.' From the tone of his voice she gathered the fishing had been pretty good. ‘There's a few crabs in a pail out there and there's a lobster if you fancy such a thing,' he told her.

‘I do indeed,' she said enthusiastically. ‘There's nothing I like better than a lobster but the price of them in the city shops is so frightening I rarely tasted a claw. Will I cook it as part of your meal tonight?'

‘Ach, no,' he refused. ‘Neither of us have a liking for lobsters though we don't say no to a crab or two.'

‘But no,' she protested. ‘You must not bring lobsters for me alone. It would be a waste of good money. I also like crabs cooked in the fire the way we talked of it at
ISLAY
. Is that the way you wish me to cook them when you are ready for your supper?'

‘Aye so,' he approved.

‘The tea is fresh brewed and the porridge is hot,' she advised him. ‘I found cloths in the big cupboard as you said there would be and since there is light enough I will go and try to clean that window.' He made no comment as she went outside, where she found a pail which she filled from one of the big water butts at the end of the house. As she rubbed at the glass she could see the two men eating their porridge. Ruari Mhor seemed to approve since she saw him get up to take a second helping from the pan. Well, I've done something to his liking evidently, she gloated and rubbed a little harder at the window pane.

Her efforts to clean the window met with little success. The salt was so adhesive she imagined it had been mixed with glue and though she rinsed and rinsed the cloths and rubbed and rubbed at the glass it looked as if she had been merely daubing it with salty smears. Exasperated she gave up. The water was creeping in chilly rivulets up the insides of her sleeves, her hand were stiffening with the cold and a sneaky breeze was harrying her legs. She emptied the pail and tucked her hands under her armpits to warm them. Thus, looking miserably hunched she went indoors.

‘I cannot clean the salt off the window with these cloths,' she told him. ‘And it is cold working outside for no result.'

‘Ach, but the next rain will clean the window,' he encouraged.

‘I doubt if rain will wash off the salt just,' she said morosely. ‘It's that sticky you would think it has been painted on with glue. I believe I will need to use a scrubbing brush when I try again.'

‘Ach, but my brother knows the secret of cleaning the salt off the windows. Is that not true, Ruari Mhor?' He looked eagerly at his brother.

There was a perceptible pause before his brother permitted the single monosyllable to escape his lips. ‘Aye,' he admitted.

‘It's a kind of moss you gather, is it not?'

Again the pause. Again the monosyllabic ‘Aye.'

‘You will show Kirsty where you get it, or will you bring some for her to try?'

A derisive twitch of his lips preceded Ruari Mhor's final ‘Aye.'

Kirsty could feel the slight tension between the brothers and went to the bedroom to change into a dry jersey. When she got back to the kitchen her husband again was wearing oilskins.

‘You're away back to sea?' she questioned.

‘We will be taking our lobsters to the salesman on the mainland. Will there be messages you would wish me to get there?'

‘The things I spoke to you of,' she reminded him hesitantly, not sure if she should offer him payment. ‘Gumboots and sou' wester and oilskins.'

‘Indeed you will be needing such things and I'd already planned to get them. Will I take a shoe to match the size?'

‘No, no. I cannot spare a shoe. Just tell them I take size five shoes so they had best send me size six gumboots and I can then wear a couple of pairs of socks to fill them.' ‘Is that the lot?'

‘All I can mind. No doubt there will be a few groceries I am needing but I will write a list for you to take with you next time you are going to the mainland.'

He grunted an acknowledgement. ‘I must away then,' he said, hastily fastening his oilskins. ‘My brother is already down at the boat and he will not be best pleased if I keep him back.'

‘
Oidhche Va
, then,' she called cheerily as she followed him outside. His reply was brusque and barely audible. He neither turned his head nor made any gesture of leaving.

Her mouth puckered into a rueful smile. Well, there you are Kirsty MacLennan, she reflected as she watched him striding away. You have got yourself a true Island man. Not a demonstrative man; not a city suitor and not by any means a gallant, but so long as he continues to behave kindly towards you, you must consider yourself a lucky woman. I will do my best to please him and to make his home the sort of place he will wish to return to. Indeed, she thought, the only difficulty that might stand in the way of their achieving at least a mildly affectionate relationship with one-another was her brother-in-law. Would he ever come round to accepting her presence in the household? Could she believe, as her husband encouraged her to believe, that it would not be long before her brother-in-law ‘took to her'? How long would it be before he would even look at her, never mind speak to her, she asked herself. She must pray that time would indeed mellow his resentment, but until it did she must not permit herself to become either too pessimistic or too perturbed by his attitude.

Before going back to the house she fed the hens, stuffed a sack with hay for the cattle and made a potach for the milk cow. Then in the kitchen she took most of the hot peats off the fire, dropped them into a pail, carried it outside and left it on the cobblestones. This way, she reckoned, by the time she got back from the cattle the range would have cooled enough for her to easily locate the flues and dampers and perhaps to discover why the oven did not get hot.

Donning the oilskin and slipping her feet into the gumboots she had worn the previous day, she set out to find the cattle. She was in no way overawed by the misty loneliness of the moors but rather felt that she was easing herself back into a childhood from which she had never managed to detach herself. How had she filled the intervening years? Had she been truly content? Had she really convinced herself that she'd known no yearning to go back to an Island life – that the city had claimed her? She knew this morning, as she drew in deep lungfuls of the sweet damp air, that the yearning had only lain dormant, that the moors were impatient to reclaim her. She felt an urge to kick off her gumboots and to walk barefoot through the moss and heather but she put the boots on after a few steps. The moss was cold and wet and the heather was scratchy. When the warm weather came she must condition her feet to cope with it, she promised herself. She trudged on, her pleasure mounting as the morning brightened, the mist shredded itself into tendrils and the only sounds that broke the silence of the moors were the occasional bleatings of sheep, the mew of a buzzard and the clumping of her own gumboots.

She followed as nearly as she could recall the path which Ruari had shown her the previous day, stopping briefly to admire the ‘spelled lochan' and the Glen of Bluebells where it was so still and quiet that even the trees seemed to be listening in the hope of detecting whispers of other life.

She found the cattle in much the same area as they had been the previous day, and when they saw her they raised their heads to look at her curiously but they did not approach. She started to pull hay from the sack and set it out in tufts and they began to come forward, apprehensively at first and then more trustingly. She was doubtful about being able to identify the milk cow but one of the herd disregarded the hay and came purposefully towards her. Kirsty offered the potach and crouched down to take her requirement of milk.

Instead of going back the way she had come, she decided to make her way across the Island and by so doing she came across a scattered settlement of derelict houses which she assumed had been the home of the crofters who had abandoned the place so many years ago. Now sheep grazed on the short winter-crisped grass; rabbits scuttled among the moss-grown stones while a pair of hooded crows squabbled over a carcass. Resting on a boulder she contemplated the setting: the gentle slope down to the shingle shore where at that moment a stately heron was waiting at the edge of the tide for the sea to service him with a meal, while a couple of otters indulged in sinuous exploration of the dark sea-covered rocks. She thought, if I'd wanted to build a home this is the spot I would have chosen, not the place the Laird chose to build his son's house. Turning again to look at the ruined cottages she let her imagination people them with figures such as her Granny had described to her. Women, young and old, sitting at the doors of the cottages and working at their spinning wheels; men making nets or fashioning hazel withies into creels while children watched and learned; dogs lying in wait to chase a gull or a hooded crow which dared to venture too close to the dwellings.

She would have liked to linger there, but reminding herself of all the work she'd planned to do before the two men returned from the mainland, she started homeward.

The range was certainly cool by the time she got back and it was easy enough for her to locate the oven flues. One had jammed due to lack of use, but she managed to free it with the aid on an iron rod and a stone, and then with a long-handled scraper she had discovered in the barn, she began to take from under the oven shovelful after shovelful of tight-packed peat ash which she scattered on the turf at the back of the house, telling herself it would be good for the garden she planned to have there before very long. Next she gathered dry kindling and peats from the peat shed and lit the fire. It took off well and she very soon had a kettle boiling and a pot of tea brewing. Adjusting the dampers of the oven she piled peat on to the fire and after they had been glowing brightly for an hour or so she opened the oven door. Heat wafted out and she hastily shut the door again. It had been blocked with ancient peat ash and now she had found the flues she could make the oven hot whenever she wanted to. She was highly satisfied. She could experiment with dishes other than boiled fish and potatoes.

Estimating that it would be nearly dark again by the time the two brothers got back from the mainland, she made herself a strupak and sat meditating over what dish she could provide from the limited ingredients in the safe and which might appeal to both men. Apart from fish, there was butter and milk; there were plenty of potatoes in the clamp in the barn; there was oatmeal and there was flour. There was a paunched rabbit hanging in the scullery, she reminded herself and since the weather had been cold, it should still be in fresh condition. She decided to try making a rabbit pie and when it was put before them she would observe their reactions, but in case either of them found it not to their liking they could have potatoes and herring or roast crabs. Nothing need be wasted, she told herself. Her husband had enjoyed pastry at
ISLAY
. She herself enjoyed pastry, and if her brother-in-law found it unpalatable, what wasn't eaten could be mixed with the hens' mash.

When the two men got back the pie, with its crisp, gravy-stained crust was keeping hot on the hob alongside a dish of roasted potatoes hot and golden and glistening. Ruari sniffed curiously while he was taking off his boots and oilskins but forbore to comment. He threw a folded oilskin and a pair of gumboots on to the bench.

‘There now, do they please you?' he asked.

‘Indeed they do,' she responded, putting her feet tentatively into the boots and measuring the oilskin against her. ‘I like them fine.' She smiled approvingly. ‘They will be gey useful on the moors.' In the city she would have been more gushing but now, in the Islands she knew that even heartfelt appreciation must be expressed laconically.

She put the pie and the roast potatoes on the table. She thought they both looked and smelled delicious.

‘My, my!' said her husband. ‘What do we have here?' He looked pleased.

‘I cleaned out the range this morning and I got lots of stale ash from under the oven. When I lit the fire again the oven got hot enough to cook pastry. I'd seen the rabbit hanging in the scullery and knowing you liked pastry I thought I would make a rabbit pie. The potatoes I roasted because you said you liked them that way,' she reminded him, putting a helping of pie and some roast potatoes on his plate. She turned enquiringly to her brother-in-law but he had ignored the meal on the table and was already helping himself from the pan of potatoes on the hob. Disappointed, she put a portion of the pie on to her own plate and began to eat in silence.

‘This is good!' her husband complimented her. ‘I like it fine. You should take a taste of it, Ruari Mhor. You would like it,' he urged his brother as he helped himself to another portion.

‘Ach, I like to eat fish when I come in from the sea,' was the chilling response.

‘I could bake other pies if you would like that,' she said. ‘I could make tarts and shortbread and puddings. I could even make bread if you could bring me some yeast.'

‘Aye indeed?' he queried.

‘I believe we would use a good many more peats to heat the oven regularly but I used to work in the peats for my Granny and I could do so again for you,' she volunteered.

‘There is plenty of peat on the wee Island I showed you yesterday,' he said, with rapidly ebbing interest.

He had brought a newspaper back with him from the mainland and was settling himself to read it. She picked up her knitting and, since her brother-in-law had left the kitchen, she settled in the other chair. When the hour of her usual bedtime came round she said, ‘Ruari, I am going to make my hot milk. Is there anything you would like me to get for you before I go to bed?'

‘No, no,' he declined. ‘I will make myself a mug of tea after I have walked my brother's back for him.'

She thought she had misheard him. ‘Walk your brother's back, did you say?' she asked banteringly