Holy Terror in the Hebrides (3 page)

“This was just what I needed,” I said with a contented sigh. “I’m Dorothy Martin, by the way.”

“Maggie McIntyre. And what brought ye to Iona so late in the year?”

I explained about my friends and the plans that had gone wrong. “But you’re the second person to mention it being late. I would have thought September—”

“Late for here. The storms will be comin’ soon, now. There’s no’ a trace o’ land from here to Newfoundland, ye see, and the winds can get a wee bit strong when they’ve that many miles of sea to cross.”

“I can well imagine. Hurricanes, do you mean?”

“No’ hurricanes, quite, but gales, wi’ rain, an’ thunder. The seas rise, an’ ye canna see yer hand before yer face, it’s that dark. And wi’ no warnin’, oot of a clear blue sky, as they say.”

I glanced out of the window at the clear, blue sky and the leaves moving lazily in the gentle breeze, and Maggie chuckled.

“No, ye’ve no need to worry today. It’ll be a week or two, likely, before they start, though ye never know. But that’s why the tourist season here ends at the beginning of October. I mind one year, when the storms began airly, there was a couple oot in a dinghy. Germans, they were, good people, wi’ a pair o’ bairns waitin’ behind.” She sighed and paused, remembering, and then finished her coffee and stood up briskly. “’Twas the next mornin’ before the Coastguard could get their helicopters oot to search. The boat had fetched up on Ardnamurchan, twenty, twenty-five miles northeast o’ here. He was still alive, but they never found her. I canna offer ye more coffee, for I’ve drunk the last drop, but I’d be happy to make ye a cup of tea?”

I can take a hint as well as anybody, and the gorgeous afternoon was beckoning. “No, thanks, but I’ll be back tomorrow, I expect. So nice to meet you, and we’ll hope the storms don’t come early this year.”

I put the sad little story out of my mind and went exploring. The Heritage Centre itself I would save for another day; it was inside and I wanted to be out, out in the sunshine, out in the air that was reviving me with every breath. I wandered across the road to the very lovely ruins of the Nunnery.

It may sound odd to refer to ruins as lovely, but the soft pink granite of the broken walls glowed in the afternoon sun, and the few arches that still remained had lost none of their delicate beauty. A well-tended garden nodded gently in what might have been the old cloister, and here and there tiny plants bloomed cheerfully in niches of the walls. I sat on a bench in the sun and watched as small birds flitted in and out of the empty windows or perched atop roofless walls. Bees and butterflies and large, beautiful dragonflies roamed among the flowers, and in one sunny corner a small black-and-white cat sat washing itself, now and then pausing, one paw in the air, to eye the birds. The Nunnery was, in its gentle way, a busy place, but utterly peaceful.

I sat, drowsily trying to analyze the quiet. It wasn’t an absence of sound, exactly. I could hear the beat of wings when a bird flew overhead, the clop of a horse’s hooves as one of the wagons went down the village street. Somewhere people laughed, and a dog barked.

It wasn’t until an ancient tractor chugged noisily past the Nunnery that I put my finger on it. There was, except for the odd car or farm vehicle, no traffic noise on Iona. I knew that residents could bring cars onto the island, but they seemed to use them mostly between home and the ferry landing. Otherwise, everyone cycled or walked, so the loudest noises were natural ones, and the occasional toot of the ferry.

I stretched luxuriously in the sun. I could get used to this.

However, I realized shortly, I could also get what my grandmother used to call “the dead sets” if I didn’t move soon. I rose reluctantly and headed on down to the village.

The shop displaying Scottish crafts drew me, but I resisted temptation and went instead to the jetty, the heart of the village. Perching on a post, I watched for a while. The little ferry plied tirelessly back and forth, each time taking a few passengers and bringing a few back. On one trip a garbage truck, looking very much out of place, lumbered off the boat and groaned its way down the village street, emptying trash bins with the usual hideous noises.

That did it. Romance lay elsewhere. I puffed back up the hill and was about to turn in at my hotel when a church bell began to ring. The Abbey, I assumed from the direction, and I hadn’t been there yet. Partly from a sense of having transgressed against proper tourist etiquette, and partly because I find church bells irresistible, I panted another few yards uphill and joined the last few stragglers walking into the church.

The service, to an Episcopalian used to a fixed liturgy, was pleasant but rather odd. It seemed to follow no particular pattern, but there were hymns and readings, some of them poetry, some from the scriptures of various religious traditions, and prayers of the sort that are designed not to offend anyone. Well, I already knew that the Iona Community, which was in charge of the Abbey, was a nondenominational group, so I hadn’t exactly expected Evensong.

When someone—a lay person, I gathered from the absence of vestments—launched into a rather rambling sermon, my mind and eyes began to wander. I was a little disappointed in the Abbey, I decided. Though lofty and attractive enough, it held none of that sense of antiquity I had come to expect in British churches. After all, there had been a church of some kind on this spot since 563! Of course, I reminded myself, the present building, though begun in the twelfth century, had fallen to ruins by the sixteenth, and the “restoration” completed some thirty or forty years ago had really amounted to an almost total rebuilding. So perhaps it was little wonder that the ghosts of past worshipers seemed to have departed.

Worshipers. My eyes roved over the present congregation. There were a lot of earnest-looking young people in blue jeans, part of an Iona Community retreat or some such, I surmised. The small group in garments that tended to flow were probably the New Agers from the Argyll Hotel that my guide had mentioned. And the group right in front of me, seven of them stretched out in one pew—I sighed. There was Teresa, and the pair from the bus, and the rest as well.

On a small island, it was going to be hard to avoid the unfriendly crew from the Iona Hotel.

I sneaked out before the service was quite over so as to escape them, and wandered around the Abbey grounds, looking at the lovely old. Celtic crosses and the graves of, among others, one MacBeth. It was while I was wondering about him—surely he couldn’t be the original of the story Shakespeare made immortal?—that the little hotel group came out of the church, somewhat apart from the rest of the congregation, and assembled in front of the largest cross. I watched from my vantage point in the churchyard as a clergywoman from the Abbey joined them.

It appeared that she was giving them a little speech of welcome. The fitful wind caught her words and flung them at me now and again. “Iona Community delighted and honored . . . seven such stalwart laborers in God’s vineyard . . . wish you joy and peace here . . . let us pray.”

I didn’t stay for the prayer. The wind was getting cold as twilight closed in, and besides, I was bemused. Laborers in God’s vineyard? That antagonistic bunch? It takes all kinds, certainly, and maybe I’d misjudged them, but . . . I climbed up the steps to the hotel and went to my room to put on warmer clothes and speculate about personalities.

Dinner was included in the price of my room, and from the aromas wafting up the stairs, it was going to be delicious. I debated about going down to the lounge for an aperitif, but decided against it. I’d be better able to face unfriendly people with some food inside me, and in any case, I had a couple of phone calls to make. There was no phone in the room; I collected some change and went downstairs to the pay phone in the hall.

The first call was to Lynn.

“Oh,
good
, you’re there. We tried to call you earlier, but you must have been out doing the island. Isn’t the cottage
delightful
?”

I sighed and explained. Lynn’s silver peal of laughter sparkled across the miles.

“It
thrills
me when other people do things like that. I can’t wait to tell Tom; he’ll
adore
it.”

“And how is Tom?”

Tom was at home, asleep at the moment, and doing much better, though chafing under diet restrictions, Lynn reported. They hadn’t had to do any bypass surgery or angioplasty or anything, and his doctor had told him he could travel in another few days if he wanted to.

“Well, when he gets up here to crab and salmon-land, he won’t mind low-fat eating. Soon, I hope?”

“This weekend, if all goes well. But I’ll call.”

So I gave her the hotel number, just in case it took me forever to recapture the lost key, and went on to the next call.

“Jane? I’m so glad you’re home . . . yes, I’ve arrived, and it really is a lovely place . . . yes, well, that’s why I called. I don’t know how the cottage is; I’ve done a really stupid thing.”

I explained about the key. “Apparently, there isn’t another one closer than Inverness, and what with the ferries and all, that’s a couple of days’ journey from here. We really are in the middle of nowhere, which is one of the things that make it so nice, but right now I wish civilization were a little closer. Anyway, do you think you could mail me the key? How long do you think it would take to get here?”

Jane’s dry voice came over the line quite clearly. “Any place else, I’d say a day, but you’re back of beyond, there. You’d best count on two. I’ll go and post it straight off. You having a good time?”

“Well—yes, on the whole. There are some rather odd people here at the hotel, but I’ll only be here another day or two, so I won’t have to mix with them much. I’m getting a lot of exercise, and I do love the island. It’s just as peaceful as everybody says. How’s my house, and how are the cats?”

“What you’d expect. House looking a total disaster but coming along, cats missing you but bearing up.”

“I miss them, too, but there’s a nice cat here at the hotel.” Stan was at the moment twining himself, purring, around my ankles. I reached down and petted him; his purr stepped up to fortissimo. “Any news?”

“Alan rang up.”

“Oh?” My heart beat a little faster despite my stern inner admonition not to be silly.

“Wants your phone number when you have one. He’ll ring again. What shall I tell him?”

“I hardly know. I’d call him, but there’s only a pay phone, and all the way to Brussels—look, I’ll give you the number of the hotel so he can reach me if he has to, but tell him I’m fine, really, and I’ll call him when I move into the cottage.” I read her the number, and hung up feeling lonesome.

The rest of the guests were already seated when I walked into the dining room. It looked as though the seven other guests and I had the hotel to ourselves. They were seated in the same pairings I had observed earlier, and seemed just about as cordial. The man with the beard was again alone, and on impulse I stopped the waiter as he was about to lead me to my table for one.

“Wait a minute. I hate to dine alone.” I approached the bearded man. “I see you’re by yourself, and I am, too. Would you mind sharing a table?”

One of the advantages of age is that one can make a suggestion like that without being suspected of ulterior motives. The man looked a little startled, but gestured to the other chair. “Please.” He even stood up, a nice little courtesy most males have abandoned.

I chose barley soup over a cold appetizer and ordered a bottle of bordeaux to go with the roast beef. “I hope you’ll share it with me?”

The bearded face split in a grin, and the appealing brown eyes lost their sad look for a moment. “If you let me buy the next bottle. You’re staying a few days, yes?”

“I’m not quite sure, actually. I’ll be on the island for a couple of weeks, but I’m moving to a cottage in a day or two.” By the time we’d finished our soup he knew the whole story of Tom’s medical problems and my lost key. “My name’s Dorothy Martin, by the way, and even though I live in England, you can tell from my accent that I’m American. I gather you are, too?”

“Jake Goldstein, Chicago.” He inclined his head in a semi-bow.

“Are the seven of you traveling together?” I encompassed the room with my eyes as the waiter set plates in front of us.

His eyes rose emphatically to heaven. “Together! You could say together, if you mean we go the same places at the same time. Me, I’m just along for the ride.”

Well, that didn’t tell me much. I tried again. “Is it some sort of tour, or something?”

He sighed and took a good-sized gulp of wine. “Or something. To tell you the truth, Mrs. Martin—”

“Dorothy.”

“—Dorothy, I’d be better off at home. I should’ve known better, but—” He raised his shoulders and his hands in an elaborate shrug. “So I like salmon. So is that enough that I should have to put up with a bunch of—look, I’ll tell you the whole story.” He glanced around the room and lowered his voice.

“Like I said, I’m from Chicago. So there’s this organization, see, the Chicago Religious Assembly. You’ve heard maybe of the National Religious Assembly?”

I nodded. The ecumenical group was well-known throughout the United States.

“Yeah, well, the Chicago branch has money to burn. So they decide to have this contest. All the big religious groups are supposed to pick one person who’s done the most, for the congregation or the neighborhood or whatever. And then the assembly chooses the biggest seven of all and sends us all on this two-week trip to Scotland.”

“I see.” I did see. Seven people, all from different religious backgrounds, all stalwarts of their own faith, possibly even zealots. “It sounds,” I said, feeling my way cautiously, “like the sort of thing that could—um—generate ill feeling unless it were handled very tactfully.”

“Ill feeling!” Jake shrugged again, and once more rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Listen, a mushroom cloud should appear tomorrow over Iona, you’ll know why. We’ve been together for a week, now. Edinburgh, Inverness, Glasgow—long enough for them all to decide they hate each other. Me, I’m an outsider. The Quaker got appendicitis at the last minute and they got me to come so they shouldn’t waste a ticket. I ask you, a rabbi ending up on Iona! It was a free vacation, so I’m here, and sometimes I try to keep the peace, but better you should get into a fight between two alley cats than some of these Christians!”