Love and Music Will Endure

Is it the fox? Is it about the fox’s stink? She wondered. She knew that the neighbours would have been complaining to him about it, grumbles sneaking out of the corners of their mouths. She strained to follow the scent. Why had the summons come now? Her mind scavenged for clues. She jabbed the tip of her umbrella between the stones as she strode along the driveway sweeping beside the river towards the loch.

‘Walk tall, like Finn McCoul. Pound the earth beneath your feet.’ That’s what Pappa would say.

‘Well I’ve done that often enough and enjoyed seeing my enemies tremble but it’s hard to keep roaring now I’m old and battle scarred’, she imagined replying to him. He had only known her when she was young with a high tide surging through her. How her Mamma used to shake her head at that strong current, the vigour within her that flooded over the banks of womanly behaviour.

‘You’ve been trouble right from the start. What a hard time I had bringing you into the world. You had to be contrary even then, ripping your way out backwards. And afterwards you were always famished and suckled like a ravening beast.’

She stopped to catch her breath, looking down to check her shoes for mud. Those wretched corsets, nipping her as she bent. She lifted each of her heavy men’s brogues in turn, grunting with the effort and scrubbed them through a clump of grass. When she was a child her mother had complained about how fast she grew. Màiri felt like a bumbling giant as she snagged her skirt on
brambles or her raw boned frame burst the seams of her blouse yet again. To Mamma she was a boisterous heifer erupting from the winter byre with green meadow memories in her nostrils and trampling everything in her path.

There was the big house looming ahead, still looking raw and new laid against the dun coloured, muted winter landscape. The tower stabbed upwards, a thick accusing finger. What was she to be accused of? As a young woman when blame had struck her like a lightning bolt she had tried to flow quietly and not let the torrents spill over. But what use had meekness been when she had to fend for herself later on? Frowning she turned down the side wall leading to the back of the house. She kicked a loose stone, sending it skidding down the slope. Then she hauled out a glowing white handkerchief to swab her dripping face before heading towards the back entrance, the one used by servants, tradesmen and tenants. She had waited often enough at similar doors with Pappa when he came to pay his rent. Most of the men would shuffle in when it was their turn, caps crushed in their hands. A few sauntered in, hands plunged in pockets. Most commented on the weather, some enquired after the landlord’s health, others ventured a joke. All of them though, bar one or two who were ostentatiously pious, accepted a dram, smacking their lips as the welcome heat slid down their throats. What did Pappa do? He held himself as steady as the Old Man of Storr himself and marched in with dignity – a nod but no smile.

‘I’m not a supplicant,’ He would say. And neither was she. All those years she had spent on platforms, the audience tight-packed as seabirds on a cliff, their cheers swirling around her. Had it been a mistake to return home? It was true that a prophet was without honour in his own land. She had done the neighbourly thing, calling on folk with a basket of warm bannocks on her arm. But people had changed their ways. They didn’t want to
be shown how to spin a strong woollen thread or how to cook herring the old way, straight on the peats. The lairds and their ladies were welcoming enough but they expected her to sing for her supper. Was that all she was now, an entertaining character? What about everything she had fought for? The Land League was fading from people’s memories as if it had never been, just like the mighty Cuillin itself could be so smothered in mist that it disappeared from sight. We’re all old now, our fine, fresh hopes curdled, she thought.

Taking a deep breath she swayed, broad-beamed, around the corner, the wind plucking at the edges of her plaid cape, making it billow out behind her. She looked over the calm sweep of Loch Snizort. The wind twitched the shimmering water, creasing its satin surface and splashing beads of rainbow light. She sucked in the moist air and let her lips stretch into a smile. The land was constant; it would always succour her. She had lived through terrors: the night-time thud on the door, the rough grasp on her arm, the shame of the prison cell. After all of that she could surely face up to a disapproving landlord?

She looked back towards the house and suddenly she realised that she could see right in through the window. She sidled closer. There was a small table there, holding a brass tray. Shiny enough but it would be the better for more elbow grease. She could make out strange, curved figures carved on it. He must have brought it back from India. What were they? Beasts of some kind? No, the legs surely belonged to people. Some sort of heathen gods? But four legs tangled together? Surely not? They wouldn’t show that, a man and a woman coupled together? She chuckled out loud. Then with a jolt she saw Mr MacDonald himself heading towards the window. She stayed stock still, hardly daring to breathe. His fine, thin, face looked stern, his lips pressed together but – thank goodness – he was looking down at the table, not out of the
window. His fingers reached out to a decanter and suddenly leapt back as if they had been burnt. Stiffly he walked back to a chair and sat down, putting his face in his hands. Now her own hands were shaking so much that she had to squeeze them together. He must be brooding about how he would tell her to leave. Had her neighbours come to moan about her? Where would she rest her head if she was turned out? Her children were scattered seed and her old friend Mairead back in Australia. Plenty would say that it served her right for getting above herself. Widows are expected to stay at home, Bible and knitting to hand. ‘Crowing hens and whistling women are an abomination to the Lord,’ as Mamma would say.

She wandered nearer to the shore and willed the calm water to flow through her. I won’t leave the island I love for a second time, she vowed as she stood still, gasping in the moist air. Finally, she tramped up to the door and knocked hard. She could hear shuffling before it was opened. It was himself, adjusting a frown into a smile.

‘Welcome, Mistress MacPherson. Will you not sit down?’

She levered herself into a chair. Her nervous eyes flickered around the room, quick as a fox’s snout.

‘You’ve not been in the estate office before? I was just finishing looking over some papers but I confess I expected you to use the front entrance, as before.’

‘But you wanted to see me about the cottage. That’s why I came round the back. The fox has run off you know. I’ve no man to share my life and now not even a male animal. I don’t know what people are saying …’ She blundered on but staggered to a halt when she saw how baffled he looked.

‘I don’t understand what your house – or indeed other people – have to do with our meeting. The house is yours for as long as you want it.’

She made a sort of sobbing laugh and stifled it in her handkerchief.

‘And I’m grateful although there are Land Leaguers who still condemn me for accepting it.’

‘They think that you fawn on the gentry?’

She snorted.

‘They wanted me at the big meetings on Skye but did any of them offer me a roof over my head?’ She gave him an appraising look. ‘Do you know that during all those years of the troubles you were the only landlord who could go about in a pony and trap?’

He looked puzzled.

‘All the others had to ride in a closed carriage for fear of having mud, stones or worse thrown at them,’ she whooped, slapping her thigh.

‘I’m relieved no-one disliked me enough to hurl things at me. Now if you’ll excuse me for a moment.’ He stood up and limped to the door.

‘What a silly
cailleach
he must think me, blethering on about the fox. So why did he summon me?’ she muttered to herself.

He came back, a boyish grin on his face and his hands clasped behind his back. He thrust one arm forward. ‘I wanted you to see this.’ His hand cradled something small, oblong and vividly red.

She took it, bracing her arms as if it was heavy. She squinted at it and turned it over before pressing it against her cheek. What did it smell of? Did it smell of a warm cow’s flank or of a crisp winter’s day that turned your breath to trails of smoke? It should smell of the countryside that had made it. Mamma used to say how parched she used to feel when they stayed in Glasgow, longing to gulp down Highland air.

‘Do open it,’ he coaxed.

She sighed and nestled it tenderly on her lap. Her fingers rummaged inside the bodice of her best dark purple gown,
stumbling over the tiny buttons. He looked a little alarmed but smiled when he saw her pulling out a pearl handled magnifying glass. Her fingers buzzed and blundered backwards and forwards through the leaves. Then she reddened as she turned the book the right way round. Her eyes were too misted to fix on the bird tracks of the letters.

‘I can’t take it in. These were all stored away in my head for so long and now they’re here. It was like waiting for my children to be born. I wondered what each of them would be like but I still couldn’t believe it when a new stranger appeared.’

He nodded.

‘Yet birth reminds me of death too. One of my daughters died young.’

He shuddered. ‘Do you like the printing?’

‘So many words. It took me so long to sing them all. I don’t know how I managed it.’

‘Well, if you recollect Mr White travelled up from Inverness and spent many hours writing them down at your dictation.’

‘I can write a fair English hand but I never learnt to write Gaelic properly. I wouldn’t want scholars to find mistakes.’ She was pleased to see that he looked a little uncomfortable at her reproach.

‘No, indeed. What do you think of the photographs of you preparing the tweed?’

She decided to be gracious. ‘Very good. Of course I was brought up to learn all the household skills, not like young women today who expect to buy everything from shops.’ She sniffed.

‘There’ll be a more formal presentation later but I thought you should see it first, hot from the press. It’s a record of all those words that inspired your fellow Highlanders fighting for justice.’

‘It’s good that no-one can be thrown off the land anymore and have their homes torn down around them. But there are still so many hungry for land. I used to imagine that the wheel would turn and bring back the descendants of the folk driven from the island. I believed that the
Bugha Mòr
would ring again to children’s voices and the shouts of young men playing shinty.’

A silence fell between them. He broke it first.

‘Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Land Wars, the publication of your poetry is a cause for celebration. When my tenants come in here I offer them a wee dram although I know the minister disapproves. Perhaps a glass of wine would be more suitable today.’

She laughed. ‘No, I’m happy to take a dram. It warms the heart and belly much better than your thin foreign stuff.’

‘You don’t adhere to the temperance rules, then?’ he said with a grin as he struggled to his feet and hobbled over to the table. ‘Forgive me for toasting you with water. This wretched gout is plaguing me at the moment.’

‘I’ve always followed the Church’s teachings, especially about keeping the Sabbath day holy. But I’ll never understand how folk can be so peculiar that gloom becomes the food they eat. Song, shinty and the water of life all bring joy to our lives.’

‘I couldn’t agree with you more. I propose a toast to the success of your book and to all of us exiles returned to our native island.’

She downed her drink in one swallow and sighed in appreciation. He rose from his seat as if he was about to usher her out. Not so quickly, she thought. After all, his summons had caused her all that worry which was not good for a woman of her years. It was time for her to call the tune. She tapped the cover of the book and stood up.

‘Before I go we should sing one of my songs. What about, “Farewell to the Island of Mists”?’

‘Well, there’re a lot of verses and my voice is rather scratchy these days.’

‘Seventeen in total, I believe. I have them by heart but you may borrow the wee book of words if you wish,’ she said, digging him in the ribs with an elbow.

He knew when he was beaten. So they sang together. His voice was true if a little croaky, she thought. She wished that he wouldn’t sing with his hands in his pockets as so many men did. They stood side by side looking out at the loch held in the folds of the low hills. Sky and water seeped and smudged together, like colours painted on silk.