An Island Apart (6 page)

‘No doubt I myself would have felt the same, just,' he said.

‘There's another thing that took me a while to get used to,' she continued, ‘and that was their flush lavatories.' She permitted herself a tiny embarrassed chuckle. ‘My but I'm saying they fairly made me flush scarlet and I mind I let myself get well and truly constipated before I could bring myself to use one. Being used to having the whole stretch of moors to choose my place I was shocked when I was shown the dark little cave of a wee hoosie in my aunt's back yard. There was no way you could disguise where you were going because there was nowhere else to go just. I thought it was a terrible lack of privacy even though there was a door you could shut. But when you'd finished there was this chain you had to pull and it fairly scared me out of my mind the first time I tried it for it made such a dreadful noise. Even when I got used to it I still used to be in an agony of shame because I was certain all the neighbours would hear it and say to themselves, “There's that strange girl from the Islands having to use the lavatory again”. I got to pulling the chain and rushing out as fast as I could in the hope they wouldn't see it was me.'

She shook her head. ‘And then there was only newspaper to clean yourself afterwards instead of a handful of good fresh moss. It didn't strike me as being clean or healthy.' She intercepted his nod of approbation.

‘That's the city for you,' he said. ‘Some folks think it cleaner but I doubt it myself.'

‘Mind you,' she confided, ‘it was my job to cut the newspapers into neat squares every Saturday night and then thread them on a piece of string and hang them from a nail on the lavatory door. I didn't dislike doing that because I got a good read of the papers while I was doing it and that was better than reading the Bible which was the only alternative.' She shot a glance at him to see if her light dismissal of the Bible had aroused a look of censure. His expression had not changed. She felt a sense of relief. The Islanders were not known for their devoutness and though she had not relinquished her own strict religious upbringing – she would never have dared to speak of the Bible disparagingly in her Granny's time – the city had liberated her from much of its constraint. She had no wish to re-encounter it.

‘After I'd had to leave my aunt's place I was taken on by the minister and his wife and I got another surprise. I found their lavatory was inside on the upstairs landing and the chain made such a noise you could hear it all over the house. Well, I thought, you'd expect ministers' wives to be more particular about such things but no, they weren't bothered about it at all. They had a roll of toilet paper instead of newspaper but ach, it was that thin you could have spat through it. I'm telling you, my Granny would have suspected they were debauched,' she added with a giggle. She paused, shocked at her disclosures to a man she barely knew. ‘Ach but I shouldn't be speaking to you of such things,' she excused herself. ‘Likely it is that whisky has let loose my tongue.'

He smiled appreciatively. ‘It was good to hear you talk,' he said, helping himself to another scone. ‘These are good!' he complimented her.

A glance at the yellowed face of the kitchen clock told Kirsty that they had been talking for well over an hour and a half and yet were only a little nearer mentioning the subject they had met to discuss. She recognised a mounting tension within herself. There was so much more she must find out about him, her mind stressed but how was she to do it in the limited time before Isabel and Mac returned? She tried to devise some subtle comment that would serve to shape his mind in that direction but he forestalled her.

‘The master and mistress of the house are out for the evening, you said. Will they be late back?'

‘Shortly after midnight, I reckon,' she told him. ‘I think they go to a cinema and afterwards they go for a drink with some of their friends.'

‘Do you yourself go to the cinema?'

She gave a negative shake of her head. ‘When I first came to the city I longed to go and see a picture. The cinemas looked so inviting with their bright lights and music whenever I went past them but the old aunt I was living with at the time said they were “Devil's Palaces” and I mustn't think of going inside one of them. The Reverend MacDonald and his wife regarded them in much the same way and told me I should be ashamed of myself for mentioning the word “cinema” in such a place as the Manse. It wasn't until after I came here to work for Mrs Ross that I got the chance to go. Indeed she herself took me to an afternoon matinee but I found it a sore disappointment. Ach, it was a cosy enough place but I caught fleas and I wasn't of a mind to pay sixpence to watch pictures and feed fleas so I didn't go again,' she said dryly.

‘You wouldn't miss such things, then?'

Her heart gave a little leap. He was on the edge of approaching the purpose of their meeting. ‘I would not,' she assured him. ‘Indeed there is very little the city offers that I should miss.' He noticed a small furrow of concentration appear between her eyes as if she was trying to recall some diversion she might miss. ‘Maybe the swimming baths,' she admitted. ‘I enjoy swimming but the baths are fast becoming so crowded and noisy I'm not much tempted these days.' She hesitated a moment. ‘But I'm forgetting the public library. Now that is a place I should miss sadly. Ever since I learned to read I've loved books. My greatest pleasure is a good book.' She injected a note of seriousness into her voice so as not to lead him into thinking that she might be persuaded to contemplate relinquishing such amenities.

‘There is a good postal library in the Islands these days,' he was quick to tell her. ‘It will send books regularly and you can keep them for a few weeks before you need to send them back. And,' he emphasized, ‘it's all paid for by the Education Authority.'

She was sceptical. There'd been nothing like that when she was young. ‘What kind of books? Lesson books?' she queried.

‘No indeed. My brother gets every kind of book for the asking. He's a rare man for reading once the outside work is finished and on the Sabbath whenever he can be alone.'

‘Your brother lives on the Island?' His mention of a brother took her by surprise.

‘My brother also lives in the house. It is the two of us just since the old folk passed on.'

She caught her breath. Sharing a house with two men was something she had not envisaged. She was immediately suspicious. ‘Your brother,' she began haltingly. ‘Is he in good health?' She could well understand Ruari MacDonald seeking a wife if there was an invalid brother dependent upon him.

‘My brother is in the best of health,' he replied. ‘He is a big man and he is altogether stronger and cleverer than myself. He has never seen a doctor and his teacher said he was such a good scholar he could have gone to University. He won bursaries but ach, he was never keen to go away from the Island,'

‘Is he older or younger than yourself?'

‘He is older by a year or two.'

‘And he's never married?' The Islands were noted for their bachelors. ‘Would there be a reason for that?'

‘He's too content with his fishing and his sheep and his handiwork and his reading to have time for a woman, though there's many a good lassie would have been pleased to have the chance to marry him.'

This time it was she who noticed the slight crease furrowing his brow. She guessed that he was becoming sensitive to her questioning. But, she excused herself, she had to continue. There was so much she must know before she could consider giving him her decision. ‘Are there no other crofters on your Island?' she pursued.

‘Not a one. Not since many years back about the time of the evictions, my father used to say.'

‘They were forced to go?'

‘No, but the Laird at the time was so hard on them that they chose to go.'

‘Those were cruel days,' she mused. ‘I mind the old folk telling such sad stories at the ceilidhs ever since I was a wee bairn. They must have suffered terribly.'

‘It was nigh on a hundred years ago,' he reminded her.

‘My Granny used to tell me that her own Granny used to croon such a sad song saying they were left with nothing but the burial ground,' she continued.

‘But it was sorted after a while,' he soothed.

‘It was a long enough while before it was sorted,' she contested. ‘Folks still had bitter memories that had been told to them.'

‘True,' he agreed. ‘And I'm thinking life wasn't all that easy after the settlement. My own grandparents were poor enough. My father had to go and work as a herd boy for the Laird when he was very young and I mind him saying to us that the Laird was a mean and unjust man that would grudge him the wee bowl of oatmeal he'd get for his wages.' He frowned. ‘But the time came when the Laird took to the gay life in the South and squandered all his money till he had to dispose of the whole estate including the Island.'

‘I'd say it served him right,' Kirsty murmured.

‘Aye, but the crofters were gey worried when they heard the new Laird was to be an Englishman I can tell you. But they need not have worried. He turned out to be a good and fair man and treated his employees and his tenants well enough. My father worked as a shepherd for him and was often enough on the Island to see to the sheep. He got to know it well and thought a lot of it. He had the Laird's son over on the Island with him one day and my father mentioned to him that it had been worked by the crofters until they abandoned it. When the Laird himself heard of it he immediately offered the Island to any crofters who were keen to go back there.'

‘And did they?' she asked.

‘Ach, they wouldn't listen to him. Folks were petitioning to be taken off the Islands at that time, not wanting to go and live on them.' After a short pause he went on, ‘It was said it was mostly the womenfolk fearing they'd be too isolated that stopped the men from going.' He gave her a wavering smile before shaking his head. ‘It was a pity right enough, seeing they would have had near three hundred acres of fairly good land they could have portioned among themselves. But no, they'd have none of it. They were all wanting easier crofts on the mainland.'

‘I suppose one couldn't blame them for that,' Kirsty commented. ‘And yet your parents went there?'

‘Well, how that came about was when the Laird's own son came of age he asked his father to give him the Island so he could try farming it himself. His father not only agreed but he built him a fine house with the stone from some of the old ruined cottages that had been abandoned. It was a good strong house, too, with three rooms and a kitchen, and a tiled roof rather than just the thatch that was used at the time. It was newly finished just when the war broke out and the son went off to be an officer. The poor laddie never came back. My own father was in the war, too, but he wasn't even wounded and when he came back he had it in his mind that he wanted to marry my mother who was cook at the Laird's house on the mainland. When he spoke of this wish the Laird offered my father the Island and the house there as a wedding gift in recognition of his and my mother's loyal service.'

‘He must have thought a lot of your parents,' Kirsty said.

‘Aye, indeed he did. And the Laird's wife was almost like a sister to my mother, she used to say.'

‘So they married and moved to the Island and lived happily ever after,' Kirsty concluded.

‘Aye, but my father took a whiley to think about it before he accepted the Laird's offer,' he told her. ‘See, he doubted my mother wouldn't marry him because she might want for company after being used to having the other workers around at the big house, but when he did put it to her she said she was prepared to go if that was what he wanted. Once they married they ferried some cows and sheep and hens across to the Island and a few days later they had a good ceilidh for the wedding guests in their fine new house. I believe it was a great day indeed.'

‘And were they happy there?' Kirsty enquired.

‘I doubt if they ever regretted what they'd done,' he assured her. ‘And that's where myself and my brother were born,' he added.

‘Your schooling?' she probed.

‘My father used to take us across the sound every Monday morning so long as it was good enough weather.'

‘To the mainland?'

‘No, no, to another Island where there was a school and several scholars. Then he'd come for us on Friday evenings. If the weather was bad we'd stay with one of the crofters for the week-end. My mother often used to get across with him too so she ‘d be able to call and see her folks for a strupak.'

‘And you say you have good water on your Island? Good wells and good peat hags and shelter for the animals?' Kirsty tried to make her tone sound congratulatory rather than inquisitive so he should not read too much interest into her questioning.

‘We have very good water indeed on Westisle. Folks sometimes say they haven't tasted such good water and it makes a grand cup of tea,' he said glowingly. ‘But the peat hags on the Island are shallow and the peat is poor under the kettle so we cut our peats on a small Island that's not so far away where there is more than plenty and no one to bother with it. We ferry it across in a flat bottomed cattle boat we have that's grand for the peats just, and we can take all we need for the winter in no more than two loads.' ‘Your brother is fond of fishing? Has he a fishing boat?'

‘We have a fishing boat and mostly we fish together though I believe he is the better fisherman.'

‘What is your fishing boat called?'

‘It bears our joint names,' he told her.

‘You haven't mentioned your brother's name,' she pointed out, suddenly realising that though they had been conversing companionably for more than two hours neither of them had used each other's Christian name.