Island (39 page)

“What?” they asked. “What?”

“Oh, that’s enough for today,” she said. “You had better be getting home or they will be worrying about you.”

They ran home and burst into their parents’ kitchen. “We are going on a trip to Canna,” they said. “Grandma told us. She saw it in the tea leaves. She read it in our cups. We are going to take a lunch. We are going across the water. She said we were going.”

The morning they left they were dressed in their best clothes and waiting at the wharf long before the smack was due, clutching their lunches in their hands. It was sunny when the boat left the wharf but as they proceeded along the coast it became cloudy and then it began to rain. The trip seemed long in the rain and the men told them to go into the boat’s cabin where they would be dry and where they could eat their lunch. The first part of the trip seemed to be spoiled by rain.

It was raining heavily when the boat approached the wharf at Canna point. It was almost impossible to see the figures on the wharf or to distinguish them as they moved about in their heavy oil slickers. The lobster buyers were in a hurry, as were the wet men impatiently waiting for them in the rain.

“Do you know where you’re going?” said the men in the smack to their young passengers.

“Yes,” they said, although they were not quite sure because the rain obscured the landmarks that they thought they would remember.

“Here,” said the men in the smack, handing them two men’s oil slickers from the boat’s cabin. “Wear these to help keep you dry. You can give them back to us sometime.”

They climbed up the iron ladder toward the wharf’s cap and the busy men reached their hands down to help and pull them up.

The men were busy and because of the rain no one on the wharf asked them where they were going, and they were too shy and too proud to ask. So they turned the cuffs of the oil slickers back over their wrists and began to walk up the muddy road from the wharf. They were still trying to keep their best clothes clean and pick their spots carefully, placing their good shoes
where there were fairly dry spots and avoiding the puddles and little rivulets which rolled the small stones along in their course. The oil slickers were so long that the bottoms of them dragged on the muddy road and sometimes they lifted them up in the way that older ladies might lift the hems of their skirts when stepping over a puddle or some other obstacle in the roadway. When they lifted them, the muddy bottoms rubbed against their good trousers so they let them fall again. Then their shoes were almost invisible and they could hear and feel the tails of the coats dragging behind them as they walked. They were wet and miserable inside the long coats, as well as indistinguishable to anyone who might see the small forms in the long coats walking along the road.

After they had walked for half a mile they were overtaken by an old man in a buggy who stopped and offered them a ride. He, too, was covered in an oil coat, and his cap was pulled down almost to his nose. When he stopped to pick them up, the steam rose from his horse as they clambered into the wagon beside him. He spoke to them in Gaelic and asked them their names and where they were from and where they were going.

“To see our grandmother,” they said.

“Your grandmother?” he asked.

“Yes,” they said. “Our grandmother.”

“Oh,” he said. “Your grandmother, are you sure?”

“Of course,” they said, becoming a bit annoyed. For although they were more uncertain than they cared to admit, they did not want to appear so.

“Oh,” he said, “all right then. Would you like some peppermints?” And he reached deeply into a pocket beneath his oil
coat and brought out a brown paper bag full of peppermints. Even as he passed the bag to them, the raindrops pelted upon it and it became soggy and began to darken in deterioration.

“Oh,” he said, “you may as well keep all of them. I got a whole lot more of them for the store. They just came in on the boat.” He pointed to some metal containers in the back of the buggy.

“Are you going to spend the night with your grandmother?” he asked.

“Yes,” they said.

“Oh,” he answered, pulling on the reins and turning the horse into the laneway of a yard.

He drove them to the door of the house and helped them down from the buggy while his horse stomped its impatient hooves in the mud and tossed its head in the rain.

“Would you like me to go in with you?” he asked.

“No,” they said, impatient for him to be gone and out of sight.

“All right,” he said and spoke to his uneasy horse which began to trot down the laneway, the buggy wheels throwing hissing jets of mud and water behind them.

They hesitated for a while outside the doorway of the house, waiting for the man to go out of sight and feeling ridiculous for standing in the rain. But halfway down the lane he stopped and looked back. And then he stood up in the buggy and shouted to them and made a “go-forward” gesture with his hand toward the house. They opened the door then and went in because they felt embarrassed and did not want to admit that he had brought them to the wrong house.

When they went in, they found themselves in the middle of a combined porch and entranceway which was cluttered with an
odd collection of household and farming utensils. Baking pans and jars and sealers and chamber pots and old milk pails and rakes and hoes and hayforks and bits of wire and lengths of chain. There was very little light, and in the gloom something started up from their feet and bounced against their legs and then into a collection of jars and pails, causing a crashing cacophony of sound. It was a half-grown lamb, and it bleated as it bounded toward the main door, dropping bits of manure behind it. In the same instant and in response to the sound, the main door opened and the lamb leaped through it and into the house.

Framed in the doorway was a tall old woman clad in layers of clothing, even though it was summer, and wearing wire-framed glasses. On either side of her were two black dogs. They were like collies, although they had no white markings. They growled softly but deep within their throats and the fur on the back of their necks rose and they raised their upper lips to reveal their gleaming teeth. They were poised on the tips of their paws and their eyes seemed to burn in the gloom. She lowered a hand to each of their heads but did not say anything. Everyone seemed to stare straight ahead. The boys would have run away but they were afraid that if they moved, the dogs would be upon them, so they stayed where they were as still as could be. The only sound was the tense growling of the dogs.
“Có a th’ann?”
she said in Gaelic. “Who’s there?”

The boys did not know what to say because all the possible answers seemed so complicated. They moved their feet uneasily, which caused the dogs to each take two steps forward as if they were part of some rehearsed choreography.
“Co a th’ann?”
she said, repeating the question. “Who’s there?”

“We’re from Kintail,” they said finally. “Our names are Alex and Angus. We’re trying to find our grandmother’s house. We came on the smack boat.”

“Oh,” she said. “How old are you?”

“Eleven,” they said. “Both of us. We’re twins.”

“Oh,” she said. “Both of you. I have relatives in Kintail. Come in.”

They were still afraid, and the dogs remained poised, snarling softly, with their delicate, dangerous lips flickering above the whiteness of their teeth.

“All right,” they said. “We’ll come in, but just for a minute. We can’t stay long.”

Only then did she speak to the dogs. “Go and lie under the table and be quiet,” she said. Immediately they relaxed and vanished behind her into the house.

“Did you know these dogs were twins?” she asked.

“No,” they said. “We didn’t.”

“Well,” she said. “They are.”

Inside the house they sat on the first chairs that they could find and moved them as close to the door as possible. The room that they were in was a primitive kitchen and much of its floor was cluttered with objects not unlike the porch, except that the objects were smaller – knives and forks and spoons and the remains of broken cups and saucers. There was a half-completed partition between the kitchen and what might have been a living room or dining room. The upright studs of the partition were firmly in place and someone had nailed wainscotting on either side of them but it extended only halfway to the ceiling. It was difficult to tell if the partition had been left incomplete
or if it was gradually being lowered. The space between the walls of the partition was filled with cats. They pulled themselves up by their paws and looked curiously at the visitors and then jumped back down into the space. From the space between the uncompleted walls the visitors could hear the mewing of newborn kittens. Other cats were everywhere. They were on the table, licking what dishes there were, and on the backs of the chairs and in and out of a cavern beneath an old couch. Sometimes they leaped over the half-completed partition and vanished into the next room. Sometimes they snarled at one another and feinted with their paws. In one corner a large tiger-striped tomcat was energetically breeding a small grey female flattened out beneath him. Other tentative males circled the breeding pair, growling deeply within their throats. The tiger cat would interrupt his movements from time to time to snarl at them and keep them at bay. The female’s nose was pressed against the floor and her ears flattened down against her head. Sometimes he held the fur at the back of her neck within his teeth.

The two black dogs lay under the table and seemed oblivious to the cats. The lamb stood watchfully behind the stove. Everything in the house was extremely dirty – spilled milk and cat hair and unwashed and broken dishes. The old woman wore men’s rubber boots upon her feet and her clothing seemed to consist of layers of petticoats and skirts and dresses and sweaters upon sweaters. All of it was very dirty and covered with stains of spilled tea and food remnants and spattered grease. Her hands seemed brown, and her fingernails were long, and there was a half inch of black grime under each of them. She raised her
hands to touch her glasses and they noticed that the outside lenses were smeared and filthy as well. It was then that they realized that she was blind and that the glasses served no useful purpose. They became even more uncertain and frightened than they were before.

“Which one of you is Alex?” she asked, and he raised his hand as if answering a question at school before realizing that she could not see him.

“I am,” he answered then, and she turned her face in his direction.

“I have a long association with that name,” she said, and they were surprised at her use of a word like “association.”

Because of the rain the day seemed to darken early and they could see the fading light through the grimy windows. They wondered for a moment why she did not light a lamp until they realized that there was none and that to her it made no difference.

“I will make you a lunch,” she said. “Don’t move.”

She went to the partial partition and ripped the top board off with her strong brown hands and then she leaned it against the partition and stomped on it with her rubber-booted foot. It splintered and she repeated the action, feeling about the floor for the lengths of splintered wood. She gathered them up and went to the stove and, after removing the lids, began to feed them into the fire. She moved the kettle over the crackling flame.

She began to feel about the cupboards for food, brushing away the insistent cats which crowded about her hands. She found two biscuits in a tin and placed them on plates which she put into the cupboard so the cats would not devour them. She put her hand
into a tea tin and took a handful of tea which she placed in the teapot and then she poured the hot water in as well. She found some milk in a dirty pitcher and, feeling for the cups, she splashed some of it into each.

Then she took the teapot and began to pour the tea. She turned her back to them but as she poured they could see her quickly dip her long brown finger with the half inch of grimy fingernail quickly into each cup. They realized she was doing it because she had no other way of knowing when the cups were full but their stomachs revolved and they feared they might throw up.

She brought them a cup of tea each and retrieved the biscuits from the cupboard and passed the plates to them. They sat holding the offerings on their laps while she faced them. Although they realized she could not see them, they still felt that she was watching them. They looked at the tea and the biscuits with the cat hair and did not know what to do. After a while they began to make slurping sounds with their lips.

“Well, we will have to be on our way,” they said. Carefully they bent forward and placed the still-full teacups under their chairs and the biscuits in their pockets.

“Do you know where you are going?” she asked.

“Yes,” they said with determination.

“Can you see your way in the dark?”

“Yes,” they said again with equal determination.

“We will meet again?” she said, raising her voice to form a question.

“Yes,” they said.

“Some are more loyal than others,” she said. “Remember that.”

They hurried down the laneway, surprised to find that it was not so dark outside as it seemed within the blind woman’s house. When they got to the main road, they followed it in the direction that led away from the wharf and it seemed that in a short time they could make out the buildings of their original destination.

It was still raining as they entered the laneway to the buildings, and by this time it was indeed quite dark. The laneway ended at the door of the barn and the house was some yards farther. The barn door was open and they stepped inside for a moment to compose themselves. It was very quiet within the barn, for all of the animals were away in their summer pastures. They hesitated for a moment in the first stall and then they were aware of a rhythm of sound coming from the next area, the threshing floor. They opened the small connecting door and stepped inside and waited for their eyes to adjust to the gloom. And then in the farthest corner they noticed a lantern turned to its lowest and hanging on a nail. And beyond it they could make out the shape of a man. He was tall and wore rubber boots and bib overalls and had a tweed cap pulled down upon his head. He was facing the south wall of the barn but was sideways to them and presented a profile. He was rhythmically rocking from his heels to the balls of his feet and thrusting his hips back and forth and moaning and talking to himself in Gaelic. But it did not seem that he was talking to himself but to someone of the opposite sex who was not there. The front of his overalls was open and he had a hold of himself in his right hand which he moved to the rhythm of his rocking body.