Storm Over Rhanna Read online

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Also by Christine Marion Fraser

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Part One: Christmas 1965

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Part Two: Spring 1966

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Part Three: Summer 1966

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Part Four: Autumn/Winter 1966

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  About the Author

  Christine Marion Fraser was one of Scotland’s best-selling authors, outselling even Catherine Cookson, with world-wide readership and translations into many foreign languages. She was the author of the much-loved Rhanna series. Second youngest of a large family, she soon learned independence during childhood years spent in the post-war Govan district of Glasgow. Chris lived in Argyll with her husband. She died on 22nd November 2002.

  Also by Christine Marion Fraser

  Rhanna

  Children of Rhanna

  Return to Rhanna

  Song of Rhanna

  Storm Over Rhanna

  Stranger on Rhanna

  A Rhanna Mystery

  King’s Croft

  King’s Acre

  Kinvara

  Kinvara Wives

  Kinvara Summer

  Kinvara Affairs

  STORM OVER RHANNA

  Christine Marion Fraser

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 1988 by Fontana

  A division of HarperCollinsPublishers

  This edition published in 2013 by Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © 1998 by Christine Marion Fraser

  The right of Christine Marion Fraser to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  eBook ISBN 978 1 444 76826 8

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.hodder.co.uk

  For Rhanna fans, old and new, this latest book is dedicated to you.

  Part One

  Christmas 1965

  Chapter One

  The Rev. Mark James arranged his long frame on the window seat of his study, lit his pipe and settled back to puff at it thoughtfully. His gaze roamed round the walls of his den, where hung some of his most treasured possessions. There were several lopsided child’s drawings, gloriously uninhibited creations that never failed to bring a smile to his strong, dark face. Smiling birds with clumping big feet, climbing merrily up perpendicular trees with not a foothold in sight; squinty-eyed brides teetering on impossibly high-heeled shoes; ships with tall funnels rearing into garishly coloured skies. All executed by the hand of a little girl now dead, each picture as gay and exuberant as her life had been. On the dark, panelled wood above the fireplace hung a framed mosaic of exquisitely hued sea shells fashioned into delicate flower and leaf patterns. His wife, Margaret, had collected them on their honeymoon, and as soon as they got home she had made the picture and proudly hung it on the wall above their bed.

  ‘It’s not the most artistic effort but each time we look at it we’ll remember the beginning of our life together.’

  He could see her face now, her smiling mouth, her eyes shining as she looked at him for approval. His heart twisted. She was gone now from his life, both she and his daughter Sharon, taken from him in a car accident that had wiped out their lives as if they had never been. Only memories were left, and sometimes he was afraid because in the secret recesses of his mind he couldn’t visualize his wife and daughter as clearly as he wished.

  Firelight flickered over the room, danced on the pictures, threw shadows over the faces of Sharon and Margaret looking out from their frames on the mantelpiece. His strong teeth bit into the stem of his pipe. Loneliness engulfed him. He knew a terrible longing for the happy sense of fulfilment that had once been his.

  Mark had been minister on Rhanna for over four years now and he had found a great deal of contentment in his new life, though more and more of late there had been a restlessness in him. He had tried to ward it off by immersing himself deeper into his work, but he found difficulty keeping his mind on it.

  The pages of his partially completed Sunday sermon were scattered about his desk – he couldn’t concentrate and he was angry at himself for being so weak as to want . . . to want things that were, with each passing day, becoming more and more out of his reach . . .

  Against his will his eyes were drawn to the window and he found himself gazing down towards Tigh na Cladach, Gaelic for the Shore House, a sturdy big place sitting on the machair above Burg Bay.

  This was the home of Doctor Megan Jenkins. From his study window the minister could see all the comings and goings to and from the front door which was on the sheltered side of the house facing the Hillock. Just then the door opened and the last of the morning patients went sprachling away in the direction of Portcull, body bent against the wind howling up from the sea.

  Mark James glimpsed Megan’s slender figure before the door was firmly shut and the house seemed to huddle into itself, reflecting an air of almost secretive aloofness to the world. It was as if it had absorbed the elusive nature of its newest owner, for there was a great aura of reserve about the young woman doctor who had come to the island two summers ago to take over the practice from Lachlan McLachlan, the man who had tended the population nearly all of his professional life.

  The minister’s firm jaw tightened. From the beginning he had liked Megan Jenkins – no, something much more than that. The more he had come to know her the greater had grown in him a yearning that wouldn’t be stilled. He recalled to mind how, after an initial slow start, their friendship had grown. In those early days he had done everything he could to make life easier for her in a strange place and in time they had become good neighbours, each day getting to know one another a little bit better. They had talked together, walked together, there had existed an easy rapport between them, they had discovered that they shared much in common, and then – foolishly – he had spoiled it all by letting her see that his feelings for her went far deeper than just friendship.

  She had withdrawn from him then. ‘Please, Mark,’ she had told him, ‘I’m not ready for anything of that sort – not yet – perhaps never. It might be better for both of us if we stopped seeing one another, that way neither of us will get hurt.’

  From that day she had avoided him and he cursed himself for having spoiled what they had, a platonic relationship would
have been better than this emptiness that was inside him whenever he thought of her.

  He sighed deeply and stared at the house. The smoke from its chimneys was blowing hither and thither in a gale force wind that was whipping the Sound of Rhanna to fury, Atlantic rollers were thundering to shore, bedraggled bundles of seaweed had come up with the tide to drape themselves over the walls surrounding the garden at the back of the house. To the left of the bay the almighty cliffs of Burg reared up, menacing and sheer, broken by yawning black caverns into which the sea spumed only to gush with terrific force out of spout holes atop the cliffs. Vertical pinnacles of glistening black rock rose up out of the sea in front of the caves, treacherous reefs spread spiky fingers out from the bastion of Burg and on a wild day like this it was an awesome sight to watch the ocean heaving round the jagged crags, and to hear it thundering into the caves.

  The minister could sit at his window for hours just watching the wonderful spectacle of a storm-lashed sea crashing over the skerries, but today he was in no mood to contemplate the wild grandeur before him. All his thoughts were centred on Megan, on how long it had been since he had had something resembling a conversation with her – and they were neighbours, dammit! The curse exploded inside his head. He couldn’t help it, he couldn’t! And yet he seemed to be the only one experiencing trouble getting through to her.

  At first Megan had found it hard going getting to know the canny islanders and their ways, the male population in particular finding it difficult to confide their most intimate medical problems to a woman after the easy rapport they had shared with Lachlan. In the case of the womenfolk it had been easier, many of them declaring that at long last they could discuss their feminine complaints without fear of embarrassment. To quote Kate McKinnon of Portcull, ‘There were times I would go to Lachlan wi’ a bum problem and end up showing him a skelf in my finger.’

  Yet, even though the women now found life easier as far as their personal troubles went, there were those among them who rejected the woman doctor merely because she was young, attractive, and as Behag Beag so succinctly put it, ‘fancy free’.

  People of Behag’s generation simply did not trust a doctor who could attract young, healthy men to her surgery ‘like flies to cow dung’ and with nothing more serious wrong with them than ‘hot breeks and an insatiable thirsting after passion’.

  ‘She looks as though butter wouldny melt in her mouth,’ sniffed Elspeth Morrison, whose years of allegiance to the McLachlan household had left her with the unshakeable opinion that the doctor had not yet been born to take Lachlan’s place. ‘But I know that sort only too well. Men and boys are no’ safe wi’ them and I for one wouldny like to see the kind o’ things that go on behind closed doors.’

  ‘Ach, blethers, you spiteful cailleach,’ Kate McKinnon hooted, ‘you would gie your left lug to see – ay – and maybe take part as well. You’re nothing but a frustrated auld yowe since your Hector went and drowned himself wi’ the drink.’

  ‘My Hector respected me as a woman,’ spluttered Elspeth in outrage, her bony, immobile face flushing crimson. ‘He was never that sort o’ man.’

  ‘No?’ taunted a delighted Kate. ‘What way was it then that every time he came home from the sea your wash line just about broke itself wi’ the weight o’ the sheets hangin’ on it – ay – and maybe a dozen pairs o’ your breeks keepin’ them company. Hector might no’ have been much to look at but he had his passions like any man, and wi’ him being away so often he was just burstin’ to spend them on someone.’

  ‘You’re an evil-minded woman, Kate McKinnon, that you are,’ gritted Elspeth through tight lips. ‘Dinna judge everybody like yourself – it’s no sheets and a bed for you. I’ve seen you and that Tam wi’ my very own eyes, rolling in the heather – just like a couple o’ heathens.’

  ‘Ach well, I’m no’ mindin’ what anybody says about Doctor Megan,’ declared Tina stoutly, her plump, good-natured face taking on a determined expression. ‘My Eve works to the doctor and a nicer, kindlier body you couldny meet anywhere. Fine I know it myself too for she was that good to Matthew’s mother when she near died wi’ ’flu at the start o’ winter. In every day she was and no’ just a quick look either. On the bed she sat, homely as you like, cracking wi’ Grannie Ann in the Gaelic and even accepting thon awful cough sweeties Granda John buys in Merry Mary’s and keeps in his pooch beside his baccy. No, Doctor Megan’s a good lassie and clever too. She has a way wi’ the auld folk that’s a fair treat to see and I for one will no’ hear an ill word spoken against her.’

  And that was the opinion of the majority of the islanders. Everybody had come to like and respect the new doctor. She had arrived on the island with a fair knowledge of the Gaelic language and had made it her business to nurture it so that now the old Gaels felt perfectly at ease in her company, while everyone else allowed their natural reserve to thaw bit by bit and even to address her as ‘Doctor Megan’ rather than the more formal ‘Doctor Jenkins’ as it had been in the beginning.

  Only Mark James felt excluded from her life and yet he was her nearest neighbour, the man who had fetched and carried peat, water, and coal for her when she was so strange and new settling into the big old house by the sea.

  The door of the study opened and Tina came in, her plump cheeks flushed from the heat of the stove, her fine hair hanging in untidy loops about her ears, for no matter how often she tied it into a bun it invariably escaped the carelessly applied kirby grips.

  ‘You’ve put your feets up and are havin’ a wee rest, I see,’ she observed, gazing languidly at the untidy array of papers on the desk. ‘A good thing too, you work far too hard as a rule and too much o’ that is no good for anybody.’

  Tina herself had her own methods for coping with work, her idea of cleaning the Manse floors being to slop a soapy mop around the kitchen to the accompaniment of a Gaelic air, sung untunefully but sweetly in her slow, throaty voice. When dusting or polishing she would trail a rag along a chosen route with her nose buried in a woman’s magazine or one of the romantic novels she devoured so avidly, lips moving, eyes goggling as some sensual scene unfolded before her vision.

  The minister had no complaints. Her presence in his home never intruded into his life, be he relaxing or working. Her easygoing attitude to almost everything she tackled suited him well, and she more than made up for her shortcomings by producing excellent meals for the Manse table. True the food was of the plain variety, unimaginative in the extreme but nevertheless tasty and palatable, and though never ready at the same time from one day to the next that never bothered him as he was a man who rebelled against set times and rules in his own home.

  He and Tina suited one another. He would listen patiently to all her small domestic problems and in return she protected both him and his interests in her own quiet but oddly determined way.

  Scliffing over to the window in a pair of down-at-heel boots she observed, ‘There’s my Eve coming from Doctor Megan’s house. She’ll have got through her chores early wi’ her goin’ to the Christmas bazaar in Portcull. I know fine she’s meeting young Calum Gillies over there.’ She smiled indulgently. ‘She’s an awful lass for the boys is our Eve. Mind you, she’s nearly twenty-six now and it’s high time she was thinkin’ o’ settling down but ach, it’s natural for the young ones to have their fling first, and Eve has never caused me or Matthew a minute’s worry in that respect for she knows how to look after herself. Auld Mirabelle who worked to Laigmhor aye used to warn me to keep my hand on my halfpenny and I just gave Eve the same advice.’

  The minister’s lips twitched. Tina was always coming away with some quaint observation or other and was perfectly frank in discussing the facts of life with him.

  Her eyes roved gently back to Tigh na Cladach and she emitted a small, somewhat calculated sigh. ‘It seems an awful waste – Doctor Megan down there on her own and you up here on yours and you such close neighbours too. You could save yourself a bittie money if you were both under the one roof,
and though it would mean either myself or Eve losin’ out on a job it would be worth it – ay it would.’

  ‘But Tina,’ objected Mark James, ‘just think what the island would have to say about that.’

  ‘Ach, I don’t mean living in sin!’ Her guileless eyes were round at the very idea. ‘Oh no, never that and you a man o’ God wi’ your reputation to protect. I’m surprised at you, Mr James, for even thinkin’ the thing. No, you and the doctor are both respected members o’ the community and anything o’ that nature would have to be done right and proper . . .’ She let the words trail off and wandered to the fire to give it a desultory poke and place another lump of peat on the glowing embers. ‘You see and keep warm now, you’ve no’ been lookin’ too good this whilie back – as if there was something worrying you and you canny be yourself for thinkin’ about it. There’s plenty peats in the pail in the scullery and while I’m mindin’, your dinner’s ready and keeping warm in the oven.’

  Absent-mindedly she flicked her apron over a dusty patch on the mantelpiece before meandering to the door. ‘I’ll away home and get my own dinner and I’ll be seeing you later at the bazaar. I’ve made a nice meat pie for your tea – all you have to do is heat it up.’ She went into the hall, turning to add as an afterthought, ‘There’s enough in the ashet for two – it’s no’ easy filling a dish for just one.’

  Mark James chuckled as he got up. ‘Thank you, Tina, if I can’t eat it all I’m sure Mutt and the cats will help me finish it. You go away now and get your own meal and don’t be rushing over here too early in the morning.’

  It was a palpable overstatement. The only time anyone had ever seen Tina rushing was to the wee hoosie after she had eaten too much spring rhubarb. There was no set time for her morning arrival at the Manse, that being determined by how early or how late she had seen her own family fed and catered for. She departed into the wild day leaving the minister to make his way through to the warm, roomy kitchen with its Welsh dresser, huge oaken sideboard, big shabby armchairs, and dark refectory table rung round with tapestry-covered chairs so threadbare it was difficult to make out the once rich patterns.