Stranger on Rhanna Read online

  ‘I don’t in the least bit mind you going to collect your tubes.’

  His voice was deep, soothing, his English perfect with only a slight but pleasing hint of foreign accent. There was no change of expression when he spoke the words but Megan got the distinct impression that he had appreciated her light-hearted chatter and was actually enjoying the experience of motoring through Glen Fallan in a cramped little Mini.

  But he said nothing more. His eyes were on the hills, raking the landscape, craning his neck to get a better view of the soaring peaks rising sheer on either side. Floating wraiths of mist curled into the blue corries, the hill burns meandered amongst the hillocks, glinting in the sun as they wound their way in and out, down, down, to splash over boulders and in amongst rocks till finally you could hear the purl and music of them as they fell and tumbled into the River Fallan far below.

  Fergus McKenzie of the Glen was striding over the lower slopes of Ben Machrie with Lorn, his son, running along in front, throwing out whistled instructions to a black and white Border Collie who was gathering the hill ewes, bringing them down to the fields in time for lambing.

  Dodie, the island eccentric, was making his purposeful way down to the village of Portcull, a tiny white lamb tucked under each arm. Grinning from ear to ear, he was obviously extremely happy, for he normally wore a perpetually mournful expression, and only a chosen few had ever actually heard him laughing aloud, which was as well, because it was a sound that resembled a rusty hacksaw grinding through wood.

  Seeing the red Mini, he scrunched to a halt in the middle of the road and, holding up the lambs, he waved them around like little white flags.

  ‘Doctor Megan! Doctor Megan!’ he yelled joyfully. ‘Look and see what Croynachan is after giving me!’

  The old eccentric was either losing his mind altogether or else he placed great trust in Megan’s abilities as a driver. For the second time that afternoon and with a muffled curse, she rammed her foot on the brake pedal, an action which caused the car to waltz round in a semi-circle before it came to rest just inches from a ditch.

  Furiously she wound down her window and poked her head out.

  ‘Dodie!’ she yelled, forgetting Herr Klebb, forgetting everything in her fright and fury. ‘What are you thinking of, stopping me like that! I could have killed you!’

  Dodie galloped up to gaze at her in some bemusement. An elongated drip adhered to the end of his nose; the large, hairy ears that stuck out from his frayed cloth cap were purple with the cold; his big, callused hands were raw and red in the bite of the wind whistling down through the glen; the threadbare coat that covered his stooped, bony frame would have shamed a tinker and he was altogether inadequately dressed for the breezily fresh March day. The islanders regularly gave him gloves and scarves and other items of warm clothing which delighted him for a time before he mislaid them or lost them or used the coats and jackets as bedcoverings and sometimes even as blankets to tie round his beloved cow, Ealasaid, to keep her warm in her winter byre.

  The older he got the more pronounced were his eccentricities, but he was sublimely happy these days, as Scott Balfour, the laird, had recently re-housed him in a sturdy croft cottage on the outskirts of Portcull. There he kept his hens and his cow, tended his flower and vegetable gardens, and was extremely contented with his lot. But the wanderlust was still in him and quite often he took it into his head to roam his old haunts, shanks’s pony being the only mode of travel he had ever known and was ever likely to know, for he mistrusted anything on wheels. It was, therefore, all the more surprising that he had forced Megan to stop her car in such a dangerous fashion.

  ‘I could have killed you, Dodie,’ she repeated in subdued tones. More shaken than angry now, she was aware of the fact that Herr Otto Klebb was receiving some very peculiar impressions in his first minutes on a remote Hebridean island, even though he said nothing and appeared not to be the least surprised by his informal introduction to a Rhanna native in the somewhat misshapen shape of old Dodie.

  ‘Ach, no, you wouldny do that, Doctor Megan.’ Dodie met her words with conviction. ‘Tis your place to heal people, no’ to kill them.’

  ‘Really?’ Megan said faintly.

  ‘Ay, you know that as well as me and I only stopped you because o’ these.’ Impatiently he indicated the newborn lambs in his arms. ‘One o’ Croynachan’s yowes gave birth to them on the hill and she died even before they could suckle. All the Johnsons but one are in bed wi’ the flu, and Archie is too busy to feed these wee lambs. He said I could keep them if they lived and I’m feart they’ll die on me if they don’t get warmed and fed soon.’ Awkwardly he shuffled his large, wellington-clad feet. ‘I was wondering, seeing as how you stopped your motor car for me, if you would maybe give me a wee run home in it.’

  The enormity of the request appeared to nonplus him for a moment and two spots of red burned brightly in each ruddy, wizened cheek.

  Without ado, Megan righted her car and got out to push forward her seat and bundle him into the cramped and congested space at the back. Halfway inside he remembered his manners and gazing at the front-seat passenger with his guileless green eyes he murmured courteously, ‘Tha brèeah.’

  In exasperation Megan gave his rickety backside a none too gentle push and without ceremony he collapsed into the back of the car, his long, ungainly legs splayed untidily against the front seats.

  ‘Tha brèeah!’ he repeated, breathlessly but stubbornly.

  ‘Yes, indeed.’ Herr Klebb felt moved to make some form of reply although he had no earthly idea what the Gaelic salutation conveyed.

  ‘It’s Dodie’s way of saying “a fine day”, Megan explained automatically. ‘Rain or shine, the day is fine to Dodie’s way of thinking. You’ll come across a good deal of Gaelic on Rhanna, the old folk speak it freely while the young ones pretend not to understand even though many of them can converse fluently in both Gaelic and English.’

  ‘And you understand what they’re saying?’

  ‘Yes, I knew a bit when I came to Rhanna and I’m learning more and more as time goes by . . . Oh’ – her hand flew to her mouth – ‘I just remembered . . .’

  ‘You have to call in at some house to collect your tubes.’

  Megan glanced at Herr Klebb. His face had remained straight but his eyes were twinkling and she smiled in appreciation of his quick wit. Some of the tension she had felt in his company left her – but there was still that sense of being in a Presence. She was suddenly glad that Dodie was there in the back seat, where the motion of the wheels held him spellbound in a combination of silent fear and fascination, while the waves of unsavoury odours that emanated from his unwashed person let no one forget his presence.

  ‘Dodie,’ said Megan faintly, ‘only last week I gave you a big bar of carbolic soap. Haven’t you found a use for it yet?’

  Dodie snuggled the lambs closer to his bony bosom, sublimely immune, as he always was, to any innuendo cast at his lack of hygiene. ‘Ay, indeed, it was a fine present and just the thing I was needin’ for my squeaky door hinges. I just rubbed it all over them and they have never given me any bother since.’

  Megan gave up; she put her foot on the accelerator and the little red Mini fairly hurtled along to Murdy’s house where she hastily collected her ‘tubes’ before depositing Dodie at the gate of Croft Beag inside whose portals half a dozen cockerels crowed and strutted and generally created bedlam in the once peaceful village outskirts.

  A white net curtain fluttered in the window of Wullie McKinnon’s croft which was situated close to that of Dodie’s. A cacophony of cockerel voices blasted the air. Wullie appeared at his door, shaking his fist in the direction of Croft Beag. An oblivious Dodie disappeared into his house, intent only on tending his newborn lambs.

  ‘The noise of these creatures drives that gentleman crazy,’ observed Herr Klebb unsmilingly.

  Megan did smile, but only at the idea of rough and ready Wullie McKinnon being referred to as a gentleman. With few
exceptions, that particular McKinnon family were renowned for their blunt tongues and vigorous approach to life’s situations, and Wullie had been endowed with his fair share of the family traits.

  But Megan didn’t enlarge on the subject, it would never do to divulge too many of the islanders’ little foibles to a newcomer. Until she knew a little more about Herr Otto Klebb, he was very decidedly a stranger on Rhanna, and with his dour demeanour and withdrawn manner she had the feeling that he would most likely remain so throughout his stay on the island.

  Chapter Three

  Erchy came puffing into the Post Office with the mail, which he dumped unceremoniously behind the counter, much to Totie’s annoyance for, no matter how often she told him not to, he always placed the bulky sacks where she would be most likely to trip over them.

  ‘Erchy,’ she said sternly, ‘how many times do I have to tell you about these sacks? Only the other day I nearly broke my toe on them.’

  He paid no heed, instead he ran his fingers through his sparse sandy hair in a characteristic gesture and intoned importantly, ‘A stranger has arrived on Rhanna, he came on the boat and went away in Doctor Megan’s motor car.’

  ‘Strangers on Rhanna are nothing new,’ Totie snorted sarcastically. ‘They come and they go, just like the tide.’

  ‘But this one really is a stranger,’ Erchy insisted enigmatically, ‘and forbye that he is foreign. You can aye tell the foreigners: they stand outside o’ themselves – like ghosts.’

  ‘Here, I saw him too.’ Todd the Shod, the island blacksmith, was licking stamps with gusto and slapping them on the letters that his wife Mollie had instructed him to post. ‘A big chiel wi’ a beard and queer, staring eyes that fair gave a body the creeps. He threw me a look that would have withered a rose when I accidentally knocked against him as he was walking to the doctor’s motor car.’

  ‘I noticed the man as well,’ volunteered Donald, the young grieve of Laigmhor. ‘Fergus asked me to go down to the pier to collect some new calves and I saw this stranger coming down the plank. I noticed him because o’ his coat, it had curly grey collars on it and there was money stamped all over him.’

  For a few moments Totie digested the various pieces of information before saying heavily, ‘Erchy, I shouldn’t ask because I know fine I’ll get a daft answer, but what similarity is there between ghosts and foreigners?’

  ‘Och, Totie, surely you know that.’ Erchy sounded surprised at her obtuseness. ‘Tis aye the way o’ it, they look as if one half o’ them is all dour and disinterested while the other half is watching and observing everything that is going on.’

  The doorbell jangled to admit Behag Beag, the Ex-Postmistress of Portcull, as she liked to call herself. When she introduced herself as such to tourists she made it sound like an honorary title endowed with capital letters, for that was how she saw it in her own mind. In she briskly came to dump her message bag on the counter and ask for a packet of envelopes, her quick, beady eyes darting suspiciously hither and thither before coming disdainfully to rest on the arrangement of Post Office material on the counter.

  Totie was convinced that the old woman only deigned to enter the premises in order to silently criticise and as a result Totie was always on her guard where Behag was concerned.

  ‘We have a stranger – a stranger on Rhanna,’ Behag announced to no one in particular, the pendulous folds of her wizened jowls fairly quivering with each movement of her palsied head. ‘I saw him, wi’ my very own een, getting into the doctor’s motor and driving away in the direction o’ Glen Fallan.’

  ‘Ach, that was only to collect her tubes,’ Erchy put in knowingly. ‘She left them wi’ Murdy and God only knows what he did wi’ them while she was away at the pier.’

  Totie ignored this and leaned her arms comfortably on the counter, an action which incited tight-lipped disapproval in Behag, as never, never, in all her years as Postmistress of Portcull, had she ever allowed herself such levity from the business side of the establishment.

  ‘Fancy, a stranger,’ Totie said sweetly, ‘getting into the doctor’s car – you’ll be telling us next that he threw his arms around her and kissed her in full view o’ the village.’

  ‘Mrs Donaldson!’ an outraged Behag protested. ‘There is no need to go that far! The man only got into her motor car and never put a finger on her – as far as I could see.’

  ‘He’s a foreigner,’ Erchy emphasized cryptically. ‘Thon kind o’ folk are consumed wi’ all sorts o’ queer passions. Maybe he did kiss her for all we know – when no one was looking that is,’ he quickly added at sight of Totie’s somewhat fierce expression.

  ‘Ay, and he’s staying at Tigh na Cladach,’ Tam McKinnon, coming in at that moment with his son, Wullie, promptly entered into the conversation with all the ease of a born-and-bred islander for whom gossip and speculation were second nature. ‘I saw the smoke pouring from the chimney as I was passing and the next minute there was the doctor’s motor stoppin’ at the gate and this big, hairy chiel getting out.’

  ‘Here – talking o’ smoke,’ Wullie exclaimed, noisily wiping his nose with the back of one large, red hand, ‘last night I was going past An Cala on my bike and though it was dark I was sure I saw the smell o’ peat smoke. I had a mind to go and see was there anybody in but there were no lights on, only a soft wee keek o’ pale darkness at the window that was likely just the sea reflectin’ on the panes. Anyway, Mairi was waitin’ wi’ my supper and I just went on my way.’

  He had added the last part hastily, ashamed to admit that he had been too nervous to investigate the deserted-looking crofthouse sitting lonely and silent on the cliffs above Mara Òran Bay.

  ‘You saw the smell o’ peat smoke?’ Totie repeated with a flaring of her strongly chiselled nostrils. ‘Wullie, I know fine you’ve aye been bothered wi’ your nose but surely it’s time you saw a doctor about your eyes as well – if only to report that the Lord made a miracle when he made you.’

  Wullie looked sheepish. ‘Ach, Totie, you know what I mean, it’s only my way o’ speakin’. But I did smell the smoke, my nose wasny lyin’, nor were my eyes – there was a keek o’ light at the windows.’

  Behag’s head fairly wobbled on her scrawny shoulders and she said in a voice full of meaning, ‘A foreign stranger on Rhanna and thon Rachel Jodl back on the island – sneakin’ back without a word to anybody. She must meet a lot o’ they continental people on her travels. Maybe the pair o’ them have arranged to be on the island at the same time and each pretendin’ that they don’t know the other is there.’

  ‘Och, c’mon now, Behag,’ Todd said reasonably, his round, cheery face looking serious for once. ‘There is no need to go that far, and it might no’ be Rachel that is back, it could just as easily be Jon.’

  ‘No, it will be Rachel,’ Behag stated with conviction. ‘She aye did behave in a strange sort o’ way, I used to get the shivers up my spine when she looked at me wi’ thon black, glittering eyes o’ hers. There’s gypsy blood in her and no mistake, she would put a curse on you as soon as look at you . . .’

  Tam glared at her. ‘I will be reminding you, Behag, that it is my granddaughter that you are speaking about: a bonny, proud lassie who just happened to be born with powers that only sensitive folks like myself can understand. Not only that, she has a talent on her the likes o’ which this island has never known and is never likely to know again. Oh, ay, she might no be able to speak through her mouth but she does it wi’ her violin, music that might have been composed in heaven itself, so beautiful is the voice o’ it.’

  It was a profound speech for good-natured, easy-going Tam; Behag had the grace to look ashamed while everyone else nodded their agreement at his words.

  ‘As for you’ – Tam spun round to glower at Wullie – ’tis ashamed I am just that a son o’ mine should come into a place like this to spread gossip about his very own niece and with no more than a flimsy bit peat smoke to go on.’

  Wullie grew bright red and fiercely wiped aw
ay a second drip that had gathered on the end of his nose. ‘Ach, Father, I didny mean anything when I said I thought Rachel was home.’ He rubbed his fingers into eyes that were somewhat red-rimmed. ‘I don’t rightly know what I’m thinkin’ these days. These cockerels o’ Dodie’s are drivin’ me daft altogether. He just won’t shut them in at night and the whole six o’ them are blastin’ away at all hours o’ the morning. I’m useless without my proper sleep and if something isny done soon I swear I’ll go in there and shoot the whole buggering lot o’ them.’

  It was the cue everyone needed to turn the talk away from Rachel and the stranger, even though Totie was bristling at hearing Tam refer to her Post Office as ‘a place like this’, as if he was talking about a den of darkest iniquity.

  With the greatest of enthusiasm everyone began sympathizing with Wullie over the subject of Dodie’s cockerels whose loud, raucous crowing echoed through the village from dawn till dusk. Several of Dodie’s neighbours were affected by the noise but Wullie and Mairi McKinnon, whose croft was right next to Dodie’s, suffered the most. At his previous abode, buried in the hills, the old eccentric had been accustomed to doing as he pleased. Because he could never bring himself to kill anything, his hens had proliferated without bothering anyone, but things were different now that he lived in the village and a state of war existed between Dodie and his nearest neighbours which perplexed both parties a great deal, as hitherto they had enjoyed a friendly relationship.

  Behag wasn’t particularly interested in the chatter about Dodie’s cockerels. Her attention strayed and her inquisitive eyes probed the narrow bit of window space above the fluted, flower-patterned curtain.

  Flowers! In the Post Office window. Really! That Totie had no earthly idea of what was right for premises such as these. In her day, good, sensible nets had served their purpose well and they had lasted for years. Flowers, indeed, faded ones at that – dingy with dust, cobwebs old and new adhering to the corners – and – was that a clumsily stitched tear carelessly concealed by a glass jar of aniseed balls?