Land of Heart's Desire (6 page)

“Your time will come.” The pale, almost opaque blue eyes under their grey, beetling brows went beyond her for a moment. “It will come sooner than you believe,” he added in the voice of prophecy which no one on Croma had ever dared to refute. “You will shoulder a great responsibility and know a great love. That will sustain you, even if everything else should fail.”

She waited, hoping for more, but Callum rose and led the way back along the shore. They stood at his cottage door, feeding the gulls and laughing at the antics of the busy little puffins crowding the rocks beneath them. Christine could not forget the prophecy Callum had made, although she knew that he would not refer to it again. She was free to accept or reject it at will.

After a while he walked back along the narrow cliff path with her. It was so close to the edge of the sea that she wondered if Callum was really safe, living here alone with the affliction of his blindness to contend with, but he knew every step of the way. This was his place and he would not leave it. She knew that as surely as she knew that he would never leave Croma itself.

In the gently-fading light, with his almost sightless eyes turned to the west, the old man seemed part of another world, the vast, hidden world of the Nameless Ones where he alone might walk with impunity.

The world about them was very still, with rock and cliff and pinnacle hanging reversed in the waveless sea. Slowly the sky turned from turquoise and flame to the pale, still yellow of the gloaming hour. The light was like some unearthly illumination as it hovered on the distant horizon’s rim where it would linger, arrested, all through the short summer night, fading to a thin opalescent glow when all that the Islands knew of darkness crept over the west. Callum would go to bed by its light, scorning the lamps which he never lit till the long winter set in, and Christine knew a strange reluctance to turn away from its peace and beauty.

They walked in silence to the end of the bay, standing arrested, of a sudden, to look out towards the west, to the distant horizon where a vague and shadowy shape seemed to materialize out of nowhere even as they watched.

Her breath held, her eyes slowly dilating, Christine watched it take on the outline of a ship—a Viking ship, with a white, billowing sail. As they stood there, transfixed, it seemed to come slowly towards them, graceful and unhurried on the incoming tide, its sail slowly flushing to a faint, warm pink as the afterglow caught it in a noose of light.

Reaching out, Christine grasped her companion’s arm. “Look!” she whispered. “Callum—look!”

He turned towards her, searching her face.

“What is it you see?” he asked.

“The Viking Ship!” Her lips would scarcely frame the words, but when she looked back towards the sea the ship had gone. “It was there,” she said unevenly, “a moment ago—”

For a split second Callum did not answer her, and then he said in an ordinary voice:

“If you look again you will see that it was no more than a cloud—an evening cloud, riding away to the west.”

She could see that now, but she also knew about the old superstition, still firmly accepted on the island. The Viking Ship had been seen before. It was the sure premonition of death. “Callum!” she cried passionately, “why do we believe these things? Who is to die before the moon is full again? Who is the ship to come back for—and sail away for ever?”

He led her to the edge of the moor road that went back to Erradale House.

“You are not to distress yourself,” he said. “You have seen that it is only a cloud.”

“I suppose it was foolish of me,” she admitted, trying to smile. “Callum, when you go to the shore again will you try to find me some of your stones? We used to collect them for you when we. were children, remember? We made work-boxes, sticking them on the lid between the shells. I would like to make one for my grandmother—”

He nodded his white head as she walked away.

“Yes,” he said. “I will find them for you, so that you can make your gift without delay.”

CHAPTER III

For
several days after her visit to Callum of the Second Sight Christine contented herself with various tasks about the house, mostly connected with her own coming-of-age. Her birthday was to be the occasion for a general celebration at Erradale and her grandmother planned a dinner and dance for the evening. People from the mainland were to be invited and put up for the night afterwards, so that there was a good deal of ordering to do and an allocating of rooms which did not prove too easy.

They were more than glad, therefore, when Jane Nicholson answered their appeal for help by return of post, saying that she would reach the island before the following week-end.

“Which means she’ll be coming on Friday,” Christine said, going in search of Rory to break the news to him.

He was helping to dip sheep in the pens halfway up the glen, and she stood watching as the struggling ewes were forced down the narrow gangway and through the tank. In that moment, and perhaps for the first time, she was aware of the strength of Rory’s curiously shaped hands and the power of his short, thickly-set body as he bent to his task. Then he looked up and smiled at her, as a child might smile. There was none of the dark bitterness in his face which had been there that first day of her homecoming, and he seemed content.

Content to work for her? She supposed that was what it amounted to. “Rory,” she called to him, “Jane’s coming!”

He called something back, which she did not hear, and when the last ewe was safely through the tank he dried his great hands on the rough towel lying over the fence and came towards her.

“I’m glad,” he said. “I’m glad she’s coming. Jane isn’t happy where she is. Edinburgh isn’t the sort of place she would ever take to.”

“I wish there was something she could do here,” Christine said, “but there’s so little to offer, Rory. All the young people have gone from the island. The work they need and the life they, want are to be found elsewhere.”

“If the weaving was started again,” he said abruptly, “there might be something for them to do. But, up here, there aren’t enough sheep.”

“We can’t afford any more,” she said. “At least, I don’t think so.” She looked about her at the sparse flock scattered on the adjoining hillsides and at the ewes huddled in the. drying pens. “It would be a risk to buy any more, I expect.”

“Not if we could take them across the causeway,” Rory said. “There’s rich grazing land over there that hasn’t been in proper use for years.”

“We couldn’t afford to rent it.” Her mouth was suddenly tight. “And we couldn’t ask for concessions, Rory. Not from a stranger.”

“No,” he said, “I suppose not,” and turned away.

Christine walked on, wondering why he had mentioned the land on the south side of the ford which had so recently belonged to his own family. The high cliff pasturage was no use for a dairy herd and very little use for cattle of any sort, but it would be ideal for the sturdy little black-faced sheep they reared here in the north of Croma. They would have thrived on it, and more sheep would mean more wool, and more wool...

Her eyes had the distant look of a dreamer’s as she walked rapidly towards the cliff, and as always her impulsive thoughts ran ahead of her. They were thoughts of Croma now as she looked into the island’s more prosperous past.

Long ago there had been a tweed mill on the island and the local cloth had sold at a handsome profit. It had been enough to sustain life for several weavers and their families, and as a child she had watched the spinning and dyeing of the wool with an excitement which came back vividly now as she thought of it. She remembered how she had listened to the weavers as they had sat at their hand looms or sang the waulking songs out on the
machar
on a bright spring morning with the
crotal
gathered and the smell of peat smoke in the air.

It was all so clear, yet it had all died on the island before she had really grown up. People had gone away, the younger people they needed most.

Walking on, she followed the narrow cliff path for over a mile, with all the wide panorama of the western seaboard at her feet. It was a clear day and she could see the outer islands dotted along the horizon like a phantom armada drifting idly in the sun. There was no reason for her to turn back, no urgent demand on her time, as there would surely be in a day or two, so that she walked leisurely, finding herself, at last, within sight of the ford and the causeway which divided north from south.

The tide was out and the narrow neck of land glistened in the sun. How often she had run across it, skipping lightly from one sea-worn stone to the next, aware of the tide’s swift challenge as it came slowly in again!

In those days Scoraig and Ardtornish had been her second home.

Impulsively, unthinkingly, she ran down the path and out on to the causeway. It was broken and dangerous in places, but she did not notice. The years seemed to be slipping away from her and she knew a child-like abandonment to adventure. When she had missed the tide in the old days she had stayed at Scoraig overnight, sure of her welcome at Ardtornish House whenever she liked to go there.

Shining back from the wet patches of stone, the sun was dazzlingly bright and the water was very blue. The world seemed particularly her own, wide and stretching away endlessly on either side. For a moment she paused, looking back, but there was no consciousness of trespass in her heart. It was a day to be alone, with the sea birds and the high winds and the white clouds circling round Askaval!

Once more she was running, with the wind in her hair and the salt tang of spray on her lips. The tide was out and the white sand was jewelled with pools, left
behind by
the sea. In them were a million treasures—sea-anemones and delicately-tinted shells and little scuttling white crabs—and above them the gulls circled, crying endlessly. Far up on the cliff top the grass was very green.

There was a path up there, a right of way to Scoraig village, which went close along the edge of the cliff, high and free above the rocks two hundred feet below. When they were children, to sit up there had been like being on the prow of a ship.

She reached the other side of the ford. It was years since she had come this way to Scoraig, but nothing had changed. Each curve of the path was known to her, each breathtaking view that met her by the way.

Clambering across the rocks, she found the path which led upwards towards the cliff. It had been little used, she supposed, since the new road had been made, the road that went straight across the fields to Scoraig. In an hour, if she had been going to Ardtornish House to visit the Nicholsons as she had done so often in the past, she could be in the Ardtornish policies.

She thought of the new owner of Ardtornish and dismissed him summarily from her mind. It was not a day for conflicts or even for doubts about the impulses of the past. It was a day to walk and be free, with the wind blowing strongly against you as the path rose steeply to the summit of the headland—

And stopped abruptly! She found herself confronted by a barred stile and a notice bearing the bold, black lettering NO ROAD.

For several minutes she stared at the sign in bewilderment, which was swiftly followed by incredulity. No road? But there always had been a road along the cliff, right round the island. It was an ancient right of way whose origin went back hundreds of years, so that no one really knew who had granted it in the first place—Nicholsons or MacNeills.

And now there was a notice which said, quite baldly, that the well-worn path was closed.

She could not believe it, and for a moment longer she continued to stare. She knew, without doubt, who had put the notice up there and barred the stile.

Overwhelming anger took possession of her. How dared he do such a thing! It had never been done before, and for a complete stranger to walk in and bar the whole population of Croma from a favourite walk was insufferable. Finlay Sutherland had no more right to erect that notice board than she had to close the facilities of Port-na-Keal to the handful of fishermen who still used it. They were the islanders’ rights. The very term accentuated the fact. A public right of way—a path over which no one had absolute control!

He must not be allowed to do it! Without stopping to think, without taking any other factor into consideration, she marched angrily on up the path until she reached the offending notice and, without a moment’s hesitation, tore down the warning and dropped it on the turf beside the stile.

The stile itself was no obstacle to her. She negotiated it easily and strode on to the top of the cliff. How dared he! she fumed. Did he honestly think he could do these things and get away with them, even if he had bought Ardtornish a thousand times over? This was the road MacNeills had taken to Scoraig for hundreds of years!

“Hi, there!”

The sound of a human voice was the last thing she had expected to hear. She half turned and saw him, but already she had determined not to stop. Had he been waiting—spying—to make sure that the entire populace of the island obeyed his arbitrary command?

Finlay Sutherland hailed her for a second time. His voice was sharper now, less friendly, and he strode swiftly across the field where he had been re-loading his gun. She wondered vaguely if he would shoot to kill.

But this was really no laughing matter. She meant to show him in no uncertain manner that he couldn’t do as he liked on Croma.

“Come back! Hi, there, you little fool! Come back!”

The words, carried clearly on the wind, stung her, but she would not wait. He had no right, either, to treat her like an erring child. Little fool, indeed!

Her breath began to come more quickly as she increased her pace, walking rapidly uphill. It would be undignified to run, she decided, but she meant to let him see that she had no intention of turning back.

It was then that she realized that he was running. He had dropped his gun and vaulted the stile before she had quite reached the cliff face, and he was close behind her when she turned round to accuse him.

They were both breathing hard, but instead of the anger which she had expected to see in his green eyes there was insistency and what might have been the reflection of fear.

He did not speak. Perhaps he knew that she was going to argue, to make a scene, so instead he bundled her into his arms and marched with her back along the narrow pathway to the stile.

Before he put her down on the far side she had a moment’s awful fear that he was about to put her over his knee and smack her soundly, as if she had indeed been a disobedient, wilful child. His green eyes were blazing with anger now and his firm mouth was grimly compressed. Then, as if he had seen a suddenly amusing side to the situation, he laughed.

“I’ve never wished for a hairbrush more in all my life!” he said.

He was still holding her firmly by the arms, and he shook her scornfully before he let her go.

Dazed and bewildered by the rapid turn of events, she could do nothing but stare back at him, hating him for the swift humiliation he had thrust upon her, for the way in which he had taken the law into his own hands for a second time.

“You’re a—barbarian!” she fumed.

“And you are a minx—nothing more, nothing less,” he told her calmly, picking up his gun.

“I’m not a child!” she protested angrily. “And that path is a public one. You had no right to close it—no right whatever! There’s been a cliff road round the island for hundreds of years. It goes through MacNeill property, too, and I defy you to restrict it for any whim of your own!”

The laughter died out of his eyes as swiftly as it had come. Without speaking, without stooping to argument, he took her firmly by the elbow and led her forcibly back down the path towards the shore.

Above them as they walked the high red cliff scowled down, like beetling brows arched above a rugged face, but here and there great gaps had been torn in it close under the headland. In places the turf and loosening earth of the cliff top overhung as much as two or three yards; in others there was an ugly bite where erosion had already completed its sinister work.

And the path she had been about to take went close to the cliff edge right along the undermined section of treacherous green turf. At any moment, with her added weight to give it impetus, the whole loosening structure might have plunged headlong to the rocks two hundred feet or more below.

Sickened by the very thought, she shivered and closed her eyes. What a fool she had been! What a reckless, irresponsible fool!

“What must you think of me?” she said involuntarily, not looking at her companion. “I had no idea—”

“I’m sure you hadn’t,” he answered crisply. “But the path has been creeping steadily nearer to the cliff edge for years. Until I can flatten out a new one, I have to leave that notice up. Perhaps,” he added thoughtfully, “I might have worded it better. What would you have said?”

She was still suffering from reaction. Her nerves were jarred and her voice was not quite steady when she said: “Does it matter? We will have to accustom ourselves to your blunt behaviour, Mr. Sutherland, so one notice, more or less, can’t make a great deal of difference.”

“Look here,” he challenged immediately, “is that quite fair?”

She knew that it wasn’t, that she ought to apologize at once, but his summary treatment of her up there on the cliff still rankled. Any dignity which she might have hung on to had been lost and she had not been able to clutch it back.

“It is a bit below the belt, you know,” he pointed out. “It’s quite true that I could have said ‘Danger: this path closed temporarily because of erosion’, but there wasn’t time for that. I came along here a couple of days ago and saw the state things were in and that was the first notice I could lay my hands on. In Canada we wouldn’t think twice about a thing like that,” he added thoughtfully.
“If a road’s closed we accept the fact. It’s bound to be closed for a reason.”