Island of Wings (16 page)

As soon as the couple were married they were followed out of the kirk by a procession of their kin. The young people were chanting and cheering as they returned to the village in anticipation of the feast. The MacKenzies returned alone to the manse and put the children to bed. After some time, the governor of the feast, Calum's brother Aonghas, arrived to invite the manse-folk to the feast. He had sewn a patch of white cloth to each shoulder to signify epaulettes and a patch to the front of his cap. These insignia showed that he was to lead the feasting. As the MacKenzies entered the house of the feast they found most of the adult village men seated on the floor with a table of planks before them. The livestock had been moved out to make space for all the guests. One end of the table was raised higher and placed before a chest to which the minister and his wife were led. Next to them and opposite each other sat the newly married couple. Three plates had been placed on the boards in front of the minister and his wife. One contained the boiled mutton, another one the barley bread and the third some cheeses saved from the summer. Across the long table similar crude planks with food had been distributed, but there was no soup or drink to wash down the food. The minister said grace, after which everyone ate greedily without talking much. Once the men had finished their food there was a bit of conversation before they left the table to let the women and boys have their share. Lizzie suspected that the party would only liven up once the minister had left, so she whispered to her husband that they ought to leave. It was a cold starry night and the frost was thick on the roof thatch. A white moon was hanging silently over Village Bay, illuminating the blue frost. The first tickling notes of a fiddle escaped from the smoke hole of the wedding house.

The dark sea cliffs loomed threateningly around the
clachan
. This was a different world from the Hirta which was populated by birds in the summer. This black island did not belong to mankind, only to the ocean from which it had once sprung. It was bitterly cold. Lizzie blew into her bare hands and leaned against her husband for warmth and comfort. He was thinking about something quite separate and found her closeness rather irritating. Since starting his big project he had been withdrawn and distant. Normally Lizzie didn't mind. She was used by now to his moods and the way he would forget about her and the ­children for long periods of time when something more pressing related to his calling occupied his mind. But this night she felt miserable and lonely and she wanted him to give her reassurance. As they walked towards the manse she lifted his arm to put it around her shoulders, but he shook himself free and looked at her with cold eyes. ‘What?' he said in a voice that made her shrink away.

‘Nothing,' she answered, and sank ‘I was a bit cold, that's all, and I thought you could warm me up.'

‘Wind your shawl closer around you, why don't you?' His voice offered no comfort.

‘I will miss Betty,' she said then, and turned her face towards the sea to hide her eyes. A thin crust of ice had formed by the shore.

‘Don't be silly – you will be able to see her whenever you want.' He was getting quite annoyed. He could not understand her loneliness. Could she not engage her mind in something useful rather than acting so forlornly? What did she want from him? Was he not the minister – and master – of this island? Did being his wife not offer her belonging and purpose enough?

‘I am not so sure,' she replied, his coldness for once making her stronger. ‘She belongs to the St Kildans now and her first loyalty must be to them. They still see us as foreigners and gentlefolk – we do not belong in their world.' She tried to explain her feelings in general terms. She realised that he did not understand that she sometimes felt her exile and alienation so strongly that she found it hard to breathe. Perhaps he had forgotten – or chosen to forget – that she had left her world and her youth behind to follow him here.

‘Nonsense!' he said, and quickened his step. But he had no wish to belong; he wanted to command.

‘Well, why do you think they wanted us to leave the party just now? It was quite clear that they did not want us there for the rest of the festivities.' Her voice quivered with emotion.

‘Well, for my part, I have no wish to partake in their merriments. They are crude and vulgar.'

‘How can you know when you have never been invited? Are you not at all curious?'

‘No, not at all. I look forward to going back to my study to read about world affairs.'

‘World affairs that are a year old – you do not live in reality,' she muttered flatly. He would get an annual supply of news­papers sent with the taxman once a year and had made a habit of reading each paper on the same date that it was published, but a year on.

He said nothing to this, but she knew he had won as he was fulfilled by his pride and his mission, wrapped in his magic robes, and she remained empty and solitary. He had become increasingly withdrawn since the children were born. He seemed especially awkward around his son, she thought. She had caught him looking at James Bannatyne once or twice in a way that she could not quite interpret. It was as if he was bewildered by a mystery in the boy that he could not decipher. It struck her that perhaps he had hoped to recognise himself in their son's soul. She shook her head and realised that in this she was stronger – at least she had knowledge of the children. Still she needed him desperately. As they got back to the manse she tried to make friends with him again by making him a cup of tea and smiling seductively. She wanted to sit up and talk by the fire, but he was suddenly tired and wanted to go to bed. She got in after him and put her hand on his chest. She tried to kiss his lips, but he pulled away and turned over on his side with his back to her. ‘Do you not want to give me a goodnight kiss?' she asked, humiliated and diminished, still wanting him to understand and to open himself to her.

‘No, I just want to sleep, leave me alone,' came his answer cold and hard.

She turned to the wall and curled up to cradle the empty pain in her chest. She held it there along with her pride until she could hear that he had fallen asleep. Then she let her limbs fall apart and stretched her soul thinly across the bed until, at last, she could let her misery and loneliness dissolve into the coarse sheets.

Once her crying had subsided Lizzie lay for a long time watching the moon which glided slowly across the bay outside the window. Throughout the night she could hear scattered notes from the fiddle in the still, frosty darkness. The sound seemed to travel far on the thin air. At times the music was tender and intent, caressing the rafters and spilling into the flesh of the night, only to be suddenly let loose in quick leaps and turns, skipping across the fields and chasing up the hillsides. Lizzie wished that she could dance with the wedding guests. Oh how she wanted to feel the music through her limbs and lose herself in the rhythm of the dancing feet. Eventually she fell into the slack sleep that follows dark passion, dreaming that the warm tunes carried her back to the party and into the strong arms of a dancing young man.

Christmas came quickly as the days shrank into what seemed like a long, single midwinter night. One of Calum's cousins, a thin girl of about thirteen called Anna, came to help in the manse. She could say yes and no in English and seemed to understand a bit more. Her clothes were hand-me-downs and too big for her, which made her look odd and younger than her age, but she was used to caring for small children and liked playing with Eliza and James Bannatyne while Lizzie was working on the preparations for Christmas. Anna, who was still a child herself, had an easy way with the little ones. After a while, she communicated in simple English, and Lizzie was almost jealous of the girl's straightforward connection with them. ‘Put your boots on,' she would say to Eliza before they went out, and the child would sit on the floor and pull on her boots. ‘Don't pee outside the potty,' she would say to James Bannatyne, and help him to hold his tiny penis so that the pee trickled into the enamel container while he stood obligingly on chubby legs.

Anna was a serious girl, though something of a dreamer, and beauty mattered more than anything to her. Her soul was so disturbed by the coarseness and ugliness of the domestic world around her that it would turn to beauty like a sunflower turns to the sun. Sometimes she was surprised when others did not see the thin disc of silver resting on the tarns at night, or when no one else seemed to know that water from melted snow tastes deliciously of air. In a different world she might have been called an aesthete, but in her own there were no means for her to improve her condition. Working in the manse was more important to her than anyone could imagine. Whenever she was alone she would sneak into the master bedroom or the minister's study and look in astonishment at some of the things her master and mistress had brought from the mainland: books bound in fragrant leather lettered in gold, a silver ink bottle, a seascape painted in oil and hung in a gilded frame (actually a cheap present from Lizzie's sister after a day out at the seaside in East Kilbride) and – further into the private quarters of her employers – a bundle of silk ribbons in a drawer where white linen underwear, fringed by the most delicate lace, lay folded neatly, and a little crystal box with jewellery – a brooch of silver and amethyst, a thin gold chain with a pearl pendant and a finger ring with a red stone. To Anna these were treasures of unimaginable beauty.

But amongst all the riches of the manse there was one thing Anna lusted after more than anything else. The minister had ordered a hearthrug from the mainland the previous year. It was quite thin but with a pronounced paisley pattern and bright colours. Anna found it the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. In a world where no colour was ever brighter than the sorrel in the fields, the grey in the rocks and the yellow of a gannet's neck, the hearthrug reminded Anna of all the colours of the Bible – it was the mantle of Mary, the robes of the magi and the gowns of Rahab, the whore of Jericho, all in one. She would often sneak away from her chores to look at the rug and touch it with gentle hands.

It was for this reason she could not understand how her mistress could let that halfwit of a dog sleep on the rug. Her face would twitch as she watched the dog shuffle around the precious thing before snorting contentedly and lying down to rest, his slack jaws half open, drooling on to the crimson and the cobalt and the emerald of the cloth. Anna really had no time for the beast – it was stupid and lazy, for a start, but above all it was ugly. How could it be that it was allowed to befoul the treasure that she yearned for yet could only touch in secret? It was not fair. It really was not fair at all. Why could she not have something beautiful? Some of the older girls had got scarlet headscarves from some townspeople who came on a ship once. But she was too young then so she did not get one. All her own clothes were plain and too big; she loathed them, and hated the way they made her look like a wren chick. How embarrassing! No, really she could not think of any good reason why she should not be allowed to use the hearthrug as a shawl. After all, it was far too nice a thing to waste on a floor and a daft dog.

On Christmas Eve, when the MacKenzies settled in the parlour after supper and the midwinter dark cloaked the manse, Mr MacKenzie asked his wife what she had done with the hearthrug. Lizzie looked at the empty space by the fireplace in surprise. Dog was not lying in his usual place but had retreated under the table with a distinctly grumpy look on his face. ‘I can­not think where it might have gone,' said Lizzie, perplexed. ‘Perhaps Anna has removed it to mend a tear.'

The following morning at the Christmas sermon the minister looked rather baffled as he raised his gaze from the pulpit and spotted the new maid on the bench next to his own children, neatly wrapped in his hearthrug. Indeed all eyes were turned on Anna that Christmas morning. The younger women glared at the bright colours in wide-eyed admiration and envy, whereas one or two of the older women looked around the room and met the eyes of other women, distracted, frowning. As the atmosphere in the candlelit church thickened you could almost hear them think, Who does she think she is? Anna seemed oblivious to these glances of admiration, contempt and protest. She looked contentedly at the minister as he delivered the sermon. There was no triumph or vanity in her smile. She looked neither proud nor modest, but somebody who knew her intimately might have detected a certain change in her: an elevation and an ennoblement of her station. Somebody who had never met her before might have said that, at that moment, she did not belong in this world. But to those who still did, this was altogether not acceptable.

On the first day after Christmas the minister called Anna to his study. It was a bright day. Some snow had fallen during the night and the weak sun was resting in the bay. He could see the golden down on Anna's upper lip as she entered the room and stood quietly by the door.

‘Is there anything you would like to tell me, child?' he asked, and put down his book.

She looked up at him quickly with a puzzled look and shook her head. ‘No, sir,' she whispered.

‘Would you not like to say sorry for taking something from me?'

Anna bit her lip and shook her head again. One of her thin plaits fell across her shoulder and settled on her budding breast.

The minister watched her opaque face with an irritated expression. ‘Taking somebody else's possession on purpose is stealing,' he said patiently. ‘Did you steal the hearthrug?'

‘No,' she said earnestly, for she had no experience of theft and the sun was in her eyes.

‘Come now, child, small lies are the most difficult to confess, but if we let them remain they may fester and infect an innocent mind.' Some moth holes showed in his dark coat, Anna noticed, but she remained silent.

‘Oh, Anna, Anna,' sighed the minister, shaking his head, ‘why can you not just admit your crime and ask my forgiveness? Tell me honestly that you are sorry and I will let you off this time.'