Land of Heart's Desire (15 page)

“We’re better off without him,” he said. “He would have had to go sometime.”

“Why do you say that?” she demanded sharply.

“Simply because he’s a trouble-maker and something of a fanatic into the bargain,” he returned complacently. “Believe me, my dear Christine, I know Rory only too well!”

“But he’s been doing all sorts of useful things with the sheep!” Christine, protested. “And experimenting with the wool. I can’t
afford
to lose him—not at this time of year. Please try to get him back.”

He drew deeply on his cigarette, exhaling slowly and deliberately before he spoke.

“I’m afraid that’s impossible,” he said. “He left the island an hour ago.”

She sat back in her chair, defeated. Tears were very near her eyes as she thought of what Rory had done, calling it perfidy in a sudden flash of foolish anger, but knowing in her heart that she had accused him wrongly.

“I’m sorry,” she said unsteadily. “I could have used you both. Now we will have to get an extra shepherd from somewhere to help Dan out, but don’t ask me where! There aren’t so many people looking for jobs on Croma these days.”

“Leave it to me!” he said with confidence, but she knew that it might be weeks before anything would be done.

Hamish was like that. He considered time leisurely. There was plenty of it and no hurry to perform the task in hand.

She watched him go with a new, strange restlessness. He had asked her to marry him one day, and a year ago—a month ago, even—she would have considered his proposal as the gateway to all the happiness this world could hold for her, but now she was not so sure. She wanted him to be right for Croma, too.

It should not be demanding too much of him, she thought unhappily as she made her way from the house an hour later for her customary walk along the cliff. Marrying her and settling down at Erradale House would be a sort of second chance for him now that he had lost Ardtornish—through no fault of his own.

Could he, she wondered suddenly, have hung on to Ardtornish just a little longer?

Walking along the cliff path with the wind in her face, she watched the sheep grazing high above the sea and knew a sudden fierce pride in possession as she looked at them. With any luck, she could double the flock by this time next year and put Erradale wool back on the open market again. The grass up here was thick and green, a lush, springy cushion crowning the beetling brow of the cliff. In places it had been cropped close, but in others it was almost untouched.

Subconsciously her mind fastened on the fact. The sheep were avoiding these places. Large tracts of the cliff top had remained ungrazed for weeks, possibly months.

Quickening her footsteps, she climbed rapidly, but already she knew the answer. It did not take the wide cracks in the path nor the sudden glimpse of a whole section of cliff bitten clean by erosion to convince her of danger. The sheep had sensed it and kept clear, feeling the ground beneath them insecure and crumbling. Sensible creatures that they were, they no longer used the winding track they had made along the edge, where the grass had always been sweeter, and the path which the villagers had guarded as their right of way for centuries went within inches of the deserted sheep track.

She mentioned the matter to Hamish as soon as she returned to Erradale.

“Good heavens, Chris!” he exclaimed, “the path has been there for hundreds of years. It’s not going to fall away in a matter of seconds. Why bar it to the villagers now?”

“Because it’s unsafe, and the children use it searching for gulls’ eggs along the cliff. It’s a favourite walk in summer, too, with the old people.”

“All right,” he agreed amicably, “we’ll put up a notice before the summer comes round.”

“I’d like it done now,” she told him firmly. “It should be fenced off, or at least pegged. It must be made obvious, and I’ll print another warning notice for the village board.”

He came behind her, dropping a light kiss on the nape of her neck.

“Quite the little business woman!” he said. “But you worry too much. Come out to Muldoanish with me,” he invited. “I’m going to the other side of The Minch for the week-end.”

“I haven’t time to go fishing,” she told him sharply. “Besides, I hate sharks!”

He laughed, kissing her lightly on the cheek.

“Do you know what Rory’s doing, by the way?” he asked. “He’s moved over into the enemy camp with a vengeance—helping Sutherland to build a new road from Scoraig to the ford!”

“I—when did you hear this?” she demanded to hide her surprise.

“An hour ago. Sutherland’s yacht was in the Port. He’s laying it up for the winter at Morrison’s yard.” He laughed amusedly. “Old Sandy Morrison hasn’t had a maintenance job like that for years. He’s fussing round Sutherland as if he had given him the entry to the Kingdom of Heaven!”

“Sandy’s a craftsman,” Christine reminded him tartly. “At one time his yard produced launches that were second to none in the. Islands, but now he has only the fishing boats to repair.”

“Sutherland, it would appear, has given him an order for a launch. Something more substantial than the yawl, I suppose, for use in the winter.” Hamish took out a cigarette and lit it, watching her leisurely. “We ought to have some sort of boat at Erradale, too,” he mentioned. “Then we wouldn’t be so dependent on the steamer, nor the ford, either, for that matter,” he added with a grim smile.

“We can’t afford a boat just now,” Christine decided briefly. “There are lots of things I shall have to do without until I make Erradale pay its way.”

“A boat isn’t exactly a luxury,” he reminded her. “Not on Croma. To my mind it’s an absolute necessity. We’re practically marooned without one.”

She turned away.

“Not just now, Hamish,” she repeated. “The steamer will do me very well if I should want to get to the mainland for a day or two.”

He looked as if he might argue the point and then he shrugged and left her. He wasn’t a good agent. She had to acknowledge the fact, but perhaps he would learn in time, and, now that Rory had gone, she had no other choice.

Curiously disturbed by the fact, she took longer over her own work than usual. Forms and assessments were pouring in, most of them requiring her personal attention, and she, also, was a new broom. If she had allowed herself time to think she might well have become overwhelmed by the magnitude of her task, but Erradale was full of interest for her and she responded to the challenge with all the resilience of youth. Not least among these interests was her desire to put Croma’s colour and beauty on to canvas, and so very often, when she had not been able to see the way ahead with any clarity, she had flown to brush and canvas for solace.

She did so now, taking up a block and her box of oils to paint in the best light of the day. Walking briskly up on to the moor, she decided that her subject would be the old, disused mill and the group of ruined cottages which surrounded it.

Many of the little, two-roomed houses were without a roof and most of them would have been condemned as unsuitable living quarters, but they held for her a pathos which she could not ignore.

Once, not so long ago, they had been the scene of a thriving tweed industry. Young women and old had sung and gossiped as they had spun the wool from the backs of the native sheep, ready to be dyed and woven when the time came. The old island waulking songs rang in her ears because they were still being sung when she was a child, and their haunting beauty and dark, intrinsic sadness had sunk deep into her heart.

She had felt compelled to come to the mill, to capture it all with brush and colour, but was it really the death of the mill and the old clachan surrounding it that she wanted to preserve on canvas for all time?

The question troubled her as she sat down on a grey outcrop of rock and began to sketch. The mill itself was still intact, although signs of decay were everywhere around. Nature had sought to cover it with lichen and flowers, but she could not hide the stark tragedy of those roofless homes silhouetted bleakly against the blue of the September sky. Beyond them, the heather still stained the hillside in places, but it, too, was dying. Christine could not find the purple she wanted—the true colour, because it was like spilt blood in places. The life’s blood of an island ebbing slowly away.

Tears filled her eyes and she let her brush fall idly against her palette. Was it really any use hoping that she could do what Dame Sarah had failed to do?

“You need someone behind you, Chris. Some man.” It was as if the words Hamish had used had been echoed close behind her, yet she knew that she could not trust Croma’s future to him without reserve.

She bent to her work, and a glowing tract of heather and vividly-tinted bracken stained the canvas before she looked up again at the sound of a step on the rock surface behind her.

Finlay Sutherland had climbed on to the moor through the wood. He had come from the direction of the harbour and he stood looking down at the picture on its impromptu stone easel, assessing it shrewdly before he spoke.

“You’ve got something there,” he said slowly. “The death of an island.”

It was what she did not want to hear and she would not have believed that he could have understood so readily. She put the painting aside and closed her box of colours.

“It’s an old story,” she said. “True of so many islands in our little group. There used to be more people on Croma alone than there are now on Croma and Heimra and Tolsta all put together.”

He stood thoughtfully, looking beyond her to the scene of desolation which she had conveyed so skilfully to the hidden canvas.

“We’ve got to face up to it,” he said, cramming tobacco into an ancient pipe. “The people are the vital link. If they had had work to do they would never have left their homes.”

“The older people wouldn’t, but young people are different. The old people
did
stay, but now they are dying off, and the younger ones didn’t come back after the war.” She nodded towards the head of the glen. “Up there under Buchaille Erradale there’s a village not quite the size of this where one can count the male population on one hand. The rest of the inhabitants are old women, widows mostly, who are living there because there is nowhere else
for them
to go. They have a pension, but they would rather have work.”

“Supposing,” he said, puffing reflectively at the newly-lit pipe, “they were given work to do?”

She looked up sharply.

“Supposing these people in the clachan at the head of the glen had the kind of work they know how to do?”

“They only know how to knit and spin and make cloth—”

“That’s it!” he said. “Croma tweed. The kind of cloth I see everywhere I go in well-worn suits and costumes which have lasted these people for years!”

“Mr. Sutherland,” she said patiently, “the idea is impossible. If you are thinking of the mill, the place is uninhabitable, for one thing, and we’re not producing enough wool in Erradale even to make a start. What we do produce is sold for the best profit on the mainland. It’s an elementary economic problem, you see. We can’t
afford
to make our own cloth any more—not for an uncertain and highly competitive market.”

He looked as if he had not heard.

“It would take several weeks to put this place right,” he considered, “but, in the meantime, the people further up the glen could work at their own firesides. That was the way of it at one time, wasn’t it?”

“It still is on some of the larger islands,” she admitted, “where they are weir organized.”

“Then,” he decided, “we must organize Croma.”

She stiffened, even although something strong and exciting had begun to tingle along her veins.

“If you can tell me how that is to be done without an adequate supply of raw wool,” she began, “I might be able to see eye to eye with you, Mr. Sutherland.”

“I bought your wool,” he reminded her, seating himself on the rock directly facing her and drawing thoughtfully on the obnoxious-looking pipe. “Erradale’s clippings and the stuff I have on the south side of the island would be enough to start with.”

She drew in a swift breath.

“You make it all sound so very easy, Mr. Sutherland,” she said.

“It won’t be. I know that as well as you do,” he told her, the red brows coming together in a deep frown. “But I am willing to take a chance, if you are.”

“In what way?”

“You open the mill and persuade the people to work for you. I’ll provide the wool—and the money to pay them till we get our first returns.”

She stiffened instinctively.

“Are you suggesting a—partnership?” she asked.

He laughed easily.

“In a way I suppose I am,” he agreed. “You always balk at an idea, don’t you, whenever money comes into it—my money?”

How firmly he took the bull by the horns! There was no finesse about this man, no veneer whatsoever. He got right down to rock bottom in a minimum of words. A “go-getter”, she supposed the term was.

“I’m not sure that such an idea would work—”

“You know it would work,” he said, brushing her protest aside with the utmost ruthlessness. “You could make it work. I couldn’t do it on my own. It will take me a dozen years or so to be ‘accepted’ by your islanders, and then it would be too late! But you’re one of them. It’s your rightful heritage. They’d cast themselves into the sea for you quite willingly, I dare say
—if you asked them
. That’s all I want you to do.”