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BRIDE OF KYLSAIG

Iris Danbury

Barbara, whose home was the beautiful lonely Hebridean island of Kylsaig, wanted to get away from it; her sister Judith would have given anything to be able to stay there. Here is the story of how each of them solved her problem happily.

JUDITH WHITACRE stood gazing out through the sitting room window of the farmhouse. The morning mist had suddenly cleared and the view was a revelation. Sunshine, clear blue sky, the sharp outline of hills across the strip of blue-green water. Through the open window a slight breeze brought a dozen scents on the air.

Judith’s spirits soared. Just this one morning alone was compensation for yesterday’s long, tedious journey from London to this small island off the west coast of Scotland.

She turned away from the window as her married sister, Barbara, came in with a tray of coffee.

“What a sparkling morning!” Judith exclaimed. “When I woke up and saw all that mist, I began to wonder if my whole fortnight would be blotted out.”

Barbara set down the tray. “Oh, it isn’t always sunny and smiling like this. Sometimes we’re blotted out—right off the map.”

In appearance, the sisters were quite different. Barbara’s golden blonde beauty, flawless skin and unusual sherry brown eyes had been among her greatest assets as a first-class model free-lancing around the London dress houses or photographers’ studios. At thirty, eight years older than Judith, she still retained the precise measurements demanded by the dress salons.

Judith had always known, even as the schoolgirl sister, that she had never been within competing distance of such sophisticated elegance. She had inherited her father’s more sober looks, dark grey eyes that glowed almost black when she was interested or animated, so people told her; soft, dark hair that retained its own natural colour and did not need frequent examination to see how much the roots had grown out.

She worked as salesgirl in the dress department of a West End store, though she hoped eventually to become a designer.

Judith now bit appreciatively into a delicious scone. “M’m. You’ve become a wonderful cook!”

“I suppose I’ve improved,” Barbara agreed without enthusiasm. “Cooking and cleaning take up most of my time, so perhaps the results are better out of sheer practice.” Barbara pushed back her blonde hair and sighed. “There’s never time for anything else.”

“But you go over to the mainland sometimes for shopping or a spot of gaiety?”

“Oh, yes!” Barbara’s laugh was disquietingly brittle. “Cruban’s two whole shopping streets are Bond Street and Regent Street rolled into one and madly gay beyond belief. Andy’s always too busy or too tired to take much interest in dancing or dining out. Besides, when you’re stuck on an island and have to go backwards and forwards everywhere by boat, it doesn’t always seem worth the effort.”

Judith had known for some time from the veiled phrases in Barbara’s letters that her sister was not happy in her new life on Kylsaig Island.

Two years ago Barbara had been delighted with the pattern of living—Andy, a devoted husband, steaming ahead as a salesman of engineering accessories; two attractive children, seven-year-old Robbie and Susan then just turned five; a modern house in a pleasant neighbourhood; friends to entertain or visit. Barbara had even been able to do some part-time modelling to add to the family finances and help with the cost of occasional Continental holidays.

Then Andy’s Uncle Hamish had died and left Andy this isolated croft and several hundred sheep on a windswept Scottish island.

In a surge of enthusiasm, Andy had thrown up his job, his prospects, sold the house and painted such a glowing picture of a carefree life on an enchanting island that Barbara was persuaded that the move would be to all the family’s benefit.

Judith, here for a fortnight’s early summer holiday, could see changes in her sister. Barbara still retained her shining blonde hair, her delicate skin, her slim figure, but her mouth drooped with disillusionment and there were tiny lines round her eyes.

“Andy’s going down to the ferry. Would you like to go with him?” Barbara asked.

Judith eagerly accepted, and as she swung along at the side of her brother-in-law, she was exhilarated by the beauty of the surroundings. The track led upwards through pasture and a wood, then down again to the shore on the other side of the island. Across the turquoise Sound, green slopes on the mainland rose above a winding road at shore level, although Judith could see only an occasional tiny strip of beach.

“I suppose you get one day like this for every six weeks of mist or rain,” she taunted Andy gently.

He chuckled. “It rains now and again,” he admitted, “but on the whole the climate is wonderfully mild. Fuchsias and hydrangeas grow all over the place.” He stopped for a moment to gaze at the distant Atlantic horizon. “We even get heatwaves, and I think we’re in for a fine spell now.”

“Good. You’ve quite settled down into a Scottish sheep farmer, haven’t you?”

Andy grinned. “Perhaps it wasn’t really hard for me, as I come of Scots farming stock. My Uncle Hamish spent all his life in the West Highlands. He had several places at one time on the mainland, but eventually he sold those and kept this one on Kylsaig. I spent several holidays up in these parts when I was a boy and the kids love it here, but it’s tougher for Barbara, though I think she’s getting used to it.”

Andy stopped to open a gate across the track and when he joined Judith again, he continued, “In time, when there’s more money to spare, I hope to make all kinds of improvements. I’ve turned one of the outhouses into a bathroom and now I’ve ordered a modern cooking range, easy on the fuel. You have to think of those things when you live on an island where everything, including coal, has to come over by boat. That’s another point—I’d like to have a better boat. All I have now is a small dinghy with a worn-out old engine.”

At the ferry slipway, while Andy sorted out the boxes and parcels, Judith looked about her. A rough, stony path led up to what she supposed was the ferryman’s cottage, but there seemed to be no road.

“D’you think you can carry these two parcels?” Andy asked her. “They’re not heavy.”

“Of course. I can easily manage these.”

“We need only take the more urgent ones. The others can come along on the tractor when Mr. McKinnon is passing our way. I’ll just call in at the post office and collect the letters.”

She realised that the ferry house was also the post office, and when Andy rejoined her with several letters and small packages in his hand, she asked, “Isn’t there any proper road?”

He laughed. “Only the track we walked along.”

“Not anywhere on the island?”

“No. We manage quite well with McKinnon’s tractor. You came part of the way on that yourself last night when you arrived.”

She half shuddered at the memory of that jolting ride, but she had been too tired after a long journey to bother about the transport provided. Now she laughed. “Oh, I thought you were taking me a short cut to your farm.”

“It was still the shortest way to our place. That’s how the paths were made in the first place.” His blue eyes twinkled with amusement. “It’s primitive here, but there are compensations. No traffic jams, anyway. Come along and follow me home through the jungle.”

As they approached the house, a long, low two-storey building, Judith realized that so far she had not seen it properly from outside. Now, in sparkling sunshine, it’s whitewashed walls and blue paintwork gleamed against the dark green background. A neat kitchen plot sloped away into a half wild garden full of trees and flowers, one corner splashed with a mass of yellow irises.

Barbara was busy in the kitchen making cakes. “I’ve asked two or three people to call this evening,” she told Judith. “Nothing elaborate. Just coffee and cakes. I can't promise anything exciting.”

Judith intercepted the glance that Barbara directed towards her husband, but Andy said nothing and went out again.

After lunch Judith said, “Anything I can do to help for the evening?”

“No, thanks, darling. Go out while the weather is fine. Goodness only knows we get little enough sunshine. If you go down by the shore, turn left, but keep to the path or you’ll land in bogs.”

Judith obeyed her sister’s instructions and sauntered along parallel with the shore where the water lapped the remains of a derelict quay. Then she struck inland to avoid the bogs and passed two ruined crofts, the houses falling apart stone by stone, the gardens a wildness of rank grass and brambles.

As she passed an isolated cottage, three sheepdogs came bounding out from behind it, leaping and barking around her.

Suddenly the cottage door opened and a young man came out. The dogs excitedly rushed up to him, leaving Judith standing uncertainly on the grass slope.

“Good afternoon.” His greeting was without warmth. “Sorry if my dogs were being a nuisance.” He turned to go indoors again, and the dogs, taking no further notice of the stranger, followed at his heels.

“Does this path lead over to the other side of the island?” she called. “To the sea?”

He turned back towards her again. “Where d’you want to go?”

“I’m just walking.”

He gave her a measured glance and she was about to add, as a kind of credential, that she was staying with her sister, the Greenwood family, but then he spoke.

“Up this path here, across the burn and over a plank bridge. When you come to a ruined cottage, bear right. But it’s a long way round if you’re making for the ferry. Good day.”

“Thank you very much.” His curt dismissal gave her no chance of further explanation.

She called out a cool “Good afternoon” and set off towards the path he had indicated. When two of the dogs came to follow, she heard him call sharply, “Jess! Bruce!” and they immediately bounded back.

A surly young man who had not hesitated to give her the brush-off, she reflected.

She crossed the burn by a wobbly plank, but the path to the right of the ruined cottage was overgrown with thorns and brambles. Her cardigan caught in thorns, her nylons were already ruined and even wearing sensible brown shoes did not prevent her feet from slithering into boggy patches.

“Oh, why did I come this way!” she exclaimed aloud in exasperation. “This can’t be right.” There was neither sight nor sound of the sea and, defeated, she turned back. There was no sense in trying to make progress at all.

Returning the way she had come doubled the damage to her clothes and quite ruined her temper. When she arrived out on the clear pasture, she could not decide whether to ignore the man or knock on his door to ask why he had deliberately misdirected her, but the dogs took the decision out of her hands. They seemed pleased to meet her again, frisking about her feet until she scolded them gently, hoping they would stop yelping.

The young man stood outside his door. “You came back?”

“The path you told me to take was probably in good shape ten years ago,” she snapped, “but it’s completely overgrown now.”

“You must have taken the wrong one. But you’re probably not used to rough walking.”

Several angry retorts jostled in her mind and she was infuriated by the superior look on his face. “I’ll go back the way I came,” she called, “and next time I’ll make enquiries of someone who really know the paths.”

Faintly she heard him echo “Next time... ?” but by now she was almost running down the grass slope towards the track. On this enchanting day she had not expected such a rebuff. Surely the man could have given her clear instructions, however much he might dislike visitors.

Several times during the evening meal, she was on the point of telling Barbara and Andy of her encounter and asking who the man was, but then she decided to say nothing. There was no point in adding to Barbara’s dissatisfaction by criticising the neighbours.

The first guests to arrive were Mrs. Drummond and her daughter, Mairi, a fair-haired girl in her middle twenties.

“Mairi is the schoolteacher here,” Barbara explained as she introduced her sister. “I’m sorry for her now that she has Robbie and Susan in her classes.”

“They work in very well with the other children.”

“How many have you at the school?” Judith asked. “Are you the only teacher?”

Mairi laughed. “It makes me sound very important, but I
am
the only teacher. We have twelve pupils. That’s a record for us and the children are eager to see who will make the thirteenth. But there probably won’t be a thirteenth because in September two of the boys will be old enough to go over to the mainland.”

Doesn’t it discourage you to find your pupils going off at eleven or twelve to another school, just when they’re becoming really promising?”

Mairi thought for a moment before replying. “No, I don’t think so. It’s a kind of challenge. I’m on my mettle to send them over to Cruban, or wherever else they're going, at the point where they can start on level terms for their age with all the town boys and girls. Our island children mustn’t feel at a disadvantage with the others just because they’ve been taught at a tiny school by one not over-competent young woman.”