Chapter 6 #3
The busy house was unusually quiet; her girls were out visiting and her men were on the boat.
The front room was more comfortable than the Macleod croft.
The sofa was soft and pillowy, meant for children to tumble and sprawl upon and Ella’s feet lifted off the floor as she sank into the upholstery.
Sarah poured tea into blue-rimmed cups knowing Ella liked hers to be milky and toothachingly sweet.
Ella raised the teacup to her lips but Sarah placed a gentle finger on her wrist. She bowed her head and Ella apologised without meaning it, and she did the same.
As Sarah gave thanks, Ella watched her through the canopy of her lashes.
There was a touch of the divine to Sarah.
She was graceful to the tips of her fingers, and her thin, almost waifish beauty made Ella feel thick and dumpy.
Sarah was first cousins with Innes and Sorley, and through their mothers – who were remembered as being unfailingly Christian – they had all inherited an instinct to think of others before themselves.
As a girl she always had her nose in a book, but there was something dimmed about her curiosity now.
Her children had been born a year or two apart – each growing paler, and progressively more flaxen, as though she were a stamp that was running out of ink.
When the prayer was finished, they chatted for a while about nothing important.
One of the things that Ella liked least about Sarah was that she didn’t care to gossip.
No matter what Ella told her, she would nod politely and say, “Is that so.” But it never seemed framed as a question and it was hard to get at the meat of a thing, to pick the morsels from the bone, when all you had was a limp tool like Sarah Macdonald to work with.
The subject moved on to Ella’s feet. Then Sarah hitched up her skirt and let Ella look at her varicose veins. “I need a month with my feet up,” she said, as she rolled the support tight back in place. “You would think my lot had been born without hands.”
“I telt Cal if ever I get like Licky McAllister that he’s to take me out the back.” Ella made a garrotting motion with her hand.
“I always imagined you’d go back to Glasgow one day.”
Ella chuckled. “Imagined or hoped?”
“Imagined,” she said quickly. “Oh dear me, no. Imagined.”
The second most exhausting thing about Sarah was she had no ability to banter, everything she said was spoken with a wearying earnestness. It made Ella want to provoke her.
She filled a paper with tobacco, licked the length of it and rolled it between her fingers. “How’s the wee job coming along?”
“Fine. Steady. Every week there’s more homes turned into holiday lets.”
“That’s Rory MacNeil sold his grandfather’s house. Heard he got twelve thousand for it.”
“Is that so.”
“And then there’s the old manse sold to a couple of English papists. Of all the sacrileges, eh? He was a big-time Uronnimist . . .” Ella stumbled over the word, “a Uro . . . What is that word for a man that’s obsessed with other people’s piss?”
“A Urologist? That’s a doctor.”
“Aye, that’s it!” Ella cocked her finger, and shot Sarah with the gun.
“Anyway, this piss merchant and his wife have bought the manse and some extra grazing land. They plan on reintroducing a breed of ancient cow or some fuckin’ nonsense.
” Sarah flinched at the foul language but Ella only grinned and leant closer.
“I was behind her in line at Beady’s shop.
The accent on that woman, you should have heard it.
” She tapped the back of Sarah’s hand. “I asked her if she liked living by the sea and d’ye know what she said? ”
“No.”
“Quite!”
“Quite?”
“Aye. Quite. Don’t ye think that’s funny? Quite! D’ye know, I still haven’t the foggiest idea if that woman actually likes the fuckin’ sea or not . . .”
Sarah sighed. “Is that so.”
There was a break in the smirr and the sky was clearing above them. The room filled with a sudden light. Ella glanced at the clock and was relieved to see she had been here long enough.
“Well, thank you for the tea.” She groaned as Sarah pulled her free of the settee.
Sarah took Ella’s hands in hers and bowed her head again. She said a special prayer that He would look after Ella, and give them both strength in their sore legs.
Ella put her coat on, careful not to expose the torn lining.
“Oh, aye . . .” she began, as though the thought had just occurred to her.
“I meant to say. Our Cal is home.” It sounded disingenuous even to her.
They had spent an hour talking about nothing of any consequence and here it was, the biggest news of the last four years.
“Yes, I know. I saw him wandering the road. He passed by without stopping in to say hello. I assumed we had done something to upset him . . .”
“Of course not!” Ella placed her hand on Sarah’s arm.
She marvelled at the woman’s continence; how she had known and yet resisted all urges to mention Cal first. “Sarah, you know what little boys these men can be. He’s sulking.
Could you ask your Doll to stop by? Maybe offer to take him for a pint? ”
“Oh, I know Doll’s father would rather he didn’t drink. It’s hard to get him up in the morning. They spend all day on the boat in a foul mood with one another.”
“Then mibbe they could go for a . . . a walk?”
Sarah put her thin fingers to her thin lips.
Ella knew the woman was wondering what her husband would think of that, and she liked Sarah less for it.
But Sarah nodded that she thought that would be all right and said she would mention it to Doll, if, in return, Ella asked Cal to stop in and tell her and her girls all his news.
Ella left the car near the bus shelter. A soft rain was falling but she didn’t have to wait long.
The bus was warm, the windows sweated with the condensation of low, quiet talk.
The women were tending to the last bits of business before the island fell silent for the Sabbath and Ella said hello to every stranger she passed.
This slow bus could be the best part of her week.
She would be embarrassed to admit it: but it was an hour to herself, and she liked to be reminded that there were still some strangers in the world.
She found a seat next to a young mother who was struggling with her wriggling toddler.
Ella picked some fluff from a boiled sweetie and gave it to the child.
They chatted a while about the girl and how pretty her cardigan was, before the mother got off at her stop and the bus continued north and trundled towards Lewis.
Ella cupped her hand over her mouth suddenly, fearing there was lager on her breath. She hummed to herself, and soon the humming became a soft whistling. She liked to whistle.
She was lost to her own thoughts, watching the Harris hills fade to flat moorland, when there was a gentle tap on her shoulder and she turned in her seat. The woman behind her pinched her own lips, motioning for Ella to stop her whistling.
She was one of the last to disembark. As she stepped down onto the road, the Atlantic wind rushed over the machair and tried to knock her from her feet. The wind was fiercest on the flat, west coast of the islands. The bent grass was rippling in waves like a golden sea.
The big house sat all alone on the moor.
Ella tilted into the wind and, pulling the trolley behind her, she walked towards it.
The trolley was loaded with home cooking: a joint of lamb, a pot of potatoes already boiled and salted, a bowl of trembling mint jelly, and porridge that she had spread and let cool, before she sliced it into bars and coated it with golden syrup.
The sun was behind Grace. Ella could see her fine figure through her thin summer dress.
She had heard it said that daughters stole their beauty from their mothers, and if that were true, then Grace must have reached elbow deep and grabbed with both hands, because Ella had little to give and Grace was striking indeed.
Sometimes, in a low light, Ella could catch a glimpse of the young lover that had seduced her at the Locarno, and she was saddened by that, for when she looked at her daughter it felt wrong not to think of Calum as her father.
Grace shivered as she clutched her cardigan closed. “Where is he?”
“That’s a fine hello.”
She was peering around her mother as though Ella was hiding Cal from her.
“He’s six foot tall. I’m no that fat!”
“Mam, where is he?” Grace sank back on her hip. “You should have made him come!”
Ella considered telling her daughter the truth: that her grandson was staying away to punish his mother which was also a way to punish himself, which in the end was only another way to punish his mother.
She knew he would love to see Grace, but he could not bear to see her happiness, not at this moment, not when he was mired in his own self-pity.
“He’ll come in his own time,” she said. “Soon, soon.”
She took Grace by the arm and led her back towards the house. They had the whole day ahead of them and it would be a shame to spoil it with talk of men and their nonsense.