Murray doubted the archaeologists who had taken his berth would let cake go stale, but he filled his plate and asked, ‘How did you know I wasn’t a walker?’
Mrs Dunn took a bite from a slab of iced gingerbread and brushed the crumbs delicately from the solid shelf of her bosom.
‘I’m not sure I would know now. You’ve turned into a bit of a mountain man. But when you arrived your clothes were too new and you didn’t ask any questions about the walking. Even the ones that have been here before want to know what the ground’s like or if there are any bulls in the fields.’ She looked down at her bulk and picked another fragment of icing from her blouse. ‘I don’t know why they ask me. It’s plain I’m not much of a walker these days.’
‘But you used to be?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Mrs Dunn nodded towards the wedding photograph on the sideboard. ‘When I first came here, I could trek with the best of them.’
Murray followed her gaze and saw a thin man in naval uniform arm-in-arm with a slim, young bride.
‘You made a lovely couple.’
‘I’m not being conceited when I agree with you.’ She smiled. Murray searched her face for the girl in the picture, and failed to find her. Maybe Mrs Dunn guessed what he was thinking because she added, ‘I sometimes find it hard to believe it was us.’
‘Were you married on the island?’
‘Along the road at St Mungo’s.’
‘But you weren’t born here?’
‘I would have thought that was obvious from my accent. I’m a Glasgow girl, didn’t settle here until after we were married in 1970.’
‘So you were here when Christie and Archie arrived.’
Mrs Dunn took a sip of her tea.
‘Yes.’
He waited for her to go on, but she rested her cup on its saucer and began to tell him about a granddaughter studying archaeology in Dundee. Murray worked through the contents of his plate and tried to nod in the right places.
Murray had told the landlady about his biography of Lunan while they drank their first pot, now they were on their second and he was still no wiser. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. He sipped his tea, hoping the caffeine would do its job and keep him awake.
‘There’s a few of the young ones gone in for it.’ Mrs Dunn was well under way. ‘They get school visits from the archaeologists when they’re here and then there’s always a need for free labour on the digs, so they get involved and some of them get hooked, like Kirsty. Of course, there’s no guarantee she’ll stick with it, but a degree’s a degree. She can always do something else.’ The old lady beamed. ‘We never used to bother about the old monuments much when we were young. It’s terrible to think on it now, but there were still crofters who took the boulders from the walls of the broch or the old castle to shore up their own dykes, and more than one who knocked down standing stones to make the ploughing faster. No one thought anything of it.’
Murray thought he could detect a faint, bitter scent of singeing fur, but the cat remained motionless on the rug. He said, ‘Things must have changed a lot over the years.’
She turned down the corners of her mouth in a yes-and-no expression.
‘The island looks pretty much the way it always did. But in other ways, yes, a lot has gone. We didn’t get television on the island until 1979. Before then there was a ceilidh somewhere just about every night of the week.’
The landlady’s cheeks were lightly rouged, her lipstick carefully applied. Murray’s bristles itched. He wondered at the effort of making up when there was no one to see you. He sat straighter in his chair and asked, ‘So you didn’t miss the Barralands Ballroom?’
Mrs Dunn laughed, brightening at the slight flirt in his voice.
‘The village hall wasn’t blessed with a sprung dance floor. But back then a ceilidh wasn’t necessarily a dance. More often it was talking and singing, sometimes a wee dram, but not always. Just good company.’
‘And were you made to feel at home?’
‘People tried. I think they were glad of new blood. But, of course, it was hard at first. I didn’t have any Gaelic and there were still some old ones that spoke it. They switched to English out of politeness when I was there, but I knew they’d rather be talking in their own tongue.’ Mrs Dunn looked at her wedding photograph again, almost as if she were turning towards her dead husband for support. ‘There weren’t so many people my age on the island and so a lot of the talk was about the past. Brothers and sisters who had emigrated, old ones who had died.’
Murray could imagine the smoke-laden rooms, the young woman passing round refreshments as the elderly company droned on, correcting each other on the minutiae of events of no importance to anyone outside their circle.
‘You wouldn’t know who they were talking about.’
‘I didn’t have a clue half the time, and it took me a while to realise how ancient some of the old ones they spoke of were.’
The nape of his neck tingled.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Their ancestors were real to them, and they kept their memories alive with words and music. Times were changing, they knew that, but most of them still didn’t feel the need to write their stories and songs down. Maybe they thought the power would go out of them if they were put onto a page.’
The cat rolled over, letting his other side get the benefit of the fire. Murray asked, ‘And now?’
‘Now we have television.’ She nodded towards the set in the corner. ‘I’m as bad as anyone. When it’s dark and cold outside, I turn up the fire and switch on the box. The only chance we have of preserving the past now is by recording it. Kirsty and the archaeologists have helped me realise that. I’m not a gossip, Dr Watson.’ The academic title was like savour in her mouth. ‘I’ve kept my counsel for forty years, but you’re a scholar. If you think anything I remember will help your book, then I’ll tell you what I can, though it isn’t much.’
Mrs Dunn eyed his tape recorder with approval. Murray leaned forward and pressed Record.
‘I know you didn’t come to the island until much later, but I wondered if anyone ever mentioned what Archie Lunan was like as a boy, before he left the island.’
‘My husband was ages with Lunan, but he didn’t remember much of him as a youngster, except that he was clever and the other boys teased him for it.’
‘So he was bullied?’
‘I suppose he was, but John said Archie gave as good as he got. In fact, that’s about as much as John would ever say about him, “He was a bonnie fighter when he was a boy.”’
‘Strange, on an island where the past meant so much.’
Mrs Dunn nodded.
‘Maybe, but my John didn’t like gossip, and as for the other islanders. .’ She paused as if grasping for the right phrase. ‘I think there was a bit of shame attached to Archie’s mother — or maybe not his mother so much as the way she was treated. You see, in a place like this we all have to support each other, whether we get on or not, even more so in those days. But from what I could gather, Archie’s mother hadn’t really wanted anything much to do with anyone. She’d left as a lass and came back with Archie when he was about three. No one knew who his father was, and she didn’t enlighten them, though she styled herself Mrs Lunan. She lived with her father, and when he died she stayed on in the croft for a while. But she was strange and growing stranger. She must have known it, because when Archie was ten or so she left to live with relatives in Glasgow, taking the boy with her. I got the impression that some islanders thought more should have been done for the two of them. They were slow to talk of Archie and his mother in a way they weren’t about others who had gone. The croft went to an old uncle of hers. It was a while after he died that Archie came back.’