NOW and again, for relaxation, I play the mouth organ with folk musicians in a Kirkwall hotel. One night, after we had finished, a man came up to me. He had been drinking, but wasn't drunk.
''I know who you are,'' he said.
Larry Adler, eat your heart out. I felt secretly pleased that this obviously discerning man had recognised one of the greatest mouth organ virtuosos to come out of Cowdenbeath in recent years, this century even. Feeling both famous and humble, I rehearsed in my mind a suitably modest little speech in response.
''Yes,'' he said, looking right into my face, ''You're Magnus Linklater!''
Ach well.
When I told Marjorie Link-later, the mother of the then Scotsman editor, Magnus Linklater, she hooted with laughter, and then she said, ''Magnus should be flattered!''
When I relayed the details to Magnus, for some reason he didn't laugh quite so heartily.
Marjorie liked to tell the story. She was a natural raconteur. And her death in Orkney last week at the age
of 88 produced a stream of remembered tales.
Marjorie Linklater was one of the most interesting and vital people I have ever encountered. Edinburgh-born, she was a strikingly beautiful actress when she met the Orcadian writer Eric Linklater - already established as one of Scotland's leading novelists - and married him in 1933. A few days ago, a letter Marjorie wrote to Eric after they became engaged was found at her Kirkwall home. In it she had written, with typical charm and wit, ''How can I make you happy? Oh dear, I'm beginning to become maudlin. Blast you! If you can't be happy with me, well you ought to be ashamed of yourself. I'll jolly well see that you are happy whether you want to be or not!''
It was not all happiness. Being married to a creative genius who was prone to tempestuous moods was not easy. On one occasion he emptied a fruit bowl over her. During one particularly furious argument about modern life, Eric was taking a very traditionalist line. Marjorie, temperamentally a rebel, shouted at her bewildered husband, ''All change is for the best - even when it's for the worst!''
They left their home in the parish of Harray to live in Easter Ross for some years, but after Eric died in 1974 Marjorie elected to return to Orkney. She could have settled for the demure life, enjoying the kudos of being the widow of a famous writer - but demure was never her style.
A cellist with the Orkney Orchestra - she later swopped the instrument for a donkey on the grounds that the beast made a more beautiful noise - she was a founder member of the St Magnus Festival, writing and producing plays, and also of the Orkney Folk Festival.
''I've decided to give up
sex and take up committees!'' she cried.
Maybe. Even in her latter years, Marjorie had tremendous zest for life. She had a long-distance romance with someone in the south.
''You can't believe how exciting it is,'' she exclaimed, ''to travel to meet your lover on a Senior Citizens Railcard!''
The lady had style.
But no Lady Bountiful was she. She wanted to change things.
She cared deeply about human rights, and was a founding member of the Orkney branch of Amnesty International. She protested on the streets of Kirkwall against the sale of the TSB.
She was a fierce campaigner against the dumping of nuclear waste. In her late seventies, she and local activist Frances McKie went off to challenge the managers at Dounreay, like female Orcadian versions of Moses and Aaron going off to give Pharaoh a piece of their mind.
Like her husband before her, Marjorie campaigned for the Scottish National Party, being Winnie Ewing's political agent for more than 20 years.
She was an energetic crusader against uranium mining in Orkney, and promised that if the bulldozers came in, she would lie down in front of them. No-one doubted that she would.
When she was more than 80 she confronted a local farmer for taking sand from a beach below the high-tide mark. He drove his tractor right up to the handbag-carrying old lady and told her to get off his land. In the midst of a furious tirade, he called her a ''bugger'' and a ''whore''.
''Make up your mind,'' said Marjorie. ''I can't be both.''
Panache. She was a woman of deep faith, true to her nourishing Scottish Episcopal roots but never wholly defined by them. She was a holy person who was enormous fun to be with. This reverent woman could be hilariously irreverent. It was an irresistible combination.
Her death came on a glorious Orkney summer day. She was out with friends, at a barbecue, laughing and telling stories. Then she went home, and simply died.
So we took her body from St Magnus Cathedral - where there is a plaque to Eric in the Orcadian writers' corner - and buried her in the windswept graveyard of Harray Kirk, right next to her beloved, brilliant, disputatious husband.
Beside him, but not in his shadow. You see, she never was.
Two days later - exactly one week after Marjorie's death - the whole Linklater tribe and friends are at the seaside for
a picnic. It's another beautiful Sunday.
The Orkney sea is suicidally cold, but we plunge in competitively and foolishly. Amid much whooping and roaring, a familiar head surfaces from the brine. Eye to eye with Magnus Linklater. I know who you are . . . What is that ghostly hilarity I hear?
Out of the sea, feeling both chilled and righteous. Then a barbecue. Sharing burnt sausages and wine: and an unspoken but overwhelming remembrance of a feisty and passionate woman who lived until she died.
