Jessie's Journey

by Jess Smith

  ‘Will stovies do your tea?’ she asked, pulling the big family pot from under its cover near the tent.

  Because they were by now convinced she was failing in the head, they took most of the wee ones with them, leaving only little Robbie and his week-old sister, Bell. The children’s mother Maggie, told Bridget she’d be home at midday to put wee Bell on the breast, and gave her a cuddle, saying stovies would be grand after a hard day. ‘You must understand, it’s because you’re so precious, mother dear, we worry for your well-being. Now, will you be all right?’ Young Maggie took the frail old woman in her arms, kissing her lined face.

  Bridget returned her daughter-in-law’s affection with a kiss, then watched the sprightly lassie run off down the road and disappear round the bend. She then set about cleaning the tents and shaking the crumpled bed covers before folding them neatly.

  She and wee Robbie spent the rest of the morning gathering sticks. Later she peeled a multitude of tatties and onions for the family’s promised stovie supper.

  A rare heat was radiating from the fire when Maggie came home to feed her baby, who hadn’t stirred an ounce since she left. ‘The farmer’s wife sent some scones up for you, Mammy. She sends her best an’ hopes you’ll visit her with a crack soon, when the tatties are finished,’ said Maggie.

  ‘Thank her for the good words. Aye, that would be fine. I haven’t seen many folk this whiley back, not since my Duncan went. God, I can’t even mind when I was last at the graveside. Perhaps I’ll go this coming Sabbath and take wee Robbie.’

  For the second time that day Bridget watched her daughter-in-law hurry off down the road, thinking it wasn’t that long ago she’d the same spring in her step. She pulled the coarse, grey shawl up under her chin, thinking the frost wasn’t far off, and put another clump of wood on the fire.

  Much to her dread, little Robbie copied his granny by doing the same with a half-burned stick.

  ‘God almighty, boy, don’t you be standing so near the fire. Get back out of there!’ she screamed at him, and the poor wee mite, startled by his granny’s remark, began crying, rubbed a blackened fist across his chubby face and looked at her with pools of watery eyes. Her heart sank. ‘Come to Granny, my bonnie wee cherub, sure I’m forgetting you’re only an infant. But do you know how precious fingers are? Oh dear, if you burnt those wee fingers, my, oh my.’ She picked him up into her bosom and cuddled him tight. Handing Robbie a wool ball to play with she went in-by her tent to check baby Bell, who was sleeping soundly, belly full of thick, healthy breast milk.

  Refilling her clay pipe, she sat down beside the tent flap and stole a few minutes to herself. The October sun was low in the sky, minding her the stovies should be cooking. Before hanging the big black pot on the iron chitties straddling the fire, she turned to check on Robbie, but seeing no sign of him, her heart missed a beat. ‘Where in the blazes is he? Rob, answer me now, bairn, Granny’s needing you. Stop hiding from me, come out!’

  Bridget peered into every tent, behind trees, in about the legs of the tethered ponies, squinted her eyes into slits and scanned as much of the wood as she could possibly see, but the lad had disappeared! ‘This is the last time I take care of this bairn,’ she thought. ‘Sure he’s far over precious to be left with an old woman, a stupid old one at that.’ In apprehension she screwed the edge of her apron into a tight knot between her fists and called out, ‘Robbie, Robbie!’ Silence followed her cry, as if the very birds of the forest became anxious for the wee lad.

  A soft murmur came from baby Bell, and Bridget’s burden doubled. Her family would be home in an hour, they’d find him for sure, but she cried into herself, ‘My God, a lot could happen in an hour!’ At this thought a shiver ran through her body, more chilling than the coming winter’s snows.

  However, years of experience bringing up her family replaced the fearful thoughts, and gave her an inner strength. Wrapping wee Bell securely in the old shawl, she set off into the depths of the wood in search of her wandering grandson, telling herself he was just round the corner.

  But every corner taken made her heart sound like a beating drum in her chest, as no sign of her charge appeared. Tears of fear rolled down her weather-beaten face, and a lifetime dreaming of Rob Roy Macgregor and the fairies was fading like vapor. Here was real life, her baby lamb lost in the dense forests of the Trossachs, at the mercy of God alone knows what. Not a dream or whispering trees, but a small vulnerable child wholly dependent on her care. Her family was right, she was a mad old woman!

  Bridget sat down among some stones to relieve the strain in her back from carrying Bell, and thought how useless she’d become with age, wishing she was cold dead, lying beside her Duncan. A faint cry way over by the waterfall at the other side of the wood stirred her from out of the despair rapidly taking over her being.

  ‘That’s not a wood sound,’ she thought, rising to her feet, and with one hand securing the now-stirring infant, made over to where the sound came from.

  The waterfall was always out of bounds to her as a lass, aye, and to her own brood as well. It was a deep crevice in the ground, more akin to a hole than anything else, and very dangerous. ‘God, not that awful hole!’ She froze on thinking of the place. Oh, if that sound was her Robbie, Lord, please keep him safe from the Devil’s Pot, she prayed.

  Lifting her long black skirt she made towards the frightening slit in the forest floor. Thankfully the heavy rains which usually came at that time of the year had not yet appeared, making the waterfall a trickle rather than its usual cascading torrent.

  There was no sign of the wee lad, though. Only a dead tree lay across the falls with branches stretching in many directions. Bridget peered into the hole and thought, thankfully, he hadn’t come this way. ‘No, I can’t see him,’ she sighed with relief; but then, ‘Wait the now, what’s that?’ Staring deep down the long narrow gorge and squinting her old her eyes into narrow slits, she saw a different green. Not the decaying colour of the old tree but a khaki green, the very same as Robbie’s breeches, the very ones she made for him out of Duncan’s old trousers!

  ‘Rob, Robbie!’ She held her breath and waited on an answer. That is, if one was forthcoming.

  Then, after a long pause, a heaven-sent voice whispered back to her, ‘Stuck, Ganny, me stuck.’

  Aye, for sure he was. Praise be, he’d been snared by one of the branches, but for how long? The wee bisum was well down into the gorge, how in heaven’s name did he manage that? Bridget had to get down into the crevice, for there wasn’t a minute to lose. She removed her skirt and rolled it into a warm nest. Within a clump of thick fern she put Bell snugly inside the skirt nest, then taking the old wool shawl she’d worn as long as her skin, she cut it to strips with a sharp stone. Hurriedly she tied the strips together to make a longish rope, and all the while she was calling out to Robbie she was coming, and not to struggle.

  ‘Dinna move, now, bairn, Granny will have you tucking into a plate of stovies in no time.’

  She peered in at the green slimy walls, which seemed to take the water into the depths of hell and the very door of old Nick himself! She prayed to God, the Fairies and anybody who had a hand in the impossible, before sliding her legs down towards the helpless lad, shawl rope tightly round her waist, the other end anchored on the dead tree’s root. For the umpteenth time she prayed.

  One wrong move, and she and the bairn would be victims of Mother Nature’s uncaring moods.

  Her feet dangled in mid-air as she tried and tried to get a foothold in the never-ending wet moss, but it seemed an unattainable task, for she was too old. Her legs hadn’t dross of strength; her hands were gnarled with a lifetime working the soil. And worst of all, she was more than aware of it!

  Wee Robbie shivered and sobbed on his life-saving branch while Bell, now awake, screamed. Her squeals were adding to Bridget’s growing distress, which was about to take on a serious turn.

  ‘Oh my God!’ she cried, as the shawl’s grip began to loosen from her waist and she st
iffened with fear. She knew in her falling that Robbie and his tree would go with her. She closed her eyes and asked that wee Bell’s screams would soon be heard, and she at least would be saved.

  Then, as the old woman began to drop her legs and let go, something, very, very, strange happened. Strong yet tender hands lifted her gently from her impending doom, and laid her soaked body on the ground beside the skirt nest and baby Bell.

  Taking the tail of her sodden grey flannel underskirt, she rubbed a little of the peat-water from her eyes. She looked round to thank her rescuer, but he was nowhere to be seen. Then a sight filled her vision that was so unbelievable she thought for a moment that Death had indeed claimed her and she was in a dream state.

  Before her very eyes Robbie’s wee shivering body came floating, yes, floating, from the edge of the waterfall! There wasn’t a solitary soul to be seen as he was gently handed into her care.

  ‘This,’ she thought, ‘is surely the work of the fairies.’

  Bridget sat on the earth clutching her little grandson tightly to her bosom, when Bell let out another hungry squeal, bringing the old woman back to reality. She called out to the silence,

  ‘That was you come back to save your soul through my wee lad, was it not Rob Roy Macgregor? I was right all along. I just knew you and I would cross paths. Go home, lad, you’re free now. God grant we’ll meet on the other side one day. Thank you kindly for choosing myself, a tinker of simple stock. I remember your words: On the moss-carpeted ground. You see, lad, I never forgot: a seventh son o’ a seventh son would save yer soul. My wee Robbie is a seventh son, it was him. Are the fairies and yourself listening, do you hear me?’ She cried out at the nothingness all around, but only a faint echo of her own voice carried itself from the gorge that seconds before beckoned her life’s breath.

  It was a wet but grateful old woman, holding a hungry baby in her arms, that followed on behind wee Robbie, the seventh son of her seventh son, as he ran to meet the workers.

  She never told them what really happened; only that Robbie got stuck near the Deil’s Pot. That was enough to tell them their mother was no longer capable of looking after the little ones. So they decided Maggie should stay behind in future and see to the campsite. Bridget was silently grateful for that; she’d done her bit. Although she never told her family what happened that day, she felt it only right that wee Bell should know. After all, was she not part of Rob Roy Macgregor’s ‘miracle’?

  The passing years saw the family leave the Trossachs, scattering themselves throughout Scotland. Bridget however, refused to leave her campsite in the wood at the far end of Loch Ard. In fact only her tent remained, and there she stayed, until the fairies came in the silence of a quiet summer’s night for her own soul.

  Thankfully my father was late coming for me, allowing my storyteller enough time to finish her tale.

  ‘Man, that was grand,’ I thanked the woman. But before she left I asked her name.

  ‘Bell,’ was the reply, ‘Bell Williamson,’ she said, adding, ‘Now, lassie, remember this unwritten tale, keep it fresh in your memory and tell it to travellers every chance you get.’

  I now, with your help, reader, have told Bell’s fairy story—the traveller’s version of Rob Roy Macgregor—to you.

  19

  THE LIVING NIGHTMARE

  That was a braw summer’s jaunt in the old bus. Why the others were hankering after a house beats me. Back at Crieff, though, this is all the family spoke about, apart from Chrissie. The lad she left in the spring has returned with a yearning look in his eye, and Mammy thinks her second eldest is falling in love.

  Daddy, as he’d planned earlier in the year, set about finding out the ways of spray-painting. The events this set in motion unfolded themselves into a living nightmare, though it began so well. He busied himself during the summer months offering his services to paint farm sheds, barns and the farmer’s house if so desired (one eccentric wife had her farmhouse painted a bright pink, but that’s another story). Soon he’d lined up several good jobs, but without the right equipment to take on such a task he was neither here nor there. So, unable to buy new, he bought second-hand.

  Did he know that the compressor, spraying guns and pipes were stolen?

  ‘I never knew,’ was what he swore on the good book that cold morning standing in Perth Court accused of reset! The judge didn’t believe him.

  Now, this travelling-people hater of a judge decided, on that misty Monday morning in October, that an example should be made: ‘Six months for reset.’

  ‘God in Heaven, that’s richt steep for a first offence,’ said Daddy’s brother Wullie, who along with Cousin John went to the court with him.

  Before my father was led away to serve his sentence, he glanced across the River Tay from the courthouse window, and leaning over at his brother he said, ‘If I’m still in the stardy come next summer, take the lassies on the river for a wee bit pearl-fishing and make sure Jeannie knows how sorry I am for putting us in this pitiful state. Tell her I’m sorry about her house. I’ll make it up to her when I get home!’

  Mammy’s anxious wait for the verdict was soon over. When she saw Cousin John drive the Fordy home she knew that she and her Charlie had hard times facing them, but how to keep us weans from learning the truth about him being in jail was more important.

  ‘When he gets back we’ll all pile in to build your house, Jeannie. Six months will fly by, don’t you fret.’ Cousin John was always a faithful friend to my folks. He took a sip of tea, then added, ‘That is, if he minds his tongue and doesn’t get extra time for his trouble.’

  My mother wrung her hands tight and reminded John, ‘He’s an ex-soldier, he can take orders, aye, and give them too. He’ll keep his mouth shut, for that’s a place not even a dog would want to linger in. As for this house of mine, well, it’s a pipe dream, all in my head. My Charlie could never be happy trapped between four walls. No, the road is to be our way of life. Most important is that the wee ones don’t find out where their Daddy is.’

  ‘They’ll not find out from me,’ John assured her. ‘Why don’t you tell them he’s working far away quarrying or something. That’ll satisfy their curiosity.’

  ‘I’ll tell the older lassies, because Lord knows I’ll be needing their support. But it is going to be damn hard for sure, though, John.’

  ‘You’re a tough lass, Jeannie. Remember the six years you and the four weans lived in a hut beside the midden at the Bobbin Mill in Pitlochry, while Charlie was fighting. I bet there was many a night you lay in bed listening to the bombers going over, thinking you’d never see him again.’

  ‘I’m not thinking of myself, John, it’s my Charlie. God help him locked up in a wee cell for six months. How is he going to live like that, it’ll kill him.’

  ‘Now, don’t you be getting ideas like that in your head—sure, he’s a rugger is my cousin, a hardy chiel, with a lot to live for, and, as for the time, well, it’ll flee by.’

  I remember getting home from school that Monday; a freezing fog which settled around the Dollerie fields was making me shiver. I couldn’t wait to get home and warm myself at wee Reekie.

  I opened the door for my wee sisters, noticed the stove hadn’t been lit and asked Mammy why, on such a cold day, the fire was out. Her face was unusually pale, the red from her cheeks had moved to her eyes and her appearance scared me a mite.

  ‘Where’s my Dad? I seen the Fordy outside, is he up the way cracking to old Suttie the farmer?’ I asked her. This said gent owned Tomaknock, the ground on which we lived, and he and Daddy were good friends.

  Mammy heaved a sigh, and looked blankly out the window before answering, ‘He’s away working for a few months, so there’ll just be us lassies.’

  Picking up each of my wee sisters’ blazers from the floor and folding them neatly, I quizzed her, ‘Has he got work painting, Mammy? That’s good. You’ll get your house built, and if he makes plenty money then maybe he’ll buy us another bus when this one pegs out.�
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  She turned on me, which just wasn’t like her at all. Grabbing the blazers from me she shouted, ‘Shut up, will you, Jessie! I’m sick of you going on about this stupid bus, do you ever think of anything else?’

  Her raised voice and angry reaction to my enquiry was completely out of character.

  We all ran and cuddled her. She was obviously missing Daddy, and him only a morning away. Little did we know what burden our poor mother was shouldering that moment in time.

  ‘Have you a sore head, Mammy?’ asked Renie, running a little hand round her neck.

  Mary muttered something about homework, then asked, ‘Can I get a piece in jam? I’m starving to death, haven’t had a thing to eat since my porridge,’ then added, ‘The food was yuck at the diney, wasn’t it Jessie?’

  ‘Aye, it was that,’ I answered, ‘The school dinner was rank the day all right, whoever cooked the mince did it blindfold, or blind drunk. I left most of mine too.’

  Renie said with big watery eyes, ‘Mammy, what a shame, a wean in my class peed her breeks. She was greeting ’cause horrible house bairns laughed and called her dirty names.’ Renie always felt sorry for the hard-done-bys of the world.

  Mary, on the other hand, wasn’t so soft. ‘She didn’t just pee, she filled her knickers into the bargain as well.’

  ‘Never did, that’s a lie, I gave her a cuddle and would have smelt it,’ protested Renie. ‘She’s horrible, Mammy. Have you a sore head? Looks as if you have one.’

  ‘Bairns, wheest, wheest, stop all yapping at the same time.’

  Mammy assured Renie that no, she didn’t have a headache, and yes, ‘Mary, you can have a piece, only don’t eat all the jam,’ adding that it must have been a shame for the child who never made it to the lavvie. She further told us that those bairns who made fun of the unfortunate would be visited upon by a similar experience, further adding, ‘God’s slow, but sure!’