Jessie's Journey

by Jess Smith

  I helped my sisters change into their playing clothes, all the time watching my mother. Something didn’t feel right. I knew her red eyes had to do with Daddy’s absence, but why shout at me? No, I was convinced there was more to it than that.

  After the wee ones went out to play, I voiced my concerns. ‘If Daddy’s away working, then why leave the Fordy?’

  Little did I know I was forcing my Mother to lie for the second time that day. It was bad enough saying he was working away from home, but now she had to invent a second person with a fictitious car, she was torn in pieces. Rather than face me, she took her crochet bag, removed a half-knitted glove, sat down and said, ‘You’re a nosey wee thing, Jess, but if you must know, it was an old friend of Daddy, a war buddy. They went in his car.’

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t Johnny, was it? Him who palled through the Black Forest with Dad? Did they go in his car? Was it, Mam? Daddy told me he gave a skinny man bully beef in a prison camp, so hungry was the poor soul that he tried to rip the can open with his teeth. You remember that story Dad told us, don’t you Mam. Was it him? Was it Johnny Slay?’

  Without a word she pulled me into her breast, and kissing the top of my head she said, ‘My wee Jessie, Dad’s right when he tells folk you’ve a tongue in your head. Listen to me now—he’s working far away, in a quarry. Not with that friend but someone else, and he’ll be home in six months’ time.’

  ‘Och, that’s fine then, you’re not needing to be crying, are you Ma?’ I felt relieved.

  ‘No, pet, but I’m used to him being here. Like you I’ll miss the old bisom. Now, away and see the wee ones are safe playing outside. I’ll get the fire lit, your big sisters will soon be home and they’ll be scranning.’

  I was retrieving my ball from the burn at the bottom of the field when the lassies came in from work, and, as far away as I was, I could hear the shouts from them. It was Daddy this, and Daddy that, and Oh My God, how could life ever be the same again!

  ‘Dearie me!’ I thought, that’s no way to carry on. Surely him making a living wouldn’t bring them to react in such an angry way. This put the dreaded thought in my head that perhaps Daddy wasn’t working. Surely my Mother wasn’t lying? He’s not away is he, not left us? The more I thought on this, the more certain I became.

  He’s left home. Aye, I’m sure now, my dearest Daddy has left us, deserted us all! Wild thoughts raced around in my brain. I tried to think on his last angry words. The night before, when Auntie Maggie and Uncle Joe were in, he certainly was giving it laldy about the crowded bus and the way the big ones constantly bickered. Did I not hear him telling Uncle Joe, ‘I can’t move an inch, these lassies leave clothes lying all over the place. If I find another stiletto heel on my pillow I’ll go moich!’ When he found the lipstick on his clean white vest just the other day, Lord, the blood vessels in his neck, never have I seen a near-explosion like that. No wonder none of the lassies owned up.

  If he really was gone, then why should Mammy tell me he’d be back in six months? Did she think it would take that time for me to get him out of my head?

  Then I thought he might be ill, in a sanatorium. Maybe his bronchitis was worse than he let on. Oh, this is bad, I just know it. Where is my Dad?

  Do you know, in all my anxiousness, I never once gave prison a thought, not one! Daddy was my ‘War Hero’, who’d spent six years defending the nation; he had the medals to prove it. He cared desperately for parentless bairns, sick animals, old people without relatives to care for them; a lonely hitcher on a wet Highland road was the better for his driving up and opening a welcome door. No, I never gave a prison cell one single inkling of a thought!

  I made up my mind which was the real reason for his absence—desertion! And we were the cause of his unhappiness. We must have chased him away, poor Dad! So, for weeks, my nightly prayers were for his happiness, and that whoever took care of him saw that he ate plenty good, thick barley broth. Oh, and not forgetting his eggs, boiled for three minutes (he only ate watery yolks). ‘Thank you, God, Amen.’

  Every Saturday Mammy went to Perth, supposedly to visit Auntie Winnie, her oldest sister, who, so they said, was poorly. Truth was, she was visiting Daddy.

  October moved on, November followed, tattie-lifting was finished. Shirley and Chrissie continued working on local farms, doing the same as burly ploughmen, including driving tractors and shifting heavy hay-bales for winter-feeding the cows.

  Our bonny Janey, on the contrary, stepped up in the world; she got a job as lingerie assistant at Scrimgeour’s, Crieff’s equivalent of Harrods, and loved it. This magnificent store sprawled at the end of the High Street and round onto Comrie Road. It sold everything one could possibly need, from ball-gowns to ball-pens. In the early seventies, this regal monument was reduced to ashes by the fiercest fire Crieff had ever witnessed, and was replaced by a block of retirement flats.

  Chrissie’s boyfriend had become a permanent feature in the evenings round the fire. Indeed we were all becoming right fond of the shy, blonde, curly-headed lad. Nothing of him was traveller-like, but if our sister had asked it, he’d have moved on to the road in a flash, for that’s how devoted he was to her!

  Mona came and went that winter, flitting between grannies and relatives, only coming home for Christmas.

  Not a day went by that I didn’t yearn deeply after my Dad. The longer the wait, the worse I became. I’d stand looking down the road, peering behind the fat, warty, ancient oak across the way from the bus, hoping to be the first of us to see him come whistling, bunnet perched on the side of his head, up the old road. But the cold frost wrapped around the tree’s bark would find me deserting my post to seek the warmth of wee Reekie, where I’d close my eyes and picture him in my head, still whistling, laughing and waving his bunnet, a sure sign to tell Mammy, ‘get the kettle on’. I pained so much for the want of my father, and no one knew it. But for Mammy’s sake I pretended not to miss him.

  Although none of my sisters said, I knew they too in their own ways dealt with Daddy’s absence as best they could. The Christmas of ’53, when our mother was at death’s door in a surgical ward of Manchester General Hospital, we called ‘Mammyless’. This, then, was the ‘Daddyless’ Christmas. No carol singing, no Santa, no turkey, just another day needing to be over.

  The tenth of March, my birthday, found me in bed with tonsillitis, a Monday it was. Mammy went as usual to Perth, Cousin John went with her. I wondered if poor Auntie Winnie had kicked the bucket? No, she was fine, said our Mona, who came home that weekend from Granny Riley’s.

  I had counted the six months on my fingers. If my mother was telling the truth, then our Dad would be coming home any day now—if she told the truth.

  The thick, yellow medicine Dr Mitchell prescribed made me drowsy, and soon I was sound asleep. The bus door opened and a familiar voice awakened me.

  ‘You got swelt tonsils again?’ the voice said quietly. ‘Hello, you skipping school?’ asked the same voice, raised this time.

  I thought for a second that I heard my father. How many times had I imagined his voice calling me? Sitting up I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. Was I dreaming? For standing there, right there in front of me, a sight I’d resigned myself never to see again, my Daddy!

  I wasn’t dreaming. It was him, a couple of feet from me, smiling, arms outstretched.

  ‘I said, sleepy head, your throat bothering you again?’

  I was speechless. He wasn’t out of my life but here right in the bus, back home beside us, after all this time.

  ‘Thank you God!’ I whispered deep within myself, ‘very, very much!’ All my prayers were answered. I sat straight up, ignoring the pain in my neck, and leapt into his arms. ‘Daddy! Daddy! My own precious Daddy!’ was all I could croak.

  I put myself between him and the door, fearing he might leave again, blurting out at the same time, ‘Did you get plenty broth? Was your eggs boilt all right?’

  Mammy was crying, so was Mona. Cousin John filled the kettle, saying ‘I’
ve a wild drouth. Is a man not for a drappy tea in this place?’

  ‘You’ll not leave us again, will you Daddy? Make me a soul promise. Anyroad, who could drive the bus as good as you?’ I was by this time in floods of tears.

  ‘No, bairn, I’ll not leave you again. Now, who do you know can drive the old bus better than myself?’ Those words rooted in my heart, I wound my arms round his waist and cuddled the father I thought never to see again. I never asked him where he had been, if working or otherwise; truth is, I didn’t care, just to see him sitting in his own chair was all that mattered. The wee ones were all over him when they came home from school. Janey, back from Scrimgeour’s, went on and on about the fancy shop, and the fact she had, that very day, been chosen as the year’s ‘Scrimgeour’s Queen’—beaming she was, just beaming.

  Daddy didn’t look well. He’d lost weight, his bunnet was too big, and the moustache he’d grown made him look older than his years. Thin hands, white fingernails; strange for a quarry worker. This didn’t suit his image one bit. I wondered if he had eaten at all, never mind three-minute eggs and barley broth. Main thing was, though, he was back; Mammy’s clootie dumplins, some skirlie, and thick tattie and leek broth would have him his old self in no time.

  Next day Janey took the wee ones to school, then went to work with her big head, knowing she was the bonniest lass in Crieff. It was official! Shirley and Chrissie left first thing, while Mammy and Mona went into Crieff for messages, leaving me (still throaty) with my Daddy. We played snakes and ladders, then noughts and crosses, followed by I-Spy.

  But there was something I needed to know, so I asked him, ‘Daddy, are you building Mammy her house this year, or will we be putting on the road?’

  ‘Well, pet, your Mother and me, we’ve decided to forget the house, at least for the time being. Maybe when the years hinder us we’ll settle.’

  I was over the shiny moon. ‘Great, that’ll do me fine. But what about the older lassies, you know how much they want a house.’

  ‘We, your mother and I, will have a blether with them and see. Now get back into bed, I see Dr Mitchell’s car pulling in.’

  ‘Hello there,’ he said, ‘My, here’s a changed bairn from the one I saw last week.’ He was a big man, was the Doctor, and had to stoop when coming in. ‘Oh! I see Dad’s home, this must be the reason for the miracle cure.’

  The pair cracked away for a minute. I paid little heed to the conversation until I heard the doctor say, ‘I meant to visit you last week, Charlie, there was a patient of mine in Friarton Prison who—.’ Did he say ‘prison’? Surely not?

  Dr Mitchell left with instructions to mind and drink plenty fluids.

  Daddy turned his back on my gaze and said, ‘Don’t ask me, lassie, not now. I’ll tell you when you’re older, old enough to understand.’

  At the age of fifteen he thought me old enough, and these are his own words:

  ‘Like the sick mixi rabbit, I looked with slit eyes, through narrow bars that were supposed to be windows. Travellers were, and still are, looked upon as vermin. I was a travelling man who suffered regular beatings, both by fellow prisoners and guards alike. I was given the vilest chores to do. The tiny cell I shared with a mindless thug made me suffer constant attacks of breathlessness. Worst of all was knowing that, come morning, the open spaces of the countryside, with its clean air, was denied me! Our kind, unable to feel the ground beneath our feet, are better beneath the earth, and this thought plagued me day in and miserable day out. I’m not religious by any manner of means, but all that I had in that horrible place was silent prayer, night after sickening night.

  I thought on my bonny Jeannie, your mother, and eight growing lassies in the bus. Thought I’d never see any of you again. A nightmare it was, lass, a living hell. Once or twice it became almost too much, I prayed for a quick end. “Forgive a helpless man, Lord, and take my breath away, I’m better dead!”

  Just like your wee sick rabbit Jess, I’d have been grateful if some good shepherd had chopped the back of my neck.’

  This was the true reason for Mammy not getting her ‘bonnie house’. He longed to be free, to move if the mood came on him—a Travelling Man!

  Chrissie found it impossible to leave her curly-headed laddie, so that spring we lost the first of the family. Mammy’s heart chipped a tiny bit when her second oldest stayed in Crieff. Mona, Shirley, Janey (who had fallen out with the manager of the shop for ordering her to get her hair cut, and told him where to put his lingerie job) and the rest of us left Crieff that spring to head on up the road.

  ‘Horse on, Macduff,’ said Mammy, as she slipped her arms round Daddy’s neck. ‘Brigadoon, here we come!’ he shouted, running his hand over her hair, then lovingly round her waist.

  As we drove away from Tomaknock I glanced out the back window to see all that remained of my mother’s dream: a foundation of bricks, deep-dug drains and a forgotten washing line loosely hanging between two old oak trees. Crieff gave us many happy memories. We would go back, but never to that peaceful spot across the way from the sprawling fields of Dollerie.

  20

  NEEP HEID

  Daddy knew the minute he rose from his bed that morning his body had gained the flu. He was also aware that the car park attendant would shortly be knocking on the door and telling us to move on. The man had been more than generous, letting us stay over the weekend, but his boss usually checked on him come Monday. No doubt then he’d be in trouble with the discovery that a busload of travellers had stayed in the car park in Perth’s Inch behind the old transport café.

  Daddy thanked him for his kindness, then lowered his pain-wracked body behind the wheel and took to the road. Within minutes he had pulled onto a lay-by a wee bit from the village of Methven, on the back road, and coughed his lungs sore.

  As he peered through watery eyes, his attempts at driving soon became hazardous to all, and Mammy insisted he find a woodend. There was no way she would drive behind the bus while he was so ill. Poor Daddy, I must admit his colour was near skull-grey.

  Soon a long narrow wood came into view. ‘This will do, at least until I’m feeling a wee bit better,’ he said, then added, ‘Jess, go you and open the gate.’

  ‘Daddy, what if the farmer or whoever owns this place isn’t one for travellers?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ll worry about that problem if and when it is one.’ He peered around him to see if there were signs of life, before saying, ‘No, I can’t see camping here for a day or two will upset anyone.’ Within no time we were parked up between a thick oak and a boulder dyke. He managed to light the fire before crawling under the feather quilt, exhausted. Mammy put the basin and tripod outside with the soap and flannel. Mary, Renie, wee Babsy and I went into the wood and gathered as many sticks for the fire as we could carry. Mammy set up the chitties and hung the kettle on the hook.

  ‘Poor Daddy, he didn’t even want a cuppy,’ said Mary.

  ‘Well,’ whispered Mammy, ‘just let him be. If he gets a bit of peace I’m sure it won’t be long before he’s himself again.’ This comment always made me smile; how could someone be someone else when they were ill?

  Our mother busied herself washing a few things, then hung them over a discarded fence-wire loosely suspended from a half-rotted wooden post, forgotten by whoever erected the newer one running from beyond the tree and disappearing over the horizon.

  With Daddy being ill it was down to our mother to put the food on the table. She decided, after carefully removing stones from a nearby riverbed and arranging the stone hearth round the fire, to go up the road a length to see if there were houses she could hawk. The stones were taken to provide a natural cooking area and put back into the river when it was time to go. This practice amongst travelling people was normal—well, in Perthshire it was. Further up-country, Highlanders used peat squares cut from the moors. They re-used them for fuel. Usually these hardy northerners were totally dependent on peat, given the clearly visible scarcity of forests.

  Leaving
some water and a sandwich for Daddy, then taking us wee ones with her, she set off round the farmhouses. Folks were kind and glad to see her with the filled basket of useful bits and bobs. Some folks bought needles, others took darning wool and so forth.

  I recall a couthie wee woman with long grey plaited hair who seemed pleased to see us. By her torn skirt and cardigan frayed at the elbows you could see she didn’t have much, but she still managed to give Mammy a few pennies and a wee bag of scones, ‘for the bairns’, she said. In return, Mammy told the woman a thing or two regarding her future. I wasn’t listening, because a man running up the side of a ploughed field caught my eye. ‘Here you,’ he shouted, ‘tinker woman, get tae hell away from there, we don’t need your sorts round here. I saw that blue bus in my wood. Now get back to it and be away.’

  Mammy ignored him; after all, what was one more angry farmer. Did she not have enough on her plate with a sick husband and small children to see to?

  ‘You would do well to pay heed to him, lass,’ warned the farm woman, half-closing her cottage door.

  ‘Who is he?’ asked my mother.

  ‘He’s the owner of the land for miles, and all who live and work on it’, she answered, before slamming her door in our faces. For reasons known only to herself she opened the door and whispered something through the slit to my mother. I didn’t hear what she said except, ‘So please move as far from here as you can’. That said, the door was bolted and the curtains swiftly closed. The woman’s words sent a bone-shiver through my mother as she picked her basket from the cottage step and ordered us away. Within seconds the roars from the farmer were close behind us as he rapidly closed the distance. We each grabbed an inch of Mammy’s coat hem. ‘You,’ he shouted louder this time, ‘Do as I say, stop! I want you lot off my land first thing in the morning!’ Mammy didn’t respond. Instead, she quietly turned, and we, like baby chicks, followed at her heel. I glanced back at the man, his face bright red with temper, spit trickling down one side of his mouth. He looked like a rabid dog. I’d never seen one, but if I did I’m sure that was how it would look.