by Jess Smith
‘Don’t you worry your wee head, I’ll tell her she’s got the best bairn in the whole of Scotland.’ He laughed, then said I was a braw bairn and wished he and the wife had a family.
‘Steady on, big man, even I know she’ll not have you exaggerating to that extent.’
As we got nearer home I was beginning to feel a right wee cheat for putting the blame on those invisible bracken bairns. I suppose it’s called ‘conscience’, but it was fair eating away at me. We arrived back in time to see a search party consisting of my older sister Janey, her new boyfriend (I can’t recall his name) my Daddy and one or two local lads who just happened to be beach-combing nearby.
‘Jessie, for God’s sake, lassie, we thought you were stolen or something! Where the hell have ye been?’
I had never seen my Mother look so worried, or angry, so I shoved Dougal the giant in front of her to do the business. I sat on a rock at the water’s edge and listened as Dougal sang my praises to everybody.
When he had finished, Mammy came over and looked into my eyes with her ‘is that true?’ stare. I knew there was no way I could lie to her. So, out came the truth, accompanied by a flood of guilty tears.
Tiny, my partner in crime, sat at my side as if to say, ‘If you’re in hot water, then so am I.’
Dougal came over and stood towering above me, then said, ‘Do you know the story of the jail and the judge who threw weans like you in prison alongside the lunatics?’
‘Aye, him who lived hundreds of years ago.’ I said, rubbing the tears from my eyes with the edge of my cardigan.
‘Well, perhaps nobody told you, but the present judge, his great-great-grandson, punishes folks in the same way, and tomorrow sits in the courthouse to deal with sheep-stealers.’
‘Oh, please, Dougal, don’t let on! I’ll work at your house, any chores you or your good lady need doing, only please don’t tell on me.’ My heart leapt a mile in my chest as fear gripped me.
The big shepherd put his hand on my shoulder and said he knew all along that I was the one who had let the sheep out. I asked him how he knew. ‘I saw you watching me from the top of the hill before I went away, and as there were no other bairns for miles then it had to be you.’
I asked him why he didn’t row me in the beginning.
‘Because you had the decency to stay and face me. That meant you cared.’
Those words said, the big shepherd looked at my mother, gave a wee wink, then told me never to lie like that again. I promised him I wouldn’t, and to avoid the taunting of my sisters, ran down the beach to lick my wounds, Tiny at my heel.
After a good crack with my parents, Dougal waved goodbye and set off in his old jeep with his four collie dogs, and oh, how I wished I’d never set eyes on them—well, perhaps for the rest of the day at least.
That night the big shepherd and his wife came back to join the bracken folk and us. As the campfire crackled away, we all sat round with the rest of the bracken bairns singing and cracking. And guess who was the centre of conversation? Aye, the ‘Shepherdess and her wee dug’, who had learned a valuable lesson: you can’t pull wool over a wool man’s eyes!
25
KIRKCALDY
In summer, the traveller was free. With no rules or ties to bind or imprison, we were like birds in flight. However, there was a government, and they stated that ‘all nomadic children should be schooled’. I liked Crieff school, but my parents would not return to Crieff, their favoured winter ground. Daddy had found another place. Come with me to Kirkcaldy.
Kirkcaldy was not to my liking. This East Coast town in the Kingdom of Fife would have to work hard to win me over. I didn’t take easily to the smell of her life’s blood: linoleum. It found its way into my nostrils and onto my skin. Nor did I care for the coal-black faces of her men that I would see every day. Those hardy lads who worked beneath the earth’s surface to fill fire-scuttles, and could still smile in spite of it!
Within her boundaries I ceased to be a true ‘traveller’. Where were my hills? My glens? This place was alien to me, a Perthshire traveller. Although she was home to many of my own kind, they seldom went on the road. The women gave up hawking and the skill of fortune-telling, which was handed down through generations, to work in the linoleum factories, while the young men joined the scaldie boys in the coal mines, never again to deal the horses or lift tatties or clear the vermin from acres of grassland. It became evident to me, as the days turned to years, that my own kind found ‘self denial’ an easy thing. No, I definitely did not like this place, but I, like my kin, grew to tolerate her rugged coastline with coal-dust for sand. What I did learn to appreciate, though, was her people, genuine folks with a working-class background second to none. There were open doors and smiling faces, and people were seldom judgmental. Perhaps this generosity of spirit was the reason why many travellers left the road and settled here.
I knew one thing that day in the late autumn of 1959, when we pulled onto the Gallatown’s Lennie’s Yard next door to Andrews’ coal depot in the north of the town, that would be our wintering ground for many more seasons. I heard my father say to Mammy, ‘I’ve found us a place to winter for years to come.’
High walls, excluding us from public view, gave a privacy my older sisters had longed for, and here, more precious than gold dust, was a toilet, one that flushed. For my parents this was a good place to live, because Daddy’s sister Maggie and Mammy’s sister Lena were already settled here. Auntie Maggie was mother to my torturing cousin Joey (remember the slow worm?). Auntie Lena was married to Tommy Reekie and mother of fourteen of the happiest kids I had ever met. I can say, in all honesty, what they lacked in material wealth they certainly made up for in love. We’ll spend some time with them later.
Within days we were schooled, me at Sinclairtown primary and my sisters in Dysart infants school. Mona left us because she fell out with Daddy over some lad she was seeing, one he didn’t approve of, while Janey and Shirley got jobs in the town.
That first winter we acquired electric lights. Gallatown football club shared the yard with us through their changing rooms. A nod and a backhander to the handyman allowed Daddy to wire into their meagre electricity supply. Now, far be it from me to say Daddy would ever willingly put our lives in danger, but on this occasion let me tell you how he did just that!
I can’t say what wakened me, whether it was the incessant rain battering the corrugated roof of the lean-to beside the bus, or Tiny whining to get out. I lay for ages, before whispering for Daddy to let the dog out. No answer from him, so I decided I would have to do it. Sweeping my hand across the floor to find a pair of shoes I stood up, only to be knocked abruptly back onto my bed. ‘Stay there, lassie, and don’t move.’
It was my father.
‘Why? If the dog doesn’t get out soon he’ll soak the carpet,’ I said, a little confused at my father’s reaction.
‘Look at the glow, Jessie, the bus is glowing!’
I opened my half-sleepy eyes, rubbed them and stared. ‘God almighty, what is it, a space ship?’ The entire bus was engulfed in a bright blue haze. My heart began to beat loudly in my chest, as one by one the younger girls awakened to the same phenonomen.
‘I think I know what it is, but I hope I’m wrong,’ said Daddy in a whispering voice.
My mother had risen and sat on our bed, gathering us up like a hen whose chicks are about to be gobbled up by the wily fox. Daddy told her to keep us away from windows and on no account to touch anything metal. I curled my toes off the floor, knowing that, somewhere down there in the dark, were rows of brass screws.
For a moment there was silence, then Daddy said, ‘If I don’t get us out we might all fry.’ Saying that, he threw himself at the door. Sparks formed under his fingers and ran up his arm, but there was no turning back. I can still smell the burning flesh of my poor father’s hands as he wrenched open the door. He was thrown several feet in the air, as if invisible hands had shaken him like a rag doll. Mammy screamed, so did I, and we ran out through the ope
ned doorway to see him lying, Tiny beside him, both unconscious on the wet gravel. The blue haze was gone, but sparks and a hissing sound came from an exposed cable thrashing on the ground. Mammy told me to watch over the girls while she got help from a lorry driver, sleeping unaware in his cab round by the front gate. He threw several empty coal bags on the hissing cable, while Mr Andrews, the coal merchant from next door, and his wife helped Daddy, who was by now groggy but conscious, into their car. What a close call, that night!
Next day he came home from hospital. Apart from a badly burned hand and broken ankle, he was none the worse. The lorry driver, who broke the changing-room door off its hinges to get in, fixed the electricity.
Poor wee Tiny, although none the worse for his ordeal, did look awfy sorry for himself. Mammy bought him a string of beef links (sausages) all to himself. Well, if he hadn’t started whimpering then we might all have been fried brown like our hero’s treat. Seriously, though, we were very near being burnt to death that night. When Daddy got the power back in his hand, he made sure the job was done right the next time, by burying the cable, properly insulated, deep beneath the ground.
One thing I remember about our modern brightly-lit bus was how dull the moon looked as I gazed up from my little bus window during cold frosty nights! Before the electric light my moon was the brightest light I knew.
Let me now take you down to Laurel Crescent, near Victoria Hospital. Midway up the street, in a sprawling house, dwelt Mammy’s younger sister Lena. Sharing her life, as I mentioned, were fourteen kids and her man (an only child), Tommy Reekie. I say this with the utmost sincerity: never had I spent time with a happier bunch. The front door was never locked, and visitors were given a row for knocking. They just stood at the open door and shouted ‘hello’.
Lena or Tommy would, if they heard them, shout back, ‘come in whoever you are, but only if you’ve blown yer nose and are clean and honest.’ People who knew them just walked in and helped themselves to a cup of tea from an ever-boiling kettle. If, on the other hand, a debt collector came a-calling, then he or she was wasting their time. Their call was never answered, so after a long wait they just abandoned their visit. On the kitchen table sat a massive pot. Each day it was filled, either with stovies or chunky vegetable soup. A bread-bin brimming with crusty loaves accompanied the pot, and this was their staple diet. No biscuits, sweeties or puddings. Needless to say, they had the bonniest teeth in all Kirkcaldy.
Bairns leapt up and down on the two biggest settees you’d ever seen. The infant pram, which sat by the window in the living room, was always filled with a sleeping bairn.
Auntie Lena loved singing. Tommy played the accordion. So usually when supper was over and pyjamas donned, the house boomed with singing and laughter.
Some summers they came with us to the Berries with the biggest tent (purchased from an army store) you’d ever seen. Auntie Lena would throw back the tent door, peer inside and call ‘Are you all in bed?’ Of course half of them would be missing, either playing in the nearby wood or routing about some place. Did Auntie Lena know that half her brood was missing? Of course she didn’t, because the truants paid one or two of their brothers and sisters to imitate them.
26
ONE COLD NIGHT
Soon we were into the dead of winter. It was late at night, a storm had threatened all day and I lay in bed freezing, unable to sleep.
‘Mammy,’ I whispered, so as not to wake my three younger sisters. ‘I am freezing to death lying here, is there a pair of Dad’s socks for my feet?’
A quiet snore from my mother told me she was asleep and it seemed selfish to wake her.
This was my thirteenth year, and I had pestered Daddy to have my own bed. All four of us lassies used to sleep like sardines in the big bed, but we were growing, and nights were filled with toes stuck in noses and elbows rammed in ribs. Sleep was the one thing we didn’t do. So here I was in my nice single bed, actually more like a bench than a bed, and, on this bitter cold night, I was sorely tempted to sneak back in beside my siblings. Each turn of my body allowed more cold air in to share the bed with me in my wynceyette goonie, which, incidentally, I had worn for more years than I could remember. I thought of rolling myself up in the blankets and lying on the floor, but there was a mousetrap under the table somewhere. I cringed at the very idea of a contorted wee mouse and me lying together on the floor, so I continued to shiver where I was.
My persistent turning about in bed eventually wakened Mammy. ‘Can you not sleep, pet?’ she asked. ‘Is the bed ower cold?’
‘God, Mam, the cheeks of my backside are like two frozen stones on a dyke, and my feet have long since been replaced by icicles.’
‘Aye, I’m feeling the cold myself, Jess, and with your father visiting Granny Riley at Pitlochry I miss his old bones lying beside me.’
‘Aye, poor Granny, I hope she gets over the flu soon,’ I said. Here was I fussing over a wee bit cold, and her struck down with the dreaded influenza. Granny was in her seventies and quite frail. A simple sneeze sent the family to her bedside in a state of deep concern.
Sadly, this time my dear old Granny did not recover. Within three days of that cold December night, she passed away. Perhaps this was the reason this particular tale is more vividly remembered.
‘Och, you’re a poor wee cratur right enough,’ said Mammy. ‘Come on, you and me will sit down by the stove and warm ourselves, there’s just enough heart left in the fire, it only needs a poke.’
I watched as my Mother silently and quickly put a little coal on the wee three-legged stove; then, to my delight, she poured some milk in a saucepan for cocoa and sat it on the top to boil. She draped a tartan rug round my shoulders and gave me Daddy’s thick grey army socks—not ones from the War, just socks bought from the Army and Navy stores. While I popped them on my frozen feet, she poured the bubbling cocoa into two big mugs.
In no time at all I’d forgotten how cold I was as we sat there, hands cupped round our cocoa, staring at the red glowing embers of the wee stove.
‘The wind’s whipping up a cracker of a storm by the sounds of it,’ said Mammy.
‘It’ll snow for sure,’ I added.
‘This weather reminds me of a tale your Granny Riley told me once, about an ancestor of Granddad’s. Do you think you’ll bide awake long enough to hear it, Jess?’
‘Aye, that I will, Ma, but do you think, seeing as Daddy’s away, you’ll let me sleep in the big bed with you?’
‘We’ll see, we’ll see. Now drink the cocoa before it goes cold.’
Now, let’s begin.
Old Flora and Hamish Johnston farmed a wee holding in a remote part of Glen Tilt. Long years working the soil was beginning to take its toll, and where once both of them laboured, now most of the chores were done by Hamish. They had one son, a giant of a man by the name of Joseph. Flora had lost three children, all girls: one was stillborn, the other two died in infancy. That was many years ago. Joseph was now forty, and as the old woman watched her son striding up the hill road, she wondered if she would live to see a grandchild.
Unlike his father, Joseph’s heart lay in forestry. He made his living amid the woods of Atholl and, as often as work permitted, spent most of his spare time visiting his parents. He built a small but sturdy wooden shack in the wood several miles from his parents’ farm, and here he spent the long summer months working timber on the sprawling north Perthshire estate.
Joseph waved to his mother as he caught sight of her standing in the doorway of the wee white cottage. ‘How are you keeping, old wife?’ he asked, lifting her up in his big arms.
‘I’d be doing a lot better if you didn’t just squeeze all my ribs together, my big brute of a son.’
‘Well, I’m fair glad to see you, Mother, fair glad right enough. What’s for dinner, and where’s the old man?’
‘He’s away into the village for some flour and an odd thing or two, he’ll not be long.’
His mother looked at her fine son and he kne
w what was coming next.
‘I was just saying to myself as I watched you coming up the road, laddie, it would be nice if you could find a wife. Is there no lass caught your eye yet? A bunch of bonnie bairns is what you need. That is, before it is too late.’
‘Now, Mother, don’t you start that again, I’m fine the way I am.’
He turned and said, ‘I’ll away down to the village, maybe Father has need of a hand.’
Flora smiled as her son strode off to avoid any more awkward questions, muttering to himself, ‘I wish that mother of mine would leave things as they are.’
As Joseph reached the outskirts of the village, he saw his father talking to some folks. Getting closer, he saw it was a man, a girl and three wee lads.
Hamish, on seeing his son approach, said, ‘Here comes my lad, he’ll help carry your belongings up to the house. These folks have come all the way down from Kingussie, Joseph, and I have promised them a bite to eat and a bed for the night.’ This was quite a common event: Hamish was renowned for his generosity, and, regardless of who they were, if a person was in need of help, then he never hesitated to offer a hand.
Joseph smiled at the bedraggled travellers, picked the heaviest of the packs, and walked on back to the wee house, wondering where they would all sleep. He failed to notice the lassie behind him, who was trying to keep up with his long strides.
‘Hello, I’m Helen, and who might you be? You wouldn’t be a two-legged Clydesdale pony, now would you?’
Joseph laughed as he realised his long strides must have been hard for this five-foot-nothing trying to keep up with him. ‘Och, I’m sorry lassie, I mean Helen, I do tend to go a bitty fast. I reckon it’s to do with working the forest. Oh, and my name is Joseph.’
‘That’s a gentle name for a giant.’ Her face lit up with such vibrant beauty he felt a flush of red fill his cheeks and turned away, not knowing why.