‘It’s been almost like a Shakespearean comedy, hasn’t it?’ Jamie said as we crossed the iron footbridge. ‘One of the darker ones where someone has to be saved from execution or from being eaten by a bear. Everyone romping in the wood and bumping into the wrong people. You, for example, should have been wandering the bonny banks of the Fearn kissing Euan McEwen all summer, not throwing yourself at Francis Dunbar.’
‘Kissing Euan McEwen, gracious!’ I exclaimed. ‘I never even thought about kissing Euan.’
‘He thinks of you,’ Jamie said.
I caught Euan on the path from the field to the river, almost exactly where we’d met two months ago, though I do not remember that meeting. He was carrying a milk can down to the burn to fill with water for washing.
Jamie gave me a quiet wink as he went on past us up to Inchfort.
I took Euan by the arm and made him put down the can.
‘You’re up early, Davie Balfour,’ he said.
‘We’re away now,’ I answered. ‘I came to say goodbye.’
The melancholy of the end of the summer holidays, which I expect never goes away no matter how old you are, hit me suddenly in the chest.
‘I have to go back to school,’ I explained mournfully.
He laughed.
‘Also,’ I said, ‘I have never properly thanked you for picking me up off the path and taking me to the hospital, so …’
So I kissed him, in the dappled light of the birches by the running sunny waters of the River Fearn, full of peat and secrets, and he kissed me back very gently and easily, and we both meant it.
But –
But I thought of Ellen while I was doing it.
Was it better kissing Euan or Ellen? Euan’s kiss was honest; the only honest kiss I’ve helped myself to all summer. But Ellen – goodness …
I can’t decide.
I don’t understand the difference between my passion for Francis Dunbar and my passion for Ellen McEwen. They were both, in their way, impossible to act on, impossible for either one to end well. And that means I just have to live forever a little aching and incomplete. But –
There’s something else.
It’s nothing to do with the kissing. Or – not just to do with the kissing. I could stay with Ellen for the rest of my life, kisses or no kisses. I could never put up with Francis Dunbar indefinitely. Even if he hadn’t nearly killed me, I’d have wanted to throttle him eventually for being so wet.
But Ellen McEwen, seeing through me and accepting what she finds – showing me myself …
When I found her at Inchfort that morning I gave her my pearl. I didn’t need to tell her where it came from and she didn’t have to ask. She closed her fingers around it and smiled.
‘Pinkie will miss you,’ she said.
‘Oh, Nell.’ I wanted to cry.
‘I suppose I might miss you too,’ she admitted softly.
I was damned if I’d cry.
‘There’s pearls in the Dee up at Craig Castle,’ I said, rather desperately. ‘And the oats and tattie harvest when the summer’s done. You’d be welcome.’
‘Your dad invited mine already.’
‘But I’ll be in school,’ I mourned.
‘Not always,’ she pointed out. ‘And I might find another lad like your brother and forget about you.’
She said that. As if I might, in her imagination, be an alternative to finding a lad.
‘You think so?’ I challenged.
‘Would you mind?’
‘I want you to be happy.’
‘Och, away wi’ you, Queenie.’
‘I do,’ I said stubbornly.
She cocked her head, and gave that little appraising hnnph.
‘Well,’ she said at last, ‘you’re better at giving than you were.’
Then softly she sang a part of the song she’d sung to me at the ceilidh at Inchfort, Burns’s ‘A Red, Red Rose’:
‘Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
and the rocks melt wi’ the sun:
I will love thee still, my dear,
while the sands o’ life shall run.’
She stopped. She was waiting for an answer.
I started to sing the rest, and she joined in.
I so loved singing with her.
‘And fare thee well, my only love!
And fare thee well awhile!
And I will come again, my love,
tho’ it were ten thousand mile.’
She opened her hand. The pearl gleamed for a moment on her open palm. And then she put it in her mouth and swallowed it.
She met my eyes, waiting for my reaction.
For a moment I was stung and blinded by tears.
Then we both burst out laughing.
The kisses don’t matter.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Living with Uncertainty: Travellers and Pearls
The 2011 census records about 4200 people living in Scotland today who identify themselves as Travellers. That’s probably a low estimate; there may be four times that many. The Scottish Government recognises ‘Gypsies’ or ‘Travellers’ as an ethnic group, and is taking a stance against the ingrained prejudices and active discrimination which is launched against them to this day. Scottish Travellers include several distinct nomadic identities, some with Romani (Gypsy) connections; the cultural groups loosely termed Highland Travellers are native to Scotland, sometimes tracing their heritage as far back as the twelfth century. Like the McEwen family, many take their names from Scottish clans. For generations, folk outside their way of life have disparagingly referred to them as ‘tinkers’ because of their trade in tin and metal.
I am an outsider to the Traveller way of life, which is partly why I chose to tell this story from Julie’s outsider’s point of view. The small portrait of the Highland Travellers represented by the McEwen family in these pages does not reflect the full spectrum of local names, folkways, beliefs, bloodlines and customs associated with Travellers from different parts of Scotland, nor does it deal with the complexities of their relationship with authority and the law, nor does it actually show them on the move. It’s a glimpse into their lifestyle during one summer in the 1930s, but tells you little about their long history or how their communities have been scattered and disrupted in the past hundred years.
Scottish Travellers, like other nomadic ethnic groups throughout Europe, have long been treated as pariahs. But for hundreds of years Travellers made an intricate and intrinsic contribution to agricultural and village life throughout Scotland, as they assisted with seasonal work and provided an assortment of essential goods and services to Scots living in fixed dwellings. The sweeping changes of the twentieth century have caused cataclysmic upsets to their lifestyle, and indeed, to their cultural heritage.
Ironically, the automobile – that revolutionary mode of individual transport – appears to be responsible for some of the most negative recent impacts on Scottish Travellers. With cars came road improvements and laws that shut down ancient camping greens, closed well worn paths and byways, and enabled remote settled communities independent access to the myriad goods and services that Travellers had once provided for them. Many Travellers were respected horse dealers, and the petrol engine put an end to the horse trade. Scottish river pearls, found in freshwater pearl mussels, were another traditional source of Traveller income; the pearl mussel’s decline in Scotland is probably also due in no small part to the automobile.
The freshwater pearl mussel (Margaritifera margaritifera) is now considered by some to be the most endangered species in the world. Though pollution and destruction of habitat also played their part in the decline of the pearl mussel, the discovery of the enormous Abernethy pearl in the River Tay in 1967 created a media sensation and started a sort of Scottish ‘pearl rush’. There was then no law against taking pearls; cars made it easy for day trippers who knew nothing about pearl fishing, except that they were eager to get rich quick, to access remote stretches of riverbank and leave them strippe
d.
Within thirty years the pearl mussel population in Scotland had been utterly decimated. In 1998 the freshwater pearl mussel officially became a fully protected species and it is now a criminal offence to disturb them. The pearl mussel is so close to extinction that there is no retail trade in new Scottish river pearls at all. If you sell Scottish river pearls, you must have a licence from the Scottish Government to do so, even if the pearls you are selling belonged to your grandmother and you want to sell them privately. They must be known to have been taken before 1998 to be legal. On its webpage dedicated to the freshwater pearl mussel, Scottish Natural Heritage urges people to report to the police any suspicious activity seen in or around rivers that may contain mussels. Scotland’s protected rivers are now the last fragile breeding ground for a species that was once widespread throughout Europe.
Until about thirty years ago, there was an intrinsic connection between Scottish Travellers and freshwater pearl mussels. Now, with the Traveller lifestyle and the pearl mussel’s habitat both under threat, their futures will take distinctly separate courses. I am cautiously hopeful for both.
We don’t ken half what’s buried in the peat
Part of the joy of writing this book was that it is set where I live. I’ve never done that before. Everything I wanted to look at was right at my fingertips. Cairncross of Perth, one of two retailers in Scotland who are licensed to sell Scottish river pearls, is within walking distance of my house. Cairncross were very generous and enthusiastic about showing me their stock, even though they knew perfectly well I wasn’t going to buy anything; without getting up close and personal with Scottish river pearls, I’d never have become aware of the subtleties of colour and lustre that make these jewels so exquisite. The Scottish Crown Jewels on display in Edinburgh Castle are set with Scottish river pearls, too, but those are locked behind glass.
Cairncross is not the only local organisation who let me get close to my subject matter. I experienced a wonderful insider’s view into Iron Age Perthshire by volunteering on the Moredun Top hillfort excavations in 2015 and 2016, sponsored by the Tay Landscape Partnership and led by David Strachan. Strachan also led the Carpow Logboat excavation in 2006. The Carpow Logboat dates to 1130–970 BC and was discovered in Carpow Bank at the confluence of the River Earn and the River Tay, the setting for my imaginary Strathfearn. I saw the logboat on display in the Perth Museum in 2012. Needless to say, it provided the initial inspiration for this book. While The Pearl Thief was in progress, the Carpow Logboat was being scrutinised at the Glasgow Museums Resource Centre and wasn’t on public view, but David Strachan kindly pointed me to a newer Tay logboat (485 AD) in the MacManus Gallery in Dundee.
Look away now if you’re reading this before you’ve finished reading the novel, because there are spoilers ahead.
There is no evidence that the Carpow Logboat had any ritual use, but nor has such a use been discounted, for the exact reason Ellen McEwen cites in the novel: river crossings are strange and sacred places. However, no bog bodies have ever been discovered in mainland Scotland. This thread of the story comes from Wilmslow in Cheshire, England, where I lived when I was just starting school, and from the discovery there of a two-thousand-year-old body in Lindow Common in 1984. This murdered man, now on display in the British Museum, may well have been the victim of ritual sacrifice. As a four-year-old living not far from Lindow Common I was terrified of the place because of the eerie role it played in Alan Garner’s The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. The discovery of the ancient body there in my twentieth year seemed like a complete vindication of my earlier anxiety.
But this is what authors do: we make up stuff that might be true. We populate the concrete landscape of the real world with the spirits and atmosphere of the landscape of our imagination. Sometimes the difference is very nebulous. Strathfearn does not exist; but Perthshire does, and so does the River Tay, and the River Fearn is closely related to the River Earn. The geology and geography of the imaginary landscape where I have situated the Strathfearn Estate is a sort of artist’s impression of the Tay valley. Elcho Castle stands where Aberfearn Castle might have stood, the village of Bridge of Earn is more or less in the same place as Brig O’Fearn, and the concrete telephone box (one of two survivors of its 1929 design) is in Rhynd, near Perth. Strathfearn House, renovated to become the Glenfearn School, could quite easily be mistaken for Freeland House, now home to the Strathallan School. I imagine Glenmoredun Castle in the same place as Balvaird Castle, though in better condition; I’ve deforested Dunbarrow Hill to turn it into the Pitbroomie grouse moor. And everything is a bit closer together in my fictional Perthshire landscape.
The Inverfearnie Library is the most uprooted location in the book. It’s a tribute to the Innerpeffray Library on the River Earn near Crieff in Perthshire. The Innerpeffray Library was founded in 1680 by David Drummond, Third Lord Madertie; it was the first free public lending library in Scotland and is now the oldest. In 1680, making books available to the public for free was more or less unprecedented. Originally the library was housed in the Innerpeffray Chapel, which dates to 1507, with the current structure purpose-built for the collection in 1762. The library is funded to this day through a trust set up by its founder, alarmingly styled ‘The Innerpeffray Mortification’. The Mortification is now a Scottish Charity (SC013847) and is supplemented with visitor donations. The current Library Manager and Keeper of Books is a young woman with a degree in English and Theatre.
And thank you
I tend to be shy and sneaky about my research. I did tell Cairncross of Perth that I was working on a book when I visited them, but I didn’t give them any details, and I didn’t have the courage to tell the Keeper of Books at Innerpeffray what I was doing when I visited the library, either. There is, however, one person who was let in on the project in detail: Jess Smith, storyteller, author and outstanding advocate for the Traveller community in Perthshire and beyond. She was my consultant in the art and culture of pearl fishing, advised me on the use of cant within the text of The Pearl Thief, and spent a painstaking amount of time annotating the original draft of my book. It was her suggestion that the Murray pearls be a gift from Mary Queen of Scots, which changed the course of the story. And her own writing provided me with a wealth of resources for the Traveller background for The Pearl Thief. I alone take full responsibility for any errors I’ve made in my portrayal of Scotland’s Traveller community, but Jess Smith has been hugely supportive to me in this project and I hope that it helps to give her own life’s work a wider voice. Her website is www.jesssmith.co.uk.
A novel is a much more collaborative project than readers may realise. This one had no less than five editors working on it: Amy Black, Kate Egan, Ellen Holgate, Emily Meehan, and Julie Rosenberg all helped to craft it into the thing of beauty that it has become. Amanda Banks, Miriam Roberts and Tori Tyrrell were my usual trio of first readers and I now don’t know what I’d do without them, as they are always so fast with their feedback. Kathryn Davie, knowing nothing about the story except where it was supposed to take place, insisted I include Elcho Castle in it: so Aberfearn Castle was born. I am also grateful to Iona O’Connor, my ‘Scotland’ consultant – she also helped me with Code Name Verity – and to Sally Poynton and her father, who provided background information on early twentieth century farm equipment. And of course I would never get anywhere without the staunch and steadfast support of my agent, Ginger Clark, who I happen to know wears Scottish river pearls from Cairncross in her ears.
Some invaluable references and links of interest
Books
Christian Miller. A Childhood in Scotland. London: John Murray, 1981.
Timothy Neat. The Summer Walkers: Travelling People and Pearl-Fishers in the Highlands of Scotland. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2002 (1996).
Graham Ogilvy. The River Tay and Its People. Edinburgh and London: Mainstream Publishing, 1993.
Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger. Till Doomsday in the Afternoon: The Folklore of a Family of Scots Trav
ellers, The Stewarts of Blairgowrie. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986.
Jess Smith. Jessie’s Journey: Autobiography of a Traveller Girl. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2002.
David Strachan. Carpow in Context: A Late Bronze Age Logboat from the Tay. Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 2010.
Betsy Whyte. The Yellow on the Broom: The Early Days of a Traveller Woman. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2001 (1979).
Websites
The Scottish Government’s Equality statement on Gypsies and Travellers:
http://beta.gov.scot/policies/equality/gypsy-travellers/
Shelter Scotland maintains a sympathetic website offering information and advice on accommodation-related issues for Scottish Travellers:
http://scotland.shelter.org.uk/get_advice/advice_topics/finding_a_place_to_live/gypsiestravellers
British Pathé newsreel video, released 5 June 1961, showing Bill Abernethy fishing for pearls in the River South Esk:
http://www.britishpathe.com/video/pearl-fishing
Scottish Natural Heritage’s webpage on the freshwater pearl mussel:
http://www.snh.gov.uk/about-scotlands-nature/species/invertebrates/freshwater-invertebrates/freshwater-pearl-mussel/
The Scottish Government’s statement regarding the freshwater pearl mussel:
http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Environment/Wildlife-Habitats/paw-scotland/types-of-crime/fresh-water-pearl-mussels
Perth and Kinross Heritage Trust’s webpage for the Carpow Logboat excavation:
http://www.pkht.org.uk/index.php/projects/carpow-logboat/
Innerpeffray Library Website:
http://www.innerpeffraylibrary.co.uk/
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Julie admires Ellen for ‘being herself’, unconstrained by the social pressures Julie feels. Do you think Ellen is freer than Julie?
2. Ellen accuses Julie of thoughtlessly taking everything she wants from life. Is that a fair accusation? Does Julie’s attitude to giving and taking change during the story? Does Ellen’s?
3. How do you think Ellen feels about Julie?
The Pearl Thief Page 27