by Mick Kitson
He was English and he was posh. He’d unclipped his skis now and he walked over the snow to the ice and just started talking like we knew him.
‘Come all the way over from Glentrool. Pretty hard going this last bit. Going back over that way – past the stones, bit more slopey down there.’
Peppa stood up and was looking at him. He was good-looking. His hair was that kind of reddy blond and it was all fluffy and wispy round his face. He had big eyes and his lips were thick and pink. He had pink cheeks and his eyelashes were long and dark. He walked onto the ice and stamped and a big crack opened and shot out away from him with a hissing sound and he jumped back and went ‘Whoa! Cool!’
He stamped again and the big chunk of ice flipped up and clattered away from the hole he made and water bubbled out. He kicked at the ice lump and it spun and skidded across to where Peppa was and he went ‘Yeah! Ice hockey!’
Peppa kicked it back and he slid away from her and stuck his leg out to stop it passing him and then kicked it back. Peppa was smiling and slid over and kicked it back. The lump flashed along the ice between them twirling silver in the sunshine.
I stepped back towards the shore and watched and they started kicking the ice lump and Peppa was laughing and shouting ‘Nah!’ when she missed it and he was smiling and shouting and gliding about. They were about twenty metres from each other and he pulled his goggles from round his neck and put them on the ice and then took off one of his gloves and put that down about two metres away and he shouted and pointed ‘Hey! Goal!’ and Peppa started sliding towards him pushing the ice in front of her like a football player. Then kicked it hard and it shot towards him in the goal and he stretched and then flipped up and crashed down onto his arse and he went ‘Oooh.’ The ice cracked where he hit it and water blew out along the crack and he scrabbled and slipped trying to get back up. Peppa was still flying towards him and she hit the water and flipped over too. He was laughing and he had his hands down on the ice and his feet were sliding and slipping from under him as he tried to get up. Peppa was slipping and tripping and laughing and she bumped down onto the watery ice and went ‘Aaah, ma bum’s wet!’
He was sitting too now with his legs straight out in front of him and he said ‘Me too. I’m Adam.’The sun was shining full on him and he smiled over at me. Peppa got up and skidded over to him. She said ‘I’m Peppa. She’s ma sister Sal’ before I could stop her. Then she said ‘Are you English?’
He held his hand out and she grabbed it and helped pull him up and he said ‘Yeah. Are you Scottish?’
Peppa slid away from him back towards me on the shore and went ‘Aye. We’re on holiday.’
He came over slipping to the shore. He said ‘Me too. I’m staying with some people from uni other side of Glentrool. It’s cool here isn’t it?’
Peppa said ‘Aye. Are you posh?’
He frowned for a second then smiled again and said ‘Well no, I wouldn’t say posh. I’m a student. I like cross-country skiing. And ice hockey on frozen lochs with funny little girls.’
Peppa was stood by me now and she almost half hid behind me and peeked round at him grinning. He looked at me and he was still smiling and putting his goggles back round his neck. He nodded at her and said to me ‘She’s a little ball of fire isn’t she?’
I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t even know what he meant and I just kept staring at him. He had gold freckles on his forehead and wee red blond hairs coming out of his chin where he hadn’t shaved. He was tall and his shoulders were wide and he had big hands with long thin fingers. Peppa skipped out in front of me saying ‘Have you got a girlfriend?’
He laughed, shaking the water out his ski glove and looked me in the eye and shook his head like he was saying ‘Kids eh?’ Peppa was right up by him now and she carried on, ‘Have ye? Is she pretty?’
He grabbed her and started tickling her and she shrieked and he span her round and held her upside down. I just stood there not moving. Not even when he grabbed her. She was screaming and laughing and he put her down and she jumped up at him and he caught her again and she tapped on his chest with a pointy finger and went ‘Well, laddie have ye, or no?’
He said ‘Yes.’
She said ‘Is she pretty?’
He said ‘Not as pretty as you.’
She said ‘What’s her name?’
He said ‘Hermione.’
Peppa laughed and jumped down from his arms and said ‘What, like Harry Potter?’ and he said ‘Yes’ and Peppa said ‘Is she a witch?’ and he said ‘Yes.’ Peppa said ‘You’re lying!’
He walked back over to his skis and started clipping them on. Peppa ran over to him again. She said ‘Have you read Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson?’ He stopped and thought for a second and then said ‘Yes I have. Davy and Alan.’
Peppa said ‘Aye, that’s me and Sal.’
He said ‘Who’s Davy?’ and Peppa said ‘Me’ and he looked over at me smiling and said ‘I’ll have to be careful of Sal then – is she good with a sword?’
Peppa said ‘No but she can use a knife, and shoot and snare rabbits and catch Pike and build shelters and make fire. We’re outlaws.You could be Sal’s boyfriend. She’s a woman. She’s had a period.’
And then I did speak. I shouted ‘PEPPA!’ I was hot and my heart was banging and Peppa skipped off laughing. Adam was still smiling and shaking his head. He looked at me again and he looked kind and his eyes were soft and he said ‘I’ve got a little sister just like her. They drive you mad don’t they?’
I was still all hot and I just went ‘Aye.’
Then Peppa shouted ‘Snowball!’ and a snowball hit Adam on the arm and he laughed and pulled his goggles on and started pushing off and he shouted ‘Bye Peppa!’ and she threw another snowball at him and shouted ‘Bye Adam!’ He stopped and pulled his goggles up and looked back at me and said ‘Bye Sal.’ And I said bye and he skied off up along the side of the loch where we’d come and then pushed up the slope towards the ridge and the moor.
Peppa came and stood by me and said ‘I fancy him Sal. Do you?’
I said ‘Come on.’ And we started off back, walking in the tracks his skis had made.We watched him getting smaller and smaller as he pushed up the slope and finally disappeared over the ridge at the top. As we walked back up slowly Peppa said ‘Will he tell on us?’
I said ‘You shouldnae’ve told him our names Peppa. Or said we were outlaws.’
She said ‘He won’t tell. He’s nice. And he’s good-looking int he?’
‘Just coz he’s good-looking doesn’t mean he’s nice Peppa.’
Peppa said ‘Aye it does. I like posh people. He had big muscles on his arms. Did you fancy him Sal?’
I said ‘No.’
She said ‘Aye you did. You went all red.’
I said ‘Shut up Peppa.’
I don’t like telling her to shut up but sometimes she pushes it. It’s because Peppa thinks everything is funny and she can’t be serious about anything and sometimes she doesn’t realise you shouldn’t push people just because you think things are funny. But she is only ten. Most things are serious and you have to make plans and Peppa doesn’t understand that yet. She was too wee to remember a lot of things in the flat or I stopped her seeing them or being there when Maw was really bad or when Robert was there and hitting her and coming in my room at night. But sometimes you just have to take action and sort things out and get everything in order. Just like with a camp when you are surviving. If a camp is ordered and tidy and well planned you will survive and your morale will be better.
At the top of the ridge we could see Adam’s ski tracks going off away from us and our woods over the moor where it dipped down in a low valley and then rose again towards Magna Bra. It was coming dark and the sun was going pink in the west over the tops of the big Scots pines. I decided there was no point in worrying about him telling. And he didn’t know where we were anyway and Ingrid’s was impossible to find if you didn’t know where to look.
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nbsp; Back at the camp Ingrid had the fire going and had made bread and soup, but she was hobbling with her back and after we’d had tea she sat in front of me on a long log and I rubbed her back at the bottom where it hurt her. She took some ibuprofen and codeine and then I held a hot stone in a towel on her back for her. Then she got me to get snow and rub it all over her back to freeze it. Her skin was smooth on her back and she smelled of pine. Then I put the hot stone on again. She said it was a way of freeing trapped nerves and getting blood circulating. She said ‘It is slower with me because I am old now.’ Then I rubbed her back more and massaged it and she said ‘Gut. You have healing hands Sal.’
We sat by the fire and it started to get really cold so we wrapped up in blankets and Peppa wore her rabbit hat. We talked about getting Maw again and Ingrid said we should do it soon before her back got worse. I thought we should try and get her soon too. She would be coming up four weeks sober and they might send her away from the rehab soon. Peppa said we should make her a bender so we decided we’d do that the next day and then the day after that we’d go and get her.
Chapter Fourteen
Car
We were cold that night and in the end I got a rock from the fire and wrapped it in a towel and we had it in bed in between us and it worked. In the morning I got up and got the fire going and made the porridge and tea and then I went and cut poles for Maw’s bender.
It was hard work and we let Ingrid stay in bed and rest her back while we got the poles and piled up rocks to make a plinth for the bed. I had to cut a lot of spruce branches for the covering because it had to be thick, we had no tarp to cover it. I spent all day dragging the spruce back and Peppa and me thatched it thick. If it snowed again it would be good to insulate it more. Maw’s bender was near the fire on the river side and looked back at ours and Ingrid’s. It looked like a real Indian camp with three of them round the fire in the middle. Peppa swept all the snow and leaves out off the floor and we put spruce down thick and treaded it flat and we made her a table out of flat rocks and Ingrid gave us more blankets and a quilt for the bed. Peppa made a star out of feathers and ribbons and we hung it over the doorway and it looked really nice. We hung a big piece of green cloth Ingrid gave us over the doorway and we put some of Ingrid’s birch bark candles in there and Ingrid gave us a basket she could have on her table to put all her bits in. We put some of Ingrid’s scarves over the bed covers to make it look nice too.
Ingrid’s back hurt all day and she said she’d be alright if she rested so she did. We had rice and beans and bread to eat and lots of tea with sugar. I was starting to get excited about Maw coming to the camp and living with us.
The next day we all got up and Ingrid said her back was fine but she still walked slower. She got a screwdriver, a bit of copper wire and a little hammer out of one her boxes and then put them in the pocket of her big coat. She didn’t wear a hat, she wore some of her scarves tied up in her hair.
I got the backpack and brought the maps and the compass and my knife and my monocular.
We had porridge and tea and then used the two head torches and set off down towards the road before it started getting light. It was slippy going down through the wood and we saw the badger running back towards his sett in the wee woody valley over the river in the half light.
We came out just up from the garage and the Little Chef but stayed in the woods and went along the road and then into the car park at the back and Peppa and me stood in the trees and Ingrid said ‘I have to find an old car. I cannot start a new car. I can only start old cars. Like a VW or a Volvo.’ So she walked out into the car park. There were already cars in it and the lights were on in the Little Chef and the garage but you couldn’t see the car park from the entrance. We watched as Ingrid walked around the car park looking at all the cars. Sometimes she bent down and looked hard at the bumper or the back of one.Then she disappeared into a row over by the exit and then we saw her stand up and walk towards us smiling with both her thumbs up.
We ran across towards her and as we did I heard a little bang and then a rattling sound. We got to the car and saw she had busted the window with her little hammer and there were squares of glass all over the tarmac by the door. She pulled the lock thing on the door and opened it quickly and then reached back and pulled locks on the back door and said ‘Get in.’
She was crouching down under the steering wheel and there were ripping and banging sounds for a few seconds and then she was muttering in German. Me and Peppa sat in the back seat which was wide and covered in red leather. The car was nice and old, it had silver paint and the seats were all smooth and soft. There were two fleecy checked blankets on the back seat and Peppa snuggled up in hers and I sat up looking back out of the window in case anyone came. Then Ingrid went ‘Aha!’ and then we heard the car start and rumble and she jumped into the driver seat and slammed her door. She turned and said ‘Gut! We have a car!’ and Peppa went ‘Yeaaahhh! Let’s go and get Maw!’
Ingrid was fiddling and pulling at the knobs and the car lights came on and then she went ‘Handbremse . . . aha . . . yah’ and we went off backwards and then she clunked about again and we started going forwards and I watched as we pulled out past the Little Chef and onto the main road.
The car was big and it smelled lovely and it had nice polished wood on all the doors and wee tables in the seats. I climbed over the box thing in the middle and got in the front with Ingrid. It had a long silver bonnet and a silver angel with wings like she was flying at the end.
I said ‘Posh car Ingrid.’
She said ‘It is a Rolls-Royce. About nineteen eighty.Very good. Automatic. Power steering. But no seat belts so I must be very careful. I will stay at exactly the speed limit.’
Peppa was sliding about on the back seat and rolling around in the blanket and she shouted ‘It’s lovely. Maw will love it.’
As we drove along I got the map out and started checking the signs we saw and worked out we were about twenty-two miles from where we turned off. Ingrid looked happy driving along with the wind blowing her hair through the smashed window.
There were almost no other cars on the road. We saw a few lorries coming the other way. The snow got less and less as we went along but the road sparkled with frost. We had to go out round a gritting lorry and then Ingrid drove along in front of it.
It would take us about twenty-five minutes to get to the turn-off we wanted for the Abbey which was near a village called Killaggan. I watched for the signs and felt the lovely gliding feeling of going along in the car. A car came up behind us and Ingrid watched it in her mirror and it went out and round us and carried on and she said ‘Gut. Not police.’
Two more cars passed us and they weren’t polis either and soon we had got near our turn-off and I watched and saw the sign for Killaggan and Ingrid turned and we went up a long straight road with trees either side. We had to watch for another road that went off from it before the village on the right. It was all woods around us and we found the next turn and it was like a wee lane and we went slow along it and over a humpy bridge. The lane turned a lot and Ingrid went slow in the big car. It was light now and there was white frost on everything.
We followed the wee road for about two miles and then there was another wee road we turned up on the right and it went along by fields with woods round them and a drystane dyke. A bit further along and we saw a wooden sign that said ‘THE ABBEY – TREATMENT CENTRE’.
There were stone gateposts and a drive going into the woods. We stopped and Ingrid said ‘We need to hide the car and walk.’
We drove up a wee bit and found a flat grassy bit where we pulled in by some bushes and Ingrid put the car right in so the bushes hung over it. She said ‘Get some branches. We hide it.’ We got out and it was cold and quiet and still. Crows were squawking and that was it. Ingrid said ‘Get branches.’
Peppa and me went into the woods and we started pulling branches out. I got a big dead branch of a beech tree that had brown leaves on it. We piled
the branches up along the side of the car by the lane. Peppa pulled some ferns up and spread them over the back of it so you couldn’t see the silver of the bumpers. We worked quick running in and pulling out twiggy branches and snapping off bits of beech with brown leaves still on them.
Ingrid walked out back into the lane and looked and said ‘It is good. But our tracks are on the frost.’ There were two tyre marks coming along the lane in the frost where we had drove up. She rubbed at them with her feet then said ‘The sun will melt it away soon.’
I told Peppa to bring the blankets from the car and I brought the backpack and we walked back towards the gate and then went into the woods and walked down through the trees till we came to the wall. It was about 1.5 metres high running through the woods. Peppa just jumped up on it and down the other side, but I had to help Ingrid over it and then we dropped down into the woods that ran along the driveway. We crept along, and through the trees you could see a big grassy lawn with a wishing well in the middle and then the house. It was old with a pointy roof and wee battlements like a castle. The roof was green with moss on the slates. There was a stone entrance bit and there were lights on in some of the windows. At the front there were four cars parked on the gravel.
We went on through the woods that went all around the lawns of the house and at the back was a new bit sticking out with big sliding doors and a patio with tables and chairs like outside a pub.
Ingrid whispered ‘There.That is where they will smoke.’
We got down and sat on one of the blankets behind the trees and some big bushes with thick green leaves and we could see the patio and the back doors. Peppa wrapped a blanket round her and we sat and watched and waited.
The sun came up over the house and made a big triangle on the lawn on the other side from us. We stayed quiet and watched. After about an hour some lights came on in the windows and went off and then a big light came on in the room behind the sliding doors. Someone slid them open and two men came out. A wee guy in a leather jacket and a bigger man wearing a tartan coat and holding a tea cup. They both sat on the benches and lit fags and we watched. Then a big fat woman came out and was talking to them and then she went in. Then the men finished their fags and went in and slid the doors shut.