by Mick Kitson
Maw laughed and said ‘I cannae believe that!’
I said ‘Neither can I. They’re usually nocturnal. I think it was a mother and two cubs. The cubs must be nearly a year old, they get born in February.’
Peppa had arrived and heard me say that and she said ‘Like me . . . Ah’m born in February’ as she skidded into us and we all flopped over in a big pile and Maw went ‘Peppa!’
I sat up and pushed Peppa off me and said ‘Ingrid would say that was magic’ and Maw said ‘It was. I’ve never seen anything like that.’
Peppa was standing up and brushing all the snow and twigs off her and she said ‘Did you see them?’ and we said ‘Aye.’
We got up and shook the blanket out and walked back up and Maw told Peppa about seeing the badgers and Peppa wanted to go back and watch again but I said it was no good now they’d been spooked and we’d have to come at dusk on a night when there was a big moon.
Peppa said ‘They wanted to see you Maw.’
‘Aye they must’ve,’ Maw said. ‘Everyone wants to see me sober.’
Back at the camp Ingrid was still in her bender and we went in to see her and she sat up and told us she was in pain and her lower back hurt. Maw and Peppa got the fire going again and then they went and got more sticks and I boiled the kettle and then went and sat with Ingrid. She was propped up on her bed with blankets behind her and she looked grey and really tired. She didn’t want to eat and I gave her the last four ibuprofen and codeine and then gave her pine tea with sugar.
I told her about the badgers and she smiled and said ‘I see them a lot in the daytime. They are special ones who like the day. I saw her cubs in June when they were little. They love to play. The big boar comes up into the camp in the summer at night. You want to know where they go in the winter? They go down along the river and dig in the mud and sand and they turn over big stones to get insects and slugs along there. They are very strong animals. They cross the river even when it is cold.’
I said ‘Can they swim?’
‘Oh yes they are excellent swimmers. In summer the cubs play in the river. I have seen it.’
I said ‘Can we show Maw how to make bread?’ and Ingrid said ‘Yes she must learn.’
Ingrid was too tired to come out so me and Peppa and Maw got all the flour and yeast and the big bowl and we made bread by the fire. Maw kept laughing and saying ‘Are you sure this is how you do it?’ and I kept going in to Ingrid and showing her the dough and she told me what to do next. Kneading it was hard work and we all three did it in turns and Maw and Peppa threw it back and forwards to each other like it was ball. While it was rising by the fire I put potatoes in the fire to cook and set the fire going in the bread oven and Peppa told Maw all about her new book which was about a boy and his mother was dying of cancer and every night a monster came into his room and told him scary stories. Maw said it sounded sad but Peppa liked it. She told Maw the story of Kidnapped and told her all the Scots words in it and Maw laughed.
When the bread was risen I scraped all the embers back and we put it in the oven and Maw sat on the ground and watched it cook through the hole. She kept shouting ‘It’s getting bigger! It’s going all brown!’ and she got really excited when we got it out and put it on a stone to cool. It looked lovely and it had the nicest smell of anything in the world.
We had to take Ingrid to go to the toilet and we left her there because she said she wanted to be on her own doing it. We helped her back when she called us and then she asked us to heat up water and put it in the big bowl so she could wash.And we lit some of her candles in her bender when the light started going.
Me and Peppa and Maw had potatoes and cheese and bread but Ingrid said she wasn’t hungry and she stayed in her bender. After our tea I got the head torch and went into the woods near us and found another good little ash tree and cut a pole out of it about two metres long. Then I sat by the fire and started shaving it down with my knife. I was going to flatten one side and then laminate the two ash poles either side of a bit of spruce with pine resin. I was going to lash it with paracord while the resin went off and then shape the whole thing into a bow. I’d seen it done on YouTube and you have to just keep shaving away and shaping it thin at either end and then getting thicker towards the middle. It was easy to shape wood with a Bear Grylls knife. Laminated wood is strongest, Ian Leckie taught me that.
Peppa read her book with her clip light and Maw went in to see Ingrid. It was quiet with just the sound of the fire. This was what I liked best in the world. Sitting by a fire at night and listening to the sound of it and carving wood. A little breeze started up and it was westerly and warmer.
I could hear Maw and Ingrid talking but not the words and smell fag smoke coming out so they were smoking roll-ups and Ingrid coughed a bit. Maw was in there for ages with me carving and Peppa reading.
Maw went in her own bender and it rained and I worried that it was going to leak on her so I went through to her with the head torch and she was asleep. The spruce was working and there were no drips or anything on the inside and she was warm.
Chapter Seventeen
Fog
The rain had stopped and all the snow was gone, only grey crescents of ice left in between the rocks and behind the benders.There was thick white fog so you couldn’t even see the trees from the bender door. I managed to get a bundle of kindling going as it started getting light and had to use a lot of the wood from the middle of the stack in the rack because the wood on the outside was damp. I shaved a dry stick from the middle for tinder and then got some dry twigs going. The fire smoked a lot and pumped up into the fog and hung over the camp in a cloud.
Looking down towards the river from the camp it looked like a flat white sea and you could hardly see the trees, they were just grey lines in the fog. There was no wind and little beads of silver water formed on the spruce on the benders and on my fleece arms when I was by the fire putting in sticks. I put two piles of wood by the fire either side to dry out and got water from the burn.
Maw came out of her bender and went to pee in the latrine and then ran back to the fire and sat by it in her grey coat and had a roll-up. I made the tea. We had black tea with sugar because we had no milk left, UHT or fresh.
Maw sat and got warm by the fire and then she said ‘I had a good talk with Ingrid last night Sal. I told her all about us and the flat. And Robert. I told her all about drinking. She knows a lot about it. She’s treated people for drinking. Thing is Sal, I can’t stay here. And also she can’t stay here. And neither can you. And neither can Peppa.’
I said ‘Why?’
Maw lit another roll-up and rubbed her forehead. Little dots of moisture were forming all over her coat. ‘Look Sal. I know you wanted to hide and survive and you did that and you looked after Peppa because I didn’t. I know that and I’m sorry for that. I’m an alcoholic and I can only survive if I stay sober. And, well, the first thing is I need to be with the people who keep me sober.’
I said ‘I can keep you sober. There’s no drink here.’
Maw said ‘I know. I know you want to but you can’t Sal. Only I can and only I can with the people I know from the rehab, and Ian.You don’t need to keep me sober. I know about what is wrong with me now after the rehab and I can’t have you doing everything and looking after me and Peppa all the time.’
I didn’t say anything. I got up and got my bow and sat down again with the knife and started shaving it. Maw carried on talking. ‘There’s something else. Ingrid thinks she is really ill. Really, really ill. She thinks she’s got cancer and all the pain in her back is the cancer. She is in bad pain Sal and she needs to go to hospital and get treated properly. She needs proper doctors and medicine.’
I said ‘Will she die?’
Maw said ‘She will, aye . . . if she doesn’t get treated. They can make her better but not here in a bender in the woods.’
I said ‘I’m not leaving Peppa. I’m not getting split up from Peppa.’
Maw said ‘
Look Sal. I don’t know what will happen. Right. Look, in rehab I only had to do two things okay? Not drink and be honest.That was it. I just had to not drink and be honest. So I had to face up to and talk about and be honest about all the things I did. All the things I did to you and Peppa. Can you see that Sal? I had to be honest and tell the truth. If you’re honest and you tell the truth then you get better. I got better didn’t I?’
I got up and walked over to Ingrid’s bender and she was sitting up in her bed and she had her eyes closed. I stood and looked at her. She opened her eyes and smiled and said ‘I am good.’ She rubbed the wee scar on her cheek. I walked back out.
The wind picked up and the trees tops were getting clearer in the valley and starting to sway. The fog was rolling like waves. My heart started up beating fast and I felt hot and red. My chest felt tight and I breathed hard to get it feeling loose. My leg started vibrating and I walked off away from the fire, and I walked a bit further and then I started running.
I heard Maw shout ‘Sal!’ but I kept on, along the flat bit of the camp and then down and into the trees over clumps of grass and ferns and round boulders. The fog was still thick the further down I went and I was running into it not seeing what was coming, just running and breathing in the damp air. The ground was soaked with wee puddles and streams in the leaves and they exploded water up as I banged through them. I still had my knife in my hand and the blade flashed in the corner of my eye as my arms went up and down running. And I kept on and felt the blood pulsing in my ears in rhythm with my feet slapping down onto the ground.
I got to the river and ran down it and then jumped it where it was thin and went through some sheer rocks and on the other side I ran up into the trees swerving when one came flying at me out of the fog.
Then I stopped.
The noise in my head kept on, the thump thump thump of my feet and blood. I stood still in the fog and breathed it in. I was in a white cave surrounded by it and grey birch trunks.The thumping in my head got less and less. And then it stopped and then I breathed deep and slow and listened to nothing.
The air felt soft and smooth going into my lungs. My skin felt tingly and warm. The words Maw said bounced around inside my head. Sober. Cancer. Can’t. Hide. Survive. Honest. Truth. Pain.
Then a dog barked and it was close. And then I heard a voice. A man’s voice shouting. Another man’s voice. They were flat and sounded dry coming through the fog. Feet and stamping. A bright yellow shape blurred, moving. Crackling and a beep. A voice on a radio and then a flat man’s voice saying ‘Okay.’
I turned and ran back. The dog barked more. I sprinted and jumped and flew along back across the river and up and whipping past the trees. Towards the top the fog was thinner and my blood was chug chugging in my ears.
I ran up the steepest bit onto the wee path that led along to Ingrid’s bit and the fog was clearing more as I got up and ran into the camp and Peppa and Maw were by the fire. When Maw saw me she shouted ‘Sal! Put the knife down!’ I looked and I still had it. Peppa ran up to me and she had been crying. I hugged her and walked over to the fire. Maw said ‘I told Peppa.’
The fog was starting to lift across our camp and everything was glistening with wet silver drops. I went in to Ingrid and she was sitting up on her bed.
She said ‘There are men and dogs in the wood Sal. I can smell them.’
I said ‘I know.’
Her face was in a shadow and I stepped in further and knelt down in front of her. She lifted her head and smiled and I saw her big long white teeth and the wee scar on her cheek. She was just staring at me and smiling. After a bit she said ‘Something is going to happen Sal. And I don’t think you can do anything now. I think you have done everything you can. Sometimes you can’t stop things.’
The tears suddenly came out of nowhere but my face stayed the same and they just came out and went down my cheeks. Ingrid put her hand out and touched the top of my head. She said ‘You brought me light. Thank you.’
I could feel the warmth from her hand on the top of my head as I got up and went out. I wiped the tears away so Peppa wouldn’t see. She was standing by the fire with Maw and she was biting her lip. The fire was starting to go out and it was cold, just a wee wisp of smoke drifting up from it.
I looked around at the three benders – ours, Ingrid’s, Maw’s and the spruce branch umbrella over the fire and the wood store and the bread oven.There was pants and a T-shirt hung on the paracord washing line, and pots and cups in the big tin bowl by the fire. The gun was leant up outside our bender and the fishing rod was propped against Maw’s. The three bits of wood for the bow were shaved and leaning on one of the rocks we used for a seat. Ingrid’s tin of pine resin sat next to the cold fire. The air was still and quiet. Maw had her hand on Peppa’s shoulder and they were both staring at me.
The helicopter was sudden.We didn’t even hear it getting near, it just came up over the trees behind us loud – chop chop chop – so loud you had to shout. It was polis. I could see the guy sitting looking down out of the side talking into a phone and looking down at us. I grabbed Peppa’s hand and said ‘Run’ and Peppa shouted ‘Maw!’ and we ran and Maw ran after us.
I shouted to Peppa ‘Go up. Up to the moor!’ and she took off way ahead of us and I followed and Maw followed me shouting ‘Sal!’
We climbed up through the woods running in a line, Peppa in front, and she kept turning and looking back at us. Maw was puffing going up the slope and I waited and grabbed her hand and pulled her.
The helicopter stayed over the camp but it went higher and we could see it hovering and it had POLICE on the side. We went into the big Scots pines where the ground was covered in long needles and it squelched and spat water as we ran through it.
I had nothing in my head only ‘get away and don’t get nicked’.And then ‘stay with Peppa’ and then ‘stay with Maw’. And then Ingrid.
Peppa was up through the pines, and just at the edge of the moor she stopped. Maw and I came smashing through all the branches and we stopped too and we looked out onto the moor. There was still snow in patches and more as it rose up towards Magna Bra and the stones.
Peppa said ‘Which way?’
Maw said ‘We can’t run. They’ll get us.’
I just stood looking up towards the stones where the snow was lying in big long thick lines with heather in between. At the top it was almost all white still. In the wind the sun was breaking from under the clouds and sunlight flooded the whole moor for a second and then went and it was grey and dull again. The chop chop chop of the helicopter was still there behind us. I breathed and breathed and thought and tried to stop and plan. I wanted a plan to come. I needed a plan to come. Something small and achievable I could do right now and make a step towards us thriving.
Peppa said ‘Which way Sal? They’re coming.’
The snow was grey and washed out and I couldn’t walk on and the sounds all around me faded to far away. The larch needles under me were yellow and the cold air seemed to stand still under the grey sky. Something was shifting about in me. Something like silence. Something white.
I said ‘I’m not leaving Ingrid.’
Maw hugged me and said ‘I’m not leaving you’ and Peppa said ‘Will we get split up?’ I said ‘No.’
I was still holding the Bear Grylls knife. I looked at it and then chucked it as hard as I could out onto the moor and it disappeared into the heather and snow.
We started walking back down. We went through the Scots pines and then down through the woods and down the big slope. The fog was all blowing away and the sun came out again and everything looked gold in it.
When we came to the ridge above our camp the helicopter was still hovering and there were three polis. One was standing outside Ingrid’s bender talking on a radio. One had a dog and it was sniffing all around the camp on a lead pulling him. And one was a woman and she saw us walking back down towards them and spoke into her radio and then walked up to meet us.
Chapt
er Eighteen
Home
Peppa was dancing round the house in her pants. Maw was on her phone and I was looking out of the window at the wee garden in the front. Peppa had Salt-N-Pepa on YouTube and she was going ‘Oooh push it . . . push it real good . . . oooh push it . . .’ and shaking her arse.
It had snowed again and the pots and the wee bench were covered. The garden was white and soft and the sun was just going down.
Maw got off the phone and said ‘Ian’s coming in five minutes. Peppa get your jeans on and wear your new trainers.’
And Peppa went ‘Yo Mom,’ in an American accent.
Ian Leckie’s car pulled up outside and I saw him get out and open the wee gate and come down and I went and opened the door and he said ‘Oh Bonny Sal’ and hugged me. He hugged Maw and said ‘Everything alright?’ Maw said ‘Aye’ and Peppa came running in from our room in her jeans and trainers going ‘Ian Leckie Ian Leckie you are specky . . .’ and Ian went ‘Hello Peppa.’
Maw said ‘Come on then. Let’s get going, it takes an hour to get there. Sal get your fleece, it’s cold.’
I went through to the spare bedroom where I’d left it. There was a bed and Ingrid’s rail from the bender with all her clothes and the Chinese jacket. Her boots were all in plastic boxes by the bed.
Peppa sat in the front and me and Maw sat in the back.
Social services were paying for the house and we had three bedrooms like our flat and they were all on the same level and no stairs. Ian was coming down all the time and taking us places. He took Maw to meetings and he took me to interviews and meetings with the psychologist and tomorrow he was taking me back up to the court and I’d know how long I was going to get in jail. I was just going on my own with Ian, and Maw was worried about me being lonely. I told her: I had a solicitor, two social workers, an educational psychologist, a police psychologist, a mental health worker and a police liaison officer.And Ian. I wouldn’t be lonely.