STOLEN BAIRNS: Scottish Fiction

by Anne Bone

  Stolen Bairns

  by

  Anne Bone

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  STOLEN BAIRNS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Anne Bone is a retired Social Worker. Although she was born and spent her childhood in the South of England, she moved to the North East of Scotland nearly forty years ago. Anne considers that Scotland is her spiritual home. She is very fortunate to have her grandchildren living close by, and they have grown up listening to Anne’s storytelling. Stolen Bairns is her second novel.

  STOLEN BAIRNS

  Torry, Aberdeen, 2005

  ‘I remember every detail of the day when my children were stolen from me. I remember every year, month, week, day, hour and second of what it felt like to wake up and wonder where they were. Their faces were embroidered and imprinted on to my mind. I felt as though someone had gouged a huge hole into the centre of my soul, and then filled it with deep slimy, poisoned pus that penetrated deep into every bone, muscle and sinew of my being. I was surely going mad. The physical pain was such that I thought I would explode.’

  She has used these words so often when she addressed audiences; the words were welded into her being, just as if they were yet another limb. She had spoken these words to countless audiences since the Stolen Child Trust had been established all those years ago. She had watched how, on hearing the words, people clutched tissues to their eyes to mop up their tears. This was before they reached deep into their pockets to give money to keep the telephone Helpline going; the Helpline that many parents described as their lifeline; a lifeline which held them together like a thick sticky glue, while they waited, sometimes waiting for years before they knew.

  Beth gazed across the room now and her eyes locked on her own special lifeline, Marty. He sat with his head slightly to one side while he read the words of some article in the daily newspaper. His coal black hair, now speckled with silver, was still thick and curly and longer than the norm for a man of forty-seven.

  It was a true saying Beth thought that men became more distinguished as they aged; it was certainly true for Marty. The laughter lines around his eyes only added to the depth of his dark brown eyes. Eyes she had thought when she had first met him that she would sink into. He still only had one chin, which few men of his age could boast of. Marty was as slim and wiry as he was on that day when she had first met him. He claimed he was putting on weight, although she could not see where, his body was as firm and supple as a man half his age.

  Marty felt her eyes on him and looked across the room. He smiled. ‘What time do we have to leave?’ he asked.

  ‘The flight leaves at four fifteen, and we need to check in just an hour beforehand. I have ordered the taxi for quarter to two, just to make sure we are there with time to spare.’

  Marty laughed. Yes, he knew that as far as his wife was concerned, even though the taxi journey from their home in Torry would only take thirty minutes, she would need to get there early. His Beth still suffered at times from the anxiety of not being in control of things. That was one of the things he loved about her.

  ‘Tell me the itinerary again,’ he asked.

  ‘We arrive in London at five thirty and then we can make our way by tube to the hotel.’ She picked up a neatly typed paper and scanned it. ‘Tonight we will meet with the journalist from The Sunday Times, and then tomorrow we need to be at the conference for nine thirty. I think it all kicks off at ten.’

  ‘And, tomorrow night?’

  ‘You seem to know more about that than I do, so I don’t know why I need to tell you. I would much rather just have come straight home, but I don’t seem to have been given an option.’ Her tone indicated that she was irritated from, as she saw it, the interference to her tight planning.

  Marty nodded, he knew that his job over the next couple of days was to charm the pants of anyone who might give some funds to The Trust. He had taken three days off work to accompany Beth; he tried to do this whenever he could. Being his own boss of a thriving hair salon meant he could devote time to support his wife. His staff were always more than accommodating when it came to anything to do with The Trust.

  Everyone, everywhere, who came into contact with Beth was mesmerised by her story, and her depth of compassion and commitment to The Trust. She did not seem to realise the effect she had on people. She could never accept that she was beautiful not just to him, but also to everyone who came into contact with her. It was not just her appearance, her beauty lay in her soul, which seemed to sparkle and exude from somewhere beneath her skin. Her blonde hair had turned white early, probably due to the trauma and worry she had experienced. The white hair she was left with could be better described as silver and seemed to bring out the violet of her eyes making them hypnotic to those she looked at. She had gained a little weight, although it only served to make her cuddly and sexy as far as he was concerned, ‘something to hold on to’, he had told her many a night. It made up for all of those nights when all he had felt had been her bones sticking through her gaunt flesh as she fretted and grieved for her children. No, the extra weight brought with it a sense of health and this was reflected in her rosy cheeks and round face, which was framed by her short silvery-white hair.

  No matter how often Beth told her story it never became any easier. It often left her feeling sad and angry. She had always been adamant that she would not allow what happened to turn to bitterness. She would use it to help others. However, she knew that by Friday and their return to Aberdeen she would feel every one of her forty-four years, and then some. It would take her a couple of days to recover, almost as if recounting the details of what had occurred all those years ago sucked the energy out of her.

  She would not allow this to prevent her from continuing her life’s work to reach out to others whose children were stolen and were not so lucky, she had found hers. Her work was for the children who were still missing.

  Chapter 1

  Cairn View Croft

  Beth was born in July 1961; she was born in the same bed as she had been conceived in nine months and one day previously. Her mother had been attended to by the local district nurse, while her father had continued splitting logs outside in the bothy. Her mother thought he probably was doing this to blot out her screams when the blonde-haired, eight pound baby girl propelled herself into the world from her body.

  Cairn View Croft was a small, detached, granite building overlooking Tolby Hill. Just as its name suggested it had an excellent view of the Cairn which stood on the top of the hill, and which could be viewed by all those who lived in the small Highland glen. The croft had been handed down to Fred Menzie by his father and his father before him. Over the generations the croft had become more difficult to maintain and now it was reduced to a few sheep, a couple of cows and a dozen or so hens, which provided some legitimate income for the Menzie household. The two ferrets that huddled in their hut helped to supplement the family income, sometimes illicitly, as Fred used them in his nocturnal visits around the countryside and more often the local laird’s land.

  Fred’s father had died a year before Beth’s birth. He had already been an old man when Fred was born. Fred’s mother had died when bringing him, their one and only child, into the world. Fred had a strange sort of childhood, doted on by his elderly grandmother who cared for him after his birth, but then almost ignored by his father. That was until he became old enough to work. Then he was expected to undertake all of the work on the croft, while his father sat back and watched.

  Fred did not have much of an education. He had missed a great deal of school he could just about read. However, in other ways, his father had taught him to be wiley and cunning, providing him with the skills to make some sort of living
. He had shown Fred how to poach the salmon out of the River Don which flowed through the glen, and then how to go about getting a good price for it.

  If there were any tricks in the books about making a quick buck, often not entirely legal, then Fred had learnt this from his father. He would have easily been able to set up his own university course, on gaining a degree in ‘ducking and diving’.

  When Fred had met Doris at a village ceilidh two years prior to Beth’s birth, he had viewed her as an asset to the croft. She would be happy to look after his father and him. She would be able to cook wholesome meals out of almost nothing and she was a strong looking woman who, he believed, would be able to help out in any capacity.

  There was another added advantage, that she would also be a good bed warmer, her plump thighs would provide an abundance of warmth in the night as he fulfilled his sexual urges, something he had been short of with so few available women living in the glen. They all seemed to disappear to work and live in Aberdeen and the few that were left would have no truck with Fred Menzie. He was well known in the area and all knew that not only had he nothing to offer financially, nevertheless was considered by all to be a bit thick, and to top everything, his personal hygiene left a lot to be desired.

  When Doris had come to stay with an aunt in the area, she was only too pleased to be courted and accept marriage to this big burly man. Did it really matter if he was a bit smelly and often forgot to comb his thick sandy hair; he was a better catch than she could have hoped for when she was banished from her home in Aberdeen to the wilds of rural Donside. Banished she had been by her parents who had told her never to darken their doors again. The elderly aunt had almost been forced to accept her, and was delighted when she had met and married Fred Menzie no matter what his reputation was, as for her it was a huge relief that she no longer had to take any responsibility for her niece.

  Doris’s banishment to the countryside had been due to a few little misdemeanours, which Doris had got herself involved in. Well, getting into a bit of bother was not the end of the world, but to her parents it seemed it was. And what if she had a police record, so what? She had been threatened by the Court that if she came in front of them again for theft, then she would face a prison sentence. It was for this reason her parents could no longer put up with her antics and washed their hands of her.

  Doris and Fred rubbed along together; they had had a funny sort of relationship. They tolerated each other most of the time, but would support each other in any scheme which led to money. At other times, they were at each other throats; on at least one occasion, literally.

  Wee Beth was provided with the basic essentials for a young child. Clothes were found, usually donated by one of the neighbours in the glen, who felt heart sorry for the pretty blonde-haired child, whose dimples would melt the hardest heart. The dimples were something that her parents used whenever the possibility presented itself. Beth was the recipient of many brown paper parcels of clothes from someone whose own child had outgrown the items.

  Doris would often search through the parcel and even then she would sift out the best articles, which she would take to the second hand shop in Aberdeen on her monthly visit where she would manage to get a few pence for them. What was left would be worn by Beth until they were filthy and had to be thrown out. Doris did not seem to understand the concept of washing clothes. She just waited until another brown paper parcel arrived.

  Two years after Beth’s birth, Doris expelled another child from her rather obese body. Ted, being a male child, held all sorts of possibilities for continuing the family name. As soon as he was able to walk he was carried by Fred all over the countryside to begin his education into how to make a quick buck. Fred was delighted when Jason and David followed, to add to the dynasty at two year intervals.

  Doris announced to all and sundry that having produced four children, and three of them boys, her childbearing days were over. Fred, she told everyone, would have to seek his pleasures elsewhere: in future, her legs would stay securely fastened together.

  On hearing this, Fred entertained the bar of the Coach and Horses with his ideas of where and how he would find the pleasures that had now been so publicly withdrawn by his wife. It brought shudders to many of the locals for them even to allow their minds to enter the realms of thinking, let alone visualizing, how Doris would or could set out her pleasures for anyone. Ugh!

  Others could not imagine that any female who was in the possession of all her faculties would even consider getting within an arm’s length of Fred. The couple was viewed with a mixture of disgust and amusement by their neighbours. Disgust, by the way in which they conducted their lives, always scrounging and treating everything as if it was theirs and if it wasn’t, then they were entitled to it anyway. Amusement, in the way they went about insulting each other and always seeming to be up to something, which brought them into the limelight and provided the village with countless opportunities for laughter.

  The three boys followed their father about as if he was some sort of king with his little princes learning how to carry on the family business. It was Beth most people warmed to; many locals wondered just what her life was like behind the closed doors of Cairn View Croft.

  Beth did not know any different. From an early age she was able to understand that it was her job to help her mother with whatever she needed. Waited on would be more the description, as the one certainty was that Doris was a lazy, slovenly woman, who spent most of her day smoking her roll ups, her legs getting more and more mottled while she toasted them before the big black kitchen range.

  Beth was a quiet child, she somehow sublimely learnt that the best way to avoid getting a slap was to try and blend into the background. Therefore, on the days she did manage to attend school she was the child who nobody noticed. While her brothers came in for some ridicule for their lack of hygiene, Beth did not. She did not cause any trouble while the three boys acted as a sort of mafia gang and would end up fighting anyone and everyone whom they perceived was against them. It was not unknown even for Beth to become the target of their unwelcome bullyboy tactics.

  Beth was sort of viewed as an enigma. She silently went about her business and caused no one any harm. There were many days when Beth did not show up for school, her teachers just accepted that this child was kept at home to help out, and after attempting to raise it with her parents they gave up. They felt intimidated by Doris’ and Fred’s venomous tongue lashing accusing them of poking their noses into their business, insisting that Beth was needed to help her ‘poor disabled mother’.

  If the teachers had been more vigilant and interested, then they may have discovered that on many of the days when Beth was ‘helping her disabled mother out’ she was, in fact, at home waiting for the bruises on her body to fade and heal. The bruises she had received from her so-called disabled mother who, when she chose, would lash out at her daughter over some trumped-up charge of not fulfilling some task to her satisfaction.

  Doris had become bored with her life, and her children did not bring the joy and satisfaction they brought to most mothers’ lives. No, her children, especially her daughter, brought a reminder of how she had ended up living in this God forsaken place, in the back of beyond, wedded to a man whom she had ended up despising. There was no excitement or anything else apart from the daily drudge of trying to keep her family fed with the pittance her excuse for a husband provided them with.

  Beth was an easy target. If she vented her fury on one of the boys they would run to their father to complain. He in turn would take their side and would, on occasions, give Doris a smack around the face to enforce his so-called dominant role as master of the house. It was a bitter, vicious and downward cycle, which ended with Beth taking the brunt of her mother’s temper. The only member not to bully her was her father. His abuse was, however, just as damaging, for he just ignored his daughter, it was almost as though she was a non-person. A child who had learnt that if she silently went about her business and did not spe
ak or voice anything she might have been thinking, then she could avoid some of the more painful experiences.

  Beth was the family slave. She was the one member of the family who truly worked. She, alone, and in her quiet and diligent way, kept the household going. No one noticed or gave her any acknowledgment of all the good things she achieved when she made the dismal house just a little less dismal.

  Chapter 2

  Beth was to remember her fourteenth birthday. It was a day of which there was to be some happy memories. First, her father had given her five pounds as her birthday present, it seemed Fred had had a good win at the horses and was feeling generous. Secondly, she was able to attend school, and two of the girls from the village had remembered it was her birthday and given her a present and a card. Thirdly, her mother left her alone for the day.

  Having a whole five pounds of her own was a totally new experience for Beth. She knew that she should spend it as soon as she could, just in case her mother remembered she had it and took it from her. The following Saturday she managed to hitch a lift into Alford with her father in order that she could visit some of the shops. She was enthralled with the variety of potions and make-up in the chemist shop. She even found the courage to venture into the one dress shop where she found they had a lovely range of pretty scarves.