STOLEN BAIRNS: Scottish Fiction

by Anne Bone

  Beth worked it out that she could buy some nice smelling soap, a small bottle of perfume, a pale pink lipstick and pale blue eye shadow, also the addition of a lovely turquoise silky scarf. She could hardly wait until she was safely locked in the bathroom back at Cairn View to experiment with her new possessions. For once she was able to act as a teenager, applying make-up and making herself smell nice just for once.

  She had the sense to hide the items though, and had her own secret cubby hole down the back of her chest of drawers. She knew that if her mother discovered them she would either sell them or destroy them just for the fun of it.

  Beth did not realise that she was turning out to be a very pretty young woman. Her blonde hair had not darkened with age; it still was the colour of sunlit corn. Her eyes were more violet than blue, although they always held that timid frightened and watchful look. Her skin was clear and firm. She took on a light tan in the summer, which seemed to intensify the colour of her eyes and hair. Her lips were full, although it was her dimples which gave her that unique look. She was still petite, although she had inherited her mother’s bone structure she had not followed after her in gaining weight. She was developing a lovely figure, and while some of her class mates were trying desperately to get the boys to notice them, Beth was oblivious to the fact that when she passed the boys in the school corridors, she left a trail of interested glances in her wake.

  Day to day life for Beth as a fourteen year old did improve slightly. She must admit her mother did not beat her so often now, whether this was due to Beth learning how to avoid triggering her mother’s anger, or whether Doris had her so perfectly trained she no longer needed to. Who knew, but Beth was the beneficiary for whatever reason. However, she never allowed her guard to slip just in case this was the one time her mother chose to lose it, and lash out using one of her flabby hands to slice through the air to connect with her daughter’s head.

  Life in the Menzie household was often chaotic. Fred was always into some scheme, which according to him was going to make them enough money to allow that he would be able to sit back and never worry about finances ever again. Doris was used to hearing about these ideas he had, and now would not even bother to make any of her usual sarcastic barbs which would be the trigger for another Doris/Fred barney.

  Fred did, however, have the total attention of his three boys, who hero-worshipped their father. They believed everything that Fred told them, which often got them into all sorts of bother when they repeated some of his views at school. It was not unusual for one of the boys to return home from school sporting some injury which he had received while defending something he had repeated his father had said.

  Fred did manage to bring in some money; one of his more profitable adventures was dealing in scrap metal. He turned the back yard into a graveyard for broken cars, tractors and anything else he had persuaded some person to part with for nothing. He did this by making the person feel as though he was doing them a big favour by removing it and the price he was charging for doing so was a bargain. He then transported it back to Cairn View where he would allow the pile to rust until he had enough to sell on.

  Fred and the boys were notorious in the glen for spying something in someone’s garden and then to appearing at the door to offer to take it off their hands. People in the village got wise to them and once they had received and refused an offer, they would often feel it was necessary to hide the item, as it was not unknown for it to mysteriously disappear one dark night.

  The old truck, which Fred drove, would career around the glen with the three boys whooping and screeching at everything and everybody. They could be heard advancing long before they could be seen.

  The three male Menzies were the image of their father, in all ways. They were loud and coarse-mouthed burley sandy-haired boys. The inhabitants of the glen often wondered what would come of ‘The Menzie Boys’ as everyone referred to them. Certainly they would not become great academics; they were not regarded as the brightest bunch. No, people sucked in breaths and shuddered when they considered the future of the boys. The thought of having three adult ‘Freds’ around all ducking, diving and perpetrating scams just did not bear thinking about.

  Doris was not seen out much, she seemed to spend longer and longer at the croft. Occasionally she would venture down to the local shops, or Fred would take her into Alford. People said it was due to her obesity that she did not go out, and certainly over the years Doris had grown sideways rather than upwards. She was the size of a house. Her feet could hardly be seen under the rolls of fat, which fell like the Victoria Falls over her battered slippers. She had given up wearing shoes some time ago, she wobbled rather than walked. She was usually so out of breath with her wheezing she often sounded as though she was some puffing steam train, which meant that she was another Menzie who could be heard before being seen.

  Doris was most certainly not the most attractive of women.

  Beth appeared serene amongst the chaos. She glided around the croft clearing the mess left in the wake of her brothers. At fourteen, Beth had more or less taken over the full housekeeping duties of the home. She did make a better job than her mother ever made of it. However, it was a bit like painting the Forth Road Bridge, by the time she finished one task, the boys would arrive and then she would have to start all over again. Cairn View suffered from years of virtually no maintenance. Therefore, there were parts of the building which showed real decay. The windows frames were patched with bits of paper and cardboard, which was fine in the summer months, although in the winter they did nothing to stop the artic winds that rushed along the glen penetrating into every inch of the rooms.

  The kitchen was the living room for the family. The black range, which doubled as the cooker and heater, often billowed black smoke when it became blocked. Beth would plead with her father to clean it out and, eventually, when they almost choked on the fumes, Fred would be forced to respond to his daughter’s wishes.

  The kitchen was dark and dingy as were most of the other rooms in the house. No matter how much scrubbing and washing took place it would not make any difference. What it needed was a good paint, except this was totally out of the question. Who would do it for a start? And it would take money which was needed for other things. Beth often thought that if her father stayed away from the Coach and Horses for just one Saturday night, then they would have more than enough money to fund the painting of the whole house.

  The bathroom was the bane of Beth’s life. It smelt. Beth never got to the bottom of where the smell came from; she did not know whether it was due to having four males in the house whose aim for the toilet left a lot to be desired. She was not convinced this was the reason, as she washed the walls and around the toilet every day with a strong disinfectant. Still this made no difference. Beth thought it was more likely due to serious problems with the drains; she shuddered when she considered something more sinister like a dead rats’ nest underneath the bath. Rats were a bit of a hazard at Cairn View and even the big grey tomcat was fighting a losing battle trying to keep them under control.

  Beth continued to fight the battle of keeping the house in some sort of order and trying to prevent them all dying from cholera or some other terrible illness. She did most all the cooking now, and had over the years become quite a good little cook. She could make things go a long way, which was just as well as often the ingredients she was provided with by her father and brothers were sometimes delivered in a haphazard way. She could make a dozen different dishes from rabbit, which was the household’s most regular meat they brought home. Occasionally, there was a salmon. Most of the fish, which was poached, was sold on and did not reach the large scrubbed kitchen table of Cairn View.

  Beth had really ceased going to school after her fourteenth birthday. Oh, sometimes she would attend for a few days, usually after there had been a visit from the School Attendance Officer, who made threatening sounds about court action being taken. When she did go to school she ended up having even longer
days, as she still had to do all of her household tasks before and after.

  Doris and Fred occupied the large room at the back of the house. Their large double bed sat in the centre of the room, surrounded by large dark somber-looking furniture. Beth would make sure that her parents’ bed was made and that the sheets were changed on a regular basis. If it was left to Doris, the sheets would have stood to attention on their own, as washing them did not feature in her priorities. Fred was often heard to complain that there were bed bugs as he was sure he was being bitten. Beth would try and keep the room as tidy and as hygienic as possible which was no mean feat given Doris’s lack of social and personal care skills. Why she needed to pee in the potty under the bed rather than make her way along the short passageway to use the toilet was something only she knew. Beth detested emptying the potty every morning. It smelt and Doris didn’t have the best aim in the world.

  The only place in the house where Beth could claim as her own space was her small box room of a bedroom. There were two bedrooms upstairs in the eaves of the cottage. One was much larger and was where her brothers slept. The three beds just about fitted into the room. Hers, although smaller, had more space. Her bed was covered with a lovely bright yellow bedcover, which she had managed to discover in one of the bags her mother had been presented with by a neighbour. Beth had secreted this away upstairs to cover her own bed, and given her mother was no longer able to climb the stairs it was somewhat safe from being sold on. Beth had also managed to source some thick red curtains, which she hung against the windows. These helped to stop some of the drafts which whipped through the small window. The window did, however, provide her with a wonderful view along the glen. She could lie in her bed and see the hills which were dominated by Tolby Hill and the Cairn which sat on its peak, almost like a sentry guarding the glen. That was one of the stories Beth had weaved in her mind when often lying in her bed trying to blot out the pain after one of her mother’s vicious assaults.

  In the summer months when it was light almost all night long, she would leave the curtains apart and could lie in her bed and watch the movement of colours as the light would ricochet off the hills and shine into her small room, making it feel lighter and warmer.

  Beside her little bed she had a pine kitchen chair which acted as a bedside table and on which stood her small clock that one of her brothers had produced one Christmas for her. The question as to where he had sourced this from was not asked, nor for the small trinket box which sat on her rather dilapidated chest of drawers. Beth had just been grateful for the items. These were hers, where they had come from, and, you did not ask these sorts of questions in the Menzie household.

  Beth did not go out much. There was never the time nor the money, apart from the question of where on earth would she go? Although the girls at school were not unkind, she had never made any real friends. How could she? She would not be able to do the things they were doing; she could have hardly invited them back to Cairn View.

  She knew the young people in the area went to the school discos, and she would listen to the descriptions of what took place at these events whenever she did go to school. Her peers seemed to have great fun at these, there was always much debate about who got off with whom, and whose mini skirt was the shortest or whose platform heels were the most precarious. Beth could not enter into these conversations, so she just listened. She did not feel envious of the girls; she would not know what to do at a disco. The girls would talk about the latest pop song and how they would practise dancing to it around their sitting rooms at home. There was no way that Beth could even imagine in her wildest dreams disco dancing around the living room at Cairn View. Beth was just happy to remain as an outsider; she had no ambitions or hopes that things were ever going to change for her.

  Chapter 3

  One of the daily tasks that Beth did enjoy doing was to take Poppy the Border collie for a walk along the pathway by the burn. In the summer months she could go out quite late after she finished washing up all of the supper dishes. She would throw sticks which Poppy would charge after, bringing them back to her and plonking them at her feet, demanding that she continued the game. Poppy, the black and white agile dog, was possibly Beth’s only real friend. She told Poppy all of her secrets and worries and Poppy would sit, head on one side, just as though she was listening and understanding every word that was being spoken.

  It was the middle of April on a lovely spring evening when she was sitting on a rock at the side of the burn telling Poppy how fed up she was with her brother Ted. He had been coming into her bedroom and raking around amongst her stuff, and she was ranting on about this when she suddenly realised that there was someone behind her.

  She turned and looked, she had to catch her breath and found her heart beat flip when her eyes caught sight of the person before her. She did not know where on earth he had suddenly appeared from.

  She could not help staring into the face of the young man who was standing smiling at her. He was about five foot six, slim, wearing flared jeans and a blue and white striped shirt. On his feet he had black polished chiseled toe shoes which had a small shaped heel. It was his face that she was intrigued by. He had shoulder length black curly hair, the colour of coal. It was thick and framed his oval-shaped face. His aquiline nose, although seeming out of proportion to his high cheekbones, did not dominate his face as you would have expected. It was his eyes which dominated his face. His eyes and his eyelashes, which were so long that Beth was sure he could sweep the floor with them. His dark eyes seemed almost to be as black as his hair, they had such warmth and depth to them that she almost found herself mesmerised. It was as though when looking at them she could feel herself sinking into them.

  They were crinkled now as the man smiled. He was saying something, but Beth was so overcome she had not heard or understood what he was saying. He smiled and repeated, ‘Hi there, I thought you were some sort of magical fairy person sitting on that rock.’ He waited for some sort of reply and when nothing came he continued. ‘Hi, I’m Marty, Marty Paton,’. He walked a couple of steps towards her offering his hand.

  Beth did not quite know what to do. She got to her feet and tentatively allowed him to take her hand whereupon he proceeded to shake it, then did something which seemed natural yet surprised both of them, he put her hand to his mouth and planted a kiss.

  She laughed nervously and withdrew her hand quickly. ‘Hi, sorry you gave me a bit of a fright. I’m Beth Menzie, I am out for a walk with Poppy’. She gestured to a rather wet and excited dog who stood looking a bit silly with an over large branch hanging from her mouth.

  ‘Mind if I sit down beside you for a bit,’ Marty asked. When he saw her head shake from side to side, he moved to sit down on one of the boulders beside the burn.

  Beth sat back down on the one she had so recently vacated. ‘Where did you come from?’ she asked him.

  ‘Oh, along from Hillside Farm. I’m working there for a while. What about you, where do you hail from?’ he replied, his eyes not leaving the beautiful vision he had just discovered.

  ‘I live along at Cairn View; it’s just along the other side of that track. You can just about see it from Hillside Farm, in fact, one of the fields to the back of us belongs to Mr Bellows.’

  ‘Oh, I know the whereabouts, have you got a load of brothers?’ he asked. When she nodded - thinking I bet they have tried to sell him or fleece him of something - he continued. ‘Don’t look so worried, I heard about them that’s all. Do tell me what else you do apart from walking the dog?’

  She hesitated. What on earth could she tell him? She decided that she could only tell him the truth. ‘I don’t do anything really. That is, apart from going to school and helping out at home that is.’

  He smiled cheekily at her, ‘So, no boyfriend then?’ She shook her head and, overcome with embarrassment, dropped her eyes to the ground. He laughed. ‘Just checking, I don’t want to find some good looking local bloke coming down heavy on me.’

 
She laughed at that, and the transformation which took place across her face was amazing. Gone were the frowns and frightened timid look as her whole face came alive. He remembered thinking later that it was as though her eyes lit up and flashed with rays of violet lights he was sure could send a beacon of light which, on a dark night, would light up the whole sky. She fascinated him.

  They sat beside the tumbling burn quietly chatting. Marty told her how he had arrived at Hillside Farm just one week ago; he was planning to stay there until October. Mr Bellows had advertised for temporary help while he recovered from some surgery, and although Marty had not had any previous farming experience he had taken him on. Marty’s response to the advertisement in the local paper and his subsequent interview allowed him the opportunity to use his charm to gain the job. Marty was learning quickly that farming meant early rises and long days. He was not afraid of hard work, although he did miss the hustle and bustle of Aberdeen where his home was.

  However, he only planned to work through the summer. He had just left school after sitting his Scottish Higher Certificates and was hoping that, if all went as planned, he was going to college to study hairdressing. He lived with his Aunt Molly in Aberdeen; she had a house in Torry overlooking the harbour and the River Dee. He had gone on to explain that he lived with his Aunt Molly, his mother’s older and single sister. His mother had married several years ago and had successfully emigrated to Australia where she now lived with her new family; his half siblings. He had never been certain as to why she had not taken him to live with her. His Aunt Molly had told him she had needed to have a fresh start and she was only too happy for him to live with her.