by Jess Smith
‘You know that now I’m sixteen, your lad and me will be wed?’ She was surprised at the loudness of her voice, and blushed red. This made him smile and he answered in soft tones.
‘Aye, lassie, that I am; and I’ll say this for you, I never thought you good enough for Bruar but there are ways in you that are strong and honest. You’ve a depth to yourself, I’ve seldom seen one so young with a spirit like yours. I’m sure the lad will do no better. His mother was a tinker you know, aye, just like you. Her folks came from the west coast, although I only knew her uncle. My Lassie—that’s what I called her—was abandoned into the care of the uncle after her parents were killed by a deluge that washed their camp site away. It was a blessing she had been playing on the hillside at the time. Poor thing, she used to wake up in the night screaming, I think she was remembering her drowned relatives. She had a heart that loved everybody. Even wee robin redbreasts with broken wings brought tears to her bonny eyes, and God she had the most beautiful eyes.’
That was the first time he had taken her into his trust, she felt warmed with words she’d never thought to hear from this once drink-filled excuse for a man. His words brought a sense of pride. It felt right to be taking on his name, and within no time the pair were relaxed and comfortable as they chatted on.
Yet there was a clearing to be done. The resentment he harboured towards the Macdonalds had bothered her—why did he feel so strongly? Before another word passed between them she had to know. His easy flow of conversation made her think that while in this mood she would be able to question him further.
For a moment he dropped his head, ran a hand through his thick grey hair, and looked quite sheepishly at her. He said, ‘It’s not you. It’s a story I was raised on that was told by wandering tinker folk who used to come up to the far north, about the feuding MacIan Macdonalds—that was the proper clan name, you know, lass.’
Yes, she did know.
‘Well, there’s an old tale was brought to our ears about the Glencoe massacre. Campbell of Glen Lyon, who had been given instructions by the English King William to kill all of the Glencoe Macdonalds, had been secretly having relations with a Macdonald lassie. She was already promised to her cousin Alister MacIan. Now to get rid of him, Campbell, along with a certain powerful Edinburgh man by the name of Dalrymple, accused the whole clan of ‘reiving’—cattle stealing.’
Hearing her ancestral name being brought low wasn’t part of the answer she’d expected. She had her own version of history, had been reared on it, and her temper rose. She didn’t like his version of the story, and in no uncertain terms let him know! ‘Well, it just goes to show how much you know, big Rory Stewart. Dalrymple was William’s stooge. He hated everyone with a drop of Catholic blood. The Macdonalds supported your Prince Charlie during the ’45. Many died for him, for God’s sake. And here’s another wee bit fact of history for you to puff through your pipe—during the wild days of Robert the Bruce, the two clans Campbell and MacIan Macdonald were related. And another thing, what if it was true the lassie had a fling with the Campbell; surely it was her business? But if you think killing old men, women and children—and I heard tell over forty were slaughtered in the snow that fearful night—was because of a silly affair, then you have allowed the drink to take your brain along with your gut.’ She rose quickly to her feet, and with hands on hips, hissed, ‘That was at the end of the seventeenth century, why should you condemn every Macdonald to this day for it?’
‘Sit back down, lassie, and accept my sincere apologies. I promise to end my disgust at the name. Anyway, in Durness I heard many stories about our own people that don’t do the Highlanders any favours.’
They looked at each other thinking on how senseless it was to argue and take sides in an incident long buried. When the anger subsided from her heart and the red from her cheeks, she moved closer to him, exchanging her seat of wood for a more comfortable stool. Changing the subject, she said, ‘Bruar. Now there’s a wonder o’ a name, but why give it tae your son? I know o’ the Falls o’ Bruar at Blair Atholl, but I’ve heard nobody but my lad called that.’
Rory sat back in his seat, looked up at the high hills surrounding their small campsite and said, ‘Do you know something, I never thought I’d hear myself tell anyone this, but I like you, Megan Macdonald. So I’ll tell you why we, my lassie and me, chose to call our boy Bruar.’
She sat closer by the fire to give him all her attention. He would soon be her father-in-law, therefore it was only right that she knew as much of the man as she could.
‘I remember like it was only yesterday,’ he said, running his hands once more through his thick hair. ‘Spring was bursting from a long cold winter. We were but bairns, yet felt so grown up, ready to take on the world together. We were wed that very day in a tiny church on the shore of Loch Eribol by a small priest who told us everybody belonged to God, and never to forget that. Then my lassie and I thought, if it was all right with God, we’d go on a hike round Scotland. Leaving Durness, we set upon the road, filling our teenage lungs with the fragrance of yellowed gorse and pink-white hawthorn blossoms. Not one part of that beautiful long summer did we miss a chance to thrill at nature’s wondrous sights and sounds. We went swimming in the waters of the blue-green Atlantic, soaked in sunshine upon deserted beaches of golden sands without a stitch of clothes on. Oh, she was a bonny lassie, was Bruar’s mother. I wish you’d known her.’ Suddenly although it was a warm, pleasant day, he pulled the collar of his shirt up around his chin and hunched his shoulders. He folded his arms and lowered his face into his chest.
She watched as her storyteller flinched, and wondered if she’d opened old wounds. ‘Do you want to continue, big Rory?’ she asked. ‘Look, if you don’t want to tell me, I’ll understand.’
But it was only that a sudden vision of his lassie had filled his thoughts, and for a moment he didn’t want to share her with anyone. Megan gently wrapped an arm around his bowed shoulders, ‘If you’d much rather not speak o’ her, I’ll understand.’
‘No, lassie, of course I’ll tell you. It’s just that as I went back in my mind I could see how much I missed her. But look, sit down, and I’ll tell you how we came by the laddie’s name. When we found the purse was empty we went down to Blair Atholl. A landowner from Glen Tilt had postered notices on a village wall. I asked my lassie what they said. She turned on me then, and hit me hard with her fist. I couldn’t understand, because I’d never seen her show one tiny spark of temper. At first I thought the notice was one saying ‘no tinkers’, and that’s why she saw red, because we came across so many of them on our travels. Then when I read it I found that it said “Workers to cut bracken apply to factor at the castle.” I asked her what had caused the outburst of anger? And that’s when she broke down in tears, saying she couldn’t read at all, and she was so ashamed. It made me feel more drawn to her that she relied on me from then on, but having said that, I wasn’t that good a reader myself.
Well, we got the job, and with it keys to a small cottage, high up on the braeside. It was a melancholy wee place, with eyeless windows and a ruined, gaping chimney breast. Part of it was roofless, ravaged by the winds and rain from the heavens. There were traces of fastening on a wall where once hung a cupboard, and doors long since replaced by openings leading from one room to the next. We stood alone, gazing at what once had housed families, probably happy people, and wondered what they’d think of the bleak place now? We sat on a sill and wondered if it had ever held a vase with flowers. My sister Helen never put an empty vase on a sill, even in winter she’d put some plant or other in her blue vase. Every tiny low roofed cottage in Durness had them, little, rounded, glazed sea-blue they were, always filled with a few flowers.
Long grasses grew from a hole in the floor behind the front door, as if searching for some light. I told the factor we weren’t too happy with the state of the place, but he just shrugged his shoulders and said, “What do you expect, a mansion? You’re bloody tinkers, for God’s sake, nothing mo
re! I’ve scraped cleaner stuff off my boot.”’
Megan stopped him then and said, ‘You’re not a tinker, Rory, I know, because sometimes I speak to Rachel in our tongue, and Bruar hasn’t a clue what we’re saying.’
‘No, but my lassie taught me some words. And anyway, what difference does it make? I’m not a tinker, but the boys are half-bred, so I suppose they’re as near as can be. Anyway, do you want to hear this tale of why Bruar is so called, or not?’
She apologised, folded her arms, and asked him to continue.
‘For the remainder of the summer we lived in the cottage with its partly thatched roof and worked from morning till night, clearing bracken from acres of braeside. The factor only came by to pay us, apart from the day he handed my lassie a bag of scones. His wife had made a batch for a shooting party, but she’d baked too much. We ate them heartily, even if they were a week old and as hard as stones.
Although the moorland around our makeshift home spread wide, a deep forest grew over the lower land. One Sunday we wandered off down through the vast forest, following a burn until it widened into a wild untamed river. She laughed when I said that those gigantic fir trees trapped a power of jungle heat, and for this reason, big hairy men over twenty feet tall dwelt in their midst. It certainly was a hot day, and when we were exhausted with the heat, we were so glad to see the beautiful waters of Bruar falling in sparking cascades over rocks and canyons. ‘Let’s jump in, my love,’ said my lassie.
I thought it far too deep and dangerous, but she said that at our age there was no danger, only a challenge. So over we went, like salmon leaping to a magical spawning ground. Our skin tingled with bouncing bubbles that popped and danced all over our bodies. Oh, I can still feel the surge of water, what a feeling, I haven’t the words to describe it. I felt her legs tangling around mine; her hands found my face as mine entwined her small middle.’
Megan blushed. She thought that maybe this wasn’t for her ears, but her truth-teller was living again through those heart-hid moments, and not she or anyone else would stop him. He continued.
‘Eventually we scrambled up on the bank, and there, while the water sparkled and danced around us in pools, we made passionate love.’
Unaccustomed to such expressions of emotion, Rory blushed too and rose to his feet, leaving Megan completely dumbstruck. She threw back her head, panting with excitement at his words, her earlier embarrassment gone. ‘What wonder, what a brilliant scene! And ma lover was the result o’ that heavenly day—unbelievable, simply magical.’
He smiled, glad she’d enjoyed his story and not run off red-faced. ‘Yes, your lad was the outcome of me and my lassie finding the joy that only the fairies know, making love beneath the mystical water. Now, there you are, you even know the heart of me, a wee skelp of a thing. I must be getting soft, telling you my secrets.’
Unable to control the joy she felt at that moment, Megan rushed over, hugged, kissed and thanked Rory before going back to add more sticks to her own fire. At long last she had been given a glimpse into the past of this sad man, who lived only on memories of days gone by. Him sharing his innermost emotions had brought them closer now, and no matter what the future held they’d remain close, they both knew that. This man of scarred heart, his life riddled with many dubious twists and turns, hid in his depths a vision that would equal that of any great artist. His vivid descriptions she’d remember forever.
FOUR
Winter brought a fierce biting wind swirling round their tents, drawing the young lovers closer for warmth. A surge of wanting ran through Bruar at her closeness. He unfastened two brown buttons, opening her woollen jersey, and kissed a small inch of exposed freckled shoulder. ‘Megan, I have waited so long. Are you ready? Oh God, how I hope you are, because it’s time now, no more waiting. I will be as gentle as the dove.’
‘You can be as dovey as you like, big lad, but me—well, I’ve waited all this time too you know, and I’m going tae swallow every inch of ye. So I’m for a wolf’s feast!’
That night had been the culmination of a wanting and waiting that both could only dream of, and when the cold early morning frost smothered the sleeping grass around them, a love was cemented within the small canvas abode that only death could part. They knew inside that if life, with its cruel twists, separated them, then love would keep alive a flame nothing would extinguish.
Next morning the pair rose to be greeted by a freezing fog which shrouded every inch of land with its grey blanket. It rushed inside the tent as they threw back the canvas door, into their eager, youthful faces. Everybody had heard their lovemaking from the night before, and it was Rachel who asked the question, ‘When are you getting married then?’
‘When the frost has thawed a mite, then we can lie without blankets.’ Bruar’s answer had a power of barely concealed excitement. He was hardly able to keep his hands off Megan, his Megan, who was curled around him winding her eager arms through his. He lifted her into the air like a rag doll, tickling each rib, she squealed with laughter as his knees played with her thighs. Then a thought flashed into her mind, prompting a further squeal of delight. ‘Never mind a thaw, let’s you and I mix the fluids this Saturday!’
Many days while trekking over the heather moor they had discussed the ceremony. She wanted the tinker’s mixing, just the way that her mother told her was how a Macdonald married. He didn’t care what way they wed, as long as for the rest of his life she’d lie at his side. He looked around the faces half-smiling back at them. They were more concerned to light a fire, fill cold bellies with porridge and milky tea. Then he said, through a beaming smile that could melt all the frost clinging with its icy fingers upon the dyke, ‘Saturday it is, then. I’ll ask the good doctor to come.’
Saturday came and found the families in a far happier mood. Big Rory, O’Connor, Jimmy and Bruar were dressed in suits that they had laid by for weddings and funerals; a motley collection of clothes with frayed collars and crushed trousers.
Rachel wore a fox-furred cape, given to her mother by some old minister’s wife, hoping she’d wear it and come to church, but she never did. One of its eyes had been lost in its travelling, and chunks had been ripped from the pathetic skin when two whippets had once thought it alive and fought over it. But it was all she had, so she wore it with pride.
Bruar had waited long and lustingly to a further sharing of his body with the raven-haired girl, so it wouldn’t have mattered what she looked like. Nevertheless she had made an effort to impress. Her mother Annie’s own wedding dress had been washed and pressed by laying it under a horse-hair mattress. That old garment had been kept safe in a wooden chest, along with family birth certificates and some old trinkets. Rachel prodded her sister, reminding her of the night of the storm when she carried it on her back all the way from Glen Coe. With gratitude and unusual attentiveness, Megan hugged her older sister and kissed her pale cheek. Rachel squeezed her shoulders in return. For all their differences, with Annie gone they were closer than they’d ever been. Rachel with the companionship of Jimmy smiled more; her tendency to ill-nature seemed to be buried by his delicate and personal attention.
Although the dress was faded and slightly torn at the hem, Megan still looked a picture: a lovely, fresh bride, in a tattered wedding frock of dull satin.
Firewood lay in massive piles between the tents. Two loaves of bread, half a pound of freshly boiled ham and several bottles of ale sat neatly on a small makeshift table made of cut logs. Bruar took a metal bucket and put it beside one belonging to Megan.
Only Doctor Mackenzie was missing, and they wouldn’t start without him; he was their only guest. It was tradition to allow someone not of the culture to attend a wedding. Some believed that this person could stand witness to the joining. As government and church took little part in the ceremonies of tinker folks, such a witness served as good proof to the actual marriage. Children could then take their father’s name, knowing they would inherit any meagre belongings left behind after death.
/> Half an hour passed. Rachel added sticks to the fire, muttering that if a spark ignited the remains of her dowdy fox fur, the doctor wouldn’t like what she’d call him. Not long after, Megan and Bruar, who had clambered to a vantage point, said his horse and trap could be seen trotting along the old drove road. They were pleased and excited to see their only wedding guest, but to their surprise, he wasn’t alone! When Rory saw the stranger who sat next to his friend on the trap, he stepped forward, raising his hand. ‘Sorry, doctor, but we never invited another.’
‘Oh, stop your nonsense, man. This is no guest, he is my present to the bride and groom.’ He helped the stranger down from the trap, along with a long box and objects they’d never seen before. Then, once each contraption had been unloaded and put at the stranger’s feet, the doctor said, ‘Close your mouths or Jack Frost will be away with your tonsils.’ He put a firm hand on the shoulders of Megan and Bruar and said, ‘I went to Perth for this lad, and I hope I don’t offend your customs, but he’s a photographer. He’s going to take your wedding pictures. Now how does that sound?’
Bruar stepped forward, awkwardly grabbed at the slender gent who had the most terrified stare on his face, shook his hand and said to his intended bride, ‘Come on, lassie, have you no manners at all? Give the man a shoogle.’
Megan, arms outstretched, hugged both her dear old friend and his wedding present. The photographer was genuinely scared of this band of eager subjects. He’d never ventured any closer to tinkers than glancing warily at their fire-smoke rising from some forest, and would speed away fearing his life was in mortal danger. However, with the speed of a magician he set up a wooden tripod and fastened onto it the one-eyed box (as O’Connor called it). He popped his head in and out from under a purple blanket like a darting weasel, whispering through nervous coughs, ‘Smile, please’. As quickly as it had been assembled, the three-legged stand, along with purple blanket and camera, were stacked, tied and secured again in their long box. He dropped a key as he tried with no success to fasten a padlock and chain around his box, and everybody laughed. Rory handed the man a stone jar. ‘Here, lad, take a dram with us.’