by Jess Smith
Rory moved a small wooden seat next to the fire for their visitor and asked again, ‘When?’
‘According to this telegram—oh, I hope you don’t mind, I opened it, seeing as none of you read. I hope that’s fitting with you.’
‘Yes, yes, now what does it say?’
Not wishing to prolong the agony further, he read: ‘We regret to inform you that sometime on the 18th of March 1915 Private Bruar Stewart sustained serious injury resulting in his death.’
Rory had lost everyone: his lovely wife, Jimmy, a mild-mannered son hardly into adulthood, and now Bruar, his first-born. Filled with sorrow he wondered if the curse of the one-eyed seer had followed him like a plague-stricken victim. ‘Too much pain,’ he said, retrieving his jacket from a nearby fence-post. ‘O’Connor, I can’t take this, see to the lassie.’
The Irishman poured a cup of tea into an empty cup held by Doctor Mackenzie. He knew no amount of alcohol or company of seductive females would help his friend. A sense of complete uselessness enveloped him, as he watched his friend disappear among the shadows of trees and scattered sunbeams.
He took off his torn cap, slipped it into his pocket and said, ‘What manner o’ God can justify the pain that this country has inflicted upon these folks. The poorest among us, yet such sacrifice would only be expected from the highest of people, not humble tinker-folk who scrape a living among the worms.’
‘I have no answer, O’Connor. But keep a watchful eye on this heartbroken lassie, there’s no telling how deeply she’s been wounded.’
Megan drew a hand across her tear-stained face and spoke in whispering tones. ‘Don’t underestimate me, good friend. You see, me and Bruar, we always said if time wasn’t on our side, then he’d live in my heart and me in his. You worry about Kirriemor, I am sure there’s a wife or mother who’s about to get the same news as us. Away with you now. I think it’s a day to be among my hills, me and Bruar always spent the best times in our hills.’ She went inside her small tent and came out with a black shawl a woman had given instead of money for scourers, wrapped it around her shoulders, smiled reassuringly to O’Connor and the doctor, and then set off to mourn in her own way.
Mackenzie felt useless, and said to O’Connor, ‘Watch her, there’s no telling where a broken heart will lead. Now tell me, where has Rory gone, do you know?’
‘As far as his legs will walk him. Then he’ll rist a while an’ come back.’
‘But that might be some time, he’s a big strong man.’
‘There’s no strength in those legs, doctor, only pain in his heart. He has to get it out.’
‘Do me a favour—keep him away from the drink.’
His companion shrugged his shoulders, bent down to light his pipe on a fiery twig and turned his back to the fire’s warmth. ‘I have no control over such matters.’
Tired, saddened by war, the doctor trotted his horse off the campsite that morning; no one saw the tears trickling from his eyes. He patted his horse and said to the animal, ‘Folks think I’m made of iron.’ The old horse pulled onto the bit and neighed as if in agreement.
Less than a mile from his destination there was a sudden deep gurgle from the throat of his old mare. For a moment she turned to stare into the eyes of her owner, and from the depth of her belly came another gurgling sound. Suddenly her back stiffened, and his old horse of thirty years keeled over and breathed her last.
‘Daft beast, you near flattened me,’ he called into the early afternoon sunshine, shaking a fist at the unseen phantom of death. ‘Not even my old horse escaped your fingers of doom.’ He was tired, but one thing for sure, his days sitting straddled on a horse were well and truly over. From then on it would have to be one of those new noisy things; a motor vehicle. Every doctor from Perth to Aviemore had one. He’d not been one for change, though, and had often said, ‘As long as the mare can walk, I’ll sit on her back.’
Dealing with the disposal of the horse took his mind away from Megan and her loss.
Two months went by, and Rory still hadn’t returned home to the campsite in the glen. For a time, eternally hopeful, Megan refused to believe that her soulmate was really dead, and lived day to day watching from her vantage-point for signs of him. She also spent a long time talking to herself, and this worried O’Connor.
‘Are you well in the heart now?’ he asked her one morning; she’d just thrown her black shawl on the fire.
‘I’m as well as one could expect. Why do you ask?’
‘I feels responsible for you. Since Rory has not come back, I tink maybe it has fallen to me for to look after you.’
‘Oh, I reckon we’ll see him before long. But don’t concern yourself for me, I’m no widow woman wearing the black and keeping the head hung. He’s not dead, O’Connor. I feel it, you see.’ She crossed both hands to her chest. ‘He’ll come whistling up that road any day now, just wait and see.’
He did worry about her, though her grief wasn’t showing yet, not in the normal way. He wondered if she might try something drastic as the old doctor had suggested. Responsibility wasn’t his thing—he had always been a loner until he’d met these people, but as is the way, like ivy, folk grow on you. Not just that, but he was hankering after a bit of silk-stockinged leg to wrap around his body, and a bucketful of ale to help the gnawing deep in his gut.
Megan took on her role as the only woman in the campsite. She snared, caught and skinned rabbits, cut firewood, continued making pot scourers, cooked and kept a clean place.
Then Rory crept home, quiet and withdrawn, after tramping out his grief. He stared about him a lot. O’Connor could see that demons had followed his footsteps, and the only way to dispel them was, as he said, ‘a good drink!’ No words were wasted on where he’d been or what he’d done—his bushy beard and ripped clothing spoke volumes. In no time, both began where they’d left off before the fateful news; spending the nights drinking and sleeping with other men’s wives.
Megan could not have cared what they did, she had finished with them. At night, when time stretched slowly by, she brought Bruar into her bed, making love or just talking. If life had removed him in body, in her imaginings he was still alive.
One night, with the men gone, her lonely existence suddenly frightened her. ‘What if my man never comes home, what if he is dead and I am a real widow woman?’ Her sorrow began to reach inward, tear at her young heart.
With the passing of time she’d failed to notice how the secluded glen had held her to its soil. That promise she had made—if her man was indeed gone—was no reason to keep her tied; why didn’t she pack what little she owned and get out of the place? Rachel, she believed, had gone and was not likely to look back; her days as a tinker were buried deep in her past. Annie, Bruar and Jimmy were no more. By morning she had decided to leave forever her Angus glens.
It wasn’t as simple as that, though. Big Rory, with each passing day, became more and more like the crawling fiend of a snake, freely taking what lonely soldiers yearned to come home to. He was the only reason she lingered behind. But heaven forbid if someone should inform the soldier husbands that two tinkers were sharing their sacred beds and stealing what they alone were entitled to? Perhaps she should go, before her father-in-law and his companion found themselves trapped in an act of vengeance. Already glen soldiers were trickling home; the rumours were that the war had burned out and soon would be over.
Each time that she felt more kindly towards them, the drinking bouts that had them crawling from smelly flea-ridden pits to work without breakfast through harvests and plantings and anything else which brought enough of a wage to buy more drink made her kick the grass and punch the air. So one morning followed another and her hostility to them stayed firmly in place.
One day she paid her friend Doctor Mackenzie a visit. His legs didn’t take him any distance now, and that new-fangled motor car never materialised. He admitted that the ones he’d seen frightened the life out of him; they were too noisy and fast. The real reason, howev
er, was that both his eyes were covered in cataracts, restricting most of his vision. He’d worked and lived in the area for fifty years, and was more than relieved to hand his practice over to a new doctor; someone young, eager and full of new ideas, with a wife and two lively children.
Megan almost put two and two together and got five. ‘Where’s my pal, is he dead?’ she asked the new resident of his house.
‘He’s moved out of town into a smaller house, and he’s not dead!’ his replacement said, laughing at her forthright question.
It was a picturesque little cottage, one she often imagined living in, if she ever stopped travelling. Soon, in the confines of a cosy kitchen, the pair shared a pot of tea.
She was saddened by her faithful friend’s ailing health, so rather than heap her worries on him, she asked if he missed healing folk.
‘I’ll always be here lassie to help the unfortunate soul who canna pay for treatment. But forget about me for a minute, and tell me about those men from the campsite. I swear I’ve heard tales, and not the best of rumours either, about Rory and his wayward Irish comrade. Better tell them to stay away from Kirriemor.’
‘Doctor, how can I stop them? They’ll have to take their punishment, when it comes.’
Megan left her friend to wander back. His old home was on the near side of Kirriemor, but to get from this one meant walking the whole length of the town. Her road led past some low-roofed cottar houses. As she passed, a door flew open and a woman was bundled out. ‘If I ever see your face again, I’ll kill you! And see him, the filth that’s ruined you, well, he’s dead for sure.’
Megan quickened her pace, but as she turned the corner the woman called, ‘Tell Rory to get away, or else he’ll die at my man’s hands. He’s for it!’
She recognised the voice, and looking over her shoulder, there was no mistaking the face of the battered woman picking herself up from the pavement; it was the giggler who had shared her father-in-law’s tent.
She ran home, stumbling from stone to tree until the smell of burning sticks met her nostrils. ‘Good-father, there’s a hell of a stink in Kirriemor over the bitch and you. I think her man won’t settle until he’s had his revenge!’
Thankfully Rory was sober. A pot bursting with vegetables was boiling on the fire, he’d put two bowls and some bread on the familiar tree stump.
‘Calm down, lassie. I’ve not been near her for weeks. If her man was coming, I’m certain he’d be here by now.’
‘I tell you this, he flung that woman a mile in the air, her face was like mince.’
‘Stop exaggerating, Megan, and eat the soup.’ He ladled some into a bowl and handed it to her. After they’d eaten, she asked where O’Connor was. He didn’t know, but went on to speak about her—what were her future plans?
‘Good-father, what is there for me in this place apart from sadness, worrying about you? That woman today brought it closer and more urgent. O’Connor doesn’t care about anyone but himself, he’d move on and never give us a thought. Come with me to Glen Coe, my kin are good quiet folks, there might be a lassie there free to warm your bed.’
He stopped her and said, ‘Megan, I’m not sure where life will lead me, but one thing I do know—it’s time to leave. War breeds respect, and now men will be working to bring it back home. I know my behaviour has been, well, awful, but I thought about giving up the drink, getting a place and settling my bones, maybe a farm job, you know?’
‘Yes, I do. Please mean what you say this time, because I’m worried about that ploughman. The woman had bull’s eyes with the kicking, he’s real pig-angry with you.’
‘Don’t fret, I can take care of myself. When O’Connor gets back I’ll tell him we are for the off.’ He smiled, eyes narrowed with smoking, face reddened by alcohol abuse, yet there was a visible change, not something she could explain, a kind of submission.
‘Do you want me to pack anything for you, like this box? It seems very bulky to add to your other belongings.’
She’d seldom known Rory to be so clear and level-headed. She leant down, opened her mother’s box and took out the only thing worth keeping—her and Bruar’s wedding photo.
‘Let me see it, lassie.’ His voice filled with emotion as she carefully laid it in his hand. ‘You both were a pair of beauties that day. Do you mind how the photo man shivered with fear?’
She laughed, and at that minute the vengeful ploughman didn’t bother her. Next day she’d pick up her life and move on, going partways with Rory. The Irishman could go where he wanted, to the moon for all the good he ever did, but Bruar’s father meant the world to her. He was all she had left.
Leaving Rory to sort his belongings, she decided to say farewell to her beloved hills and the memories shared with her lost Bruar. She called that she’d be back early evening. It was a lovely warm afternoon.
The last time she’d walked in such glorious sunshine was far back in the time when she and Bruar had skipped on the hills as youngsters. It seemed as if she’d lived two lifetimes. One was when happiness and joy were as common as flowers on a dyke. The other was when unhappiness and heartache were held by the icy fingers of death. She’d never fall in love again: that was left behind with Bruar’s memory on the heather-fringed horizon. But who but fate knows the path ahead? For today was her farewell day, her last day in the Angus Glens. Perhaps the great winged eagle would appear to her. It could not herald doom, if it appeared when there wasn’t a cloud, and there was not a sign of one in the perfect blue sky.
Leaving a patch of thick yellow broom she walked the steep hillside, filling her lungs deeply with the sweet-scented air. Grouse mothers, pretending to be injured, fell and hobbled at her feet, trying to lure her away from their young chicks, fluttering on infant wings over the purpled ground. ‘Och, look at the state of you; I won’t touch your babies,’ she assured them. ‘I’m here to say cheerio, because tomorrow, my brown-feathered friends, I’m away. Now shut up, because you’re spoiling my peace.’
Lost in thought in that special place, she smiled, recognising the hill-slope on her right; it was there she first tried to seduce her Bruar. Not tears, but warm feelings welled inside her. God knows she’d shed enough tears, and what good did it do—none at all.
‘From this moment, the gathered memories of my beloved Bruar shall be sweet.’
Filling cupped hands and drinking the clean, cold water from a nearby burn, she began to climb up the steep face of the hill. The mountain scenes were breathtaking, as inch by inch, rock and scree replaced grass and heather. Soon she was stretching sunburnt arms into small crevices to find handholds in the now exposed crag. One last push, and ahead lay the mountain top; a cone-shaped cairn stood alone like an ancient Pictish symbol, fashioned by primitive hands to some pagan God.
‘This is heaven,’ she murmured. She fell upon the ground and allowed the sun, sky and the boulders beneath her to possess every inch of her breathless frame. ‘I wish you were here, my man, to share this with me.’
Suddenly a feeling that someone was there made her sit bolt upright. How could there be anyone? The whole mountainous peak spread itself before her, a vision of panoramic vastness. She lay back down again and had the same uncanny feeling. There was someone there! Something touched her face. A gentle, invisible hand ran over her body. She closed her eyes, as a soft breeze whispered, ‘Don’t worry any more, my precious baby.’ He was there—her Bruar.
‘I love you, my bonny lassie,’ he called from within the warm wind.
She drifted into a dream state in the warmth of the summer day. He kissed her, she kissed him back, they touched every inch of each other’s bodies, then, lost in a world of wonder and mystery, the young couple joined as if in dreams. In this world Death himself could not separate them.
How long she lay there, there is no telling, but if it hadn’t been for the whirr, tabak-tabak-tabak sound of a mother grouse chasing away a buzzard, she may never have awakened.
Whether or not Bruar had come from the grave to
make love to her she did not know, but one thing she did know was that it was a long, long, time since she had felt so refreshed. From then on, when life was sore and heavy, she’d call to him and at least in dreams they’d be together. With this thought planted firmly in her mind she set off for home.
Now and then a buzzard soared high in the sky, watching and waiting. A vile smell made her recoil in disgust, as she came upon the half-rotted carcass of a red deer, but it mattered not. ‘Ah well, she thought, ‘all must eat, I suppose.’ Further on she stopped to take another drink from a trickle of water spurting from the earth. ‘Scotland, you are a wonder,’ she said, wetting a cotton handkerchief and running it over her sweated face. ‘Where in the world has God painted such beauty? I think nowhere else, but where have I been, apart from here and Glen Coe? Maybe Rachel has the right idea, to go as far away as anyone willing to take you.’ She smiled, thinking what a long and perfect day this was. It certainly was a hot one, so feeling tired she stretched out behind a shady outcrop of rocks, sleeping once more. She knew arguments between Rory and O’Connor would be in full swing. The Irishman, lost without his drinking buddy, would not be pleased with his new abstinence. An hour or two more and she’d trek back.
The hours fell away, and when at last she awakened a dusky night was drawing near.
‘Oh my goodness, this has been a long sleep! I’d best shift my feet, better I get back in case Rory has gone into town to have a goodbye drink; heaven knows where that might end.’
The darkness of the sky joined the horizon of the heather moor. Her pace quickened; grotesque shapes appeared to hem in her path, rocks took on strange forms as the shadows grew longer and deeper. A tiny glimmer of the sun’s rays danced upon tree tops for one solitary moment, before being engulfed by the night. Dew had formed on the broom; a big moor spider hung from its web as if drinking the weighty dewdrops suspended from its temporary home. In time the ground flattened out, and she sighed with relief. A lone moorfowl was a welcome sight, rising in panic from a bed of reeds at the sound of her footsteps. The broom’s yellow blossom had curled into itself for the night, which had brought with it a chill wind. Her feet found familiar ground, and soon she reckoned another mile would see her home. Her phantom romancing with Bruar had given a strength she’d welcomed, for sure as night follows day she’d need to be strong to take to the long road with big Rory in tow. The flames from the campfire lit up the sky; her father-in-law was still there.