Telling Tales

by Jane Yeadon

  In it there’s a thermos flask, some cups, sandwiches and a small pair of plum-coloured opera glasses. Mum says they’re a legacy from the days when she was a flapper. Wondering if she’s tried flying too, I don’t get the connection. Still, the glasses come in handy. I often use them to see if there’s anything happening on the main road, and if it’s worth investigation.

  ‘Look, quines, it’s such a bonny day, I thought we’d have a picnic,’ beams Mary. ‘I promised your mum and Dod we’d check to see if Roma’s all right. She’s not supposed to be due till next week, but apparently she’s crossed the Knockack burn and gone out to the hill away from the herd. We’ll go by the wood. It’ll be fine and cool, then once we’re on the hill’ – she flourishes the glasses – ‘these’ll help find her.’

  A track cuts through the plantation at the back of our house. It’s sheltered and lovely in its quietness, and if we wanted to visit our neighbours at Culfearn and go by foot, we’d follow it, then, when it comes out at the main Forres to Grantown road, we’d cross it to go down the farm one.

  However, the path that we’re taking today branches off to head up to our moor with the plantation, now on one side, whilst older, taller pine trees flank the other.

  Elizabeth gazes up at them. ‘It’s a wonder these trees weren’t cut down for the war effort,’ she says.

  Mary nods and changes the basket to her other hand. ‘Uh huh. It was lucky that peace came before it was their turn. They’d have been chopped up at the sawmill that was here.’

  Heaps of sawdust are all that remain of a place that once must have been busy and noisy. I wonder if the workforce got used to the racket of the sawmill. I think about the tractor’s fan-driven circular one at home. It’s not big, but before Dod starts it he takes off the saw’s home-made wooden cover and something like the huge mouth of a hungry monster appears. It’s got grinning jagged teeth, and when powered into action, they spin into a cruel cutting blur. There’s a horrendous shriek as they bite through what’s to become our firewood. Elizabeth and I’ve to help stack it in the woodshed. We can’t hear anything for ages after, so I think it must’ve been horrible working somewhere that the noise was constant.

  Now, in kinder and softer voice, the trees sigh; their tops sway a little. They allow the filtering sun to glance over Mary as she muses, ‘Tombain wouldn’t have been half as sheltered without those big fellas.’ She points to the ground. ‘But mind you don’t trip over these roots.’

  She means the ones that have surfaced and meander over the path as if, like us, they’re out for a dander. They, however, are leaving their tracks like maps: handy for beetles and wee beasties. I imagine them tuning in to Earth’s heart and wonder if a human can share in that world.

  I fall back far enough, so neither Mary nor Elizabeth can see me. I kneel down, then put an ear to the ground. I listen hard. Hidden birds sing in trees that whisper back forest news that only they can understand. At length, disappointed to be so excluded, I give up and run to catch up with my companions.

  The clean resin-like smell of pinewood escorts us to a big grey gate. When we climb over it, we’re onto the moor and the heavy coconut-like scent of gorse takes over. Their bushes make brilliant golden splodges in the moor’s more muted colours. A sentry bird with a pink waistcoat is impossibly perched on the spiky top of the highest gorse bush. I don’t know what it is but it makes a funny sound like a clock being wound.

  ‘That’s a stonechat,’ says Elizabeth, squinting her eyes against the sun.

  ‘How d’you know?’ I wonder.

  ‘Dod telt me,’ she says, smug. ‘We were out checking the cows one night that you were in bed.’

  I’m jealous. How did she manage that? Ordinarily, by the time a bonny summer day fades out, the farm world drowses into sleep as well. There might be a whisper of magic and mystery in the air, but by that time we’re both usually in bed and Mum’s shouting, ‘Go to sleep, quines. It’s half-past nine.’

  Mary jumps in before an argument starts.

  ‘Well, whatever that bird is, it’s doing a good look-out job. Actually, I think it’s a bit like Roma. Your mum says she’s got a suspicious nature too and a taste for the wide open spaces.’ She scans the moor with the binoculars, before handing them to Elizabeth. ‘See if you can find her. The trouble is there’s so much here the same colour as that dratted beast and the heather’s so high, it’ll be difficult enough seeing her, never mind a calf.’

  Milkwort grows in sharp-blue scattered patches. They remind me of the little flowers that sprig the black of Mrs Bremner’s best cross-over pinny. She only wears it for the doctor’s very occasional visit to Lala. After the last one, Mum had to start giving him monthly injections for something called pernicious anaemia.

  I know what that is. It means Lala’s getting more tomato ketchup than mince.

  I heard Dod more or less say so, and he look worried about who’d be able to give him an injection until Mum said, ‘Jabs are easy enough to do. I learnt how to when my father got diabetes. Your mother’s got plenty on her plate without having to stick needles of vitamin twelve into her husband.’

  ‘Let’s look and see if we can find any unusual flowers so we can tell Mum,’ says Elizabeth.

  ‘Like those?’ asks Mary, pointing to a spray of small sunshine-yellow flowers growing in the shelter and clefts of a heap of boulders piled carelessly beside the fence separating the moor from a cultivated field.

  Elizabeth launches off. ‘These ones are called Tormentil and they’re nay that rare. We see them a lot on the moor, but ye’d wonder at anything managing to grow in the crooks and crannies o’ those stones. They must’ve been here a long time for the flowers to get a foothold.’ She looks around the moor. ‘There’s no other one stone heaps, so I wonder whit this ane’s doing here.’

  ‘I think that they’ll have come from that field. It’s obviously been cleared and improved. Look how green it is compared to where we’re standing.’ Mary shows a rare moment of irritation as she jumps on the soft peaty ground, making it squelch and her sensible black shoes turn muddy brown.

  ‘That’s cos Dod’s been cultivating and spreading lime on it,’ my farmer-sister observes.

  ‘Aye, and before his time there’d have been folk trying to wring a living out of here. Hard work in hard times! I sometimes think of them and wonder how they managed to shift such huge stones and did they think it worth it,’ Mary observes.

  ‘I bet they’d have been pleased they’d made something a bit like a throne,’ says Elizabeth. She hands the binoculars to Mary. ‘I can’t see Roma anywhere. Maybe you’ll see better than me.’

  She scrambles up to the top of the pile, throws her arms wide, then, flinging her voice skyward and jumping up and down, shouts, ‘I’m king of the castle!’

  As if in challenge, with a sound, surprisingly loud, throaty and brave in the vastness of the moor’s empty space, a cuckoo calls. With the rounded shoulders of the Knock rising closely behind us, I imagine that if anybody’s at its top, they’ll hear it.

  ‘I’ll bet that’s the same bird we keep hearing in the mornings and at night. I don’t like cuckoos – they’re bloomin’ parasites. ‘P-a-r-a-s-i-t-e-s.’ Elizabeth repeats the word as if spelling it out. Unlike pernicious, I’m not sure what the word means, but by the tone of her voice it’s not a compliment.

  Umbrellas having recently been proved useless, she jumps down, arms outstretched instead. She lands well. She’s so annoying.

  In the spirit of competition, I say, ‘A cuckoo’s much cheerier than a lapwing. It sounds as if its heart’s been broken.’

  ‘Ach, Jane!’ Elizabeth begins, but Mary stops her.

  ‘I think it’s time for our picnic,’ she says. ‘You’ll both be hungry. Come on, you two!’ She sits with her back resting against a boulder and pats the ground beside her. ‘It’s such a bonny day, we should enjoy the sun whilst it’s shining.’

  A bee goes by, sounding so full of purpose it’s easy to understand w
hy they’re called busy. The tea is sweet and hot and I wonder if Mary’ll make us eat our crusts. They’re almost black, tough and spoil the rest of the nicely doughy high-pan-sliced bread. It’s thickly spread with the butter we churn from Charlotte’s cream and the jam Mum makes from the wild raspberries that we picked last year.

  I take the binoculars, check the moor stretching before us and spot the viaduct. Beyond the railway line are the hills and fields of distant farms. Before, they’d been edging the fringe of the moor in faraway patchwork but now look so close as to be almost reachable. There’s one in particular.

  ‘Mary,’ I say, pointing, ‘would that be the Lurg where Smithy and Beel stay?’

  ‘Good for you, Janie. Well spotted, and of course not so far from the Glebe really.’

  ‘Mm,’ I say, taking the compliment in my stride, ‘But see that dip in the hill nearer us. Is that where Boganey is?’

  While Mary peers in the direction in which I’m pointing the binoculars, I continue, ‘Mum often speaks about a Mrs Macdonald who lives there. She says she’s got a horse.’ I stop for a moment, savouring the thought. ‘It’s a beautiful white stallion and she rides it alongside the railway line right up to Grantown.’

  Elizabeth clicks her teeth. ‘No, she does not. Honestly, Jane, you and your imagination!’

  Mary looks down at her with a wee grin as Elizabeth delivers her umpteenth lecture of the day. ‘She . . .’ she indicates me with a sideways head-nod, ‘obviously doesn’t know this, but I bet you do, Mary. Mrs Macdonald’s got a collie and it’s so clever, it swims the burn that runs between Boganey and the railway line. It saves her mistress getting her feet wet and collects the messages the engine driver puts out for her.’

  ‘Honestly, Elizabeth,’ I laugh. ‘Who’s talking about imagination now? He’d have to slow down the train for that. He’d be sure to get the sack for doing that.’

  She shoots back. ‘It’s a fact. Mr Macdonald was a railway worker but he died. Mrs Macdonald’s getting on a bittie and she’s no so fit to go shopping now. The railway folk are helping her, just like that dog.’

  ‘It’s a horse. Look, I’ll prove it to you. It’ll not take long to get there.’

  I put down the binoculars and suddenly everywhere looks so far away again; it’s not much of a disappointment when Mary says, ‘Well, if we wanted to see Mrs Macdonald, we’d have to come at it by the other side. We’d need to go by road, up under the railway viaduct and even after we’d reached the end of the tarred surface, there’s a couple of miles of rough track to go, then cross the railway line and,’ she draws breath, ‘at the end of it all there’s that burn to ford.’

  ‘Mebbe not today but some other one we could go straight over from here,’ states Elizabeth. ‘That’d be much shorter.’

  Mary’s horrified. ‘No, you could not! The Kettle-holes are between us. And folk say you only know where they are when you fall into them.’

  ‘Kettle-holes? That’s a funny name.’

  ‘Aye, deep pools of water where kelpies live and the Knockack burn starts.’

  Now’s the time to ask.

  ‘Kelpies?’ I wonder.

  ‘Aye, water horses, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they live further down the Knockack as well.’ Mary must see us exchanging glances because she warms to her theme. ‘I know I certainly wouldn’t want to go there myself. And they’re especially fond of pulling little children deep, deep, down, down into the water so we never see them again.’ She drops her voice as if frightened a stray kelpie might hear her, but lifts it to continue. ‘Still, I’m here to look after you and I think we’re safe enough today. Let’s see if Roma’s risking anything more dangerous than having a wee calfie.’

  Elizabeth’s sure there’s no kelpies in the Knockack. ‘There’s not enough water,’ she whispers as, leaving Mary behind, we run down the moor’s slight slope towards it. I hear it gurgling as if chuckling at not being interfered with by people of damming intentions. I stop for a moment to check a grey stone. Its surface and colour resemble a toad’s back, with something like a mustard-coloured stain splattered over it.

  In its shelter, a mauve-coloured flower stands up from a bed of emerald-green grass. ‘Look, Lizabeth, a wild orchid, and it’s a sweet-smelling one,’ I say, wondering if kelpies aren’t as big as Mary suggests. If they’re small, they might think orchids are little pink Christmas trees, for they have that shape.

  But as usual I’m talking to myself. Elizabeth’s raced ahead. She’s slipped off her shoes and sits on the burn bank, dangling her feet in the water. There’s some grass rushes near her. She pulls a few, then holding three in her mouth starts to plait the free ends.

  Then it’s either a very big horned kelpie that comes snorting towards her or it’s Roma, and just a few yards away from the weaver lies a new calf.

  18

  ROMA RULES

  ‘Hello Roma, I see you found a nice bed of rushes tae hide your calfie.’

  I’m several yards away but Elizabeth’s voice, though soft, carries. In her neat fingers, the plaited rush holds its shape. She waves it before the cow. ‘Look, something to put on your horns and if you wait a wee minutie I’ll make you another one to match it.’ She stoops down and plucks a yellow flower that’s been growing at the waterside. ‘And, look! Mimulus! Bees love it.’

  Somehow or another I don’t think that Roma’s all that interested in a botany lecture. She drops her head, rolls her eyes, paws the ground and breathes so deeply it looks as if she’s about to charge, but my sister seems unconcerned. She stays put and picks some more rushes, then starts plaiting them as if having a cow with lowered head, advancing, is something to expect from the quietness of rural life.

  Mary’s running towards us, shouting and waving the basket, but all that does is frighten the calf. It gives a small cry. Roma lumbers forward and stations herself between Elizabeth and the calf. She noses it. As if being told to get up, it does and staggers towards its mother’s udder.

  For a moment, she lets it suck, then, with a gentle chivvying call, she moves away from the rushes, across the burn, then waits, attention completely focused on the calf. It stares at the moving water, lifts its head and gives a bewildered cry.

  ‘On you go, calfie,’ says Elizabeth, making a shooing gesture. ‘The water winna hurt ye.’

  For a moment, the calf hesitates. Roma calls again. The calf sniffs the water, then slowly stumbles through it. No mother could give a loved child a better reception as it climbs up the bank and to her. Maybe she’s working on the ration book principal because she allows her calf only a thimbleful of milk before turning towards the moor. Head outstretched as if trying to catch up with the dairy lorry, the calf totters after her.

  A breathless Mary arrives, wiping her brow. ‘Phew!’ she says. ‘That’s a relief, and your mum and Dod’ll be pleased that Roma’s calved, and would you look at the pair of them now! I’m thinking they’re taking the old drove road.’

  She means the faint tracks just visible in the heather. They lead in the direction of Boganey.

  Elizabeth jumps up, throwing the plaited rush into the burn. As her frail craft sails off, she dusts down her dungarees and laughs. ‘Maybe Roma fancies seeing a bit of the world.’

  I’m curious about the drove road.

  ‘Roma would find it easier to follow if it was springtime,’ says Mary. ‘According to your mum, the tracks are really clear then.’

  ‘So, was it for taking you to the other farms?’ Elizabeth asks.

  ‘It’d be handy for that, but these were the days before there were proper roads. If animals were to be sold, men called drovers would drive them on foot to the Falkirk Tryst. It was a big market in the south of Scotland. You know,’ Mary marvelled, ‘for most drovers, it was such a long way away, they’d to stop the night in places called stances. The men wore plaids but sometimes they weren’t warm enough so they slept with their animals. Can you imagine that!’

  I can. I think it might have been nice, but
maybe not with Roma.

  ‘If she’s heading south, she’ll have to get past the Kettle-holes first,’ muses Elizabeth, but Roma’s stopped to lick her calf. With an enthusiasm similar to Mary scouring our scullery floor, the cow’s great tongue massages the wet body, transferring enough energy to allow the calf eventually to escape and search for, and this time get, better rations.

  ‘Ah! She’s not heading for the bright lights after all,’ says Mary, as, once the calf’s had its fill, Roma, keeping a watchful eye on us, heads back towards the burn then further down it. There, instead of the rough banks overgrown with heather, she’ll find birch trees overhanging the murmuring water, whispering an offer of shade and shelter. She might even stop near our acrobat trees; it’s such a lovely spot.

  Mum often speaks about a school that was once not far from it and built on a knoll. Now all that’s left are its stones, which litter the grass of what may have been a turfy playground. Dunphail’s present school is a grim-looking building with high windows and it’s halfway along the road between the Glebe and the shop. We’d been fascinated that somewhere nearer us but so far from anywhere else was also a school but couldn’t really imagine what it was like.

  ‘Who’d have gone to it?’ we’d asked.

  ‘Girls, and over thirty of them attended. I found some records not long ago and they said the teacher was paid on her own adventure.’ Mum’d given a grim laugh. ‘I doubt if it was a paying spec. 120 years ago. I’ve done my sums and worked out that she’d have been lucky if she got £8 for the year.

  ‘What would she have taught?’ Elizabeth wondered.

  ‘Spinning probably. It would have been important then. Seemingly the women of the parish were notable for their skill in this.’

  The scattered remains of old crofts can be seen all around us. They may once have been the homes of the pupils but, try as I might, I can’t imagine the moor holding anything but the song of the wind and the cry of its birds.