by Jane Yeadon
By now, she was blowing on her hands to warm them, then climbing into her clothes. Reluctantly, I followed. Through the night, there’d been enough snow to cover the outside world in a white blanket and the larch trees in powder. By the look of the menacing sky, we could expect more, whilst there was a curious stillness on the land below as if it was waiting for something to happen well beyond human control.
It wasn’t like that in the kitchen. As soon as we appeared, Mum swung into action. ‘You’re up early! Good! I’ll need to go and check that all the home animals are all right.’ She tightened her coat belt. ‘I’ll leave you to get on with your porridge. After that you’ll need to wrap up warm, wear your wellies and take a spare pair of stockings. According to the wireless, the weather forecast’s not great. Dod and Nell have gone to take the sheep off the hill.’
I felt aggrieved and still sleepy. ‘Never mind the sheep, we might get stuck in a drift and perish.’
Mum was unfazed. ‘It’s unlikely. Anyway, Dod says that the road’s fine and clear at the moment and you’ll be all right on the bikes, and if the weather does get worse he’ll come and collect you.’
‘I canna eat all this. It’s too thick,’ grumped Elizabeth, putting down her spoon.
Mum’s reply was exasperated. ‘There’s Charlotte’s good cream to go with it and you’ll need something to stick to your ribs this morning.’
‘It’s OK. I’ll get something at the shoppie. Come on, Jane.’
Unless I tried to follow in the tyre marks left by Elizabeth’s bike, it wasn’t difficult biking in snow, but when we reached, then passed, the school she stopped for a moment, truly annoyed.
‘Ye dinna need tae come too. Ach! I wish ye’d stop copying me all the time.’
‘But I want a piece, too,’ I cried. ‘And nay pink wafers either. Anyway, you said I’d to come with you.’
‘No, I didn’t. Well, it’s not what I meant!’ She got back on her bike and raced off, and by the time I’d reached the post office she was already inside. Even if she had been with me, I didn’t imagine she’d see the lady in black. Every time we’ve passed the shop I’ve looked out for her, but never saw her again. And now there she was. Standing at Mattie’s house door and looking real enough. I’d have tried waving, but she’d disappeared before there was a chance. Maybe wearing specs outside’s not such a bad idea, I thought, going into the post office, where Mattie had stopped organising the post and the posties to attend to her customer.
‘Ah! Here’s Janie, too, uh huh, uh huh.’ She smiled. ‘My, but you’re hardy girls and growing too! I thought the Tomdow brae would maybe be blocked and Postie wouldn’t manage to get up it.’
‘Och, the road was fine, but I think Mum’s getting anxious in case there’s more snow and she can’t get her article posted tomorrow,’ Elizabeth declared, stamping her feet and leaving a big puddle of water on the stone floor. She looked round the shop, then earnestly asked, ‘Miss Robertson, have you anything that would stick to my ribs?’
Mattie dimpled. ‘Uh huh. I’ve got the very dab. What would you think about these?’ She pointed to a plate of pastry slices oozing with dried fruit. ‘Fly cemeteries,’ she said. ‘Fresh from Deas the baker this morning. That should do the trick.’ She lifted a brown paper bag. ‘Two?’
Making a point of independent-thinking, I asked for a snowball and my own bag.
‘Certainly, certainly.’ Mattie cheerily popped the coconut-covered cookie into a separate one. ‘You’d get plenty of them outside today but don’t eat any but this one.’
Getting back on our bikes, I spotted the lady in black, amazed when Elizabeth waved to her.
‘I dinna ken why you’re waving,’ I said. ‘There’s naebody there.’
‘There is so. That’s Mrs MacGillvray, Mattie’s auntie. She comes and helps her whileys.’
In a bid to even the ghost-sighting score, and despite the fact that this one was waving back, I said, ‘Well, I canna see her. I think ye must be seeing things.’
But she was already off and calling over her shoulder, ‘We’ll be late.’
But we aren’t, which is a pity because we might have been spared the mouse’s cremation. However, it’s thanks to Mrs Haggarty’s labours over the stove to which the poor mouse has made its sad contribution that there’s a pleasant warmth from the radiators in the classroom.
As we make our usual gathering round the piano, Miss Milne says, ‘There’s lots of lovely hymns for this time of year, so we’ll start practising some for the Christmas party.’
The very mention of party makes a buzz of excitement. She continues, ‘We’ll be having it in the hall, but it’s nice to have some decorations here as well, so after the singing you’re going to cut crêpe and gummed paper and make streamers with them.
‘Please, Miss, how will you hang them up?’ Alec asks.
Miss Mine thinks for a moment, then regards him somewhat doubtfully. ‘If I thought you’d be responsible, you could. Miss May has a ladder.’
‘James could hold it,’ says Alec, and looks almost as pleased as James when she agrees.
‘It’s snowing,’ says someone. Despite Miss Milne’s call to order, we race over to the windows. They’re too high for me to see out of, but, looking upwards, it seems as if someone’s emptying a huge bolster of feathers from above. The flakes fall as if they’re in a hurry and will do it forever.
42
SLEDGES, TRAYS AND SLIDES
Lining one side of the schoolie brae is a beech-leafed hedge. Its dead leaves will stay until spring. In the chill wind, they made a crisp whisper alongside the hiss of the sledge runners tracking down the road. A snowplough had cleared it after dinnertime. Since then, there’s been no more snow, but the morning’s waiting-feel’s come back. December days are short enough, but it’s getting dark earlier than usual.
Snow on the telephone wires makes clear white lines against a blackening sky, yet, meeting Dod with the tractor and trailer at the bottom of the brae, is a surprise.
‘You look ready for Siberia,’ says Elizabeth, looking at his milking cap thatched in Charlotte’s cast hair, the old army greatcoat tied with binder twine and worn over his boiler suit. Gaiters, cut from old wellies, cover his boots.
‘Aye weel, according to the weather forecast, there’s a storm on the way. Your mam wis worried about you, said you might get stuck in a drift. Mind,’ he winks at Elizabeth, ‘Janie was a bit feart, but you both look as if you’re a long way from perishing.’ Taking a bike and hoisting it onto the trailer, he says, ‘But I thought I might hae met you on the road earlier, Janie.’
It’s not the time to say that time flies when you’re trying to perfect a hunkered position going down a fast slide at school. Instead I say, ‘I thought I’d better wait for Elizabeth in case she got stuck in a drift.’
Dod heaves aboard the other bike. ‘It’s a mercy I’m here then. Noo, whit wid that string be doing on the back of both your bikes?’
Even if he says it with a twinkle, Elizabeth and I chorus, ‘No idea.’
We’re not really, really scared of getting one of Dod’s rows, but, it seems Alec and a pal are. Neither my sister nor I want to get the boys into trouble, nevertheless we were impressed by their reaction.
‘That’s Dod Bemmer comin’ roon the corner on his tractor!’ Alec had sounded horrified. Both boys had been pulling us on their sledges with our bikes. Now they leapt off, and in one swift movement with the knife that Alec uses for everything, from cleaning his nails to carving on any bit of wood, he’d sliced the connecting string.
‘We’re off! We dinna want him catchin’ us,’ he said and, with that, they fled.
Floating through the empty air came the sounds of their curses.
‘They’ve been left wi’ such short string to pull their sledges, they’ll be barking their ankles,’ whispers Elizabeth. ‘Mind! Dinna say anything aboot them tae Dod.’
We might hardly have recovered from being decanted into the snow, but the lie about
the string came smoothly. One dark look from my sister makes sure of that. I’d have loved to have told Dod how hurtling down the schoolie brae on bike-pulled sledges had been as exciting as sliding on a tin tray down the hill beside the canteen.
Mrs Haggarty lent some of them to us at dinnertime. ‘Here! If you’ve no sledges yourselves, use these. Just don’t break your necks.’ She added, ‘Otherwise I might have to sling you in the boiler, ha ha!’
After a few tray-travelled runs, the piste already created by the sledges gained a fine gloss. Then it came alive with the sound in equal measure of terror and delight as we shot down the slope. At the bottom, a few feet across from it, there’s a wall. Those who didn’t want to risk crashing into it at the speed of sound concentrated on making a slide nearby. Soon, it too had such a glassy surface that the safest way to avoid falling was just to sit down on it.
‘Ye’ll wear a hole in your breeks. Look! This is how ye dae it,’ boasted Alec. With his tackety boots sounding like someone taking a stick over corrugated iron, he shot downhill, somehow maintaining his crouched-down position until the end, when he jumped onto his feet. ‘See?’ he shouted. ‘It’s easy-peasy.’
‘Wi’ a bit o’ practice I bet I’ll dae it better,’ had been my foolish remark, and one, as I’m sitting on a wet cold bum on the trailer, I’d time to regret. Home has never appeared so warm or so welcome.
Dod thinks the same. ‘It’s started tae drift and by the look o’ it the road’ll be blocked by the morn’, he tells Mum. ‘It wis beginning tae fill in when we were coming up the Tomdow hill. Thank God we’ve managed to get all the beasts in about the place.’
‘Uh huh, it’ll be easier to get them fed, but I’m praying this weather doesn’t last and that the road gets cleared quick. I’ve seen us having to wait days for it to be opened.’ Mum looks anxious but smiles when I say, ‘Maybe we winna get to school the morn.’
‘Mebbe not. That might please you.’
I’m not so sure. Today was fun. Not only were there snowball fights, sliding and sledging, but in the classroom we did circle games and whilst we were making the streamers Miss Milne read us out something she called a ballad.
‘It’s a simple story told in simple verse,’ she’d said, but I thought that, easy as it was to listen to, getting a tale about a king sitting drinking blood red wine and to reel it along in rhyme was pretty clever.
‘Mum, I widna like tae miss the party,’ I say.
‘Well, we’ll have to wait and see. It’s in the lap of the gods.’
It’s a wholly unsatisfactory and confusing answer.
The stone hot water bottles that Mum’s put in our beds give off a fierce if limited heat. They’re heavy. Risking scalded feet, I kick mine to the bottom of the bed and cuddle Belinda and Rabbit in case they’re not warm enough.
‘Hey, Elizabeth, I think you shid tak’ Bluebell intae bed wi’ ye. The poor thing’ll be starving. She might be sitting bonny on the top of the chest of drawers, but I bet she’s starving.’
There’s no reply. She’s probably tired after helping Dod check all the animals are still safely sheltered; even so, it’s amazing that she’s able to sleep through a storm that threatens to break into the house. The window rattles as if protesting at the wind forcing in its icy draught and hailstones hit it like someone throwing gravel. There’s a surge of sighs coming from the larch trees, with the occasional snap then thump as a branch falls. Snow’s beginning to fur up the window.
I bury my head under the blankets and try a wee song with Rabbit.
My sister turns in bed and mutters something rude.
43
TELLING TALES
It must be later on in the morning than we thought and we’re wakened by Mum, who’s carrying two cups. ‘It’s cocoa,’ she says, handing them over. ‘And just you stay where you are. The road’s blocked. No school or postie today and, as well as that, the phone’s not working. Dod’s going to take me in the tractor to the kiosk at the hall so’s I can dictate through my article to the Bulletin folk and,’ she clicks her teeth, ‘I don’t suppose they’ll have as much as a flake of snow in Glasgow. Still, I suppose we should be glad that last night’s storm’s passed.’
On her way out she adds, ‘We’ve been so busy checking the beasts this morning, I haven’t had time to see if Duck or Drake’s all right. When you do rise, see if you can find them, and if you could feed the hens that’d be another great help. Our own road’s blocked, so we’ll have to cut through the field. Be sure and follow our tracks to Tomdow, otherwise you’ll be up to your necks in snow.’
‘Have you plenty change for the phone?’ Elizabeth asks.
‘Aye, I’ve been down the side of every chair in the house, and I’m sure Mattie’ll have plenty as well.’
‘Uh huh, uh huh.’
‘Don’t be cheeky about your elders, Jane.’
Mum must’ve been in a hurry because she never mentioned the Snow Queen’s visit. She’s come after the storm and covered our fields in glittering white. Helped by a hard sun in a faultless sky, the drips that she’s frozen into crystals shine from every larch branch. Her cold breath on our windows has left ferns growing on the glass. In the far distance, the firth shows icy blue against mountains covered in snow that softens the lines of everything and muffles the Knockack.
Lost to the magic of this wonderland is Duck.
‘Come and see this,’ says Elizabeth, beckoning at the door of the recently vacated henhouse.
Inside, in a nest box, Duck and Drake are cuddled up. Duck regards us with a cold eye whilst Drake keeps his head tucked under his wing.
‘Wait till we tell the hens,’ laughs my sister.
They, unlike the happy couple, are full of activity and oblivious to anything but the appearance of fish pellets.
‘Let’s check up on the steading beasts,’ Elizabeth suggests on our return.
It’s almost as busy and noisy as a town. Black Douglas is in Frankie’s old pen and conversing amiably through a separating gate with his harem. Chaffinches take the chance of foraging amongst the straw feed before flying back up to the rafters to continue with their casual gossip, whilst in the absence of Maudie, long since gone to market, Charlotte uses head girl status to chide Morag for banging on about her rights and to be glad that at last the tattie pit’s been opened.
If it wasn’t for the thought of missing the party, I’d be happy to stay in this enclosed world forever.
As if reading my thoughts, although not quite in agreement, Elizabeth says, ‘Ooh! I’m already missing school. I hope the road clears soon.’ She crosses her fingers, and although that’s never worked for me it seems to for her, because soon after, normality returns and, as a triumphant festive ending to the term, we’re actually all set fair for the Christmas party.
‘I must say the new teddy Santa left in your stocking’s very polite and it’s good that Elizabeth’s new panda can keep Bluebell company on the dresser,’ says Belinda, ‘but d’you think your school party was better than today? It’s been Christmas Day after all.’
On account of the excitement from which Mum’s so keen to spare herself, I’ve been packed off to bed early.
I think back. ‘Well, I got to wear white socks then and the leather soles on my red shoes were perfect for sliding on the hall floor. There weren’t any chairs on it, so there was loads of room for games. Races too and, Belinda, I can’t believe it, nobody stopped us!’
‘Not even your mother?’
‘No. She was too busy gassing to the other wifies sitting round the hall.’
I warm to my theme. ‘And then there were birlies.’
‘Birlies?’
‘Yes, you take a partner’s hand and go round and round. It’s super. You get really dizzy’.
‘I could do that with Bluebell.’
‘You could, but you’d need more than two for “The Farmer’s in his Den” and “The Grand Old Duke of York”.’
‘Are they good fun?’
‘Not really,’ I say, thinking about Miss Milne looking down anxiously from the stage, where she was thumping on the piano. ‘Moira and Davy told us not to push or shove.’ Remembering looking down on the tinsel, the tree and Santa competing with us when we were singing ‘Away in a Manger’, I add, ‘But it was nice when we were all up on stage and I could sing as loud as I liked.’
Rabbit’s already snoring and Belinda’s beginning to sound sleepy. Still, she says, ‘As Elizabeth’s not here, you won’t disturb her, so tell me a story. I like the ones about you growing up in Tombain.’
And so I begin.
COPYRIGHT
First published 2015
by Black & White Publishing Ltd
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This electronic edition published in 2015
ISBN: 978 1 84502 980 7 in EPub format
ISBN: 978 1 84502 954 8 in paperback format
Copyright © Jane Yeadon 2015
The right of Jane Yeadon to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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