by Jess Smith
‘Oh, there’s no end to what a handy pair of wings could do for a body!’ Anna’s comment brought hilarious laughter from us both.
From then on we sat on a little patch of grass discussing the benefits of flying.
Suddenly a thought came into my head. I jumped up and declared, ‘I’m going to try it.’
‘Try what?’ enquired Anna, rising to her feet.
‘Flying, of course, dafty. What did you think I meant?’
‘Don’t talk rot, how the hell are you going to do it?’
I then disclosed my ingenious plan. ‘See the lavvie roof, well it’s just high enough to give me a start in the air,’ I said, pointing over at the sloping toilet roof.
‘I’m away to tell Mammy on you, Jessie,’ shouted Mary, who’d joined us on our flattened grass patch. ‘That’s really high up you know.’
I threatened instant death if she told on me, and just managed to grab her saying, ‘Come back here, Mary, if you dare tell I’ll drown you in the Earn inch by inch. Look, come on and let’s see if I can fly. I’ve got a belly-feeling if Batman can do it so can I. Now are you with me?’
By now other curious bairns had joined us. They looked at each other as if to say, ‘Well, if this daft lassie is willing to give us all a show, why stop her?’
So off we went to see me attempt the death-defying jump of the century!
Gathering as many big stones as we could find, we then piled a heap big enough to reach the lowest part of the lavvie roof. Thankfully I managed to jump up with a push from a big laddie who’d joined our group and was soon staring down on my followers from the highest point.
I remember thinking, ‘Gosh almighty, they don’t half seem far away!’ But if ever a day was meant for flying it was this one!
The sky was a clear blue; the sun filled every space. I was above the caravan site, above the river and the yellow broom. I was ‘on top of the world, Ma’, as Jimmy Cagney said.
Well, the lavvie roof, to be precise. But this was my first flight; next time I would go further.
With one last look down, I stepped out into mid-air, arms stretched, head up!
Now, isn’t it annoying how even a maestro can be distracted. Below me, thinking himself in a private cubicle, a big fat lad, before relieving himself of the contents of his stappit-full bowel, let rip the biggest and loudest fart I’d ever heard. I felt my body teeter backwards, then forwards, then over I went. Down towards the stones we had so neatly piled minutes earlier.
Drifting in and out of consciousness, I heard bairns screaming. Someone carried me by one leg, somebody else by the other. Daddy was shouting, ‘What happened?’ Mammy was cuddling me, crying, ‘My wee lassie, my wee lassie.’ She tried reassuring me, but all I could feel was the searing pain shooting up my right leg.
‘I can’t do anything with that leg, you need a surgeon. Take the bairn to Bridge of Earn hospital, they have all the means there,’ said the doctor that my father eventually found.
It was Sunday, and the local doctors were either away or having dinner with family and friends.
Daddy pleaded with the man, ‘Please look at the state of my bairn, can you give her something?’ The man closed his door behind him, saying, ‘I can’t do that in case an operation’s needed, now hurry up, get her seen!’
As I lay stretched out on the hard floor of wee Fordy, I wished to a thousand gods I’d never gone to the picture house and seen yon big stupid Batman!
I still remember the awful pain as Daddy drove with the utmost haste to Bridge of Earn hospital, twenty-three miles away. Every bump in the road sent me into excruciating agony. The right leg (as a result of my attempt at flying) was broken in five places.
When the surgeon eventually finished working on my leg, Daddy put it to him, ‘Are you telling me I’ve to go home and tell her mother her wee leg’s in bits?’
‘Yes, Mr Riley, that I am. She’ll be here for the next six weeks at least.’ He wasn’t kidding neither! So for the next six weeks I became a permanent fixture in the orthopaedic children’s ward of the Hospital over the Bridge, under which flows the Earn. The very same river I saw before falling from my flying future.
Daddy had some work to see to in the Black Isle, so they were forced to move on without me. Mammy tried to see me as often as she could, but it’s a right far distance from where they were camped to the hospital. So nothing else for it than to ask relatives if they would keep an eye on me. As if I was going anywhere!
I wasn’t short of visitors. Aunts, uncles and cousins came from all of Perthshire. I must mention one person, though, who came faithfully each week, D. O. Mclean, the headmaster of Crieff’s Junior Secondary School. A lad from Crieff was there, like me nursing a broken leg, and D.O. came to visit him. The ward matron told him about my accident happening in his home town. So he popped into the girl’s ward to see me also.
When the lad went home D.O. continued visiting me. Now, was that not a nice man! I have never forgotten his act of kindness, seldom shown to Traveller children outwith their own kind!
By the time Mammy came for me my leg was well and truly stiffened. Still in its stooky (plaster) I had to be carried into the ambulance. From Perth railway station we took the train to Inverness. We then went on the very choppy Kessock ferry. Then finally a taxi to the campsite on the Black Isle. The journey was repeated to have the plaster off! Thankfully a relative gave Daddy a loan of his big Humber Hawk, with lots of room in the back seat to stretch my injured leg.
I remember hopping onto the beach at Munlochy Bay and attempting to stand on my yellowed, hairy, skinny leg. It was more than very sore I can tell you!
Soon, though, my wee right leg was the same as the left one and I was running, climbing, swimming, midden-raking, doing everything youngsters enjoy, with one very definite exception—flying! Well, come on, how stupid did you think I was?
5
JOEY’S BRAINWORK
Because we had spent a few extra weeks on the Black Isle the ‘Berries’ were in full swing when we got back. The tale I’m about to share with you may bring to mind a similar experience of your own, because we all went through it, in our own way. This was my introduction to (red face coming on) anatomy! The male anatomy, that is.
Two things old Nell Macdonald could not abide: one was folks abusing the Sabbath, and the other was a woman drinking alcohol. She never hesitated to let you know if you were an offender. The ‘you’ on this bonny Sunday morning at Blairgowrie was my father’s sister Maggie, an offender on both accounts!
The old woman glowered at Auntie Maggie hanging out her washing and said in her sternest voice, ‘You’ll bring the wrath of God on your head for that, my lass, washing clothes on the holy day.’
Maggie ignored the old woman and continued with her chore.
‘I said,’ Nell continued, leaning on her stick with one hand, moving the clay pipe between the last two teeth in her head with the other hand, ‘no good at all, mark my words.’
Maggie was in her early thirties and had to give the old woman the respect her eighty years demanded, but could not resist saying something in her own defence. ‘I’ve been that busy all week I just never had a minute to call my own.’
As quick as a flash Nell took the breath from my auntie by her replying: ‘If you hadn’t spent the whole of yesterday standing in the Well Meadow pub drinkin’ beside the men, you’d have had time to do all the washing in the entire green!’
Maggie drew in her breath, bit her top lip and continued hanging out her washing. There was no way she would be drawn into an argument with old ‘viper-tongue’ Macdonald.
My mother, who was listening to the old woman’s ranting, couldn’t help but say something in Maggie’s defence. ‘Now, Nell, the lassie only went into the pub to get her man. She needed help with the messages. It’s a steep hill and fine you know. Did she not have the two biggest boxes of the stuff to hump?’
The old woman went back to her tent to plait the hair of one of her many grand-dau
ghters, muttering in a tongue known only to herself.
My cousin Joey, the eldest of Maggie’s two sons, who was standing over by the old stone dyke that ran all the way from the farm steadings to the Alyth road, called across to me. ‘Bell, are you coming down for a rout among the strawberries?’ Joey called me Bell because he knew it annoyed me. And his favourite pastime was annoying me!
‘Don’t you dare call me that,’ I warned him. ‘Fine you know I was christened Jessie, not Jezebel, but if you want to give me my Sunday best then call me Jessica!’
‘Oh, stop your moaning face, sure I’m only pulling your leg. Now are you going down the field, or not?’
‘I’m not,’ was my answer. ‘I’m playing at brainwork.’
It was far too warm to go raking for strawberries, playing rounders, or climbing trees. The only enjoyable leisure pursuit on that hot day was swimming, and as none of the men were willing to pile us all into a van and take us to the Gothans, then brainwork it was.
Before I go on, let me explain that the Gothans was a place three miles outside Blairgowrie on the Perth road which was the campsite favoured by the traveller folks before the last war. The Lunan burn flowed past the site on its way to join the River Isla, and featured a perfect deep pool for dooking. As a matter of fact, ask most of the travellers in Perthshire where they learned to swim, and they’ll tell you the Gothans.
‘This brainwork,’ asked Joey, ‘can I do it?’
‘Do you mean to tell me there isn’t any wee beasties for you to torture?’ I enquired.
Joey was the cruellest laddie in the whole of God’s kingdom. Just that very morning I stopped him chopping a worm into a dozen bits by pulling his jersey over his head so he couldn’t see where he was cutting. Joey was in his glory catching grasshoppers just so he could pull the legs off them. In the spring of the previous year, did he not leap the rocks across the Dochart Falls holding a bonny wee kitten by the back legs, with me in full pursuit screaming at him to give it to me? And not until I near pulled the two lugs off him did he let it go.
‘No,’ he answered, ‘I was bit right hard on my finger by a wee mouse that refused to come out of the dyke over by Nickum’s farm last night.’
‘What, may I ask, were you doing there? It’s near half a mile along the main road.’
‘Well, auld Macdonald was hiding from Nell on account of him being blind drunk after beating all the men in the green at pontoon.’
‘And how was he in that state winning a game of cards?’ I asked.
‘Now, Jess, do you think the old man could go home with all that money in his pocket without Nell wondering where it came from?’
‘Of course, I forgot, she is just as much against gambling as she is Sabbath abuse,’ I answered.
Joey continued: ‘The auld man said he’d give me half a crown if I would bide and be looky-out for him, that being until he sobered up.’
‘And how long did you bide?’ I asked.
‘Until the wee crabbit mouse bit me,’ was his obvious reply.
‘She didn’t half plough into your Ma earlier for washing on the holy day,’ I told Joey. ‘Did you not hear her?’
‘Aye, that I did, fair put Mother into a right mood, so I’d best keep on her good side until she comes round.’ Joey would hang from a cliff face before aggravating his Mam. ‘But never mind her, look at my finger,’ he said, quickly changing the subject. ‘That wee mouse gave it a right sore bite, here, look at that.’ Joey shoved a red swollen pinkie into my face, and I felt a sense of victory for all mice as I examined the swelt finger.
‘Did the old man sober up?’ I asked him, ignoring the injured digit.
‘No, I left him to sleep it off. He didn’t give me the promised half crown though. Instead he gave me sixpence this morning for not letting old Nell know where he was. But I’m not doing it again, he’s untrustworthy.’
‘He’s an angry old drunk,’ I reminded him. ‘No wonder his poor old wife is always crabbit!’
‘Anyhow, what’s this brainwork you’re on about?’ enquired my impish cousin.
‘Well, have you ever wondered how aeroplanes can fly? In addition, why is it that ships don’t sink?’ I quizzed him with my seven-year-old intellect.
‘Nope, I never give it a thought,’ said Joey, with his hands on hips and head tossed back.
‘Liar,’ I said, ‘Everybody wonders about those things.’
With those words said, my cousin, myself, and several other bairns who had joined us, spent most of the afternoon discussing the hows, whys and whats of life.
As we sat on the long grass which had escaped the ravages of tents, caravans and campfires, it didn’t take long for the lads to revert to their usual antics: teasing the lassies. Soon our large gathering became smaller, as one by one the girls huffed off to do other things, leaving me alone with three lads and Cousin Joey.
‘Bell,’ he asked, again to my annoyance, ‘I bet you can’t guess what I’ve got down my trousers?’
I didn’t answer him, because he knew calling me by that name fair peeved me, and secondly, knowing his cruelty towards wee beasties, I was certain he was about to sicken me with producing a wriggly or its like.
Joey turned his back on me and proudly showed the lads what he was concealing within his khaki shorts. It must have been something right comical because they all went into hysterics laughing.
What happened next was to be my introduction to anatomy! Quicker than the flick of a lamb’s tail, Joey turned toward me and pulled what looked like a very short, pale-coloured slow-worm from the front of his trousers. Holding the helpless creature by the neck with one hand he squeezed it with the other. A spray of water came spurting from its mouth all over my Auntie Maggie’s clean white sheet.
Red anger welled inside me, I had seen too much cruelty to lesser living things. It was time to take a stand. Joey had gone too far this time. ‘Give me that, you cruel bissum!’ I screamed, as I lunged at Joey’s trousers’-front, determined to save this helpless soul from certain death.
Imagine my utter horror as I grabbed its head and pulled, only to find it had attached itself to Joey’s body. I screamed again and this time pulled even harder, but by now Joey was turning a very deep red and begging me to let go.
‘Help, help me!’, he squealed, hanging on to the other end of the slow-worm. It went limp and I thought we’d killed it.
‘Give me it right now,’ I ordered, ‘or else I’ll tell Auntie Maggie on you.’
Now, reader, I imagine you’ve got the picture, and I can hear you saying; ‘No way!’ But I swear that was the truth. I was one of eight girls, had never seen a lad before, so how was I to know? Come to think of it, I’d not seen many a slow-worm neither.
Auntie Maggie, Mammy and old Nell came rushing over to see what all the commotion was. ‘Now,’ said the old woman, ‘did I not tell ye that no good would come of washing on the Sabbath day, look at the mess of your sheet with these weans playing dirty tricks.’
Auntie Maggie walloped both of us with a hazel switch as we took off in opposite directions, Joey with a swollen you-know-what, and me utterly stumped as to what I’d done wrong. ‘Och, this is a strange world,’ I thought. What in Rabbie’s name had I done?
I had no intentions of putting my brain through that kind of work again, so a wee chat with my Mammy before I slept that night fair put my cousin Joey into an entirely different light, I can tell you!
6
MURDER IN CLOVER
There we were, then, trundling up the road towards Pitlochry, singing the roof off the old bus and the tar off the A9.
‘Kindallachan.’ shouts Daddy, ‘We’ll camp here for a week or two.’ He manoeuvred the bus into a fine bit at the wood-end between several trees. Mammy wasn’t long in getting a fine washing line tied up while he got the fire on the go, and before long the kettle-lid was dancing away happily.
Within a day or two several other traveller families arrived and soon we had a fine gathering of hantel (peop
le). Daddy’s sister Anna, her man Robert and their lassie Berta also arrived. Aberdeen was where they hailed from and they lived in a grand house on the banks of the river Don. At night, round the campfire, there was fine crack, merriment and singing, everybody knew each other and all got on well.
The menfolk tied a thick, long rope over a sturdy branch of an old oak tree for us bairns to swing on. Further into the wood we built ourselves a braw wee tree house where we promised to stay friends forever, exchanging trinkety keepsakes, the odd earring or ring sealing our friendships till time’s end. Chances were when we parted it was unlikely we would meet again for a few years, and by that time would have forgotten who pledged what to who. Never matter, this was now, and now was all that counted to us bairns.
We were stopped on that campsite for a week or two, and as we played, we noticed after supper each evening a couple would come walking up the windy farm road. Nothing unusual about that, you might say, but this man and woman would clamber over the dyke and disappear into a field of clover. Strange way of doing for adults, wouldn’t you think?
Any road, us bairns decided to have a meeting, because it became a question on everyone’s lips—just what were they doing?
Wee Tommy ‘One-Eye’ Docherty (this didn’t mean Tommy was missing an eye, it only meant he blinked constantly with his right eye when the nerves were on him) thought the couple had stashed a treasure in the field, and they were checking up on it in the gloaming. Our Mary thought they might be having a wee sleep.
‘Do you know,’ said ‘Sooky Kate’ (so called because she always sucked the edge of her cardigan) ‘maybe they’re catching mice to feed their cats. Country folks have piles of cats—my heilan granny telt me that and she never ever lied.’
‘Na, na, cats catch their own mice,’ said cousin Berta, in her thick Aberdonian accent, ‘they’re richt fussy craturs and they’ll no just eat ony kind o’ mice, you know.’ Cousin Berta thought she knew everything, but she didn’t really. If she did then why did she call sherbet bon-bons, jap-deserts? ‘They folks are spies,’ she informed us, ‘Hitler’s ones.’
