by Jess Smith
I gently tightened my grip on the string and yanked as fast as I could. ‘Got you!’ I screamed. Jumping to my feet with excitement I ran over to check on my captive spug pet. Then a thought flashed to mind: ‘How can I lift the basin up without him fleeing away? I’d best go and see if Mammy will help me make a cage for my new pet.’
Well, if ever a mistake was in the making that was it. I can still to this day mind the look on her face when I told her what I’d done.
‘You’ve done what?’ she roared. ‘Do you mean to tell me you’ve got a wild bird trapped?’
‘It won’t be wild for long, Mam. Sure, if a flea can be trained, then surely a bird would be a doddle.’ I went on, ‘Can you not make a cage for him? He’d look grand sitting in the back windy.’
‘Would you like to be stuffed in a cage sitting in the back window, my lass?’
‘No, but...’
‘Never mind but. Listen to me, now, Jess, this is a lesson! When the good Lord gave you two legs to run with, he also gave yon wee sparra wings to fly with. How would you feel if you hadn’t the use of your legs?’
‘Wheesht, Mammy, for God’s sake, heaven forbid,’ I squirmed at the question.
‘Well then, the sparra’s trapped and can’t use his wings.’
My mother stared at me as if staring into my very soul. Only mothers can do that. Tears filled my eyes as I thought on what I’d done. She put her arm round my shoulder and continued: ‘When travelling folks camp in the countryside they must leave it as they found it, nothing taken, or abused. You see, this would offend Mother Nature and she doesn’t look too kindly on abusers of the land. Some, who have spoilt her pattern, find she won’t let them back. They say such people have had all their belongings lost, either in floods or landslide, aye, and some found a living impossible to make. Now, lassie, away and set free yon wee sparra, that is if it’s still alive.’
My mother’s lesson fairly filled my head as I sped off to release my captive. I began to think that Mother Nature must be married to God, because Granny Power told me he was the one who made everything. ‘One big painting, Poppy’ she would say (she called every wean that), ‘painted by the Master Himself. Birds singing, spring and autumn colours, winter’s frock o’ white. He does the paintings. She gives it life.’ And here was I interfering in Their way of things.
‘Oh dear, better pray the sparra hasn’t died with fright!’ I thought, running with the stretch of a pursued hind at rutting time.
I hurried back to my wee captive, and with trembling hands gently lifted up the basin. ‘Are you dead, bird?’ I whispered, peering underneath. The spug sat there with marbled, glazed eyes, not a single tweet or movement, just silence. Lifting my head towards the heavens, I prayed, ‘I didn’t mean it harm, God, only thought it would mak a fine pet. Please can you see a way to forgive a helpless wean?’
The sparra sat staring. I sat grovelling, even promised to wash every dish the family used indefinitely.
Unable to contain my fears at what the Almighty and his woman had planned for my future, I took hold of the dish-basin and threw it a mile in the air. The noise it made as it stotted against a tree trunk did the trick. Our wee sparra was only kidding on, one look at the dish-basin rolling in his direction sent him reaching for the sun, with the healthiest pair of wings I’d ever seen.
‘You wee cheat, there was nothing wrong with you,’ I screamed pointing at the heavens. ‘It’s a bating [spank] for you if we meet again, I can tell you, my lad.’
After teetering on the brink of God’s wrath, I swore I’d leave all birds alone, and spend my time from now on playing bairns’ games! But isn’t it peculiar when we’re young how we soon forget our wrongs, so within a minute the basin was propped up again and I was hidden in the undergrowth awaiting my next victim.
‘Oh my, what a naughty girl!’, I hear you say, but well, ha, ha, you’re wrong!
I would leave the spugs alone and go for the big black hoodie. Mammy hated the clumsy creature, the witch’s favourite. Many times she stretched her fist towards the sky and called out, ‘You can’t leave a crumb out to feed the wee birds when yon big ugly black things steal it!’ I even heard old wives say the hoodie was a bird of the Devil.
So seeing as nobody liked ugly craws, I’d make it up with both mothers—nature’s and my own—and catch one.
So there I was, concealed in my now familiar hidey-hole, string clasped firmly in my hand, awaiting the unsuspecting prey.
I waited, and waited, and better waited, but yon wee sparra must have spread the word that the big bird-trapper was operating in town.
As I lay there, only the odd thin-legged spider ventured without fear across my bum, up my back and down my arm, then trotted off to disappear under the basin. Apart from him, nothing, not even a wasp, ventured within a mile of my trap.
It might have been nearing suppertime, my belly was rumbling, but by golly it wasn’t the only thing, for the thunder that my Uncle Robert had predicted was splitting the heavens.
I could hear away in the distance Mammy’s beckoning whistle, calling her brood home. ‘Home,’ I thought, ‘best get back.’
But, before I stood up, something caught my eye. A rabbit was making its curious approach to the basin mouth. ‘Jeeps’, I cringed, ‘if Mother Nature takes a heavy at birds, she’d be a damn sight more peeved if I trap a rabbit.’
The next few minutes of my life in the undergrowth that late afternoon were for sure the most terrifying I’ve ever lived, so take heed as I relive the horror.
Directly behind the unsuspecting bunny I saw him. Standing on hind legs, swaying like a red cobra, was Auntie Anna’s demon throat-ripper! He stood poised, ready to strike my unsuspecting wee ball of innocent fur. Like a snake he swayed from side to side as if hypnotising the poor wee rabbit. His prey went rigid and so did I. I could hear deep in my head a high pitched shrill, a sound I’d never heard before, like a scream from a dying fairy brownie.
Now, I don’t know if it was the thunder and lightning, Mammy’s whistle or Auntie Anna’s tale of blood-sucking, but my whole body froze from top to toe. All I could manage to move were my fingers, which I pushed into the soft earth, filling my fingernails with peaty soil and rye grass.
It mattered not a jot if rabbit was on Dracula weasel’s menu that day or not, as long as it wasn’t me. I became terror-struck. Bit by bit, from teeth to feet, the fear of weasels spread across my rigid body, giving birth to a lifelong phobia.
As I lay in the undergrowth with my dirty nails and dry throat, I could not have cared less for the raging electric storm, my whistling Mammy, Mother Nature, God—aye, even the fate of the poor wee rabbit. No, my throat and its contents were all I cared for. So, with the last ounce of strength in my now useless body, I up and like the banshee herself, shrieked across the now rain-sodden grass.
Wallop! My mother’s slap brought me spinning back to the world of the living.
‘Where’s my basin?’ she shouted, ‘and why did you ignore me, your supper’s frozen cold?’
‘Mammy, dear, ken I fine we’ve not to disobey you, but I’ll take the worst of your hand before I go back there into the kingdom of King Weasel for a simple basin.’ Those words said, I threw myself over her knee.
Beware the wee weasel wha hides in the green,
For he’ll rip oot yer tonsils, an’ gouge oot yer een.
8
OUR PRAYER
The remainder of our journey that summer in the bus took us to Kingussie, where we met a Minister’s wife. I will tell you briefly how yon wife tried to do more for the cause than I’d imagine her man ever did. Let me take you with Mammy and me when we knocked at her door doing a bit of hawking.
‘Good morning tae ye, wife,’ said Mammy, ‘would your sewing basket be the better of some of my threads, laces or buttons?’ The lady of the manse, without a single peep into my mother’s basket, grabbed us both by the arm and ushered us in. Inside the old church house, bookshelves lined the front hall and continue
d into each room. Even the kitchen was an array of reading material.
‘My,’ whispered Mammy, being respectful to the good woman’s status, ‘a long, cold winter’s night would pass in no time with all these books to take yer pick from.’
‘These books are all centred on the Path,’ the wife explained. ‘Now, sit down the pair of you and I’ll say a prayer for the saving of your heathen souls.’
I could see my mother flinch at the woman’s words, but she said nothing. Perhaps she was comforted by the idea that a benevolent minister’s wife would not have us leave, so to speak, empty-handed. She held her tongue and played along. I just stared at the millions of books, and prayed the dishtowels drying on the Raeburn rail wouldn’t catch fire and spread.
‘How many family have you got?’ she enquired of my mother.
‘There is my man and me, and eight daughters,’ answered Mammy.
‘Well, if you all come to the church on Sunday I’ll buy half the contents of your basket, and I’ll even fill a bag of cast-off clothing. Oh, and a baked currant loaf will be added, now how does that sound?’
Mammy was obviously thinking the same as me. This was Monday and Daddy was planning to shift up to Inverness on the morrow. There was no way he’d hang around for nothing more than a few shillings and a bag of secondhand clothes smelling of moth-balls, currant loaf or not. She thanked the wife but refused her offer.
This brought floods of tears from the wife. ‘You’ll go to hell,’ she screamed at us, ‘hell, I say—the devil, I can see him now, rubbing his hands!’
My mother picked her basket from the stone floor, grabbed my hand and said to the woman, ‘I have no fear of hell, only of my God, and it is out of respect to him that I hold my tongue in this house of misery. I’ll give a wee bit advice, though—why not stick to baking your currant loaves, and leave the soul-saving to the man.’
‘Stupid bitch,’ she muttered to herself as we half-ran along the village street. ‘I could have hawked all the countryside the time wasted meeting in with mad biddies like yon. I’ve a good mind to send every dealer I meet to her door.’
For the rest of the day I played with some traveller bairns who’d camped beside us. We pretended to be Highlanders and redcoats rampaging through Ruthven Barracks, it was great fun.
That night, as our old bus trundled its way on to Inverness, we laughed thinking on the holy wife who’d lost her way. Even though her house was filled with Christian books.
We only ever said one little prayer. This is it, and it sometimes brought on the odd giggle-fit:
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John
Bless this bed that I lay on,
If I should die before I wake,
I give the Lord my soul to take.
Lovely words for a child to say you may think, but children can be wee devils on their way through life, and we were no exception. If the weather was warm it could get pretty unbearable trying to sleep four to a bed in the bus. The bus being mostly windows meant that, if it had been a hot sunny day, it was well into the night before it cooled. It was surprising that we didn’t sprout like tattie shaws in the bus-cum-greenhouse we had to sleep in.
So there we were, the four of us younger lassies, saying our wee prayer while our proud mother stood over us, when Mary would, without warning, replace the words ‘if I should die before I wake’ with ‘if I should bake before I wake, I give the Lord my soles to take.’
The giggles followed, and inevitably, so did the wallops! Sleep was hard to find after that, because the rest of us did our Burns bit to Mammy’s wee prayer, and try as she might it wasn’t long before she too was laughing. Then Daddy would chip in with his verse—
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John
Double in size this bed that I lay on,
Or I will fry before too long.
More laughter followed, louder this time because our parents were being disrespectful to the Almighty! I would be surprised, though, if He wasn’t having a good laugh himself at our antics.
Mammy would then prepare us for sleep with a drink of milk and a tale from her never-ending store of bedtime stories. Then, one by one, we gave in to the heat of the night, which we were none the worse for in the early morning rising.
We spent a week at Inverness before making our way down country to settle a quiet winter at Stirling Green.
The following summer we more or less followed the same route as before. The next memory I will recall comes from Ballinluig, not far from Pitlochry. It gives a wee insight into how crowded bedtime could become when the older girls were with us.
9
BUS-BOOT BED
Daddy found his favourite spot in a wood near Ballinluig, and reversed the bus between the River Tummel and silver birch trees. Chrissie and Shirley, fed up kipping down in the wee Fordy, pestered the life out of Mammy to sleep in the bus boot!
‘Girls, are you mad, just imagine the danger! Laying sleeping in a place where any wild man could steal you away in the dead of night.’ Mammy wouldn’t even entertain the idea.
The girls laughed, saying who in their right mind would want to do a mad thing like that?
‘The boot doesn’t lock,’ she reminded them, annoyed at her lassies for harping on. ‘Even if it did, what about you and your claustrophobia, Shirley?’
‘We’ll keep the boot open, Ma, and I’ll sleep to the front just in case I feel chokit!’ pleaded Shirley.
‘There is no way you two are sleeping a night in there. Now go and do something useful like peel a pot of tatties or collect more sticks for the fire.’
Shirley had a pot of tatties peeled in no time, while Chrissie gathered up a pile of dried driftwood heaped on the riverbank after a recent flood. Shirley tried again, ‘Can we sleep in it now, Mam, please?’
‘Look,’ said Mammy, ‘let me talk this over with your father. I’ll see what he says.’
This was right up Shirley’s street, because if anybody could wrap Daddy round their little finger, it was her!
Dad’s brothers, Joe and Wullie, had arrived for a wee visit, and these two lads didn’t half rib the lassies whenever in their company. More so when they found the girls discussing a bus-boot bed.
‘Do you know there’s wolves in this wood, Shirley?’ teased Joe.
‘Aye, and they say at night a river monster, I think it’s a cousin of Nessie, has been seen to rise from the Tummel and help itself to a cow or two,’ added Wullie.
‘Away and not talk rot, next you’ll be telling me that giant pud-docks leap onto the road and piss over the cars!’ said Shirley.
‘Mammy, Shirley’s speaking dirty again and giving me a red face,’ clyped Janey. She’d spent the day sitting on a bank by the railway, counting passengers in the trains. As well as horses, Janey loved trains. She would spend ages counting people’s hats or how many men and women were in each compartment. Trains held a fascination for our Janey. But those comments might sway Mammy’s decision about the boot. So Shirley did what she always did, grabbed Janey by the neck and pulled her onto the ground.
My two uncles laughed at both my sisters, as they rolled about the grass hissing and spitting for all the world like a pair of scraggy cats. Mammy, affronted at the state of her daughters, took a dishtowel and came hard across their backsides, putting an end to their catfight!
‘You two men stop filling their heads with rubbish about monsters and the likes, or else those two won’t sleep tonight.’
‘Oh Mam, does that mean we’re getting to sleep in the boot after all? Did Daddy agree then?’ asked Shirley, as she brushed off bits of twigs sticking to Janey’s backside from their wrestling match, apologising at the same time.
‘Yes, he did, but one single peep out of either of you and it’ll be under the bus you can sleep, now, do I make myself clear?’
‘Clear as a baggy minnow pool, Mam, in a pearl burn,’ said Chrissie, giving her a big hug.
As the day came to a close, Dad, who’d not seen his brothers for months, cracked round the fire
well into the night. They discussed the Berries. Who was there, who’d died, who’d married, who was in the jail, and so forth.
Soon it was time for the last cup of tea. Mammy had made a fine batch of scones. These were served up with dollops of butter and tablespoonfuls of just-made raspberry jam. Well-fed and well-cracked, the two lads said their goodnights and went home, not without a parting word for the girls to watch out for monsters prowling round the bus while they were at the mercy of the night.
Daddy took the rolled-up mattress from wee Fordy and put it in the bus boot, while Mam added a pillow and the tartan rug from the driver’s seat. In no time we were all bedded, including the lassies in the bus boot.
Whether it was the clamminess of that August night or Uncle Joe’s parting comments, who knows, but Shirley found it hard to sleep.
‘Chrissie,’ she asked, prodding her sister in the ribs, ‘are you thinking about what our uncles said?’
‘No, I’m trying to sleep, that’s what I’m thinking about,’ answered Chrissie, pulling another few inches of the tartan rug that her sister had claimed for herself.
But Shirley continued: ‘I heard a noise, and I think it came from over by that old twisted oak tree.’
‘You do too much thinking, full stop. What kind of noise?’
‘I don’t know, a kind of rustling-in-the-bushes noise!’
Chrissie sat bolt upright in the bed, banging her head off the low roof. ‘Ouch! you stupid fool, are you trying to put the fear in me? You’re no better than the men,’ she shouted.
This wakened Daddy and prompted a bang on the floor. ‘Get to bloody sleep, you two, or you’ll feel the back of my hand.’ (I could never understand what that meant, for I am sure the front of his hand would have done a better job.)
