by Jess Smith
The policeman took off his helmet, knelt down and said, ‘Listen tae me noo, loon, an’ no be makin a fule o’ me. I ken enough aboot motors to tell when one has a burst spring. Now follow us and we’ll gie this heap a guid going over.’
Well, to cut a long anxious story short for Davie, they told him to come back after two, and they’d have it inspected properly. Imagine his horror when he found his white Popular Ford sat at the rear of the yard, with a sticker on it saying ‘non-roadworthy’. The lumpy bit that had made our wee Johnnie so uncomfortable was in fact the broken spring, held in place only by the metal frame of the back seat.
A visit to a scrappy left us with three pounds and car-less. Once again we were reliant on some kind soul to take us home. This time my Uncle Joe offered to take us, and boy, were we grateful.
2
A LOOSE MOOSE
Now, the mention of Mammy going on about mice made this memory come vividly back. I can’t remember telling you about the time when we lived in the Bedford bus and my older sister Shirley, seething with thoughts of revenge, brought back a pet from the tattie-field.
This is how it went:
We had settled up for the winter in Tomaknock outside Crieff. It was tattie-lifting time and all hands were to the fields. All except Mammy, that is, because she had enough to do with Babsy, her youngest and not yet school age, and Janey who was working as a shop assistant in Scrimgeours (Crieff’s high class department store). Renie and Mary were at school, but I was a fine tattie-lifting age of nine. I had an exemption certificate signifying that I was fit for hard work. Well, it didn’t really mean that, but Daddy always made me feel a big lassie when he said it did.
In the fifties, traveller children were allowed to attend harvests as long as they attended school when they were finished. However, just in case some lazy travellers ignored the harvest time and kept their kids off school without working on the tatties, inspectors would randomly visit campsites and tattie fields checking for shirkers. I might add that their search was nearly always fruitless, because travellers knew just how much of a difference tattie money made to a cold winter existence. If my memory serves me right, these inspectors were known as the Spewers—this meant when folks saw them coming, it made certain bodies sick.
Shirley and Chrissie had been arguing all that morning, something to do with a Teddy-boy apprentice named Bobby. This said lad, with a headful of thick, sticky Brylcreemed hair, hadn’t decided which of my sisters he wanted. Sixteen-years-old Shirley had already made up his mind for him, and didn’t like the fact Chrissie, then nineteen, was homing in on her beau—so she threw a bowl of porridge over her.
Mammy slapped the both of them and refused to pack sandwiches, saying, ‘Bloody stupid buggers, it’ll serve ye baith right for filling yer heads with men when there’s a ton o’ tatties needin’ lifted. Now, if you want food then walk back here, an’ I’ll have soup ready for dinnertime.’
‘Mammy, for the love o’ Jesus,’ exclaimed Shirley, ‘the farmer’s fields are three miles from here.’
‘Don’t blaspheme! There’s no so much as a nugget o’ shame in ye.’ Mammy hated to hear the Lord’s name uttered in vain and warned Shirley to mind her tongue.
‘What do you expect from a dung-face like her?’ laughed Chrissie.
It was all my poor mother could do to stop them from cat-fighting, so rolling up a wet dish-cloth she gave them a nippit wallop into the back of their legs. It worked, as each of them ran off to await the early morning transport laid on by the farmer to collect his workers.
Chrissie heard the tractor and bogey coming, grabbed a welly under each arm, and called out to Mammy that she’d get a certain tractor lad to drive her home at dinnertime, but that Shirley would have to walk. Mammy gave me and oldest sister Mona sandwiches for the day, knowing the farm wife would supply milk, and ignored her haughty pair of daughters who were staring daggers at each other. Once on the bogey we all found a space to sit between thirty or more Crieffites, while the driver made his way to where the tattie field lay ready to be churned by mechanical diggers and flattened by a hundred pairs of eager feet.
The farmer guided us to our set ‘bit’ for the day, while we scooped up enough tatty skulls (potato-lifting baskets) scattered around from the previous day’s work. I called out hellos to a family of Burkes (distant relatives to my father), especially to Elly who was nine like me. She was great fun, and not afraid to play the silver birch game at break time. Growing next to the field, these slender, thin-barked trees were ideal to shin up. When you reached the top, there was sufficient pliability in the trunks to bend them down, and when they couldn’t bend any further you just let go, landing like Tarzan on the next tree along. A whole wood could be covered this way. Anyone who touched the forest floor with their feet had to fall out. This was just one of many games we traveller bairns had devised to play with Mother Nature. No one ever broke a tree, or if they did then it was understood they carried too much weight and couldn’t take part in the game.
We could do a fair share of showing off as well. Once, when I had been at the berries in Blairgowrie, I told a lot of scaldie bairns who were bothying at a nearby farm to lie still and no’ frighten the row o’ rabbits at the brow of a hill. Stupid gowks, did they not lie stiff for an hour, not moving or saying a word. If a shepherd hadn’t appeared when he did, shouting to them to be off, they’d still be there. No, they weren’t rabbits, it was a row of neeps (turnips)! Anyway, let’s get back to the story of my sisters, feuding over a Teddy-boy.
Chrissie settled onto her spot at the far end of the drills, with Shirley downwind. Shirley swore if she so much as smelt her archenemy on that day, she’d throw worms at her.
The hard back-breaking day dragged on, with every person on that field praying that the earth would throw up a giant boulder with enough bulk to render the digger powerless. But with the digger not hitting a single stone and stopping to give us a wee respite, the work was relentless. Up and down, down and up, no sooner were the skulls filled and emptied when up came the digger again. At piece time, all that could be heard was the munching of sandwiches and slurping of tea. This was provided by traveller women, though first they always carried on working their husbands’ patches along with their own while the man made a fire and boiled the kettle.
Shirley asked me for a piece of bread and of course I gave her some, even though I knew I’d not have enough to get me through the day. But she and I were close, and what sister could eat while the other had nothing? Elly’s mother Jean-Ann gave us soup, which helped. However Chrissie wasn’t so fortunate. She’d found no generosity coming from the folks at the end drills, in fact these craturs refused to share a conversation with her, and I wouldn’t blame them. She had a face like fizz, and a brow furrowed like the same drills she was lifting tatties from. But things were to change, when a very handsome tractor driver appeared to whisk her off for dinner. He offered to take Shirley back home too, but Chrissie warned him not to, or else. As I watched my older sisters, one on the back of a tractor, chest out and chin upwards in defiance, the other squeezing dozens of fleshy worms in her fists, I thought only one thought: the bus was going to be the scene of a war of the Amazons!
At long last the day came to a finish, and I can tell you there is no better sight for a tattie-lifter than a digger man turning his vehicle homewards.
We clambered onto the bogey, every bent-backit one of us, from teeny wee weans to decrepit auld bodies, praying the tractor driver would do his best to avoid the dozens of waterlogged pot-holes in the long farm-track road. He didn’t though, the blasted sadist! Middle-aged women, not afraid to speak their minds, screamed the air blue, but from the safety of his tractor seat he grinned as we rolled and joggled from side to side.
At long last we jumped off the bogey at the bottom of Tomaknock Brae. Shirley pulled on my arm for me to look at something concealed within her trouser pocket. Gingerly I peered in, and near on died when I found a totty snout-faced wee mouse staring up at
me.
‘What in blue blazes are you going to do with that? Let it go! It’s cruel to keep a helpless thing.’
‘Shut up, I’m only going to put it into Chrissie’s bed for a night. In the morning I’ll set it free. That’ll sort her to eye her own men and leave mine alone.’
‘I thought you were going to pack worms into her pyjamas?’
‘Well I was, but when the digger threw this wee lad into my skull I thought it would have a better effect. Dae ye mind when one ran intae her knickers while she wis peein under the railway arch at Ballinluig? God, did she no half shoot up ontae the track. If Daddy hadn’t been there, a goods train heading tae Pilochry would have flattened her—no way would she have won the “Miss Logerait” beauty contest if it had. Mind you, if I wisna in bed at the time with a broken shin, it would have been a forgone conclusion who the winner would have been.’
Before I could say a word on that matter, a certain painter and decorator’s apprentice with a stiffened head of jet-black hair came walking towards us. It was Bobby.
‘Hello, darling, are we goan’ dancin’ the night?’
Shirley blushed, not at his request but at her grubby tattie clothes. Still, clothes don’t maketh the man—or, in Shirley’s case, the woman. Anyone who ever met my sister will tell you her beauty was awesome. Flawless complexion, hour-glass figure, shiny black hair, perfect height and sea-green eyes. Oh, indeed a beauty. And boy, did she flaunt it.
‘How could I be such a twit to imagine he’d look sidey ways at weasel-face Chrissie, there’s no comparison,’ she reminded me, then called to him, ‘I’ll see you at seven,’—totally forgetting that helpless cratur which shivered in her pocket, unaware of its fate.
Chrissie was busy chatting with her tractor man and making her own plans for the evening. Mona too had a fancy-man, but with her flair for finding rich guys she kept him a secret. Mind you, I noticed the farmer’s son spent more time giving her denim buttocks the eye than those of any other female tattie-lifter.
The three of them dashed into the bus to see what Mammy had cooked for supper, before the battle of soap and towels took place.
Mammy was in a great mood, because a nice lady had presented her with a massive box of the finest bed-linen. This person was in the throes of emigrating, and wondered if Mammy wanted her bedclothes. What kind of a question was that for a mother with eight lassies?
Chrissie and Shirley, who had by now settled their differences with a silent truce, lifted the great big box of bed-linen and sat it to the back of the bus, where Mammy would later put it under her and Daddy’s bed, in a large storage box used for storing all the family’s blankets and sheets. Daddy never let on, but we think he got it from an undertaker—still, it did the job.
Supper was mouth-watering, stovies and onions with stewed rhubarb and custard to follow. Mary and I did the dishes, while the she-devils made themselves into Marilyn Monroes and Gina Lollobrigidas. I loved watching them. Silk stockings would have been a bonus, but no one could afford them, so my sisters, being the Picassos that they were, improvised by very carefully drawing charcoal lines up the back of their legs. They looked just like stocking seams. Except for Mona, may I add. She had the real Mackay. She would save every penny until she had enough to buy them. When she dressed, it was an art form like no other. For a start, she never pulled on stockings without having cotton gloves on to avoid snags. Her shoulders were covered by a towel when she powdered her face. It would have been terrible if one particle of powder should come to rest on those fine silk blouses she often wore.
Now, I know you’re having a hard time imagining that all this went on in a single-decker bus, but believe me it did. Not only that, but Daddy listened to his wireless through all the high-pitched chatter and Mammy told stories to her wee ones.
Now let’s get back to another wee one—a certain mouse, to be exact. ‘Where did Shirley put it?’ I thought, as I watched my older sister saunter off arm-in-arm with Bobby, the Brylcreem king.
I quickly checked Chrissie’s bedclothes, but they were neatly folded where she’d left them that morning. I didn’t say anything to Mammy or anyone else; not wanting my sister to get a row and knowing that she would when Mammy found out. After a fruitless search, I gave up, thinking she’d disposed of the wee timorous beastie into a field of cropped corn next to our winter stopping-ground, and I forgot the matter.
Next day the lassies were all chatted-out by the lads and tired after their gyrating on the dance floor. The day went on at its usual pace, a replica of the previous one, until while shinning birchies I tore a great lump of material out of my trousers, and was presented with another pair by the farmer’s wife. She had no females in her household, only young ploughmen—what a sight I was in my nicky tams!
Within three weeks, Mammy began complaining about a scratching noise beneath the bus somewhere. This was not unusual, so Daddy set some traps. The noise continued each night, driving my poor mother batty. Eventually, unable to stand the constant scratching, she sat bolt upright in her bed and screamed into the pitch dark night that we must all rise ‘oot o’ our pits and search for the moose!’
Damp matches were thrown all over the bus as Daddy tried to light some candles, tutting and moaning about broken sleep.
Suddenly I froze, and the same thought must have been flooding Shirley’s mind, because she gave me a nudge. What if her wee mouse was hiding in the bus?
‘What happened tae the moose?’ I whispered.
She whispered back in my ear, ‘I don’t know. All I remember was taking off my trousers and laying them on that box of linen.’ Her face drained of colour. ‘Oh, oh, bucket o’ shit, are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ she said, tightly squeezing my arm.
‘I hope for your sake those fine Irish linen sheets are intact,’ I told her, unfolding her fingers from my pinched flesh.
Mammy threw up the mattress and opened her blanket box. ‘Hold that candle down there,’ she ordered Daddy. I swear, on my Granny’s low grave, I have never seen such a sight; no wonder Mammy shrieked louder than the Banshee. Piled high inside the box were mounds and mounds of shredded sheets, blankets and eiderdowns, and curled in a corner was a terrified wee mouse with a dozen and more tiny weans, all squeaking and squirming.
Mammy never knew it was Shirley who caused that catastrophe by introducing a pregnant mouse to our home, but I knew, and boy, did I put the tighteners on her when I wanted something!
3
ON THE ROAD AGAIN
Now, back to the pokey flat in Crieff where Dave and I were living. The postman made me cringe each time he pushed mail through the letter-box—with me feeling trapped behind four concrete walls and a heavy oak door, it seemed to me that he was a prison warder having a peek.
Davie was born and reared in a house, how could he possibly understand my anguish? The poor man had enough to do keeping down a job without having to take my constant nagging about how unhappy I was in that house. ‘Listen pet,’ he assured me at nights when I tossed and turned in bed, ‘you have more to think about nowadays than yourself.’ He’d point across at our sleeping infants, and I knew what he meant.
In all honesty, though, as days turned into weeks, I began to hate my basic but comfortable home, and could hardly wait for morning, when my little boys were rushed into their clothes and popped into the pram. Like a miniature gypsy wagon, that pram was crammed with enough food and drink to last all day, as I got as far away from the four walls and into the fields and woodland surrounding Crieff. Stephen’s baby milk was wrapped in tin-foil and nappies to keep it warm. When we stopped, out would come blankets for the kids to lie on. Then my shoes would be discarded, as Mother Earth and my feet joined again. It was as if I was retracing my steps to old tinker ground.
Listening to the different birds singing to each other, it seemed as if they were including me and my wee lads. I’d sing a lullaby to my tiny infant, then when he was asleep I’d teach Johnnie how to tell the difference between trees and bushes. T
ell him tales of the Tree people who lived under bark, and Giant Mactavish who spent all his two hundred years living in the forest fighting off the Smelly Sock frogs. (When I recall how his big hazel green eyes lit up at those stories it makes a dull day disappear.)
Rain or shine, it made no difference, just so long as me and my little half-breeds could escape to the open spaces. When the sunshine of summer shone in cloudless skies, going back to the house was more than I could bear. Selfishly, I’d leave my wristwatch at home, and one day, when we eventually arrived back, it was a very angry, hungry husband who confronted me.
‘Jess, I can hardly work for worrying about you.’
‘Why?’
‘Trekking lonely byways with my wee sons, that’s why.’
‘They’re fine; do you think I’d put my boys in danger?’
‘If you’d come down out of your silly cloud for one minute and listen to me. What if one of them got sick or something?’
‘Davie, travelling people live like that, we cope with everything, even sickness.’
My stubbornness hit a raw nerve, he thumped the kitchen table so hard all four legs bounced off the floor. Cups wobbled in their saucers as sugar scattered between them.
‘I am not a traveller, though, and these are my sons! And by God, I don’t want them dragged around the countryside because their stupid mother won’t let go of a dead lifestyle. Now stop it and get a grip.’
That night I wrote the longest letter of my life to Mammy.
Davie and I were like strangers after that night, with an iron atmosphere between us. Sandy brought a garden swing for Johnnie and Margaret gave me a Bero home-baking recipe book. Strange to imagine me being a good baker, but with my wandering curtailed I had to do something. Davie saw I was trying to adapt into scaldy life, and in time our marriage did strengthen again.
