Tears for a Tinker

by Jess Smith

  He worked hard, did that lad. He was as tough as three ploughmen, and although the missing fingers might have hindered his aim with a rifle, it didn’t stop him with a plough. Janet especially needed his company during the long nights when she and Drummond used to cuddle together in bed and fall asleep, embracing in true love. She so longed for her husband and tried hard not to rely on his brother, but one night while a blizzard raged outside, she welcomed Robin in to share her bed. From then on they were as one. Yes, this robbed each of dignity, but who can afford that luxury during a war?

  Only once did a letter arrive from Drummond. It gave Robin and Janet an insight into the horrors of battle, but not wishing to upset his family he finished with a cheerful, ‘no need for snivelling, I’m eating like a horse.’

  Then it happened—the letter from a weary War Office: Drummond was missing, presumed dead! Weeks of closed curtains and tea-sipping left Janet’s exhausted mind in turmoil. Robin said he’d not let the wind blow on her or the weans, and that once her heart wore off its pain they’d marry. Her own frail old mother gave them her blessing, saying he’d make a good man for her. So one sunny day, three years later, Robin and Janet wed.

  Another two years passed, with the arrival of a son to bless their union: then great public celebrations brought the final chapters of war to a close.

  The farm work was undertaken without supervision; the jobs needed to be done and the tinkers did them. The late farmer had left instructions with his factor that wages were to continue to be paid to his tinkers as funds allowed. However he hadn’t reckoned on his heir: a nephew with a heart coated in iron. He liked the look of the houses occupied by the tinkers, and wondered what they’d fetch if sold. The farm could make a good sale also, bringing him cash; he was a lover of money, obviously. So one day the bombshell came with a letter to each tenant saying it was time to move. Oh yes, they met him and protested all they could, but there wasn’t a drop of his uncle’s benevolence in the nephew, and with deep sadness the tinkers took once more to the tent and travelling the trails.

  For a while small amounts of money were earned through rat-catching and rabbit-snaring, but it barely provided the necessities of existence for the sad, weary tinkers. Janet’s mother died of influenza. One young mother died in childbirth, and soon the severe weather took its toll on Robin. His chest proved weak, and as each day passed he began a downward spiral of ill health. By 1948 he’d seen his last winter. Janet, now alone with four children, took to begging the streets of Aberdeen.

  One day, after a long sore day’s begging, she headed home—which was a wood-end on the outskirts of Dyce. Walking along the road, young Muriel thought she recognised a man passing on the other side. She ran after the bedraggled man with black beard. He shoo’ed her away, but there was a distinct familiarity in this tramp. She called a name; one she’d long spoken under her breath. The tramp froze, then turned. It was her father: none other than Drummond, presumed dead, who’d been captured and spent the rest of the war as a POW. He’d suffered shell shock, not regaining his memory for some time. When it had returned, he made a long journey to find his family.

  ‘Blessings come in strange packaging,’ was all Janet could think as she kissed her lost husband. Now, with him returned home, she could see a future for her children. There were no recriminations about her marriage to Robin, because Drummond’s sentiments all his life were ‘what’s mine’s my brother’s, and what’s my brother’s is mine.’

  When the above story was given to me, not much detail came from its narrator. However it wasn’t my place to elaborate or retouch it. I have told you the version I heard.

  23

  GLENROTHES

  We emptied our wee low-roofed cottage house of its meagre amount of furniture, giving it to whoever wanted it. Then we piled into Daddy’s van (a bit larger than John’s) and set off to Glenrothes, to live with Shirley in her new house. It was to be a tight squeeze sharing with her, but as far as Davie was concerned it was a step nearer Crieff. Fife skirted Perthshire, and he’d not be happy until we were back in his beloved home town. However, this, may I say, was a pipe-dream carried around in my husband’s head. As far as I was concerned, Crieff was in the past, and would firmly bide there! Yet if you’ve read my previous book, then you will know that, in the end, he won.

  From Woodside, the ancient part of Glenrothes, sprang Scotland’s second modern ‘shopping centre’ (Livingston, I’m informed, gave us the first). By shopping centre, I mean shops gathered together under one roof. The birth of ‘you will spend your money here’, and the death of family-run businesses began in these places. Years of shopping with the personal touch died beneath those Perspex roofs. The old shopkeepers were unable to compete with ‘buy one, get one free’ smiley faces behind miles of walled glass. Like zombies we give them hard-earned money for cheap, shabby goods, and turned our backs for ever on the ‘this is quality’ businesses that had been handed down from father to son, pushing them into little drawers of past times. Yes, new town shopping centres like those in Glenrothes and Livingston had us hook, line and pork-linkers. Nowadays, like locusts, those centres have arrived in every town, ruling our credit and controlling spending on a gigantic scale. Gone forever is the personal touch, lost to banks and building societies who determine what, where and when we spend.

  Personally I blame these centres for destroying the art of conversation. We tend to eye up a nearby stranger as a hovering hawk ready to pounce and steal our credit cards from tightly held purses. I used to enjoy shopping—now I spend more time trying to avoid eye-contact with security guards than wondering if the garment I just purchased could be dry-cleaned or machine-washed.

  Talking about credit cards, here’s a poem on the subject penned by Shirley:

  THE PLASTIC PATCH

  With symbolic layers of plastic,

  We procure some flexible friends.

  This warrants idle fancies,

  Able choices in the end.

  With the touching face of plastic,

  We inhale the telephone.

  The moving arrow travels on,

  Words unspoken, minutes gone.

  With fine moulded, mounted plastic,

  We acquire Baird’s progression—

  Beware this T.V. madness,

  It dictates without permission.

  When steel encircles plastic,

  Enter now the vehicle maze,

  The happy wanderers’ wanderlust

  Enslaved to wheel and brace.

  With the ultimate in plastic

  We replace our tired hearts,

  A hip, a leg, whatever next,

  In this Hi-Tech paradise...

  Shirley was working in a chicken and egg factory named Eastwoods. Her then husband had a good job managing a department within the local paper mill. My Davie got a job working on a building site (Glenrothes was rapidly expanding) and guess who held the fort. That’s right, me. I made certain Christine and Hughie, Shirley’s wee ones, got off to school on time, sandwiches were prepared for the workers to their satisfaction, the house cleaned (it was a big one) and dinner cooked for all eight of us. Could life get any better? Nope!

  24

  BELLS AND GHOSTLY CHAINS

  So why don’t we all take another trip down memory lane? To a time when Daddy was a laddie of fourteen years old.

  Every year Daddy’s family trekked over the old drove road leading to Ballater, to spend the winter working on a large estate. Their allotted campsite was behind a high dry-stane dyke, with a hardy line of firs and Caledonian pine to stop the wild wind, and of course the snow that came in with September’s end; not a sign of brown peat was seen until it was vacated in April. My grand-dad looked after the garrons, those sturdy hill horses which carry the deer down the mountain. He was given this job because he had a Horseman’s Grip, in other words no one knew the hill ponies better than him. He also provided beaters for shoots. This was when my father, his younger brother Wullie and two cousins came in handy.
Granny made pot-scourers from heather roots to sell around the area. So you can see how important this place was to my father’s family.

  Most travelling folk had their favoured winter place, and it usually centred on an estate where work could be plentiful. Some however considered themselves to be sea folk and worked along the coastlines, fixing creels and whelk-gathering, to name two typical jobs.

  So there they were, heading towards the campsite, a natural hamlet snuggling between two spurs of rolling hills. Suddenly Granny noticed a spiral of smoke coming from the exact spot. When they last spoke in the spring, the factor had promised them the site would be cleaned and ready for their arrival that autumn. So who had got there first?

  ‘Away, you and Wullie, run down and peek at whoever has lit a fire in oor campsite, Charlie,’ she said, adding, ‘I expect it’ll be the factor himself burning brushwood to clean the place for us coming.’

  Grand-dad had tarried further back to adjust some loose strapping under the belly of his own old horse. They had been forced to abandon a fine cart the previous day because of twisted wheels, and all they possessed was either tied to the horse or back-packed. They were already two days late in arriving, and Grand-dad was worried his boys would be missed at the beating.

  Daddy and Wullie removed their bundles and did as Granny asked, jumping and running through the coarse heather like two young deer. In no time they stood eyeing the campsite. There was indeed a fire, a big one. Four untidily erected tents cluttered the spot that their tents should soon be occupying. Matted-haired bairns ran back and forth, tearing at slices of braxy ham like young wolves. Two massive black pots filled with foul-smelling meat hung from iron chitties, cooking over the reekit fire. An elderly woman sat cross-legged, poking a blackened stick into the flames as she puffed on a pipe. A fine example of long life was this lady: she made Daddy think of a banshee resting before puffing life into a parcel of broom and scooting toward the day-moon peeping through a veil of clouds.

  ‘Hello, laddies, whit dae ye want?’ asked another toothless woman, with a face that seemed to have been moulded by a drunken goblin. Running her hand across her wet nose and dipping a bent spoon into the meat-pot she asked if they were hungry.

  ‘Thank you mistress, but no; we was wondering why you stole big Wullie Riley’s site.’ Daddy pretended not be related to Wullie Riley, and asked if they knew of him?

  ‘Aye,’ growled a deep croaky voice from within one of the tents, a dark shadowy hole of green tarpaulin, ‘we ken the Rileys, don’t we?’

  A chorus of roars and cackles, joined with coughs and splutters, answered my father.

  ‘Noo git tae hell awa frae here, unless ye have drink and baccy,’ ordered the croaky one.

  ‘Oh shit,’ exclaimed Wullie, ‘wait until Mammy finds oot the wild MacSpits have stolen oor winter grun! She’ll rip a pound o’ flesh aff faither’s back for sure.’

  ‘Oh, Lord roast thon MacSpits,’ Granny screamed, when her breathless sons told her who’d stolen the jewel in the crown of campsites. ‘Yon bare-heided, rid-eyed yaps o’ the Devil’s ain wild folk ken fine that we winter there. Not an inch o’ spare grun is there tae pitch another tent.’ She turned to scan the hillside. ‘You’d better go and see whit yer Faither has tae say.’ She ranted on about the factor, and how it wasn’t like him to let the site to anyone else. Daddy and Wullie, along with cousins Matthew and Thomas, ran back to tell him about the campsite being invaded and taken over by yookies (rats). Granny, when riled, had the devil of a tongue in her head, and rats was the mildest name she could muster to describe the undesirables down on ‘her’ land.

  Poor Grand-dad, his back was burdened with a wheen of heavy gear, and the only thing that had been keeping him going was the thought of building a fire sheltered by the stane dyke, and a hot cup of sweet tea.

  ‘You get doon among thon hantle, big Wullie,’ she warned him, ‘and fling yon buggers aff my winter grun. Bash them intae pulp if ye have tae, but I want them run aff afore nicht comes.’

  Grand-dad shifted his bonnet and scratched his head, saying in answer to his wife’s call for arms against the MacSpits, ‘lassie, them craturs have every right tae settle where they want. Who am I to order them anywhere?’

  ‘But I thought you and the factor had an agreement tae keep that place free fer us?’

  ‘Well, something must have happened. What bothers me mair than the grun is all the work we usually get frae the estate. You ken fine, without it bellies will be hard-filled.’

  Granny fell silent as Grand-dad laid aside his pack and set off to find the factor.

  Meanwhile, with night rearing shadows, it was decided to find a dip in the glen and set up camp. Granny warned the boys not to go down among the squatters in case they were fuelled with drink. ‘Whit Tam o’ Shanter saw was nothing tae yon witches.’

  They laughed—not Granny, though, the dour scowl was on her because she’d a mother’s worry to contend with. Winter in those parts took old and young alike when it had the bite of a hard frost, especially those that had no good food in their bellies.

  ‘Auntie, you sound like you have a grudge agin them?’ asked Matthew, amused by her temper. Such a wee creature, hardly five feet tall, but by the gods she had a rage in her towards those folks.

  ‘I have nae grudge agin ony living soul, but thon hantle are soulless. Now away and fill the kettle at the burn, and make sure no tae fill it with heather seed, or else the grouse will go as hungry as us if we fail tae get work on this estate.’

  Boys will be boys, they say, and my father’s lot were no exception. It bothered them that these uncouth travellers, who had little respect for themselves, would have none for the ground which had always been theirs. Daddy knew every tree and bush. Granny had left her drying rope tied from one tree to the other to be there for her return. No doubt the squatters would have used it for securing their dirty tents. Wullie had more reason than the rest to feel aggrieved, because wee Florence, his beloved collie pup, was buried down there in the ground under those filthy drunkards.

  Yes, the more they thought about it, the more determined they became—they had to go! Be moved on, shifted. But how?

  Grand-dad arrived at the factor’s house, much to the man’s surprise. ‘Riley, ma man,’ he exclaimed, ‘I was told you weren’t coming this year.’

  ‘Aye, for sure, sir, what else would I do over the winter? Who told you such a lie anyway?’

  ‘Och, it was the MacSpits. They’re doing the hill ponies and the beating. Granted I’d rather have yourself, but we shook on it, and you know me, I’m not a man to go back on my word. I let them stay on your spot.’

  ‘Well, fine I ken, sir, because yon wee wife o’ mine is daein loops at not getting herself intae the stane wall. What other kind o’ work have you? I’ve four sturdy laddies can graft harder than any youngster if you’ll give them a chance.’

  ‘Sorry, Riley, but the only work I have is emptying and gutting the old shooting lodge. There’s no payment, but you’re welcome to any scrap metal you can shift.’

  Grand-dad, with a heavy pair of shoulders on him, headed back with the news to Granny that other folks had stolen her site. Before he set off to meet the factor he was of the mind that the MacSpits deserved to stay, but not now—not after discovering they had lied, the bisoms.

  When Daddy and the other lads heard this they set off downhill to challenge their rotten, lying enemy. Only boys, the four of them, but boys when angered can take on the best of men.

  Chests puffed out, they strode down, and soon the smoke from wet green sticks met them on the old ground. There might have been a blood-bath, had it not been that the travellers from hell were all stone horned drunk. Drunk as cuddies, as my Granny was wont to say.

  The boys lined up behind the dyke, eying the enemy, before deciding to warm themselves at a half-dead fire. A moor wind was picking up the reek and swirling it into their eyes. The sound of snores filled the bitter cool air and mingled together like an orchestra of lo
custs. Daddy shrugged his shoulders at the futility of the MacSpits and decided all-out war was not the answer, at least not while the ale had rendered them as helpless as starlings on a maggot-less tattie. No, some other tactics would have to be applied. Meanwhile they made a dart back to their own cold make-do campsite. Thomas, who was a master storyteller, would entertain amidst the shadows and heather winds until sleepiness sent them all to bed.

  It might be the best point here to add the names of my father’s other family members. His oldest sister was Jessie, Anna came next, then Lizzie; a lot of mouths to feed.

  The giant structure of the shooting lodge designed to please Queen Victoria’s eye loomed above high trees. Turreted granite walls built to withstand eastern Grampian winters were now considered useless and destined to be pulled down and rebuilt. Prince George and his spoilt brother Edward didn’t like the way the lodge was designed, so on a whim decided it had to be changed. That’s what a ghillie had told my Grand-dad, but the truth wasn’t important. What was, however, was his task of gutting the place of anything that might make some money to feed his family.

  Granny, with her home ground firmly in other hands, set about tearing an old blanket into strips. Jock’s Road was a long trail through the mountains before descending to lower ground. They’d settled one winter at the Blackwater, several miles north of Blairgowrie; maybe if they hurried and the snow kept to the heights they might just make it. The torn blankets would provide the bairns with puttees to protect their ankles. Armies march for miles with cotton puttees wound around their exposed lower limbs; her breed would do it with puttees of wool.