by Jess Smith
Thankfully the winter snows didn’t amount to a great deal, nor did the demons creeping for souls reappear in the forest, but on Christmas Eve the lads tied all the rings and bells to the old yew tree, and Granny swore she heard a fluttering of wings during the night. ‘Maybe you bairns should take a wee deek, ye never know what kind of miracles abound this time o’ year.’ When the family investigated, they found big fat stockings made from green velvet laying upon the frozen ground, filled with sweets and fruit.
‘There’s only one Angel living in these woods, Mammy,’ said my father, giving her a Christmas cuddle.
The ‘eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you could die o’ fright’ MacSpits1 were seldom met from that day. Yet when they thought about it afterwards, my Father’s family couldn’t help but feel sorry for them. They were simple-minded folks, but as Granddad told their relatives later, ‘all’s fair in love and whoever gets tae a campsite first. Just dinna listen tae a master storyteller in a cauld wood wi’ a whistling wind!’
By the following early spring, as lambs were popping up in the lower fields, my Granny gave birth to another boy.
25
A STREET NAMED ADRIAN ROAD
I hope you enjoyed that tale. Hearing it was for me just an accepted part of my rich cultural heritage. Let’s go back now to Glenrothes for a while, and see how we all got on living in Shirley’s five-apartment council house, on a street named Adrian Road. Number 5.
To be honest, life went on at a snail’s pace. Davie, Shirley and her man rushed around in the early morning trying to avoid each other, because, according to experts, that’s the time of day when we are most short-tempered. I expertly prepared sandwich boxes with whatever appealed to their bellies, and was pleased as punch to see the back of them, the moaning lot.
Weekends could be fun, though. Davie and my brother-in-law would take themselves off to the dog-racing at Thornton, leaving Shirley, me, Johnnie and toddler Stephen along with Shirley’s two, Christine and Hughie, to wander through the wooded areas between Leslie and Glenrothes. Thankfully, at that time the town hadn’t expanded into what was a lovely natural wood of old trees and a meandering burn. It has today, though. We’d take a picnic box filled with sweeties and ginger [lemonade], tip-toe when a squirrel was sighted, run when we saw a young fallow deer. Johnnie desperately wanted to see a badger, and followed Hughie around because he knew where a den was. Christine, like her mother, had little interest in the natural world apart from wanting to put it into song. For instance, if a colourful jay bird flew among the branches, Shirley would sing: ‘Hello, bonny tartan bird, skipping through the trees, noisy screeching tartan bird, are you full o’ fleas? Blackbirds arenae pretty, but they sing a joyous tune, but you, my lovely feathered bird, like a witch whirling aroon.’ That was my sister. Christine always tried to go one better, but each had their own gift of verse and music. That for me was a double joy, and still is.
Wednesdays, I always remember, were by far the worst days of the week. I think it was because, back then, the Glenrothes workforce got paid on a Thursday. Rent, bills and so on saw the bulk of the pay packet empty out on Fridays, and more was frittered away through the weekend. Monday left enough to feed families to Tuesday, but on Wednesday it was empty larders and walk to school and work. But that was in the beginning, before new factory units provided a whole new way of life for the lads who had gone down the mines and the lasses who had worked long hot hours in linoleum factories and paper mills. Things were to change when companies saw this new town as the gateway to an exciting technological age.
Factories producing electrical components sprung up everywhere. They offered jobs that required small skilful fingers—women’s. Youngsters, who at one time left school and stepped straight into coal mines and linoleum factories, were now offered well-paid jobs in a clean and healthy environment. The new lifestyle meant that dreams could be realised like affording your own house and owning a car. Yes, the hunger on a Wednesday soon dispersed, as families saw that to own their homes with two cars was not so much a dream but now a reality.
So let’s for a wee while go back to the lean, mean, hungry days when Glenrothes was on the dawn of change, and I’m away down to fill my son’s pushchair with Monday morning’s messages. With three adults working full-time, we managed to afford mince and tatties. Four pounds of minced beef meant shepherd’s pie for Monday and meatballs in tomato sauce on Tuesday. I’d scrape enough together to fill sandwiches for the lunchboxes. A pot of soup made with left-over vegetables and flavoured with ham-bones would fill bellies until Thursday, when fish suppers would abound all around the town. That was my plan.
If I were older I’d have felt like Janet, the wee housekeeper of the Doctor Finlay television series. My purse would be gripped firmly in one hand while I manoeuvred the pram and two big wicker baskets ready to be filled with tatties, bread and that very important minced beef. There was no room for my weans, they were happy enough toddling on and chatting to a young policeman covering his beat.
The supermarket was fairly busy, with dozens of women doing the same as me, Monday shopping. As I made my way through the crowds of people, many with weans like mine, I heard a woman shout, ‘if yer looking fer mince then there’s nane, the butcher couldnae get it the day. I’m right sorry, ye ken, but there is plenty ham-bones tae feed the man soup.’
Everybody in that place must have had the exact same menu planned as me, because a surge of jostling females had emptied the butcher shelves of hambones before I could blink. When I had made my way through to scour the glass shelves in the hope that something would be there to feed my hungry bunch, I was delighted to hear an assistant shout that more mince had just come in, but only a small amount.
‘Four pounds, please,’ I said, shoving the right money to the assistant who took it and handed me my precious bundle. Suddenly, like a weasel diving onto the neck of a poor unsuspecting rabbit, two big-knuckled hands grabbed at my mince, which fell from my grasp in a heap on the floor, where an army of leather-shod feet crushed it flat. I grabbed my boys, thinking a mad person was loose on the public, holding them tightly by my shaking knees. It was the most awful sight that stood before me—a great fat beast with bullet eyes, fists on hips and wearing a ton of hair rollers screamed, ‘Ma Bob wid kill the hale o’ Glinrothes if he didnae get his mince and totties!’
‘But surely you’d get some down the road at Tom Baird’s?’ An elderly woman, feet in fluffy pink baffies, minus her false teeth, repeated the question to Two-ton Tessie. By mentioning the butcher down the road, the older woman, I’m certain, saved my jaw from stotting off something hard. Although the butcher at the bottom of the road had occurred to me as well, I was struck dumb by this woman’s temper and just stood stiff with fear.
I remembered when I was only fifteen during my short time as an employee of a paper mill, the women there could either be sweet gentle creatures or roaring gladiators who even cowed the men. But frightened as she’d made me, I couldn’t help but feel as if I’d been robbed, and truth be told, Shirley, her man and Davie wouldn’t be too chuffed.
‘Well, yon’s a cow that died for nothing!’ I muttered eventually, and gestured at the mess of mince on the floor and on shoes and boots which were tramping away to be cleaned outside. The more I looked at this waste of food and thought about how much it cost me, the angrier I became. ‘Stupid bugger,’ I dared to say as the heap of slavers and sharp eyes moved menacingly toward me. The hand, with its cardigan sleeve rolled up, rose in the air. I thought my brains were about to be battered out of my skull, and they certainly would have been had a young trainee manager not intervened with a timely worded warning: ‘There’s a polisman outside!’
The arm fell to her side, and the female from hell shifted faster than Roger Bannister running the mile. I asked the butcher’s assistant if a refund was out of the question? Thankfully it was given, with an apology. With my money back, I bought tinned mince and loads of tatties and bread, enough to feed us for two days.
I also managed some flour and margarine for baking.
I learned a lesson that day—if a mountain of anger approaches on a supermarket floor, pray a nice member of staff is willing to intervene. I later found out, to my utter dismay, the big lady lived three doors away around the corner from our house. Every time we met she growled that my end was coming, so to avoid her I began taking the longer route to the shops. In time when I accidentally met her, the threats stopped and her stare became less menacing.
Telling you this, the memory of a similar experience my dear mother went through comes to me. She was a mere sixteen years old at the time she took on the Crinnan women from Dalwhinnie.
26
IN DEFENCE OF THE PEARLS
I’ll speak in my mother’s voice.
‘I’d been hawking three solid days in a row. Started at the Atholl Palace in Pitlochry, where I foretold a cook she’d find her lost engagement ring under a stone bench, and thank God she did, because she presented me with a basket of fine oatcakes amongst other braw eaties. I loved them crumbly biscuits that only Scottish cooks can conjure up. She was so grateful that I left that kitchen with two whole florins and a bottle of the finest malt. The four shilling was well needed, but not being one for whisky, it gave me pleasure to pour it into the burn at Killiecrankie. Daddy, you see, was all too fond of the awful stuff, and when on it could blacken my poor mother’s eyes; he was just a demon with drink, my father. I remember shouting down intae the water, where I think a certain soldier leapt to his death in days gone by, “if ye’re still doon there, man, here’s a guid dram tae ye.”
I gathered washing for a Blair Atholl woman who’d hurt her shoulder, and in gratitude she gave me a present of two tweed skirts. Said she’d a bairn growing in her bowdie, and the skirts would be too small when her belly swelt.
I made up quite a few miles heading over the pass, but by the gods it wisnae half cauld. I arrived at Dalwhinnie, and met up with my family in our usual campsite a half mile beyond the Distillery. Mother was rare pleased with the basket and clothes. Daddy, thanks be, didn’t take any drink, and as was the case when he stayed off it, he was a really pleasant father. He’d got a job burning heather on the moor, which took from sun-up to its going down. There was no time for drinking, but he joked that on a down wind the smell of the “Angel’s Share” wafting from the froth-topped alcohol fermentation vats satisfied him.
I was feet-tired after my long road journey on the old A9, and after chores called over to my mother, sat stirring broth in a big black pot cooking over a grand fire, “Mother, if you don’t need me, can I curl ma toes in the burn?”
“Aye, lassie, away you go. I’m rare pleased with your hawking these days. There’s a laddie waiting somewhere, and he’ll treat you good, for there’s golden threads in you, wee Jeannie, aye, and silver yins and a’.”
I loved my mother’s way with words, and did hope that soon I’d meet a fine young man willing to better my lot, as all travelling lassies did in those fanciful days.
Over by the ash and willow trees flowed our lifeline, a freshwater burn. It wound down through miles of heather moorland and rocky ravines. The burn, a gift from Mother Nature to all wandering people, provided liquid to quench the thirst, and water to wash everything, especially our birthday suits, and on that day for me, with sore and puffed feet, it was heaven itself.
May blossoms glided softly from wild hawthorn bushes, dropping on waiting bluebells that were throwing out scents to please a fairy queen. Broom thrust above drystane dykes like hundreds of tiny soldiers wearing yellow caps. Summer was just around the corner; I felt weightless and content. I think in my heavenlike state I fell asleep, because then some lads were wading down the burn, shouting excitedly among themselves. They were not much younger than I, about four in number, and I went to see what all the noise was about. They seemed so busy my appearance hardly raised an eyebrow. “Hello boys,” I called, “what are you doing?”
“We’re pearl fishing, look at the pile of shells.”
I did indeed see the heaps of emptied mussel shells, which made me feel sick. “Why are you raping the bed of all those young shells, surely you can see there winna be ony in them. These older ones maybe, but not them.” I pointed to some shells that had hardly been hardened, and gave the laddies a right roaring.
One jumped up and lifted his hand, but the others warned him not to hit a lassie. I said to forget the lassie bit, I’d take them all on, but they pushed me and laughed. Before I left, one called out that their womenfolk would meet me and batter the spit from me.
Hot, more under the collar than sun-warmed, I dashed over to our camp site.
“Mother,” I spat the words, “is there other travellers near us? I’ve just had a run in wi’ wild bisoms who were raping a mussel bed, ripping intae the poor shells and them no near any age.”
Mother, who was busy cooking over the fire a mammoth pot of vegetable soup, said when she heard me ranting on about the laddies armed with pearl knives, “it’s a family o’ Crinnin folk”. She seemed worried, and asked me if I’d annoyed them. I told her I couldn’t give a pirate’s curse for their well-being, it was the annihilation of the mussel bed that bothered me.
My brother Matthew, who’d been out on the moor burning heather with Daddy, arrived home tired and weary and said, “Jeannie, yon Crinnin lads will be spouting tae their mither and her sisters about you. Mother is worried they’ll visit now with wild fighting talk.”
His words sent a shiver into my wet feet. Every travelling family knows too well not to upset the Crinnin, especially the women. It doesn’t take much to spur them into a fury, but look out when they are! They were three big brutes of females, famed for one way of fighting—head butting.
“Matthew, the lads were ripping every single shell apart, kenning fine if there were pearls in them they’d not be the size of a pin-head. It was the horrible way they laughed and threw the empty shells at each other. You ken me, brother, I cannae stand that type of thing.”
“Oh aye, Jeannie,” said Matthew, with as serious a look on his face as I’d seen, “but nevertheless, yon Crinnin dogs love a fight. Any excuse will dae, they need little wind in their sails. Mind, if stories are true, it’s the bitches that dae the fighting.”
My mother told Daddy about it as she poured him a deep bowl of soup, adding that if they came seeking to pagger, it was his wee Jeannie who’d take it.
Daddy sat down, took a slurp of his broth and said, “well, that’s a different way o’ daein right enough. Sorry, lassie,” he stuffed a chunk of crusty bread into his mouth and continued, “I darenae stand by your side if women throws the glove.”
“Well,” said I, “then it’s time I was away again.”
Mother shook her head, handed me my share of steaming broth and said, “No, Jeannie, I’m not seeing you off again, lassie, it’s no more than a half day since you came back. We’ll all go. Tae hell with the Crinnin belles.”
“Margaret, I’ve a whole month’s work burning heather. If we move, then where else will I get work?” My father handed over his empty bowl for a refill, adding, “listen, if they come looking for tae pagger oor wee Jeannie, then I’ll have tae show her how to handle her fists.” He sat down his too hot soup and grabbed my hands. Like he was handling gold he ran his fingers over each knuckle, asked for more bread and said, “we’ll get started right away, Jeannie. If yon wimmin mean tae pagger my lassie’s bonny face, then she’ll not be taking it easy-like.”
I was shivering inside, thinking what state my face would be in after three mountains of madness threw iron skulls in its direction, but Daddy’s words took away part of the fear. My daddy was, during his peak, a first-class street fighter. In fact he told everyone that’s what attracted our mother to him, his hard knuckles and swervy moves were irresistible. She always laughed at this statement, and pooh-poohed it, saying it was the black hair, twinkling eyes and the way he made the keys dance on his wee melodeon.
With an eerie silence coming fr
om the Crinnin who were camped a mere half mile into the neighbouring glen, Daddy took me onto a flat grassy patch to show me his moves. Like a bee he buzzed around me, jerking and jabbing in a ghost-fight fashion.
“Don’t turn your back on me, I could take you down. Don’t leave the chin exposed, keep it low. Here, watch me.”
He pivoted, he ducked and he parried, kept moving, blocking an invisible blow, and catching his opponent’s jabs with an aggression I’d never seen in my father. I’d seen him angered with drink, but not like that, now he was controlled. He was in his past again, master of the ring.
“Now, Jeannie, whatever you do don’t get caught off balance, always keep up your guard. Watch their eyes, follow them at the same time, imagine you have more eyes than them, in the back of the head, at the side, keep watching. And no matter how close they get, never lean back, and slip your head away when reading their moves. Oh, and lassie, if you get tired, please don’t drop these hands. And for God’s sake keep the temper under control—a mad dog is easy kicked!”
For the rest of the day I became a boxer. It was strange how much energy flowed through my arms as I followed his expert instructions. Later, as we walked back to our beds, I asked my father why he never kept up his boxing.
“See this scar under my chin?” he lifted his head and removed his muffler. I never knew it was there on his neck, a scar stretching across his throat.
“That was a big brute of an Irishman called Traveller Buff Scarlet. We met on a field behind a pub on Stirling’s Drip Road. Said he was a flyweight, but every man on that day could see he was a lot heavier. Well, I held my ground and we battered it out, reaching nineteen rounds; longest I’d ever boxed. A fearsome bastard, yon Irishman. He hooked me with a one-two, and when I moved back a fish knife was flung at his feet by some snake relative. All’s I mind was the heat of blood running over my chest. Thank God he missed ma main artery, or me and you widnae be having this conversation. Come tae think on, you widnae be born.”
