by Jess Smith
From head to heel Rory felt the shiver of a hidden terror, a terror that had dogged him from childhood to manhood. His awe of the sea prophet was now apparent; he feared his own end. In his head he heard himself shout ‘when, and by whose hand?’ but the words would not come out. His tent was now a flicker of ash, already lifting into the breeze; his spirit was broken and he needed a drink.
Without waiting for an answer he ran faster than a stalked deer, and soon disappeared into a sea haar that was crawling over the beach with shroud-like stealth. Rain fell from the heavens to douse the funeral pyre, sending curious onlookers scurrying home. Helen took a long corner of the baby’s shawl, covered her head and retraced her steps to where Bruar stood waiting obediently. Rain ran down his red cheeks from a head of curly blond hair. With one hand he pulled a torn jersey closer under a shivering chin, and with the other he waved in the direction where he saw father running.
The final spiral of dingy smoke that was all there was left of a happy home danced among the now heavy raindrops. A lost boy wondered if Aunt Helen would feed him some of her chunky vegetable soup, he’d liked the taste. The feel of her soft bed, with its wooden headboard, had been great fun when she took him in once after mammy and daddy had been rained out of the tent. She could do anything, could Auntie. Maybe one day she could bring mammy back and daddy too; one day.
From that day, Helen, who once harboured dreams of serving her Jesus as a nun within a high-walled convent, was, for the foreseeable future, a full-time mother. Neighbours, who were few, came by to remind her often that his children were welcome, but they hoped that Rory had disappeared like a sea fog, and he’d better not come back.
So life along the costal domain of Durness, with peat bog to its rear and the ocean swell to its front, went on without a hair of his head being seen in those parts. Helen knew her brother’s fondness for drink would make any journey he took troublesome. His sons filled her days with responsibility, yet at night when the lamp was extinguished, the boys tucked up safely in their beds, she’d listen for those heavy-booted feet upon her doorstep, and the gentle tap-tapping of his clumsy fist on her cottar door.
It was seven long, happy years later, when thoughts of her brother seldom entered her mind any more, that he did indeed come home.
It was a lovely spring morning, lambs bleated and gambolled on the nearby braeside. She’d been busy with the annual spring cleaning. The boys wrestled playfully on the green at the back of the house before running towards two hill ponies, grazing amidst heather and rock. Bruar, well-made, big for his ten years, was as strong as any good-sized teenager, and a power of help to her. Jimmy though on the contrary a slip of a lad, could cut the peat alongside his older brother, working a full day.
Helen sang softly to herself without the slightest inkling that someone was watching her every move.
Not wishing to disturb her, Rory went round the other side of the house to admire the fine job she’d made of rearing his sons. He rested his back against an old fence-post, rotted by the wind-blown sea spray.
Bruar held himself well, ‘a lot like me,’ he thought, proudly. The other lad, small like his mother, yet had strength in him, seldom seen in a seven-year-old. He watched and wondered what name she’d given him; no doubt some biblical tag, knowing her.
His feet were blistered, his back weary with travelling open drove roads for weeks on end, yet it was a journey well spent; it was worth it just to see them—his very own sons. He could have forgotten about them, given up any claim he had to them. But like a wounded deer scoured from the herd, his way was hard. He’d been wandering for years, reasoning and arguing with himself, whether he should go home and be with the boys, or trek aimlessly until his body aged and broke, until it succumbed to the harsh elements of a freezing winter.
One day, after a night plagued with dreams of his lost lassie and who she’d want to be raising their sons, he rose from under a torn canvas hap and headed northwards. It was as if his late wife had made the decision for him: ‘go back and reunite with our sons’.
Her mouth parched, Helen stopped to make some tea and check the boys, and then came the shock. She saw him, cap in hand, hair showing an appearance of time-ravaged grey. His rugged looks, with a prominent scar running down his right cheek, told her that her brother would have fared better staying hidden in the fog. Yet there he stood, back from wherever he’d hidden himself, and he was there for only one thing—to collect his sons.
Her ears filled with heart-beats pounding in her chest like deafening drums. She had poured natural devotion as powerful as that of the most loving mother into those youngsters as if they were her own. They were known for miles around as her little orphans. The fisherfolk had said that with his wild temper, surely Rory would have met his match and would now be dead; that father of theirs, who took the eye from the Seer.
No words were exchanged as she walked stiffly into the house; he followed at a safe distance, shutting the door at his back. Her inner fury reeled her round to face him, she met his eyes from a vortex of anger, her emotional state deepened with disgust and fear. He was subdued, exhausted and ashamed. After a long pause, she asked coldly and straight to the point, ‘You come for the boys, Rory?’
‘I do, sister,’ he muttered, as he laid a bag next to the bread-board on the kitchen table. ‘There is money—enough for the years of feeding you done. If you pack their clothes, we’ll be away.’
A rage swelled in her beating breast, she gathered the money bag in her hand and threw the meagre offering off her table. ‘You saunter back into their lives, all this time not a word, nothing to say one way or other if you’re dead or alive, nothing!’ Her fury rose as she fumbled for a heavy iron pot that sat, half-filled with boiling water on the stove. Holding it level with his face she hissed through the cloud of steam, ‘Those boys are better off without knowing their drunkard father. Now get the hell out of here, and don’t bother coming back.’
He showed no fear, leaned down to retrieve the bag and said, ‘Look, sister a lot of flowing water has passed below the bridge since those days when I’d spend hard-earned peat money on drink, but since my lassie died I’ve changed. I’ve been working every hour, how do you think I made this?’
‘For all I know, you battered some poor soul and stole it. But it’s not about money. It’s about Jimmy’s first wobbling steps, his little mouth never able to say the words mama or dada. His first words were “dog” and “cat” and “Bubs” for Bruar. And as for me—’ she put down the pot and rubbed away tears flowing over her thin face: ‘My name was “Hell”. Me with my Bible being called that—do you know how much laughter that brought to this house? Oh no, how could you. You were away some place wallowing in self pity. Always about you, wasn’t it, Rory? All about my big useless brother.’
He made a futile attempt to hold and comfort her, but his hands were pushed aside as she went on, ‘and then the sickness that would worry me onto my knees and make me pray through the fever, nights and nights with my sweet little sons—they are not yours, they are mine! Now get out, get out!’
It was then he saw the full pain his sister had endured; what he’d put her through. He slumped down on his knees on the stone floor, his arms clumsily circled her thin frame. ‘Forgive me, Helen, I never meant you hurt. Please see it in your heart to understand.’
She quickly composed herself and took his hands away. She brushed back and then ran trembling fingers through the loose hair that had escaped from a cotton hair band. ‘Where did that scar on your face come from then?’ she asked, calmer yet still filled with hurt and anger.
Before he could answer, Bruar, followed by his brother, came panting into the house. When he saw the stranger he ran across and held her hand. ‘Is this big man bothering you, auntie?’ he asked.
‘Och, not at all, son.’ She gathered him into her arms and squeezed the youngster tightly.
In her quiet way she was never one to frill an explanation with unnecessary words, so rather than wast
e time, she brought the boys around her aproned knees. ‘Bruar, Jimmy,’ she fidgeted with their collars, running her hands over their shoulders, flicking dead grass from their tousled hair, took a long pause, then said quickly, ‘this is your father! He’s come back for you, and thinks nothing of taking you from me.’
For a minute of uncomfortable silence the boys looked from Helen to Rory, children trying to make sense of the awkward situation.
Rory sat down heavily in a tattered, cushioned armchair, taking warmth from the welcome fire. He studied Bruar’s face, searching it in the hope that he might remember him from that last night when his mother died. Such traumatic events—surely something had left its mark in his mind. ‘Son, I know you were only three, but do you have no memory of me?’
Bruar said nothing and turned his back. Apart from one or two fishermen handing in a basket of herring now and then, men seldom sat in that chair. His aunt had a rule about allowing them into her house; men were strictly doorstep visitors. Yet there he was, sitting in that chair as if he knew it was her knitting chair and not used unless she allowed it.
Helen’s legs began to shake. Overcome by events she sat upon a wooden chair. The boys, like pint-sized soldiers, took up position like sentries at each side. Jimmy held her hand while Bruar draped an arm, sleeve rolled up like a real working man, around her shoulder to assure her that he was the man of the house. Oh yes, many times he had thought that if father should dare to show his face, he’d have plenty to say. Yet as he examined this stranger’s appearance, his watery blue eyes and square, broad shoulders, he felt drawn to him in a way he could not explain.
As he looked from his aunt to the stranger he found a change on her face never before seen. Her jaw was firm, blue eyes staring and filled with fire. She was holding a handkerchief between her hands and tying it into knots. He’d heard her muttering many times under her breath, when he and Jimmy got too much for her: ‘God help me, I love the two o’ you, but I hate that big useless father of yours for leaving me this burden.’ Yes, there wasn’t another man who could cause that expression, so through clenched teeth he said, ‘He’s back then.’
Rory smiled, and could not stop the lone tear that escaped and ran over his cheek. He pushed out a shabbily dressed arm and touched his eldest son on the shoulder. He so wanted to hold him; to kiss that young red cheek, so vibrant and fresh. But no words came forth, a lump of emotion blocked up his throat like a hard lump of solid oak. He turned to his younger son and whispered instead, ‘James is a good name, lad, that was our father’s name. I’m pleased you have it. It’s better than Abraham or Jeremiah.’
The boys gazed at each other bewildered by the remark, but it brought a thin, wry smile to Helen’s stern face. She remembered how as a child she had named new lambs born to a neighbour’s ewes after biblical characters, and was for a moment touched by her brother’s memories of days when they were closer.
For a moment silence in the low-roofed cottage thickened as no one uttered a word. Rory patted an old black collie dog lying curled in a ball at his feet.
There was a power of explaining to do, convincing his children to accept him. It was not easy, he knew that; but first Helen deserved an explanation as to why he had come home out of the blue. He had positive plans and wanted them all to share in them; to be a family.
‘I’ve worked my back sore just to bring money here. I had to let you see I’d keep my promise. I’ve been feeing with farmers in Perthshire and Angus. Work comes by way of harvest and grouse-beating. Oh, I can turn my hand to many things. And I happen to think it’s a better place to bring up a family further down the country.’
Helen kept silent. Bruar asked him why he’d taken so long to come home.
‘Son, I don’t know. Time just seemed to drift by, working, paying my keep, there never was much left over. It’s taken a long time to get this money here; and losing your mother like that. You do remember, son, how Mammy died?’
Bruar dropped his head, shuffled uncomfortably from foot to foot. ‘No, I don’t. But Auntie, she told us how you took the eye from Balnakeil and how you ran away. Yes, we know all about you.’
His father moved closer and said, ‘Aye, and no doubt you’ve heard about me being the wild drunkard? Well yes, I hold my hand up, I might at times have let drink make memories fade. But that was a long time past; I’ve not so much as smelt the stuff for more than two years or so.’ He took his son’s hand and slipped the bag of money into it. ‘I’m clean now, son, and ready to take on the responsibility of caring for you and Jimmy.’
Helen wanted to ignore the sincerity in her brother’s face, he’d surely forfeited all rights to his children. Why, after all this time, had he come back to haunt them, disrupt their peace? He’d no rights at all. She hated him, at that moment she wished he’d been murdered, destroyed.
He saw it all, the anger and pain in her face, and without a word fell upon his knees for a second time, sobbing for forgiveness. ‘Sister, please,’ was all he could say, as like a baby he laid his heavy head on her lap.
Her heart was weeping, the reason why a sweet spring day had changed into a horrible nightmare eluded her. Yet what had years of bad dreams been preparing her for, if not for this day—his return. She ran her hand over his head, and with each stroke her sisterly love was born again. She didn’t hate him or want him dead, she wanted to see him happy, with his children. They weren’t hers, she’d no rights. ‘In God’s path we walk the bends and the straight,’ she told herself, ‘all I’ve done is keep these little boys on the right road.’
She pushed away his head from off her lap, stood up, gave the smouldering embers in the fire a poke and said in a subdued tone, ‘I’m feeling the effects of age’. Holding back tears welling in her eyes she continued, ‘Boys, you should be with your father...’ Never in all her life did she think she would hand over her charges to him in so meek a fashion. Nights she’d lain in bed cursing him, swearing he’d take them over her dead body, but here she was dismissing the only things in the entire world she loved, as if they were nothing more than her neighbour’s full-grown lambs ready for market. Yet again another phrase from her book of simple teaching came to mind: ‘The meek shall inherit the earth’. Yes, they were ready to be given back. Then her thoughts lifted: what if her brother would stay home—here in Durness?
Her brother had other plans, though, and they didn’t include taking the boys from her. He threw up his arms, beamed with new vigour, shouting his offer into every corner of the cottage. A small moth fluttering in a corner flew out through an inch of open window, obviously unused to such loudness.
‘I want us to go south where we’d all get work, you too, Helen. There’s no need for you not to move with us, be a solid family again?’
She had the opposite view. Her hope was that instead of living on the road as his wife, the boys’ mother had done, they’d stay at home cutting peat, and in time would all be one big happy Highland family. This, she thought, would be the best solution.
She rose from her chair, lifted a broom and began brushing up the dried grass which she’d picked off the boys. Then she laid her broom against a window frame, lifted a blue vase of wilting flowers and said, ‘I’ll go and throw these out while you three discuss going on the road and things.’ With these quiet words, she lowered her head and walked outside.
If her charges had felt anger towards Rory, it was soon dispelled. It was if he’d never left them, and they each fought to hold his attention, asking eager questions about what he’d done and where he’d been.
Helen wouldn’t up sticks and move away though, there was no point. Sure, her heart would break and for a while be empty, but she was a Durness spinster, not a wandering traveller. No, she’d stay in her secure little home and bear a lonely existence.
With formality forgotten, Bruar, gingerly at first, walked around Rory as he sat by the fire, staring for ages at his scarred face, big broad shoulders and thick mane of grey hair. With his rugged and worn appearance his fa
ther looked older than his thirty-five years.
He sat by him and asked, ‘Auntie Helen told us mammy was a tinker. Is that true, Rory—sorry, father?’
‘As wild and as beautiful as a gentle roe deer. She smelt like flowers, and her hair was as black as the shiny wings of a raven,’ he said, closing his eyes to see the precious vision clearer in his memory.
‘She sounds right bonny. I’m going to marry a beautiful girl one day, father, you know?’
‘Oh, you are, are you?’ He laughed then added, ‘She might be a beauty, but there will never be another to match your mother.’
‘Will we live in a house, father?’ enquired Jimmy. ‘It’s just I knew some travellers who came by from Caithness, they said the winters in tents were killers.’
Rory drew a hand across his younger son’s shoulder, and sat back in his chair, ‘We’ve got a good long summer ahead, and it’s the tent I have, but don’t worry. When winter comes I should have managed to secure a house from a factor, providing we get winter work. But listen, your mother, she was born and reared in a tent, and it didn’t do her any harm at all. It’s how you build one, that’s the secret. I’ll show you soon.’
Bruar asked if, like him, they’d also have to work.
‘Hard work is good for young lads, but only if you want to. I’ll do the providing,’ he assured them with the full weight of his conviction.
For a while Jimmy and Bruar talked things over, then Bruar, being the oldest, said, ‘Daddy, me and Jimmy think before you get much older, you’ll need us to see to you.’
Helen could hear this from the compost heap where she had loosely tossed the withered flowers, and knew then she’d lost the two most precious people in her life. Aware that on this day her chapter of surrogacy was closing, she had to speak with Bruar alone, certain things had to be said. Going inside she called him, Jimmy went with his father at her request. Rory took his younger son’s hand and walked outside to give them time together. He knew she was going to tell Bruar about the ‘promise’; though he was aware of it, it was not his place to speak about it.
