by Jess Smith
Bruar walked over and dropped the large bundle of firewood at their camp, putting light to their fire before going over to his own camp and doing the same.
Annie thanked him. ‘You are a good boy, and I hope I can trust my lassie in your hands.’ He lifted a hand in reassurance that Megan would be safe, before going into his own camp to waken his father and brother.
Rory, the worse for supping forbidden liquid the night before, half-opened his eyes at the opening of his tent door as the sun’s rays entered and brought life to a million particles of dust. He called to Bruar, ‘have you any tea laddie?’ Then added that he’d heard that Macdonald lassie hooting on him, further remarking that she’d a flame in her belly wanting on a man. ‘You’d do well to keep a grip on yourself, or that wee fire demon will have you roped and branded.’ Bruar hushed him. ‘She is the one I have chosen, and nothing you say to bring her down will change things.’
His father grunted as he pushed his arms into a damp jacket. Then, muttering to himself in a low gruff voice he wandered off to the forest. He’d wash in the burn, and probably find a secluded spot to do what he’d been doing a lot of lately—bringing up the green contents of his gut.
Within an hour all the camp dwellers were up and about their business. Bruar, Rory and Jimmy (who, incidentally, had more than a fancy for Rachel if she but knew it) took a day working on vermin control on the scattered farms round about. As there was never a lack of rabbits, moles and rats, they were regarded favourably by the local farmers, and with plenty of rabbits to eat, their bellies were filled. Megan and Rachel hawked round the tiny villages nestling in and near the Angus glens, selling their pot scourers and brooms. A cool gloaming brought the foot-weary workers home.
After supper, both boys shared Annie and her daughters’ fire. Bruar wondered where the Irishman was, and called over to Rory lying resting in his tent. There’d been no sign of him for several days.
Jimmy hoped he’d slung his hook, but just as he scraped a final drop of gravy from his supper plate, a course, rough voice could be heard coming round the bend in the lane, singing out ‘Danny Boy.’
‘Lord, why does the earth bring that useless bastard in among us?’ said Bruar. ‘Could he not start walking away and forget his way home?’ Jimmy scolded Bruar for his sharp tongue, and asked the bearded ruffian where he’d been.
He’d been drinking with a few rough Irishers living up at the farm in a shed. ‘They were going back to the old country,’ he said, ‘and we was supping a goodbye drink. Where’s the wrong in that?’
Nobody answered; they hoped he would collapse into his tent, but instead he rammed a hand into his torn coat pocket, retrieving a large green bottle. ‘Well, me auld highlander, do yez want a sup?’
Rory was not sober for long, as both men gulped and sang until a full moon and drunken sleep brought silence to the night.
Annie still wasn’t well and so Megan went off to bed, sharing soft tales with her mother until she too slept. As Megan lay listening to a hedgehog digging in the rough heather at the rear of her tent, her mother slept fitfully.
As the last embers of fire crackled, Jimmy and Rachel felt themselves growing closer. Each of them could see in the other similar qualities and ways.
Next day, when work was over and the fires gently smouldering again, Doctor Mackenzie came trotting along the path. Hobbling his old horse to a gnarled oak, he called out, ‘Are you folks in good health? For a sharing of your tea I’ll give you all a wee bit look-over.’
Megan and Bruar, who were away somewhere over the high hills checking rabbit snares, would have been sorry not to see and blether awhile with the good doctor. Annie had been sore and thanked God for his visit. ‘I have a pain worse than bairn-labour, doctor, could you give me something to help me sleep? Rachel, pour him a mug of good strong tea, and if you and your sister haven’t eaten them all, a scone to go with it.’
The doctor knelt and lifted a feather pillow, fluffed it and gently laid her back onto it.
‘Is the big world still turning, doctor?’ asked Rachel, gladly pouring him a strong mug of tea from the blackened kettle suspended over the campfire. She buttered a few scones as her mother asked, then added, ‘You see, sir, I sometimes wonder if we are the only folks left alive. We never see a soul unless we go hawking, or buy butter and milk from the good farm wives.’
‘Apart from the village folk and the screeching curlews I have no knowledge of the outside world myself, Rachel.’ He winked; she blushed, bowing slightly as if he were royalty and made an excuse to leave.
‘She’s a lady, is that lass of yours, Annie,’ he said, watching the way she moved and thinking that if her rags were replaced with fine clothes one could easily see her fitting into a world of finery.
‘Aye, she’d be pleased to hear you say such things, for all she moans about is getting free of this life. But is my lassie as near as would be able to hear me? I have to speak serious with you, sir.’
He was concerned at her tone of voice, detected her fear. Casting an eye at Rachel and seeing her speaking with Jimmy, he replied, ‘I must say they make a fine pair, where are the other two?’
‘Never mind them. Listen, doctor, there’s these awful searing pains in my chest, like a hot poker piercing at my heart. Promise me you won’t tell the girls, now will you, because if there’s a bad thing wrong with me I don’t want them worrying.’
He knew enough about tinker folk to tell that when a pain was admitted it was serious. He could see by looking at the woman that she was anxious, and so whispered, ‘You have been too long caring for these lassies. Stop concerning yourself about them so much. Now let’s have a listen to these innards of yours.’ Ushering her to a secluded place at the back of the tent he gently pressed a large stethoscope at her chest. ‘Where exactly is this pain you speak of, my dear?’
Never having seen a stethoscope before, she at first drew back from its cold touch. The old man smiled and gently persuaded her. ‘Come now, lass, this only tells me what’s going on in there.’ He ran a hand across her upper chest and under her chin.
The beats sounded faint and solemn. Mackenzie was long enough in the tooth to know a weakening heart when he heard one. Her face also told a story, with greyish lips, yellowed eyes and cold, clammy skin. ‘Annie, you tinker folk doesn’t like untruths, so I hope you listen to me and take life easy from now on.’
Cupping her face in work-gnarled fingers she gazed into his eyes, looking for an honest answer to her next question. ‘How long, doctor?’
‘Now, lass, only the Lord himself can say for sure. But you have two grand lassies who will see to your every whim.’
‘Please don’t tell them. I can’t bear the thought of them hovering about with tear-streaked faces. It’s only months since their father met an untimely end. No, I’ll keep this strictly with your good self. Now I can hear that big highlander Rory Stewart calling on you, best you take a look at him too. He doesn’t half cry out in the nights.’
Doctor Mackenzie crept out from the tent, wishing he’d a magic wand to turn Annie’s thin canvas abode into a warm wee cottage with a fire, and a bed that would at least keep her off the damp ground. He could easily have offered her a death-bed in the local hospital, or, better still, a bed in his house, but he knew that tinkers desire only to wait on death in the embrace of mother earth.
As he stood up, the sight of Rory approaching took thoughts of Annie from his mind. ‘Hello, big Stewart my man, what can I do for you?’ he asked.
‘Well, good doctor, my stomach has been rejecting every morsel of food these days.’
‘I bet it has no problem with the cratur? The whisky will be the reason for your gut being a bother. Stop supping and I bet within a month the stomach will be back to normal.’
‘You’re a hard man for one who is supposed to heal, I can tell you. The water of life hasn’t passed my tonsils for months—if you don’t believe me, then ask Jimmy over there.’
Young Jimmy, who had gone back to
weaving a basket after Rachel answered her mother’s call, smiled at the doctor, said nothing and continued with his work. The doctor went over to him. ‘Can you swear your father hasn’t touched the drink, Jimmy?’
The young man lowered his dried reeds to the ground, stood up and whispered, ‘If you smell my father’s breath, then you’ll see that not weeks but hours have passed since he was filled with stuff O’Connor the Irishman brewed.’
Rory had no problem in hearing his son’s whispering, and raised his fist. ‘You lying toad, I’ll switch the hide off you for that! The drink doesn’t affect my ears.’
‘Rory, I never thought you a violent man towards your sons. I’d lay off the demon drink for more reasons than a sore belly if I was you.’ He handed him a bottle of stomach chalk, saying, ‘Take a spoonful every four hours.’
‘God love you, man, this’ll cure the gnawing.’ Rory thanked him once more, before crawling inside his tent, probably to drink half the contents before O’ Connor slipped him another bottle of homemade, hellfire brew.
Round the bend in the road, in a quiet spot another family of tinkers had found refuge. Before heading home, the doctor popped his head inside the tent of the McAllisters, who were anxiously awaiting the arrival of their first baby. A quiet couple, they kept to themselves, bothering no one, and never joined the campfires of the others.
They were private and shy, nothing like Megan, who came singing and laughing with Bruar over the high hill above the campsite. When they saw the doctor unhobble his horse, they hurried to see him before he left.
‘Hey, Doctor Mackenzie, wait on us, see what we have for supper,’ she called at the top of her voice, holding aloft and waving a brace of cock pheasants and two large buck rabbits; but he was already trotting away and didn’t hear her.
‘Would you take a look at that,’ she said to Bruar, ‘the only visitor we get, and we miss him.’
‘You’ll see him next time,’ he told her, adding, ‘I think the lassie McAllister is due her baby soon.’
‘Yes, I suppose so. But I’ll tell you something, I didn’t like the colour of Mammy this morning. I think she is not letting on about her illness. She says it’s her bones that ache, but I think it might be far more serious a problem. Do you know I got up in the night and heard her whispering to Daddy’s memory? I hope we don’t have to fetch the doctor sooner.’
However, when the summer’s solstice came, Megan’s words echoed with an uncanny truth as Annie awakened in the dead of night, screaming and fighting for breath. Her screams roused everybody from their beds. ‘Death stands on the forest edge waiting with his scythe, can you see him lassies? Look, his head is hooded and he hovers like a dragonfly.’ Rachel was crying, unable to ease her mother’s suffering. Megan gripped Rachel and said, ‘You and Jimmy go fetch Doctor Mackenzie; I’ll stay with Mammy until you come back.’ In no time Rachel and Jimmy were gone along the old drove road to bring the doctor, while she and Bruar comforted the dying woman. ‘Mammy, you look at me and ignore old Death, for sure I’ll cut him in bits with his bloody scythe if he so much as winks at you.’
Minute by minute Annie’s breathing became less erratic, but this was replaced by a rasping sound from within her throat. This frightened Megan—she’d heard older folks speak of ‘the death rattle’, and if their words had any truth then there was certainly no mistaking the sound. Tears flowed down her cheeks and gently landed on her mother’s face. ‘Mammy, please, don’t die! Rachel’s coming with Doctor Mackenzie, he’ll make you better. Oh mother, I love you so much. Don’t leave us so soon after Daddy, we need you!’
‘Megan, you’re making it hard for her to let go,’ whispered Bruar. ‘Look, her eyes are glazing over, she wants to join your father. Let her be, my love.’ He prised apart both her hands that were tightly clasping Annie’s and moved closer to the dying woman. Suddenly she arched a rigid spine, drew in one last breath, then slumped back lifeless on her horsehair mattress.
‘Say goodbye now, your mother’s gone. See how peaceful she looks.’
Megan could not gaze upon her mother’s dead face, and ran out into the night. The moon was spreading gentle rays throughout the forest; she threw herself down on the rain-moistened moss to empty her mind of everything apart from the thought of her mother’s silent, dead frame. ‘Oh Mammy, Mammy! What will we do, now you’ve joined Daddy?’
Far up on the high hills a solitary eagle lowered his churk-churk call as if out of respect for the death on the moss-covered ground below him. A lapwing gently ceased its flight and bobbed upon the earth inches from Megan’s mournful figure. Perhaps a fox or weasel had killed its chicks, and in some strange bond of nature the bird sensed the girl’s grief as being akin to its own.
Bruar left her in peace, to break on her own the invisible birth cord between a mother and her child. When she’d cried herself sore, he brought her back to see to the duties that must be carried out for any dead soul.
By the time Rachel and Jimmy arrived back with Dr Mackenzie, Megan had composed herself and had Annie’s small, lifeless body laid out. After certifying the time and cause of death, the doctor stayed a while. He offered his condolences before slowly walking off alongside his horse, saying he’d send the priest if they wished it. But there was no need, the girls informed him; they had their own ways of burial.
Throughout the next day, refusing help from other hands, they prepared their dear mother for her rest. Moistened flax was carefully inserted in her ears and nostrils to keep out evil spirits; to prevent demons from looking into her soul, her eyes were covered by two small river pebbles. And finally, every inch of her body was wound round with muslin cloth. When their trembling hands had finished this last duty, only the ground awaited. Jimmy had nailed up an oblong box with whatever materials he could find, and it was into this narrow vessel that the girls very gently placed Annie.
Bruar watched them from among the nearby willows. He felt a silent pride that there was no longer any sign of the girl in Megan, just a strong, controlled woman doing her duties with a firm resolve. As they covered Annie’s coffin with a blanket to await her burial on the next day, he was astonished at the precision and respect of their ritual. Then, as was the way of the Macdonalds of Glen Coe, they covered their faces and fell silent.
O’Connor tried in vain to coax them to have a wake—‘In my part of the world they do,’ he told them.
All through the night they sat by their mother’s remains. No talking and no moving, rigid and silent they watched, until far upon the hillside a black hooded crow screeched to herald the dawn. A thin smirr of rain had changed to heavy mist as the tiny band of silent mourners lowered Annie down to her place of slumber in the middle of the moss-carpeted forest floor. It would have been a blessing to put her across beside her husband in Glen Coe, but that was not possible. However, Annie had had no belief in burials, saying to her daughters many times, ‘When I go, just pop me in any old place and I’ll find my way to your Daddy.’ So here they were, laying her down in a secluded, gentle glade, where small roe deer wandered by and brightly coloured jaybirds rested. Here the red squirrels darted and chased each other’s tails, and here all around tiny sparkling dewdrops would fall from the moist trees and water the roots of the bluebells and wild primroses to carpet their mother’s grave. ‘Yes, Mother,’ whispered Megan, arm entwining Rachel’s, ‘here you will be well cared for. Mother Nature herself will see to that.’
Rory ushered his two sons out of the glade to allow the lassies their last moments with Annie. Minutes later, just as they too left their mother’s graveside, a small cry pierced the air. The secretive McAllisters gave the world a new life, a boy.
‘As one life goes below another comes up,’ said the Irishman, sticking his drunken head out from his tent and calling on Rory to join him. Strangely enough, the highlander, dependent as he was on the demon of alcohol, declined, opting instead to take himself off into the forest. Perhaps to remember his own wife’s demise many misty years ago, or perhaps it wa
s just that he’d not the stomach for drinking that day.
THREE
As the rest of the summer drifted by, it was not only Bruar and Megan who grew closer, but a feeling of companionship had touched Rachel and Jimmy. They spent days walking and talking, growing more dependant on one another. Rachel’s wasn’t the same as her sister’s relationship, not as passionate, more comfortable.
Rory spent less time drinking, and his sons hoped and prayed that he had changed for the better. He’d even taken to rising first, lighting a fire and starting breakfast. Perhaps it was Annie’s parting that made him see how precious a good family was. He never said so out loud, but it was a far happier camp when the Highlander was a sober man.
Not so O’Connor! If he’d staggered home cut and bleeding once, then he’d done it a dozen times. He’d found a drinking den in Kirriemor, one usually frequented by burly ploughmen who joined in quarrelsome debates about Ireland and its history.
‘One of these days, man, you’ll take a battering from the ploughmen you won’t walk away from,’ Rory warned him, genuinely worried. ‘Why don’t you go back to Ireland and find some family to share time with?’
If there was a family somewhere O’Connor never let on, he cared not what happened as long as he could pay for and enjoy the pleasure of alcohol. ‘Tomorrow and its worries can take care of themselves,’ he was heard saying many times, as he slugged the final dregs from an emptied bottle.
By autumn’s end Megan had at last reached the age of consent. She decided to ask her future father-in-law what were his thoughts on his son mixing with a tinker Macdonald? Bruar was busy in the depth of the forest cutting firewood; she’d voiced her anxiety about speaking with his father, so he left them together to give her time to bond with big Rory. Gingerly she went over to his fire, and sat uncomfortably down on a large log. Now, for the first time, she was going to speak about her innermost thoughts and worries.
