by Jess Smith
‘What’s wrong? Are there bad words in that paper? Read, like you said you would.’
In the time she’d known the old man, she’d never seen him look so worried. His face was pale grey instead of its usual ruddy pink. Whatever was written in the pages of that newspaper certainly wasn’t easy reading.
‘Sit for a moment, Megan, here by my side. This concerns all of us, even your kind.’
As the lassie knelt by the man’s chair he read from the front page: ‘An announcement by His Majesty: “It is with regret that I have to inform my subjects that Britain is at war with Germany”!’
‘Where’s Germany, what’s a subject and who’s His Majesty?’
Ignoring her, the doctor hastened through into an adjoining room and came back with another newspaper, muttering to himself. ‘I think it was in this issue, yes, Monday June 29th. Here it is. I knew it, I bloody knew it. I told everybody in the town and countryside this would bring a heavy price. Listen now, my girl.’
The copy of an earlier edition of The Times had been folded in a crumpled fashion. He pushed Megan forcefully down onto a wooden stool and read, his eyes fixed on a column of small typed words: ‘The Austro-Hungarian heir-presumptive, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and his wife the Duchess of Hohenberg, were assassinated yesterday afternoon at Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The actual assassin is described as a high school student, who fired bullets at his victims with fatal effect from an automatic pistol as they were returning from a reception at the town hall.
The outrage was evidently the fruit of a carefully-laid plot. On their way to the town hall the Archduke and his consort had narrowly escaped death. An individual described as a compositor from Trevinje, a garrison town in the extreme south of Herzegovina, had thrown a bomb at their motorcar. Few details of this first outrage have been received. It is stated that the Archduke warded off the bomb with his arm, and that it exploded behind the car, injuring the occupants of the second car.’
‘I remember thinking at the time that this vile act would find an end, and by God what an end, bloody war with Germany.’ Tears almost spilled over as he folded the paper and laid it down. He could see that in her blissful ignorance Megan still hadn’t grasped the enormous gravity of the news. He would only waste time explaining, so he quickly set aside his fear for the dark days ahead and got the horse ready for his visit with Rachel. Soon the pair were bobbing along the uneven surface of the old track. Lost, though, in thoughts of what lay in store for the young people of his country, the old doctor was almost at crawling speed. Threatening enemies waited at the door. Sitting beside him was an innocent child, a walker with nature, of a kind which had no national enemies. They suffered prejudice, yes, and persecution by certain individuals, but not the monstrosity of war! A warmth emanated from her trust in him, and for a moment he felt it. There was no evil cunning in the tinkers; to his mind they were simple survivors. How would they cope with this looming shadow of unnatural forces? What would become of their moors, burns and forests, where they cleverly blended into nature’s environment?
Megan grew concerned for the old man, of whom she was dearly fond. She had never known him to miss his cup of tea. His keeping the horse at crawling speed made her lean over and offer to take the reins. Why, she asked, should he bother what happened in a far-off part of the world? ‘Surely no one will come away up these glens? Let the war do its business, it won’t put me up nor down. Now give me those reins, for I’m thinking my sister will be a mite worried by now.’
He let her drive his horse and trap along the bumpy road, as the events in Europe filled his head. As they left Kirriemor, it was apparent by the silence that its inhabitants had also heard the news and dreaded the consequences.
No one knows whether fate took a hand that day, but no more than ten minutes out of town, Doctor Mackenzie’s old horse took a corner too fast and buckled a shoe. Drawing to a standstill the beast refused to move an inch, causing the worried pair to curse. She blamed the animal, while under his breath he blamed her driving skills. There was no option but a long walk stretching ahead of them.
Her pack, filled with scourers and bits of this and that, was no use to them, so she concealed it behind a cluster of rocks and then offered to carry his bag. ‘If we don’t get to Rachel’s aid soon, Jimmy, who faints at the sight of blood, will have arrived back in total panic.’ Not wishing to be slowed down by the heavy leather bag of doctor’s implements and medicines, he willingly handed it over.
They set off deep in thought, she for her sister, he for the countless thousands of young women carrying babies whose fathers would never return from the coming war. They would lie in a torn-up battlefield, or fall from the heavens among fragments of ripped open aircraft, or find death in the ocean, she who spares no one who sinks into her murky depths.
Meantime Rachel was having her own war! But not one with rifles and bullets. Nature demands that we come into the world with much suffering to the vessel which bears us. With her pains of labour growing in depth by the second, she cursed Jimmy and even her deceased mother for putting breath into her. Sweat oozed from every pore, and as the wretched claws of agony reached unbearable sharpness she screamed on O’Connor to help her.
‘What the hell is the matter wit that bloody woman, screaming like a choked rabbit,’ he thought, turning on a sweaty mattress. Rachel’s small tent reverberated with her next cry, followed by a low groan, then a hiss through clenched teeth.
‘That wasn’t a sound o’ a distressed bunny,’ he thought, stretching his stinking torso and rising onto one knee.
‘O’Connor, you useless bastard, get over and help me, man!’ The fear in her voice brought him to a more sober level. He’d fallen asleep without removing his ragged trousers, so slipping two leather braces over his shoulders, he crawled reluctantly from the stale-smelling tent, his hairy belly protruding like a kangaroo’s pouch from the open trouser front.
‘My baby! Irishman, it’s coming, help me! God in heaven, man, do something, please. Megan hasn’t brought Mackenzie, I’m scared stiff!’
Suddenly as the sun’s rays pierced through the clouds in his head, he realised the dire situation. Seeing nobody else in the campsite, he dashed into Rachel’s tent, apologising with every movement of his clumsy body to the now frantic mother-to-be. When Rachel spread her legs, and screamed through clenched teeth, he fell on his knees like a stone before the unfolding drama and said, ‘Holy Mother o’ the God of all things, what am I to do?’
Rachel’s legs were as far apart as she could physically manage. With one hand tightly gripping the tent pole behind her head, she was trying with the other to reach her tiny infant’s head, which was pushing its way into the world unaided.
O’Connor quickly overcame his terror. With grimy, hairy-knuckled hands, he cupped the little mite until its mother gave one last stupendous push, and out it came, partly covered in a birth-gown of red and pink fluid. Tears fell from the Irishman’s face when he held up the child to its mother. He was like a babe himself, bubbling and laughing, ‘Would ye look at him, as pure as the driven snow! Little mite is as wee as a fairy. If meself had witnessed the holy infant’s coming to earth,’ (a subject he spoke freely about when his intoxication rendered him harmless and melancholy) ‘I could not have been more humbled.’ With tender care the baby was handed to Rachel, who lay back on her bed and forgot in an instant all her previous agony, as the tiny fists touched its mother’s face. ‘Lord, O’Connor, I feared my bairn would have come into the world without a witness. Thank God for your presence.’2
Rachel wiped her son with a flannel she’d prepared along with a basin of hot water, now lukewarm. Her unsavoury midwife dashed from the tent, coming back in an instant with a dirty pillow stuffed with pheasant and grouse feathers, and gently propped her up by sliding it under her shoulders. ‘There now, my proud colleen, you rest and I’ll go fetch a cup of tea, is there anything else you need?’
She smiled and shook her head, but as
he made to leave she reached out and stopped him. ‘O’Connor, what is your name, the one your mother gave you?’
The Irishman ran a hand through a dishevelled head of grey-black hair and turned to look at Rachel, a sad look, one she’d never seen on his usually drunken face. He looked sorrowfully at the now stirring baby and said, ‘I niver knowed a mother. Some old crow dragged me up, an aunt o’ sorts. Hell, I don’t know if it’s on any birth certificate, but me name is Nicholas O’Connor. At least, that’s what she called me on a Sunday.’ He was squirming in embarrassment, never having meant to say anything of his past, which up until that moment he had defended with strict privacy.
He was spared further emotional sharing by the voices of Megan and an exhausted doctor, hurriedly approaching the tent. He dashed out to meet them. His abruptness startled the pair, as he rounded on them like a camp warden. ‘Hello then, and where the hell have you been? Sure, we have a new little ’un. Here, you better look at this.’
As he proudly pulled back the tent door, one would think if not knowing any better that O’Connor was the father.
What a wonderful relief to see that not only was Rachel holding a very healthy boy, but that both had come through without any harm.
‘All thanks to O’Connor here.’ Rachel’s words brought a red face to her saviour as he reappeared a few minutes later, holding three cups of tea in one hand. In the other he held a hairbrush, ‘I think the father will be here in two ticks, better make yourself pretty’. To everyone’s surprise he knelt down, running the brush through Rachel’s hair. ‘There now, that’s a pretty thing for yer man’s homecoming.’ Each laughed at the Irishman’s new attentive manner, except for Rachel who had forgotten how awful her sweat-soaked hair and drawn face must look.
No sooner had they finished their cups of tea when three famished, exhausted men came home from harvesting. All signs of fatigue and hunger soon disappeared, however, when the cry of a new baby was heard from within Jimmy’s abode. ‘My God, laddie,’ exclaimed his father, ‘there’s a grand sound for the ears of a proud father. Get in there and see what you got!’
Megan pulled open the tent door and beckoned the threesome in, her finger at her lips warning them to be quiet and not frighten the wee lad.
‘A boy you say? I’ve a wee son! Hey, Bruar, Daddy, I’ve a bloody son!’ Jimmy leapt into the air, throwing his crumpled bonnet so high it landed between a pair of hooded crows, which screeched and hastily left their sturdy perch at the top of an ancient oak.
Rachel looked radiant. Smiling, she handed the baby to its father, who kissed his son and whispered, ‘Love you.’ Then he told his wife he’d never seen her so lovely, but she said the reason for that was the fussing of her midwife.
‘Now that we have this responsibility,’ Rachel whispered in Jimmy’s ear, ‘we’ll think about getting away from the tent, maybe ask a farmer for a house.’ She had said many times that it was the way of life of her ancestors that killed her mother, and she didn’t want to go the same way.
Doctor Mackenzie joined the loud celebrations which spread through the family, but as for O’Connor, well perhaps it was all too much for him, and that’s why he wandered off to his lonely tent intending to spend some time with a half-bottle he’d kept for any such occasions. Before he’d put bottle to mouth, however, Rachel’s voice called out. Putting the bottle back in his pocket, he went over and peeped into her tent. ‘What is it that you want of me?’
‘I would like you to be here with us for a moment, my Irish friend, while I say something to my family—oh, and the good doctor too.’
‘Now,’ said O’Connor, ‘it’s not necessary for you to be thanking me. Given the circumstances, anyone wad ’ave done the same.’ Clumsily he shuffled from foot to foot and turned to leave.
Rachel sensed his embarrassment and said quickly, ‘Folks, I now have the greatest pleasure,’ she then lifted up her baby for all to see, ‘in introducing Nicholas Stewart.’
Big Rory picked the child from his mother’s arms and kissed him, saying, ‘That’s a grand name ye have little fella, but when did it come into your head, Rachel?’
O’Connor fell onto his knees for the second time that day, and with the edge of a ragged jacket sleeve he wiped a tear from his eye along with the contents of his nose. Then he did the unthinkable. From his pocket he withdrew the water of life and handed it round to each and every one, saying; ‘We’ll wet the baby’s head, folks.’
Later, when Rachel and her baby had fallen into a welcome sleep, the tiny band discussed the coming war round a warm fire with Doctor Mackenzie. It was with a country they’d hardly heard of, let alone knew where it was. It wasn’t part of their world, so the war must be the concern of others.
‘Anyhow, it doesn’t matter who wins or loses a war, tinkers are treated the same everywhere.’ Bruar’s words seemed to take the personal sting from what was unfolding hundreds of miles away.
All night long they each excelled in the singing of their ancient ballads. O’Connor, now that he had a good reason to feel a sense of pride in himself, sang the heart from ‘Erin’s Isle’. Although big Rory had a heavy fist, this wasn’t apparent in his beautiful baritone voice as he serenaded everyone with northern songs of the sea. He mixed traditional ballads with golden oldies he had learned about bonny babies. Megan’s sweet lovesongs spoke of lost lovers going on faraway journeys, and brought tears flowing freely down the fire-glowing cheeks of the hardy men. Even the hooting owls perched above them in the old gnarled oak joined the ceilidh. A chorus of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ gurgled through painful throats greeted the sun’s first rays, along with a squealing hungry Nicholas.
Doctor Mackenzie set off after drinking near on a whole pot of tea, promising to let them know how things were taking their course in the wider world, while the three men left to take on another long day’s harvest.
O’Connor yet again spent a large chunk of the day sleeping off the night before, as Megan helped her sister with the new baby before setting off uphill. She’d her heather scourers to make. Winter money would be stretched further with another mouth, albeit a tiny one, to feed.
Afternoon was bringing a storm, she could see it forming high above her. Great white fluffy clouds had turned black and were creeping like fat fingers around the brown mountain tops. She sat down to eat a sandwich, and suddenly without any warning a massive stretch of wings swooped down several feet from her. The sandwich fell from her hand as she sat transfixed, watching the King of the Mountains soar so close she could see his fully-feathered legs and square white-tipped tail. Holding her breath, she waited on his barking or ‘twee-oo’ call. What happened then froze her to the spot, as in slow motion the mighty eagle glided so close its eyes met hers in a deep penetrating stare, before silently gliding upwards towards the waiting storm.
‘Omen!’ she screamed and ran home as fast as any deer, repeating over and over again, ‘An omen!’
Rachel, who had risen from her birth bed, was washing at the burnside when she heard her sister’s screams, and hastened to her aid thinking she’d been assaulted. ‘Who’s interfered with you, sister? Wait till Bruar finds him, he’ll cut the hands from his miserable body.’
‘Nobody looked my road, it was the “King”—he spoke to me! Well, not as you’d have heard him in words, but, oh my God, Rachel, he was silent above the black clouds. You know, as does every living travelling man, woman and child from the Glen of Coe, that when the golden eagle soars toward the storm in silence, then it heralds doom!’
Rachel, aware of this powerful omen, began to whimper. The sisters grasped each other’s hands tightly and began to chant. O’Connor, holding baby Nicholas, had never witnessed this strange behaviour before and sat transfixed by their heathen ways. Megan spoke with quavering tones, while Rachel hummed. If he hadn’t already heard that this was the way of the Glen Coe Macdonalds, then he would have taken them for witches, packed his tent and left there and then.
‘What was that all about?’ he asked,
when the pair had stopped chanting.
Rachel with furrowed brow, frightened eyes darting to and fro from corner to corner of the campsite, told him. ‘One day before a terrible snow storm came upon the Macdonalds of Glen Coe, the eagle appeared to a boy, before soaring up towards the black sky. The boy ran home, telling his parents about the great bird of the heavens which had not made a sound. That night, through a raging blizzard, their neighbours the Campbells set on them like wolves, killing all that could not flee, and there were damn few of them that could. Ever since that day, if the golden eagle is witnessed soaring in silence towards a storm, then a terror will befall the Macdonalds.’ Megan nodded vigorously at each statement her sister made.
O’Connor handed over her son and said to Rachel and Megan, ‘Sure, in this day an’ age a superstition so old would have lost the power.’ Before an answer came, he added that he was certain that the whistling heard earlier was the men coming home, and not a morsel of food cooked for them. Sure enough, almost the minute he finished speaking, the three men of the campsite turned the bend of the dusty road.
Highlanders also fear such superstitions, and all through that evening and the night that followed, an eerie silence prevailed. It was hard to imagine that the band of songsters from the previous night were the same miserable lot who now wondered what awful event was to befall them. To add to the atmosphere of foreboding, a terrible thunder storm stirred and awakened little Nicholas. With it came a deluge of rain, sagging the tent roofs, then soaking their thin canvas and animal skin homes.
Much of the rain had penetrated, leaving them damp and exhausted from lack of sleep. Just as the sun pushed through the clouds, the band of tinkers eventually fell into welcome sleep.
For several months the village of Kirriemor saw one young man after another go off to wear the King’s uniform. Bruar and Jimmy spoke of nothing else, annoying the girls and reaching deep into their father’s soul. He had missed a lot of their raising, and didn’t want to lose them as young men just starting on the long road of marriage and fatherhood. He wanted more little babies to cheer his old age and keep the proud name of Stewart alive.
