by Jess Smith
‘Yes, Father, you could well be right.’
Her arm hugged Bruar tighter as the threesome took the road home.
‘That was a frightening experience hanging from that tree root, Father, I really thought my end had come. Tell me, why were you there?’
‘To say I received a letter addressed to you. I have it in the presbytery. Come with me and I’ll read it for you.’
‘For me, Father? But who would know where I am?’
Passing the church and heading toward the presbytery, another wonderful happening blessed her day. Bruar, to her astonishment, pointed to her head and said with a slow mumble, ‘One grey.’
‘One grey what, my love? What is it you’re trying to say?’
‘Tell us, son,’ asked the priest jerking him round to face him. But there was no explanation, nothing, just the same limp arms and glassy eyes.
‘He’s trying, though, Father. I tell you it’s a good sign. Somewhere under that mop of blond hair are threads of memories, all searching for each other.’
Soon with warm tea in hands they were sitting within the sparsely furnished interior of the Durness presbytery as Father Flynn proceeded to read. Megan could not help but feel excited, and yet with all the roads, places and people she’d encountered, it also entered her head that the contents of the letter the old man was about to read might not be pleasing. There were in fact two letters inside a large envelope. The first letter, larger than the other, was buff-coloured and had a look of officialdom about it. It was from a firm of Perth solicitors.
Father Flynn began: ‘Being solicitors in charge of the affairs of Doctor Roger Mackenzie, we have been instructed to inform you, Mrs Megan Stewart, that our client, being of sound mind, has bequeathed his entire estate to you. Following his recent death, it our duty to hand over keys of said property to yourself.’ The priest went on, but not one word made sense, apart from those that said Doctor Mackenzie, a dear friend of her family, had died.
‘You seem to own a bit of property, lass. What are you going to do?’
Her eyes welled up, at the memory of that sweet old man with the crabbit mare. His usual call, intended to be for a few minutes, would undoubtedly last all morning or afternoon; it would depend on his mood or just the flow of tinkers’ crack. The ease his visits brought to Annie, her mother, in those last agonising days of life. His parting left a hole unfilled, and in that moment she saw and yearned for the Angus Glens.
‘I think I’ll take my man back to Kirriemor, Father,’ she told him. ‘Dr Mackenzie’s house isn’t big, but it holds memories, good ones. Tell me what the second letter says?’
‘I forgot about it,’ he said, opening the small, whitish envelope.
‘Dear Megan,
It has been a long time since Rachel, her son Nicholas and I set sail for America.
We settled in the great city of New York. We spent a wonderful time there and loved our Manhattan apartment. Nicholas is almost ready for school. He is a handsome child and resembles his father, his mother informed me.
The reason I am forced to write, is sadly to inform you that recently Rachel took ill, and after three weeks of pneumonia lost her brave battle for life.
I have sent this letter to an address she said would in time reach your attention. I do hope it does.
She said on her deathbed that you must not be sad, because at last she and Jimmy will be together.
I now hope to relieve you of any concern for Nicholas. I have already adopted him, and shall do my utmost to see he wants for nothing,
Kindest regards
Lady Arabella Cortonach.’
‘Rachel, my dearest sister, you got your rich life, but what a pity you didn’t live to enjoy it! Still, I know your last breath would be given to see Nicholas well cared for. Bless you, my sister, sleep peacefully. I shall visit mother’s grave for you when I get there.’
In spite of her husband’s miraculous rescue and her new-found property, many memories picked up the threads of times past; she ached deeply, and wanted to be alone. The last of her family apart from young Nicholas were lost. ‘Why do we come into this world,’ she asked the priest, ‘if all we do is hurt, then die?’
Clouds were forming in the late afternoon sky. ‘Rain’s not far off,’ he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. ‘When it’s windy and bright, a woman washes clothes, but not if there’s sign of wet weather. Life’s a bit like that. We should live with the good and bad, but only remember the best days. You know, my dear, no matter how cloudy life gets, I promise you sunny days are just round the corner.’
Father Flynn said his farewells as she hugged and thanked him. Taking Bruar’s hand, she guided him onto the cart. It would take three days to reach Thurso, where she’d sell her horse and cart to whoever gave her a good price. Then, for the final time, they would take the train south to Perth, and from there it was a short journey to the home that her old friend had gifted her.
Soon she was slipping the key of Doctor Mackenzie’s house into its lock. For the several weeks that followed, she revelled in cleaning it, inside and out. He’d left a small sum of money, and this allowed a fairly easy winter. The kind folks welcomed them home, and where once doors had been closed to them, the opposite was now the case. Megan and her lost man were greeted with open arms. The ploughmen had no quarrel with her or Bruar. In time they settled into their new life.
Bruar continued to make slow progress, and one night while a wild wind rattled the windows in their frames, he spoke!
It happened without warning. It was the constant battering of wind on the old house that did it. Neither could sleep, such was the intensity of the wind. He was disturbed, and it seemed to agitate him. She pulled bedcovers around them both and sang a soft song. He quietened, then to her utter amazement ran a hand over her head and whispered, as a sliver of moonlight rested on her head, ‘Megan has grey hair.’
She threw back the covers and grabbed him by the shoulders; he was smiling from ear to ear.
‘That’s what you were trying to say at Durness!’ She leapt from the bed and dashed across to the dressing table, fumbling with a small oil lamp. She stared into the oval mirror, and there was indeed a very prominent grey-white hair visible among the black.
‘Bruar, talk to me—say something, anything!’ She lifted a shoe from the floor, held it above her head and asked, ‘What’s this?’ her eyes staring like eggs.
‘Put down the shoe, Megan.’
‘Oh my dear sweet man, at long last! Mother Earth has heard and answered my prayers.’ She dived from the room, threw open the front door, ran into the garden, and danced around her neat flower beds; sprays of rainwater fanning around her bare feet. Such was the joy when she returned to bed, they cried into each other all night long.
From that night Bruar progressed in leaps and bounds. Life took on a gentle serenity. She continued to wander the high hills gathering heather roots and making her pot scourers. He took on work with a shepherd, and showed a wonderful ability for the job. Soon he was able to look after his own flock. With his doggies excitedly circling his feet, the seasons passed in a gentle, harmonious pace.
Children, however, failed to bless the quiet household and many a time Megan would take crocheted mittens to a neighbour’s new baby, just to have the excuse to look and hold the tiny infant.
One night, while Bruar had been helping with a farmer’s lambing and had been out all night, Megan found sleep difficult. Thinking that she heard him on the doorstep, she wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and opened the door. Half-expecting the dogs to rush past her, she was puzzled to see no one there. She called his name several times and was about to close the door, when she was suddenly startled by a voice. ‘Please, missus, don’t shut yer door!’
Megan stepped outside and saw a shivering girl, no more than fifteen if she was that, standing by the house. ‘Come out of the shadows, lassie, and tell me why you are out at this hour.’
‘Missus, ah canna keep it, ah’ve left it lying in yon wee gairden
shed. I ken you’ll be good tae it, God bless ye, missus.’ The girl reached out to Megan and pushed a torn blanket into her hands. With her sleeve she wiped tears away and said, ‘Ah’m a tinker, and faither would kill me. I ca’ her Mary.’
At that the girl turned on her heels, and before Megan could utter a word was gone down the road. She wondered if the family was camping in their old site. She wanted to ask who they were, but darkness and the speed of the girl’s departure prevented a conversation. Megan felt a sense of déja vu, flashes of visions of herself running off down the road all those years ago. She was about to go back inside the house when a small cry came from behind her in the old garden shed. Her investigation revealed what she had already guessed would be there. Fearing that an infant was lying there in ill-health or worse, she stepped inside. It was dark, but a lamp hung on a nail behind the door. She rushed back to the house and lit the lamp at her fire. Soon she found the tiny parcel curled in a basket covered in bracken—a baby girl, newly born. It took her no time to bring the babe into the warmth of the house and fill it full of warmed milk.
But what to do? Whoever mother was, she certainly wanted no one to know of her child. Megan felt certain, though, that she’d come back when things were better. But she waited and waited, and as one month followed another, the mother never returned.
So into their lives came a daughter who grew strong and single-minded. Her adoptive parents from the beginning told her the truth. It seemed important that she knew of her background. Years passed, and although encouraged to do so, young Mary never left to search for her natural mother. She was content to share her life with clumsy Bruar, even although he stammered and sometimes uttered not a word for months. But when he did find his voice, she marvelled at his tales of Vikings, peat bog monsters, wild waters and high mountains.
The most precious memories of all came from her proud surrogate mother. From her, in winter nights beside a roaring fire, she learned the story of how against insurmountable odds she set off to search for her severely shell-shocked husband, and regardless of fiend or foe, single-handedly brought him home...
One thing moved and haunted Mary—that ‘promise’. Megan always felt she might let her man down when he talked about the ancient burial site. So when her death approached before his, she laid it on Mary’s shoulders, and asked her, when his time came, if she could fulfil the promise made all those years ago on a bonny windswept hillside.
It was a responsibility she shouldered with pride, and carried out one winter day.
Below the derelict Parbh lighthouse, his remains lie for eternity. Not so his spirit! It dances in the salty sea sprays, gliding among the puffins and seagulls. It holds back hordes of Viking warriors, then sees them blindly descending into the peat bogs of Sutherland. And nearby there’s a green-eyed tinker lassie watching with pride.
THE END
POSTSCRIPT
I reflected during many sleepless nights that my storyteller had more insight into her tale than a traveller woman who had just been told it by another. Unable to get free of these restless thoughts, I took a visit to my late friend’s lawyer, who held her legal documents. She had left no heir and he agreed to see me. In his presence I viewed the only papers still surviving to say who she really was.
The marriage and death certificates, plus a torn Peddler’s Licence, gave familiar information, but there was one more document—a certificate of adoption. Mary had been abandoned as a child and reared by a couple named Margaret and Blair Stewart.
Was Blair none other than Bruar, and was Megan’s real name Margaret?
I don’t think I want to track down war records or write to the authorities for information about the characters from this story. Something tells me that Mary knew the answers, and that’s good enough for me.
ENDNOTES
1 Author’s note: in Highland communities superstitions abound. Feared among all shore dwellers was hearing, and God forbid, witnessing, the haunting sight and sound of a Ban Sidh. This was a creature supposed to be of wispy thin appearance, with long, grey-white hair that danced from head to feet, a skull face and no eyes; it heralded a coming death. Fishermen who were late home from a trip at sea would cause great worry within households, until their boat was spotted far out on the horizon. Women would enquire of each other if a foreboding was in the air. The wisdom of older females would be sought to see if anyone had experienced anything strange, for instance whistling winds or howling dogs. Rory had been reared on such tales—he’d a deep inner fear, and perhaps that was part of the reason he left his sons. Shakespeare fashioned Macbeth’s witches on the model of the Ban Sidh (pronounced Banshee).
2 Author’s note: It was a sworn law amongst travelling people that someone must see mother and baby separate their joining. In this way no one could say that the mother had stolen another’s child.
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM BIRLINN BY JESS SMITH
JESSIE’S JOURNEY
From the ages of 5 to 15, Jess Smith lived with her parents, sisters and a mongrel dog in an old, blue Bedford bus. They travelled the length and breadth of Scotland, and much of England too, stopping here and there until they were moved on by the local authorities or driven by their own instinctive need to travel. By campfires, under the unchanging stars they brewed up tea, telling stories and singing songs late into the night. “Jessie’s Journey” describes what it was like to be one of the last of the traditional travelling folk. It is not an idyllic tale, but despite the threat of bigoted abuse and scattered schooling, humour and laughter run throughout a childhood teeming with unforgettable characters and incidents.
TALES FROM THE TENT
In Tales from the Tent, Jess Smith – Scottish traveller, hawker, gypsy, ‘gan-about’ and storyteller – continues the unforgettable story started in Jessie’s Journey of her life on the road. Unable to adjust to settled life working in a factory after leaving school, she finds herself drawn once again to the wild countryside of Scotland. Having grown up on the road in an old blue bus with her parents and seven sisters, Jessie now joins her family in caravans, stopping to rest in campsites and lay-bys as they follow work around the country – berry-picking, hay-stacking, ragging, fortune-telling and hawking. Making the most of their freedom, Jessie and her family continue the traditional way of life that is disappearing before their eyes, wandering the roads and byways, sharing tales and living on the edge of ‘acceptable’ society. Intertwined with the story of Jessie’s loveable but infuriating family, incorrigible friends, first loves and first losses are her ‘tales from the tent’, a collection of folklore from the traveller’s world, tales of romance, mythical beasts, dreams, ghostly apparitions and strange encounters.
TEARS FOR A TINKER
In the third and final book of Jess Smith’s autobiographical trilogy, Jess traces her eventful life with Dave and their three children, from their earliest years together. Their adventures and achievements are interspersed with stories of her parents’ childhood, her father’s ‘tall tales’ and the eerie echoes of ghosts and hauntings that she has heard from gypsies and travellers over many years. Fans of Jess Smith will not be disappointed with her latest memoir, full of more unforgettable characters and insight into the travellers’ way of life, a tradition that stretches back more than 2000 years and survives in the rich oral tradition of its people.
WAY OF THE WANDERERS
Scottish Gypsies, known as Travellers or Tinkers, have wandered Scotland’s roads and byways for centuries. Their turbulent history is captured in this passionate new book by Jess Smith, the bestselling author of Jessie’s Journey and a Traveller herself. Her quest for the truth takes her on a personal journey of discovery through the tales, songs and culture of the ‘pilgrims of the mist’, who preferred freedom to security, and a campfire under the stars to a hearth within stone walls. The history Jess has uncovered reveals centuries of prejudice and shocking violence by settled society against Travellers, including the enforced break-up of families and separate schooling. But drawing
on her own and her family’s experiences as they wandered the glens and braes of Scotland, she also captures the magic and rich traditions of a life lived outside conventional boundaries.
BRUAR’S REST
Bruar’s Rest is an epic tale of love and loyalty set against the backdrop of World War One. The story opens in the Highlands at the beginning of the twentieth century. The gypsy wife of wild drunkard Rory Stewart dies giving birth to their second son. Many years pass, and Rory and his sons are rootless travellers on the roads of Scotland. One night, during a winter storm, they save another traveller family from freezing to death in a blizzard. Bruar Stewart and one of the girls he rescues, the hot-blooded and beautiful Megan, fall in love. But the First World War is declared, tearing their lives apart. Bruar is reported missing in action, and Megan sets off on a long and perilous journey to find him...An epic tale of love and loyalty by the author of the spellbinding autobiographical trilogy, Jessie’s Journey.
SOOKIN’ BERRIES
Introducing “Sookin’ Berries”, her collection of stories for younger readers, Jess Smith writes: ‘I have been a gatherer of tales for most of my life, and I suppose it all began when I was a wee girl. I shared a home with parents, seven sisters and a shaggy dog. It could be said that I lived a different sort of life from most other children, because ‘home’ was an old blue bus. We were known as tinkers or travellers, descendants of those who have wandered the highways and by ways of Scotland for two thousand years’. Acclaimed for her autobiographical trilogy, “Jessie’s Journey”, Jess is on a mission to pass on the stories she heard as a girl to the young readers of today. ‘If you are aged from around 10 going on 100, then you’re a fine age to read, enjoy and hopefully remember forever these ancient oral tales of Scotland’s travelling people. What I’d like you to do in this book is to come with me on the road; back to those days when it was time to pack up and get going, and to take the way of our ancestors. I want you to imagine that, as my friend, you are by the campfire listening to the magical Scottish stories that have been handed down through generations of travellers’.
