Tears for a Tinker (2 page)

‘I’ll tell you when we get home,’ I told him, adding, ‘now stop staring at people.’

That night after supper, with Horace laid to rest in a matchbox buried underneath a soft patch on the washing green, my little boy brought up the subject of the traveller and her sad, wet-eyed
children.

I knew the woman, not personally, but recognised her from her kin, who usually winter-camped in bowed tents near Lochgilphead. Sometimes they favoured Double Dykes. This was a large boggy field
on the outskirts of Perth, and now, thanks to the efforts of hardy travelling folks, it had been turned into a properly-run caravan site.

‘Well, my lad,’ I said, sitting him on my knee and squeezing him gently, ‘that poor woman had no husband. Those bairns didn’t have a daddy like you to bring in money for
food.’

He asked where their dad was, but at six-years-old his young ears were not ready to hear that the man was burned to death in a warehouse fire in Glasgow. I simply said that he died of a bad
illness. I know telling lies is not a good parent thing, but Johnny was a sensitive child.

His little eyes widened, and I could see the brain cells painting a picture of kids without a dad. I went on, ‘those tears were caused by their mother rubbing onions around their eyes to
make them cry.’ This seemed to horrify my child. He jumped off my knee, eyes wider than ever in disgust and wonderment. ‘How could a mother do that?’ he raised his voice. I looked
into his little reddened face and calmed him down. ‘Son’, I assured him, ‘no mother loves her children more than a travelling mother, but those kids had to beg, and that was her
quick and authentic way of doing it. Long ago—well, if after the last war was long ago—that woman’s menfolk would have owned tinkering tools to fix pitchforks and knives, pots and
pans; in fact any kind of broken metal would have been sorted, and that would bring in money. She would have had a job if it were the olden days. They used to be called tinkers because of the noise
their tools made as they carried them on horse bags or wee bogeys, and later, prams.’

He didn’t understand much of what I told him, nor the word authentic, but he got enough of the explanation to learn that onions make you cry, and crying brings caring folks to part with a
few coppers. ‘If that mother had begged for money, folks would have looked the other way. The tears unwittingly made them give generously. Tears reach our souls. And I know that for every
person who gave, she would have blessed them with a prayer to God.’

Silence followed, and both Dave and I could see our wee boy deep in thought. In time he went into the bathroom, and came out with tears flowing down his small face. ‘What in heaven’s
name is wrong, laddie?’ asked his concerned father, whilst I was busy feeding Barbara, our youngest, who was three at the time.

‘Those wee tinker bairns without a daddy made onion tears. Well, I have cried some real ones for them.’

Johnnie was cradling in his hand a photograph of his dear departed Horace.

When our children grew older, I would often tell them stories of my own tinker childhood, and to this day they are proud that mother belongs to a cultural background rich in
ballads, stories, and with a lifeline going back two thousand years.

Well, where will I start? Yes, let’s go back to Crieff, just after Stephen, our second lad, was born. We were living in a rented flat, part of a large Georgian house. If you have refilled
your cup, then let’s walk back again, back down memory lane.

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MAMMY, WHAT NICE PICTURES IN THIS CAR

D
avie had a succession of jobs, but all paying next to nothing, and this meant very little money for anything other than the bare necessities. My
in-laws, Margaret and Sandy, were super at keeping the kids in clothes, sometimes paying the odd bill when we struggled with other debts. Sandy worked at Naval Stores near Almondbank, three miles
from Perth. In his spare time he excelled as a poulterer for John Lows, fishmonger in Crieff. Margaret had taken jobs cleaning hotels and offices. Davie had a younger brother, Alex, who was a wee
brain-box. Much to his parents’ delight, he was always studying, head down in books. Alistair had been their oldest son, but at twenty-one years old, while serving in Germany with Her
Majesty’s Royal Engineers, he was killed by an express train. Margaret never got over the loss of her boy, avoiding any conversation that might open her wounds. In her own way of dealing with
his death, she kept quiet and to herself.

I sometimes wondered if I was good enough for her son, me being from travelling stock, but she made me welcome from the first moment we met, and we stayed friends until her death of cancer many
years later.

Mammy and Daddy had uprooted themselves and headed for Macduff on the Moray coast. A picturesque house nestled at the top of the town became their home, and if memory serves me right the street
they lived on was Patterson Street. Macduff is built on a steep hill, so the views of the ocean from that house were spectacular. When we visited them for the first time I didn’t want to go
away, it was so fresh and beautiful. Even the sea-gulls had a kind of regal glide to their wings.

Dave and I bought a cheap scrap-heap of a car for the journey, a white Ford Popular it was, from a ‘This is a bargain, honest, folks’ mate. From Crieff to Macduff is 140 miles, and
how we survived that trip was a miracle to say the least. Round about Perth it became apparent that the vehicle had a few more openings than just the doors and windows. Johnnie sat alone in the
back, and kept telling us he could see brown and black ribbons, and what a bonny picture they made at his feet, also that he wasn’t comfortable due to a lumpy bit on the seat. We ignored him,
putting his remarks down to the vivid imaginings of a toddler. I sat in the front with Stephen on my knee. This was before seat-belts, and when I think on how dangerous cars were back then,
I’m certain a higher being was watching over us. Outside Perth, Davie heard a rattling sound and pulled over to investigate. It was then he discovered that Johnnie’s ribbons were in
fact the road beneath us. Our wee laddie had been staring down through a gaping hole in the car floor, which had given way not long into our journey. The rattling sound was another problem; the
exhaust had decided to part company with us, causing the most horrendous roar all the way to Macduff. How the police didn’t get wind of our travelling beats me. When we at last arrived at our
destination, Daddy was horrified by the state of our transport, and flabbergasted the car had made it.

However we soon forgot about the car, because I was so happy being near my precious Mammy. After looking over her new home I thought, ‘she’ll be content here’.

This was the first time in thirty years that my parents had slept in a bed that didn’t need folding up in the morning. Daddy felt uncomfortable at the change, and so spent most of his time
scanning the horizon of the sea from a high wall circling the fine garden, like a mariner with a hand shading his eyes, rather than sitting inside at a nice warm fire. I must have got my travelling
blood from him. Mammy, on the other hand, was in her element. She had her very own sink, oven, bath, washing line and much more. At long last she had arrived at her castle—a wee queen. She
discovered, much to her delight, she had green fingers, and grew herbs, flowers and shrubs. She baked cakes. Boiled up, not just berries for jam, but countless pans of other culinary delights to
store in large jars, which she delicately labelled and stored in the larder.

Meantime my younger sisters, Renie and Babs, took on jobs living as any normal lassies would do, and never mentioned their rich cultural background as travellers.

Daddy still had his health, and his spray-painting equipment that he used for contract work. He started up a small business, earning enough to live a comfortable existence. He furnished the
house with all that was needed, and soon settled into the friendly neighbourhood. However, when asked if he was now a ‘scaldy’, he would reply, ‘Nae way am I a hoose-dweller.
I’ll aye keep yin eye on the road, another yin on the sky.’ What that meant was that if the mood and the weather suited him, he would go.

By then I couldn’t have seen Mammy going with him, though. She loved her bus-travelling days, no doubting that, but now, older and stiffer, she’d settled for her cosy wee hoose.
Anyway, she’d seen enough of Scotia’s bit fields and wood-ends in her lifetime. There wasn’t a B-road she didn’t know, nor a landowner she cared to know; a lifetime as a
gan-aboot for my dear Ma was well and truly over.

The only worry she had was that Daddy’s habit of leaving doors open at night stayed with him. When a boy, because of claustrophobia, he’d throw open the tent flaps at night, and
according to Granny Riley they’d all be near frozen stiff. Even the bus door would get drawn back; frost-covered eyebrows he’d wake up with many a winter morning. So once more, even
although he’d found a spacious bedroom to sleep in, the daft gowk insisted on leaving the house door ajar. Nothing scunnered Mammy more than thinking a wee mouse was inside her larder,
scoffing all those cheeses and cakes she stored so meticulously. Many a time she scolded him, ‘Charlie, man, I’ll feed the mice-droppings tae ye if I find them at the fit o’ ma
press. Honest tae God, I’ll pit them in yer stew and tatties.’

He in turn would say, ‘I dinna want that bloody door locked if a fire breaks oot.’

‘Away an’ no be so silly’, she reminded him nightly. ‘The fire’s cinders and ash. Anyway, the safety screen is on.’

We couldn’t drive home after that first visit because Davie was pulled up by the Banff police on account of our noisy exhaustless car. Banff is only a mile from Macduff, separated by a
grand bridge. There’s a story from those parts about a certain fiddler I’ll share with you soon, but not until I’ve told you about our car. Driving along the road, Davie noticed
he was being followed by a police car. The officer who pulled him over had a wee look under the vehicle, and when he stood up said to Davie, ‘Div ye ken there’s a burst spring in that
car, loon? It’s a’ down on the one side.’

My poor husband, who had not long had his driving license but acted like he knew all about motors, said, ‘Och no, officer, there’s nothing wrong with it, it’s only a wee-er
spring than on the ither side.’

The policeman took off his helmet, knelt down and said, ‘Listen tae me noo, loon, an’ no be makin a fule o’ me. I ken enough aboot motors to tell when one has a burst spring.
Now follow us and we’ll gie this heap a guid going over.’

Well, to cut a long anxious story short for Davie, they told him to come back after two, and they’d have it inspected properly. Imagine his horror when he found his white Popular Ford sat
at the rear of the yard, with a sticker on it saying ‘non-roadworthy’. The lumpy bit that had made our wee Johnnie so uncomfortable was in fact the broken spring, held in place only by
the metal frame of the back seat.

A visit to a scrappy left us with three pounds and car-less. Once again we were reliant on some kind soul to take us home. This time my Uncle Joe offered to take us, and boy, were we
grateful.

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A LOOSE MOOSE