Tears for a Tinker (4 page)

‘I hope for your sake those fine Irish linen sheets are intact,’ I told her, unfolding her fingers from my pinched flesh.

Mammy threw up the mattress and opened her blanket box. ‘Hold that candle down there,’ she ordered Daddy. I swear, on my Granny’s low grave, I have never seen such a sight; no
wonder Mammy shrieked louder than the Banshee. Piled high inside the box were mounds and mounds of shredded sheets, blankets and eiderdowns, and curled in a corner was a terrified wee mouse with a
dozen and more tiny weans, all squeaking and squirming.

Mammy never knew it was Shirley who caused that catastrophe by introducing a pregnant mouse to our home, but I knew, and boy, did I put the tighteners on her when I wanted something!

3

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

N
ow, back to the pokey flat in Crieff where Dave and I were living. The postman made me cringe each time he pushed mail through the
letter-box—with me feeling trapped behind four concrete walls and a heavy oak door, it seemed to me that he was a prison warder having a peek.

Davie was born and reared in a house, how could he possibly understand my anguish? The poor man had enough to do keeping down a job without having to take my constant nagging about how unhappy I
was in that house. ‘Listen pet,’ he assured me at nights when I tossed and turned in bed, ‘you have more to think about nowadays than yourself.’ He’d point across at
our sleeping infants, and I knew what he meant.

In all honesty, though, as days turned into weeks, I began to hate my basic but comfortable home, and could hardly wait for morning, when my little boys were rushed into their clothes and popped
into the pram. Like a miniature gypsy wagon, that pram was crammed with enough food and drink to last all day, as I got as far away from the four walls and into the fields and woodland surrounding
Crieff. Stephen’s baby milk was wrapped in tin-foil and nappies to keep it warm. When we stopped, out would come blankets for the kids to lie on. Then my shoes would be discarded, as Mother
Earth and my feet joined again. It was as if I was retracing my steps to old tinker ground.

Listening to the different birds singing to each other, it seemed as if they were including me and my wee lads. I’d sing a lullaby to my tiny infant, then when he was asleep I’d
teach Johnnie how to tell the difference between trees and bushes. Tell him tales of the Tree people who lived under bark, and Giant Mactavish who spent all his two hundred years living in the
forest fighting off the Smelly Sock frogs. (When I recall how his big hazel green eyes lit up at those stories it makes a dull day disappear.)

Rain or shine, it made no difference, just so long as me and my little half-breeds could escape to the open spaces. When the sunshine of summer shone in cloudless skies, going back to the house
was more than I could bear. Selfishly, I’d leave my wristwatch at home, and one day, when we eventually arrived back, it was a very angry, hungry husband who confronted me.

‘Jess, I can hardly work for worrying about you.’

‘Why?’

‘Trekking lonely byways with my wee sons, that’s why.’

‘They’re fine; do you think I’d put my boys in danger?’

‘If you’d come down out of your silly cloud for one minute and listen to me. What if one of them got sick or something?’

‘Davie, travelling people live like that, we cope with everything, even sickness.’

My stubbornness hit a raw nerve, he thumped the kitchen table so hard all four legs bounced off the floor. Cups wobbled in their saucers as sugar scattered between them.

‘I am not a traveller, though, and these are my sons! And by God, I don’t want them dragged around the countryside because their stupid mother won’t let go of a dead lifestyle.
Now stop it and get a grip.’

That night I wrote the longest letter of my life to Mammy.

Davie and I were like strangers after that night, with an iron atmosphere between us. Sandy brought a garden swing for Johnnie and Margaret gave me a Bero home-baking recipe book. Strange to
imagine me being a good baker, but with my wandering curtailed I had to do something. Davie saw I was trying to adapt into scaldy life, and in time our marriage did strengthen again.

Then came the letter from Mammy.

Round the corner from her house was a wee low-roofed cottage, Daddy knew the old man who lived there. He, getting too elderly, had decided to move over to Aberdeen with his niece. The rent would
be affordable. ‘Did we want to come up to Macduff?’

I was like a bairn on a Christmas morning. ‘Oh Davie, please say we can go.’ The thought of living in a new place beside my parents was drawing pictures of wonderful excitement.

I had deep pangs pounding in my breast. Would Davie, who was a Crieff man through and through, say no... or maybe yes. I watched his face, then he said, ‘I’m away out to think this
over.’

Hours passed, and there was still no sign. It made me think my long-suffering husband was not ready to up sticks and go far north; fifty miles north of Aberdeen, to be precise. However, just
after midnight I heard his key in the door. If extra persuasion was needed I’d baked a thick chocolate cake.

‘Well, lad?’ I asked, pushing near half the cake under his nose, and waited on his answer.

‘Yip!’

I could hardly contain my excitement, because when Davie said ‘yip’, it came without conditions. We were leaving Crieff and this nightmare prison of a house.

That night we cuddled and laughed with excitement at our forthcoming new ground.

‘My birth sign is “Pisces”, the two fishes. Macduff is a fishing port. All the signs are there—we will be happy.’ I was heart-sure. Davie joked, reminding me his
sign was Cancer. ‘Plenty of them crawling among seaweed on the shores of the Moray Firth,’ he said, and tickled me, pretending to be a crab.

We were both only twenty-one, a lifetime spread out before us. Macduff, I was certain, would be just the first place of many more.

Sandy and Margaret were heart-sorry to say goodbye, especially as we were taking their only grandchildren from them, but offers to visit would soon find them not far behind us.

4

THE BIG HUNTER WITH HIS POACHER COAT ON

I
have a wee tale to share with you before we all take ourselves up north. John Macalister, a half cousin of mine who had promised to flit us in
his wee van, was helping with our packing one night when he brought in a large rabbit some mate of his had trapped. I told him to take it away, because I’d no stomach for skinning or gutting.
Anyway, all my cutlery and cooking utensils were packed in boxes. Over a bottle of beer, he and Davie got talking about poaching and trapping and so on. When John left, Davie said. ‘I think
I’ll go out for a wee turn at the poaching.’

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Catch myself a goose.’

‘Davie, did you not hear me tell John all my utensils are in boxes?’

‘Dad would pluck and skin it, if I caught one, and Mother would cook it. We could call it our going-away feast from Crieff.’

This was my husband’s one and only attempt at goose-stalking.

Old Tam, a neighbour, had given Davie a long, heavy wool coat some time ago.

‘A richt poacher’s yin,’ Tam joked, showing Davie all the concealed buttons and hidden pockets. Davie thanked his neighbour, but as he never considered wearing anything other
than trendy Beatle jackets, he put it away, not intending to be seen in it. So imagine my surprise when he unearthed this sinister-looking garment to go goose-stalking.

All that day, fog and damp air covered the countryside. Geese and ducks could be heard flying above the blanket cover of mist. ‘Surely I’ll get myself one, there’s hundreds up
there,’ he said, pointing upwards, the poacher’s coat hanging loosely over his frame.

Before I could close my half-opened mouth he was gone, swallowed up by the mist that swirled round his ankles, billowing up into that coat. All he left behind was the eerie noise of his
footsteps on the pavement outside our soon-to-be-vacated house. I imagined him rounding a corner in the street. ‘My God,’ I thought, ‘he’ll frighten folks to death. He looks
like Jack the Ripper.’ One glance at the mist, tinged orange by the street lights, and the door was slammed shut, and my kettle boiled for a nice warm cup of tea.

For a moment I peered through a slit in the kitchen curtains, convinced he was joking and that I would soon hear his knocking on the door, but no sound came and I began to worry. Feeling a wee
bit uneasy about the thick, ghostly mist outside, I closed the window I’d left ajar, and then ran through the house, drawing the curtains. Johnnie pushed his tiny arm into mine and asked for
a biscuit. I gave him several, along with a box of Lego. Then, when Stephen filled his nappy, thankfully concerns about Davie diminished while I busied myself with the bairns. The hours passed
slowly, and my boys were long bedded and asleep when those familiar footsteps brought my man home. ‘Is that you, Davie?’ I asked, before opening the door.

‘Woman of the house, open the door and let your hunter in,’ he joked.

‘Have you caught a goose, then?’

‘Have I indeed. Feast you eyes on this big juicy fella.’ Davie threw open his poacher’s coat and rammed both hands eagerly inside the hidden pockets. From one he took out his
father’s priest (salmon thumper), and from the other a big, brightly-coloured, plastic, DECOY DUCK!

The sight in front of me I can only describe as unbelievable!

The fog had turned to rain and soaked him to the marrow. Exhausted, but still smiling, he made me promise hand on heart not to tell a living soul what had happened—that he had seen the
duck sitting in a field and lay on his belly for ages stalking it. When he decided that it must be an injured bird, he jumped up and charged. Not until its head went one way, and body the other,
did it dawn on him what it was he’d been stalking in thick mist as he crouched for hours on the freezing ground.

The poacher’s coat was handed in to big Wull Swift, a real life rabbit man. He, standing well over six feet, would be better suited to its size.

I never was one for breaking promises, so only after getting my red-faced husband’s permission have I ventured to reveal to you the tale of ‘The Big Hunter, with His Poacher Coat
On.’