A Small Death in the Great Glen (15 page)

Although Granny Ross disapproved of Joanne, her sister Elizabeth and her brother-in-law Duncan, him being a minister of the church had ameliorated her initial opinion of her daughter-in-law. “Not good enough for my son” was code for “brazen hussy.” Now it was “Too big for her boots” and that other expression, common throughout the land, used to describe any woman who thought for herself, who did not conform, who tried to better herself: “Who does she think she is?”

Mrs. Ross senior expressed these opinions to no one but Grandad Ross, and he filtered his wife's monologues as he filtered the background chatter from the wireless, only tuning in when his sixth sense told him that an “oh really?” or an “uh-huh” or a “grand” was needed.

Granny Ross could stand it no more. She turned to Elizabeth.

“The bairns are filthy. Look at them.”

“They're having a lovely time, aren't they?” Elizabeth beamed. “Grandad, could you ask them to come in and have a good wash before lunch? Granny, could you look at the lamb for me? I think it's about right.”

She knew full well Granny Ross would sniff at the lamb, “Underdone,” she'd mutter, but that was how the minister liked it. The vegetables were almost raw, the tatties still had their skins on and Duncan insisted on draining the curly kale water into a mug, adding a good pinch of pepper and drinking it. Then he, a minister of the kirk, would serve himself and her husband, George, a glass of stout. He even offered some to the womenfolk.

Duncan's Ford Prefect crunched up the gravel driveway. The ordered ritual of the Sunday lunch began.

Church first, Sunday school for the children, family lunch, then the Sunday Afternoon Walk, that was the time-honored ritual for most families. Unless they were Wee Frees. To Granny Ross's eternal shame, her son refused to join them, hating church. Usually it was back to the house for dinner (she would have nothing to do with calling it lunch), where Granny Ross cooked; Grandad Ross read the
Sunday Post;
the children read the comic section of the paper starring Oor Wullie and the Broons; Grandad would check the football pools, listen to
Two-Way Family Favorites
on the Home Service and snooze in his chair.

Then, early afternoon, come rain or shine or snow—maybe a blizzard would stop them, but nothing else—they would set off, dressed in their Sunday best, hats and all, on the Sunday Walk. The girls knew that sulking or complaining would get them nowhere, “fresh air makes children big and strong.”

The Rosses' route never varied. So, once out the garden gate,
across the road, along past the rows of neat, tidy, identical bungalows, Granny Ross would start her monologue on the state of the neighbors' gardens. The children had to be restrained from skipping too high or chatting too loud, and a shriek or a shout would result in a slap from their grandmother. It was Sunday, after all. Soon they reached the imposing iron gates of the cemetery.

Granny Ross always read the
Gazette
in unchanging order. Births, Deaths and Marriages first, though in her case the order was Deaths, Births and Marriages. Who died, their age and where they were buried was of great importance. The volcanic plug and its surrounding acres, densely wooded, deeply mysterious, was
the
cemetery, Tomnahurich. On each side of a narrow spiral path winding to the top of the plug were the graves of previous centuries. Newer graves spread outward along wider gravel pathways on the flat. But the only place to wait for the Second Coming was right here. Granny Ross knew that and pitied anyone who had to lie in lesser grounds. There were burying places where others went to wait for the Resurrection. For Catholics, as they are going to hell for their popery, there was no need for a burial at all as far as Granny Ross was concerned. Religion for the north of Scotland was tribal. Ecumenical causes and the Iona idea of a loving Christianity were mostly ignored. The answer to “What church do you go to?” told more about a family than their profession or trade. The river was not the only divide in the town.

Once through the gates, Annie and Wee Jean ran to the start of the climb. Up the winding paths, past lichen-covered gravestones, some staggering, some fallen, some placed flat, spiraling round the hill, up through the cold canopy of laurel and cypress and holly and oak, jumping over fallen tombstones, daring to tread on the dead, up to the top, to the panorama of town and firth and canal and river and off in the distance the snowcapped mass of Ben Wyvis, the children ran. Grandad, using his walking stick on
the steeper parts, followed steadily, slowing to tip his hat to ladies and his betters, his wife following in his wake. The grandparents reached their favorite bench in their favorite spot, with a great view of the town gasworks, a good five minutes after the girls.

“I'm fair peched,” Grandad said, as he said every Sunday.

“That's 'cos you're old, Granda.” Wee Jean cooried into the old man's side, hiding from the North Sea wind.

“Where do we go when we die?” Annie started.

“Heaven,” Granny sighed.

“But maybe I'll go to hell, like the Bible says.”

Grandad said immediately, “Of course not,” but Granny secretly thought that there was something about this child that would lead to no good.

“Good girls go to heaven and bad girls to the other place.” Granny had to get her bit in. She was ignored.

“Grandad, tell us about the faeries,” both girls begged. They had heard the stories many times before and never tired of the telling.

“Once upon a time there was a faerie queen. …”

“And she lived in the woods on the hill called Tomnahurich,” they joined in.

“And one day …” He continued with one of his many versions of the legends that added to the mysterious allure of the hill that physically and psychically dominated the town.

Annie tried to pretend that the story was for babies like Jean but, as always, she too became absorbed in the tales. A girl who lived in her imagination, she often wondered if she was adopted or, more likely, kidnapped by the faeries and returned to the wrong family. But no, that couldn't have happened as she was too like her mother; tall, skinny, thick brown hair with a curl and passionate green-gray eyes. But eyes that betrayed a suspicion of people.

“Time to go,” announced Granny Ross. “My old bones are feeling the damp.”

At the bottom of the hill they passed the new graves.

“Will the faeries look after Jamie?” Wee Jean asked Grandad.

Granny Ross grabbed the girl's hand to hurry her out of the cemetery and continue the walk to the Islands, and to evade the question, scolded, “If you want your Sunday treat, we have to hurry.”

It was most unusual for Mrs. Ross to forgo the pleasure of checking the new graves. Examining the wreaths, counting their number, reading the cards, this was the highlight of her week. Family wreaths were judged by their cost, others by the importance of the sender. The usual morbid questions from her eldest granddaughter were not what she needed, today of all days.

The Islands were just that, a group of small, scattered islands in the middle of the river linked by a series of footbridges. Tunnels of trees, waterfalls, rapids, birdsong, benches along the sandy paths leading to the Island Café, serving Italian ice cream and teas, this was a favorite place for the Sunday walk and for courting couples.

Annie and Wee Jean waited in the queue clutching their threepenny bits for an ice cream. Granny Ross settled on the veranda of the café with a group of lady friends, each surreptitiously eyeing up any new hats and all trying valiantly not to be the first to broach the subject on everyone's thoughts, the death of the boy. Grandad stood outside the café raising his hat to a passing stream of acquaintances. He was a well-known, well-liked man, champion of the local bowling club and member of the British Legion and a singer of renown. And he had once had a reputation as a bit of a ladies' man, so Joanne had heard.

Ice cream in hand, Annie ran ahead and was now jumping on the suspension bridge, finding the exact spot to make it sway up
and down in a caterpillar motion. Granny Ross and her friends were regathering on the pathway about to go their separate ways, still chattering away like a gathering of rooks at twilight. “Oh really?” or “Oh I know!” they cawed from time to time. Grandad and Wee Jean waited patiently. Between licks on her cone the wee girl was explaining about her friend Jamie.

“My friend Jamie, he's dead.” She started in a matter-of-fact six-and-a-half-year-old way.

“Aye, it's very sad.” Grandad held on to her free hand, treasuring the contact.

“We saw him,” she explained, “me and Annie, we saw this great big black hoodie crow. He opens the door, all of a sudden like, an' he spreads out his wings”—she flung her arms up and open in a wide circle, splatting ice cream like seagull poo down her Sunday coat—“and he picks up Jamie in his wings and takes him to Heaven an' now baby Jesus'll play with Jamie an' when he's in the hole in the ground in the cemetery the faeries'll be his friends too, so he won't be lonely and he won't be feart of the water nor the dark like he used to be.”

Grandad stared down at the child. At first he was confused, then astonished, then a little worm of concern started to burrow its way into his subconscious; what on earth was the child on about? Granny came up from behind. He jumped. His first conscious thought was relief that his wife hadn't heard the child's ramblings.

“I hear Joanne's friends, they foreigners, have got themselves into a right pickle.”

There was a note of satisfaction as she explained what she had heard about Peter Kowalski sheltering a fugitive from justice. She got no answer but was used to that. There had been other, much darker rumblings on the subject of the two Polish men, but she judged that now was not the time to raise the subject.

“Those Italian friends of hers, the ones with the café and chip shop, they've done well for themselves.” She jumped from subject to subject like fleas on a dog, but Grandad Ross was used to this and never made any attempt to follow his wife's logic. All would be revealed in due course, this he knew only too well.

“Aye, they come to town with nothing, straight out of the camps some of them. And look where they are now—taking over the place.”

It would be a long time before there would be any Christian forgiveness for the former enemy. Midwar, released from the camps where they were interned, quite rightly as she saw it, some had just walked into cafés and chip shops throughout Scotland, so she said. No matter that no Scotsman knew how to make ice cream, nor coffee, no matter that the men and women had spent years in cold windswept camps, laboring in fields trying to turn the tide of stones that appeared after every plowing, planting potatoes, working the land. Some were farmboys from another impoverished region, albeit warmer and with no midges; some were fellow Scots detained for being of Italian ancestry. The hard work, the loss of their businesses, their land, and country, and language, the death of their families; that meant nothing to Mrs. Ross. To be fair, Grandad thought, the Scottish regiments suffered horrendously in Messina, Monte Cassino, all through the Italian campaign. Their son, their only bright laughing boy, had come home from Italy a haunted, damaged man.

Granny Ross's rant came to an abrupt halt. She had spied the pale pink and white splats on Wee Jean's coat.

“Will you look at the state of you?” she cried.

And, dragging the sniveling child by one hand, nagging her husband over her shoulder and calling to Annie to keep up, she marched them past the war memorial, past the municipal flower beds with only the sad remains of fading wallflowers and
chrysanthemums showing, marched them over the suspension bridge, past the infirmary, home, to a cup of tea, the wireless and a rest.