Tales from the Tent (2 page)

M
y bus home of ten previous summers was gone and everyone told me to stop greeting about its demise and get on with life. Sister Shirley reminded
me daily that I was fifteen years old, with a whole life spread out before me. A world of wonder waiting to be explored, so get on with it.

But how could I? The neat bedroom she prepared for me with girlie curtains and bedspread to match stank of scaldy (settled) life and made me puke. I wished I was a road tramp with skin as brown
as toads, eating out of deerskin lunzies and laying my filthy body down to sleep behind bumpy-stoned dykes, with a star-encrusted heaven as my roof. But a fifteen-year-old female wouldn’t
last long. On the other hand I knew survival wasn’t impossible, not with the knowledge I’d accumulated on the road. We travellers are born survivors.

Shirley was kindness itself and tried her best to make me feel at home. So I bit my lip and said nothing about my true feelings.

The women at Fettykil Paper Mill in neighbouring Leslie, where Carl—Shirley’s then husband—found me a job, mothered the life from me. They recognised how unhappy I was. One of
them called Stella was from travelling stock and she said she knew how I felt. At break there would be a fairy cake or half a Mars Bar and sometimes a wee drink of ginger (lemonade) propped against
the paper-bag-holer machine I used. I knew it was Stella who left those treats because once I had told her how my Mammy did things like that in the bus. Whenever the old tonsillitis left me with a
vile taste in my mouth she’d put sweets and tit-bits under my pillow or in my sock, anywhere I’d perk up on finding them.

Still, all the kindness in the wide world failed to remove my misery, and one day round about three on a Friday afternoon I collapsed at the paper-bag-holer machine. Not before plunging its
giant needle straight through the index finger of my right hand, may I add. The factory doctor asked me if a period was the reason. Embarrassment turned me pure red in the face and silent. So he
diagnosed period pains, even though it wasn’t anything to do with that. The nurse was a wee bit more concerned and asked if there was a problem. I don’t know if it was her gentle voice
or the way she tilted her head as she bandaged that throbbing bleeding finger, but it opened the flood gates and I told her of my yearning to be home on the road with my own folks.
‘Lassie,’ she whispered, ‘away you go, pack your bits and pieces, and whatever you do don’t come back here on Monday.’ If I’d been offered a free dip at the
contents of Fort Knox I’d not have been happier than when I left the high-walled paper mill as soon as I did.

I hugged Stella with tears of unbridled joy. She laughed and said, ‘My God, girl, you’d think ye were gittin oot o’ the stardy.’

‘I feel like I’ve been in one,’ I told her.

Shirley wasn’t too pleased when she heard I’d had it with the scaldy life. In fact she was mortified, but what else could I do? What choice did I have? None.

Within three days Daddy and Mammy came over to Glenrothes and removed me, wee brown leather suitcase and all. I can’t say I wasn’t sorry to leave Shirley, because all through my
young life she was the heart of the bus, she was a fire when there was no coal in Wee Reekie, and I knew we’d miss each other. She was now a scaldy; her days of travelling had ended,
Scotland’s roads were a wee bit quieter from then on.

Shirley may have left the road but the road never left her, and for starters here is a wee poem by her to give the coming chapters a bitty atmosphere.

Aye, when we were young,

Wi’ oor luggies, hooks, strings and pails,

Boy, did we have fun.

And the sun was high in the sky,

Wi’ oor sloppy joes, jeans and boppers sae white,

A bottle o’ juice an a pie.

And greeted the auld weel kent set.

Sticky juice o’ the berries wis stuck roond oor mooths,

It’s a sight I’ll never forget.

And mother wis fair black-affronted.

We turned a shade green, were in bed for a week,

A doctor wis a’ that we wanted.

While filling oor pails it wis fun.

We a’ went tae the berry picking,

Aye, when we were young.

Oh my, what a delight for the eyes of a traveller lassie who’d been locked off the road for a full two months! The berry campsite was brimming with trailers,
hawker’s lorries, vans and lurcher dogs. The women, with heads of thick hair wrapped in multi-coloured head squares, were all cracking and gossiping. Younger lassies showed off slender
figures, flashing smiles and gold-ringed ears. Men were spitting on their hands and doing deals over horses or motors or whatever they fancied. I felt the giant butterflies bursting into life
inside my young breast—I was home, back on the green. If you’re not a traveller then you’ll be thinking I went mad. If you are, well, need I say more?

Mary, Renie and Babsy circled round and hugged me until I worried if I’d have a chest to breathe again. That was a grand welcome, but nothing like the one wee Tiny gave me. I swear if yon
dog could talk he’d have poured the love of every day he’d missed me through a tottie wet tongue right into my ear.

Without the bus, things would never be the same again, I knew that much, but I’d settle for the Eccles caravan and large Ford van Daddy had replaced it with. I named that motor Big Fordy.
(Remember Wee Fordy? Makes sense, doesn’t it?)

My parents realised they’d made a mistake by taking me off the road. I later heard Daddy tell Mammy that ‘Yon lassie o’ oors is like me when I was a youngster, Jeannie—a
thoroughbred gan-aboot.’

Mammy nodded and said, ‘Aye, Charlie, I’m thinking she’s a throwback from the old yins.’

Something completely different had become a fixture in our circle—
a male
! Mammy’s sister Annie’s boy Nicky had joined us, and was to prove invaluable as Daddy’s
right-hand man with the spray-painting. He had his own caravan, and was the reason frying steak was on our menu from then on.

Someone else had joined our crew whilst I was trying out the scaldy life—Portsoy Peter. He was a pal of Daddy’s, who went back as many years as my parents did. He hailed from
Morayshire. I can say this, with hand on heart, that more folks than I care to remember came through our lives, but no one sticks so vividly in my mind as this expert of the gab art, Portsoy, King
of the Con! He was a con-artist second to none. Soon I’ll share some of his expertise with you, but first I’d like to tell you about ‘Wullie Two’.

2

A CONVERSATION WITH WULLIE

F
or as long as I could go back in my mind, Wullie Two was part of the ‘berries’. Nobody knew much about him but the minute a fire was
lit, there was Wullie. ‘A wee bit simple,’ some would say. Others would just say he never grew up. He wasn’t violent or anything like that, in fact the opposite was the case. He
would go to the pictures with us young ones, sit on the back of the seats and shout out at John Wayne, ‘Git yer heed doon, man, the Indians are coming!’ He believed that the film being
projected in front of his eyes was really taking place. Then we would all shout at him, ‘Git yer heed doon, Wullie, the picture-house man wi the torch is comin.’ This of course was
double the entertainment for us, laughing ourselves silly at the antics of Wullie as he dived below our feet, thinking he’d be turfed out before the film had ended.

This is a conversation I had on a quiet Sunday with the guid lad.

‘Why are you called “Wullie Two”, Wullie?’

‘Weel, ma Mammy had four laddies, an as she wisnae very good wi names she cried us all the same. Wullie One, Wullie Two and so on.’

‘But how come she called you all Wullie?’

‘The scaldy hantel call a man’s private johnny, a wullie, and as ma faither used his tae give us a “jump start”, then that’s why we’re all cried
that.’

‘Have you any sisters?’

‘Aye.’

‘How many?’

‘Only the one.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘I dinna ken, but she wis a beautiful lassie.’

‘Have you forgotten her name?’

A silent pause made me wonder if I’d upset him somewhat, so I asked if he didn’t wish to answer. His response turned me silent.

‘Ma sister nivver had a name, neither had she a man tae herself.’

‘Was she fussy with lads?’

‘No, she fell in love with a greyhound, and when she had a litter o’ pups ma Dad sent her packing.’

I tried to stifle the surge of laughter welling in my throat, but I don’t believe anyone could hold back after such a comment, so I let rip. When I’d composed myself Wullie’s
next words sent me back into overdrive.

‘Ye may well laugh, but she’s rich noo, yon sister o’ mine, because ivery yin o’ yon dugs went on tae tak first place on Scotland’s racetracks, ivery
yin!’

‘Oh, Wullie, what a man you are. Where were you born, anyroad?’

‘Ma Mither found me sleeping in a pot o’ pea an ham soup, huddlin’ in ahent a puckle boilt bones.’

Just when I thought my sides would split his finishing comment left me in stitches.

‘It was rare an’ warm in yon pot!’

So there you have it, folks, my memory of a born comic. No script, no rehearsal, just a pure untapped rarity of golden delight. However, the more I think about Wullie, the more a certain
Rattray man’s words keep turning over in my head. His nickname was Shakims, and as he said, ‘Who’s the more foolish—him who tells the tale or him who believes
it?’

3

A KINDRED SPIRIT

H
ere is the story of Mac.

The July sun was never as hot as it was that day, so once I’d reached the grand sum of one pound and ten shillings worth of berries picked, I dropped the wee metal luggie tied round my
waist and headed home. The berry farmer wasn’t too pleased with my early withdrawal from his heavily-laden fruit field and called after me, ‘Where are you going, young un?’

I had hoped he wouldn’t miss me, but as the rain had poured solid the two previous weeks, this cratur was desperate to see all hands on deck to transfer his yield of fruit, which was
hanging heavy, from bush to baskets. I had no wish to lie, so as the pinky of my right hand had earlier suffered the fierce sting of a big orange and yellow bumblebee, I used this as my excuse. He
tutted and warned me to ‘mind and make sure you work double hard the morra.’ Poor man, little did he know cousin Nicky had removed the bee’s painful spike over two hours earlier,
and although the pain was still there it certainly didn’t warrant a ‘sicky’. But after I’d soaked my head under the waterspout behind the farmhouse I was more than glad that
the day’s berry picking had come to a close. Betsy Whyte was outside her trailer boiling a kettle of tea water on an iron chittie and waved over to me. ‘Aye, Jess, it’ll be a
sunbathe you’ll be up tae, lassie.’

I laughed and asked her not to tell Mammy. Betsy was one of the nicest travelling women I’d ever met. Little did I know that some day in the near future she would be the greatest traveller
writer of her time. (Both her books—
Yellow on the Broom
and
Red Rowans and Wild Honey—
would be renowned as classics.)

But you know something, if I hadn’t left the drills that day then my meeting with Mac might not have taken place and a great deal of tales would have passed me by.

I went into the trailer where Mammy had, before going to join her brood on the field, a massive pile of drop scones cooling under a flannel dishtowel. Putting one in my mouth and another in my
pocket for later I lay down to sunbathe under the hotter-than-ever sky. Just as my eyes felt heavy and Father Nod crept serenely over my body I was brought to life by a large being shading out the
sun.