Tears for a Tinker (15 page)

‘My folks are Riley,’ I told her eagerly, ‘well, Daddy’s people, he lives just round the corner. Keep your eye on my boys, I’ll go fetch him in a minute. What have
you been doing here? I ask because we don’t see much of the old ways in these parts. These are all fisher-folks, very holy, don’t hold to fortune-telling.’

‘I’ve been walking all over these parts doing the dukkering [fortune-telling] and hawking with a tushni of lace. Me old fella is dead this past seven years. Young Barley, me son, is
in the town over the bridge, I forgot its name.’

‘Banff,’ I interrupted.

‘Yes Banif, he’s fixing on the lorry engine, it’s a ’mergency. We have parked our wagon, well, caravan, on a beach; lovely it is, but my God if it’s not a cold
spot. Praise to God we don’t have to puv the gries [field the horses] in these parts. Me husband’s people still grie-draw wagons, and if their gries [horses] depended on hay in these
wind-blown flat-lands, they’d all be gotten stiff.’

I laughed and thought on the many times I’d pushed our wee chaps in the open pram, noses blood-red, and frozen drips of snotters stuck hard onto their wee faces. ‘Aye, wife, the wind
blows for championship in these parts, right enough.’ Johnnie, bless his heart, had brought a stool and lifted my guest’s sore foot onto it. She sighed in relief and gave him a lucky
charm from her basket. Stephen had teething trouble, so she gave him a plastic ring which went straight into his mouth. I rushed round to fetch Daddy, but he’d left early for a trip to
Aberdeen, and Mammy had gone with him. Somehow, with him being a Riley, this pair may have known snippets of history I didn’t, and could have shared them.

‘What’s yer first name?’ I asked her. Penfold was a lovely old gypsy name, but I wondered if her forename was Scottish.

‘Morag.’

Aye, it was a right bonny Highland handle, no doubt.

Well, this visitor of half-Scots, half-English blood soon relaxed to the point when I wondered if she had intentions of leaving. She hung out my washing while I swept floors and made beds, and
by now we all needed lunch. She’d discarded her hard shoes, adopting my baffies, shuffling from area to area of the cottage. That was a strange thing to do, because everybody knew that
travelling gypsies do not nose into people’s houses. They usually sit still and move only on invitation.

Afternoon arrived, and already my friend was intending on a wee siesta. Nowhere in my mind was there any hint she should go, yet I felt maybe being hospitable wasn’t such a good thing, was
I stuck with her? I popped out for baby milk, taking my boys with me, leaving Morag sleeping peacefully on the settee.

Arriving home, I saw a red lorry with flashy painted doors at the far end of Patterson Street. ‘It can only be her son, Barley,’ I thought.

‘Hello,’ I called out, ‘are you looking for Morag?’

A young man of maybe twenty or so came towards me. ‘Yes, is she with you?’

‘Aye, I’ve left her asleep. Follow me, I live in this wee house here.’

‘In this house?’ he asked strangely, as if some memory hung around the place.

‘Aye, come on in.’ I opened the door, calling out to Morag that I’d found Barley. My boys were making a racket as we entered the house, and it seemed unusual that she failed to
hear them. Barley was a right impatient lad, pushing by me, almost forcing entry.

‘Oh Mother, Mother,’ he cried.

‘What’s wrong with you, she’s fine!’ I shouted, picking up Stephen, who stopped crying at my touch. Morag, however, wasn’t just sleeping as I thought. Barley was
cradling her in his arms, sobbing deeply. She hung loosely in his grip. It was the most horrible shock to discover my visitor had died. She was stone dead!

‘I’ll fetch Doctor MacKenzie,’ I called out, wishing that my parents were home, even one of them. Chrissie also was away that day: I was alone with strangers, one dead. Davie
was at sea and I was left feeling totally vulnerable. ‘Look,’ I said again, ‘if you put her in my bed I’ll fetch the Doctor.’ Johnnie, at my sternest request, went
outside to play. Stephen fell asleep.

Barley smiled and laid her gently down. ‘No need for a doctor, or minister, or anyone. She’s done what she meant to do. Now, if you could hold back the door, we’ll be
gone.’

‘What was it she meant to do?’ I turned his head to face mine.

He wiped a hand across his tear-stained face. ‘Her mother was born in this house a long time ago. This is where she wanted to die.’

‘Then that’s why she came here—this wee house of ours she looked upon as a resting place?’

‘Yes, we would have stayed in this area for as long as it took, but she knew the heart was pegging and there wasn’t much time. Her grandmother went into labour while hawking Macduff.
Just as she limped along this way all those years ago, the woman of this house took her in, helped with the birth. My mother recently discovered she’d not long to live and had me take her up
here to die. Now, please don’t tell a doctor, ’cause stardy [police] would hinder things, questions and all that stuff.’

I assured him. ‘I’m a traveller and know enough about death ways; police won’t hear from me. Will it be a long time before you reach home?’

‘I have her coffin in the back of the lorry. When I get back, the funeral pyre will take place. Thank you for all you’ve done.’

‘I haven’t done anything, Barley.’

‘Oh, you’ve done a lot more than you know, giving her the time of day. Not many folks would do that, but I see now the traveller in you, I feel some things are meant. For her last
hours spent a while in the place where her mother began, thank you.’

Whatever had taken place in my home that day seemed outwith my control, I felt that others were planning a stranger’s life and death. I watched in total silence as he carried his mother,
Morag, my morning visitor, away. I wanted to call out she’d a really bad blister on her heel, but somehow the words didn’t come. I saw him open a door at the rear of his lorry, pull an
oblong box from the back, and lay her gently in. I watched him reverse, and then he was gone. I never heard or saw so much as a raindrop of them from that day to this.

Brief encounters, like falling dandelion seeds, have neither rhyme nor reason to them, yet I felt that for a whole lifetime a gypsy woman had planned her end, and whoever happened to be living
in her mother’s birth-home at her destined time would have been involved in that finale. It just happened to be me.

My washing dried soft and crisp and Stephen’s tooth broke through that night.

The sight of death has never bothered me. I take heed of wisdom words spoken many times by auld yins at funerals—‘just another turn intae a lang road.’

16

EWE MOTHER

N
ow I think I’ll tell you a story of another Morag—a shepherd’s wife who lived inland from here. Hughie was her man’s name,
and around by Turriff they lived, oh maybe a hundred years past. Get the kettle on again and listen to the tale of the Ewe Mother.

Tied to a strong bough of an old warped oak hung a rope swing, weakened and battered by many winters past. It grew, that tree, at the bottom of a garden—well, not so much
a flowery garden, more a small field circling a but-and-ben, home to Hughie and Morag. Sitting on that swing, trailing her feet over the worn earth, sat Morag, reminiscing. She remembered the day
Hughie strung it up for the big family they’d so eagerly planned and awaited, but which had never come. So long ago now, yet clear as a crystal stream in her memory, were the wonderful summer
days when love was all their joy. Just sixteen she was when Hughie plonked himself down onto one knee and asked, no, begged her to marry him. Right in among the sheep. She knew long before then
what her answer would be, but her youthful mischief teased and played with his emotions.

‘Hughie, I think my fancy would be better applied to a man with more status than yourself. Surely, if you love me this much, then you’d not wish a shepherd life on me.’ Before
he could say a word she continued, ‘my delicate hands are more suited to lifting wine glasses and giving written orders to servants in a big house. Don’t you want me to be a fine
gentleman’s wife, Hughie Macintosh?’ Laughing loudly, she pushed poor big clumsy Hughie backwards and ran off.

‘But if you can catch me, then I’ll marry you,’ she called out, scattering sheep in different directions while running for the heather track.

Those sweet words fell around him like clover heads bouncing in the air from the cut of a sharp scythe. In seconds they were joined together with kisses and cuddles, a day never forgotten.

They wed with promises and oaths of devotion, and within months settled easily together. He’d chosen well, because even at such a delicate age she immersed herself in the hard life as if
born to it. The sheep became as important to her as they were to him. Winter found them both trekking cold desolate regions, shepherding through snow, wild weather, short days and long nights
tending to lost sheep. They had a small herd of cows, and from them her country knowledge of milking filled a fine larder. Cheeses and butter, expertly churned, were in abundance. Bread too,
yeasted and baked to perfection. Sometimes Hughie wondered if an angel had fallen from heaven and married him, his cup ran over.

Yet, as years passed, there was a lack spreading like doom in the small cosy house, so deep it cut into them both. So awful it was that her young face did not smile any more, and her days
dragged by. In five years her womb had rejected three babies. She never reached beyond seven months in her pregnancy, with a pained premature labour. Oh, those terrible endless nights when her
fruit trees produced no yield, and they were followed by months of sorrow. The country people, their neighbours, felt nothing but sadness for the pair. They’d see them herding the sheep off
the hills, she blooming with motherhood, a bowed belly, his big, strong arms supporting her precious frame; then that sad sight of her at his side, both carrying cromacks, collies circling around,
each alone in their painful thoughts.

It was after losing the fourth baby that Morag began to fear the bad time—the shedding. This was the only time when her heart broke, not for herself, but for the ewe mothers being forced
from their lambs. September nights were filled with the bleating and crying of those mothers, aching for the lambs they’d never see again. It was then Hughie’s bed emptied as Morag
slept with the ewes. She tried to comfort them by singing lullabies, stroking their woollen coats, desperately bonding through her own pain with the loss of their infants. Her babies were gone to a
cold earth, theirs to a butcher’s slab.

Although his wife’s behaviour was uncanny, unnatural, her husband had no heart to stop it. During shedding he’d enter the field in the early morning to find her snuggling between ewe
mothers. The strange thing was, the nights quietened when she joined those grieving animals. It seemed her presence did help them. Then, after eager tups were fielded with the ewes, beginning the
whole process over again, Morag slept in her own bed, things returned to normality. The sheep, when pregnant, got down to facing another fierce winter; and yes, once more, Morag too was
pregnant.

However, her joy, like before, was short-lived, and in its place came the fear of yet another dead baby. She begged Mother Nature to help her miscarry, her body shook with fear at feeling the
icy cold fingers of Death creeping into her womb and stilling the heart of her baby. But her belly like before began to swell. Hughie made her promise not to come out with him, but to stay at home
and rest whenever possible. ‘Stay in bed all day if need be, but don’t lose this baby.’

So, with the greatest care for the contents of her womb, she slowed to a gentle pace of life. Months passed, and as before, the first kick of the unborn had them both filled with joy at one
minute, apprehension the next. She went for gentle walks among the ewe mothers, telling them about her own little lamb kicking inside. Seven months came round once more. Hughie was lambing in full
swing and rushing into the house on the hour to check on Morag, but thanks be, her labour didn’t start. By the end of the eighth month they began to think—is this it, will we see a
child, healthy and strong? Nine months came, a full-term pregnancy; everything was ready.