Tears for a Tinker (18 page)

He wasn’t lying about the icy water, because one day I asked Granny and she said, ‘aye, I’ll ne’er forget poor wee Charlie, he didnae half squeal when Granddad plonked
his wee naked body, head first, intae the burn.’

I was horrified and said, ‘what kind of a cruelty was that; his heart could have stopped wi’ the shock!’

‘Jessie,’ she turned me around to face her, ‘if he could take that, he could take anything life threw at him.’

There might be truth in that. What other man could stand eight pairs of wet knickers drying on a string suspended above his head, while doing his football coupons on a rainy Saturday
afternoon?

Anyway, let’s go back to our campsite. The fire was reeking away good style, kettle boiling on the hook hung from iron chitties. Daddy whistled in fine tune, while Mammy sang ‘Busk,
Busk, Bonnie Lassie’ like an angel, at the top of her voice.

Sisters played nearby—and me? Well, I was still being ignored, so I thought I’d distance myself from the family, who were grating my nerves good-style.

I found a braw deep burn hurling with fish, so broke a thin branch from an ash and went home to unwind some strong thread from a pirn kept in Mammy’s sowing box. As I rifled through it, I
helped myself to a safety pin. Back at the stream, the uplifting of a few flat stones exposed some big worms, too big for my hook, so I put them back and raked for thinner ones. I unearthed two or
three and plopped them into a wee flat fag tin I’d found in a midden heap. But I have never had the nerve to stick a hook into an innocent worm, so they stayed in the tin while I made a fly
from pieces of a crow-feather I’d found. Voices drifted from our bus over to the burnside where I sat fishing. I heard Daddy and Mammy with raised voices, unlike their earlier mood, which was
a jolly one. Leaning my makeshift fishing rod against a tree, I went back to see why. ‘Och, nae wonder,’ I thought, seeing the tramp. ‘Mammy did our hair the night before and
isn’t about to expose us to an army of nits.’

‘Give the bloke a drink o’ tea, Jeannie, for God sake, woman.’

Daddy took his life in his hands speaking to her in that tone. He knew she was a sweetie, but that it was us she was protecting—well, our cleanliness to be exact. Tramps didn’t put
her up nor down, if they would only pay a wee bit more attention to personal hygiene.

‘You sit away from my weans,’ she told the man, sternly pointing to a tree stump. Turning to Daddy, she said, handing him a mug of tea, ‘here, you give him that, and he gets
not a single bit of food.’

I couldn’t understand why my gentle mother felt that way, because she’d give her last penny to whoever asked her. I know, though, it wasn’t so much a personal thing. Keeping us
free from nits meant that when school came around once more, we wouldn’t have the fingers pointed or names called. If weans had nits, then to her they weren’t clean enough.

So there he was, a small-made tramp of the road with not a tooth in his head, sitting on a tree-stump wearing a massive army coat. Daddy told him to take it off and be comfortable. He apologised
for Mammy and sat by the old fellow blethering. Now, as you well know, I loved these colourful chappies, and just had to join in the blether. Mammy ignored the situation, getting on with peeling
tatties for supper. The look she sank me spoke volumes, though, something like ‘I’ll be dipping you intae the burn the minute he’s away!’

He didn’t say much, this guy, he wasn’t a storyteller, so my thoughts wandered back to my fishing rod. But when I got back to the burn, it had gone. I ran upstream a bit, and could
just make it out bobbing in deep water. Being so young I shan’t tell you what I was muttering to myself: suffice to say it wasn’t the language of an eleven-year-old.

Aware of the fast-flowing current’s strength, I lay flat on the bank and stretched. Too short was my reach, leaving only one option left, to wade in. Dangerous waters flowed swiftly around
my legs as I sank into a nightmarish slurry of algae and mud. I was being dragged down, sucked by a whirlpool. My danger did not become apparent at first, because this was no big river, just a
stream, deep in parts, shallow in others. However, one heavy shower of rain high upon the mountain can turn a quiet burn into a raging river, so it could well have been in spate. I thrust an arm
forward, yet missing its target, a hanging branch of willow. I was losing my struggle and felt stupid.

‘What will they say when I walk back like a drookit rat?’ was all my mind could think, before panic gripped me. ‘Perhaps I’ll not walk anywhere again?’ I felt
fingers of long grasses wind around my legs and pull me further, deeper in. The burn began to take on the form of a monstrous ocean trying to gulp me down. ‘Help me!’ came those
desperate screams that all near-drowning victims must utter, ‘I’m trapped, Mammy, Daddy, help.’

Water cascaded into my open mouth, choking my futile calls, filling my lungs. Bubbles started popping in my head; it was then that the strangest thing happened, I began to feel warm and good. My
struggling slowed down, then stopped, as those gentle, dancing, fingers of water formed into slender arms swaying in motion. I was aware of currents rushing violently above my head, yet not down
here.

My body began to float back and forth in rhythm, while a beautiful girl with long dancing silver hair held out arms to embrace me. Who was she, this smiling mermaid with long flowing hair? Words
came from her lips as she pointed downwards, but what was she saying and where was she pointing? She then began to fade into the reed grass, leaving me alone in the merciless depth.

It got very dark; my spine arched, forcing back my head, and I could feel my lungs bursting with water. Then a terrible pain tightened around my upper body and brought back my panic. I opened my
mouth to scream, and then came the most terrifying sight—a beast grabbed me, pulling on my neck. I looked up: it had no teeth and was smiling with an evil grin, then total darkness engulfed
me. I was running down a long black passage, when other hands began to pull at me. They rolled me over and over, until a great thumping noise bounded in my head. Lights of immense brightness burst
into my eyeballs, and then a fountain of warm sticky fluid came pouring from my mouth. My eyes opened, to reveal the toothless demon standing over me. It was a small man wearing a torn semmit and
long johns; water was pouring from the crotch.

I didn’t recognise him minus his coat. My saviour, of all people, was the road tramp. He had jumped in to investigate the air bubbles coming from a patch of clear water in a thicket of
reeds and saved my life. My family were running up and down the burn frantically searching for me, but it was his eagle eye that detected the near drowning wean, me! I later discovered that the
toothless, grinning monster who felt my kicks while attempting to rescue me, a common occurrence when someone is drowning, was that poor tramp who my mother had detested—but never again.

That night a saint sat at our fire, one wearing a heavy wool coat, and it mattered not a jot to my mother that an army of Black Watch nits infested his collar, they were welcome too.

After my near-death experience our visit to the east side of Scotland’s coastline was breathtakingly spectacular. But so was each breath I inhaled. Rock pools filled with green water as
the North Sea brought back and forth her tides. I didn’t swim once though; I was too afraid to allow water above my neckline.

Ah, but what made my days there so joyous? A coastline bursting with goodies, that’s what. Two stappit-full jute sacks of scrap metal, paying four pound sterling, meant that I became rich.
And the first thing I purchased? A beautiful china cup for Mammy’s tea!

Seriously, what did the ‘wench from the watery depth’ say to me as I struggled to keep my last pocket of air in my lungs? I’ve asked dozens of people after telling them of my
experience, and they all said the same thing—‘if you knew, then you’d be dead’. It’s the same as falling from a great height in a dream. You always waken before
hitting the ground.

Not that long ago I put my experience to an expert, who informed me that it would have been the water reeds, which can grow to a great length, that I mistook for a wispy female. ‘Yes, of
course it was water reeds of great length, but what did they say—?’

So much mystery surrounds rivers in Scotland, and a Pitlochry man, a fine poet who goes by the name of Douglas Petrie, gave me his description of one such mysterious waterway in his series of
river verses.

A RIVER HOME

MY DREAM HOME

Douglas and I met by chance recently while I was researching into my family’s background whilst they lived in Pitlochry. A phone-call had come from Radio Scotland, the
producer of ‘The Robbie Shepherd Show’, inviting me to take part in a set of summer programmes they were planning. Now, you know what a show-off I am, so I didn’t have to be asked
twice. ‘Choose your favourite places and several pieces of music,’ was the request. I chose Pitlochry. It was there in Walker’s Field over the bridge that Daddy introduced me to
my home of many summers, the old blue bus. Blairgowrie was my second choice—those wonderful days at the berries, my friends, laughter, singers, camp-fires. Choosing music was fun, because
there were umpteen songs I loved. So before I met up with Robbie and Jennifer, his producer, I took a jaunt over to see if some of the old places were still there. It was sad to see many places no
longer existed or were changed dramatically. All except Granny Power’s wee green hut where she lived at the Bobbin Mill, under a canopy of bushes, but still withstanding the ravages of
time.

It was hungry work trekking around, so I went into a nice riverside café and it was here I met Douglas. It turned out he remembered some of my family, in particular daddy’s
brothers, Wullie, Joe and Eddy. We had a brilliant chat, and as I was leaving he handed me a sheet of folded A4 paper. ‘If you write any more o’ thon stories o’ yours,
lassie,’ he smiled broadly, ‘find a wee space for these’.

I thanked him and said goodbye. When arriving home I examined the paper, and on it were scribbled the above verses. I hope one day, Douglas, you find that but-and-ben by the stream.

19

CURSE OF THE MERCAT CROSS

I
’ll take us back to Macduff now folks, and, sad to say, for the last time.

Davie wasn’t born to the sea. This hadn’t taken long to dawn on him—in fact, poor lad, he had been overburdened with his dislike of the ocean from the word go, but being a good
provider he decided to plod on and say nothing. He came home one day, and sat for ages allowing the contours of an ancient torn armchair Sarah had given us to almost swallow him, before telling me
he’d quit, finished.