A Small Death in the Great Glen (8 page)

“The day I left to rejoin my squadron I didn't know I would never return,” he started his monologue. “Our estate bordering the Baltic marshland is isolated. War was coming, we had no doubt of that, but we never guessed how bad things would become.” He lit a cigarette for support. “I said good-bye to my parents. I never dreamed it was a final farewell. Then I went back to my old unit in the Polish air force.”

The two older men nodded. So many stories had been shared; all different, all the same—heartbreaking.

“We'd been to early mass, my mother wearing her crucifix as always, this time on display, worn as a soldier would, proudly. I left straight after the service. My father understood. We were officers. It is our duty to defend our homeland. I never saw them again. I have never heard from them.” Winter sky-blue eyes clouded, he paused.

“I will always feel we were traitors for fleeing Poland. But what could we do? We escaped. They didn't. Now, once again, Poland is a prisoner.”

Mr. Silverstein and Gino Corelli listened silently, their shoulders bowed by the weight of their own memories.

“When we landed in Scotland, me and many of my countrymen joined the British forces,” Peter continued. “But I, I had it easy, stuck here in safety.”

“You served your country. An engineer does just as much as a pilot. You saved lives.” Gino was adamant. “Now it is in the past.”

“My homeland is occupied. Different enemy, same result.”

“We sold my wife's wedding ring.” Gino's voice was harsh. “My sister Lita sold everything to join me here.”

“We all did what we had to do.”

Mr. Silverstein put the cross into its red leather box. “This is yours.”

Gino and Peter both reached for their wallets.

“No, no. It is my present for Chiara, for you both. I insist. Take it, take it.” He shooed them away with flapping hands.

“I even remember the box.” Peter picked it up, shivered. A picture of it lying on his mother's dressing table came sharply into focus.

His future father-in-law looked at Peter. “Home now, ma boy.”

“I will find out what happened, Mr. Silverstein, and keep you in the picture.”

“Thank you. But be quick. The Russian captain said the ship is sailing away very soon.”

“But he will want his Polish seaman back—or at least some papers from the police to explain what happened. Big trouble for him with the authorities in Tallinn if he returns without a crew member,” Peter explained.

They left with profuse thanks, bows, handshakes and a promise to keep in touch.

As the two men walked down Bridge Street, making for home, Peter realized his stomach was empty and his mood bitter.

“He lied to me, Gino. This Karel Cieszynski, calls himself Karl, I help him and he lies. He is the only connection I have to my family. The Red Cross hasn't been able to get news. I must know. I must go back up the glen. Get the truth from him. My God! Why didn't he say something? My parents, how he knows my family, why he is here, he told me nothing.” By now he was babbling.

“Tomorrow.” Gino held his arm. “First thing in the morning. It's too late now. Nearly dark.”

And pausing in the middle of the bridge, the river red-gold from the rays of the dying winter sun, Peter offered up a brief prayer to a God he no longer believed in. The tall somber figure and his short round companion standing alongside him were each wrapped in their own memories, their individual realms of loss.

Don drove them to the bleak council housing estate on the edge of the firth near the ferry crossing to the Black Isle. Joanne had invited herself. She had always wanted to meet the famous Jenny McPhee.

“Mine's a gill of the Glenfarclas, the 105 proof. Thanks for asking.” Always one for a decent drop, Ma McPhee wasn't going to let this chance go by.

Joanne sneaked glances at the clan matriarch. She had expected someone older, decrepit. Mrs. Jenny McPhee at fifty was a handsome woman, although her life had been spent wandering from season to season. She had raised seven sons in caravans and benders and byres. She was one of a small group of Travelers who still traveled the roads in a caravan in the summer months and who kept up the traditions and secret tongue of her people.

“Aye, that'll be right,” Don said cheerfully. “McKinlay's it is and be thankful.”

This bar was for desperation drinkers only. The green-tiled interior, marginally more welcoming than a public toilet, had a malt-brown bar with trough and brass foot rail stretching the length of the room.

“We'll away to the back bar since there's ladies present.”

“As long as you're buying, Mr. McLeod.”

Jenny gathered her bags, leading the way, and the three of them settled down in the small room, a coal fire and comfy chairs
making it seem more like someone's front parlor, the impression spoiled only by the smell of a room seldom used and of spilled drinks from the sticky carpet.

“Ma man.” Jenny indicated a photograph of a stocky figure leading a pony with three rosettes prominently pinned on its halter. “Black Isle show, 1936.”

More rosettes, their ribbons faded and dusty, sat atop pictures of ponies, proud men holding them on halters. Quite why Joanne identified them as the Travelers of the North she wouldn't have been able to say, but they were clearly of that tribe. Quite why these photos were up on the wall of this saloon bar was another mystery. But Don knew; Mrs. McPhee, née Williamson, matriarch of the clan, singer of renown, keeper of the old ways, kept hushed her talents as a shrewd businesswoman.

“All right then,” said Don, “what's this about?”

“Money, what else?”

“I thought it was about grazing and camping rights.”

“That land down by the council dump and all along the shore has been used by farmers and drovers and Traveling folk for forever. It's historic those fields, it's the end of the drove roads from the West, where they rested and fed their cattle whilst waiting to sell at auction. That land belongs to the town, not the town clerk. He's got what you call an
interest
in all this. In other words he's making a nice wee commission on the side.”

“Aye, I always heard that it's common land.” Joanne knew a little about the dispute from her husband. He had his workshop in the burgeoning industrial estate that was taking over the grazing land.

“It should be left for everyone to use, not sold off,” Jenny insisted.

“Too much money to be made. You need more than common-law grazing rights to fight the council,” Don pointed out. He
knew that most of the communities in Scotland had an instinctive dislike of the tinkers but the agricultural cycle of much of the northeast would have been hard-pressed without these seasonal laborers, especially after the losses of the war. Stones needed to be lifted after the spring plowing, ditches cleared, walls mended, the raspberries picked, the tatties harvested. And the womenfolk selling lucky heather, the menders of pots and pans, the river pearl fishers, all had their part in Highland life. Yet they were outcasts.

“You're looking right peely-wally, lass.”

Joanne looked up at shrewd currant eyes examining her.

“I fell off my bike.”

“How's that man o' yours? I mind him as a laddie wi' holes in his breeks.” Not much escaped Jenny.

Joanne couldn't help laughing. Her mother-in-law would have been mortified to hear Jenny speak this way of her precious son. They all knew each other; the families came from the Cromarty part of Ross and Cromarty. They had worked side by side on the farm where Granny Ross had been brought up.

“Bill's out west a lot of the time, Loch Carron way, building houses for the council.”

“Aye. I heard that. And I heard your man has some fine new friends.” It sounded like a warning but before Joanne could ask, two red-haired men walked in, one a younger version of the other, both unmistakably Jenny's kin.

“Ma,” they said.

“Don.” The older one grinned, showing the missing front tooth that gave him the look of the fighter he was.

“Jimmy.” Don nodded a greeting back. “Yer mother has been giving me the lowdown on the land at the Longman. Maybe I can stir things up a bit. My new boss likes a bit of what he calls ‘color' in his stories.” He wanted to add, but didn't: And they don't come more colorful than you lot.

“So, maybe you could do a wee something for me.”

“Oh, aye?” Jimmy McPhee was averse to doing anything without good reason.

Jenny laughed. “What's the use? The
Gazette
'll never get the council to budge for some tinkers. Now, if it's thon sailor you're wanting to find . . .” She held up her empty glass.

Joanne and Don had barely stepped into the office when Rob jumped up.

“There you are. I've been looking for you. The school called and—”

Rob didn't have a chance to finish the sentence.

“What's happened? Is it about my girls? Are they all right? When did they call?” Fear for their children's safety, a hitherto almost unknown emotion, was now never far from the minds of parents of the town.

“They're both fine.”

“For goodness' sake, sit down, lass,” Don commanded. “Right, young Robert, what's this?”

“The school rang to say that all the children are being asked if they know or saw anything connecting to the wee boy who drowned in the canal. The children who knew him are being questioned and parents can be there, if they want to that is. Routine, they said. About three o'clock they told me.”

“But I already asked my girls,” Joanne explained. “Annie assured me they hadn't seen him.” Then an awful thought came to her; Annie would swear black was white if she was in trouble.

“I'll give you a lift over there,” Don offered. “As for you, young Robert, a wee bird whispered something in my ear about a faerie glen and a hidden Pole. And I expect a suitable reward when you get your big story.”

“In my will,” Rob promised solemnly.

“In the Market Bar or no more tips for you.”