Tears for a Tinker (28 page)

You’re wondering if I got shot of him, aren’t you, my friends? No, of course I didn’t, but I’ll let you into a secret—he was a sorry lad, because I took the rest of
the money off him, which was about half of the rebate, and bought myself a new coat. The boys got kitted out too. Davie—well, he did need a new shirt, so I bought him a cheap bri-nylon one,
knowing how that crinkly material made him scratch. A woman scorned, as they say.

We did a powerful amount of talking about that incident, and one thing I discovered was that if we were to settle in Glenrothes he would be unhappy. So the keys to our so long awaited new home
went back to the council offices, and we went back to Crieff. Somehow, although she would never say, my dear sister was more than happy to have her home all to herself once again. She wrote to me
to say how quiet the place was and how she missed my cooking, but I still think she was happy that her life was a wee bit less crowded. Another letter followed to say she’d a run in with a
certain big roller-haired wife while shopping down at the supermarket. Remember her? Shirley told me this individual tried to wrench a bag of tatties from her hand. Now, I ask you who in their
right mind would dare take on my sister? Silly woman ended up having every one of those plastic rollers pulled from her head. Wish I’d seen that!

28

ON THE GALLOWS’ HILL

N
umber 1 Gallowhill was our new home. There was a small row of houses, long since turned into flats, and we were in the first one. It was an area
steeped in history. Where several roads met there was a place called the Chains, and in that place over a hundred years ago criminals hung from the gallows while cattle were driven by, filling the
street with dung. The place was haunted by stories of drunken murders and whisky-fuelled drovers seeking red bisoms of prostitutes after they’d sold cattle at the Tryst, their ghosts still
wandering in a shadowland of waste ground opposite our home. Lying below this grassy stretch was Crieff’s graveyard. Dark marble statues towered on monuments above small cheap stones, but
each carried the same bleak message—‘we all go the same road.’

Back home for Davie was back to square one for me. I didn’t like the place, not in the way I do now. As a child travelling in my bus, Crieff was a stop-off point before the
‘berries’. We might pass through a winter or two there before gathering at the real travellers’ meeting place, Blairgowrie, where the raspberries hung their ripened fruit onto
long green bushes for us to work through a fun-filled summer.

Now July would come and I knew that the berries would not wait on me. I was stuck just like all the other flatties—static—imprisoned.

Although this upstairs flat was new to me, to Davie it was a home he had lived in many a time, because it was the home of his deceased grandparents, Sandy’s parents. I never met this pair
of grandfolks, but tales abound about how well-respected they were in Crieff.

James and Margaret were their names. His work was selling fruit around Crieff with a horse and cart, and wood-cutting. It was not that different from how my old relatives lived, just that they
carted themselves from place to place, whereas he did the same with fruit. Old Maggie, his wife, was a stern body, so I’m led to believe, who seldom went further than her own front door. As I
said, they had long since passed away when I came on the scene, but I’ll tell you later that Maggie still crept about that house, and she seemed to have a thing about how I made the bed!

Davie soon got a job, and Margaret was as pleased as punch to have her little grandsons only ten minutes down the road. Things settled easily into the ways of scaldie folk, except for one tiny
flaw—me—I wasn’t one. I needed to get away, but after many an argument Davie knocked holes in my arguments for moving around the country and said I was being selfish. The boys
needed stability, and anyway, how many times had we heard stories from travellers about the extermination of their kind from the roads of Scotland. I was aware of the situation when I lived in my
bus, and matters had became worse. What was left for my kind? Where would we go? How could we make a living? Yes, I think it was round that time my mind told me that memories of the old ways was
all I had, that I should just lump it and be content with my lot.

So, for the first time since I had my boys, I got a job. I was twenty-three years old. Yet I felt like an auld humpy-backit wife stuck hard in her routine. Davie would come in have his tea,
we’d do the dishes and I’d go to work in an old folks home. At ten pm I came in, kissed the bairns goodnight and went to bed. Yes, a scaldie life was just grand—aye, right!

Well, there you have it. So why not fill that cup and come back with me to those happy old days when life was full and clocks had no faces. This story is from our days in the bus.

If that old mutt of yours needs a walk then take him, I’ll wait until you come back. If you don’t own a dog, then read on.

29

MY SILENT FRIEND

W
e’d not meant to drive so far down country, but as the weather had been diabolical in Perthshire and Argyll, my Daddy went to Galloway
searching for better climes. We knew lots of travelling gypsies from that area, like the Marshalls, the Blythes, the Youngs and the Gordons. Daddy went searching for an old wartime mate of his. He
was a real olden-style traveller who made horn spoons; his name was Billy Hearne. After we’d stopped on several fields cracking with other gypsies, the man’s whereabouts were revealed
to us by a big hairy blacksmith who had bought a smallholding for his wife and horses. He directed us to a place amid miles of sand dunes, where we discovered Daddy’s old mate and his
family.

Dina was one of his daughters, a ten-years-old deaf mute with three brothers and two sisters, who were brilliant fun. Me also being ten, I hit it off with Dina from the first moment we met. Her
folks were old-fashioned tinkers who refused to modernise, and it was a joy to sit in their long tunnel-like tent with its rows of beds and a stove fixed in the centre. Within a night of our
arrival, Dina’s old granny, Billy’s mother, a brilliant storyteller, had me glued to my seat with her tales. She told biggies about Hell’s long-tails (rats) dragging a phantom
bogey filled high with the souls of bad weans. She was amazing, because at first glance you saw this wrinkled old half-dead-looking body, but the minute she opened her mouth it was like listening
to a young woman: terrific.

We couldn’t pull our bus onto the sand, so were forced to leave it on hard ground and walk down to Billy’s place. This was a nightmare, because the first night I was there I had
listened to so many tales I had a bladder like a fish-bowl. Well, how could I be expected to squat down in ghostly sand dunes, with sea winds whistling like eerie elves from every angle? Dina had
no fear, though. Because of her inability to hear and speak, she never heard a word of her Granny’s ghost stories, although she made faces of staring eyes and covered her mouth when a creepy
bit was was being told. I thought her antics were just from copying her siblings, but certain events would soon change my mind.

Billy had some farmwork to do, and as Daddy had been recovering from chest problems he was under doctor’s orders to take things easy. I really mean Mammy’s orders, because she was as
near to a healer as he got. Anyway, he decided he’d go with Billy for the crack. Me and Dina wandered on behind our fathers, she hand-gesturing and me stumped at first as to what she was
meaning. It didn’t take me long, though, to make out what she meant, because her hand signals were very artistic. She followed with her eyes the wild creatures of the Galloway countryside,
and made birds by joining both hands and fluttering her fingers. Rabbits were represented by a few hops and jumps.

As we trudged on and communicated in our own way over knolls and burns towards a low-lying farm surrounded by steadings, a sudden sound rent the air. The blast of a powerful horn reminded Billy
of something he’d clean forgot—there was a hunt on that day. ‘Nae point in heading through thon fields, the farmer will be sitting astride his cuddy tuggered up like a lighthouse
beacon, red face tae go with his jacket. He’ll not be needing me.’ Billy reached into a torn waistcoat pocket, retrieved chewy baccy, popped some in his mouth, spat a brown spyuch onto
a flat stone and turned to go back. Daddy refused the offer of a breath-choking chow and followed on. Laughing over at me, he said, ‘Listen, Jessie, you keep a civil tongue in your head, my
lass. This is hunt country, and I dinna want you screeching at the riders.’

I pretended not to listen, and knew if I saw one red jacket I’d fly into a rage.

His companion told him that Dina was the worst wean in all the world. He’d a red face and hard job explaining to a furious huntsman, who was missing a saddle and a whip, that she was a
mute lassie. Daddy asked how that came about. Billy said that his daughter had spurred a horse, and when the rider fell off she’d unsaddled the beast to prevent the rider returning to the
hunt. When he lifted his whip to take it across her legs, she tore it from his hand and threw it into a fast-flowing burn.

‘But what can ye dae at chastising a poor wean wha canna hear nor speak, aye, Charlie?’

‘Aye, man, it must be sore tae live in a silent world, right enough.’

Billy then quelled the rage swelling in my heart at the thought of witnessing a fox hunt, when he said it was just a gathering of riders who met every so often to ride wild across the moors and
low-lying fields. Then, far off, I heard their whistles and horns, and when on the horizon appeared a line of well-bred horses straddled with straight-backed riders, I had to admit they certainly
looked a grand sight. I forgot for a moment that my friend couldn’t hear, and said to her, ‘Dina, dae ye hear the thumping o’ yon horses’ hooves?’

She smiled and nodded, and then it dawned on me: this fly wee bisom can read lips. Now, in a small way, I didn’t feel so helpless towards her. I knew now if my explanations with hands and
body movements failed, then I’d to face her and slowly mouth what I wanted to say. That, though, in itself was a mystery to me, because if she lived in a silent world from birth, then how
would she know what words were, never mind their meaning? But this was only a momentary thought for me, because what was on my mind was the same thing that all ten-year-old weans have; all I wanted
was to play and rout the place.