Bruar's Rest

like a baby he laid his heavy head on her lap.
    Her heart was weeping, the reason why a sweet spring day had changed into a horrible nightmare eluded her. Yet what had years of bad dreams been preparing her for, if not for this day—his return. She ran her hand over his head, and with each stroke her sisterly love was born again. She didn’t hate him or want him dead, she wanted to see him happy, with his children. They weren’t hers, she’d no rights. ‘In God’s path we walk the bends and the straight,’ she told herself, ‘all I’ve done is keep these little boys on the right road.’
    She pushed away his head from off her lap, stood up, gave the smouldering embers in the fire a poke and said in a subdued tone, ‘I’m feeling the effects of age’. Holding back tears welling in her eyes she continued, ‘Boys, you should be with your father...’ Never in all her life did she think she would hand over her charges to him in so meek a fashion. Nights she’d lain in bed cursing him, swearing he’d take them over her dead body, but here she was dismissing the only things in the entire world she loved, as if they were nothing more than her neighbour’s full-grown lambs ready for market. Yet again another phrase from her book of simple teaching came to mind: ‘The meek shall inherit the earth’. Yes, they were ready to be given back. Then her thoughts lifted: what if her brother would stay home—here in Durness?
    Her brother had other plans, though, and they didn’t include taking the boys from her. He threw up his arms, beamed with new vigour, shouting his offer into every corner of the cottage. A small moth fluttering in a corner flew out through an inch of open window, obviously unused to such loudness.
    ‘I want us to go south where we’d all get work, you too, Helen. There’s no need for you not to move with us, be a solid family again?’
    She had the opposite view. Her hope was that instead of living on the road as his wife, the boys’ mother had done, they’d stay at home cutting peat, and in time would all be one big happy Highland family. This, she thought, would be the best solution.
    She rose from her chair, lifted a broom and began brushing up the dried grass which she’d picked off the boys. Then she laid her broom against a window frame, lifted a blue vase of wilting flowers and said, ‘I’ll go and throw these out while you three discuss going on the road and things.’ With these quiet words, she lowered her head and walked outside.

     
    If her charges had felt anger towards Rory, it was soon dispelled. It was if he’d never left them, and they each fought to hold his attention, asking eager questions about what he’d done and where he’d been.
    Helen wouldn’t up sticks and move away though, there was no point. Sure, her heart would break and for a while be empty, but she was a Durness spinster, not a wandering traveller. No, she’d stay in her secure little home and bear a lonely existence.
    With formality forgotten, Bruar, gingerly at first, walked around Rory as he sat by the fire, staring for ages at his scarred face, big broad shoulders and thick mane of grey hair. With his rugged and worn appearance his father looked older than his thirty-five years.
    He sat by him and asked, ‘Auntie Helen told us mammy was a tinker. Is that true, Rory—sorry, father?’
    ‘As wild and as beautiful as a gentle roe deer. She smelt like flowers, and her hair was as black as the shiny wings of a raven,’ he said, closing his eyes to see the precious vision clearer in his memory.
    ‘She sounds right bonny. I’m going to marry a beautiful girl one day, father, you know?’
    ‘Oh, you are, are you?’ He laughed then added, ‘She might be a beauty, but there will never be another to match your mother.’
    ‘Will we live in a house, father?’ enquired Jimmy. ‘It’s just I knew some travellers who came by from Caithness, they said the winters in tents were killers.’
    Rory drew a hand across his younger son’s shoulder, and sat back in his chair, ‘We’ve got a good long summer ahead, and it’s the tent I have, but don’t worry. When winter comes I should have managed to secure a house from a factor, providing we get winter work. But listen, your mother, she was born and reared in a tent, and it didn’t do her any harm at all. It’s how you build one, that’s the secret. I’ll show you soon.’
    Bruar asked if, like him, they’d also have to work.
    ‘Hard work is