Bruar's Rest

the ooze of hell, never to be seen again.’
    She reminded him that next to her birthplace of Glen Coe in Scotland lay Rannoch Moor, the location of the country’s deepest bogs. They made slimy graves for whoever didn’t know the area for certain. Pools of wet, black peat covered the earth further than the eye could see. Once, many hundreds of years past, it is believed a whole battalion of Roman soldiers, out scouting suitable routes to the Highlands, were swallowed up by the wet lands of Rannoch. ‘Fear not for my safety, Michael, I know boggy moors like the back of my hand. The secret is never to walk in straight lines, and always test black peat with a stick,’ she assured him.
    ‘I don’t doubt your knowledge of bog terrain, my lovely, but nevertheless I’d feel a lot better if you took walks on solid ground. There’s lots of lovely quiet ways here, though I’m afraid there’s no village for miles. In fact all we have in the way of neighbours is a few solitary tinker families who come and go on the edge of the moor.’ His words sang out to her.
    ‘Where are the tinkers exactly, Michael?’
    ‘I might have known you’d want a visiting with your own kind.’
    ‘Can you blame me?’
    ‘No, of course, I wouldn’t dream of it. If you ask Mrs Sullivan, although she doesn’t say, I know that sometimes she takes food to a small family living way out by Runny Brook. It’s an area of woodland on no man’s land between moor and forest.’
    ‘Do you think she’d take me next time she goes?’
    ‘Ask her and see. It wouldn’t do any harm, and I’m sure she’d be glad of the company.’

     
    ‘I’d be happy to take you,’ said the housekeeper, folding her arms over a snow-white apron, ‘but bless me soul, if the family isn’t away to Glendalough. Kathleen, the young wife who comes with her man and children, winters there beside her parents. I dare say though, like the curlew, the folks will be bundling into their summer haven soon. Her man is called Robin, a fine name for a lad who wears a red waistcoat given him by a lord whose life he saved at a shoot near Wicklow. Nearly shot the head off himself with his own gun, had Robin not grabbed the blessed thing off him; folks say the lord was on the edge of committing the mortal sin of suicide. By the Holy Virgin, I can hardly bring meself to utter the awful words.’
    Megan was just getting interested, when the old body refused to continue, sat down on a high-backed chair and began running rosary beads through her podgy fingers and muttering prayer after prayer. Yet her eyes seemed to say, ‘If you press further I’ll tell you.’
    So sitting close she said, ‘Go on, Mrs Sullivan, tell me why the gentry was killing himself?’
    ‘Oh, something to do with a lot of debts he owed, and don’t ask me another thing about that, cause me lips are closed. The tinker couple have been blessed wit three lovely little boys, and it’s them I takes the food for, beautiful sweet childer they are.’ Then she raised herself from the chair and said, ‘The lord was so grateful to Robin for saving his life, as his worries turned out not to be as bad as he thought. He gave him the red waistcoat, and that’s why I said the name Robin suits him fine, because since receiving the gentleman’s clothing it’s never been off his back. They’ll be passing any day and you’ll see for yourself. He always takes the lead, pushing his red breast to the front. As the purple crocus raises its bright head from the brown soil, that’s when they’ll head up to Runny Brook, and that’s not a flicking of a lamb’s tail away.’
    Although Paddy stayed in the farm at Ballyshan, Terry and Johnno lived several miles away in the nearest village, going home at weekends and holidays to their families. And going by their stories, each had about a dozen kids.
    Megan settled down to live a normal life in and around the homestead, but unknown to Michael had become quite an expert in the causeways through the boggy moors.
    Michael had been taking trips and not coming home for days at a time. In the beginning he was always there, to-ing and fro-ing between the house and stables, yet after a month he began to be absent more often. When she asked, all he would say was, ‘I have deals to do, horses to sell and people to meet.’ Although she didn’t say anything, loneliness had taken its place in her heart.
    It wasn’t her place to be interfering, but perhaps it was that loneliness