Bruar's Rest

Megan.
    ‘I’m a Highlander, that’s why that big softy and me had so much in common.’
    ‘Why are you not going home then, Sandy?’ She was wiping Bruar’s nose, every bit the carer, and although she’d been told he would never be any different, she’d enough of her lad to love.
    ‘I expect it’s because of two things. One being I promised always to take care of Bruar, and secondly, as I said, lack of funds.’
    ‘Sandy,’ she said excitedly, ‘There’s enough money for the three of us to go home. Come with us and be there when he opens his eyes, for mark my words he will speak again. If you knew about the Seer and how circumstances have swept me here, then I know you’d have faith.’
    ‘He always said you were a dream of a wife but not a dreamer. The doctor made sense when he told you this man of yours was severely brain-damaged. Better get used to it. I’ve been with him a long time now, and there’s not been so much as a blink of an eyelash.’
    ‘You don’t know which parts to touch or words to whisper. I’ll take over now, and if this is all I get then so be it. He’s mine, and if we can’t join in life then we’ll do it in dreams. Please understand, Sandy, there’s no way I’d let him rot like mould on cheese in that barred prison. He can live with the wind in his hair and the heather beneath his feet. Now come on, here’s the train. Be there when I open his eyes.’
    Sandy shuffled his feet and pushed his hands deep inside his pockets. For a moment he looked around and then shook his head.
    She could see all he needed was a wee push. ‘I can’t take this big lump on and off trains, come on, man, give me a hand.’
    It worked! With a grin spreading from ear to ear Sandy helped her escort Bruar on the final journey home.
    ‘Never,’ she promised herself, ‘will we be parted again, not as long as we both live!’

     
    Sandy left them at Inverness, after solemnly promising he’d visit them when he’d said hello to relatives in the north. In Thurso, with the last of her money, she bought a small buggy and an old horse, sturdy enough to trot the moor road to Durness.
    Finding Helen’s tiny cottage locked up, she went to call on Father Flynn.
    ‘Well now, would you believe in miracles?’ he said, seeing her clinging to Bruar.
    ‘He’ll come back to me. It might take ages, but I can see even now a sparkle in his eye. If you’d seen how blank and dead he was, sitting in a hard chair staring out at iron bars and smoke-filled skies in that bleak asylum! I kid you not, it was a pitiful sight. Here though, where he was brought up, this place will stir life into him. Now, where’s Helen?’
    ‘So many boys come back from the war like that, I knew of two lads in Sutherland, grand clever heads on their shoulders too. But now they can’t even tie a shoelace. Lassie, be prepared for little improvement. Helen, bless her, is no longer with us. She took a severe stroke. There was no pain, I can say, because she spent a week under my roof until the end. Come away in and have something to eat, can he manage to do that?’
    ‘Yes, he can function normally. But tell me if Helen left word of her house? I need a home for Bruar.’
    ‘I’m so sorry, dear, but she never thought a relative was alive, and so she left her small home to the church. Young men entering the priesthood visit periodically and live in it; it’s a kind of sanctuary, if you like.’
    In that instant the feelings of homelessness and her new responsibility weighed heavy on her. Durness was a bleak, cold place and without a roof, no place to heal a broken mind.
    ‘Father, I’m desperate. Do you think as there’s no one living in the old place at the moment that we can stay, just until I can find some other suitable place?’
    ‘I’ll fetch the key, but meanwhile have some food.’ He ushered them in to sit, and marvelled at how Megan sat Bruar on a seat, placed cutlery in his hands and watched over him as he ate. He thought about how remarkable it was that a young woman should shoulder such a burden, but in the same thought put it down to God, as he did every miraculous event.
    Every day Megan spent hours talking Bruar through past experiences. ‘Think on big Rory, and how he and O’Connor would stumble home drunk. And try to remember old Doctor Mackenzie with his crabbit horse. Do you remember Rachel, and Jimmy your brother? Their little boy Nicholas? Oh my love, try to think back.’ She pointed to his head,