Bruar's Rest

thousands upon thousands of words. If I realised my dream of writing a book, it would have to be my past, not Mary’s murderers and lost souls, that would fill its pages. Hers was a story for another day. Hell, I didn’t even know if I could write.

     
    Yet, in the years that followed, like a running stream I made my mark on the world through, not one, but three books. A trilogy about a Scottish traveller and her dying culture!
    I had been uncaged; I was a free creature once more. The words of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre spring to mind: ‘I am no bird; no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.’
    It was after publication of my first book, while I was gathering ghosts and folklore characters to fill future books, my phone rang. It was Mary. I did keep reminding myself at times of her tale and wondered what negative response she’d had to my writings. On the contrary, she’d really enjoyed my stuff, especially when it used her contribution of ghosts and witch tales. I was astounded, though, at how quickly she pressed the case of Bruar and Megan’s tale. If determination could win a prize, in my mind she’d won a high honour.
    ‘I knew fine the days on the road would make good reading,’ she said. At first I thought she’d changed her tune, then came—‘but have you given any more thought to that lassie with the lost husband?’ The forthright, I would even say furious tone took me a little by surprise.
    ‘No, I’ve been researching the old ways, Mary. The origins of gypsies need researching for another project I’m toying with, and to tell the truth, I’m still not convinced I could do that story justice.’
    Instantly a stuttering apology followed. One book in the bestseller list and I was awarding little respect to my dear old mate, brushing her aside with a lame excuse. I felt her silence on the end of the phone and knew I’d been far too harsh. Thankfully, though, an answer came from her that sounded quite light-hearted; it even afforded me a laugh, albeit a kind of goblin-like shriek followed by a low hiss.
    ‘You can look at my craggy face and find all the details of an old gypsy, if that’s what tickles you, lassie. Come up and see me. I’m not at all well these days, old age ye ken, and any road, I could do with a bit company.’

     
    Not blessed with children, her husband long dead, she was quite alone apart from her Tam, a nippy West Highland terrier. So off I went to visit Mary and nippy Tam in their tiny low-roofed cottage, nestling in a cove on the Aberdeenshire coast. Clear blue sky went as far as the eye could see, marked with tiny wisps of white cloud. If it hadn’t been for a covering of frost on roof-tiles one might have imagined it early summer, not March.
    Holding a mug of steaming tea, one arm curled around my knees, I stared into the teller’s eyes while heat from the coal fire warmed my body. Strangely, perhaps now that my own story had been told, I found Mary’s World War tale attractive in a way I couldn’t explain. Hearing the characters come to life once more, I needed to get closer to them: what made them tick? Until now they had remained patiently silent, waiting on a pen that could give them an eager rebirth.
    She sensed my eagerness and took the story further back, this time into Bruar’s past, telling of his mother’s demise which, to be honest, dug into my marrow.
    But whether it was a lack of belief in my slender abilities or fear of taking on such a massive storyline I don’t know, but my excuse was on cue. ‘I’ll write it as a short story, I’m no use at the novel, me. Those long story writers are gifted, I’m not!’
    ‘Aye, right,’ she said, smiling through a gap-toothed grin. There was for a minute a cooling of the atmosphere, I saw the eyes narrowing, nose twitching, and thought, ‘here we go again, another argument.’ I was wrong, however.
    Stretching her cardigan across the narrowest of shoulders to keep the grey sea haar rolling in from the ocean from chilling her bones, she stared into my soul, as old folks seem able to do. ‘Can you put the neck of a giraffe onto a rabbit, or push rain back inside its cloud?’ she asked, then added, ‘It was man who invented the pen.’
    I wondered if my old relative was reaching an age when, instead of going through life with added intelligence, she was slipping back into childhood. But maybe it was I who, with all my individual characters catalogued for future books,