Bruar's Rest

war! A warmth emanated from her trust in him, and for a moment he felt it. There was no evil cunning in the tinkers; to his mind they were simple survivors. How would they cope with this looming shadow of unnatural forces? What would become of their moors, burns and forests, where they cleverly blended into nature’s environment?
    Megan grew concerned for the old man, of whom she was dearly fond. She had never known him to miss his cup of tea. His keeping the horse at crawling speed made her lean over and offer to take the reins. Why, she asked, should he bother what happened in a far-off part of the world? ‘Surely no one will come away up these glens? Let the war do its business, it won’t put me up nor down. Now give me those reins, for I’m thinking my sister will be a mite worried by now.’
    He let her drive his horse and trap along the bumpy road, as the events in Europe filled his head. As they left Kirriemor, it was apparent by the silence that its inhabitants had also heard the news and dreaded the consequences.
    No one knows whether fate took a hand that day, but no more than ten minutes out of town, Doctor Mackenzie’s old horse took a corner too fast and buckled a shoe. Drawing to a standstill the beast refused to move an inch, causing the worried pair to curse. She blamed the animal, while under his breath he blamed her driving skills. There was no option but a long walk stretching ahead of them.
    Her pack, filled with scourers and bits of this and that, was no use to them, so she concealed it behind a cluster of rocks and then offered to carry his bag. ‘If we don’t get to Rachel’s aid soon, Jimmy, who faints at the sight of blood, will have arrived back in total panic.’ Not wishing to be slowed down by the heavy leather bag of doctor’s implements and medicines, he willingly handed it over.
    They set off deep in thought, she for her sister, he for the countless thousands of young women carrying babies whose fathers would never return from the coming war. They would lie in a torn-up battlefield, or fall from the heavens among fragments of ripped open aircraft, or find death in the ocean, she who spares no one who sinks into her murky depths.
    Meantime Rachel was having her own war! But not one with rifles and bullets. Nature demands that we come into the world with much suffering to the vessel which bears us. With her pains of labour growing in depth by the second, she cursed Jimmy and even her deceased mother for putting breath into her. Sweat oozed from every pore, and as the wretched claws of agony reached unbearable sharpness she screamed on O’Connor to help her.
    ‘What the hell is the matter wit that bloody woman, screaming like a choked rabbit,’ he thought, turning on a sweaty mattress. Rachel’s small tent reverberated with her next cry, followed by a low groan, then a hiss through clenched teeth.
    ‘That wasn’t a sound o’ a distressed bunny,’ he thought, stretching his stinking torso and rising onto one knee.
    ‘O’Connor, you useless bastard, get over and help me, man!’ The fear in her voice brought him to a more sober level. He’d fallen asleep without removing his ragged trousers, so slipping two leather braces over his shoulders, he crawled reluctantly from the stale-smelling tent, his hairy belly protruding like a kangaroo’s pouch from the open trouser front.
    ‘My baby! Irishman, it’s coming, help me! God in heaven, man, do something, please. Megan hasn’t brought Mackenzie, I’m scared stiff!’
    Suddenly as the sun’s rays pierced through the clouds in his head, he realised the dire situation. Seeing nobody else in the campsite, he dashed into Rachel’s tent, apologising with every movement of his clumsy body to the now frantic mother-to-be. When Rachel spread her legs, and screamed through clenched teeth, he fell on his knees like a stone before the unfolding drama and said, ‘Holy Mother o’ the God of all things, what am I to do?’
    Rachel’s legs were as far apart as she could physically manage. With one hand tightly gripping the tent pole behind her head, she was trying with the other to reach her tiny infant’s head, which was pushing its way into the world unaided.
    O’Connor quickly overcame his terror. With grimy, hairy-knuckled hands, he cupped the little mite until its mother gave one last stupendous push, and out it came, partly covered in a birth-gown of red and pink fluid. Tears fell from the Irishman’s face when he held up