Bruar's Rest

the child to its mother. He was like a babe himself, bubbling and laughing, ‘Would ye look at him, as pure as the driven snow! Little mite is as wee as a fairy. If meself had witnessed the holy infant’s coming to earth,’ (a subject he spoke freely about when his intoxication rendered him harmless and melancholy) ‘I could not have been more humbled.’ With tender care the baby was handed to Rachel, who lay back on her bed and forgot in an instant all her previous agony, as the tiny fists touched its mother’s face. ‘Lord, O’Connor, I feared my bairn would have come into the world without a witness. Thank God for your presence.’ 2
    Rachel wiped her son with a flannel she’d prepared along with a basin of hot water, now lukewarm. Her unsavoury midwife dashed from the tent, coming back in an instant with a dirty pillow stuffed with pheasant and grouse feathers, and gently propped her up by sliding it under her shoulders. ‘There now, my proud colleen, you rest and I’ll go fetch a cup of tea, is there anything else you need?’
    She smiled and shook her head, but as he made to leave she reached out and stopped him. ‘O’Connor, what is your name, the one your mother gave you?’
    The Irishman ran a hand through a dishevelled head of grey-black hair and turned to look at Rachel, a sad look, one she’d never seen on his usually drunken face. He looked sorrowfully at the now stirring baby and said, ‘I niver knowed a mother. Some old crow dragged me up, an aunt o’ sorts. Hell, I don’t know if it’s on any birth certificate, but me name is Nicholas O’Connor. At least, that’s what she called me on a Sunday.’ He was squirming in embarrassment, never having meant to say anything of his past, which up until that moment he had defended with strict privacy.
    He was spared further emotional sharing by the voices of Megan and an exhausted doctor, hurriedly approaching the tent. He dashed out to meet them. His abruptness startled the pair, as he rounded on them like a camp warden. ‘Hello then, and where the hell have you been? Sure, we have a new little ’un. Here, you better look at this.’
    As he proudly pulled back the tent door, one would think if not knowing any better that O’Connor was the father.
    What a wonderful relief to see that not only was Rachel holding a very healthy boy, but that both had come through without any harm.
    ‘All thanks to O’Connor here.’ Rachel’s words brought a red face to her saviour as he reappeared a few minutes later, holding three cups of tea in one hand. In the other he held a hairbrush, ‘I think the father will be here in two ticks, better make yourself pretty’. To everyone’s surprise he knelt down, running the brush through Rachel’s hair. ‘There now, that’s a pretty thing for yer man’s homecoming.’ Each laughed at the Irishman’s new attentive manner, except for Rachel who had forgotten how awful her sweat-soaked hair and drawn face must look.
    No sooner had they finished their cups of tea when three famished, exhausted men came home from harvesting. All signs of fatigue and hunger soon disappeared, however, when the cry of a new baby was heard from within Jimmy’s abode. ‘My God, laddie,’ exclaimed his father, ‘there’s a grand sound for the ears of a proud father. Get in there and see what you got!’
    Megan pulled open the tent door and beckoned the threesome in, her finger at her lips warning them to be quiet and not frighten the wee lad.
    ‘A boy you say? I’ve a wee son! Hey, Bruar, Daddy, I’ve a bloody son!’ Jimmy leapt into the air, throwing his crumpled bonnet so high it landed between a pair of hooded crows, which screeched and hastily left their sturdy perch at the top of an ancient oak.
    Rachel looked radiant. Smiling, she handed the baby to its father, who kissed his son and whispered, ‘Love you.’ Then he told his wife he’d never seen her so lovely, but she said the reason for that was the fussing of her midwife.
    ‘Now that we have this responsibility,’ Rachel whispered in Jimmy’s ear, ‘we’ll think about getting away from the tent, maybe ask a farmer for a house.’ She had said many times that it was the way of life of her ancestors that killed her mother, and she didn’t want to go the same way.
    Doctor Mackenzie joined the loud celebrations which spread through the family, but as for O’Connor, well perhaps it was all too much for him, and that’s why he wandered off to his lonely