Bruar's Rest

tranquillity.
    Unable to see any semblance of her kin, she turned and ran off into the rhododendron bushes lining the driveway. Rachel ran after her.
    ‘Please try to see it my way. Tinkers are waifs of the past; we don’t have a place in society. Here I can watch my baby grow healthy and strong, can enjoy good food, be content.’
    ‘You’ve given the bairn to a toff! How in God’s name can any mother do that! Mammy will be spinning in her grave. What kind of a mother are you?’ I hate what you’ve become, and never want to look upon your face, not as long as breath’s in me!’
    Rachel clasped two hands on her sister’s shoulders and answered, ‘Listen to me, our mother knew how I hated the life, stuffed into a low-roofed tent, waking in the morning with spiders in my hair and earwigs under my armpits. Stinking of sweat, day in, day out, not washing until the warmer weather permitted—’ Before she could continue, Megan shouted, ‘You refused to wash in the cold water of the burn! Frost or not, my body smell was washed away. Creepy-crawlies only lick dirty hair, mine was clean. You never tried to live the old ways, that’s your trouble. But never mind that—Nicholas is your baby, big Rory’s grandson and my blessed nephew, and he sits with love in his wee eyes for the lady woman. That’s unspeakable.’
    ‘You’ll judge me, I can’t help that, but the poor woman is living in misery. Her man, like mine, has been killed, and the bairn has given her hope to go on. The poor soul was suicidal until his wee happy face brought joy into her life. She has promised me a new life in America. Said if she brought up my baby as her own, he’d want for nothing, and neither would I, because I’m going with her as companion and nursemaid to Nicholas. He also has a nanny. Where in our meagre existence could anything happen like going away from this miserable place, where a drunkard grandfather might teach my bairn his ways? No, Megan, I have not given up a tinker life, I’ve totally buried it, and God grant me the health to enjoy America with my son. I’ll watch him walk a rich man’s way. But let’s not part with bad feelings, at least wish me God speed. Please, sister, for old time’s sake.’ Rachel’s arms were outstretched.
    They’d not always been close, but since Annie’s death the pair had been inseparable. How would she cope alone? What if Bruar failed to return, leaving her to grow wizened before her time, seeing to the campsite and two lost causes? Megan walked into the welcoming arms, and as the two sisters embraced, each knew it would be for the last time.
    Mrs Simpson put a comforting arm around Rachel’s shoulder as they watched Megan hurry out of sight.
    As she passed each familiar tree and hill, where she and Bruar had spent many a happy hour, her young head filled with thoughts. Thoughts firstly of love, then, heaven forbid, of losing that precious love, brought a surge of fear which gripped at her heart. She clung to hope like a weak dog burying his bone so prowling strays wouldn’t steal it. Tears welled in her eyes as she called to her husband somewhere far across the sea. ‘Without you, my man, I am useless, like a three-legged rabbit or a one-winged dove. Night brings dark shadows that haunt me with ghosts of black futures. Now that Rachel has left me, I am so alone. Watch your back, and whatever you do, keep safe. Oh, that I had the power to sleep in your thoughts, my dear, dear one.’

S EVEN

     
    F rom the back of a trundling lorry he stared out at the long snaking road, winding its way through misshapen rubble, the remains of family homes that had once been filled with parents, old folks and children playing.
    Every so often an abandoned dog would howl and mourn in unison with a screaming woman. Perhaps the body she’d stumbled on was her husband’s. He may have been ploughing a furrowed field, hoping that soon the noise of battle would leave his land. Tomorrow, maybe, it would all be over, left at peace. Perhaps that was a vision he’d kept until that fateful blast.
    Bruar closed his eyes at the sight of another battered torso; metal helmet nearby, the decapitated head intact. Crows had already eaten the eyes. ‘Black-winged scavengers,’ he remembered Aunt Helen used to say, ‘they were designed for such a task.’ She would usually add, to frighten his infant mind, ‘The red seer said that a time was coming when the crows of the sky would feast upon the dead of