Bruar's Rest

own way.
    Mackenzie felt useless, and said to O’Connor, ‘Watch her, there’s no telling where a broken heart will lead. Now tell me, where has Rory gone, do you know?’
    ‘As far as his legs will walk him. Then he’ll rist a while an’ come back.’
    ‘But that might be some time, he’s a big strong man.’
    ‘There’s no strength in those legs, doctor, only pain in his heart. He has to get it out.’
    ‘Do me a favour—keep him away from the drink.’
    His companion shrugged his shoulders, bent down to light his pipe on a fiery twig and turned his back to the fire’s warmth. ‘I have no control over such matters.’
    Tired, saddened by war, the doctor trotted his horse off the campsite that morning; no one saw the tears trickling from his eyes. He patted his horse and said to the animal, ‘Folks think I’m made of iron.’ The old horse pulled onto the bit and neighed as if in agreement.
    Less than a mile from his destination there was a sudden deep gurgle from the throat of his old mare. For a moment she turned to stare into the eyes of her owner, and from the depth of her belly came another gurgling sound. Suddenly her back stiffened, and his old horse of thirty years keeled over and breathed her last.
    ‘Daft beast, you near flattened me,’ he called into the early afternoon sunshine, shaking a fist at the unseen phantom of death. ‘Not even my old horse escaped your fingers of doom.’ He was tired, but one thing for sure, his days sitting straddled on a horse were well and truly over. From then on it would have to be one of those new noisy things; a motor vehicle. Every doctor from Perth to Aviemore had one. He’d not been one for change, though, and had often said, ‘As long as the mare can walk, I’ll sit on her back.’
    Dealing with the disposal of the horse took his mind away from Megan and her loss.

     
    Two months went by, and Rory still hadn’t returned home to the campsite in the glen. For a time, eternally hopeful, Megan refused to believe that her soulmate was really dead, and lived day to day watching from her vantage-point for signs of him. She also spent a long time talking to herself, and this worried O’Connor.
    ‘Are you well in the heart now?’ he asked her one morning; she’d just thrown her black shawl on the fire.
    ‘I’m as well as one could expect. Why do you ask?’
    ‘I feels responsible for you. Since Rory has not come back, I tink maybe it has fallen to me for to look after you.’
    ‘Oh, I reckon we’ll see him before long. But don’t concern yourself for me, I’m no widow woman wearing the black and keeping the head hung. He’s not dead, O’Connor. I feel it, you see.’ She crossed both hands to her chest. ‘He’ll come whistling up that road any day now, just wait and see.’
    He did worry about her, though her grief wasn’t showing yet, not in the normal way. He wondered if she might try something drastic as the old doctor had suggested. Responsibility wasn’t his thing—he had always been a loner until he’d met these people, but as is the way, like ivy, folk grow on you. Not just that, but he was hankering after a bit of silk-stockinged leg to wrap around his body, and a bucketful of ale to help the gnawing deep in his gut.
    Megan took on her role as the only woman in the campsite. She snared, caught and skinned rabbits, cut firewood, continued making pot scourers, cooked and kept a clean place.
    Then Rory crept home, quiet and withdrawn, after tramping out his grief. He stared about him a lot. O’Connor could see that demons had followed his footsteps, and the only way to dispel them was, as he said, ‘a good drink!’ No words were wasted on where he’d been or what he’d done—his bushy beard and ripped clothing spoke volumes. In no time, both began where they’d left off before the fateful news; spending the nights drinking and sleeping with other men’s wives.
    Megan could not have cared what they did, she had finished with them. At night, when time stretched slowly by, she brought Bruar into her bed, making love or just talking. If life had removed him in body, in her imaginings he was still alive.
    One night, with the men gone, her lonely existence suddenly frightened her. ‘What if my man never comes home, what if he is dead and I am a real widow woman?’ Her sorrow began to reach inward, tear at her young heart.
    With the passing of time she’d failed to notice how the secluded glen had held her to its soil. That