Bruar's Rest

promise she had made—if her man was indeed gone—was no reason to keep her tied; why didn’t she pack what little she owned and get out of the place? Rachel, she believed, had gone and was not likely to look back; her days as a tinker were buried deep in her past. Annie, Bruar and Jimmy were no more. By morning she had decided to leave forever her Angus glens.
    It wasn’t as simple as that, though. Big Rory, with each passing day, became more and more like the crawling fiend of a snake, freely taking what lonely soldiers yearned to come home to. He was the only reason she lingered behind. But heaven forbid if someone should inform the soldier husbands that two tinkers were sharing their sacred beds and stealing what they alone were entitled to? Perhaps she should go, before her father-in-law and his companion found themselves trapped in an act of vengeance. Already glen soldiers were trickling home; the rumours were that the war had burned out and soon would be over.
    Each time that she felt more kindly towards them, the drinking bouts that had them crawling from smelly flea-ridden pits to work without breakfast through harvests and plantings and anything else which brought enough of a wage to buy more drink made her kick the grass and punch the air. So one morning followed another and her hostility to them stayed firmly in place.
    One day she paid her friend Doctor Mackenzie a visit. His legs didn’t take him any distance now, and that new-fangled motor car never materialised. He admitted that the ones he’d seen frightened the life out of him; they were too noisy and fast. The real reason, however, was that both his eyes were covered in cataracts, restricting most of his vision. He’d worked and lived in the area for fifty years, and was more than relieved to hand his practice over to a new doctor; someone young, eager and full of new ideas, with a wife and two lively children.
    Megan almost put two and two together and got five. ‘Where’s my pal, is he dead?’ she asked the new resident of his house.
    ‘He’s moved out of town into a smaller house, and he’s not dead!’ his replacement said, laughing at her forthright question.
    It was a picturesque little cottage, one she often imagined living in, if she ever stopped travelling. Soon, in the confines of a cosy kitchen, the pair shared a pot of tea.
    She was saddened by her faithful friend’s ailing health, so rather than heap her worries on him, she asked if he missed healing folk.
    ‘I’ll always be here lassie to help the unfortunate soul who canna pay for treatment. But forget about me for a minute, and tell me about those men from the campsite. I swear I’ve heard tales, and not the best of rumours either, about Rory and his wayward Irish comrade. Better tell them to stay away from Kirriemor.’
    ‘Doctor, how can I stop them? They’ll have to take their punishment, when it comes.’
    Megan left her friend to wander back. His old home was on the near side of Kirriemor, but to get from this one meant walking the whole length of the town. Her road led past some low-roofed cottar houses. As she passed, a door flew open and a woman was bundled out. ‘If I ever see your face again, I’ll kill you! And see him, the filth that’s ruined you, well, he’s dead for sure.’
    Megan quickened her pace, but as she turned the corner the woman called, ‘Tell Rory to get away, or else he’ll die at my man’s hands. He’s for it!’
    She recognised the voice, and looking over her shoulder, there was no mistaking the face of the battered woman picking herself up from the pavement; it was the giggler who had shared her father-in-law’s tent.
    She ran home, stumbling from stone to tree until the smell of burning sticks met her nostrils. ‘Good-father, there’s a hell of a stink in Kirriemor over the bitch and you. I think her man won’t settle until he’s had his revenge!’
    Thankfully Rory was sober. A pot bursting with vegetables was boiling on the fire, he’d put two bowls and some bread on the familiar tree stump.
    ‘Calm down, lassie. I’ve not been near her for weeks. If her man was coming, I’m certain he’d be here by now.’
    ‘I tell you this, he flung that woman a mile in the air, her face was like mince.’
    ‘Stop exaggerating, Megan, and eat the soup.’ He ladled some into a bowl and handed it to her. After they’d eaten, she asked where O’Connor was. He didn’t know, but went on to speak about her—what were her