The Pearl Thief

He was doing his best to distract me – although I knew, based on his fascination for hydromechanics (or as our eldest brother Davie calls it, ‘Jamie’s obsession with drains’), that he was serious about wanting to look at the pool project.

We didn’t get too close, but it was interesting. There was a hole in the lawn as big as a cottage, and the invasion into the riverbank was a miniature geological history lesson if you knew how to read it, slices of different coloured earth piled neatly one on top of the other like a giant layer cake with green grass icing on top. The layer they were currently digging into looked like Black Forest gateau.

‘Peat,’ Jamie commented. ‘I wonder if they’ll find anything interesting in it. Remember the log boat, under the water near the river gate by Aberfearn Castle? That’s three thousand years old. They can tell because the peat’s laid down into it, all around it.’

‘Show-off. You only know that because you’ve read it in Sandy’s antiquarian article.’

‘We could go to see if they’ve uncovered it. It’s still there. They must be digging nearby if they’re laying pipes beneath the riverbed for this pool.’

‘Drains,’ I exclaimed in disgust. ‘What about the Traveller folk camping at Inchfort?’

‘I’ll go to look at the pipes on my own later,’ Jamie conceded generously.

We carried on down to the river path, just as I’d done two weeks earlier, and turned upstream along the Fearn. I watched my brother’s face change as he gazed around him at the birch wood. I knew he was feeling exactly as I’d felt that first day here; all the sadness and joy.

Jamie spoke quietly. ‘I can’t believe this isn’t Murray land any more. And to think I wouldn’t even be here if it hadn’t been for your sore head! I felt like Grandad’s funeral was the end. I’m glad I came.’

We walked for a little while without talking. But when we got to Inverfearnie Island we both jumped along the iron footbridge to make it bounce, and ended up laughing. We passed the open door of the old library, crossed the mossy stone bridge to the other side of the burn and took the path towards Brig O’Fearn by way of Inchfort Field. The river wood hadn’t changed in the least bit since the first day I’d arrived.

We’d nearly reached the bend in the river where the beachy place and the big stones are when the yellow dog came bounding out of the undergrowth along the path as if it had been waiting for us.

It really did come straight towards us as if we were old friends. It saw us, scampered around us both in a circle of excitement, then made a rash decision and plunged into the clear brown waters of the Fearn.

Something tugged at my brain.

The dog found its footing and scrambled out again, bounding through the tangle of nettles and forget-me-nots on the riverbank. It shook itself gloriously and was suddenly transformed from a dripping rag to a golden powder puff, like a pantomime Cinderella under her fairy godmother’s wand. She was a very beautiful tan Border collie. She chose me to leap upon in greeting.

And I knew her.

This dog – this sodden whirlwind of golden fluff – was one of those terribly sweet, terribly brainless characters that you can’t take anywhere if you want to work: she barks at sheep, she’ll scare the grouse before your gun is loaded, she leaps at strange girls to give them kisses. That’s what she was doing now, and I knew that’s what she’d done the day I met her, the day I’d fallen.

‘Pinkie! You silly, silly girl! Down, love. Good girl, Pinkie.’

You see, I even knew her name.

Jamie helped to drag her off me before she knocked me down. She shook herself again, splattering us with river water.

‘I do remember you.’ I fondled her ears. ‘Pinkie, love, where are your people?’

She pranced away from me towards the river’s bend. She knew where her people were, and she was going to take me to meet them.

They were standing in the burn by the flat rock, fishing for pearls with glass-bottomed jugs and pronged sticks, just like the man I’d seen before my head exploded. Unlike him, they knew what they were doing.

One of them looked up at us and waved. It was Euan McEwen. He was so clearly a younger copy of his tall and ginger-haired companion that it took me one glance to guess the older man was Euan and Ellen’s father.

‘That’s the Traveller lad who found me,’ I told Jamie. ‘And his dad, I think.’

They were both wearing waders, but the water scarcely came to their knees. When Euan saw us, he pulled the tin-and-glass jug of his trade out of the water and slung it over his shoulder.

‘You’re looking bonny, Davie Balfour!’ he shouted.

The dog ran to meet him. She took a flying leap off the flat rock and into the water. The older man winced away from the splash with a strangled noise that was half groan, half laughter. She was obviously not a working dog.

‘You’re here! Hurrah!’ I cried in answer to Euan. ‘I remember your dog – the daftie! She jumped all over me!’

‘This is my dad, Alan McEwen,’ Euan said. ‘Dad, here’s our Davie Balfour come back from the dead.’

Funny things, names. Funny how it felt easy and natural for me to call Euan by his first name, and daring and grown-up to call Frank by his. I suppose I would never call Mother by her given name either, though she is Mummy in fondness.

I liked it that Euan kept calling me Davie. It felt special and friendly, though I think he did it partly to avoid having to call me Lady Julia.

‘This is my brother Jamie,’ I said. I was trying to make it clear I didn’t want the dreadful formality of a title – especially since it was only me, as the Earl of Craigie’s daughter, who had this dilemma; Jamie, a younger son, isn’t saddled with a courtesy title in everyday speech. I added firmly, ‘And I’m Julie.’

Alan McEwen whipped off his cap and flashed us a McEwen grin. ‘You’re looking braw, lass! Hello, Jamie.’

Jamie knelt on the flat rock and held out a hand. Alan McEwen gave it a wet shake. Pinkie sloshed about around the McEwen men’s legs, struggling a little against the current.

‘I wanted to thank you for taking me to Perth the other week,’ I told him. ‘And Mrs McEwen too.’

Alan McEwen smiled warmly. ‘Mrs McEwen will be glad to know you’re on your feet again.’

‘Have you found anything?’ Jamie asked.

Alan McEwen grimaced a little. ‘We’ve five fat fiddle-bellied crooks for Mrs McEwen to open. But I dinnae like to see so much rubbish chucked in the burn – glass target balls and tins and jam jars and whatnot. Washing downstream frae the village, I suppose, but it saddens me, folk using the burn as a midden. Not like the old days.’

‘You can get a penny for a jam jar,’ Euan said.

‘I’m no’ divin’ for rubbish.’

‘I say, can I see?’ Jamie asked, as eager as the dog. ‘Could I take a look through your glass jug?’

Mr McEwen smiled. ‘Aye, but you’ll have to get wet.’