WHAT’S YOUR PROPER WORK?
You know what I was expecting to find at the McEwens’ camping place? A community of twenty families, a nomadic village of tents, each with its own cooking fire, filling Inchfort Field like a ghost of the Roman military outpost it is named for. But the McEwens had got a most modest set-up, in a high, sunny corner of the field sheltered by the beech hedge of the estate boundary. They’d parked themselves as far away as possible from the queer old standing stone at the bottom of the field, covered with lichened carvings of starey-eyed fish, and I didn’t blame ’em. Grandad always told us that stone walks down the path to join the tall Drookit Stane in the river on Lammas Night and swim with the salmon in the dark. Antiquarians are all secretly pagan heretics.
There weren’t twenty people, let alone twenty families camped at Inchfort Field, and a third of those were little.
‘Gosh, I thought there were more of you here!’ I said as we crossed the field. ‘Everybody makes it sound like –’
‘– the place is crawling with tinks?’ Euan made tinks sound like bedbugs. Suddenly he reminded me very much of his twin sister. My heart leaped again, thinking Ellen might be there.
‘Well, I didn’t say it.’
‘There’s three families here. Daddy’s and his brother’s. And Mammy’s best friend and her daughter and her man. Lots of weans – you’ll see! And Daddy’s old Auntie Bessie, who’s got no family but ours.’
Ellen was there. She and Mrs McEwen and the very old Auntie Bessie were the only grown-ups about, though there were a handful of wee lassies skipping rope lower down the field; everyone else was out thinning turnips at Bridge Farm. Ellen was busy though, stripping bark from whippy willow branches. The old woman fed bits of bark to a fire over glowing coals, and Mrs McEwen was deftly weaving a willow basket with the supple wands that Ellen gave her. They were looking after the wee-est of the bairns while they worked – Ellen had a baby tied cuddled against her chest in a shawl, its downy hair just brushing against her chin. Her own hair was a glory of copper fire that morning, shining like a whisky still, long and loose in gentle flames down her back.
‘Mammy, we’ve brought our lucky lass for you to meet,’ Euan called out as we came close. ‘She’s awake and walking.’
Their mother, Jean McEwen, laughed. ‘Looks like our Pinkie’s found a new best friend!’
Their mother wasn’t like the other McEwens at all. She was little and merry and good-natured. Instantly I wished I’d thought to bring her a gift, and wanted to kick myself for not having anything to offer.
I knelt abruptly in front of her. When she put aside the willow withies she’d been weaving, I snatched up her hands, held them close together in mine, and kissed them. ‘Hello, Mrs McEwen! I think I owe you my life.’
She shook her head and laughed. ‘Och, Lady Julia, no such thing. I only kept the rain off you for a night!’
‘And isn’t that a woman’s proper work, sheltering bairns?’ Ellen remarked coolly.
Mrs McEwen still grasped my hands – I’d instinctively done the right thing to greet her so warmly – but Ellen McEwen held my gaze with chilly challenge, menacing and stony-faced.
I wanted very much for her to like me.
‘Well, somebody has to look after bairns,’ I said.
I swear, it was as though I could read Ellen’s mind. She was practically daring me to ask her: ‘Is that your baby, Ellen McEwen?’
In the same instant I was certain that it wasn’t. She was just waiting for me to jump to conclusions about her, in exactly the same way the St John’s Infirmary staff had jumped to conclusions about me.
‘What’s your proper work?’ I asked her.
‘What’s yours, wee primsie toffee-nose?’
‘Whisht, Nellie!’ the very old woman scolded her.
‘I’m still in school,’ I said. ‘So’s Jamie.’
‘I’m a willow basket weaver,’ Ellen said in a voice that made it sound like she’d made it up on the spot.
‘Oh, aye?’ Jamie flung himself down on the grass by her side, artless and winning. ‘Did you cut all this lot yourself? Do you make your own creels?’ He patted her small fisherman’s basket on the ground next to her. ‘There were always piles of baskets in the Big House – they use ’em for everything from sandwiches to guns. We used to see people cutting willows on the far bank where the Fearn meets the Tay.’
Ellen looked down her nose at him, the tiniest of smiles curled in the corner of her mouth.
‘Aye, Jamie Stuart, that’s us. That’s our willow bank. We own it, by ancient deed. Since before the new house was built. Since the Murrays lived in the castle.’
The ‘new’ house, Strathfearn House, replaced a Georgian mansion destroyed by fire. The castle is five hundred years old and nobody has lived in it since the eighteenth century. ‘Since the Murrays lived in the castle’ is a very long time ago however you look at it.
‘And that’s us banned after your gran moves out,’ Ellen added grimly, and the rudimentary smile disappeared.
‘But why, if it’s yours?’ Jamie asked.
‘There’s no place to camp after this year. You can’t camp on the riverbank because of the mud and the tide. So that’s us done with those willows. Forever. The camping green by Bridge Farm’s been closed down by the County Council, and Inchfort Field will be closed off when the Glenfearn School opens. Shaness! We’ve always done casual work for the Strathfearn Estate – working the fields, gardening, helping with the grouse shooting. But those scaldy builders aren’t interested in giving us work, and I ken the Glenfearn School won’t want filthy tinkers anywhere near their boys. And the pearl fishing – we won’t be able to do that here either. Do you know what Fearn pearls are worth? Ten pound Daddy got for one last year.’
Cripes. At that rate, twenty-five pearls would pay Jamie’s school fees at Eton for a year. And there was me ten years ago as a little girl playing with Grandad’s pearls like marbles, and me now feeling sentimental that my pretty toys were gone.
It makes you very uncomfortable to realise that your emotional attachment to something is an indulgence.
‘Neither did our gran want to have to sell the estate,’ I said hotly.
Ellen gave a snort. ‘Your poor gran. Hungry, is she?’
Ellen’s mother apologised firmly. ‘Never mind our Ellen. She’s angered about the big changes and she’s still mourning your grandad. His passing’s a great sorrow to all of us. Your mother Esmé and I were playmates when we were half your age.’
The old woman added, ‘See, Nell, she’s got her grandad’s eyes – hazel as autumn leaves turning, clear as Cairngorm mountain amber.’
I couldn’t help smiling at her. ‘Thank you! I loved Grandad’s eyes.’