Tales from the Tent Read Online Free PDF Page A

old Portsoy. I stood upon a wee stool and peeped through the window, to see the same glass Mac’s teeth had snuggled into the
night before filled to the brim with ‘the cratur’. ‘Oh well,’ I thought, ‘thon’s a wild bit o’ cracking taking place in that wee trailer this night, best I
forget the tales for now.’
    I wandered off and soon found a dozen or so girls of my age hanging about the farmer’s giant hay barn. ‘Let’s monkey swing,’ said one of the lassies. This game was to
swing from the rafters and then drop down onto the hay, great fun it was too. The usual practice was to aim to go from one end of the barn to the other without falling. Whoever slipped first stood
out, and so on until only one was left. Well, I can’t say exactly how or why, but you-know-who fell and landed, not on the soft spongy hay, but on a great rusty pitchfork concealing itself
under a layer of straw. Up it went into an inch of my foot. Two strong lassies dragged me squealing like a porkie all the way from the barn to our spot at the far end of the campsite. Every
traveller in the place was up and over to see why my foot was dragging a pitchfork behind it. ‘Take that lassie tae the doctor,’ was one concerned voice. ‘God, wid ye look at thon
fit, it’ll need tae be cut aff!’ was another. My mammy knew exactly what to do, and soon my foot with the hole was steeped in an almost boiling basinful of water and Dettol. Half an
hour later I was sat, my foot washed and swathed in miles of torn cotton sheet strips, with a cup of tea and a scone. All well wishers and nosy parkers gone, I hopped to bed with a foot as sore as
the wildest toothache, and Mr Nod definitely did not come within a mile of me that night.
    Next morning I was still immersed in the Charlotte story and failed to hear Mammy shout out to me to ‘watch the fire, ye daft lassie!’ Too late—I stumbled and fell over half a
tree Nicky had positioned on the early morning blaze. ‘Ouch!’ I watched a great swelling instantly spread itself across my shinbone to add to my other injury. Everybody laughed and I
said something stupid like, ‘so glad to kick-start yer day’s humour.’ Mammy came immediately to my assistance with a damp cloth—then, when she saw my baggy eyes, she
didn’t half turn on the fury. ‘Have you been filling your empty head with stories, how oftimes dae I say, there’s a time an a place.’ Before I could answer, Daddy came to my
aid by saying, ‘the tale she heard was a cracker, Jeannie, and if you mind oor Jess when its cold winter howling, then she’ll tell it on a dark night.’
    Mammy tutted, then ordered everyone to eat breakfast and get to work. I looked at Daddy who winked at me, then at Portsoy who in turn winked his eye at Mac. But it wasn’t the story of
Charlotte I’d heard two nights past that had caused my baggy eyes, it was the throbbing pain in my sore foot.
    However Mac’s tale of Charlotte did give me food for thought, and I just had to hear another tale. By teatime, me with my shiny shin, holey foot and baggy eyes were once again propped in
old Portsoy’s caravan, listening to another of Mac’s tales.
    This story was given to Mac by a young woman he met camping in a moor, and that was all he would tell me. He tells it through the woman’s tongue. I do the same.

 
    5
    THE TOMMY STEALERS

    I t was a beautiful place, with warmth and security. The moon shone on the hanging branches of several laburnum trees lining the pure green grass,
and as my father unyoked the horse a flash of silver-white wings rose in brief splendour from an old oak. Mother imitated the too-wooing of the owl, then apologised to it for the disturbance.
    My brother Tommy and I helped Father unload the cart while Mother filled a kettle from a clear flowing stream marking its territory round the outskirts of the forest. In no time the horse was
munching on a casket of hay, the bowed tent was nestled snugly against an ancient