BUS-BOOT BED
Daddy found his favourite spot in a wood near Ballinluig, and reversed the bus between the River Tummel and silver birch trees. Chrissie and Shirley, fed up kipping down in the wee Fordy, pestered the life out of Mammy to sleep in the bus boot!
‘Girls, are you mad, just imagine the danger! Laying sleeping in a place where any wild man could steal you away in the dead of night.’ Mammy wouldn’t even entertain the idea.
The girls laughed, saying who in their right mind would want to do a mad thing like that?
‘The boot doesn’t lock,’ she reminded them, annoyed at her lassies for harping on. ‘Even if it did, what about you and your claustrophobia, Shirley?’
‘We’ll keep the boot open, Ma, and I’ll sleep to the front just in case I feel chokit!’ pleaded Shirley.
‘There is no way you two are sleeping a night in there. Now go and do something useful like peel a pot of tatties or collect more sticks for the fire.’
Shirley had a pot of tatties peeled in no time, while Chrissie gathered up a pile of dried driftwood heaped on the riverbank after a recent flood. Shirley tried again, ‘Can we sleep in it now, Mam, please?’
‘Look,’ said Mammy, ‘let me talk this over with your father. I’ll see what he says.’
This was right up Shirley’s street, because if anybody could wrap Daddy round their little finger, it was her!
Dad’s brothers, Joe and Wullie, had arrived for a wee visit, and these two lads didn’t half rib the lassies whenever in their company. More so when they found the girls discussing a bus-boot bed.
‘Do you know there’s wolves in this wood, Shirley?’ teased Joe.
‘Aye, and they say at night a river monster, I think it’s a cousin of Nessie, has been seen to rise from the Tummel and help itself to a cow or two,’ added Wullie.
‘Away and not talk rot, next you’ll be telling me that giant pud-docks leap onto the road and piss over the cars!’ said Shirley.
‘Mammy, Shirley’s speaking dirty again and giving me a red face,’ clyped Janey. She’d spent the day sitting on a bank by the railway, counting passengers in the trains. As well as horses, Janey loved trains. She would spend ages counting people’s hats or how many men and women were in each compartment. Trains held a fascination for our Janey. But those comments might sway Mammy’s decision about the boot. So Shirley did what she always did, grabbed Janey by the neck and pulled her onto the ground.
My two uncles laughed at both my sisters, as they rolled about the grass hissing and spitting for all the world like a pair of scraggy cats. Mammy, affronted at the state of her daughters, took a dishtowel and came hard across their backsides, putting an end to their catfight!
‘You two men stop filling their heads with rubbish about monsters and the likes, or else those two won’t sleep tonight.’
‘Oh Mam, does that mean we’re getting to sleep in the boot after all? Did Daddy agree then?’ asked Shirley, as she brushed off bits of twigs sticking to Janey’s backside from their wrestling match, apologising at the same time.
‘Yes, he did, but one single peep out of either of you and it’ll be under the bus you can sleep, now, do I make myself clear?’
‘Clear as a baggy minnow pool, Mam, in a pearl burn,’ said Chrissie, giving her a big hug.
As the day came to a close, Dad, who’d not seen his brothers for months, cracked round the fire well into the night. They discussed the Berries. Who was there, who’d died, who’d married, who was in the jail, and so forth.
Soon it was time for the last cup of tea. Mammy had made a fine batch of scones. These were served up with dollops of butter and tablespoonfuls of just-made raspberry jam. Well-fed and well-cracked, the two lads said their goodnights and went home, not without a parting word for the girls to watch out for monsters prowling round the bus while they were at the mercy of the night.
Daddy took the rolled-up mattress from wee Fordy and put it in the bus boot, while Mam added a pillow and the tartan rug from the driver’s seat. In no time we were all bedded, including the lassies in the bus boot.
Whether it was the clamminess of that August night or Uncle Joe’s parting comments, who knows, but Shirley found it hard to sleep.
‘Chrissie,’ she asked, prodding her sister in the ribs, ‘are you thinking about what our uncles said?’
‘No, I’m trying to sleep, that’s what I’m thinking about,’ answered Chrissie, pulling another few inches of the tartan rug that her sister had claimed for herself.
But Shirley continued: ‘I heard a noise, and I think it came from over by that old twisted oak tree.’
‘You do too much thinking, full stop. What kind of noise?’
‘I don’t know, a kind of rustling-in-the-bushes noise!’
Chrissie sat bolt upright in the bed, banging her head off the low roof. ‘Ouch! you stupid fool, are you trying to put the fear in me? You’re no better than the men,’ she shouted.
This wakened Daddy and prompted a bang on the floor. ‘Get to bloody sleep, you two, or you’ll feel the back of my hand.’ (I could never understand what that meant, for I am sure the front of his hand would have done a better job.)
Soon, though, after a fit of giggling, fear of the dark gave way to sleep, and peace ruled in the quiet night. Then, somewhere in the surrounding blackness, a deep, throaty growl was heard by the half-sleeping Shirley.
‘Oh my God, what in Rabbie’s name was that?’ Shirley pushed her back into Chrissie’s belly.
‘You stupid bugger, you knocked the wind out from me!’
‘Did you hear it, the growling, did you f---ing hear it?’
‘Shirley, for the love of God, lassie, if the folks hear you cursing like that...’
‘Never mind that. There’s something in the night, out there in the pitch. Can you feel its presence?’
The two girls lay huddled close together, straining their ears and listening. They didn’t have long to wait, when suddenly a bloodcurdling growl shook the leaves on the whispering silver birch trees. Two hooting hoolits spread their wings and glided up and over the bus.
‘Oh God, Shirley, you’re right enough, it’s a monster, let’s run into the bus!’
‘No, if we do, Daddy will say we’re making it up!’
‘I’m willing to take a leathering, rather than face whatever is lurking out there.’
As my two sisters sat almost glued together, staring into the darkness, a movement in the trees made Chrissie shoot like a bullet beneath the tartan rug while Shirley stiffened with fear. Now, readers, when she did this, a strange form of temper would come on her. Instead of running like the clappers, as any normal teenager would do, my big sister faced whatever or whoever was responsible for her terrified state. This is exactly what she did now.
She ripped off her long cotton gown and ran screaming, mother-naked, into the night towards the beast! Lunging, she grabbed its arm, and with the strength of a dozen big men flung the mesmerised creature straight into the River Tummel! ‘Get back where you came from!’ she screamed. ‘Frighten me, would you, you bastard, I’ll give you frightening wee lassies.’
That wasn’t the end of it. Oh no, she decided to give it one more kick. So into the freezing river she went. ‘Come out here right now and fight like a man!’ By now her temper was totally out of control. Foam came from her mouth, her eyes rolled in their sockets and her body began to shake. The dripping monster was struggling for breath as it spat clumps of river reeds from its mouth. It crawled onto the bank coughing and spluttering. She let out a kick.
‘Help, stop it, Shirley! It’s me, Uncle Joe, I was only joking you!’
‘Look at the state of you, lassie,’ said Mammy, who along with the rest of us had been awakened by Shirley’s screams. ‘Get some clothes on yourself,’ she added, wrapping a coat round her dripping daughter’s shoulders. ‘And as for you, Joe, you should have known better. Don’t you remember what she did to big Macallum’s nose?’
Well, reader, who could forget that poor big man! We were up visiting with Auntie Maggie in Aberfeldy, when the said man decided to tickle Shirley’s feet sticking out the back door of wee Fordy. Oh yes, folks, that’s right, you’ve guessed. As fear gripped her, she kicked out and duly broke the gadgie’s (man’s) nose! The moral is, don’t play bogeyman on our Shirley!
One good thing came from that incident on the banks of the Tummel—the lassies never again asked to sleep in the bus-boot bed! Well, who knows, if another monster came a-creeping it might not have been a friendly uncle.
With another winter soon to be upon us we headed for Crieff, the Perthshire town surrounded by tattie fields, neep fields and farms, and where there was—yuk—a school.