10

PORTSOY PETER

Three miles down the road we pulled onto a lay-by to wait on two things: Daddy and Nicky finishing the painting job and Portsoy coming back on Thursday.

You may find it difficult to understand how we later coped with our experience. I cannot say, except that time pushes memories into a smaller piece of a traveller’s mind. Our precarious existence in temporary abodes may also have made us accept it, or maybe it was our outlook on life itself. In other words ‘tomorrow has its own worries, be they natural or unnatural, face each day like there’s no other and that’s final.’

Daddy must have been doing a fine job at the painting, because no sooner had he finished one farmer’s barns than he started another.

Menmuir, a few miles down the road, saw our next stop. First, though, I would like to share one last snippet from Kirrie with you.

I hope you remember when I said that the bold boy, Portsoy Peter, would be a subject of conversation? Well, if the tea’s in the cup and the bum’s in the chair, then just you listen to this.

Thursday morning, and as promised, Portsoy arrived safe and sound. I use those words carefully, because he had a strange way of living on the edge of a knife. I was getting ready to go into Kirrie for some messages, Mammy had a few cottar housewives to fortune-tell and the lassies were going with Nicky and Daddy to help do easy chores at the painting. Portsoy said he’d come with me, and dearie me, I can feel the shiver run up and down my spine at the mere mention of that day.

In Kirriemuir town there was in those days a very reputable establishment where one could purchase whatever one wished (my companion’s words). I will not name the fine store, instead let’s call it Kirrie’s Harrods.

When we came into the main street something so beautiful caught my eye that it held me in awe. There, in the window of Kirrie’s Harrods, draped over a slender, white-faced, rouged-cheeked dummy doll was the most beautiful garment I had ever seen—a pink cashmere duffle coat with jet-black toggles. My heart louped somersaults in my young breast: never had I seen such a beauty, what a garment! I stood there transfixed, completely forgetting the groceries I had to buy for the family’s supper.

‘You see something you like, Jessie?’ whispered Portsoy.

‘Oh aye, man, take a deek at that, I have never seen such a coat. Would you look at it, man, could you see me in that pink?’

‘Aye, lassie, that I could, dae ye want it?’

‘Dae I want it, ha, that’s a laugh, dae ye see how much they’re asking for it?’

A price tag for some enormous amount hung from the cuff—don’t ask me how much; I can’t remember what it was, but so outrageous was it I knew in a million years I’d never afford it. But so lovely was that coat, that for a poor wee travelling girl just to look upon it was more than enough. Old Portsoy pushed an arm through mine and said, ‘if you want something bad enough you should have it, now watch and learn, my girl.’

With those words still ringing in my head, my escort walked me into the department store, and proceeded to charm the staff with a born wit of the highest degree.

‘Now, Jess’, he whispered, ‘don’t speak unless I touch the pinkie of your left hand, and talk like a toff!’

‘I cannae talk like a toff, all that marbles in the mouth stuff,’ I told him adamantly.

But he convinced me I could and that was that.

Portsoy then approached a slender middle-aged lady smelling of roses and bade her good-day. She smiled, and with one hand sitting gently in the other asked if we needed assistance. My companion went for the jugular. ‘We, that is my niece Gwendolyn and I, are visiting my cousin the Laird for a day or two, and we were passing this magnificent shop. Gwenny has taken a liking to the cashmere piece in the window. Do you have it in blue? Blue’s her colour, you see. Well, do you?’

I froze as Portsoy made out he was thoroughbred, and an English one at that! Worse, he implied I was his niece!

The rose-smelling lady, who by now was smiling from earlobe to pearl-studded earlobe, approached me with a swirl of measuring tape and called to a girl no older than myself to bring a size-12 in blue. This she did. It was gorgeous. Portsoy Pete knew, however, it was the pink one I wanted, and said, ‘oh, dimples, my darling, I know blue’s your colour, but that shade does nothing for Gwenny’s lovely eyes. No dear, best try on the pink, mmn?’

By now sweat buds I never knew I possessed were erupting over my body like mini-volcanoes. Portsoy touched the small finger of my left-hand, meaning it was time I spoke. The mother of all nerve battles took place in my dry throat and I squeezed out the minutest ‘yesssss’. The battle was then lost, closing my lips forever as trickling beads of sweat ran from below my hairline, down my back and disappeared under my breasts. Not even the Banashen herself had the power to bring such fear. I wanted to run out the door, not stopping till the trailers on the lay-by came in view, but something halted me in my tracks—a pink, cashmere, jet-black-toggled duffle coat was being draped across my shoulders by the girl. I slipped one arm in, then the other, and as if in a dream gently fastened each shiny toggle. Portsoy came behind me and lifted the hood over my head. Then swiftly turned me to gaze at my reflection in the full-length gilt-edged mirror.

I was absolutely beautiful. For the very first time in my entire life I wore a coat no ordinary traveller girl had ever worn. I felt like the Queen of the travelling people.

‘Portsoy,’ I whispered, ‘I know full well you and the whole of Kirriemuir don’t have the lowie tae pay for this coat.’

‘Shsst. I never touched yer pinkie, wait and watch.’

So, whilst the young lassie folded my new purchase into a gold-coloured box, Portsoy conned, to the highest standard of his profession, the rose-smelling manageress.

‘Now, where, oh where, did I leave that blasted wallet of mine?’ he turned to me.

Obviously his pinkie-touching technique was still applicable and I stayed silent.

He pretended to search through his pockets for a wallet that never existed, saying, to humour the lady, ‘I have a shoot this afternoon, my man must have popped the pocket contents into my tweeds. So, sorry Gwenny, but we’ll have to leave this coat of yours here, can’t be helped, lovey.’ Then he turned to the lady, apologised and summoned me to leave.

‘What in heavens name is he up to?’ I thought. The idea that he’d taken cold feet, and wasn’t conning the dear lady as he’d first thought to do, was a relief to me, but I was sad I’d lost the coat. I had misjudged him, however, because Portsoy knew exactly what he was doing. His plan was still ongoing.

‘That will not be necessary, sir,’ the manageress said, as she pushed the boxed garment into my hands, smiling broadly. ‘Feel free to settle the purchase any time you’re in town.’

‘If you think that will be alright,’ he said, adding, ‘I tell you what, just in case I’m called prematurely back to Harley Street, better pop it onto the Laird’s account.’

‘Certainly sir!’

I can say this to you, reader, in all honesty: when we walked from that store I felt like every law-enforcer on the entire planet was about to pounce. I was terrified.

‘Happy with your purchase, Jessie?’ asked my wily companion, as we headed back to our fancy mobile apartment nestling on the Kirriemuir lay-by.

Honestly, words failed me, I didn’t know whether to scream out loud, throw the boxed coat over a dyke or hide beneath a boulder. ‘How do I explain this coat to Mammy?’ I asked him.

‘Your wonderful mother has no idea how much a coat from that shop costs, and if you don’t tell her, then where is the harm?’

Little did he know he’d asked the impossible of me—to lie to my Mother: not Death himself could force me to do that. I fell silent and knew that this beautiful pink coat would never be mine. Next day I’d give it back, even if it meant going to jail.

Strange, though, how our best intentions can be waylaid.

When I entered the trailer Mammy said a dear relative was nearing his end and she and Daddy had to go to him. We were to stay with Nicky and Portsoy Peter until they came back. That very night Nicky pulled our trailer over to Menmuir, then went back for his mate’s. I never told anybody about my pink cashmere coat, nor did I show it to them, because whilst they slept away the night I ventured into the dark, found a soft piece of ground and buried it like a corpse. Portsoy’s venture, although a terrifying experience for me and my conscience, was an everyday laugh for him. So, no surprise that he wondered why I was never seen wearing the coat of many lies!

Menmuir and its neighbouring area seemed to be full of farms and outbuildings. Daddy was certainly going to be a busy man. Mammy and I did a lot of hawking. One day we went up an old track road, hopefully to make a bob or two at some cottar houses snuggled in behind a heather moor, when we came upon a really nasty young woman seriously abusing one of her children. A sad wean, a lassie of no more than ten if she was a day, was getting a beating for dropping her baby brother. Her mother with all her strength was using a heavy stick across the lassie’s back. Mammy saw red, took the stick off her and broke it in pieces. ‘Never you do that to your own bairn or the Lord will take a heavier stick across your back, shame on ye.’ My mother, as wee as she was, could wield quite a power when she came upon injustice.

‘I tell her till I’m blue in the face, but ever since my man left me that quine has turned as wild as a schnell north wind.’

The young woman, along with her brood, hurried away down the road, and Mammy said, ‘God alone knows what thon lassie has to put up with, her no having a man, but there’s nae excuse for cruelty tae children.’

That night, while the family enjoyed a sing-song with some local folks who’d joined our fire, I stayed inside the trailer and remembered this story Mac told me. And given the day’s events it holds a lot of weight.