Tears for a Tinker Read Online Free Page A

the longest letter of my life to Mammy.
    Davie and I were like strangers after that night, with an iron atmosphere between us. Sandy brought a garden swing for Johnnie and Margaret gave me a Bero home-baking recipe book. Strange to
imagine me being a good baker, but with my wandering curtailed I had to do something. Davie saw I was trying to adapt into scaldy life, and in time our marriage did strengthen again.
    Then came the letter from Mammy.
    Round the corner from her house was a wee low-roofed cottage, Daddy knew the old man who lived there. He, getting too elderly, had decided to move over to Aberdeen with his niece. The rent would
be affordable. ‘Did we want to come up to Macduff?’
    I was like a bairn on a Christmas morning. ‘Oh Davie, please say we can go.’ The thought of living in a new place beside my parents was drawing pictures of wonderful excitement.
    I had deep pangs pounding in my breast. Would Davie, who was a Crieff man through and through, say no... or maybe yes. I watched his face, then he said, ‘I’m away out to think this
over.’
    Hours passed, and there was still no sign. It made me think my long-suffering husband was not ready to up sticks and go far north; fifty miles north of Aberdeen, to be precise. However, just
after midnight I heard his key in the door. If extra persuasion was needed I’d baked a thick chocolate cake.
    ‘Well, lad?’ I asked, pushing near half the cake under his nose, and waited on his answer.
    ‘Yip!’
    I could hardly contain my excitement, because when Davie said ‘yip’, it came without conditions. We were leaving Crieff and this nightmare prison of a house.
    That night we cuddled and laughed with excitement at our forthcoming new ground.
    ‘My birth sign is “Pisces”, the two fishes. Macduff is a fishing port. All the signs are there—we will be happy.’ I was heart-sure. Davie joked, reminding me his
sign was Cancer. ‘Plenty of them crawling among seaweed on the shores of the Moray Firth,’ he said, and tickled me, pretending to be a crab.
    We were both only twenty-one, a lifetime spread out before us. Macduff, I was certain, would be just the first place of many more.
    Sandy and Margaret were heart-sorry to say goodbye, especially as we were taking their only grandchildren from them, but offers to visit would soon find them not far behind us.

4

    THE BIG HUNTER WITH HIS POACHER COAT ON

    I have a wee tale to share with you before we all take ourselves up north. John Macalister, a half cousin of mine who had promised to flit us in
his wee van, was helping with our packing one night when he brought in a large rabbit some mate of his had trapped. I told him to take it away, because I’d no stomach for skinning or gutting.
Anyway, all my cutlery and cooking utensils were packed in boxes. Over a bottle of beer, he and Davie got talking about poaching and trapping and so on. When John left, Davie said. ‘I think
I’ll go out for a wee turn at the poaching.’
    ‘What?’ I asked.
    ‘Catch myself a goose.’
    ‘Davie, did you not hear me tell John all my utensils are in boxes?’
    ‘Dad would pluck and skin it, if I caught one, and Mother would cook it. We could call it our going-away feast from Crieff.’
    This was my husband’s one and only attempt at goose-stalking.
    Old Tam, a neighbour, had given Davie a long, heavy wool coat some time ago.
    ‘A richt poacher’s yin,’ Tam joked, showing Davie all the concealed buttons and hidden pockets. Davie thanked his neighbour, but as he never considered wearing anything other
than trendy Beatle jackets, he put it away, not intending to be seen in it. So imagine my surprise when he unearthed this sinister-looking garment to go goose-stalking.
    All that day, fog and damp air covered the countryside. Geese and ducks could be heard flying above the blanket cover of mist. ‘Surely I’ll get myself one, there’s hundreds up
there,’ he said, pointing upwards, the poacher’s coat hanging