Tears for a Tinker Read Online Free Page B

loosely over his frame.
    Before I could close my half-opened mouth he was gone, swallowed up by the mist that swirled round his ankles, billowing up into that coat. All he left behind was the eerie noise of his
footsteps on the pavement outside our soon-to-be-vacated house. I imagined him rounding a corner in the street. ‘My God,’ I thought, ‘he’ll frighten folks to death. He looks
like Jack the Ripper.’ One glance at the mist, tinged orange by the street lights, and the door was slammed shut, and my kettle boiled for a nice warm cup of tea.
    For a moment I peered through a slit in the kitchen curtains, convinced he was joking and that I would soon hear his knocking on the door, but no sound came and I began to worry. Feeling a wee
bit uneasy about the thick, ghostly mist outside, I closed the window I’d left ajar, and then ran through the house, drawing the curtains. Johnnie pushed his tiny arm into mine and asked for
a biscuit. I gave him several, along with a box of Lego. Then, when Stephen filled his nappy, thankfully concerns about Davie diminished while I busied myself with the bairns. The hours passed
slowly, and my boys were long bedded and asleep when those familiar footsteps brought my man home. ‘Is that you, Davie?’ I asked, before opening the door.
    ‘Woman of the house, open the door and let your hunter in,’ he joked.
    ‘Have you caught a goose, then?’
    ‘Have I indeed. Feast you eyes on this big juicy fella.’ Davie threw open his poacher’s coat and rammed both hands eagerly inside the hidden pockets. From one he took out his
father’s priest (salmon thumper), and from the other a big, brightly-coloured, plastic, DECOY DUCK!
    The sight in front of me I can only describe as unbelievable!
    The fog had turned to rain and soaked him to the marrow. Exhausted, but still smiling, he made me promise hand on heart not to tell a living soul what had happened—that he had seen the
duck sitting in a field and lay on his belly for ages stalking it. When he decided that it must be an injured bird, he jumped up and charged. Not until its head went one way, and body the other,
did it dawn on him what it was he’d been stalking in thick mist as he crouched for hours on the freezing ground.
    The poacher’s coat was handed in to big Wull Swift, a real life rabbit man. He, standing well over six feet, would be better suited to its size.
    I never was one for breaking promises, so only after getting my red-faced husband’s permission have I ventured to reveal to you the tale of ‘The Big Hunter, with His Poacher Coat
On.’

5

    THE REAL LOCH NESS MONSTER

    S tories of hunting, shooting and fishing were common among travellers while I was a bairn. Depending on how they were told, certain tales stayed
vividly cemented in my head. This tale I wish to share with you now is about the most feared hunter in the whole world, and for two reasons it has never left me. One is the legend that is
intertwined with it, and the second is its theme of greed. Greed is a monumental sin, but one that can grant you the gift of immortality if the old Devil likes you for it.
    Are you one of those who believes in the Loch Ness Monster? If you are, great! If not, then perhaps after this story you’ll be of a different mind. I leave it entirely up to you, my dear
friend. Sit down, and I hope you are near a pond or some other stretch of water, though it would be far better if you were sitting on the shoreline of Loch Ness. Never mind where you are, just let
me paint the scene.
    Around three centuries ago, Peggy Moore, a heaving giant of a woman, lived in a tent on the side of Loch Ness with her husband and son.
    Quiet folks living over in Drumnadrochit kept well away from Mistress Moore’s abode. Not because her family were tinkers, but simply because folks were terrified of her brute strength. For
around the expanse of the loch it was well known that she was as uncouth and unkind a woman as ever breathed good