A Small Death in the Great Glen by A. D. Scott Page B

himself Karl, I help him and he lies. He is the only connection I have to my family. The Red Cross hasn’t been able to get news. I must know. I must go back up the glen. Get the truth from him. My God! Why didn’t he say something? My parents, how he knows my family, why he is here, he told me nothing.” By now he was babbling.
    â€œTomorrow.” Gino held his arm. “First thing in the morning. It’s too late now. Nearly dark.”
    And pausing in the middle of the bridge, the river red-gold from the rays of the dying winter sun, Peter offered up a brief prayer to a God he no longer believed in. The tall somber figure and his short round companion standing alongside him were each wrapped in their own memories, their individual realms of loss.

    Don drove them to the bleak council housing estate on the edge of the firth near the ferry crossing to the Black Isle. Joanne had invited herself. She had always wanted to meet the famous Jenny McPhee.
    â€œMine’s a gill of the Glenfarclas, the 105 proof. Thanks for asking.” Always one for a decent drop, Ma McPhee wasn’t going to let this chance go by.
    Joanne sneaked glances at the clan matriarch. She had expected someone older, decrepit. Mrs. Jenny McPhee at fifty was a handsome woman, although her life had been spent wandering from season to season. She had raised seven sons in caravans and benders and byres. She was one of a small group of Travelers who still traveled the roads in a caravan in the summer months and who kept up the traditions and secret tongue of her people.
    â€œAye, that’ll be right,” Don said cheerfully. “McKinlay’s it is and be thankful.”
    This bar was for desperation drinkers only. The green-tiled interior, marginally more welcoming than a public toilet, had a malt-brown bar with trough and brass foot rail stretching the length of the room.
    â€œWe’ll away to the back bar since there’s ladies present.”
    â€œAs long as you’re buying, Mr. McLeod.”
    Jenny gathered her bags, leading the way, and the three of them settled down in the small room, a coal fire and comfy chairsmaking it seem more like someone’s front parlor, the impression spoiled only by the smell of a room seldom used and of spilled drinks from the sticky carpet.
    â€œMa man.” Jenny indicated a photograph of a stocky figure leading a pony with three rosettes prominently pinned on its halter. “Black Isle show, 1936.”
    More rosettes, their ribbons faded and dusty, sat atop pictures of ponies, proud men holding them on halters. Quite why Joanne identified them as the Travelers of the North she wouldn’t have been able to say, but they were clearly of that tribe. Quite why these photos were up on the wall of this saloon bar was another mystery. But Don knew; Mrs. McPhee, née Williamson, matriarch of the clan, singer of renown, keeper of the old ways, kept hushed her talents as a shrewd businesswoman.
    â€œAll right then,” said Don, “what’s this about?”
    â€œMoney, what else?”
    â€œI thought it was about grazing and camping rights.”
    â€œThat land down by the council dump and all along the shore has been used by farmers and drovers and Traveling folk for forever. It’s historic those fields, it’s the end of the drove roads from the West, where they rested and fed their cattle whilst waiting to sell at auction. That land belongs to the town, not the town clerk. He’s got what you call an
interest
in all this. In other words he’s making a nice wee commission on the side.”
    â€œAye, I always heard that it’s common land.” Joanne knew a little about the dispute from her husband. He had his workshop in the burgeoning industrial estate that was taking over the grazing land.
    â€œIt should be left for everyone to use, not sold off,” Jenny insisted.
    â€œToo much money to be made. You need more than common-law