The Scottish Hero

We followed in his trail of cigar smoke, in single file and complete silence. Carefully placing our plimsoled feet, avoiding any twigs that might snap. Above us, the sun filtered dappled light onto a forest floor covered in scented pine needles. When he stopped and held one finger aloft, even my five-year-old sister knew to stand dead still. I held my breath, hardly daring to swivel my eyes, in case I startled a magical creature. He took his finger down to his lips, then pointed toward a clearing. At first I saw nothing, just unfurling ferns swaying in the breeze. Then she raised her beautiful head, seemed to sniff the air, before bolting away.
‘A female red deer,’ the hero pronounced. The voice of authority. My father. ‘Let’s go home and see if Mum has made sandwiches.’
We turned around and headed towards the beach. The forest was Tentsmuir, less than fifty miles from my home. Not even out of Fife, but to this ten-year-old, it was a magical place.
Home for two weeks was a caravan in Tayport. In hindsight, hardly glamorous, but for a cash-strapped family of six, it was ambitious enough. Especially as I was likely to get car sick before we cleared Halbeath.
We walked along the shoreline back to the caravan park. I tied my laces together to hang my gutties around my neck and splash through the shallows. My sister’s legs couldn’t manage the last few miles, so Dad swung her onto his shoulders. He sang I Love You Because. Jim Reeves had been dead five years by then, but Dad’s admiration was undiminished. The walk took over an hour because every rock pool had to be explored. He picked up submerged stones to reveal crabs, anemones and little fish, then replaced them with care. The ‘find the best shell’ competition distracted us from the walking. My brother and I complained when he set our little sister beside the oyster shell and flipped it over. He’d guessed the unpromising looking grey shell, gnarled, ridged and covered in barnacles, hid a rainbow-shimmering mother-of-pearl interior. She was declared the winner, giving fuel to her podgy legs to run ahead and give it to Mum.
Mum sat outside the caravan on a tartan blanket. She stood to welcome us back, pulling our baby sister onto her hip. My mother was beautiful, photos confirm that. Wavy dark hair. Slim and tall with long legs, usually in tight slacks, today in shorts. She was like a gazelle in a herd of wildebeests. Other mums in the caravan park wore the same outfits as those of my friends’ mums. Tight-curled hair from overnight rollers. A sensible dress over American tan opaque stockings. Flowered pinnies, stretched over ample bosoms. I longed for one of those anonymous looking women, embarrassed by the attention Mum drew.
The hero woke me at dawn, that must have been before five in the morning in a Scottish summer.
‘Tide’s out. Come and help me dig for bait.’
My brother and I pulled our wellies over our bare feet and struggled into hand-knitted jumpers. The bucket banged against my legs as we ran behind him over the rippled sand. Across the Tay, lit windows marked the early start for the butchers, bakers, and milkmen of Broughty Ferry. He stopped beside the tell-tale spirals, and sank his spade into the sand. We overcame the horror of our task, to pick out the squirming lugworms and toss them in the bucket. Later he baited his rod and fished from the end of the harbour wall. We sat cross-legged beside him, dangling lines from square hand reels into the dark sea.
We returned to find our caravan plot had become a major attraction. Danny his foreman had driven up a blue and white convertible sports car, a holiday run around for my father. A scrum of people had gathered to admire its sleek lines. A man wearing braces over his white semmit asked him what kind of car it was?
‘Austin-Healey 3000. A mark III.’ Dad answered. The man’s look confirmed what I knew. We were in the presence of a hero.
‘Let’s get some tea Danny, then I’ll drive you back.’
‘Take the big ones with you?’ Mum suggested. We children would be split into two groups for the whole of our childhood. Even when the youngest child, a wee one, overtook me in height as a teenager.
Dad looked dubious.
‘She won’t be sick with all the fresh air.’
‘Promise, Dad.’ I said.
Then, the thrill of squeezing our thin legs into the plus-two back seats behind Dad and Danny, before the engine roared and the car scattered gravel leaving the campsite.
Dad owned a small garage with his father. I guess he had seemed like a golden boy when Mum married him. On the rugby and cricket teams and a competitive forest rally driver at the weekends. We didn’t know it then but his living was about to go the same way as the miners and the dockyard workers. Strong men with huge pride would have to take second place. The new industries better suited to their wives.
My stay-at-home Mum must have seen it coming. She went to college to get Highers, then on to teacher training. I remember how tired she looked, trying to study whilst coping with four young children. By the end of the next decade my father’s business had gone bust, their house lost with the garage. She turned her hand to architecture then, designing a new house to sit on a bit of land they kept. Using the last bit of capital not swallowed up by my grandfather’s death duties. She became the breadwinner and he worked as car parts salesman until he retired. He had hated it but revealed a stoic side, grimly accepting his changed status. Turns out both my parents were heroes.