CHAPTER 13
The ‘pernackity’ turned out to be a sort of hotpot, sliced potatoes in a rich gravy; the ‘stotty’ was a flat, round piece of bread. In later years, the closest equivalent I could find was ciabatta. It had the same dense texture and weight to it, and I was profoundly disappointed to discover that many ‘stotties’ sold in chain stores were actually just a flatter version of sliced white bread.

We ate our free meal in silence, and the food was very good indeed. The air of tension seemed to have been swept away with the wind along the beach and the bounce of flat stones as little waves broke in their hurry to meet the shore. That night, the tent rocked in the endless wind from the marram and the sand, and once more I lay between two people I finally understood loved me.

Lorraine cut my stitches the next morning, and we celebrated with a proper fry-up, Graham delivering a half-dozen fresh eggs to enrich it. The days at his farm were few in number, but the time stretched endlessly, delightfully, till the morning we struck our tent, all tractors fettled and our food stocks replenished with more stotty and an abundance of other food. I was rather embarrassed by the reaction Graham showed when we left, as he hugged me closely.

It was hours later, as we headed northwards on the A1, that I asked myself how much of my discomfort at his attention was caused by the memory of Charlie. Don had always been urgent in his attentions, in such a hurry to get it done, finished, while Charlie had lingered, stayed in me, kissed the back of my neck.

How on Earth could I tell simple affection from whatever it was that could describe those two utter bastards?

I tried to put those thoughts away as we drove, the trip broken by visits to a couple of castles, one romantically ruined and the other huge and imposing. Both adults were in a mood as breezy as the air outside the van, jokes flying back and forth along with smiles.

“Might have a treat for you in a bit, duck!”

Lorraine snorted, shaking her head.

“I checked the tide tables back at Graham’s, love. Not a chance just now”

I looked from one to the other before asking the obvious question.

“Not a chance for what, Loz?”

“Lindisfarne, love. It’s an island, just over there. There’s a causeway, but when the tide comes in it gets cut off. They have a market there every now and again, more of a bring-and-buy thing, to be honest. We drop in when we can. Magical place, is that”

Ken nodded
“As long as you don’t mention the bacon beast of the curly-tailed animal”

“Eh?”

So, so eloquent, Deborah.

“Pigs, Deb. They say it’s unlucky to say that word on the island, so they have all sorts of euphemisms for them”

“Oh! Like, um, oinkers?”

“Yup! Or it might be squealers. Anyway, round here they call pigs ‘gissies’. Old Norse word”

“Why Norse?”

That led to a sort of lecture, engaging and enlightening, but still a lecture, on the history we were driving through, and Ken talked seamlessly and with real passion as we crossed the Tweed and rumbled around west of Berwick, which stopped his recitation in mid-flow.

“Loz?”

“Ken?”

“Get it, duck? I mean, where we are right now?”

“Oh! Right! Deb, love, where we met, that showground. The name of the road past it is Berwick Road! We’ve come full bloody circle, sort of”

Something else hit me just then, and I found myself almost helpless with laughter for a minute, until I could get the words out.

“Not just that, is it? Ken says about pigs and that island, and that path I ducked down was called Pig Trough!”

More laughter from the two of them, before Lorraine turned a little more serious.

“You OK, love? I think chatterbox there was doing all the talking because you looked a bit out of sorts. What was up?”

I shook my head, wanting to bury it all once more.

“Just memories, Loz. Bad ones”

“Then let’s make some better ones, love. Ken?”

“Aye?”

“Getting towards dinner time. You thinking what I am?”

“Already looking for the road, duck! Hang on… Deb? This is the border coming up…welcome to Scotland, girl!”

Nothing like the films would have shown, and everything looked just the same on the Scottish side as it had in Northumberland, but it was a new country for me. We stayed on the A1 for several miles, before Ken turned off to the right. A little way further, we came to a small town set near some cliffs, Ken navigating from memory and skilfully manoeuvring the van and trailer through cramped streets. We parked on the street, which was a miracle in itself, and the three of us walked round the corner to a shop, whose sign confused me. Embarrassingly, I had to ask.

“What’s ‘oxleys’, Ken?”

“Beg pardon? Oh! That’s not ‘Fish, oxleys, chips’, Deb. It should be ‘Oxley’s fish and chips’. Duncan Oxley and his family own it. Do you like fish?”

“Not had it much”

“This place, it’s locally caught. Fresh as can be, duck. Loz?”

“Yeah?”

“You hungry enough to split Deb’s with me if she doesn’t like it?”

“From this place? Dead bloody right I am! Let’s see what they’ve got”

There was a short queue, but we were soon at the till, where a fat man in a long white overall and an odd net-topped trilby hat beamed in recognition.

“Hiya you two! Staying or passing through?”

Lorraine was chirpy, but I noticed her eyes were away from his face and looking at the display of cooked food.

“Passing through this time, Duncan, but we couldn’t not stop, could we? What’s fresh?”

“Oh, got some lovely haddock in, plus some really lovely skate. Who’s this with you?”

“This is Debbie, our daughter. First time in Scotland. Not really had proper fresh fish before, have you, love?”

I shook my head, the smell of the vinegar and fried food making my stomach rumble. Duncan grinned, his eyes almost disappearing.

“Then let me really recommend the skate. One wing should do. What would you two like?”

“Oh, skate for me as well, Duncan. Ken? Haddock? Yes? And a haddock for him, please”

“Chips with all three?”

“Is the Pope a Catholic? Small portion for Deb, but me and him will pig out”

That word set me laughing again, and Duncan’s eyes disappeared once again as he smiled.

“She’s a happy wee lassie, I see. I’ll do you a bottle of pop as well, for her smile, aye?”

It wasn’t that far to a little harbour, gulls yelling as small fishing boats unloaded, and there was a bench with enough room for three. Steaming vinegar-soaked parcels of food, and a large glass bottle of dandelion and burdock that we passed around, all of us drinking directly from it. The skate was a delight, tasty flesh wrapped around a collection of ribs that felt like plastic. It melted in my mouth, and I couldn’t decide whether to save some of the fish or a few chips for my very last mouthful.

Sod letting the two of them have it!

We sat silent for half an hour, but not in silence, as the screaming from the birds was incessant. Eventually, though, we made our way back to the van, three abreast and all of us hand-in-hand. Conversation flagged as we drove on, but that wasn’t a worry, as Lorraine had picked out some more cassettes that took my musical education on some new routes. Edinburgh was also bypassed, but only so that I could see something I had heard so much about, but never dreamt I would see in real life: the Forth Bridge.

We crossed the Forth on the much newer road bridge, the music off so that Ken could deliver a long and involved lecture on the engineering principles involved, but I was lost in the view. I couldn’t tell which bits were ‘cantilever’, which ‘box girder’, which ‘suspension’. I just knew they were all beautiful.

We stopped in a small town near Dunfermline, Ken explaining how the local naval base delivered a clientele of a particular kind.

“We don’t need the jumbo skins for this one, duck, but they buy blobs like they’re going out of fashion”

I found out what he meant the next day, in the semi-permanent marketplace we set up in, as a steady flow of young men with very neat haircuts topped up our cash box and left with boxes marked ‘Durex’. The only words that came to mind as I watched the trade were “Hello, sailor!”

The next morning was a Friday, and our destination was another MCC rally, in a field behind a pub near Dunblane. It went just as I now expected, being such a hard-core veteran of the rally scene. Having someone like Sam and Rosie there would have been better, but I was slowly learning to decode the local accent, but a pair of sunglasses were still a pair of sunglasses, and fingerless leather mitts remained fingerless leather mitts. There was a hog roast, involving a whole pig on a spit over an open fire, but Lorraine warned me not to try any.

“They are already pissed, love, and that is a really shit way to cook a curly-tail. You will either get it burnt or nearly raw, and THAT will get you scratching your bum”

“Why my bum?”

“Well, there’s lots of things you can pick up from eating raw pork, and several of them are worms. I had to deal with a couple of tapeworms when we were in Germany, and digging through someone else’s poo trying to find the thing’s head is not something I enjoyed. Anyway, they are doing haggis as well, and that’s from sheep. So think about something more important, love”

“Such as?”

“We dancing tonight?”

“Is the Pope a Catholic?”

That got me a hug, something I never tired of, and when the weather broke on the Saturday afternoon, which sold us out of packable rain capes, Ken declared that we could close early. One large sign was left on the empty stand: ‘You know where we are. Want/need anything, come and find us. Ken, Loz, Debbie’

We did dance, something I was getting to love more and more with each opportunity I was given. It was all-involving, all girl, all me. I put my head back and my arms up, and Lorraine and I rocked out to a disco as well as a half decent live rhythm and blues band. The rain stopped several times, but the patter on our roof lulled me to sleep in my safe space.

Sunday morning dawned brilliantly clear and sunny, which allowed me to see the mountains rising before us. Ken caught my gaze.

“Not this time, duck. Can’t really take the old bus through there with the trailer. South for us, this time, but we’ll be back. What do you think? Take a month off some day, go off into the mountains, just the three of us?”

That brought on the tears I had done my best to hide from Don and his friends, which brought Lorraine running, but I managed to explain how I felt, what it meant.

Safe space. Ours.

We packed up after I had washed my face, and then we were off on that road to the South and away from the hills I so longed to see in close-up. We only drove around a mile before Ken pulled up, outside a newsagent’s shop. Lorraine and I sat waiting for nearly twenty minutes before she said “Wait here, love” and disappeared into the shop.

Ten more minutes went by before they were both back in the Commer, Ken holding a copy of a very familiar newspaper. He looked hard at Lorraine, who simply nodded, at which he handed me the News of the World. The front page headline was stark:

‘HELL HOUSE PAIR DEAD’

I skimmed the article, then read it again, and once more, but there was nothing there to answer my question.

John and Marie Parsons had killed themselves, it seemed.

Where were Charlie and Don?