Barra’s Angel

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CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_9ab48bfe-055e-5b0c-93b1-7312b40757cf)

Rose glanced over her shoulder at the kitchen clock. Ten to four. Barra would be out of school soon, but when he’d arrive home was another matter. She sighed, and continued scrubbing the tatties. The velvety sound of Nat King Cole soothed her in her labours and she hummed along to her favourite, ‘Nature Boy’. The song reminded her of her son each and every time she heard it, and she smiled. For wasn’t it Barra himself in every line?

The smile dissolved, tugged downwards into a frown. If only Chalmers could see what she saw, could try to understand the boy – just a wee bit. Rose placed the tatties in the pan and dried her hands, tutting at her husband’s scarf which hung carelessly on the back-door knob. Three times this week she had hung it on the hallstand, and three times Chalmers had taken it off; only to leave it dangling behind, having decided at the last minute that the April sunshine would last another day.

Rose reached for the scarf, holding it for a moment against her cheek. Her heart lurched, an uncomfortable habit that had begun just weeks ago. Please God, let me be wrong. I couldn’t stand it … Then fury, white-hot and suffocating, rose within her.

Well, Chalmers Maclean, if it’s Sheena Mearns you want, you can bloody well have her! Rose wrapped the scarf around the doorknob, once, twice, three times, twisting it within an inch of its life.

She gave the stew more of a skelp than a stir, and walked back into the living room. The LP had come to an end and the needle whished irritatingly at its centre. Rose shook her head. Her husband was an electrician, for God’s sake. You’d think he could get the damned thing to work properly!

She lifted the arm back on to its rest and switched off the radiogram. Throwing her small frame heavily into the chair, she snatched yesterday’s newspaper from the basket by the fireplace. Her eyes scanned the headlines. Halfway through the ‘swinging sixties’ and the world’s going to hell in a basket, thought Rose – what with Mods and Rockers, and free love all over the place!

The Craigourie Courier also contained a full-page report on the previous Tuesday’s Budget, which had resulted in an increase in the price of a fag and a dram. And this from a Labour government!

Rose snorted. Who could you trust any more?

Unable to concentrate, she folded the paper and returned to the kitchen. Well, at least she’d have some company when Barra got home. The Easter holidays started today, and she’d be opening the house for the bedders next weekend. Wouldn’t that be enough to keep her mind off things?

Rose gazed out at the ancient forest bordering her home, and knew that it wouldn’t; for Barra would likely be spending every minute he could lost among the trees, giving her even more to worry about.

It was Rose’s ever-present nightmare that Barra would be ‘molested’ (they were using that word more and more on the telly) while wandering in the woods which separated the Maclean household from the Whig at the other end. The Whigmaleerie was, in fact, the full name of the café but, as the building housed Drumdarg’s only shop, bar and café under the one roof, the property had simply been referred to as the Whig for as long as anyone could remember.

The front was given over to the shop and the bar, with the back divided neatly between the café and the kitchen. Maisie Henderson owned all of it, and lived in the four rooms above with her bidie-in, Doug Findlay. It was no secret that Maisie and Doug ‘lived in sin’, but they were popular enough for folks to turn a blind eye to the fact. Besides, they had been together for ten years now, and everyone assumed they would marry some day.

Rose had been glad of Maisie’s friendship when she first arrived in Drumdarg, and the pair had become even closer over the years. Rose had found an easy comfort in Maisie’s company that she had never shared with anyone else. Yet even Maisie paid scant regard to Rose’s complaints about the inordinate length of time Barra spent in the woods.

More than once, Barra had come upon some poor inebriated soul attempting to navigate the forest trail and had helped him back to the Whig, and the inevitability of yet another ‘one for the road’.

‘It’s the boy’s nature,’ Maisie would insist. ‘Y’might as well accept it.’ And, despite Rose’s most earnest entreaties, she could not encourage Barra to stay out of the forest. Chalmers, who had been known to stagger along the trail himself on occasion, could understand her anxiety even less than Maisie.

‘I’d have given my right arm to live wi’ the woods at my back when I was his age,’ he would assure her; often, and in a voice that brooked no argument.

As soon as Chalmers had felt sure his electrical business could support it he had bought the house at Drumdarg; this despite Rose’s concern over such a foreign idea as ‘paying a mortgage’. Once installed, however, Rose had decided to make the best of it and, realising that the front room and the spare bedroom were destined to remain empty most of the time, set about contributing to the family coffers by planting a ‘Bed and Breakfast’ sign at the end of the road. A large carefully printed notice in the shop window of the Whig soon followed, and it wasn’t long before the ‘bedders’ started arriving.

Rose quickly came to appreciate the small independence it brought her, but it didn’t lessen her anxious concern for her son’s well-being.

Barra had been seven years old when they moved from Craigourie to Drumdarg, and the woods were as comfortable to him as his own back garden. They were his back garden. As the seasons turned around him, Rose watched and worried as his childhood slipped seamlessly from him and adulthood began sweeping a gentle brush over the planes of his body; smoothing, preparing.

Yet Barra’s eyes were childlike still, and the magic he found in every leaf, every flower, was captured and distilled, and fed to a heart not yet ready for a grown-up world.

Rose knew these things. Chalmers, of course, did not.

‘You’ve ruined him!’ had become his anthem, especially since the incident with Mama Iacobelli.

Barra had had a late start to his education, due to a sickly infancy which left him smaller and weaker than his contemporaries. Consequently, at the age of thirteen (almost fourteen, as he informed anyone who might care to ask), he was sharing his first year of secondary school with pupils a year younger than he. Among these pupils were the redoubtable Iacobelli twins – more usually referred to as the Yaks.

Once it became known that Barra had had to be pushed in the big pram until he was nearly three years old, the Yaks had all the reason they needed (if, indeed, any was needed) to pick on their new classmate. During Barra’s first term at Craigourie High School he had been beaten up twice in quick succession by the Iacobelli brothers.

Barra had taken his licks, refusing to fight back. First, and most importantly, he saw no reason for people to fight ever; and secondly, he knew it was a waste of time, when between them the Yaks outweighed him four to one.

After the second beating, Rose had urged Chalmers, whom she knew would have been better pleased if his son had put up at least a semblance of a fight, to call upon Mr Iacobelli Senior.

Mr Iacobelli was a small, mild-mannered man, whose entire conversation seemed to consist of ‘Si’ and ‘Prego’. While his wife attended to the fish-frying side of the family business, Mr Iacobelli ran the ice-cream parlour. Fortunately for him, they were separated by an adjoining wall, for Mama Iacobelli was anything but mild-mannered. Her sons had inherited her imposing physique and belligerent attitude, and all three were inordinately proud of their ancient lineage.

As luck would have it, Chalmers had arrived just as Mr Iacobelli had taken the opportunity of a lull in his day’s toil to nip across to the bookie’s. Chalmers was therefore confronted by the formidable lady of the house, and had scarcely opened his mouth to complain about the twins’ bullying when Mrs Iacobelli (dressed, as always, in readiness for a funeral) rolled up her black sleeves to reveal two massive, and very threatening, arms.

Chalmers was forced to step back out of the doorway to avoid physical contact, and indeed felt fortunate to have had the chance to complain at all.

Retreating to the relative safety of his van, he was followed the length of the High Street by Mrs Iacobelli’s voice – which was every bit as intimidating as her presence.

‘Stay outta my shop, you hear me? My boys, they no doing bad to no-body. My boys, they look after their mama. Nobody pincha da sweetie in Mama’s shop! My boys, they no allow it. My boys …’

And on and on she went.

Chalmers had been in a foul humour by the time he arrived back in Drumdarg. Even Socks, the family cat, and Chalmers’ sworn enemy, deemed it politic to remain at a discreet distance.

‘Barra!’ Chalmers shouted.

‘What is it? Chalmers, what is it?’ Rose had tried to catch her husband’s arm as he marched past her towards the staircase. Barra, who had earlier pleaded with his mother to leave well alone (it wasn’t as though the Yaks had singled him out; they had already beaten up most of the other boys), appeared on the landing almost at once.

‘Did you want me, Da?’

‘Were you stealing sweeties from the Iacobellis?’

Barra came hurtling down the stairs. ‘Course not! Course I didn’t. I don’t steal!’

Chalmers looked at his son and knew that he was telling the truth. The boy always told the truth. He didn’t have the gumption to lie. Again his eyes surveyed the split lip and swollen nose, and Rose breathed a silent sigh of relief as Chalmers reached to ruffle Barra’s auburn curls.

‘Right, then. Well, that woman takes the biscuit, so she does. Stay away from those boys, son,’ he warned. ‘Let them take their Tally tempers out on someone else.’

Chalmers turned towards the kitchen. ‘Cup o’ tea, Rose,’ he commanded.

A look passed from Barra to his mother. As so often, they had no need for words, and Rose smiled at him, her eyes sympathetic. They both knew it wouldn’t be so easy to stay away from the Yaks. The boys were well known for picking on others at a moment’s notice – and for no reason.

The twins, however, seemed to have lost interest in Barra, partly as a result of Barra’s determination not to put up a fight, and partly because they deemed him too puny to bother with. Until, that was, Mr Macdougall inadvertently gave them a new excuse to make Barra’s life hell.

The good teacher, in an effort to capture his pupils’ flagging attention during an Ancient History lesson, rightly pointed out that Barra Maclean shared his middle name with the ill-starred Roman soldier, Mark Antony.

By the end of the period, the Yaks had worked out that the initials of Barra’s name spelled B.A.M. From that day forward Barra was hailed as ‘Y’wee poofy bampot’ whenever he was in the near (or far) vicinity of the Yaks.