Free Bruar's Rest by Jess Smith Page B

controlled woman doing her duties with a firm resolve. As they covered Annie’s coffin with a blanket to await her burial on the next day, he was astonished at the precision and respect of their ritual. Then, as was the way of the Macdonalds of Glen Coe, they covered their faces and fell silent.
    O’Connor tried in vain to coax them to have a wake—‘In my part of the world they do,’ he told them.
    All through the night they sat by their mother’s remains. No talking and no moving, rigid and silent they watched, until far upon the hillside a black hooded crow screeched to herald the dawn. A thin smirr of rain had changed to heavy mist as the tiny band of silent mourners lowered Annie down to her place of slumber in the middle of the moss-carpeted forest floor. It would have been a blessing to put her across beside her husband in Glen Coe, but that was not possible. However, Annie had had no belief in burials, saying to her daughters many times, ‘When I go, just pop me in any old place and I’ll find my way to your Daddy.’ So here they were, laying her down in a secluded, gentle glade, where small roe deer wandered by and brightly coloured jaybirds rested. Here the red squirrels darted and chased each other’s tails, and here all around tiny sparkling dewdrops would fall from the moist trees and water the roots of the bluebells and wild primroses to carpet their mother’s grave. ‘Yes, Mother,’ whispered Megan, arm entwining Rachel’s, ‘here you will be well cared for. Mother Nature herself will see to that.’
    Rory ushered his two sons out of the glade to allow the lassies their last moments with Annie. Minutes later, just as they too left their mother’s graveside, a small cry pierced the air. The secretive McAllisters gave the world a new life, a boy.
    ‘As one life goes below another comes up,’ said the Irishman, sticking his drunken head out from his tent and calling on Rory to join him. Strangely enough, the highlander, dependent as he was on the demon of alcohol, declined, opting instead to take himself off into the forest. Perhaps to remember his own wife’s demise many misty years ago, or perhaps it was just that he’d not the stomach for drinking that day.

T HREE

     
    A s the rest of the summer drifted by, it was not only Bruar and Megan who grew closer, but a feeling of companionship had touched Rachel and Jimmy. They spent days walking and talking, growing more dependant on one another. Rachel’s wasn’t the same as her sister’s relationship, not as passionate, more comfortable.
    Rory spent less time drinking, and his sons hoped and prayed that he had changed for the better. He’d even taken to rising first, lighting a fire and starting breakfast. Perhaps it was Annie’s parting that made him see how precious a good family was. He never said so out loud, but it was a far happier camp when the Highlander was a sober man.
    Not so O’Connor! If he’d staggered home cut and bleeding once, then he’d done it a dozen times. He’d found a drinking den in Kirriemor, one usually frequented by burly ploughmen who joined in quarrelsome debates about Ireland and its history.
    ‘One of these days, man, you’ll take a battering from the ploughmen you won’t walk away from,’ Rory warned him, genuinely worried. ‘Why don’t you go back to Ireland and find some family to share time with?’
    If there was a family somewhere O’Connor never let on, he cared not what happened as long as he could pay for and enjoy the pleasure of alcohol. ‘Tomorrow and its worries can take care of themselves,’ he was heard saying many times, as he slugged the final dregs from an emptied bottle.
    By autumn’s end Megan had at last reached the age of consent. She decided to ask her future father-in-law what were his thoughts on his son mixing with a tinker Macdonald? Bruar was busy in the depth of the forest cutting firewood; she’d voiced her anxiety about speaking with his father, so he left them