When I was a little girl, probably about six or seven, I lived with my family in an old farm house .It was situated on the banks of the Tummel River a tributary of the river Tay in Central Scotland.
We had come from Paisley to escape the intense bombing focused on the river Clyde at the beginning of the war .My father had been in the Navy but was invalided out near the beginning of 1941.There are many stories about how this happened. He never talked about it. The only thing I do remember was the buzz around his return home and the general feeling of tension that surrounded his reappearance in the family.
By the time I was six the war was over and I was going to the village school. Sometime near the end of the war my grandmother came to stay with us. She was the only one of my grandparents that I ever really knew . Her husband Willie had died in 1936 the year before I was born. I hardly knew my mother’s father and my maternal grandmother was also dead.
The story we were told was that Grannie came to stay with us because of the bombing. The worst must have been over by then so there was a mystery surrounding her appearance in our midst. She was coming from a large house, where she was the only occupant, to our somewhat crazy household .Looking back, I think my mother must have made quite an effort to make her comfortable .This on top of a large household where we always had many people staying as well as workers both on the farm and in the house .Grannie had a bedroom next to mine on the second floor and her own sitting room downstairs.
The old house had been added to frequently over the years .It was a long low building made of whitewashed stone. You could see where some of the windows had been filled in at one time to avoid the window tax. Inside there were many little steps up and down and creaky passages where the floors seemed to slope.
The history was that it had been built as one of General Wade’s road houses after the first Jacobite rebellion in 1715. These had been used as way stations for the troops and where their horses and equipment was stored.. They are still known as King’s Houses and a few are still in use around Scotland
.Because of this quite unsubstantiated and fanciful story we thought that it might have also been a place where Bonnie Prince Charlie stayed on his flight from the defeat at Culloden in 1745. .His ghost could sometimes be seen on a quiet night!
In reality, of course, if Charlie had stayed at all the houses he was reputed to have stayed at ,he would never have made it to France! It was a nice story and fit well with the romanticized tales we were told in our first history classes at school. So much at odds with the really blood filled reality of the Scottish experience.
One night ,long after I thought everyone was asleep, I woke up in the darkness and could not seem to go back to sleep. There must have been a moon or some other slight light as I could see the outlines of furniture and a faint glow from the window. There was a small oil lamp on the commode but we were not allowed to light any lamp ourselves. There was no electricity in the house and these prohibitions on oil lamps were well instilled. You had to be a grown up and be careful. In this way we avoided the risk of fire.
As I lay there I remembered that Grannie kept a tin of biscuits in her room. She sometimes offered me one when I went to see her as she ate her breakfast in bed. They began to speak to me…. I had to have one. It did not occur to me to just go and ask.
I crept out my bedroom door and along the carpeted corridor without a sound. So far so good! I opened Grannie’s door and spied the cookie jar across the room on her dresser. The room smelled as it always did of the lavender sachets she kept in her underwear. I had helped her pick the lavender and that smell always reminded me of her for many years.
I crouched down and started across the room behind the bed end. On my way I glanced up and to my surprise there was Grannie sitting up in bed reading her book. She had her fancy bed jacket on and her glasses were in their usual place sliding down her nose. She seemed completely engrossed in her reading. Undeterred. I kept going and reached my prize. As I opened the tin with a little click the lovely smell of oatmeal cookie wafted up. I took not one but two and replaced the tin..Clutching the cookies I made it to the door and slid into the corridor closing the door behind me. I scuttled back to my bed and sat up and had a lovely midnight feast. The resident mice must have subsequently enjoyed the crumbs.
In the morning, as I got ready for school ,I enjoyed a secret sense of accomplishment at having been so daring as to pull off that cookie heist.
That evening, it was my turn to go for supper with my parents and the other adults. My sister and I took turns and this exposure to the world of my parents was a serious privilege. We were on our best behavior.
During dinner my Grandmother said ,”I think I had a visit from Prince Charlie last night”.” There were these footsteps and my door handle clicked”. I kept my head down and studied my plate.
Someone responded that the old house always creaked in the silence at night. The conversation moved on. When I finally dared to look up my grandmother had a slight smile on her face and glanced very briefly at me. Nothing more was said. If she knew who her visitor had been she was not telling. Neither was I!
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