I have to put Dad to bed again. Not strip him or anything, that’s just gross. I take his manky slippers off his cheesy feet, try to fold the hole of his socks over so his toe won’t stick out like an accusing finger. I pull the duvet over his big belly and leave him to snore.
It’s still early so I head out before Tommy comes searching for me.
Mr Hogan had been nagging at me again to practice more. All right for him to say in his fancy detached house up the glen. If he stayed in The Loan he’d know all about it. Old Meggie upstairs blasting out her Madonna tunes at all hours of the day, and Bill downstairs playing something Dad says is offensive to anyone not born in Northern Ireland. I quite like it. The whistles are a grand swagger, but he says it’s full of hate and if Bill doesn’t like the politics here, he should bugger off back to Belfast.
It was the whistles of The Sash that made me approach Mr Hogan in the first place. If you can’t beat them join them. He gave me a chanter at first. ‘You play the melody on the chanter’. And some easy tunes to learn. Hector the Hero and some slow marches. When he got me to add the bag and drones I blew so hard I thought the top of my head was going to explode. That first month he let me practice in the dinner hall every day after lunch. He wanted me to stay behind after school for practice, but I had the school bus to catch, and no way was I letting Dad drive to pick me up in the afternoon. He assured me he would never drink and drive with me in the car.
Then Mr Hoggan entered me into the piping championships in Glasgow. I told him it was impossible because we couldn’t afford the kilt. He said that’s the last thing I needed to worry about.
‘Get the music down, get the music down.’
I must find somewhere to practice so I head towards the old railway line. Last summer when we first moved here, I would mooch around the track that stretches from our village above the loch side to St Fillans. There is a walkway where folk walk their dogs and leave little black bags of poo lying around to be trampled into the undergrowth. Tommy Chisholm is always at me to collect them and shove them through old folks’ letterboxes, but I’m not doing that, it’s horrible. I just think of my granny and how she would cope if that happened to her. Dad says I’m not to talk to Tommy but he’s the only one in this village who will hang out with me. Also, he’s about twice my height and ten times my weight. If he wants to be my pal there isn’t much I can do about it except hide.
I always wondered what happened to the railway track when it entered the village. The straight track seemed to stop at a tangle of brambles and nettles and then sway off down the banking to join the woodland trail advertised on the board in the carpark by the toilets.
I bump into Tommy at the public toilets, it’s like he’s been hiding there to catch me on the way past. He’s riding a bike that’s too small for him. Nicked probably. His big fat blobby backside spills over two skinny tyres. It’s going to break. He cycles round and round me, spitting on me, calling me teacher’s pet because I have my chanter in my hand. I shove it inside my hoodie. I need to get away to practice. The championships are still six months away and I‘m pretty hopeless.
‘Ryan Sykes, teacher’s pet, Ryan Sykes, big swot, Ryan Sykes, teuchter music.’
‘It’s not teuchter music.’ I move towards the narrow path that leads up to the track before above village. He won’t be able to get up there on the bike. As soon as he passes me to turn at the toilets I sprint.
‘Ryan!’ I hear him bellow. ‘Ryan!’ He gets closer. ‘Ryan, your dead.’ I reach the main track, I know he can push the bike up here and once on the track he can easily cycle to catch me. I see a wall of bushes in the opposite direction and dived that way. My trainers slip and tip me forward. A thick bramble net blocks what might have been a path at some point. To the side grows a bank of nettles, the lesser of the two evils. I’ve no idea how far the nettles stretch, I must get off the path. I pull my hood up over my head, drag the sleeves down to cover my arms, gulp lungfuls of air, head down, dive into the nettles. It’s not too bad once I crush them under my body, they seem to lose their bite. I feel the tiny feathery stings prickling through my trackie bottoms. I scramble to a patch of grass behind a net of brambles. And crouch, watching the path. The bike’s front tyre appears first, he’s pushing it on. His bull head thrusts forward, his face purple, eyes popping with rage.
‘RYAN, YOU ARE DEAD MEAT!’
My breath booms, my face soaked with sweat, he must smell my stink of fear. But he never even looks in my direction. He backs out of the tangle, jumps on the bike and wobbles off on the track toward the dogwalkers and joggers.
I sit back on the grass, eyes still on the patch he disappeared into and I wait. He might come back but after about ten minutes I rub the stings on my hands and legs and drag myself up to my knees. Another knot of brambles stretches across the path, and I weave myself forward on hands and knees, catching, releasing, blood now covers my hands. I’ve a thorn in my thumb which will make playing the back note difficult, but I’m able to pull it out and suck the blood off. After a bit the brambles give way and I see a wall line either side of the path. It’s about my height and made of something weird. Not brick or stones like most walls but some sort of concrete, it has strange lines along it and cracks like water marks in paper. The top is a hat of moss. The further I crawl the line the thinner the brambles are. Cracks in the concrete tufted with grass spring up amongst the nettles. I hear traffic, not below me but ahead of me. A metal rail runs along the top of the concrete, and I’m able to grab this and hoik myself up to look over the parapet. I see the Ogle Burn running down the glen and disappearing under me. I’m on a bridge. I lunge to the other side and pull up. There are the hills I see from the house, there’s the burn heading towards the loch. To my left I just make out the track of the old railway. I duck back down in case Tommy sees me. I know I’m on a bridge but no idea where it came from. I’d never seen it from the road before. To the right the wall gives way to a banking and a canopy of trees. I’m in a jungle. There’s a small gap in the undergrowth, I step towards it, my heel skitters and I end on my backside sliding down the banking. When I stop rolling I notice the road coming down Glen Ogle and a line of cars desperate to pass an ancient campervan. The trees here are thick and high. I crawl down the rest of the bank shielded from the road now by the forest. I look up and along and almost cry out loud. A massive bridge loops over the burn and glen. Colossal arches, I count five, but guess there’s more, I just can’t see them for the trees. The towers are like sleeping giants, white streaks running down the legs like they’ve wet themselves. I start to giggle at the thought then stop. Through one of the arches, I see the lochside and the hills to the south, it must be visible from the village but I can’t remember seeing it or hearing anyone mention it. Mind you we have only lived here for six months. There are no houses nearby only the drone from the road tells me I’m near people.
A blue shipping container sits under the centre span. Who put that there? I look around and sure enough a land-rover track leads from the farm up the glen. I skirt the container, the vegetation growing at its base makes it look forgotten. Sheep droppings scatter the ground. It appears it’s being used as a farmyard. I take my chanter from my inside hoodie pocket; glad it survived all the tumbling about I’d been doing. Mr Hogan would roast me if anything happened to it and Dad certainly wouldn’t be able to pay for a replacement.
I play a scale, the notes echo, crescendo. My heart swells and I wish I had the full pipes here, but I know that’s crazy because it would bring everyone from the village and might even wake Dad from his comatose state. But it would sound brilliant.
I crane my neck. I see the railings. I see where I had looked over. The bridge is gigantic. A pleasing curl round the valley, perfect, like a trombone. No one knows it’s here apart from the farmer with his shipping container. When I get back to the banking, I don’t immediately return to the top. I venture towards the road and see a small gate on the opposite side of the road from the Scout Centre. I know exactly where I am. On bloody hands and knees, I crab up the banking, force myself through the brambles onto the bridge parapet. With the heels of my trainers I scrape out a patch free from nettles, sit down, back to the wall and place my head against the cool concrete. Above me a skein of geese are vee-ing around the loch on the early evening hunting rounds. I know it will start to get dark soon. Dad will be getting up, might even get dressed today, but that doesn’t normally happen on a Sunday. He’ll attempt to make me something nice for my dinner. Pasta probably and I’ll eat it even though its soggy. He’ll crack open another bottle of vodka and I’ll pretend he’s only having a glass of Irn Bru.
Mr Hogan says if I get on well at the piping championships, I can maybe get a place at the Conservatoire in Glasgow. He says I might need to stay there during the week. I don’t know who would look after Dad then though.
I coorie into the nest that I’ve made on the bridge. I warm up with a pibroch and the sound soars into the air, drowned out by the noise of the traffic. I feel a tiny spot of rain but keep going. The sun is glinting Alpen glow upon the north flank of Ben Vorlich, my fingers begin to numb but I keep playing. If it rains I know I can go under the arches. The only one who can hear is a bridge made of concrete and it’s not going to tell on me.
Moira McPartlin is the author of five novels. Her latest novel, Before Now:Memoir of a Toerag is written in Fife dialect. Moira was a 2021 writing fellow at Hawthornden Castle and 2022 Federation of Writers (Scotland) Scriever. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies including, Crannóg, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Poetry Scotland and Causeway. Moira’s current project is about Scotland’s Victorian mass concrete viaducts.
