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Chapter Four

Snow

Sometimes when I was about nine and Peppa was six and Maw wasn’t too bad with the drink she would tell us about our das. It was before Robert came and after a man called Eddie Bean who used to come and smoke weed with Maw and stay the night.

Maw was sixteen when I was born and my da was called Jimmy and he was blond and he supported Rangers and Maw went to school with him and she said she loved him and they got a flat together when I was in her belly. Then my da got killed in a car he was in with three other lads going into Glasgow and the other boys all survived, one was in a wheelchair and was called Pally and you sometimes saw him in his chair going in the Spar. My da got killed because he was in the front seat and he didn’t have a seat belt on and they were all drunk.

Maw said she cried and cried and the council gave her a new flat – our flat in our block that has a balcony and you can see the firth and the wall and the lighthouse right out at the end of the wall and at night it flashes once every forty-five seconds.

Our flat had three bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom with a shower and a bath and a living room with a door out onto the balcony. I mostly had washing drying on the balcony.

She brought me back to that flat after I was born and for nearly two years she looked after me and she says she didn’t drink or smoke weed and she was doing an apprenticeship at Cutz in the precinct learning to be a hairdresser.

Sometimes when she was out I got looked after by Mhari’s papa, Ian Leckie, and her nanna who was called Pat, and they knew my mum because she had been in school with Mhari’s mum and Mhari was born three months before me. Mhari’s mum wasn’t there and when I asked Maw where she was Maw made a face and said ‘I cannae tell you darlin’, but she got in a bad way is all I know.’

Mhari and me were babies together a lot and we had a playpen in her papa’s house which was down by the wall and had a garden and a shed.

Maw said she met Peppa’s da in a nightclub and he was a Nigerian student who was from the southeast of Nigeria and was from a tribe called the Igbo. He was tall and his skin was brown and Maw said he was gorgeous. He was learning to be an architect and he played football for the college and he could speak English and Igbo and four other Nigerian languages and also French and a bit of Arabic and Italian and he knew Latin. I think that is maybe why Peppa is clever and learned to read very quickly and she also likes words especially swearing and she reads books which I don’t, except the SAS Survival Handbook.

Peppa’s da’s name was Kenneth and Maw said he liked her because she was curvy which means she had big tits and she liked him because he was a gentleman and had a lovely speaking voice. She said Peppa is like her da and I am like my da because I am tall and blond and I have got big eyes and a big mouth like him and I am getting muscles on my arms. Peppa’s da was a Catholic and my da was a Protestant.

I think I remember Peppa’s da from when I was only about three and I was on the balcony and he was with me and he lifted me up and he was laughing. He smelled of perfume and his hands were soft and he held me and we looked at the lighthouse.

There was about ten centimetres of snow in the morning and we got the fire going again and had tea and then went to check the snares and we’d got another rabbit. There were tracks in the snow, I found rabbit, red deer, fox and, I think, red squirrel under an oak tree, but I think squirrels hibernate, so it might’ve been a bird.

We collected more wood and then I had to look at the shelter because the snow had dragged the tarp down. I made the shelter the day we got here in the afternoon after we had walked five miles in the sun with all the gear. It was hard and we had to keep stopping and having drinks of water. I used the map and the compass to plot the route we took right up the side of Loch Trool on a forestry road opposite the other road where we saw some cars through the trees. It was easy on the forest road but when we got to the end of the loch we had to go up and ascend over 500 metres to the top of the ridge. There was a sheep path on the first bit up over grassy slopes with big rocks but it got steeper as we went higher and Peppa had to stop and so did I. We just did a bit at a time and took it slow, which is what they all say on the websites when you are climbing up.

The shelter was made by stringing paracord across between two birch trees and then fixing the tarp with the Velcro flaps to it and pulling it back to the ground so it was at an angle of about sixty degrees which is the best angle for shedding water. Then I held it down at the back with rocks and used more rocks to make three plinths under it then cut poles of birch to make the bed. Peppa got spruce branches and we laid them all over the poles and we used a lot so they were thick and insulated. And they prickle a bit but once they are pressed down they are very soft and comfortable. You have to build the bed platform off the ground to stop heat loss. We did all this after the five miles with all the gear to the most remote part of the forest I could find on the map which also had access to water and was in the trees.

But after the weight of the snow the tarp had got all pulled and rucked at the bottom and the paracord had stretched and sagged, and the middle of the tarp was getting a V in it which would let in water if it rained. So I decided we needed to make a bender.

A bender is a type of shelter that is loads of saplings arched across each other to make a dome shape. There was a diagram of one in the handbook and it said it was a good shelter for longer-term use which is what we wanted. I would cover it with the tarp and then spruce branches to insulate it.

When I told Peppa we were going to make a bender she grinned and said ‘Aye, we are going to make a bender because you are a bender!’ and she giggled a lot.

She is always saying I am a lesbian, but I’m not and she is only joking but it is a bit homophobic, but it isn’t because I am not gay. But when my hair is pulled back or I wear it under a hat I do look like a lad.

Some things make Peppa laugh so much she can’t stand up and she has spasms and sometimes you think she is an epileptic. One thing that makes her laugh like that is the word ‘houmous’.When we were wee and I used to steal her food I got her some houmous in a tub and she loved eating it with bread dipped in it and then she asked what it was called and I told her and she nearly pissed herself. She also laughs a lot at the word ‘meconium’ – which is the name of a baby’s first poo when they are just born and it is full of very dangerous bacteria. The word ‘bender’ for a gay makes her laugh and so does the word ‘menstruation’ for having a period. She also likes swear words like ‘wanker’ and ‘bollocks’ and she loves the word ‘jobby’, especially if you call someone a jobby.At school she got in trouble for writing ‘Mrs Gammon is a jobby’ on sugar paper on a display when she was in P6.

If she sees fat people in town or in the precinct, she goes ‘Quick – hide the pies!’ and this makes me laugh too. And sometimes she goes ‘Oooh . . . someone’s found the key to the pie cupboard!’ She also likes the word ‘bumhole’, and she sometimes says ‘Stop being a drippy bumhole’ if someone is annoying her or going on about stuff.

She likes Scots words as well like ‘glaikit’ which means that you are thick and your mouth is open and you look like you haven’t got an idea in your head. And she also likes saying ‘guy’ for very and she likes the word ‘dreich’ for when it is damp and drizzling and dark, and if it is she’ll go ‘It’s guy dreich the day.’

There was a kid in her class with a really big head called Robert McCulloch and she started calling him ‘Heid’ which is Scots for head. And soon all the other kids in the class were calling him ‘Heid McCulloch’ and he liked it because he had a nickname but Mrs Gammon said it was bullying and Peppa said ‘Aye, but it is a guy big heid Mrs Gammon.’

She did Burns in school and learned the Mouse poem and she sometimes says them and the bit that is best is ‘. . . still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me! the present only toucheth thee: but Och! I backward cast my e’e on prospects drear! An’ forward tho’ I canna see I guess an’ fear!’ which he says to the mouse in the nest he’s ploughed up and that is true and that is how I was in the flat and how I was for all my life and I want to be more like the mouse. Peppa calls women ‘hen’ like wifies in shops and if Maw was drunk she said she was ‘unco fou’.

Another good thing about a bender is that we could keep it warm with just a pyramid fire instead of a long fire and that would use less wood and that was another good reason so I cut the tarp down and shook it off and then went to look for saplings and thinner branches and Peppa went and got wood to keep the fire going.

I lashed some of the saplings together thin end to thin end and made them about four metres long and sharpened the ends and then forced them into the leafy ground and that was not all that easy because there are a lot of rocks and stones in the ground, so I put little piles of stones around each one when it was in to hold it. I spaced the poles about two metres apart each and then looped them over and made a dome shape. It was not as easy as it looks in the handbook either.

The sun was out now and some of the snow was getting soft and dripping from the trees, and I was kicking snow and leaves and muck out from round the bed under the new dome frame when I heard the helicopter.

It was low and chugging and I knew what it was as soon as I heard it. I think I had been expecting it. And I shouted in a big whisper ‘Peppa get down.’ She was dragging some wood back towards me and she just dropped and rolled under a holly bush and I crouched. I was looking up through the dome frame and above me I saw it as the noise came louder going chop chop chop chop chop. It was white underneath with E90 RESCUE in black letters. It was so low I could’ve hit it with the airgun probably less than thirty metres. It went right over us under the trees crouching.Then it flew still low out towards the loch.

I stayed still and shout-whispered to Peppa ‘Stay there.’ Then I sprinted down towards the burn and jumped over the rocks and up the first slope into the trees.The noise was fading and when I came out in the bracken it was halfway down the loch, still low. Then Peppa was there beside me in the ferns and she got hold of my hand and said ‘Is it after us?’

I said ‘I don’t know. I think it’s mountain rescue.’ It had disappeared behind the trees on the other side. Then we started to hear it again and it came out far over on the other side of the loch zooming along against the snow on the trees. It was coming back round and I grabbed Peppa and we rolled into the bracken and I pulled it closed on us and we lay there.The chop chop chop chop chop getting louder. And louder. And it must’ve come right back over us skirting our wood and heading north towards Magna Bra and the moor. The chopping faded. It was cold and damp in the ferns there on the snow and leaves, but I made us stay there and counted to 180 saying elephant in between each number to make it three minutes.

I said ‘Let’s go back.’

Peppa said ‘Have we gotta move now?’

I said ‘No. Not now. If it’s mountain rescue it means they’re looking for someone up there. In the snow.’

That meant there were people up at Magna Bra or on the moors above our wood.

I said ‘Come on.’ And we sprinted back through to the shelter and I got the map and we sat under the dome frame and looked at it. Magna Bra was at the top of the moor above us and our woods stopped about a mile from the start of the moor.

‘Ah’m going to look’ I said and pulled the compass out of the rucksack.

‘Ah’m coming’ Peppa said.

‘NO Peppa stay here and wait for me, they’re looking for two of us.’

She said ‘Nah’ and got up and started sprinting north through the wood. I shouted but she was gone faster than I could get after her so I started off.

The burn ran north and you followed it all the way to the top of our woods. I was cracking through the sticks and bracken and trees but I couldn’t see Peppa not even her back. It was all rising ground and the snow was thicker the further you went up. As long as we stayed in the woods we couldn’t be seen from the helicopter or anyone out up on the moor, the trees broke up the outline and against the snow looking in you wouldn’t stand out plus my fleece was grey and Peppa’s was black and they are good camouflage colours. But not against snow in the open once we got to the top.

Following the burn up you could feel the trees start to thin out and see the moor rising up and I slowed down and started to creep and I was puffing from running and getting panicky about Peppa because I still couldn’t see her. The sharp wind had started again and was blowing straight into me and stratus clouds were moving in from the north and I kept checking the compass. The wind was whooshing in my ears and I was stooping and running trying to stay low.

Finally the trees stopped and the burn went on into a gorge with steep sides and there was a ridge above me and I could see Peppa lying flat at the top and looking over it. I wished it would get dark so we’d be covered unless they used a light. I could hear the chop chop chop far off again now as I ran up towards Peppa and she was peeking over the ridge top by a rock.

I got to her and jumped down next to her and peeked over. The moor was huge and white with ridges of snow and it rose up and there was a hill at the end and above that another hill. About 150 metres away the helicopter had landed but the rotors were still going and there were little flashes of orange and yellow from men’s coats moving by it and snow was starting to come down again.

We watched through the snow and they were putting a stretcher in and there was three guys, two in bright-coloured coats and a guy in a blue thing and it looked like they had another guy on the stretcher.

Peppa said ‘Wanky walkers.’

I said ‘We need to get back in the woods before they take off.’

And we backed down the slope and ran back into the woods and got in far enough to be covered. We could hear the helicopter blades getting fast and watched it rise up above the ridge. They couldn’t see us and the snow was starting to really blow in.

Peppa said ‘You know what I fancy?’

I said ‘What?’ and she said ‘Sausages.’

We didn’t have any but we had a rabbit and we had to finish the bender so we walked back down the burn into the woods.

We had to work fast to finish the bender and stretch the tarp over it, and I made a doorway with an arch-shaped pole and bound it on with paracord, then we thatched it with spruce really thick and we put new spruce on the bed because it had got wet.

It started to get dark and the snow kept on but not as bad here as up on the moor and we got a pyramid fire going just outside the door of the bender and cooked the rabbit. We had tea and Peppa ate the last bit of Dundee cake. The bender was getting covered in snow and inside it felt warm because snow insulates.

They were the first people we’d seen since the bus driver on the day we came here. And although I tried not to I started to worry about it and them being there and there being walkers and wankers in cagoules up towards Magna Bra but they hadn’t seen us and they hadn’t been looking for us.