A Tale of Two Grannies

There are jobs that have died out altogether, starting with the Industrial Revolution and running right through to the advent of Artificial Intelligence. In some cases, at least, probably no bad thing as they could be dirty and dangerous. But there are other jobs that are still around, and it might surprise people. For instance, there are still governesses, and Helga Sherman was on the point of becoming one. Oh, she called herself a tutor, as only a man in that role would once have done, but it was not the same as giving catch-up tuition to a child who had been off school, or extra tuition to one who was cramming for exams, or supplementary help to parents who were, for whatever reasons home-schooling. She had performed that role. But it was not the one she was performing now. 

     Angus and Alicia Tavistock played little or no role in their children’s formal education, and it was most definitely not a temporary arrangement. 

     Helga found out about the post in a very old-fashioned way, too. In the pages of The Lady. It wasn’t even a magazine she read, but it had been lying around in the doctor’s waiting room (for once a fairly recent one) and was at least preferable to Practical Caravanning or Superior Sugarcraft. 

Couple on Scottish island seek tutor for their children, aged ten and eight. All expenses paid and allowance provided. Own accommodation.

     Despite promising isolation and being advertised in The Lady, the advertisement did include a telephone number and an email address.

     Helga’s interest was piqued. She was, as it happened, in an uneasy halfway house. She still had a job as a teacher at the local junior school, and one she loved, but it was a pretty open secret that it would soon be merged with a larger one in the next village and though everyone assured her (and she liked to believe it) that she was highly valued, the fact remained she was the most recent newcomer, and last in, first out still held good, whether it was officially admitted to or not. 

     She had also, for at least the last decade, had this notion that she must make the effort to discover Scotland better. She had been to Edinburgh a couple of times, and just over the border in Berwick, but somehow a different plan always seemed to come along, and it was shelved until next year, or the next holiday. She confided in her colleague and friend Naomi, who tried to be tactful about it for at least a minute. And the prediction Helga had made to herself that it would only be a matter of time until Jane Eyre was brought up. Somewhat overlooking the fact that though, admittedly, mad wives in the attic didn’t constitute an ideal situation, Jane actually had quite a cushy number of it as a governess (even if her creator didn’t). 

     Helga did not completely abandon her common sense and self-preservation. Though not averse to having her five minutes of fame, she had no wish to end up as the subject of the kind of documentary that starts with telling you that some scenes have been reconstructed and ends with a hotline for anyone who has information. She ascertained that the geological research going on on Starra Brae was a tad marginal, but thoroughly respectable, and that Angus and Alicia were regarded as a tad quirky, but as long as they financed most of their own research, were tolerated by the scientific establishment. And the island itself (there was something illogical about an island being called a Brae that both appealed to and slightly irritated Helga) was idyllic. Admittedly the kind of idyll that had more to do with windswept rocks and crashing tides than lush valleys and roses round the door, but Helga had no problems with that. 

     After a telephone interview and the dispatching of references (the one from the headmaster of the village school was so glowing it made Helga blush) she was offered the job, and within weeks, was on her way to Starra Brae. 

     The journey there was accomplished by both reassuringly and slightly disappointingly modern and efficient means. She got onto a high speed train one of the few that still offered sleepers, and was whisked northwards and westwards. Before she fell asleep on her narrow, but reasonably comfortable bunk, Helga watched the contours of mountains, somehow both jagged and stark and fading into the mists and the moonlight, flash past and yet seem static. There was something out of time about making a long train journey, even on the most modern and hi-tech of trains. But the end of the line wasn’t the end of her journey, and this was where it got slightly complicated. There was the need of a taxi drive to the airport, and then a flight to Starra Brae. The island itself didn’t have an airport, but it did still have a landing strip, a leftover from the days when it had been considered more important than it probably was as an outpost in the Cold War. There had been a campaign to keep the ferry service, but it had failed, as most people had expected it would, and now there was one to get it opened again, which would probably fail, too. 

     Helga wasn’t wild about flying, and the last (and only) time she had been in such a small plane was when she was a child and it was still (just about) the days when people could be taken for a spin – they always called it a spin – as part of a local fair. It hadn’t been a happy experience, as it had been rough, and she suspected that though the pilot (presumably) had a license, he was decidedly rusty. But this flight was smooth, with an expert pilot, and she was almost sorry when they landed on the airstrip on Starra Brae. “I presume you’re being met,” he said, as he helped her with her luggage. 

     “Yes, though I don’t know if it will be Angus or Alicia.” They had already said she was to use their first names.

     The pilot smiled, “Lassie, I’m not a betting man, but if I were, I’d feel safe laying a bet with you that it will be one of the grannies!”

     Even as he spoke, they spotted a squat, sensible, 4 by 4 coming up the runway, which was, as the pilot said, technically off limits to other vehicles, but people always ignored it. “Then it’s goblin Granny,” he said, “If it were the minibus, it would be gospel granny.”

     “I – er, beg your pardon,” Helga muttered, but already the car door was open, brawnier arms than the pilot had were tossing her luggage into the boot as if they were flimsy evening bags, and she looked up to discover that the brawny arms belonged to a woman who barely came up to her neck and who wore her grey hair in long, thick braids. “Good luck!” the pilot said, wryly.

     Helga was not sure whether to regard that as just a pleasantry or something that should make her nervous!

     “The name’s Katherine Tavistock. You may call me Kate if you wish, but not Kathy. Can’t be doing with Kathy. Don’t know why. But I expect Airman Alex has identified me with another name.” Helga gave a nervous half-chuckle at Airman Alex, thinking of Postman Pat, but her companion seemed to speak quite affectionately. 

     “Och, spit it out! Goblin Granny. That’s what they call me! And before you ask, I may be a bit wee, but it’s not on account of that. To hear some folk talk – one person in particular! – you’d think I’d signed pacts with every demon known to man and danced naked on the croft at midwinter dawn. Oh, I believe that there are more things and beings on this earth and beyond it than your so-called rational bodies like to admit. But I approach it quite academically. I even have a doctorate in the subject.” She mentioned that as casually as she might have said that she was wearing an Aran sweater or that it had started raining – almost as if she were detached from it. “And I’m a trained teacher. So is Morag. Who you may know as ….” she paused. Takes a teacher to know a teacher, and their tricks, thought Helga, still coming to terms with the strangeness of the situation and the bleak, rock-strewn landscape interspersed with patches of almost unnaturally bright and hardy heather. “Gospel Granny?” she asked.

     “Aye. Alicia’s mother, and a fine woman in her way, for all she’s a Presbyterian.”

     “But – excuse me, but if you’re both teachers, then …..”

     “Come on, lass, catch on! Angus and Alicia are scientific folk. Now nothing at all wrong with that. But did you think they’d be wanting either Goblin Granny or Gospel Granny to be teaching their wee ones? Not that it stops either of us telling our tales!”

     “That must be – awkward….”

     “Aye, it can be. But we rub along pretty well for the most part.” She pulled up by a large standing stone, that definitely seemed to have some kind of manmade inscription on it – or at any rate, something not caused by the elements! – and asked. “What d’you make of that?”

     “It’s impressive. Can you tell me what it means?”

     “I wish I could! But nobody is quite sure. Morag thinks it was once a Celtic cross, though she has enough trouble with even that. But I reckon no human hands, Christian or otherwise, made those marks.” She laughed, a rather lovely laugh, gruff, but with rough music in it. “Relax, lassie! We’re not as weird as you’re thinking. Well, not most of the time …..” Helga could see the twinkle in her rock-grey eyes, but didn’t know if she was convinced.  This could be seen as seriously bizarre, she thought, I’m here as a tutor to the children, but I’ve not met them, nor even their parents, but I seem to already know a great deal about their Grannies. Or perhaps very little!

     Barra Brae was not an utterly uninhabited island, nor one inhabited only by the Tavistock clan. Kate drove them past neat, weathered white cottages, and even a larger, three-storey building, that showed the sign of recent building work, though nobody was on site as they passed. “Known as the Manor House or the Big House,” Kate said. “Someone’s thinking of opening it as a hotel again. Didn’t work last time, and I don’t suppose it will this.”

     The Tavistocks’ house was somewhere between the two. It was big enough to house six – now seven – people fairly comfortably, but far smaller than the Big House. It was also almost jarringly modern. Almost – and yet not quite. There was something about its angles and neutral colours (apart from a flash of bright blue on the door) that blended in well. A tall, thin woman, clad in a long, muted tartan skirt, her hair in a short, sever style, and a cross round her neck, came out to greet them, with a child on each hand. Marcia, the elder child, coltish and with her thick red hair already coming out of her pony tail, though Helga suspected it had only just been put in it, and Sebastian, her little brother, chubby and cheeky. Helga was relieved to see that they both clearly adored Gospel Granny and were chattering away to her. She might be a woman of stern faith, but, just like Goblin Granny, she plainly loved her grandchildren dearly. She shook Helga’s hand in her own cool, dry one, and said, “Children, say hello to Ms Sherman.”

     “Helga, please,” she said.

     “Aye, well I’m not sure about that. But I suppose it’s up to you and their parents, and as long as they remember to be respectful and work hard for you!”

     Though Helga had mixed feelings about home schooling when it wasn’t necessary, she did have to admit that home-schooled children were almost always bright and mature and had a genuine love or learning, and Marcy and Seb, as they were generally called, were no exceptions. She had also been relieved to discover that their previous tutor had left to live with her partner (Gospel Granny spoke the word as if it were something vaguely unpleasant and certainly not to be compared to husband) and that the parting had been entirely amicable, with tears on both sides. 

     Marcy and Seb would have started lessons that night, at least shown Helga round the countryside with them doing much of the teaching, but Goblin Granny said firmly, “No, my bairns. Helga has had a busy day and a long journey, and she’ll be wanting to have a word with your Mum and Dad, too.” Helga noted that Marcy gave a bit of a theatrical sigh and Seb pouted, but both accepted it readily enough. They were well-behaved without being remotely cowed. 

     She knew she shouldn’t have thought it, but after the Grannies and the children, Alicia and Angus were almost a disappointment. They were friendly, pleasant, but there was something about them that was – well, somehow it went beyond scientific and verged on the clinical. They looked as if they were longing to be wearing white coats even when they weren’t. As soon as they courteously could, they returned to their research, and Helga felt vaguely sorry for the children, though their parents clearly loved them dearly, and they did have the Grannies. After enjoying some delicious scones and hot, aromatic tea, she said, “If you still want to show me round, I’d love it!” 

     They needed no second asking. “We can show you our favourite places,” Marcy said, “But sometimes it seems like it changes everytime we go out!” At first Helga was inclined to dismiss that as a charming childish notion, but as her little guides undertook their tour, she began to see exactly what she meant. They turned one corner, and there was a gushing burn, and another and there were still, limpid pools. There were rocks everywhere, both tall and squat, and they seemed to change colour. Oh, it was subtle, not some chameleon like metamorphosis, and she knew some of it was probably just the changing light as the sun sank lower in the sky – no, all of it was that, she hurriedly reminded herself. But the biggest surprise of all was suddenly seeing a hill rise up from the flat landscape. “We call it a mountain,” Marcy said, “But Granny Morag and Mum and Dad say it isn’t, not really, it’s only a hill.”

     “But Granny Kate says it is a mountain and sometimes you can see it and sometimes you can’t.” That wasn’t quite the same as saying sometimes it was there and sometimes it wasn’t, but Helga suspected Seb wasn’t just referring to the light or the mist, or their absence. 

     That night, Helga fell asleep quickly, with a good tiredness lulling her on her way, and she dreamt she was walking across the island seeing the rocks both tall and squat, and the gushing burn and the limpid pools, and the hill that sometimes you could see and sometimes you couldn’t. And she saw two women on the crest of that hill. One of them was tall, and one of them was short, and one of them had hair cut into a neat and sensible style, and one of them had long plaits. Both wore flowing robes and both were barefoot. Without hearing them speak, Helga knew that they were conferring, and they were not in agreement about everything, by no means, and might be in disagreement about the most fundamental of things, but they met in respect, and as sisters. Helga felt as if she had been transported back in time, and yet that wasn’t quite right. It was as if time had ceased to matter. For a few seconds, Helga thought, no, this is not a dream. I am not in my bed but have left it. So far as I know I have never walked in my sleep, and I don’t think I’ve started now, but this has the clear edges of reality and not the toss and tangle or a dream.

     She woke up in her bed, and dawn had already broken, and she followed the smell of porridge (a thing she had never much liked, but this was delicious) down to the kitchen. Two women, one tall and one short, were sitting at the table, sipping their tea and discussing the weather. They wished her a good morning and Goblin Granny joked that the weather was the only thing they agreed about. But they all knew that was not true. And that it never had been. Not for thousands of years.