The Serial: A Rowan Tree In My Garden Day 28

In the severe frost the water shooting high had frozen, leaving an enormous chandelier of ice. As we passed, the setting sun was sparkling on it

Jean said: “We’ll have to use hote water, a though there is enough in the kettle for a cup of tea.” I weighed up the situation we were in. “Water out of the hot water tank can’t be all that bad,” I said. We knew that Mother, who wasn’t a particularly good housewife, was extremely fussy about certain things: having a clean tin opener, spotless utensils connected with food, eating nothing that had been left in a tin for any length of time, and not using water for drinking from the hot tank.

We had banked up the range before going to bed, and the water was very hot.

“We’ll have to let the fire go out,” I said, “otherwise the tank might blow up.” I wasn’t quite sure how the water system worked, but had often been warned of the dangers of an overheated boiler. “We’ll have to light the fire in the sitting room instead and try to get to the burn for water. The house water comes from there anyway. It will be just the same.” Afterwards a council of siege was held between us.

“How do we get to the burn?” questioned Jean. “Remember that huge drift between us and it.”

Expedition I did remember. The height of it was awesome: 10 feet high, we reckoned, and at the top it curled inward like a wave. It rose in the middle of what was usually a grassy sward, the playing fields for the hens. Later, at Easter time, in warm spring sunshine, we were to sit under this freak of nature to picnic at a table and chairs we had taken outside. The drift did not melt until well into the spring.

“I think there will be a way round the drift, or through it or something,” I said optimistically.

We started out on our expedition: took a spade each and worked our way round one end of the monster drift. It took us an hour of digging to get through to the pond which was completely frozen over. We took our spades to the ice and managed to make a fairly large hole in it which let us fill the two buckets we had brought with us.

We trudged back with our heavy loads, water sloshing over the rims of the pails. We divided out one bucket of water among the livestock and took the other into the house. When we entered the kitchen we found, to our relief, that a slow drip of water from the cold tap was stotting into the sink. The little lamp was working, and as yet there was no sign of a burst pipe.

We had no idea how badly blocked the road down to the village might be. Perhaps, by the beginning of the week, a thaw would set in although there was no word of this in the weather reports on the wireless. Perhaps a snowplough would pass.

We knew that our hill road would not be top priority as hardly anyone lived up this road these days. All the evacuees had gone back to Glasgow.

Keeping all the livestock and ourselves fed, watered and warm took up most of our day. However, we did take out our sledge when all the chores were done, to scramble up the hill at the back of the house and whizz down at some speed over the frosty snow. What fun! We were beginning to enjoy being cut off from the rest of the world.

Sufficient food By the start of the following week we thought we had better try to get down to the village. We still had sufficient food, but paraffin for the lamps and cooker was beginning to run low and I didn’t dare light the range.

The quickest way to get to the main road was diagonally across the field in front of the house as the road from the croft was completely blocked. It felt strange to walk over the fence at the bottom of the field, that we knew was there but couldn’t see.

We took the sledge with us and put a basket on to it for the groceries, a tin for the paraffin and two house shovels for digging through snow.

Much to our relief we had little need to use them as most of the road had been blown clear, with manageable drifts now and then.

We walked through a changed but beautiful world. After we passed our nearest neighbour’s farm things were even better. The farmer had taken his Fergie tractor to get down to the village. All we had to do was to follow its tracks. We didn’t need to go any further than the grocer at the top of the village. We could get everything we needed from him: groceries, bread, and paraffin.

“How are you coping with things up the hill?” he asked us.

“Fine!” we said in unison.

“Mother not with you today?” Curiosity had got the better of him.

“No, Mum and Dad are both away working all week and can’t get back because of the snow.”

I think he was a little surprised that we were there all on our own. Mother had wanted to keep their absence quiet to make it safer for us.

We trudged our way homeward up the hill road. It was tougher going back as parts of the road were slippery and sometimes it was one step forward and two back. The paraffin can leaked a little, leaving a line of pink spots on the white snow. Every so often, when negotiating a drift, paraffin would slosh out from a badly fitting lid and we had to carry the groceries and bread in case they got tainted by it.

Evening was drawing in by the time we left the village, and blue shadows played on the white hills. I thought I had never seen anything quite so beautiful or mysterious. Half way home we came across something we hadn’t noticed on the way down.

Spectacular In the grounds of the once more deserted Hillfoot House the old disused fountain in the grounds had sprung several leaks. In the severe frost the water shooting high had frozen, leaving an enormous chandelier of ice. As we passed, the setting sun was sparkling on it. It was a spectacular sight that lasted for many weeks, and later on people from the village would walk up especially to see it.

When we got home, in dying light, we filled the lamps with paraffin, lit them, and then put a match to the sitting room fire that we had prepared before we left. After tea we sat round the roaring fire listening to the wireless. Snow was not forecast for the next day, so Jean went back to school.

On Thursday Father arrived home; how pleased we were to see him, and how relieved he was to find we were safe and sound, and had coped with the difficult conditions.

He had been marooned in a village in Fife, he told us, but managed to get in touch with Mother and was going to collect her from Dundee next day if at all possible. He brought Mother home just as it was growing dark. (More tomorrow.)