The Silver Thrup’ny

He always knew it would have to come to this. He had finally had to put his mother in a home. She had become more and more eccentric. More and more living in the past. Her drinking was causing problems. She was forgetting names and calling people others. And to crown it all the taking to relieving herself in the garden.
“The dogs do it why can’t I.” she had retorted.
“They are animals Mother.”
“We are all Gods animals.” she had replied. “And I remember when we were in the field, there were no pretty toilet facilities there.”
He had never really known what his parents had been during the war. He often wondered how his mother had come to leave him on the ferry from Orkney to John O’Groats.. She had been half way to Thurso when, she had remembered him. He always wondered if she had something to do with the Italian prisoners at Lamb Holm. She always seemed to have a thing about Tony……….being Italian, or so she thought with his surname.
He began to put the clothes and bric-a-brac from his mothers chest of drawers into neat piles, not bundles, piles. There was the clothes that she had never worn, bought but too small, give to the Red Cross. The bundle that had worn out and the bundle still to take to the home.
As he methodically worked away, he found at the back of the drawer, a small plastic zipped folder. He couldn’t remember seeing it before. His mother must have hidden it well. He sat on the bed and zipped the folder open, and tipped the contents onto the bed.
The papers he carefully extracted, they were yellowing with age and beginning to crumble. He picked up the 1st, his siblings birth announcement, his own was there too, Glasgow. He spied a green square of paper. He carefully unfolded and to his surprise found it was a pound note. A Scottish pound note. It had been years since he had seen one of those. It was all pound coins in England now, but as he looked down at the bed he saw the coin. A silver thruppenny piece. A thrup’ny bit, as they called them in Scotland. He picked it up and rubbed it carefully between his fingers, before closing his hand round it. He smiled as he remembered the coin………………
****

In Scotland, it is superstition to place silver coins in the baby’s crib or pram. It ensured they had good fortune, not only monetary but in luck. Usually the father took the money and went to the pub.

Ducky began to think of the coin, and how over the years, he had had many. He thought back to when they went to visit his Uncle Carkin in the little town of Clagolaky. He had been only about four or five. His uncle had given him a thrup’ny bit, “An’ dinnae spend it aw’ in the wan shop.” which was a bit stupid as there was only one shop in the village; and it sold everything from coal, food and was even the local post office and police station. The one police cell was attached to the policeman’s house.

The Christmas puddings or dumplings. Cooked for hours, steamed. The dumplings wrapped in a towel. It had to be the same one each year. Floured, and the gooy mix wrapped. A silver piece carefully concealed in paper. There were other charms too. Well……..as he began to smile………buttons usually, but always a silver thrup’ny or two, one for each of his mothers children. It was funny how they always got the coins. It never occurred that it was fixed. They always thought it was lucky.

When he had gone to Eton. Not straight away, but gone in at the fifth year. He had won a scholarship, and it meant getting away from mother. He had enjoyed the routine and the dress uniform was different. Mother always liked him dressed. Maybe that’s why he always wore a dicky bow. He had joined the Cadet Army.

He was studying “The Sciences”, biology, chemistry………he had become rather eccentric.

He loved to relate stories of old Edinburgh. Of Burke and Hare…Deacon Brodie…….he told how Robert Louis Stevenson came from Edinburgh, wrote Jekyll and Hyde………Treasure Island….Kidnapped…….how he, that would have been RLT, had stayed in the Hawes Inn in South Queensferry. He began to enjoy the more macabre side of death. St Mary’s Close, blocked up, no cemented up due to the plague……. and of course how could anyone forget, the story, set in 1707, of the mad young heir of Lord Queensberry, who was caught, cutlery in hand, tucking into a plate of freshly spit-roasted servant………..now even NCIS had never got one as good as that.

He toyed with the coin……….He remembered the chess competition. How winning the Scotsman Chess Trophy was the highlight of his Lower Sixth. He hadn’t even competed in Edinburgh. It had been done down the phone line, but he had held a silver coin.

On leaving Eton, he had applied and was accepted for the University of Edinburgh Medical School, it’s beginnings going back to the 16th century. His mother had been proud of him. He had been throughout his time in Edinburgh, part of the University Army Corps. On graduation he had joined the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. His course, a mere 10weeks, due to the fact he was a qualified Doctor. It was colloquially known as the Vicars and Tarts course. He smiled at the thought. “Must have a theme party.”
Six years and he was now free to apply for what he wanted. He joined the Metropolitan Police as a Medical Examiner and got a tour of duty to Hong Kong. He carried his silver coin with him in his wallet. He would take it out and look, it reminded him of home. The Chinese being superstitious, nodded and agreed , his talisman was good.

Ducky soon became bored of the Eastern Colonial ways and applied to the British Embassy in Washington. The Embassy had been looking for Medical Examiners. Dr Mallard had got the job. As he packed and said his farewells to his family, his mother pressed a silver thrup’ny into his hand. He didn’t say anything, just smiled and placed in his wallet.

He was enjoying his time in America. He made many friends in Washington, and had eventually persuaded his mother to join him. Reluctantly she had agreed.


Ducky was still a reserve in the RAMC and when needed was called to do his duty for Queen and Country. With the Vietnam war on, he had been asked, as a British subject, to help the allied troops of Australia and New Zealand. Since Britain was technically not fighting, he agreed to assist. His deployment was with the ANZACS. He made many friends in Vietnam, among them the many members of the Medecins Sans Frontieres, Vietnam having been a French dependency. He had liked the Vietnamese, their culture and how they too had this superstition about carrying a coin.
They had laughed at such a small piece, when their coins were bigger and heavier. He used to joke about the power of such a small silver object.

He told stories of Scotland, the superstitions. Particularly Hogmanay, where you gave some poor stranger a lump of coal, a poke of shortbread and of course the bottle of whisky, opened the back door and forced them to cross the front door at midnight. A silver thrup’ny was given as well. The stranger could keep it as a good luck token.

Donald Mallard stood and walked to the window, he looked out. He began to wonder how many more his mother had kept hidden. Mother was always giving him one every time he had left on his travels. He remembered giving the one he had had in Vietnam, to an American, he wondered if he still had. He had been one of the lucky ones. Come to think of it there should be one in Afghanistan, he had given one away there too.

Ducky turned and made his way back to the chest of drawers and pulled out another drawer. He rummaged about and smiled to himself as he felt the plastic bag with what felt like coins. As he pulled it out, and the bag saw the light of day, it caught on a splinter of wood and scattered over the floor. A scramble, another Scottish tradition, where the Groom on his wedding day took a handful of coins and threw them to the waiting hands of children. It symbolised the fact he was now a married man and all his worldly goods and money as a single man was no longer his own, but a joint account.

Ducky knelt and began to pick the coins up. He spotted a farthing, a ¼ of an old penny, but it was the bird on the reverse side…….the wren. Ducky let out a laugh. A wren…….no a WREN or should that be WRNS………a member of the Women’s Royal Naval Service, they were known as Jenny Wrens. Oh yes, he remembered many a wren, well they had been officers, medical officers, at HMS Cochrane in Rosyth, and HMS Claverhouse, in Leith, both land based ships. But the Jenny he remembered now, was the late Director. He thought back to when he had first met her as a young NCIS agent working out the Marseilles office. It had been where he had met up with Jethro again.

Paris, the City of Lovers, not that Tony or Ziva had seen much when they had been over. No, Jethro and Jen had had, the city. He began to wonder if the monstrosity out side the Louvre was worth another look. As he gathered the coins up, he found another silver thrupenny piece, and then another.

As Dr Donald Mallard gathered his thoughts along with the coins, he again picked up the note and looked at the back. Edinburgh Castle………Edinburgh. Maybe he was getting old…….reminiscing like this, but maybe, just maybe he should take that sabbatical, he had always promised himself. Mr Palmer, no Jimmy was coming along fine. Mother really couldn’t remember who he was………and he wasn’t getting any younger. As he now stood in the room, clasping the note and the silver coin.
He opened his hand, placed the note on the bed, took the silver thrup’ny, and with his left hand placed it over his now clasped fist, the coin nestling over the thumb. Ducky smiled to himself, it was now or never he thought, the coin would decide, as he flicked the silver coin into the air. It twisted and turned, the sunlight catching the silver, before landing on the ground. Dr Mallard just looked at the floor and began to smile……………………………..


The End