Chapter 6
Chapter 6
N alitha instinctively covered her bump, and Morag stood in front of her. They didn’t want to draw attention to themselves. Nobody did; everyone looked away as the man, who was huge, with a straggly beard and several random jumpers on, stumbled in out of the weather. He smelled terrible.
“AYE YOUZ KIN A WATCH AYE ARIGHT BASTARDS,” he yelled, arms flailing, as he fell against the magazine rack. Everyone immediately found a reason to move to the back of the shop and stare very hard at the cheese slices. Morag would have taken Nalitha out but the man was between them and the door.
“AY GIE US...” He stumbled around. “A WEE BOTTLE O BUCKIE AYE? A WEE BOTTLE?”
It’s fine, thought Morag, just ignore him.
But it was too late. He’d seen them.
“OCH AYE YOU GOT A BABBIE IN THERE THEN AYE?” he shouted.
Nalitha colored immediately and Morag put a hand on her arm.
“NO TALKIN’? YOU NO TALKIN’ TO ME? AHM JUST BEING FRIENDLY LIKE. JUST BEING FRIENDLY HEN. OR DOES YOU NAE SPEAK ENGLISH AYE?”
There was a horrible silence in the shop as everyone stood, on edge and very nervous.
“Come on,” said Morag, quietly. They could just walk out. But he was so big, and unpredictable, and frightening. Nalitha, who normally wasn’t scared of much, was shaking beside her. Pregnancy made you so vulnerable. She couldn’t help it.
Morag straightened up, to pull Nalitha out with their heads up before he had a chance to do anything, but just as she thought about doing this, he knocked the display stand the Dundee cake had been on and it went absolutely everywhere.
“AYE FUCK THAT!” said the man.
Suddenly a lanky dark-haired person stepped forward.
“John Paul McGowan,” Gertie said, in a quiet, gentle voice. “Now you know you canny come in here, don’t you! You’ve been telt! And now I’m having to tell you again.”
The man’s face focused and turned to the woman talking.
“AH just want a wee...”
“It doesn’t matter what you want, John Paul,” she went on, inexorably. “I’m very sorry. You know you’re not allowed. But you know, let me walk you across the road to the Project, and they’ll give you some soup, yeah? And I made you a new hat.”
“I don’t want...”
“You do want a new hat,” Gertie carried on. She was scared of some things, and many men, but she wasn’t scared of John Paul, who was a poor soul right enough, had grown up with half the KCs who knew his backstory and had nothing but pity for him.
“You know you can’t come in here scaring nice customers, John Paul, don’t you?”
The wind had completely gone out of the man’s sails, and he stared at the floor like a little boy.
“Aye.”
“Come on,” Gertie said, softness in her voice. “Come on, John Paul, let’s get you sorted out, eh? They’ll sort you across the road, can’t they?”
She stepped forward, and to Morag and Nalitha’s amazement, she offered the man her arm. And, even more surprising, he took it, and shuffled off, head down, as she marched him toward the door.
As he reached it, he turned his head back.
“Sorry, lassie,” he mumbled in Nalitha’s direction. “Ah didnae mean any harm.”
Nalitha swallowed and nodded, still a bit freaked out.
Out on the street, they could hear him shouting at a parked car as he crossed the road. Inside the shop, the relief was palpable, and everyone started talking at once.
“Are you all right?” said Morag to Nalitha, who looked about to cry. Someone brought her over a chair.
“Oh no, I’m fine,” she said, her eyes filling. “It’s so stupid. If it was just me, I wouldn’t give a toss. But it’s the baby... it makes me weird and emotional.”
“That’s what it should be doing,” said Morag. “But you shouldn’t have had to go through that. Here.”
She picked up the wrapped Dundee cake from the floor, read the ingredients, tore open the covering, and handed her a bit. “It says no alcohol stays in after cooking,” she said. “I think you’ll be okay.”
Nalitha looked about to refuse, then grabbed it and gobbled it up. “I feel so stupid.”
Gertie came back in, rubbing her hands with hand sanitizer. The other staff gathered round her, and Morag went straight up to say thank you.
“Thanks,” she said. “Excuse me, are you Gertrude Mooney?”
Gertie immediately reverted to the twelve-year-old she had once been, scared to be confronted by the older girls. John Paul was one thing; she knew what she was doing there. The big girls, not so much.
And Morag looked really good; Gertie had thought that as soon as they’d walked in. Nalitha of course was gorgeous; Morag looked so healthy and bonny, with roses in her cheeks and lovely hair.
“Yeah,” she said, trying to sound casual but just coming across a bit off. “Hi. I know you’re Morag.”
“What you did there was brilliant,” said Morag. “Do you remember Nalitha?”
Gertie thought, well, of course she did; they’d just left school , as Nalitha waved weakly. Then she thought about it some more. Even if you took off a couple of years for the pandemic like it didn’t count, actually she’d left school ten years ago. It was AGES ago. Even thinking that gave her a sudden spurt of panic. She couldn’t. She couldn’t have been working there for ten years. She couldn’t have watched half her entire twenties go past her whilst she was restocking the coffee shelf. Whereas these two...
“Oh yes, of course,” she said, coloring. “And I saw you and your plane in the paper.”
“Right,” said Morag, and Gertie assumed it didn’t mean anything to her and she was brushing it off because Gertie was obviously some weird fan. Quite the opposite, in fact; Morag found it completely embarrassing, being very slightly famous in the paper just for doing her job, and hated it being brought up. Gregor found it hilarious but tried not to tease her about it more than was strictly necessary to be very, very funny.
“Well, nice to see you,” said Morag. “Do you...” She looked around the supermarket, trying to make conversation. “Is it nice working here?”
Nalitha elbowed her suddenly in the ribs.
“What?” said Morag. It had been more painful than Nalitha had intended.
“Uh, it’s all right,” said Gertie, staring at the floor.
“Thanks,” said Nalitha. “He gave me a fright.”
“He’s harmless, John Paul,” said Gertie. “But I get you wouldn’t realize that straight off.”
A FTER THEY GOT back outside, checking the street in case John Paul was lurking, which he wasn’t because he had been telt, Morag turned on Nalitha.
“What were you nudging me for?”
“Oh my God, you are so dense. Don’t you think she’d be brilliant?”
“What? I’m worried about you!”
Nalitha heaved a sigh. “She’s in there, keeping the place tidy, dealing with the John Pauls of this world, checking the stock, cashing up, turning up on time every day, presumably for years, doesn’t ask for much... Don’t you think she’d be perfect?”
“For... for what, your maternity cover?”
“Yes!” said Nalitha. “You have to be tough to do the job.”
Morag frowned as they headed down past the quaint Mercat Cross. “Don’t you remember her being all kind of... dreamy and quiet? Doesn’t she moon a bit? Like her name?”
The mooning bit was undeniably true, as they had been friendly with Struan and Gertie had somehow magicked herself to almost anywhere he was in the school for about nine months.
“I don’t want to sound harsh, but what if she’s too tongue-tied to give the safety announcement?”
“You can learn how to give the safety announcement,” said Nalitha sagely. “You can’t learn how to deal with someone behaving erratically. You have to be a natural at that. Some people can just never do it. But she obviously can.”
“Plus she’d need training.”
“No, she doesn’t,” said Nalitha. “She’s not actually flying, is she? You do all that—she’d just be working the desk. I could get a monkey to do it. Actually, I probably should. Better upper body strength for loading.”
It was true, there was no stewardessing on Morag’s flights; she and her co-pilot Erno did it all. There was no inflight service, no drinks. Dolly was a tiny sixteen-seater bus of a plane that hopped the route between Carso and the islands of the very north of Scotland, from Larbh to Archland and back again, often stopping off at Inchborn where Gregor lived.
Nalitha was right, Morag thought.
“Maybe she wouldn’t want it,” said Morag. They watched as a host of youths, clad in huge puffa jackets, went banging into the shop, yelling and catcalling at one another, filming their exchanges. The boys were making wisecracks; the girls were screaming with laughter. Morag found herself following them, glancing through the window. Gertie was handling it all seamlessly, serving them at double quick time, remonstrating with some of them to keep their hands off the sweetie shelf—but not meanly or crossly; always with a smile. Gertie in her comfort zone was more impressive than she realized.
Nalitha was sitting down on a bench. Obviously she was tired just heaving her bump about. It wasn’t fair making her haul that about all day, standing up, Morag knew. But so far the Job Center had sent them two people who had asked if they could work from home. They used to get a steady influx of young people from Europe in the summer season. But of course, since Brexit all of that had gone.
Nalitha stroked her large bump meaningfully.
“Hmm,” said Morag.
After another short walk, they found a nice little café and ordered some cheese scones. Nalitha pulled out her phone.
“What are you doing?” asked Morag suspiciously.
“Having a look.” Nalitha pulled up Facebook.
“Oh my God, you are very 2012,” teased Morag.
“Yeah, all right,” replied Nalitha. Morag spent a lot of time on Inchborn, which didn’t have a Wi-Fi connection and so she had managed to more or less wean herself off social media. She behaved as if she’d done some excellent moral duty with this instead of being forced into it by pure necessity. Also, all her old friends were pilots in Dubai and constantly posting pictures of themselves in hot tubs or at foam parties. It hadn’t been, in the end, the life Morag had wanted and she was truly much happier where she was. But all the same it wasn’t helpful to see those photos on the minus-4-degree days.
“I reckon Gertie is probably more of a Facebook person,” said Nalitha. “I don’t think she’s very Instagram.”
“That’s insulting,” said Morag. “Is it? Can’t tell.”
“I don’t mean it to be insulting!” said Nalitha, who was always posting pouty pictures of herself on the ’gram looking fabulous but never used Facebook at all.
They found Gertie’s Facebook page. Sure enough there was almost nothing on it except lots and lots and lots of knitting, and pictures of knitted items and free knitting patterns.
“There we are,” said Nalitha. “Perfect. She’s not going to turn up hungover after being on an all-night bender in Aberdeen with this kind of hobby, is she?”
Morag studied it more closely. “Yes, but she might just knit all the time?”
“That’s fine.” Nalitha was known to file her nails when the counter was quiet, after all.
“Pfft, I don’t know,” said Morag. “Maybe she loves her current job.”
“Manhandling tramps in the freezing cold? Yeah, all right.”
“Yes, but, Nalitha: the hangar is also freezing cold.”
“There you go,” said Nalitha, undeterred. “She’ll be used to it, plus she can knit.”
“Uh, excuse me,” came a voice and they turned around in shock. Standing right there, staring at her own profile on Nalitha’s phone screen, was Gertrude.