Chapter 19
Chapter 19
S truan didn’t have so much time to worry about the upcoming school trip, as he was driving in every day behind the big RVs that moved in to colonize their small roads earlier and earlier each year. The very polite ones pulled off into lay-bys to let the cars pass; the rest seemed to enjoy leading parades. Anyway, he was still teaching every day as well as playing the village hall ceilidh that Saturday, and Saskia wasn’t at all happy about it. She wanted them to go duvet cover shopping for reasons he found utterly mysterious, as well as getting him to practice for this big audition she’d found for him. There was an opening she’d come across for a guitarist in a big touring legacy band, their hits decades behind them, which meant their fans had deep pockets and were happy to shell out for hospitality packages to come and relive their youth for a couple of hours. Big UK tour, possible European extension. Terrific money.
He’d quickly learned the parts—there wasn’t a huge amount to them—and sent off a self-tape to his “agent,” in reality a retired bartender in Glasgow called Nimoo, to please Saskia, and then was surprised and a little perturbed to be summoned for an audition. Saskia was delighted and convinced this was the start of something. She wanted him to hand in his notice to the school, and focus on his music career, and by the way, that wasn’t how you loaded the dishwasher. After the Outward Bound trip, he kept saying to her. Soon.
So he had a lot on his mind. The night of the ceilidh was a fair evening; it wasn’t raining and that was the big thing, everybody said. Okay, it had been freezing; very very cold for early March which was, after all, practically Easter and whilst it wasn’t entirely unusual to still be scraping frost off your car window then, nonetheless winter had been going for a long time and was showing absolutely no signs of stopping anytime soon, even if the daffodils were out.
But it was no longer getting dark at three o’clock in the afternoon, so that was something, and the northern light was clear as glass, bright sunshine on blue water. As long as you were wrapped up or behind double glazing, it absolutely was not so bad.
All the hairdressers—well, all two of the hairdressers, A Cut Above and Talk of the Town on the high street—were booked out with people getting elaborate dos that would only last until the first eightsome reel and would then, no doubt, come tumbling down quicker than mascara running down the face, but that didn’t matter.
The hall was being decorated by the cubs and brownies who had made spring bunting with varying degrees of enthusiasm (some of the rabbits may have originally being toting machine guns, until Akela had told them all off), and a rough bar was set up in the corner, selling bottles of BrewDog, or drams, or some absolutely terrible prosecco that tasted like carbonated candyfloss and coated the teeth in more or less the same way, which was exactly how the locals liked it.
Struan and his band went along pretty late to set up; he was on guitar, Jake, who was nineteen and an absolute wunderkind who could play anything, on fiddle, complaining that his neck rest was giving him acne, but nonetheless reasonably cheerful about his chances of pulling the prettiest girl at the dance with his rarely failing method of serenading them with a love song with their eye color in it. “Brown Eyed Girl” or “Baby’s Got Blue Eyes” or “Bette Davis Eyes” if he wasn’t exactly sure or was seeing double by then. Harris was the grunting accordion player-cum-caller, stout and heavily bearded.
And that was the three of them, Struan setting the rhythm and responding to Harris “One, two, three.” A “Gay Gordons” and a “dashing White Sergeant” to get everyone warmed up, then they’d go as difficult as the audience was in the mood for. Oddly, the tourists swelling the ceilidh ranks since the emergence of TikTok hadn’t been that helpful, as they didn’t know how to do it and tended to bump into each other.
Back at the Shore Close cottage, the KCs were getting ready, with the help of some of the same candyfloss prosecco awaiting them at the church hall. Or rather more accurately, they were getting Gertie ready, who had popped in to pick up a dress she’d forgotten when she had moved out. Gertie wasn’t even taking her knitting! She wasn’t even going to be sitting with them! She was going to be with Morag the pilot and her new friends from her exciting new job! The KCs smelled gossip afoot. This was the most exciting thing that had happened to them since Marian’s lobe piercing got infected. Jean was utterly delighted, and a wee bit sad at the same time.
Gertie, as she put her makeup on, and tried to stop Jean from suggesting she wear more colorful eye shadow and add the blue mascara, couldn’t deny feeling excited too.
She was wearing the prettiest, boldest thing she had: a daisy-print dress, which she had originally thought was too childish but now as she tried it on in the evening sunlight, swung about in its full skirt, saw that the wide neckline was flattering to her small chest and her long legs stuck out the bottom. And she had made herself just the thing: a tiny cardigan, little more than a shrug, knitted in pale blue silk, the exact same color as the underprint of the dress. It was chic and, in this weather, entirely necessary and she was incredibly pleased with it. She looked at herself in the mirror. She could fly. She’d been up in a plane. There was no reason—okay, there were a million reasons—why she couldn’t pull a multimillionaire, and it was a ridiculous idea.
But she thought of Calum’s generous, keen smile; the way he spoke to her straightforwardly, never seemed to take the piss out of her, like everyone else did. He had a clearness about him.
And he was single; she’d checked. And he was coming, because she’d asked him. And the airline and helicopter pilots were coming so he’d want to hang out with them anyway. Her heart quickened with excitement as she added some more mascara and combed her curly black hair out with the most expensive unguent she could find in Lloyd’s pharmacy, and added some extra lipstick, which was very unlike her. She even borrowed some of Jean’s blusher and was amazed by what a difference it made to her face.
Gertie stood up in the tiny bedroom upstairs in the cottage, and moved into the freezing bathroom, which had the only full-length mirror. Downstairs the chatting was getting pretty loud already so the pre-party was in full swing. Heavy laughter reached her ears. Outside, people moving up the high street were all dressed up, the men in kilts or trews, their tartan trousers, depending on how much dancing or sitting they were planning on doing. Kilts favored dancing. Trews were often cut rather snugly and offered a variety of hazards to the more enthusiastic of the dancers.
The women were dressed up too, hair all done, fancy outfits on, often in prints or just plain black, but it was undeniably the men who were the stars of the evening, the tartans bright and glowing in the light; sharp and colorful, like the Lindsays, full of purple, or deep and mysterious, like the hunting Cameron. Men walked taller when they wore the kilt, Gertie always thought. And she wondered, suddenly, what Calum would wear. Of course he was welcome to wear the kilt as an incomer—plenty would wear a Stewart tartan and all were welcome. But perhaps he would wear something from his own country? Formal wear in Norway? She had a vision, suddenly, of him wearing white tie and tails with ceremonial medals. No. This was ridiculous, obviously. She shook it from her mind, feeling pink. Nevertheless, he would take her hand, with her new pink and white manicure, and sweep her onto the dance floor and...
“Gertie! Get your arse in gear!”
It was Jean downstairs. They had finished the prosecco surprisingly quickly, and were gathering up their wool. Gertie frowned at them. They were looking rather motley. Tara appeared to be wearing a ballgown that didn’t quite fit her, in a slightly startling fuchsia, whilst Cara, presumably to differentiate herself, was wearing a patchwork jumper that made her look like she was protesting a nuclear power plant in 1986. Jean was in sparkly black mohair, as per usual, which looked rather good with her dramatic black eyeliner and freshly dyed hair, but was going to get unbelievably hot in about fifteen minutes flat. Underneath she only had a camisole on. Gertie fervently hoped it wouldn’t come to that. She may have to keep an eye on the prosecco. Marian looked good actually, a simple black long-sleeved top on, then a small black kicky skirt that emphasized her fantastic legs, and a nice bun at the back, which may not have entirely been her own hair, but was none the worse for that. Majabeen was in hot pink. Elspeth was staying behind—she was, thank goodness, strong enough to stay at home on her own now; seemed so much better. But she had been promised every scrap of gossip.
There was a general chorus of approval as Gertie descended the stairs. Jean, looking at her, felt a sudden stab. She had just got so used, over the years, to seeing Gertie in her supermarket tabard, or her comfies, and had always been so pleased to see her that she hadn’t thought enough about whether Gertie should have been out more, having more fun, getting dolled up. Even now, it was only the village ceilidh, and only the old KCs.
Elspeth beamed. She always thought Gertie looked beautiful.
“Have a wonderful time,” she whispered into her granddaughter’s ear. Elspeth didn’t think the ceilidh was a small night out—not at all.
Jean brightened, however, as they opened the front door and there was Morag heading toward the village hall with Jim and Gavin the helicopter pilots, and a lumbering Nalitha beside them.
“On you go,” said Jean, kissing her daughter’s hair, and shoving her out the door before Gertie got a chance to get too nervous about it. It was primary school all over again. “You go on with them—we’ll see you in there.”
But in complete contrast to school, Morag turned round, smiling, and beckoned Gertie to join them, and Gertie’s heart opened up, so happy and relieved. Even more so when even Nalitha, huge but somehow resplendent in a tight purple top and her maternity jeans, admired the silvery blue cardigan and was astonished that she’d made it herself.
“Would you like me to do something for the baby?” Gertie asked, and Nalitha had smiled and said, normally when people knitted for the baby they sent some awful itchy Fair Isle that would more or less kill a baby with overheating, but if she could do something as delicate as that, well... she’d absolutely love it—she loved the penguin—and that made Gertie happier than ever. She met Morag’s boyfriend, Gregor, for the first time and was impressed by his quiet, careful manner. His kilt matched his eyes, which were gray. She’d rather assumed Morag’s boyfriend would be like Gavin or Jim—a loud confident type talking loudly over everyone—but Gregor was gentle, and she saw it right away. And how she longed, in fact, for someone who did what he did—wherever Morag was nearby, Gertie noticed, Gregor always knew; their eyes met. Constantly.
You could hear the noise from the hall as you approached, half the town drawing closer and closer, along with excited-looking tourists wearing hired kilts that came down past their knees, or up, rather awkwardly, to their groins, or, on one memorable occasion, worn completely back to front with the flat bit at the back, which you had to admit did give them a certain practical use vis-à-vis sitting down.
They smiled and waved at the people they knew, and Gertie felt prouder again when they passed a group from the ScotNorth, promising to come over and say hello whilst feeling that she was with a bunch of cooler people. And even though it was just a ceilidh in a small town at the very top of the country in a cold March; it felt to Gertie like she was stepping into a New Year’s ball at the Ritz.