Chapter 20
Chapter 20
T he cubs and brownies had, to be honest, done a wonderful job making the old Scout Hall feel hospitable and party-like. The bunting was jolly, the colors mismatched but it didn’t really matter; in fact, quite the opposite; it added to the general sense of celebration. The band was warming up in the corner but there was already a stampede toward the bar. Jean meanwhile marched straight up to the corner nearest the door. Had it been in a posh restaurant it would have been called a power table, because you could see everything that was going on without being too near the band. There were some tourists sitting there, looking nervous in their fleeces because they hadn’t packed formal wear and were now worrying about it (which they really didn’t have to do, because the farmers would be along soon enough once they’d tucked the cows in for the night, and they’d be lucky if they changed their trousers).
Regardless, Jean immediately decided they were fair game, and marched up to them staring and, when that didn’t work, said, “I’m sorry, this table is reserved,” and they jumped up like somebody had given them an electric shock, even though everyone knew you couldn’t reserve tables. Regardless, the KCs swept in and took all the best places, beaming smugly, and opened their knitting bags, dispatching Marian to get more prosecco, and an orange juice for Majabeen, who didn’t drink because it might affect her ability to communicate with her grandchildren on the level they required, being geniuses.
Safely ensconced, they looked around the room, beaming at their friends and giving stink eye to their enemies, of whom there were more than realized they actually were enemies, including Sadie McInnes from the other hair salon who had said something mean about Marian’s eye makeup in the bar at the Silver Tassie, which got back to them, meaning they had all boycotted the place right away, whilst also buying Marian some new, slightly less spidery eyelashes as a birthday present. Also Pamela McGinty who had, back in the dim and distant past, given Majabeen’s grandson Beni a B on an essay for which eternal enmity was called for and if some of the KCs thought, well, perhaps it wasn’t the worst thing for Beni to get a B on something (he was rather a bumptious child, fond of pontificating on what he was going to study at university, but not the University of the Highlands and Islands; he was going to go to Oxford or maybe Cambridge, despite the fact that he was only nine and a half) but the Law of the KCs meant that they had to hate Mrs. McGinty anyway—they didn’t make the rules.
It felt odd without Gertie, Jean noticed. Like they didn’t have someone to tease. Normally they’d be trying to push her out to dance or have fun. She looked for her daughter. There she was, standing with Morag and the lads from the helicopter, Nalitha sitting down looking absolutely ready to pop and pretty cheesed off, as if she had been determined to show she was totally cool and ready to come to this, but then realized when she got here that she wasn’t and all she wanted to do was be at home, which was a pretty shrewd observation on Jean’s part.
For everyone else, though, there was something different in the air. You could feel it. Gertie could, at any rate. The first sense of spring; the promise—sometimes fulfilled, sometimes not—of warmth in the sun, of the feeling of light on your back as the evenings got longer and longer. In midsummer, it wouldn’t really get dark at all; just a tentative twilight.
But tonight, thought Gertie. Tonight held the promise. She always felt it, like magic in her veins: that special night in the spring, particularly after a long winter; and the Highlands had had a very, very long winter, which had been wonderful for the ski fields of the Lecht and Glenshee, who had had a startlingly wonderful season, which was lovely for the people with the wherewithal to ski there, but quite chilly for everybody else.
But tonight she could feel it on the breath of the air. Spring was a promise; a fragility brought on the blossom, that could be sent off with the first breath of a late season’s wind.
This was the night of the ceilidh; the early promise had been fulfilled and the air was full of the scent of gorse, as the doors of the uninspiring community hall were thrown open and the dancers could burst out onto the lawn (although woe betide them if they strayed onto the bowling green which, thankfully for everyone, not least the local Facebook page, they did not). The sweet sounds of the band wandered down the street, causing toes to tap that didn’t even mean to.
One family, tootling along the North Coast 500 on a tour that had not gone well as their harassed, anxious city kids had barely looked up from their iPads, came through the sweet little town, with its toy-sized airport on the outskirts, parked in the harbor for free, paid their ￡5 each at the door (￡2 to locals, only fair), and the children danced and cartwheeled happy as Larry all night long. They looked at the room filled with happy people and beautiful music, and decided straightaway to take their kids out of their overstuffed loud competitive schools, sell their boxy house for a fortune, and move. They never regretted their decision, not in all the March days to come that were gray as granite as the children tore around and grew strong and bonny and developed musical local accents and ate chips and drank Irn-Bru on the harbor walls and the little one got over her fear of seals, and they never once missed a ceilidh in the town.
“S O YOU LOOK lush,” said Morag, which was the truth, and Gertie beamed. “You SO have your eye on someone.”
This was going to be awkward, Gertie realized, when Calum walked in—after all he was her boss—but she’d deal with that as and when. And anyway, Calum was so charming—he’d just manage to skim over it lightly. For sure he would. Not a problem. They’d probably be quite casual at first.
“Oh no one in particular,” she said, pretending that she was the kind of person who might just dress up for any occasion. And for a moment, she felt like she was. It was a nice feeling.
“So what’s single life like?” said Nalitha, avidly. She adored Mo, but nonetheless, it was still interesting, and now Morag was all settled she’d lost the fun that comes out of hearing that it is absolutely terrible out there, pure hell on earth.
“Oh God, don’t remind me,” said Morag, sipping her drink and looking a touch smug and squeezing Gregor’s hand.
Gertie shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t...” She flushed. “Well, I do like someone...”
“Spill! Spill!” yelled the girls. Gregor politely moved away to insert himself into Jim and Gavin’s helicopter conversation even though, as a mechanical dunce, he had less to contribute than he would have done to the Gertie’s love-life discussion.
Gertie was suddenly desperate to talk about nothing else; to talk about his lovely smile and his great teeth and his casual dress and his enthusiasm and his aura, and how funny he was and... but she knew she couldn’t. Even though they were nice, these people, they were still her bosses. And he was their boss. So it was a bit of a palaver. But soon... her eyes strayed toward the door again, and Morag and Nalitha exchanged raised eyebrows and excited looks.
S TRUAN WAS PLAYING well, but only on half attention, he realized, still thinking about the audition. He glanced out into the crowd. He knew everyone pretty much; they had some very loyal attendees. He’d nodded gracefully to the KCs because firstly Jean cut his mum’s hair, so he wasn’t messing with that, and she had always been very generous with the lollipops.
They were speeding up on an eightsome reel, trying to get the balance right between the speed the locals would like—murderous—and what would be best at not tripping up the visitors.
The room was growing very warm, even with the doors flung open and people forming fairy rings in the garden and dancing out there, the sunlight glinting off highlighted hair, and pints of foaming beer. Okay, so he had a lot on at school, and things might be a bit tricky in his new place, but he couldn’t help loving the groove, that moment of bottled lightning where everyone was playing in total harmony, the fiddle weaving in and out of his solid rhythmic lines, the accordion a counterpoint, the feet banging on the scuffed wooden floor making their own percussion, along with the off-beat double claps and whooping of the onlookers.
It was a fine thing, right enough, watching the lassies with their skirts flying: some of the prettiest girls clumsy as drunk giraffes; some of the most heavyset, serious-looking women with lines on their faces and rock-solid Presbyterian hair suddenly turning into fleet-footed beautiful dancers as they took their turn on the floor. The years turned back with every spin they made; their gray-haired partners long used to having their hands exactly where they needed to be, even if those hands were spotted now, their grips less sure; seeing though, in the women dancing opposite them the young girls they had been, long ago, in homemade clothes, full of giggles and hope, on a night very much like this one, even as the young people there were eyeing each other up, and couldn’t believe the oldies were getting in their way. What were they even doing there anyway?
A S S TRUAN WAS letting the music force through him, him only the conduit, on this sweet evening, the giggles of the children rolling down the tiny hill of the lawn cutting into the top lines of the melodies, Gertie was looking around. Any moment, Calum was going to walk in and she couldn’t have wished for a better evening. Okay, so he’d missed the “dashing White Sergeant”—Gertie’s absolute favorite, with its flirtatious bobbing and dancing, between two men—but there were plenty more tunes to come, and she was angling her face to look its best for when he entered. She nipped to the bathroom, redoubled the red lipstick, and added the daring mascara that had lengthened her normally colorless lashes. The dress was lovely. She didn’t look like herself at all, as had been rather unflatteringly pointed out by absolutely everyone, particularly the ScotNorth table.
The band took a break as the music stopped. Gertie walked back carefully around the dance floor, just in case he’d arrived whilst she’d been in the bathroom. A sunbeam came through the door and hit her hair as she turned, her face prepared into a nice, but not too enthusiastic, pleased smile she had practiced in the mirror. “Oh, Calum, how lovely to see you!” was her plan.
Instead, just as she prepared her big smile, she caught, accidentally, Struan’s eye.
And, suddenly, Struan had the oddest thought.
“I know you,” appeared, fully formed, in his head, as if someone had chalked it up on a blackboard.
“I know you. I have always known you.”
He blinked. She was his tenant, obviously, and apparently she’d been at school with him...
But it felt like more than that. It was an intensely strong feeling; a very strange thing, as she stood there, her dark hair outlined in the sun, her face happy and excited. That she knew him and he knew her.
Gertie was still staring at the door, ignoring the rest of the party, who were getting animated—the helicopter boys reckoned they could design Nalitha a better stroller and were getting excited drawing diagrams on napkins—in the intermission, whilst background music played and the band went to get a well-earned pint. Struan couldn’t help himself. He was just so surprised.
“Hiyah,” he said, softly. “How’s it going?”
Gertie turned to look at him: handsome, unshaven, old jeans on long legs. It was so strange to her after all this time—that he wasn’t who she was looking for.
“Hiyah.”
“How’s the flat going?”
“Since yesterday?” She grinned. “Oh, we have some post for you. I think the pizza delivery company misses you.”
He smiled and shook his head.
“Thanks for that. You know... I can’t believe I don’t remember you from school.”
“Maybe you were just too busy playing your guitar all the time.”
“Probably,” said Struan softly.
“And you’re off to the big world soon anyway...” said Gertie, looking around the Scout Hall.
“Aye,” said Struan.
Gertie looked at the bright light pouring through the open door, listened to the laughter of the children rolling around the hall; the sound of friends and neighbors meeting each other with great cheer, or in the case of the KCs, occasional sniffing.
“It’s not so bad here,” said Gertie, and at the precise moment, the sun still illuminating her hair, Struan would have found it very difficult to disagree with her.
Gertie looked at him. For a moment, with him standing right in front of her, she felt dangerously wobbly, her old self; like she would fall back into those silly old ways.
No. She wouldn’t. She was the new Gertie now. In fact, she decided, she was going to tell him. So they could laugh about how silly it had been. Get over it properly. Yes.
“You know,” she said. “I used to have such a...”
Struan was straining very hard to hear when: “Mr. McGhie! Mr. McGhie!!!”
It was Shugs, his gravel-voiced Primary 6. Struan glanced up and sure enough, Big Shugs, his dad, was standing by the bar sinking pints with all his mates from the farm. The only difference between Wee and Big Shugs, both dressed in shorts and T-shirts and trainers, was that Wee Shugs had a thatch of thick red hair and Big Shugs had no hair at all. Apart from that, they were completely identical.
“Hello, Shugs,” he said.
Shugs frowned. “I thought you were a teacher. Why are you here?”
“Teachers can do other things,” Struan said. “I don’t live at the school.”
“I didnae think that,” said Wee Shugs, who had.
“This your girlfriend, sir?”
“No,” said Struan, incredibly quickly.
Gertie noticed. She couldn’t not.
“God no,” she said after that, too quickly, hurt.
Struan looked up at that, surprised at her vehemence. He had just been trying to redirect the child’s interest in his personal life. Also, why should she care?
Gertie looked at the child in horror—she knew Wee Shugs well, and was used to gently batting his chubby fingers away from the lollipop jar when she was cashing up for his mum—and was about to move away when another voice came in.
“That seems a weird question.”
And walking into the room was Saskia, looking extremely good—she wasn’t dressed up, she was just wearing very tight black jeans and a black vest but it looked sensational on her, and her wide pouty mouth was pouting even more than usual.
Saskia came up to the small group.
“Hi,” she said, in her husky voice. “I’m Saskia. Struan’s girlfriend?”
“Hi, sweetie,” said Struan, turning pink. As was Gertie.
“Nice to meet you,” Gertie said, rather stiffly, furious inside that this woman thought—definitely thought, by the way she had her arm round Struan now, quite possessively—that she had been trying to chat him up, rather than him coming over specifically to tell her she looked nice. “Struan’s my landlord.”
“ You’re the new girl?” said Saskia. “Huh. I thought you said she was...”
Gertie stiffened. What was Saskia about to say?
Struan wouldn’t have put it past Saskia, at that point, to repeat that he’d called her a mouse.
Happily for both her and Struan, Wee Shugs piped up.
“Because you know she works in the ScotNorth? She can get you like free ice cream sandwiches and everything! She doesn’t though,” added Shugs, sadly.
“I don’t work there at the moment,” said Gertie.
“Did they catch you stealing ice cream?” said Shugs, in conspiratorial tones.
“No!” said Gertie, deciding she had had quite enough of this conversation.
“Well, I’m glad you and your landlord are getting on so well,” said Saskia, for whom the appearance of Gertie—who she could only see as a very pretty, leggy young woman whispering in the ear of her live-in boyfriend—confirmed 100 percent the reason she wanted Struan closer to her where she could see him.
Gertie got none of this, naturally, and just wondered why Struan’s incredibly beautiful girlfriend—it was absolutely no surprise why he’d followed her—was being so hostile. Maybe she knew she had once had feelings for Struan! But then, how could she, when Struan himself didn’t remember who she was? This was absurd. She was changing these days. She was a different person.
She stuttered a goodbye, then turned and walked against the flow of people heading back in again for more dancing or drinks, happy and flushed and eagerly enjoying their night and saying hi to their friends. Smoke drifted across the open air, presumably from the naughty vaping teenagers on the other side of the hall. Some children had started a game of football, and were veering further and further away from the hall, presumably in case a parent caught their eye and realized it was getting late to take them home. Two little girls were solemnly coupled up, waiting for “Strip the Willow” to start, and trying to inveigle others to join them. Tragically the boys were having none of it.
The sky was softening into a range of purples and pinks; a chill was blowing in from the sea and she pulled her cardigan closer and looked up and down the street. And as she did so, she realized something. It was empty. Everyone from town was either already inside or had settled down in front of the telly for the night.
And suddenly she knew, with an ice-cold certainty, that Calum had just been polite. He wasn’t coming.
He wasn’t coming and she was unbelievably stupid with her little fantasies. He was a millionaire international businessman, and she was literally nobody. She was such a fool, an idiot, to think that Calum Frost—Calum Frost who had been in the papers —would ever turn up to a little village dance. How stupid was she?! Even stupid bloody Struan McGhie had told his girlfriend—his super-hot girlfriend—that she was, well, she hadn’t heard exactly what, but it was clearly nothing good.
Oh God. She felt that familiar ice splash of reality she hated so much. At least—her one massive point of relief—she hadn’t told anyone who she thought was coming. They had just thought she’d got dressed up to look nice. Or they suspected something, but they wouldn’t know.
Gertie stared down the road, her daydreams dribbling away. Oh God. She was practically thirty, not fourteen. How could it still feel like this? How could she be waiting for her life to begin? It had felt so much that way with the new job, but underneath she was still just plain old stupid Moony Mooney.
Inside she heard the band start up, but they sounded a bit odd.
“Ladies, gentlemen, and anyone who wants to be here... we’re just waiting for the last member of our band...”
S TRUAN WAS STANDING, staring at Saskia.
“I have to... I need to be onstage,” he said weakly.
“Oh for fuck sake, Struan, it’s hardly the London Palladium.”
“I know, but it’s my job.”
“He’s got another job,” said Wee Shugs helpfully. “He’s my teacher.”
Struan turned to him. “Wanna run along, wee man?”
Big Shugs stirred himself at the bar and gave Struan a strong look. “You telling my lad to run along?” he inquired, holding on to his pint.
Struan screwed up his face. “Not at all,” he said, only just managing not to add “sir” to the end of the sentence.
Saskia, who was facing away from Big Shugs, gave him a look. “This is why you’re giving up your job, remember?” she said.
“Look, I just have to...”
Kenny was looking at them both with mildly disguised impatience.
“Okay, everyone, we’re just going to line up for ‘Strip the Willow’—groups of eight please. Lassies to the right, laddies to the left, but of course go wherever you feel free.”
Kenny was very proud on how up to date he was on his audience chat. Everyone immediately started to form lines that would be chopped up into neat rows of eight to form the dance. Two dancers at the top of the set would hold arms, and couples would then swing round, join hands, and race under the marriage bower. People were starting to form around Struan and Saskia, assuming they were going to take part.
She was still looking at him, her lovely face distraught. She had tried so hard.
“I don’t... I mean. I thought you wanted. To move away. With me.”
“Look,” said Struan. “We’ve moved in, aye. But that doesn’t mean I dump everything: my job, the kids, my band, this town, my work here.”
Kenny was now going through the dance, for the benefit of the new families and any other strays, rather than the locals who’d been dancing it since they were in nappies, and indeed, the very small children just out of nappies who were standing all ready themselves.
“But you don’t... you don’t seem like you want to leave any of it.”
Struan didn’t know what to say to that. “I want you?” he said, finally.
“Hurry up!” said Annalise, one of the outside-girls-only set.
“That’s why you’re sixty miles away, chatting to other women.”
They looked at each other for a long moment.
“Do you want to dance?” said Struan, finally.
“No,” said Saskia. “I want to go home. To our home. To spend time with you.”
The music sounded awful without Struan; they couldn’t keep time.
“But I have to...”
She nodded.
“You do know.”
“I do,” she said, turning round, looking defeated. “I do, Struan. I really do.”