Chapter 27
Chapter 27
W alking home with Morag later was a bit awkward. Gertie was quiet, and Morag kept trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t make things worse.
“You know,” she said finally, “once at flying school... I pretended not to understand ATPL theory to get this really hot guy to help me out. Then I passed the exam and he failed and he called me a Super-nerd Cow and never spoke to me again.”
Gertie appreciated the sentiment. “How old were you though?” she said.
Morag frowned. “Nineteen.”
“I’m nearly thirty.”
“Does it normally work, knitting for boys you like?” said Morag. Something tugged at the back of her mind, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
“Not really,” said Gertie.
Morag patted her on the shoulder.
“I just feel so dumb,” said Gertie.
“I share the man I love with a goat,” said Morag.
“Well, as long as the KCs don’t hear about it,” said Gertie, a completely vain hope, as the vicar had been arriving in from an ecumenical conference in Dundee and overheard the airport discussion, and in an error she would regret for a long time, had gone back to the manse and asked the twins why Gertie was looking so upset, which had immediately sent them into a frenzy until they had discovered the truth.
“We could have a fish supper?” said Morag, cheeringly.
“I’m going to go sit with Elspeth. Now she’s better, she’s just bored.”
“Good,” said Morag, fervently. “Bored is what we’re after.”
T HE NEWS EVEN made its way back to Ranald. As a flying man he’d been on the receiving end of a few crushes in his time and, in fact, he had Peigi living in his house right now, so he understood a little bit about it.
He didn’t deliberately go and hang out near the wool shop; he just happened to be heading by to pick up some fish and chips. His son Iain, Morag’s dad, was in town, and point-blank refusing to eat Peigi’s food. Ranald had worried slightly that even after all this time he might feel that Peigi was trying to fill his mother’s shoes. Apparently he had dealt with that a long time ago; it was simply that Peigi was a terrible cook, in a way that Ranald had learned not to mind.
Anyhow, it was a chilly evening, despite the sun, and the queue for the chip shop was in the shade, which wasn’t ideal, and Jean was standing outside the wool shop, looking cross.
“Hello yourself,” he said, pleased.
Jean looked up surprised. “Hiyah!” she said, noting that he was looking well. His arms were tan in short sleeves, and surprisingly muscular given his age.
“Just waiting for chips. You choosing wool?”
“Not from here,” sniffed Jean. She’d been at war with Janet in the wool shop for years; Janet got annoyed that Jean got all her wool except for odds and sods from mysterious circumstances, and Jean was annoyed that Janet wouldn’t sell their work in the shop, instead preferring her own, rival group, who specialized in baby matinee jackets with copious frills and matching knitted dollies. Jean thought they were common and had said as much within Janet’s hearing, so that meant that visits to the shop were often fraught, yet necessary, it being the only knitting shop between here and Oban. Sometimes you just needed a set of number 6s and that was that.
“Okay,” said Ranald, who had only the very faintest idea of what knitting actually was and how much wool you would need to do it if you did it.
“Uhm, I hope Gertie’s okay after today?”
“What do you mean?” said Jean, her senses prickling. “She’s fine!”
In fact, Gertie in truth was not at all fine. She had sobbed her heart out, on her lonely bed, then gone back to her old house so she could sit next to Elspeth and cry quietly, whilst her gran got her up to date with River City .
“Oh good. I’m so glad that’s settled then.”
Ranald got to the front of the line.
“Chips?” he said suddenly, out of common courtesy, and Jean rather surprised herself by saying, why yes, and shortly—Ranald would come back for the fish suppers—they found themselves down on the front, sitting in the sunshine with a bottle of Irn-Bru between them, and plenty of salt and vinegar on the hot crispy utterly delicious irresistible chips, staring out to sea as the seagulls circled with their normal air of impatient menace. They warmed their hands on the chips and their faces in the sunshine, and Jean, to her surprise, found herself very content.
“I haven’t done this in ages,” she said. “Do you remember when you were a kid, you’d get chips and sit out, like, all night.”
Ranald smiled. “We’d do tricks on our bikes to impress the girls.”
“Did it work?”
“It did work,” he said. “And I still have the stitches in my arm to prove it.”
Jean laughed. “You’re older than me. It was skateboards by my time.”
“Okay, well then, that sounds a lot cooler.”
“It was, thank you.”
“So it worked on you?”
“Come on,” said Jean. “It’s Carso. What else were we going to do?”
And they both laughed, and irresistibly found their gazes drawn to the old red telephone box on the shore, still working, but no longer the center of group activity it had once been. The boys would call the girls, or they’d all dare each other to call someone in particular, or make prank calls to the head teacher whilst killing themselves laughing. Those had been good days too.
Jean smiled. Then she looked out to sea, watched the windmills turn, and glanced at the cargo boats just visible on the horizon and she thought of her daughter.
“What happened to Gertie?” she asked, quietly.
Ranald was just thinking very briefly, and no doubt stupidly considering his age (and what these chips would do to his cholesterol levels he didn’t want to mull on), that he felt young again. It was nice to sit out on a sunny evening, by the sea, with a girl and some chips and some Irn-Bru, feeling there was nothing ahead but possibility: no responsibilities, nothing to do later, just a girl, some hot crisp greasy chips, the salt stinging his tongue, the vinegar making him blink, the Irn-Bru blessedly sweet. Everything perfect.
Well, anyway. He felt himself pulled back, and chided himself for being ridiculous. And then he told her.
Jean went very still. She looked at the crumpled empty shining paper in her hand, bundled it up and stuck it in the nearest bin.
“Sorry,” said Ranald. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you. It’s just a bit of silliness.”
“No, I’m glad you did,” Jean replied. “They never stop being your kids, do they?”
Ranald thought of his son Iain, back at the house, refusing to talk to Peigi.
“Not really,” he said. “You think they will but they don’t.”
“I mean, it was easier for us, wasn’t it? Don’t you think? None of this internet, or traveling about, or choosing from everyone. You just found someone you liked...”
“Ate some chips...”
Jean smiled. “Aye. But for the young folks now... it seems so complicated. And those boys on the apps... I don’t trust a one of them.”
“Not a single one?” said Ranald, smiling and throwing one of his chips for the seagulls even though he knew it was a mistake that would start a massive noisy barney and he was correct in that.
“Those bloody things would eat a babby,” said Jean. “Don’t do that, they’re velociraptors.”
“I know. It’s just been a while.”
They stared out for a moment.
“Aye, I think it is harder,” said Ranald, finally. “It took Morag forever to find the right man. And look who she ends up with! Some birdwatcher who lives like a hermit on a remote island!”
Jean laughed. “Oh yes, so she did. Mind you, she seems happy.”
“She does, aye,” said Ranald, beaming.
“You’re so happy she’s back up here, ey?”
He nodded.
“Sometimes I think Gertie should go further away. Spread her wings,” said Jean. “But I’m not sure I could bear it. She’s all I have. That makes me sound so selfish.”
Ranald nodded. He understood.
“If she’d traveled a bit more... seen a bit more of the world. She wouldn’t have been so caught up in... I mean, Calum Frost. Seriously.”
“Ach, it’s easily done.”
Jean nodded. “I know, I know.”
“I wouldn’t be young again for the world,” said Ranald. “Well. You know. Apart from the knees.”
J EAN WAS ABSOLUTELY ready to be full of sympathy for Gertie when she got back, glad she’d run into Ranald wearing a full face of makeup. She’d worn it mostly to annoy Janet, who veered toward the mumsier end of the scale, so it worked out pretty well in the end.
The twins looked up. Majabeen was in England with the genius babies; Marian had gone to visit her dad, who was traditional, so that was always tricky. Elspeth was sitting by the fire and the twins were passive-aggressively racing to knit up two sleeves of the same jumper. They had also been full of vicarish sympathy for Gertie, and told her not to worry about being single; it was fine—although of course it helped if you had an identical twin sister. So Gertie had ended up feeling awful all over again, and gone upstairs to her old bedroom.
“Come on, Gertie,” shouted Jean up the stairs. “I’ve got a brew on and I’ll get out the good biscuits.”
Gertie though had lost herself in a daydream in which “Oh here I am in hospital,” said Calum, “with a terrible chest cold... pneumonia maybe. If only I’d had your scarf, Ger... Miss Mooney, everything would have been so different. And yet you are still happy to nurse me back to health when all the shallow models I knew have abandoned me completely. I don’t deserve someone like you, I really don’t. Will you ever forgive me? Oh, my expensive pajamas appear to have become unbuttoned...”
“GERTRUDE!”
Jean calling her Gertrude really was a five-alarm situation.
Gertie, bursting out of her daydream, screwed up her face. She couldn’t stay up here forever. Or could she? Plus she was absolutely starving.
Her door nudged open, but nobody came in. Instead, a long tube of Jaffa cakes was pushed through. Goodness, Jaffa cakes were for very, very special occasions. How bad did they think she was? How bad was she?
Tentatively, she moved a little closer to the Jaffas. This was absurd; it was one of the ridiculous novelty one-meter boxes they normally did at Christmas. Jean had obviously got it in the January sales and was saving it for a special occasion, which would be a very Jean thing to do.
On the other hand, Gertie really was very hungry. She bent down and stretched out... whoosh! The Jaffa cakes jerked back.
“Mu-um!” said Gertie. She crawled toward them, but they got yanked back again. Gertie couldn’t help it—she smiled.
“Mum, I am not going to crawl downstairs for Jaffa cakes!”
Jean’s face, eyes rimmed with the familiar spidery mascara, appeared behind the door.
“Then would you crawl downstairs for me?” she said, opening up her arms.
“T HE THING IS,” said Tara, unnecessarily, as Gertie was fussed over and petted and poured extra tea and given more Jaffa cakes than even she wanted, which she wouldn’t have thought possible. Obviously Tara had been formulating a speech whilst Gertie had been upstairs.
“The thing is, those books and TV shows you like, Gertie...”
Elspeth and Gertie exchanged worried glances. Gertie was frogging wool from another beautiful scarf she’d started for Calum; it hurt far too much to continue on with it.
“... they’re not real. You know, rich and famous rock star meets a backstage girl and despite the fact that they’re really rich and famous and get to meet lots of glamorous people all the time, what they really want is someone to ground them and tell them the truth,” went on Tara inexorably. “You know those are just stories, right?”
Cara nodded, as if she was an expert in matters of the heart also. “I mean, look at rich and well-known men. They marry supermodels and actresses.”
“Miserably,” pointed out Elspeth from the sofa, peering over the tops of her spectacles and trying to count stitches. She kept losing her place. She hadn’t told anyone about it. She knew the pattern for a sweater off by heart; she’d knitted enough of them down the years. The last thing Elspeth wanted was to worry Jean by telling her she didn’t understand the patterns anymore. She’d only fuss unnecessarily. Elspeth was just tired; that was all. It was nothing.
“Yeah, they always get divorced,” agreed Cara.
“Yes,” said Tara. “And then the handsome famous guy marries someone even more beautiful and famous and even younger than the last one. So what’s your point?”
Gertie sighed.
“I mean there’s nothing wrong with you,” Tara went on, as if she was being extremely kind at this point.
“Well, thanks very much, Tara O’Farrell,” butted in Jean, sharply.
“No, but you know what I mean,” said Tara. “The rich millionaire looking for a poor nice girl... it’s... I mean, you are very nice,” she added at the end.
Gertie stared at the floor. “Thanks for that, Tara.”
“It’s a bit like me and Rod Stewart,” said Jean, thoughtfully. “I mean, I think Rod Stewart would have loved to have been married to me probably instead of all those leggy supermodels.”
“Calum is nothing like Rod Stewart, Mum!” said Gertie with some force.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Jean. “They’re both blonde. But you know, I think... well, Rod would love coming round for some cock-a-leekie soup.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Mum!”
“He would though,” insisted Jean. “He’s Scottish.”
“He isn’t! He’s from Essex!”
“All the more reason why he’d like a pure Scottish person then, isn’t it?” said Jean, putting her knitting down and folding her arms. There was really no shifting Jean once she got onto Rod Stewart, and Gertie was daft to even try.
“So anyway,” Jean continued. “That’s what I’m saying. It’s nice to think about Rod Stewart.”
Tara, Cara, and Marian all nodded emphatically. Gertie stayed schtum.
“But it doesn’t mean that if he came to Carso he would immediately fall in love with me.”
There was a disappointing lack of dissenting voices.
“I mean, it’s not out of the question,” said Jean, raising her voice slightly, and rather undermining her entire argument.
“Are you saying it’s not out of the question that a world-famous rock star with a gorgeous leggy blonde supermodel wife would run off to live with a size-sixteen middle-aged lady in a small town in Argyllshire?” said Cara. “I’m just trying to clarify.”
“Well we wouldn’t live in town ,” said Jean crossly. And they were still arguing about what, exactly, they would do with Rod Stewart when Gertie headed home, feeling undeniably better, if sworn off all men, famous or otherwise, forever.