Chapter 30
Chapter 30
T he bell woke Gertie from a not unpleasant morning half-dream in which Calum had started a new route to France and needed someone to walk down ancient cobbled streets trying croissants with and... BUZZ!
Maybe it was him! She thought suddenly, sitting bolt upright, running her hands through her knotted hair. Maybe he’d had a night lying awake thinking about her, and he couldn’t wait a second longer. Maybe the helicopter was right outside.
She pulled off her old Friends pajamas and replaced them with a black dress she grabbed from her hanger, dashed into the bathroom.
BUZZ!
To rinse her mouth out with toothpaste then downstairs, slapping her cheeks a little to put some color in them, all the while trying to tell herself to stop being ridiculous, it was probably a delivery driver for Morag.
Struan was standing on the street, holding two cups of coffee from The Point, which opened early for the fishermen.
“Ah,” he said. “Hiyah.”
“But don’t you have a key?” she said.
Struan shrugged.
“Aye, well, it’s your house, aye?”
“I suppose...”
She stood back to let him in.
“Is your... was your girlfriend all right?”
He winced. “Not really. Sorry if she was rude to you.”
Gertie shrugged, only relieved she hadn’t managed to follow on her instincts and tell Struan about what she’d once felt for him. God, what was she thinking?
Struan explained his mission, and Gertie sent him up to the loft, where he managed to dig up a waterproof jacket, which was fine. The tents would be provided, but his sleeping bag... he pulled it down from the tiny loft. It did not smell good. He hadn’t used it since last summer, when they’d been playing little folk festivals and camping. Good times. Sadly not good enough for him to remember to wash his sleeping bag. He sighed. Maybe they’d put him in a tent by himself. Surely he wouldn’t have to share with the headmistress... A chill went through him. No. Definitely not. Oh God, why couldn’t they have booked with their normal people on Mure? The idea of having to undress in front of... no. That wouldn’t happen. Not in a million years. So he could stop panicking.
Struan grabbed his bag containing his deodorant and all his socks and looked around at what had used to be his apartment. Gertie was in the shower, which felt odd, although of course she had to get to work too. She had looked terribly fetching in her black dress and bed head, he found himself thinking, then shook that thought right out of his head.
He sighed once more and grabbed another one of his guitars down from the attic, just out of habit, tuning it absentmindedly. Then he remembered they were going hiking and put it down again. Then he thought, well, it wasn’t heavy. And they were going to be moving at the pace of ten-year-old children, so it wasn’t going to be a speedy thing to be doing. And the kids might like it round the campfire... It might make things more bearable anyway. So he strung the case around his rucksack. By this time Gertie was out of the shower and dressed in her uniform and she kindly filled his flask with very strong hot coffee.
“Actually this might be good,” he said, taking the coffee with thanks. “A bit of fresh air, a bit of exercise, get the kids singing as they move.” Even now, years on from the pandemic there were still a few, even up here, in the great free wild air of the very far north who had never quite escaped the trap of their bedrooms and their phones. Whereas on this trip all phones were confiscated and left at base, to save the children from trying to order pizza or call in a helicopter or simply to send messages to their parents of the heart-rending deprivation and terror involved in being outside for more than fifteen minutes.
Gertie looked at him. “I thought you were off to be a big rock star,” she said. “This is a slightly different kind of rock.”
He smiled. “Aye. But it’ll be all right. No phones. Nobody bothering me. Few songs around the campfire. Maybe a scary story.”
“About a man who gave up his lovely flat in Carso?” said Gertie, and Struan smiled again, then looked rather wistful and stared out the window.
The sun was pinkening over the sea, the waves white-capped. Tiny lines in a mackerel sky were crossing above that, as the light hit the rolling hills, the sheep already up and grazing.
“It’ll be a beautiful day to fly,” said Gertie.
“Aye,” said Struan, watching gusts shear the water’s edge. It was chilly, out there, but so beautiful. In the distance rose Inchborn, like a drawing of Narnia; beyond it Larbh and Archland.
“I suppose when you’re touring it’s cozy and you get to go to new places,” said Gertie. “And no children!”
“It’s all hotel rooms and buses,” said Struan. “Everything looks exactly the same. And don’t tell the wee buggers, they’ll get even more unmanageable but... I quite like the children.”
T HEY WERE HEADING in the same direction—there was a coach picking up the kids from school, and Gertie would walk on further that way, so they left together into the freezing cold, sunny morning, Struan clanking under the weight of his rucksack.
“I don’t think I’ve been camping since last year’s festival circuit,” he said, to break the silence.
“I wondered what the smell was.” Gertie allowed herself a small smile.
Struan wrinkled his nose. “Oh Christ, it’s my sleeping bag isn’t it? I knew it was awful. Then I got used to it and kind of forgot. Oh no. The kids are going to rag me something stupid.”
“That’s if you don’t render them unconscious with the dope smell first.”
“Oh God, really?!”
He twisted his head round comically to sniff his sleeping bag and Gertie really couldn’t stifle a full grin then.
“It’s that bad?”
She nodded. “Maybe just keep yourself very far away from their tents.”
“Oh they make the teachers do that anyway, don’t worry.”
Gertie shivered. The morning was clear, but colder than it looked, or than it should have been for the time of year.
“It’s going to be right cold up there, isn’t it?”
“This is Scotland,” said Struan. “I think that’s a given.”
“But you have your trusty stinky sleeping bag.”
Struan sighed. “Maybe they’ll have a spare at the Outward Bound center.”
Gertie laughed. “You would actually get inside a stranger’s discarded sleeping bag rather than your own? What went on in there?”
Struan looked sheepish. “Oh, I don’t...”
“I mean I think they have some old sheep blankets probably?”
She was teasing him and he found himself smiling back. They came to the bottom of the hill, next to the road with the school. A large coach was already there, belching fumes, along with a gaggle of children, their parents, bags, and general uproar. They didn’t technically need a coach as the airfield was only a kilometer away, but it helped make sure they could count them in and out.
Gertie sensed an immediate slowing down from Struan and it took her a second or two to realize what he was doing. He was hanging back so that nobody there would think they were together, it being so early in the morning and everything. He was completely terrified of the idea that anyone might think they were a couple, or knew each other. He didn’t want a repeat of the Wee Shugs incident.
She flushed quickly. What had she told herself after Calum? Stop it. Struan had probably heard about it—that was even worse. Probably thought she was completely desperate.
“I’m just turning down here,” she said quickly, going off across the road.
Struan, who had not heard about it, had barely realized what he was doing; it was only just dawning on him that he was about to turn up in front of the whole school with a young woman who was not his girlfriend. He was just planning out a tactful way of explaining to Gertie how much unimaginable ragging he would get if they showed up together, and even worse when they saw her at check-in later, when he turned his head to see she was march ing off, again. Oh. Well. She must have had the same thought first, how awful to be seen with him early in the morning in front of people from the town. Huh.
He walked on, rather crossly, toward the clutch of very excited children, and parents who clearly hadn’t got quite as much sleep as they would have liked the previous night.