Chapter 4 #2
A bike wouldn’t have been his first choice, but it was all he had.
Since setting himself up in business a few weeks ago he’d done nothing but count the pennies, wishing for a van of his own and knowing that being able to afford one was years away.
He’d calculated that at his current rate of success he’d be able to afford a Transit like a real electrician by the time he was forty.
‘Anyway, there’s a sidecar in Grandad’s garage,’ Euan told him, making McIntyre’s eyebrow arch. ‘And I thought if I could work on getting it attached again, I could take Grandad on runs out and about.’
‘Good thinking. So… why’s it no’ mounted to it now?’
‘That’s the problem. When Granny Rosie passed, Grandad let the sidecar lie unused in his garage. It’s in a right state. Mounting point’s rusted through.’
In spite of the sad note in Euan’s voice, McIntyre had the look of a man presented with a longed-for birthday present. ‘And you want me to help you fix it up?’
‘It was Grandad’s idea. He told me you can fix anything.’
This made McIntyre stand all the straighter, his freckled cheeks flushing. ‘I won’t let any machine defeat me, that’s true. I do have a lot on at the moment though.’ He scratched his head, considering then dismissing this. ‘So, Saturday morning?’
‘Huh?’
‘If you can get it here for Saturday, we can start working on it together?’
‘Oh! Right. Thanks. Grandad’s probably not up to helping, but I’m keen enough.’ Euan considered what spending next Saturday here might mean.
Everyone in town knew the shed’s main repairing day was Saturday and, according to his grandad, the place was always overrun with customers. The rest of the week, the shed was open for special events or social groups or the gardening project in the mill house grounds.
‘Are, um, are all that lot here every Saturday?’ Euan asked, tipping his head towards the shed.
McIntyre, who no one considered particularly romantically inclined, not in the traditional sense anyway, hadn’t a notion that Euan was chiefly thinking of young Peaches McDowell.
‘Aye, cannae seem to get rid of them,’ McIntyre joked, his eyes still on the bike.
McIntyre’s idea of romance was the hands-on magic of restoration, and the only sparks he sent flying these days were of the kind that required a welder’s mask, so he thought no more about the lad’s question.
‘We open at ten on Saturday, but if you can get here for half-eight, we’ll set to uninterrupted. I can pick up the sidecar from Clyde’s garage through the week, if that helps?’
It was all agreed with a handshake, after McIntyre had confirmed all repairs were free of charge but ‘a wee donation is always appreciated’, and it was expected that on big jobs like this, the customer would stick around and learn about the repair, even taking part in it themselves.
McIntyre was about to lead Euan back inside to fill in a repair docket and get the job officially logged when he said, ‘Listen, son? Dinnae let the chatterers, like our Senga, worry you. They’re just hard up for gossip. They’re no’ out to spoil your reputation; and they couldn’t anyway. OK?’
So, thought Euan, the repair shed boss was more clued up about goings-on in the town than it first appeared. He’d heard the whispers and wanted to comfort him.
Unfortunately for McIntyre, Euan had heard similar whispers about the repair shop.
In fact, those whispers had become a national news item last summer.
There’d been a scandal over some stolen jewellery and a crime gang operating in the area.
It had been before Euan’s return to Cairn Dhu, but everyone in town knew how the repair shop had got inveigled in it at the expense of its reputation.
‘Grandad told me the same gossips managed to take away all of your repair shop customers at one point?’
‘Aye… well.’ McIntyre coughed. ‘That’s as may be, but look at us now. Heavin’ with customers every Saturday. Folk always see sense in the end. And a town needs its repairers, just the same as it needs its electricians. You’ll see.’
Euan dropped the subject because he didn’t like to tell the older man he was surely wrong about his fledgling business recovering from his mistake, and so they made their way indoors to fill out the paperwork.
Once inside it was immediately obvious something was wrong.
The pink-hair girl was frantically tapping a message into her phone. ‘He’s not coming!’ she was saying on a loop, panic in her voice.
A woman in tall heels and with a severe blonde bob, who Euan hadn’t even noticed in the shed until this point, was trying to calm her down. ‘I know, sweetheart, but glandular fever can be like that. People can relapse for months afterwards.’
Just in case anyone was thinking this a sympathetic, kindly woman, she made sure to add, ‘Damned inconvenient of Willie to be sick tonight!’
‘I hate to add to your worries, but this replacement bulb doesn’t work either,’ Cary was announcing from next to the spotlight scaffold where he was unscrewing a huge light bulb. ‘It’s the last one we’ve got as well.’
The girl let her phone fall in her hand to her side. ‘Thanks for trying. I guess it doesn’t matter about lighting, Cary. It’s not going to be a proper rehearsal anyway, not with my model missing and no guaranteeing when he’ll be well enough to come back.’
Euan was signing off the repair docket, having filled in his phone number and Clyde’s address, when McIntyre said in a stage whisper, ‘Uh-oh, lad, I’d get on yer bike and go, right this minute, if I were you.’
‘Huh?’
Euan hadn’t a moment to process what was happening. The blonde woman was clicking across the floor towards him in her towering heels.
‘You?’ she commanded. ‘Young man. You’re an electrician?’ The woman cast her eyes over him as though she couldn’t believe that was true.
‘I am,’ Euan replied, unsure if he should be glad that news of his bad reputation hadn’t reached everyone in town’s ears, or if he should be worried about whatever she was cooking up behind those sharp, canny eyes.
‘Do you fix lights?’ she said, pointing to the top of the spotlight scaffold.
‘I can,’ Euan said with a shrug, then, after seeing the woman’s impatient scowl, he jumped to attention and peeled off his jacket. ‘Right now? Yup, okey-doke.’ He made his way to the steps and shimmied up. ‘Is this thing turned off at the mains?’
Cary, who was getting his coat on now, muttering something about it being another date night so he couldn’t stick around, directed Euan’s eyes to the snaking cable leading to the plug on the floor.
Sachin made after Cary, telling McIntyre he was meeting some old pals for band practice tonight, and the two left together.
‘It doesn’t matter about the spotlight, Mum, honestly,’ the girl said in the gloom. ‘It was only for atmosphere, really.’
‘No. It was to properly illuminate the garments, to see how they will show onstage on the real runway. We need appropriate lighting to identify what needs to be altered.’
So, the blonde bob woman was the girl’s mother, and she clearly wasn’t the sort to take broken for an answer. He’d better make a decent job of this.
He reached up into the spotlight’s hinged shades and opened them wider, untwisting the bulb Cary had shoved back in before leaving, and sniffed the contact.
The burned-out smell of the first bulb lingered.
‘I’m willing to bet the first bulb popped, and this second one is just a dud. Have you really not got a third?’
‘Nope,’ said McIntyre. ‘Those bulbs have been hanging around the repair shop for years. I’m no’ surprised both of them were dodgy.’
‘Sorry,’ Euan told the woman, who from the look on her face seemed to hold him personally responsible for the useless lightbulbs.
‘Ugh, it doesn’t matter,’ the girl cried out, going over to the big sofa in the café nook and dropping herself into it.
‘All of Willie’s clothes were custom made for him, so I can only rehearse my half of the show tonight.
I’ll just have to hope he’s better before the end of the month and we can fit in another rehearsal. ’
Euan heard all of this, not liking the sad note in the girl’s voice. His attention, however, was drawn to the girl’s mother staring up at him from the foot of the ladder. No, she wasn’t just staring, she was assessing him.
‘You’re slim,’ she said. ‘And muscled in a scrawny sort of way.’
‘Um, thanks?’
‘How tall are you, exactly?’
‘I did tell you to run while you could, son,’ McIntyre said portentously.
Euan glanced between the woman and her daughter. ‘Modelling? Me?’ A flush of panic rose up his chest, making his throat burn. ‘I couldn’t!’ Not in front of that beautiful girl anyway. ‘Nope. Not for me, thanks.’
‘You’re a local boy?’ the woman went on, standing in his path at the foot of the ladder, not letting him descend.
‘Aye.’
‘Do you know who I am?’ Without waiting for an answer, she told him she was ‘McDowell Property Management’, before adding that her usual electrician had for some reason neglected to sign the renewal of his contract she’d sent him. ‘Are you for hire?’
Visions of a shiny white Transit van pulling tyre-smoke donuts on tarmac filled his mind. ‘I am.’
The woman handed up a card, but just before he took it in his hand, she snatched it away. ‘You are fully qualified and registered?’
‘Of course.’ She didn’t need to know this was only his first week in business by himself since finishing his training.
The plan had been he’d move to Cairn Dhu to work alongside his grandad, who would come out of retirement for long enough for Euan to be apprenticed to him before going it alone, but Clyde’s stroke had put paid to that, so he was out on his own for now.
‘I’ve some outdated wiring in one of my rentals on the high street, needs bringing up to code,’ Carenza was saying, and Euan felt the need to check with a glance that the big shed doors were indeed closed and Senga Gifford wasn’t about to burst in again and blab about the mess he’d made with the primary school job.