Chapter 7 #2
‘Careful, now. You don’t want to lose your bakery stall volunteers,’ Senga warned, arms folded across her aproned bosom.
‘Ah yes, Senga and Rhona Gifford…’ Carenza ran a red stiletto fingernail down her list. ‘You’ll be selling your food on your bakery stall? For a profit, yes?’
Getting no reply, other than eyerolls and displeased, conceding looks from the women, she went on. ‘So it can hardly be classed as volunteering. Be there for six to set up, please. You’re stall number one, nearest the entrance to the Knowe recreation ground. Got it? Good.’
Roz, who’d stepped outside to gather in McIntyre and Clyde when Carenza started her rollcall, led the latecomers inside now.
‘Ah, yes, Roz. You’re working with the community to make their Beltane procession costumes, masks and besoms?’
‘I will be running some craft sessions through the week,’ Roz replied, indicating the big plastic storage tubs of old tabloids, green scrap fabric and crepe paper on the floor by her sewing station.
‘Most people keep their masks and costumes from year to year, but the wee ones can make new ones of their own, and some of the older ones will be wanting to embellish or repair theirs.’
Carenza typed into her iPad, saying to herself, ‘Repair shed mask and costume making, beginning in earnest. Tick. Thank you. And where’s that handy husband of yours?’
McIntyre raised a reluctant finger.
‘You’re on fire duty. Building the bonfire on the Knowe in the usual spot, plus helping the townsfolk safely light their torches for the procession.’
‘That’s right. Same as every year since ’99,’ he said.
She added another tick to her list. ‘The procession departs from the repair shop at eighteen hundred hours, making its way along the high street before turning on to the river path towards the rec, yes? And you will oversee the lighting of the bonfire at eighteen thirty-five precisely. No dawdling. Last year, some of the little ones were dithering in front of the shop windows looking at the Beltane displays.’
‘Mrs Hoolit and the other teachers will be there to help,’ McIntyre replied. ‘And all the parents. This will be a dawdle-free year.’
‘Sachin?’ Carenza turned her attention to the shed’s repair triage coordinator. ‘You and Mrs Roy are in charge of the sound system and musical entertainment, correct?’
‘Aye, I’ll be DJing again.’
‘Spinning the auld vinyls, eh?’ Clyde Forte put in.
This ignited Sachin’s enthusiasm. ‘Sure will! I was thinking, some nineties club and festival classics. The Shaman, Bombay Talkie, mixed wi’ a wee bit o’ Punjabi MC, a bit of Skerryvore—’
‘You’ll kindly stick to this pre-approved list of traditional, family-friendly Scottish songs,’ Carenza corrected, handing him a list that dampened the music lover’s ardour.
Sachin scanned the paper dejectedly. ‘“Flower of Scotland”? “Donald, Where’s Your Troosers”? “Shang-a-Lang”?’ He squinted harder. ‘“Stop Yer Ticklin’, Jock”? You’ve got to be kidding?’
Carenza, however, wasn’t listening. She ticked Sachin off her list and moved on. ‘Cary Anderson?’
‘Aye?’ The carpenter lifted his brows, ready to accept his fate.
‘Litter duty.’
‘Oh.’ His shoulders dropped, but he knew better than to argue. This was his punishment for spiking the grown-ups’ cider bowl with spiced rum the year before.
‘As you know, I will oversee the drinks cauldrons this year,’ said Carenza, primly. ‘One pear and apple squash, one orange and ginger ale, both non-alcoholic.’
Rhona Gifford mouthed the words ‘Squash?’ and ‘Ginger ale?’ in Cary’s and Sachin’s directions, screwing up her face.
‘And, Cary?’ Carenza went on, pointedly. ‘I’ve confirmed with Dr Alice that she’ll be staffing the first-aid tent. At least it won’t be overrun with boozed-up partygoers this year.’
Evidently, Cary’s punishment extended to his girlfriend too.
‘And that’s it,’ Carenza concluded, adding one final check to her list.
Euan saw his grandad puffing his cheeks and blowing in relief. He’d evidently been removed from sausage sizzling duties, and it seemed Euan was still too recent an arrival to be lumbered with a job.
‘And what else will you be doing?’ Senga called across the room to Carenza, before adding under her breath for Euan’s benefit, ‘Swanning about the Knowe like Lady Muck, nae doubt. The Queen at her ball.’
‘I…’ she replied, ‘will crown the May king and queen, and make the announcements. As Beltane Celebration Committee Chairperson, it is only fitting. Besides, there’s only me and Post Office Pauline on the committee now.’
‘Only because the rest walked out when you took over. There’s nobody left to run the thing,’ Senga grumbled in response as the crowd dispersed and everyone went back to their repairs.
Euan didn’t hang around. He had to catch Peaches before his grandad wanted to go home for the matinee movie on Channel Five.
‘Peaches?’ he attempted, at exactly the same moment Carenza called for her daughter.
‘Yes, Mum?’
He watched as Peaches followed her mother to the café sofas, and he gave up on asking her out any time today, especially not when there were so many people around.
He took his bacon rolls and coffees outside to where Clyde and McIntyre were getting back to work on the sidecar. The three of them tinkered and welded, filled and smoothed for the rest of the morning.
Senga watched Euan depart, leaving the café counter with no customers for the moment. She seemed to satisfy herself that Roz was also diverted, pressing at the pedal of her noisy sewing machine once more, and she drew her sister’s attention with a jerk of her head.
‘What’s up?’ Rhona said, whispering on instinct. Senga had that look in her eye of having a morsel of gossip. Only her mouth was set in a firm line that said she took no pleasure in passing this on.
‘You know Tony?’
‘Jean Wilson’s cousin from the hop-on, hop-off tour buses?’ said Rhona.
‘That’s the one. He told Jean who told me that he spotted’ – Senga swept cautious eyes around the shed and lowered her whisper – ‘McIntyre in a parked car with A Woman.’
Rhona nodded, still waiting for the good part.
‘A woman who wasn’t Roz!’ Senga whispered emphatically.
‘And where was this car parked?’ Rhona asked, trying not to let her sister down by showing her disappointment in what sounded like half-baked gossip to her.
‘In the back of a pub car park, the Garten Arms.’
Rhona shook her head and plumped her bottom lip, not one for pubs. ‘I don’t know it.’
‘It’s not the…’ Senga’s voice bounced off the walls of the shed, and Roz’s eyes darted towards the women enquiringly.
Both women sprang into poses of industrious innocence, wiping down the countertops and restacking the cairn of rock buns under the glass dome until Roz had looked away again.
‘It’s not the pub that’s important,’ hissed Senga. ‘It’s what on earth McIntyre is doing sitting in parked cars with strange women late at night…’
‘You didn’t mention it was late at night!’
‘Well, it was about half six,’ Senga conceded.
‘Tony was on his last route of the day and he swore blind it was him and a mystery woman, and they were looking very cosy. I told Jean to tell him he must need his eyes checked because there was never a steadier couple than the McIntyres, but when you think about it, when was the last time you saw the pair of them anywhere near each other? Or having any fun? Or going out together? Dinners and that?’
‘Are you suggesting’ – Rhona dared only whisper the following into her sister’s ear – ‘that some other wummin is getting her…’ She paused, searching for a delicate way of saying it. ‘Her hinges oiled by Charlie McIntyre?’
Senga fired a sage look at her innocent sister. ‘He is forever sneakin’ off on his own lately. You must have noticed?’
Rhona had to anchor herself against the counter. It couldn’t be? Not the McIntyres? Not after all this time?
‘I’ll have a tea, if that’s all right, please, Senga?’ Roz had appeared at the counter.
‘One mug of tea, coming up,’ Senga brazened, turning for the urn.
Rhona, who was a good deal less cunning than her sister, only clutched her tea towel to her chest and gazed through sympathy-washed eyes at Roz. If it was indeed true that McIntyre was up to no good, it wouldn’t be her that gave the game away and broke poor Roz’s heart.
‘Have a rock bun, on me,’ Rhona blurted, dishing up the biggest chocolate-dipped sugary boulder of the lot. ‘Tea’s on me as well,’ she said. ‘My treat.’
‘All right. Thanks very much?’ Roz drew out the words, eyeing the sisters.
Thankfully, they could often be accused of being more than a little eccentric and this reputation meant they were easily let off the hook now. Roz smiled warily at them both and carried away her treats, shaking her head.
Side by side like two watchmen on the ramparts, the sisters surveyed the room as Roz settled once more at her machine, and Senga spoke from the side of her mouth. ‘I hope that freebie’s coming out of your pocket, sister.’
And so, the morning carried on much as it ever did behind the repair shop café counter.
On the sofas, Carenza had one last task on her list.
‘There’s something I wanted to ask you, Peach.’
‘OK?’ Peaches trusted her mother in most things, so had no reason to panic; not like the rest of the town folk when Carenza bowled up to them and said she has something to ask of them.
‘I wondered if this year, at the bonfire, you’d consider… entertaining… a date?’
‘A date?’ Her mind raced. ‘Who?’
‘It’s come to my attention that a certain… earnest young man has arrived in town, and he’s wasted no time in making himself very useful to me.’
‘He has?’ Peaches looked to the doors that Euan Sparks had passed through only a moment ago.
‘He has impressed me a great deal and, I think, conducted himself in a gentlemanly manner.’
‘OK?’ Peaches’ heart beat a little harder and she felt her cheeks redden. Had her mum noticed her awkwardness around Euan and put two and two together? Could it be that she actually approved of him?
‘The boy’s from local stock and already embedded in his community. A kind person, I think, and reserved. Discreet.’
‘Yes,’ Peaches said quickly. She had to agree; Euan had been nothing but kind, and reserved; but, if anything, he was too discreet. She’d felt sure he was about to ask her out earlier, but hadn’t seemed able to summon the words.
‘You know I don’t like to meddle,’ Carenza purred. ‘On this one occasion, however, I’d like your permission to invite him to the Beltane celebration as your… chaperone.’
Peaches cringed. ‘My chaperone?’
‘I’ll be busy overseeing the event, you see? And I want you to be kept safe and to enjoy yourself. I think you would have a very pleasant time with him, if I were to… engineer a meeting. What do you think?’
Peaches couldn’t understand what had got into her mother, but she didn’t want to shoot herself in the foot if Carenza was willing, for once, to yield a little on the topic of her dating. Still, she couldn’t resist asking, ‘Why now?’
Carenza didn’t need to consider her answer.
‘Because it’s time. You’ve all but completed your studies.
You’re well on your way to success and it can’t hurt to have someone suitable accompanying you.
A strong alliance is not to be sniffed at.
’ Carenza’s eyes dropped to the now blank iPad screen on her lap.
‘For a long time, I had an alliance with your father, and we were unstoppable. With my ambition and talent and his… spark, we were really something. It’s not my fault he had other ideas—’
Peaches cut her off. ‘I’m in.’ Anything to stop her mum wallowing in the bitterness her dad had left them with.
‘You are? Oh, you are a good girl, Peach! I know I don’t say it often enough.’
‘You say it all the time.’
‘Yes, well…’ Carenza was positively misty-eyed as she leaned in and kissed her forehead, right in the middle of her bangs.
‘You are a good girl. Right!’ She clapped her hands, decisively.
‘You don’t need to do a thing. In fact, I’ll go and let him know my wishes right this instant.
’ She stood and, after hugging her daughter, who could only laugh giddily at the unexpected turn of events, bustled right out the door.
Peaches ran to the little window at the front of the shed, just to be sure she wasn’t imagining things, and there she saw her mum practically dragging Euan Sparks aside, speaking to him with a severe, determined look on her face, a look that meant business.
She peered out long enough to see him nodding his head, a little bewildered, and shaking the hand Carenza offered him.
As her mother marched out of the driveway and disappeared, she watched Euan’s fine mouth break into an abashed smile. He flicked his eyes in the direction of the shed. Afraid of being caught looking, Peaches ducked and hid.
The rest of her morning, occupied in helping Roz mending and altering clothes and textiles for the folks of Cairn Dhu, passed in happiness as visions of talking with Euan while sparks from the bonfires rose into a starry sky played in her imagination.
She was going on a date and, for once, she didn’t have a thing to hide or to feel sorry about.