Chapter 12
The first signs that there was anything seriously wrong came about twenty minutes after this, after Jolyon and Mhairi had gone home in their car and Sachin was locking up for the afternoon.
PC Jamie Beaton’s radio crackled into life, just as the officer was wiping the coffee froth from his lips and putting down his empty cup.
‘All service alert. Two trees are down over the main road northbound out of Cairn Dhu, and one pylon’s blocking both ways on Station Road leaving town. Stand by for emergency protocols.’
Peaches, who was at the doors looking out for her mother, responded first. ‘The roads are blocked? How?’ She heaved the shed doors apart, finding them heavy on their runners. A sharp wind howled inside.
‘Close the doors!’ Sachin and Senga shouted at once, flattening the papers on their counters to stop them blowing away.
She was trying to slide them closed when a figure appeared and squeezed inside.
‘Jings! I nearly blew all the way to the Arctic Circle!’
It was a very windswept Clyde Forte, his head bare and his cigarette extinguished by the gusts. ‘Can I wait in here while it dies down? Freak winds, they’re sayin’ on the telly!’
Jamie spoke into his radio. ‘This is PC Beaton. I’m at the repair shop. Where do you want me? Over.’
‘Mum’s supposed to be here by now to take me to my showcase!’ Peaches said to anyone who’d listen as she and Clyde hauled the heavy doors closed once more.
Peaches’ phone rang, and this was the moment everyone in town realised their best laid plans were about to be scattered like a plough going through a fieldmouse’s nest.
Carenza bellowed so loudly down the line Peaches had to hold the phone from her ear. ‘These oafish police officers, the Mason brothers, aren’t letting me through onto the high street!’
Everyone in the shed, who had gathered near the doors by now, heard her, even though she wasn’t using speakerphone.
‘Tell your mother she cannae cross a police cordon. No one can,’ Jamie instructed sternly, mid-call on his own radio. ‘Got it, thanks, Sarge.’
‘But—’ Peaches started to protest. All her beautiful garments lay over the chair backs around her, ready to be bundled into her mum’s Lexus.
‘Everyone’ll have to stay put until the wind drops.’
‘I’ll get to you, one way or another! You are not going to miss your showcase! Get your hands off me, Officer Mason!’ Carenza howled, before hanging up, leaving Peaches picturing her mother being bundled into the back of a van for breaking through a cordon.
‘I have to be there in an hour and a half,’ Peaches said, looking at her phone limp in her hand.
‘Dinnae worry,’ Clyde tried to comfort her. ‘I’m sure your teachers will wait for you…’
‘No, they won’t. We were warned they wouldn’t hold the runway for anyone. If I miss it, I fail.’ Peaches’ phone rang once more as she was saying this.
It was Willie. ‘I’m on campus, where are you?’
‘The roads are blocked out of Cairn Dhu, some freak winds apparently.’
‘Winds? There’s nothing here.’
‘It’s blown trees down over the roads here. Mum’s not allowed through in her car. All my stuff’s here at the shed…’ Her words grew pitchy as her panic increased.
‘Just take a breath. How long can it take to move a tree? I’m going to take a nap while I wait for you. Just get here quick, OK?’
‘A nap? Are you not feeling any better?’
‘I told you I was modelling for you tonight and I’m not letting you down now. I’m just a bit feverish, that’s all. Don’t worry about me, but get here soon. Professor Quinn-Watson is stomping around in a right froth. Some teams are already running their last-minute timings on the catwalk.’
‘I’ll get there.’ She hung up only to realise everyone was looking at her: PC Beaton, Clyde, Senga, Sachin and McIntyre, each one more sorrowful than the last.
‘Peaches,’ McIntyre began, making her sit in one of the café chairs. ‘You’re not getting out. Not until the tractors arrive to pull clear the debris and all the heritage trees lining the roadsides are checked for cracked limbs that could cause further timber falls.’
‘But…’ Peaches wouldn’t be contained and flew to the shed door, dragging it open. She staggered out into the driveway and froze, the men running after her.
Every one of them stopped and looked into the sky.
‘But it’s…’ began McIntyre.
‘It’s stopped,’ said Peaches.
Sure enough, the air was still, and eerily quiet. The birds were not singing and the animals in the pastures all around the valley were silent. No engines revved and absolutely nothing moved.
‘They did say it was likely to be isolated gusts and short-lived,’ added Sachin.
Peaches’ heart lifted at this and she spun round to look at the men, but again they were thin-lipped and frowning.
‘The station are telling me there’s no vehicular access in or out of town,’ said Jamie Beaton. ‘Unless you can offroad—’
‘She can,’ Clyde Forte interrupted. ‘She can!’ He was dialling a number, the call connecting in seconds. Whoever picked up was worried for Clyde’s safety and had been trying to get through to him.
‘You know I keep my phone on silent,’ Clyde replied. ‘Listen, I need you to bring Rosie to the repair shop. Come the river path way, ride in the gullies if you need to, just avoid the polis’ roadblock on the high street, OK? I know, I know, just get here. Peaches is in a spot o’ bother.’
That was seemingly all he had to say and the call ended.
Clyde and McIntyre only had to glance at one another before they sprang into action, hurrying from the shed.
In the end, it didn’t take long, even though it was the very first time in forty years that the sidecar had been secured to Clyde’s motorbike, and Clyde had burst into tears to see them reunited and fixed fast.
‘That was some good welding the other day,’ McIntyre was saying, admiringly.
Peaches hadn’t exactly been consulted on the common sense or the safety of the mission; she’d only been swept up in it all, watching for Euan bursting through the gap in the boundary wall, having dashed here as fast as possible.
Sachin helped her bundle the garment bags and place them in the sidecar; they didn’t all fit and some would have to be held but if she sandwiched them between her front and Euan’s back on the bike, they’d be OK.
Clyde was acting like this was an excellent solution and not in fact a highly dangerous one.
Officer Beaton put up a lot of complaints but with everyone doing their best to convince him this was an emergency, he had to relent and throw his hands up, saying, ‘I can get you an outrider as far as the tree over the road, then you’ll have to skirt round as best you can.
Word on the radio says there’s a metre-wide gap if you leave the road to avoid the tree and skim the riverbank.
Then with any luck, you can get back up onto the road, provided it’s not too slippery or rocky, or steep. ’
‘That’s the plan?’ Peaches said. ‘Maybe get through? Maybe end up in the river?’
‘It’s the best we can do,’ Euan was saying, re-strapping his helmet and holding something out to her, astride the bike. ‘We may as well go take a look.’
She stared at the helmet he was offering. ‘You want me to wear that?’
The whole thing was ludicrous. A motorbike and sidecar dash across country, dodging fallen branches and whole tree trunks, and her in her everyday clothes?
‘Put this on as well.’ Euan stripped off his leather jacket and handed it over. ‘Are we leaving or what?’
Her phone rang again. It was either her mum, Willie or Professor Quinn-Watson, and she didn’t want to be told off by any of them, so she threw the jacket on, zipping it up, before pulling the helmet down over her face.
It felt suffocating and she couldn’t see very well through the visor, but Euan held a hand out to help steady her as she clambered onto the bike behind him, sitting pillion.
Sachin, very gently, laid the last two garment bags across her lap and gave her a nod.
‘Hold on tight,’ Euan called over his shoulder, and before she had time to change her mind, the tyres were rolling.
‘Wait!’ Clyde yelled out, stopping them dead. ‘Euan, listen hard to me now.’ He spoke urgently. ‘You’ve never ridden Rosie wi’ the sidecar. It’s going to feel totally different.’
Euan slapped his visor up, not happy to hear this. ‘How’d you mean?’
‘Braking, steering, everything will feel different. You can’t lean the bike on a corner, so you’ll have to handlebar steer.’
‘Got it.’
‘Wait! This is very important! When you’re turning on a bend, the sidecar wheel can lift off the ground. Avoid that, no matter what.’
‘Keep wheel on the ground? OK,’ he said, trying to appear blasé, but with the difficulty of what he was about to attempt, and with Peaches at his back, the responsibility was only now sinking in.
‘Stopping distances will be much longer, you’ll need to keep your wits about you in case you need to emergency stop, say, if another branch falls across the road before yi!’
Euan swallowed. ‘Got it. Anticipate problems. Brake early. Is that everything?’
‘No’ quite. The sidecar will pull you to about, and if there’s any camber on the road surface, you can end up in a ditch. God knows, me and your granny found that out the hard way one time we were coming back from a run to Arbroath and—’
Euan stilled him with a leather gloved hand to his arm. ‘I’ll look after her, I promise.’ He meant Peaches and the bike, and his Granny Rosie too, who Clyde and Euan knew full well would in some way be accompanying them tonight.
Clyde’s heart was swelling with pride, and regret, no doubt, that it wasn’t him riding north on another adventure. He couldn’t speak for the lump at his throat.
The last thing Peaches saw when she glanced behind her in the little mirror was McIntyre and Clyde on the gravel drive, each with an arm raised in surrendering their handiwork, the sidecar now restored to gleaming silvery usefulness and absolutely stuffed deep into its footwell and almost overspilling with the clothes from her collection.