Chapter 19
The day ought to have run like any normal Friday, and to the unaccustomed eyes of an outsider, maybe that’s how it looked as the local businesses kept to their usual hours, and the gossips stopped one another in the street to share details of the strange and sudden storm the night before, which, they delighted to recount, had taken some tiles off the school gables and dashed old man Sneddon’s gate clean off its hinges and torn the felt from the accountant’s outhouse roof.
The woman from the delicatessen on her delivery bicycle and the postie with his cart made their deliveries up and down the valley, and PC Beaton walked his beat and greeted everyone he passed, just as the three of them always did.
Yet, as the afternoon wore on, there grew an undeniable buzz in the air.
A busload of lads from out of town arrived shortly after the lunch rush to prop up the bar and ply the jukebox with coins at the Cairn Dhu Hotel Restaurant, and their presence only encouraged the old-timers and barflies to sup all the harder, so the whole place sounded like a party by the time the bonfire was finished being constructed out on the Knowe.
This year’s bonfire would be the biggest in the town’s memory. A great stack of kindling and logs propped up like a teepee, bulked out with all the fallen branches and sawn trunks that had blocked the roads the night before.
The afternoon school-run traffic had cleared by three thirty, with the children even more excitable than on a regular Friday, knowing they’d have to rush their dinners and get into their masks and costumes before gathering at the repair shop for tonight’s big procession.
By the dot of five, as the sun’s warmth was fading, the shops were closing up but leaving their window lights on and the shutters up so passers-by could admire their Beltane displays, all pastel plastic flowers and twiggy arrangements in the shape of wild beasts and curious creatures.
Ozan the barber was hoping for some kind of special recognition from the committee for his display of a somewhat disturbing ‘Beltane Bogle’, which he’d made out of floristry wire stuffed with the week’s hair sweepings (his creative process aided by the fact no one really knew for sure what such a thing as a bogle might look like).
An ice cream van, a thing very rarely seen in the valley due to the widely dispersed population making a resident van unprofitable, rolled down the high street at five thirty chiming an out-of-place ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ as it made its way to the turning off the main road and down onto the rec.
All day long, Carenza McDowell had careered around town making phone calls, delivering things to the site, and checking everyone was on target for opening, and all with the look of a woman who just cannot get the staff these days, though, in actual fact, all of her volunteers had seen to their tasks as instructed.
There now stood a series of tents and stalls and haybale benches constructed around the field’s outer perimeter with the bonfire at its centre and the two smaller ‘blessing’ bonfires a little way off, towards the southern tip of the Knowe near the river.
There was even a small raised platform where Sachin had installed his DJ deck and speakers under a garden gazebo, not that the evening showed any signs of rain.
Even the Gifford sisters had put away any animosity they might have for Carenza and, thinking only of the town (and the repair shop coffers), began setting out their stall with their homemade Beltane rum ball truffles (for the grown-ups) and their chocolate-dipped apples on sticks and bags of sweet vanilla tablet (for the bairns, and Finlay Morlich, whose sweet tooth, the women knew, would bring the grumpy mountain ranger to the site even though he hated large crowds).
Sachin was biting down his annoyance and running his soundcheck using one of Carenza’s permitted tunes, so ‘The Birdie Song’ was pervading the entire area.
The council had allowed the committee to rig their PA and Sachin’s electricity supply from the rec’s own electricity distribution cabinet which the park’s CCTV ran from.
The bouncy castle company had also set up in their corner of the field and started their noisy petrol-powered blower, inflating a big pink princess castle.
The Knowe was lit with fairy lights and low, late-afternoon sun.
PC Beaton and the two Mason brother officers were stationed at the site’s official entrance to pretend to check a few bags for illicit substances (to pacify Carenza who didn’t want a drop of booze near the punch cauldrons) and to manage crowd control.
Fire Officer Dunoon had arrived to oversee the bonfire and keep the safety barrier in place around it, and Dr Alice and some St John’s Ambulance volunteers from Garten were in the field’s medical tent, hoping their services wouldn’t be needed this year.
Carenza surveyed the site before giving the go-ahead to start letting people in.
She’d ticked everything off her to-do list. Nothing looked set to go wrong.
Over at the repair shop, Rosalyn McIntyre had marshalled the costumed kids, all in some version of the traditional mossy masks or twiggy antlers, green capes, besoms and leafy crowns, into hand-holding pairs, ready for the procession.
The children, with their teachers and parents, lined up in the car park.
‘Very nice to see you, Rosalyn,’ Mrs Hoolit greeted her, wearing her old familiar owl headdress with great round eyes made from Christmas tree baubles. She’d worn the same thing each Beltane for as long as Roz could remember. ‘Not dressing up this year?’
‘Ah! No. Decided against it.’ The truth was her precious old costume and crown had never turned up anywhere. She hadn’t felt like running up a new set; no matter how pretty they might turn out, they wouldn’t be the same.
‘When are we leaving?’ Shell Cooper wanted to know from behind her mask, champing at the bit, having dragged her mum to the head of the procession.
There rose from the crowd other similar grumbles and enquiries. ‘Where’s McIntyre with the light?’ one of the grown-ups asked. ‘We should be on our ways by now!’ said another.
Roz didn’t dare reveal that she knew exactly where McIntyre had sneaked off to, and it had taken all her fortitude to disguise the fact. The discovery still hadn’t quite sunk in.
She hadn’t meant to lift his phone when the notification sounded an hour ago, but he’d left it lying on his workbench while he pottered frenetically about, the way he had when he was a nervous bridegroom on their wedding morning and again as an expectant dad pacing in the waiting room before her C-section.
She’d only glanced at the phone screen for a second, setting it straight back down as soon as she’d seen the words.
Sent 15.05
You said I’d see you today. What’s keeping you? You really know how to keep a man on tenterhooks! Mac.
Sent 16.41
I can’t wait any longer, Maddie. It really is now or never!!
Roz hadn’t been able to stop herself reading the eventual reply too, and her heart felt pierced through with the words.
I’m so sorry! I couldn’t get away until now. Meet me in the back car park of the Garten Arms in half an hour, Mads xx
Read 17.01
No sooner had she set McIntyre’s phone down than he had appeared from the back of the shed, a pink flush touching his pale face. He’d looked like he was sickening for something. Or someone.
She didn’t know any Maddie, and she didn’t know why her husband was begging to meet her in a car park at night when he knew he had so many responsibilities tonight with the bonfire and procession.
She’d pretended to be busy with one of the kids’ headdresses but had caught him out of the corner of her eye lifting his phone, visibly sagging with relief and bolting from the shed without a word of an excuse, only telling Wayward she couldn’t go with him.
‘You stay here,’ he’d told the little dog.
In that moment he had forgotten Roz existed at all; forgotten their life, their home, their kids, and all the people gathered in the repair shop relying on him.
‘I can light the torches,’ Roz announced now, to stop the grumbles, and wishing they’d all clear out of here so she could gather her thoughts and analyse what this meant.
It was only just occurring to her that she probably hadn’t been the only one in their marriage asking herself the question, ‘Is this it for me now?’ McIntyre had thought the same thing, but he’d gone and done something drastic about it. With someone called Maddie.
Mrs Hoolit eyed Roz warily as she put McIntyre’s welding apron on over her dungarees and cardi, and she’d joined the impatient families waiting outside. She lifted the lid from the brazier with the big metal tongs, making flames lick the air and smoke sting her eyes.
‘One adult from every family, roll up!’ she called out carelessly, no longer all that interested in being sweet, gentle, doormat Roz.
Most families let their menfolk approach to claim a fire torch. McIntyre had been making them all year and now they were doused in citronella and oil ready for lighting.
She was in no fettle for niceties now. Some of these men she only ever saw on Beltane night.
They always wanted to be the one in charge of the fire-setting.
Her mood made her uncharitable towards them.
She wanted to say snide things about how she’d see them next year at the same time and not around the town when the mums were doing it all; running the whole world, carrying shopping and babies, pushing strollers and making appointments on phones, handing over toddlers to daycare while running late in their uniforms and office clothes to jobs that would only just cover the extortionate childcare costs, if they were lucky.
For the first time in a long time, Roz’s heart was flooded with disappointment and humiliation and fury.
She lit each torch from the flaming brazier and handed them over in turn, only saying ‘you’re welcome’ to Livvie Cooper and the few other mothers and grannies who didn’t have (or want or need) a man around spoiling things.
She really was ill-disposed to the world this evening.
She knew deep down she was scaring some of the men with her scowling, and it wasn’t fair to take her disillusionment out on them, but she also couldn’t stop herself.
As soon as she’d handed over the very last firebrand and shooed the last dawdlers out of her driveway, she did something neither she nor her husband had done in years.
She drew the big gates closed over the gap in the boundary wall and bolted them firmly into the ground, shutting out some of the light and a little of the hilarity and impromptu singing coming from the departing procession as it made its way onto the high street.
Then she trudged to the shed and turned off all of its lights before pulling the switch on the big floodlight outside.
As she made her way back to her family home she stopped for a second to look out at the dark, enclosed gardens. This was McIntyre land, her mother’s mother’s land, now lighted only by the glow from the brazier, which could burn itself out for all she cared.
She told herself she was done with being helpful and cheerful and giving, always giving. From now on she would shut herself away like the women they used to call witches, the ones scorned in the history books.
‘Let’s get inside, Wayward,’ she said in a voice she wished didn’t sound so self-pitying, and she stepped inside her mill house with her little black dog and locked the door behind her.