Chapter 21
‘You’re late,’ Carenza crowed as McIntyre scurried through the crowds, arms laden with piled boxes.
‘You missed it! Someone else took your job, I’m afraid,’ she shouted after him, not afraid in the slightest now she was back behind her big black cauldrons and chalking the words ‘pear and apple squash’ and ‘non-alcoholic ginger ale with orange’ on their rounded sides, and thinking how well everything was going, in spite of her chief bonfire-lighter having gone AWOL.
McIntyre wasn’t listening. He was running from stall to stall. ‘Has anybody seen Roz? Sachin, have you seen her?’ He peered up at his old friend, glum behind the spinning record on his turntable. ‘Where is she?’
Sachin shrugged. ‘Havenae seen her at all. Have you been home yet?’
‘No, I was busy…’ Distractedly, he weaved his way back across the rec, bumping into people with his boxes, not thinking to apologise.
‘You’re in trouble!’ Senga called in greeting from behind her stall as he approached.
‘Am I?’ He’d already suspected this. It made his heart pound to have it confirmed. ‘Is she no’ here?’
‘You weren’t there to accompany Rosalyn to the bonfire,’ Mrs Hoolit said, drifting by, her adult children and grandkids around her. ‘You must attend to your wife, Mr McIntyre.’ She was gone again, leaving him gulping in realisation.
He really was making a mess of things. Roz had warned him, and he’d still carried on like an oaf.
‘I’d run if I were you,’ Rhona said, in the middle of serving up a bag of rum balls to Reverend Meikle.
‘She’s not been herself recently, Mac. You must have seen that?’ the minister, of all people, said in a sermonising tone.
‘I’ve been busy!’ McIntyre protested, raising the piled boxes as evidence.
‘Too busy,’ said Senga in a voice that set his feet moving again.
The Gifford sisters shook their heads and tutted, watching him run. ‘I hope for his sake he isn’t too late,’ said Rhona, introspectively. ‘Even the most patient woman can run out of kindness, and a love can sour.’
Her older sister and the vicar both looked to the perennial spinster with surprised looks.
‘Oh, aye?’ probed Senga.
‘So I’ve heard it said,’ Rhona added hastily, and she turned her reddening face away, enough to stop Senga prodding her younger sister for any long-buried romantic secrets.
‘Next customer, please!’ Rhona said with urgency.
‘Whit?’ McIntyre had near about run straight into the bolted gate. It was shut? But it had never, ever been shut, not in the twenty-eight years they’d lived here.
He dropped the boxes and paced at the boundary, his phone to his ear. No answer. On tiptoe he could see a faint glow at their bedroom window. Testing the dry-stone wall with his hands – easily five foot tall, but surely something he could scale? – he made up his mind.
‘Roz!’ he yelled, dropping each box over the wall, wincing at the sound of them hitting the gravel on the other side. ‘I’m coming in!’
A crack showed between the bedroom blinds as he scrambled up and onto the pointed capstones. ‘Ohyah!’ It hurt, but he was determined.
When he fell hard onto the boxes on the dark side of the wall, however, he was less sure this was his best idea. A pain spread from his buttock down to his left knee, which had taken much of the impact, but still, he was going to get through her defences one way or another.
‘Rosalyn!’ he shouted again, dragging himself to standing, dusting off his good new overalls. As he gathered the dented boxes he realised his elbow hurt too, and it was wet under his new shirt. A bit of blood wouldn’t matter now, though.
A light came on at the stairs, then at the porch door. He limped towards it, the boxes threatening to topple with each drag of his aching leg. ‘Jeezo, Mac, you’ve really done it now!’ he told himself.
He’d been about to knock at his own front door with scraped knuckles when he heard the bolt being slipped and the chain jangling.
Roz’s face appeared at the crack. ‘What the hell are you playing at!’ Anger masked her concern.
She’d been crying. When had she turned so pale? Hadn’t he noticed how tired she was looking lately? Where had his head been at this spring?
‘Rosalyn, Roz,’ he gasped, still winded from his fall. ‘Will you let me in? I’ve something I need to tell you.’
Her looks turned sicker still, but she dolefully stepped aside and let him in, and for the first time in their marriage he learned what it felt like to show up scratched and scraped (granted, usually it was from a slip while repairing something in the shed, not throwing himself over his own wall) and his wife didn’t flinch at his cuts and run to get her first aid kit.
Only as her cool impassivity hit him did he realise how accustomed to her care and compassion he’d grown.
He only truly felt its enormity now she’d withdrawn it.
Quailing at how steely and distant she’d become, he told her, fearfully, ‘You had better sit down,’ drawing out a kitchen chair; though, in truth, it was McIntyre who was feeling faint.