Chapter 30
MID-AUGUST
Any person inclined towards feeling a wee bit jealous of folk lucky enough to live here in Cairn Dhu can be comforted by one small fact.
Smack-bang in the middle of summer when the corn is still ripening and the sun barely dips below the horizon at night before it’s back to announce the dawn, and while English and Welsh kids are still playing at home or holidaying in far-flung places, Scottish bairns are packing their pencil cases for the new school year, and none with more nervous anticipation and excitement than those embarking on their very first day in Primary One, which you might know as ‘Reception’ class if you live in an early-September-starter part of the world.
Wherever you are from, the start-of-school emotions are the same, only for some families they are heightened and tinted with a special kind of apprehension. Mhairi Sears understood this feeling only too well as she approached the school gates at eight-forty-five on this day in the middle of August.
‘Remember to collect me?’ Jolyon asked, his fingers looking tiny against the buttons of the tablet.
Mhairi had thought he’d grown so tall that summer, playing outside in the sun with Shell and some of the other kids they’d got to know on Jolly’s school trial days in June.
Now, however, in his grey shorts and the tiny white polo fastened with Velcro behind a placket of buttons for easier dressing, he looked so small.
She tried not to look to Dan, her husband, for fear she’d start off crying again, and they’d made a rule that summer never to show their school worries in front of Jolyon.
‘That’s right,’ she told her son. ‘We’ll collect you at half past two. Just like on the pretend days. Remember?’
They kept walking, moving through the gathering families, some chatting excitedly at the school gate, some arriving on bikes, book bags bumping on the handlebars; some others were not to be seen, still on their doorsteps with fringes combed down, socks pulled up, and cheeks scrubbed, saying ‘cheese’ for the camera.
Jolyon did remember the trial days. He remembered the hard, red plastic chairs and a desk of his own with his name spelled out in smiling snakes all Sellotaped down.
He remembered the big thick pencil held between his fingers and the mark-making he’d done on the huge sheet of paper and how interesting the scritch-scratch sound of the nib had been when he’d lain his ear on the desk to feel it better.
He remembered the big white clock on the wall that had a noisy tick, which he wasn’t keen on at all, and the black rubber plimsoll scuffs all over the assembly hall floor where he’d gone to look at the older kids doing ‘gym’ and Shell had been there and they’d thrown red and green scrunchy-feeling beanbags back and forth to each other and that had been so good.
He remembered trying smelly school dinners with a queasy feeling, not liking it at all, though the dinner lady had been nice and let him swap his chicken casserole for a banana and something wonderful called pink custard and iced sponge, and his mum had told him not to worry, he could have a packed lunch box instead if he wanted.
He was holding that very thing right now, with his favourite sandwiches inside, and his water bottle and the big flat rectangular book bag with nothing in it. It was a lot to manage, he’d heard his mum saying last night.
Most of all he remembered Mrs McIntyre, who he’d been told not to call Roz, even though that’s what he’d called her when she helped him with his Green Man cape, ages ago now, and when she was there on Sunday handing out the trowels at the repair shop garden project when he and Shell and some of the other kids had pulled the big carrots they’d grown out of the ground and she’d cut them up right away for a snack.
She wasn’t here now though, like she’d promised. He specifically remembered she’d said she would be waiting for him at the school gate. She’d told him and they’d made pinkie swears on it.
‘Ma?’ he said, and he stopped and held on to his mum’s legs and tried hard not to cry, but he really couldn’t help it, and he knew it would make his mum cry too, which it did.
One hour before this, and Roz had been fussing with her lanyard and what seemed like way too many carrier bags of supplies for a first day at work, as she looked in the mirror at the foot of the mill house stairs.
McIntyre was tipping the mug of coffee he’d just made her into a travel cup to take with her. She’d told him she was too nervous to drink it at home.
‘Did I definitely pack the chunky pens, and the fidgets?’ She rummaged in the bags, finding them. ‘Tissues? I didn’t bring any tissues.’
Pretty sure they’ll have those at the school, McIntyre had been about to say, but thinking better of it, he just lifted the box from the table and slipped it into one of the bags. ‘There. Time for school, Mrs McIntyre.’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ This wasn’t like her at all. The old pre-twins Roz had done this a thousand times; dressed, coffee, out the door, no problem. ‘What if I can’t do it? What if I make a mistake? Something that could set Jolyon back or cause him harm? What if I can’t tell what he needs?’
‘The fact you’re worrying about these things is the proof you’re the right person to be teaching him.
’ McIntyre could have gone on. He could have reminded her of the hours of training she’d put in over the summer, all of the extra research she’d done, far beyond the course reading list, and the way she’d aced her tests, and the trial days with Jolyon, when they’d both emerged at home time smiling and exhausted and exhilarated.
‘You’re ready,’ he said, steadying her by her shoulders.
‘Come on, I’ll walk you there myself, make sure you don’t play hooky on your first day of school. ’
She had to smile at this. ‘You’re right, let’s go.’
‘Oh, wait the now!’ He stopped her from opening the door and dashed for the fridge. ‘Your sandwiches!’
Already laden with carrier bags, Roz offered them up so he could shove the Tupperware inside.
McIntyre shook his head. ‘No. Sorry. Uh-uh.’
‘What is it?’ Roz looked down her body. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Follow me, Mrs McIntyre,’ he told her as he opened the door, letting the sweet summer air inside. The sun was hot, even at this time of the morning, and the gravel drive kicked up dust as he led her to the repair shop doors.
Inside, the big barn was silent and sawdust-scented. Dust motes sparkled in the sunbeams from the long windows at the back.
He walked his wife to his own workbench, steering her by the shoulders, stopping before the object concealed with a cloth.
She knew better than to ask ‘what’s this?
’ This was how the repair shop experts always made their big reveals of a special restoration or repair, like a magician whipping a cloth away to reveal some breathtaking transformation or another.
But here, they didn’t rely upon magic, but craft skills passed down over generations, some ancient, some on the brink of being forgotten entirely, preserved only by a handful of people determined to keep the old ways going in a modern, throwaway world.
Roz nodded, knowing McIntyre was waiting for her signal, not a clue what might be under there.
‘You’ll be needing this…’ He pulled away the fabric.
Slowly uncovered, smartly shining, red inch by inch, was a thing she’d forgotten she ever owned, but now could not imagine how she’d ever lived apart from it.
‘My satchel?’
McIntyre nodded. ‘The very one.’
She set the carrier bags down and took the bag in her hands; weighty, sturdy, stiff and smelling of old leather, and embossed on the front with her initials.
This was the bag she’d treated herself to with her very first teaching pay packet, back in the nineties.
She’d carried it to and from the school every day for years.
Nothing more than clasping it to her chest like an old friend seemed right.
‘It’s been in the attic all this time. Soon as you said you were going back to school, I thought of it. It’s got a new strap, not that you’ll be able to tell, and the latch needed repairing, but it’s the same type as before.’
She squeezed the golden clasp that released the tether, opening her satchel to reveal the fuzzed leather of the insides. Spotlessly clean, and not quite as good as new, and still very much her faithful schoolfriend. McIntyre slipped the sandwiches he’d made for her inside the satchel.
‘Are you feeling more ready now?’ he asked, and all she could do was smile with gratitude.
‘Look who I see!’ Jolyon’s dad said suddenly, waving his hand in the air and smiling in a wobbly way that Jolyon had never seen his dad doing before.
Over the school gate, like she’d promised, and waving back, leaned Mrs McIntyre.
The three of them made their way over to her, Jolyon carried in his mum’s arms. Even if it was not the usual kind of school drop-off, for this family and their teacher, it felt absolutely right that they all hugged over the school gate, and maybe Mhairi did have a wet face, and maybe even Dan did too, but Jolyon had no idea because he’d clambered into Roz’s arms and she’d lifted him right over the gate and down onto the playground where the hopscotch lines were, and the two of them had hop, skip, jumped along the numbers, right up to the doors, and Jolyon didn’t even think about looking back, and neither did Mrs McIntyre.
They only held hands and went through the open doors.
Their first day of school had begun and all Mhairi Sears could do was hold on to one of the many things her son had taught her: that every new day had the potential to surprise you and sometimes it could go all right, actually.