Chapter 5
The traffic lights glared in the Saturday afternoon gloom. Sleety drizzle slashed sideways. Beats blared from slowly passing cars. Dirty slush gathered in the gutters. Compared to the silent wilderness of the bare mountain slopes with their dusting of pristine snow, Cairn Dhu town was a nightmare.
The green man flashed. Walk Now. An orange countdown of seven seconds hastened Finlay Morlich across the street as though this were a sprawling urban metropolis and not, in fact, a valley gouged by retreating ice millennia ago, leaving a pewter-coloured river and a spot ripe for the nineteenth-century development of a hundred or so granite houses in the frumpy Scottish gothic style.
Their chimneys choked out smuts and sweet pine-resin smoke for the winds to whip away.
A minibus carrying adrenaline junkies in ski gear rumbled past on its way to the mountain resort on the other side of Aviemore – much bigger than Cairn Dhu’s offering – as Finlay tramped along, his arms crossed over his body.
Headlights glared. Some vehicles were hazardously double parked outside the animal feed store and the Post Office, their owners unfazed by the presence of the police station just yards away.
Light spilled from every shop window as well as from the streetlights overhead and the phone screens of teenagers too absorbed to drag their eyes upwards as they passed him on the pavement.
‘Mind yersel’!’ he warned, as a group of teens in black hooded jackets barged past. ‘You’ll be needing reflector patches on those jaikets!’
A brief silence followed before the lads burst out cackling behind him.
‘Suit yourselves,’ he muttered as he walked on, scanning the street for fresh dangers.
Ahead, the floodlight above the repair shed further spoiled Finlay’s afternoon.
With a resigned sigh, he made his way towards it, with his rations tin in his coat pocket, its contents scoffed by the group he’d escorted down the mountain no more than an hour ago.
He’d been alerted to the news that three office workers from Kilmarnock had lost sight of the community path somewhere to the south of Gillie Fell and he’d stormed out with his rescue gear on his back.
It had taken him all of thirty minutes to locate them in the early-afternoon gloaming, their (useless) GPS glowing on their phone screens and giving them away.
He’d taken no pleasure in showing them the way back through the scrubby low heath and onto the path, only a few metres from where they’d wandered off it only to discover that, in the winter dusk, it was impossible for them to retrace their steps.
They’d been all apologies and pasty faces, promising that next year they’d book a bowling alley for their team-building outing. Finlay had agreed that’d suit them much better than an amateur survivalist adventure in one of the most dangerous environments in the world.
He hadn’t really registered the smirks two of the lads exchanged as he marched them down to the rangers’ station and sent them on their way armed with the Staying Safe in the Cairngorms leaflets he carried with him always.
One of the men, however, was shakier than the others, and hadn’t said much since Finlay discovered him, further off from the other two and staring into space, muttering about how he’d seen a huge shadowy figure of a ‘yeti man’ coming out of a bank of low cloud.
‘It even waved to me!’ the lad had said, his voice trembling, and his friends had found the whole thing hilarious.
‘That was nae yeti,’ Finlay snapped, silencing their laughter. ‘You saw the Brocken spectre.’
One of his pals made a ghostly ‘wooo’ sound at this, which Finlay nipped in the bud with a scowl.
‘It’s no’ a ghost of any kind. It was your own shadow cast against the low cloud as the very last of the sun set behind you. It’s a well-known phenomenon amongst mountaineers. Never seen it myself, mind you.’
‘But it had sort of rainbow rings all around it, and it held its arms out to me,’ the man confessed in a low voice only for Finlay’s hearing. ‘Near aboot shit myself.’
‘Trick of the light,’ Finlay told him. ‘The pair go hand in hand, glory they call the coloured rings, and your shadow projected onto the mist. Brocken spectre.’ He shrugged like that should be more than enough to make the lad understand, but from his haunted eyes, Finlay saw he thought he’d met his maker.
If he was any other man, Finlay might have patted him on the back or offered some soothing words, but despite knowing that’s what he should do, Finlay couldn’t help but maintain his usual irritated stiffness and formality.
‘Here,’ he had said begrudgingly, taking his ration tin from his backpack. The man would never know this was the most caring thing Finlay could ever do.
He’d surrendered his provisions to the shaken young man, then watched in horror as the other lads fell upon the goodies too.
Finlay had tried not to watch as they made short work of his clementine shortbread, his very last chocolate-dipped rock bun, and the sweet scraps of tablet. They’d barely chewed them.
So now here he was, underprepared for an expedition to town, passing through the wide gap in the high wall that enclosed the McIntyres’ historic mill house, where the old water wheel churned the clear, reedy burn that flowed through McIntyre land.
He shielded his eyes from that awful floodlight overhead, crunching across the gravel towards the big barn.
Banging sounds increased as he made his way closer. He wanted to shove his fingers in his ears. ‘Noise pollution and light pollution,’ he grumped, as he hauled one of the double doors aside and stepped into the pink glow of the workroom.
The warmth hit him first, followed by the good smell of – Sweet Scottish Jesus, preserve me! – cranberry jam tarts, and was that – he sniffed – marzipan? Could there be Battenberg cake?
Senga Gifford was at his arm in an instant – dang her! – pulling him inside, fussing, commenting on ‘those mucky boots’, but not allowing him time to wipe his feet on the mat. She’d all but dragged him towards her café at the back of the shed.
‘Well, well! More sweeties!’ Senga clucked, sweeping behind the counter where the glass domes covered the last of the Saturday offerings. ‘There’s no’ much left, mind, but what’s here, you can have. Half price for you.’
‘Right, thanks,’ he said, keeping his eyes on the goodies. ‘What’s that thing?’ he couldn’t help asking, lifting a finger to the glass protecting a glossy red orb with a diamond of something crystalised and sugar-sparkly on top.
‘That is my chocolate and cherry mousse bauble.’ Senga’s chest swelled with pride under her pinny.
He nodded in gruff acquiescence.
‘Oh, you’ll deign to try it, will you?’ Senga sounded fierce but her eyes were gentle, reminiscent of Finlay’s Great-Aunty Shelagh. She’d been a good baker too.
‘And some Battenberg slices, please. And any walnut tablet you’ve got back there.’
She’d already set two of her cranberry jam tarts in the bottom of his provisions tin without him having to ask. He held it out in both hands for her while she worked, feeling like Oliver Twist.
Rhona, who wasn’t permitted to do very much in her sister’s café dominion, rang it all up on the till, making sure to apply the discount.
‘How’s things on the mountain?’ she asked gently.
‘Treacherous,’ Finlay replied, quick as a flash, trying to put them off attempting a visit. Though they didn’t look much like hikers. Senga was shuffling about in her furry slipper-boots; safely a town-dweller.
‘Nine fifty, please,’ Rhona said, reaching for his ten-pound note.
‘Are you going along to this meeting at the GP’s surgery on Monday?’ Senga said, eyeing him.
‘Eh?’ he replied, distractedly snapping the lid down securely upon his goodies and wondering where the paper-wrapped tablet block had got to, scanning the shelves behind the women.
He forbade himself from asking what this meeting was. He wasn’t interested. And he’d learned not to ask questions. That’s how they inveigle you in their schemes. Or they try to.
‘Tablet! Right enough,’ said Senga, jumping to attention and passing him the package. ‘That’s the last of the tablet till I make some more. It’s about… what’s it about, Rhona? The meeting?’
‘Oh.’ The younger sister thought hard while counting the change out of the till as slowly as she could. Both sisters knew he’d flee as soon as the coins hit his pocket. ‘Sociable prescriptions, is it?’
‘Social prescribing,’ corrected Cary Anderson in his unassuming way as he washed his empty cup at the sink behind the women’s counter.
‘A new thing we’re trying, with the doctor’s surgery.
’ Having registered Finlay’s utter disinterest, Cary went back to sanding the runners on a child’s snow sled at his carpentry bench.
Seeing there was no hope of piquing the interest of the mountain man, Senga too gave up, and pointed to her chalkboard.
‘Pay it forward?’ she said, indicating the chalked sketch of coins dropping into a teacup.
‘Eh?’
‘Do you wish to buy a future customer a cuppa?’ she clarified. ‘Paying forward your own good fortune to benefit someone else who maybe can’t afford a coffee that day for whatever reason.’
Finlay thought about this. ‘My good fortune?’
The Gifford sisters nodded in unison.
He looked at his sweetie tin, thought of his cruive cottage up in the hills with its patch of ancient woodland, the wagtails and snow buntings that pecked around him as he ate his breakfast every morning. He thought of the deer and his fireside, his stars, and his wildflowers in summer.
He stuck his hand in his pocket and fished out another tenner. ‘Go on then.’
Rhona, satisfied in the knowledge that he was a sweet fellow beneath all the growling, swapped the note for the last of his change.