Chapter 1
PRESENT DAY
In the Cairngorms National Park in the very heart of the Scottish Highlands, light glows out from the windows of the big rustic barn that houses the Cairn Dhu Community Repair Shop and Café.
Today is the first of December and the wide wooden doors are, right this second, being prised open, like the doors of so many Advent calendars this morning, to reveal, not a red-breasted robin or a swaddled baby with a halo, but a pink-cheeked Charlie McIntyre, the repair shop owner, bundled in layers of fleece and Fair Isle beneath his overalls, to keep out the winter chill.
At the door he inhales the damp, wood-smoke scented air while the wintry winds shift what’s left of his sandy hair. He scans the morning sky which at this latitude will stay star-glittered until gone nine when the dawn light will at last seep across the white-tipped peaks of Mount Cairn Dhu.
‘Will you shut that door!’
It was Senga Gifford from behind her café counter in the middle of the repair shed, with her rounded hands on her rounded hips.
Her sister, Rhona, smiled an apology on behalf of them both, and McIntyre immediately whipped the doors closed, as if this was not in fact his very own venture in his very own building upon his own green parcel of land at the quietest end of Cairn Dhu town.
‘You’re not open for another half hour, Mac,’ said Roz, his wife who, since this was a Tuesday, had only called in to kiss him goodbye before making her way to the primary school where she’d have a busy day helping the children rehearse their end of term pageant, ‘An Atlas of Christmas Traditions around the World’.
She was carrying the rolled beige felt that would clothe the child fortunate enough to be cast as the Latvian Yule log who gets dragged around on a rope absorbing bad feeling and negativity before being burned in the hearth.
There’d been a great squabble in class the day before over this coveted role.
‘Are you waiting for somebody? You’ve been keekin’ out that door this last twenty minutes,’ Senga said shrewdly, her eyes narrowing into crinkles from behind a showstopping iced and marzipanned Christmas cake, ready for cutting.
Nothing has escaped Senga’s attention, not in all her seventy-four years, or at least that’s what she likes to think.
Rhona, who’s never allowed to do much in her sister’s café dominion, other than operate the till, had just this morning, and without Senga noticing, sneaked two extra spoonfuls of mixed spice into Senga’s brown sugar and Seville orange marmalade nutty muffin mixture, because she was of the opinion her sister’s precious recipe needed a wee bit of extra heat at this blood-stillingly cold time of year.
Their welcoming aroma, just starting to rise from the oven behind the café counter, would soon bring in the sweet-toothed locals.
‘It’s just…’ McIntyre began, before clamming up again.
‘What are you up to?’ Senga and Roz said at the same time. Rhona only watched on, never one to get involved when trouble was brewing.
‘I’m expecting the Civic Council to send a few wee bits and bobs to repair… you know, from the lights display? They’ve promised us a handsome donation, enough to pay the water bill for a good six months!’
Roz lifted her travel mug from the counter, now that Senga had filled it from the café’s tinsel-decked espresso machine.
‘Whatever they want, please don’t overcommit, Mac.
It was your idea to host your Merry Fixmas drive as well, remember?
’ she told her husband as she made to leave, her coat buttoned up, her book bag over her shoulder.
‘Anyway, I’ve left the box of decorations by the door, if you get five minutes to trim the tree. ’
At the shed’s entrance stood a bushy Scot’s Pine Christmas tree, which, since its delivery yesterday, had been infusing the workshop with that unmistakeable clean and resinous winter wonderland scent of a real tree, now mingling in the warm air with the spiced buns browning in the oven and the repair shop’s familiar smells of sawdust, oil and rust. Father Christmas himself never had such a welcoming workshop.
‘Right you are,’ he replied. ‘Don’t overcommit.
Decorate tree.’ He mimed writing his wife’s instructions on an invisible list before following her out into the dark morning, casting another glance towards the gap in the high wall that rings the Mill House and its land where their community repair shop and café has been operating for years now.
She accepted his kiss on her cheek and rushed off in the direction of the school.
‘So, what are the council bringing you?’ Senga said, appearing at his side and making him jump.
McIntyre didn’t have time to confess what he’d agreed to.
The council pickup vans turning onto the gravel drive answered her question.
Rhona peeked her head out the door to watch too, counting in the vans, all four of them, each one loaded up in the back with squat figures in marshalled rows, facing frontways for their journey, like terracotta warriors on a jolly day out.
‘Don’t start, Senga. It’ll be fine,’ McIntyre pre-empted, and Senga clamped her jaws, but her stony face said it all as they watched the council workers delivering the hollow, moulded fibreglass sculptures of kilted Father Christmases, snowmen in top hats, and a whole host of angels, their mouths rounded in song; the light sculptures that have been so familiar at Christmas time to anyone who knows Cairn Dhu.
The lights had been ‘vintage’ even when they’d come to the town at the turn of the millennium, purchased by the civic council from Blackpool when the English seaside town had a revamp of its famous ‘golden mile’ of winter illuminations.
They’d been bright and colourful then, back when someone on the lights committee had the even brighter idea of painting the bottom half of the Santas’ red coats with green and black checks so they became tartan kilts.
Likewise, the snowmen had been treated to vivid orange and red tartan scarves; now the paint had all but peeled away.
These light-up sculptures had served as Cairn Dhu’s Christmas décor for a quarter of a century, adorning every lamppost along the High Street for the whole of Advent, through Hogmanay, until Twelfth Night.
Folks from across the Cairngorms would make the annual pilgrimage to be reminded of their jolly charm and to shop for Christmas presents in their warm glow.
Now, however, they were faded plasticky shadows of their former selves, obscenely beige and featureless.
‘Cheers for doing this, Mac,’ one of the men in high-viz said, while another in a suit and hard hat emerged from a passenger seat holding a docket. It was one of the civic councillors, Mr Borthwick.
‘Some new pals for you, Mr McIntyre,’ he said, cheerfully, handing over pen and clipboard for him to sign.
McIntyre scrawled his signature while the councillor followed the looping ink with his eyes.
‘We’ll do our best to get them fixed up,’ McIntyre promised. ‘And your apprentices are arrivin’ at nine, aye?’
‘That they are. You’ll have them all week,’ Borthwick said. ‘And there’s a van following behind wi’ the paint and festoon cabling.’
McIntyre and Senga stood aside while the procession of sorry ghosts of Christmases past paraded inside, carried over shoulders. Rhona smiled to see them, even in this state, but Senga, who couldn’t hold her peace any longer, blurted out, ‘And when was all this decided?’
‘When the council could no longer afford to keep up its own workshop building,’ Mr Borthwick said stoically.
‘And then the high winds at Beltane took the flashin’ off the warehouse roof and, it turns out, it had been lettin’ in the rain all this time.
Nobody realised these poor fellas were getting spoilt, their paint and electrics drinking in moisture, until we came to hang the lights. ’
Senga received this information with measured acceptance. ‘And you’re paying for this…’ The last of the angels flew through the shed doors. ‘…Invasion?’
‘The civic council’s paying very well,’ McIntyre told her firmly, knowing Senga’s talent for getting folks’ backs up.
‘But the grand lights switch-on party was supposed to be tonight,’ she changed track.
‘She’s right. It always takes place on the first day in December,’ Rhona put in, but no one seemed to hear her.
‘We’re grateful for the repair shop’s help.
Right!’ Borthwick clapped his hands together.
‘Thirty-two festive fibreglass figures and one and a half kilometres of strung bulbs, all in need of restoration, safely delivered. Plus, seven apprentices borrowed from the Parks scheme and at your disposal, with a view to postponing the grand switch-on until the 7th.’
‘The seventh!’ Senga huffed. ‘They’ll be on display for no time at all! Hardly festive!’
‘A short spell of Christmas lights is better than no lights,’ Rhona said, louder this time.
She was rewarded with a ‘humph!’ from her sister.
Borthwick was making ready to leave. ‘And if we don’t save them now, we’ll lose them forever. Who better to restore them than this man? Eh?’
No one could argue with that. McIntyre had secured an unshakeable reputation as the very best fixer in the Highlands. Borthwick delivered him one last pat on the back and a hearty handshake and climbed into the van.
In convoy, the pickups, now empty, circled the yard and retreated. Senga shooed her sister inside with a snap of her tea towel, wasting no time in surveying the shed now that it was home to so many unexpected Christmas guests.
McIntyre, usually unflappable, paused in the doorway at the sight of the serried ranks taking up so much floor space, like a giant game of chess that had got out of hand. Not helping matters, a council worker had, for a laugh, seated figures on the café’s chairs and sofas.
Rhona, always a secret fan of unexpected quirks of fate – when they harmed no one – looked on with delight, her hands pressed together.
Senga however was not smiling.
‘Try to think of the money, Senga,’ McIntyre said, before she could get started on him.
That’s exactly how McIntyre was trying to think of all this, hoping to douse the apprehension and nerves-induced heartburn rising within him.
‘It’ll be a breeze.’ He waded knee-deep through the precariously wobbling figures and sent three snowmen scattering like bowling pins. ‘Probably,’ he added with a gulp.
Senga shook her head and ordered Rhona to start evicting the unwanted visitors from her café chairs. Ever compliant, Rhona jumped to attention.