Chapter 29
Compared to the hubbub of yesterday’s exhibition-making, the volunteers’ party was a calm, relaxed affair, or at least it was at the beginning.
The snow had fallen steadily all the night before and was lying thickly over the repair shop’s roof like insulation, keeping in the heat and damping sound in that curious way only snow can.
McIntyre got the party started by roasting chestnuts in a huge pan over a brazier just outside the shed doors.
The delicious smell had welcomed everyone as they arrived dressed for a party in their best frocks and sparkly jewellery or their jazzy Christmas jumpers, shirt collars and coloured corduroys (but also, sensibly, in their wellies and snow boots).
Hamish was arriving after all the others, since the slope had been busy all day and his exhibition was attracting locals to the site in droves.
It had been like the old days when passersby called in for a chat and a drink with slope views.
It was as though the locals for miles around had been released from some kind of mass hypnotic charm and suddenly remembered they had the ski facility right on their doorstep.
A few of them had shamefacedly admitted they’d got out of the habit of coming a long time ago.
‘But life gets in the way of leisure, doesn’t it? ’ they’d said.
He’d heard so many variations of this in the last nine hours since opening up the exhibition, when he’d found the newspaper report about the closure on his doormat.
It had been the front-page headline story and had no doubt contributed to the swelling visitor numbers.
There’d even been another old toboggan surrendered to the exhibition.
He was running out of places to store them.
All of this, however, flew straight out of his head as he approached McIntyre at the fiery brazier and was presented with a paper cone of roasted chestnuts, their sweet and savoury aroma all the lovelier for the smoky wood fire smell and the clean scent of snow and wet mountain granite mingling in the valley air tonight.
‘You all sorted for your big surprise tonight?’ McIntyre asking him with a cunning wink just as the shed doors were drawn apart and there, in the middle of the cosily glowing room, was Florrie, turning in a green velvet dress to the approving sounds of Roz and the Gifford sisters.
He hadn’t the words to answer McIntyre, and only floated into the shed while Sachin closed the doors behind him.
Florrie was before him in an instant, a tiny pinch of worry between her brows that seemed at odds with her wide smile. ‘I’m glad you made it,’ she said.
‘Me too,’ he told her, and he meant it. ‘I didn’t have time to make something for the potluck.
Is this OK?’ He produced the bottle of chilled champagne that he’d been keeping on ice to toast his nephew’s birth when his parents got back from Orkney, but he’d never felt more like knocking back ice-cold bubbly than tonight, so he’d grabbed it from the fridge as he left.
‘Get that cork popped, young man!’ cheered a jovial Senga who, at least tonight it seemed, enjoyed a party as much as her younger sister.
All the potluck dishes had been served up and fallen upon with great appetite, and now small groups circulated and chatted in the peaceful atmosphere of Sachin’s ‘chilled party playlist’ over the shed’s speakers, but Florrie hadn’t been able to get Hamish on his own.
Everyone wanted to talk at him about their specific items in the exhibition, and Hamish had been listening politely to their stories for some time.
When Dr Alice arrived later, having just clocked off at the clinic, she’d taken the frustrated, impatient Florrie aside to check her bandages.
‘The swelling’s gone down. You’ll be able to fly now, if you want to?’
Florrie didn’t tell her, or anyone else, that to avoid having to think about leaving, she had kept her phone switched off since yesterday, and she hadn’t missed it at all.
She’d spent breakfast watching the snow falling before she’d been press-ganged into making the paper chains that hung all around the shed now (Senga had wanted Rhona to do all the unpleasant licking and sticking, but Rhona, cannier than people give her credit for, had volunteered Florrie for the job).
It had been a quiet, slow day at the end of many hectic, restless days, or indeed months, or years, even.
Florrie was beginning to wonder if slowness was what she needed more than anything.
That was, until she’d seen Hamish walking into the party in his thick Dale of Norway jumper and those dark jeans and heavy boots and with his freshly washed hair still damp, the ends peeking out under his black beanie.
If she could just get closer to him… but he was very much the man of the hour.
Cary and McIntyre were talking to him now, right at the back of the shed amongst the shadows.
She should get used to this feeling, she reminded herself.
Even if they had kissed, even if they had, innocently, shared a bed, she was still an intruder here, a temporary guest, while Hamish was one of their own.
At least Rhona wanted her.
‘Come on, pull my cracker,’ Rhona said now, leading her away from the buffet table where the dirty plates were stacked up.
Florrie looked at the cracker and then at her bandages pitifully. ‘I can’t.’
‘Oh, right you are. Well, I’ll pull it for both of us. What side do you want?’
Florrie had no idea what Rhona meant by this, but she’d been here long enough to know she ought to just play along and not ask too many questions. ‘That one?’ she said, tapping Rhona’s right hand.
‘And snap!’ Rhona, who seemed so easily to find childlike joy in all the small things, pulled the cracker apart and announced that Florrie had indeed won.
‘Well done, I’m never lucky,’ she said, and to prove Florrie was endowed with nothing but good fortune, Rhona unfurled a red paper crown from inside the cracker and placed it on Florrie’s head.
‘Thanks?’ she said, just as Rhona was coming up with another idea; she could see it forming on her face before the words even came out her mouth.
‘Let’s play shrinking islands! It’s a braw party game! We need a newspaper and two teams!’
‘Oh, I’m not sure…’ Senga swept in to say.
‘What’s a party without games?’ said Rhona. ‘And you, Florrie, can be on an island with Hamish.’
Even though this caught Hamish’s attention at the back of the shed, and he seemed to be smiling about it, it was becoming clear that the atmosphere in the rest of the room was turning furtive and uneasy.
Florrie didn’t know why, but the McIntyres, Murray and Finlay, Ally and Jamie, Sachin and his wife, Aamaya, Dr Alice and Cary, Dr Bonnet, even the dogs, were glancing around in apprehension.
‘Mac, you’ve always got the day’s newspaper?’ Rhona pleaded.
Everyone was looking at one another, sending panicked, wordless signals, except for Hamish and Florrie, who hadn’t a clue what was wrong.
‘I’ve got a paper,’ offered Hamish innocently. ‘Here.’ He was burrowing in his backpack.
Senga, Roz and McIntyre reacted like this was the most calamitous thing he could have said.
‘What? I do, though.’ Hamish surrendered his newspaper to Rhona who was in the process of animatedly explaining the game’s rules.
She immediately started spreading out the open sheets in overlapping islands on the floor, when she fell very still and very quiet.
She had the front page in her hands and was reading.
Florrie came to see what had caught Rhona’s attention.
‘Oh, we’re front-page news?’ said Florrie, smiling at all the faces watching them, only just now realising the others were grimacing in anticipation of something bad.
Rhona started reading aloud, beginning with the headline.
‘Slay! The [toboggan] race is on to find shed sled handyman.’
‘Come away, Rhona dear,’ Senga said, her hand held out to receive the page and looking like she’d happily shred the thing.
‘Let’s not trouble ourselves with that silly article.
They got the tone quite wrong. I asked for a minor footnote, a tasteful mention of him…
’ Her words trailed away as her sister went on reading.
‘Sleuthing locals seek sleigh maker Shaw. Do you know the whereabouts of one-time Cairn Dhu resident Eric Shaw, designer of the original fleet of fifty toboggans the town’s ski centre was once famous for?
Our ill-fated ski slopes are set to close on Christmas Eve, and the shock news has prompted region-wide reminiscences about happy times at the centre which opened for hill skiing in 1969, before converting to year-round dry slope skiing a decade later.
Not much is known about Shaw, only that he was employed at the Gifford Sawmill in the late 1970s, around the time he crafted the model toboggan, later adopted as the classic Cairn Dhu Flyer.
If you own one of the toboggans (pictured here in more lucrative times for the struggling resort), or if you remember using them, ski centre manager, Hamish Skelton, would like to hear your stories for his living history exhibition and voice-recording project.
And if you are Eric Shaw or know how to find him, word has it a member of the Gifford family would be very pleased to be reacquainted.
Words by Cairn Dhu Clarion trainee reporter Olivia Noa. ’
‘Now, see, that wasn’t what I told them to write!’ Senga professed as Rhona dropped into a chair.
‘I don’t feel like games any more,’ she said, reaching for her champagne glass and taking a long drink.
‘Rhona, I’m sorry,’ said Senga. ‘I thought it might be nice to see if we could locate him…’ All of the volunteers circled around the sisters cautiously.
‘For what reason? To bring back awful memories for him? Or to make me look older and sillier than usual?’
Rhona’s eyes had dimmed entirely.
‘Rhona, dear…’ Senga began.
‘It’s no matter,’ she cut her off. ‘He’s long gone and he had no family left in the town. He can’t possibly know anything about this, that is, if he’s still…’