Chapter 29 #3
‘Well, we did it together, and not just because we wanted to save people money, and not just because every thing fixed is a thing kept out of landfill, though that is important. And we didn’t work this hard merely to resist the retailers and the companies who want us to bin things and buy new, when, in the past, these same items would have been built proudly and with integrity to last a lifetime.
No, our activities are not just one in the eye for all those billionaire salesmen and junk pedlars.
We did this,’ he was looking around at his friends and family, and all across the length of the shed with its resting tools and stilled machinery like a man understanding his life’s legacy for the first time.
‘We did this because we matter, every one of us, and if we’re all making an effort together, that’s a message for the whole world.
We may be small, and we might well be insignificant compared to what’s going on in the world, and we might never manage to shift the dial backwards on waste and pollution as a community, but it matters that we try, for each other.
And we must keep on sending out our signal to other people too, saying that the small things, the skills, the sharing, the saving, it all matters, very much indeed.
’ His eyes were full of tears when Roz raised her glass with a hear hear!
The whole room joined in with toasts to McIntyre and the enterprise he’d worked so hard at these last few years.
‘Ach, look at me, tearful at the thought of the next ten thousand repairs still ahead of us,’ and everyone laughed and watched as he took his seat once more, shaking his head at their combined efforts and achievements.
‘I believe, though,’ he said with a sniff, ‘There’s one more Secret Santa gift left. ’
Ally and Murray, even Alice and Cary made salacious, childish ‘woooo!’ noises and remarked, ‘I wonder who it could be for!’ and Hamish watched as Florrie looked from face to face and said, ‘Well, it can’t be me. Roz already gave me the socks she knitted for me.’
McIntyre was looking right at Hamish now, and gave him an encouraging nod. ‘Go on, son,’ he said quietly, and Hamish stepped forward, holding the box in his hands.
Florrie didn’t seem to realise why everyone was looking at her, not until Hamish knelt by her chair. ‘This is for you,’ he said, hoping for all the world he’d done the right thing.
Florrie blinked, startled, shaking away the idea that she should have another gift at all, as if she hadn’t arrived here and brought him back to life, and brought the snow, and brought him kisses and laughter, and long, pining nights, dreaming of her.
‘Open it,’ he said in a quiet voice.
She fell very serious as she took the weight of the little box in her plaster cast palm, and her fingers shook as, with his help, she lifted the lid on Hamish’s Christmas gift to her.
At first, there was confusion, followed by wariness, as she tried to decipher what she was seeing. Then slowly it started to make sense.
‘Will you lift it out for me?’ she said, shakily.
With sure fingers, Hamish reached for the ribbon and drew out the object, holding it in the light for Florrie to take in.
Berry red glass shards and tiny fragments of glittering debris, some as small as stardust, danced before her eyes, suspended inside crystal clear resin in the solid shape of a Christmas bauble with a long finial.
‘Wh…’ She couldn’t find words. ‘How did you…?’
‘I saved all the broken pieces, even the tiniest particles of your omma’s glass bauble, and I asked McIntyre and Roz what could be done to save it.
And of course, they said nothing could be done.
But then we realised we could turn them into something else, the same, but different, and still beautiful in its own way.
In a new way. McIntyre made the mould based on my sketch of the outline of the original bauble, and we arranged the bits inside the mould, poured in liquid epoxy resin, very slowly, to prevent bubbles and all the bits ending up in one area, and then we let it harden.
And this is the original hanging ribbon. I saved that too.’
Florrie watched the decoration turning in the light, its flat side view, and its front and back in that familiar, elegant shape of her Omma’s decoration.
Only now it wasn’t a delicate and breakable thing.
Its constituent parts were now encased and protected, preserved and glittering in hard, clear resin that looked so much like a solid block of gleaming glass.
The million broken little facets caught the light and sparkled.
‘Hamish,’ she said on an out breath. ‘It’s perfect,’ and she leaned forward and kissed him beneath the mistletoe while everyone else suddenly declared it was surely time for dessert or dancing and they all jumped to their feet and the music was turned up so the couple could enjoy their moment alone.
Hamish and Florrie didn’t know anything about the party moving on around them as they held each other close with the broken-but-recovered, same-but-different, precious thing held in their clasped hands between them.
While the furniture was being shoved aside to make room for a dance floor, and another champagne cork was being popped, Rhona was the only one who felt the approach of a stranger out in the cold, crunching through the snow towards her.
She was the one who turned with eyes wide to look at the door, her heart close to stopping, just before the knock was heard.
‘Rhona?’ Senga said in concern, wondering why her sister was frozen to the spot, her eyes on the door.
Then it slid open, bringing in a flurry of snow and streetlight from the dark night. The icy blast made the paper chains blow, and all eyes darted to the man holding a rolled-up newspaper in his gloved fist, waiting to be invited inside.
‘Eric,’ gasped Rhona, and the whole party fell silent.