by Laura Marney
I found the central heating, put it on easy enough, thank God, shut all the windows and then chose a bedroom. I settled on Glenmorangie, the front-facing bedroom with the best views, and unpacked methodically. The drawers felt damp, not just in Glenmorangie but in all the rooms. Maybe it was just cold, I told myself, the place had lain empty, it would be all right once I got the house warmed up. The drawers smelled of wintergreen. I wrapped all my clothes in poly bags so the smell and the damp wouldn’t get to them. Then I sat on the bed and looked out the window for ages before I could stir myself to phone home. Home. It wasn’t my home now, this was.
Amazingly the house phone worked and I didn’t need to use my mobile.
‘Steven?’
‘Oh hi Mum.’
Thank God Steven picked it up and not Bob or worse, Helga.
‘Right I’m here Son, safe and sound, just to let you know.’
‘So what’s it like?’
‘Aye it’s great. Fantastic. Lovely views. Have you got a pen?’
‘Eh…’
I could hear him fumbling about the hall table.
‘Top drawer, left-hand side, beside the tin, there’s stacks of pens.’
The familiarity of our hall table was already making me homesick and I’d only been here an hour.
‘Yeah, got one.’
I spoke slowly and repeated it and then I made him read it back to me.
‘Yes, that’s it, but you’ve got my mobile number if you need me Son, just phone anytime you like.’
‘Hey Mum, don’t go away yet! Tell me about your new house.’
‘I told you, it’s fine.’
‘Heh, heh, I saw what you did to the bedroom. Heh, respect.
Dad went off his head.’
‘Is he there? Can he hear you?’
‘Nah, chill out man, he’s in the kitchen. He’s cooking tonight.’
Steven had never called me man before, he only used that with his pals. Would he have called me man if I was standing in the hall next to him?
‘Look, I’ll need to get off Steven, the bills’ll be horrendous, but you phone me.’
‘Heh, heh. So Dad pays. Good one.’
‘I’ll have to go Son, and remember, if Auntie Nettie phones…’
‘I know nothing!’ Steven said mimicking an Italian gangster.
Terrified that Bob would discover me on the line and start shouting at me, I got off as quick as I could. I was too fragile to be shouted at. I wasn’t coping with the thought of him and her in my house while I was here, in a pongy cottage in the middle of nowhere.
*
I woke up the next morning absolutely starving. I’d noticed a wee shop in the village yesterday as I passed through, I could go down there and stock up. As I came out of Harrosie I was caught completely by surprise by the view. Nothing had changed, the loch and the sea and the islands were still in the same place, but they were different. The sky was cloudy but the sun hadn’t reached above the clouds yet and the strong yellow light overwhelmed everything and made it look brand new. The two other cottages were still dark, not a soul anywhere, but this time I was glad.
I made all kinds of healthy resolutions there and then. Stop smoking, that was the first priority. Healthy eating, long walks, early nights, get my head sorted out. I thought about giving up drinking as well but maybe that was taking it a bit far. Forget the B & B business for the moment, one step at a time. It would be ages before there were any tourists anyway and it wasn’t as if I needed the money. Recently I’d systematically waded my way through the top five stress factors: bereavement, new job, family split up, leaving job, moving house. Enough was enough. Think positively, I didn’t need to worry about it any longer, I didn’t have to look after Mum, or flog drugs, or worry about money. All I had to do was enjoy the view.
The shop was a branch of McSpor, proprietor and licensee Jennifer L Robertson, the sign above the door said. Probably related to Mum’s uncle Henry, I thought. The selection inside was disappointing to say the least and the old lady who ran it was hard work. By the look of her she was in her early sixties, a bit on the fat side but you could see she had been a good-looking woman in her day. Right away she told me to call her Jenny and asked me my name.
‘Trixie? That’s a nice name.’
Maybe she was deaf.
‘Eh, no, it’s Trisha,’ I said, enunciating clearly this time.
She seemed to ignore my correction and carried on asking me questions. I told her about the cottage, that I’d inherited Harrosie from my mother’s cousin. I remarked that she shared his name, Robertson.
‘Och, along with everyone else in this town!’
So we weren’t related, I was a wee bit disappointed with that. I could be doing with some family, however distantly related. She continued quizzing me, replying ‘uh huh’ to everything I said, as if she already knew the answers, as if she was checking that I did.
‘And what about your family Trixie?’ she said in her sing-song Highland accent that implied a weird mixture of sympathy and glee.
If I’d had time to think about it I’d have been offended by the bloody nosiness of the woman, but instead I fudged.
‘No brothers or sisters, there’s only me. I’m actually in for a packet of muesli, d’you have any Jenny?’
I looked her straight in the eye. If she could ask such personal questions I could change the subject. After all, she was the shop assistant and I was seeking assistance. She took ages to answer, drawing her eyes across me. No she didn’t have any. Well did she have porridge? Yes she had porridge, McSpor Porridge. Oh, not Scott’s Porridge Oats then?
‘Well you see Trisha, this is a McSpor retail outlet and as such only really carries McSpor lines.’
I couldn’t work out if she was boasting or apologising. For McSpor read limited choice and damned expensive. She only had one wee tray of knackered old carrots and turnips, and she was charging an arm and a leg for them. I had expected there to be more local produce available. It was mad, the fields around the village were chock full of fresh lamb and beef and pork and venison and eggs and grains and veg and berries. I’d seen them on my way up here yesterday. But Jenny explained in her sarcastic patronising Highland lilt that these weren’t available from McSpor, the farms were all contracted to Asdi and if I wanted Asdi I’d have to drive to Inverness. Although her face was straight, the accent was baffling me. Was she genuine or was she taking the piss? It was more than just the hissy pronunciation. She spoke so slowly and gently and her inflection was so random that you could read almost anything into it. I was being paranoid I decided, I hadn’t got a handle on her accent, the old lady was just trying to be helpful. Or was she? With her voice rising and falling as if to mock me she said she had a special offer on toilet roll. What did she mean by that?
‘You’ll not get a deal as good as this at Asdi,’ she sang to me.
I relaxed, she wasn’t having a go, she was simply giving me her sales pitch. I could see how the accent was an asset in retailing. Entranced by her melodic spiel I stuck the toilet roll in my basket along with a few frozen dinners and everything else she recommended. We were getting on like a house on fire now and I was relieved. If I was going to live here I was going to have to make friends.
An old boy from the village who Jenny introduced as Walter, came in. A tall skinny old bloke, Walter was dignified without being unfriendly. He was a bit unsteady on his feet and allowed Jenny to lead him to an old chair parked in a corner of the shop. Above the chair a sign said, ‘We Care with a Chair’. Walter wouldn’t sit down however, he didn’t care for the chair, and extended his hand to me.
‘Trixie is it? Pleased to meet you dear.’
‘It’s actually Trisha, bit of a mix-up earlier, I think.’
But poor old Walter had other things on his mind.
‘I’ve to go in this afternoon, Dr Robertson booked a bed and they’re sending an ambulance,’ he said quietly as he nodded his head at the floor.
The man was
embarrassed so I turned away and pretended to be looking for something on the shelves. Which was just as well because Jenny immediately dropped what she was doing, i.e. serving me, and spent the next twenty minutes huddled with Walter while I was left standing about.
After a while, Walter’s dog, which he had left tied up outside, became bored and started to whine. Deep in conversation with Jenny, Walter didn’t notice. The dog did what dogs always do but in a more organised way than I’d ever seen before. It whined and leapt in the air, its head and shoulders visibly through the shop window. As the dog landed it rested for a beat and then whined and leapt again. Tirelessly the poor mutt trampolined up and down, in and out of my peripheral vision, each jump the same height each whine the same pitch. The rhythm set up by the unvarying noise and the piston like jumping was at first impressive, then comical and eventually irritating.
‘Bouncer!’ Jenny shouted without a trace of Highland liltyness.
Bouncer stopped. After about five seconds, he started again.
As Walter went out and untied the dog, Jenny, without asking him, packed a bag of messages: toiletries, Lucozade, mints and a newspaper. He brought Bouncer in and said cheerio but Jenny wouldn’t let them leave until she’d gone into the back shop (which seemed to be where she lived) and came out with a Tupperware dish of home-made soup for Walter and a bone for Bouncer. As Walter left the shop no money changed hands. Her kindness towards the old man touched me until I reached the till. Then I realised that the exorbitant prices I was being charged were subsidising the old guy.
The shop doubled, or more correctly quadrupled, as grocer, post office, video library and off-licence. There was a telly and DVD player in the wee back room in Harrosie, I’d spotted it the night before. The films she had out on display weren’t the latest releases, some were years old but there were a few that I hadn’t seen. I asked Jenny about hiring.
‘Well you’d have to be a member of the I.R.V.C. Trixie dear, the Inverfaughie Residents Video Club. I could enrol you but it’ll require me asking a few details if you don’t mind.’
She was getting me back for wriggling out of her earlier interrogation.
‘What kind of details?’
‘Och y’know, your name and address, date of birth, marital status and income, just the usual kind of thing.’
She was a nosey old cow but I knew I’d get bored without movies. Lured by her kindly intonation I told her everything, Jenny had worn me down. I would have told her my National Insurance number and distinguishing birth marks if she’d asked. She didn’t write anything down but after staring at me hard up and down for a moment, she decided I could join. I took a psychological thriller on overnight hire although Jenny did kind of spoil it for me.
‘And you’ll hardly believe it, but it’s the young girl, Beth, her with the lovely red hair. It turns out she’s one of those psychopaths.’
The off licence part of the shop was remarkably well stocked for a small village but there were only a few wines to chose from. I couldn’t make up my mind.
‘Well, what do you like, vin blank?’
Jenny pronounced vin to rhyme with tin, ‘or would you prefer the vin rough?’
‘I’ll take the vin rough thanks,’ I said with a straight face, ‘and twenty Silk Cut please Jenny.’
*
From the upstairs window I watched a man cycle up from Inverfaughie. He pedalled effortlessly up the steep hill. I was looking forward to seeing him skite down the other side but instead he got off the bike and chapped my door. I think I actually gasped when I saw how handsome he was. He wasn’t far off six feet and as broad as a house. Not fat, muscley. Going by his face he must have been in his late forties but going by the shape of him you would have taken him for a young man.
‘Good morning Trixie.’
This adonis knew my name!
‘I’m here to do the garden?’
Was he telling me or asking permission?
‘Oh, right.’
‘Sorry. I’m Jackie,’ he said, offering me his big warm dry hand.
‘Jack Robertson, call me Jackie.’
Another Robertson, the place was full of them.
‘My Mum’s uncle Henry, Henry Robertson, left her this place, are you any relation?’
‘We’re all Jock Tamson’s bairns.’
Although I’d seen it written down, I’d never actually heard anyone use that expression. It sounded couthy, kind of warm and inclusive. I decided I liked it.
‘Well it seems we’re all Robertsons in Inverfaughie. Everyone I’ve met so far is called Robertson.’
He laughed at that.
‘Never a truer word.’
He had a lovely laugh, it seemed to just burst out of him naturally and had the effect of instantly cheering me up. I couldn’t believe this guy was here to do the garden. Thank you, thank you God, I thought, not only have you sent me someone to tame the jungle behind the house but he laughs at my jokes and he’s beautiful!
Jackie didn’t look like a gardener. I’d never actually met a gardener before but I’d seen them on the telly and they were usually scraggy wee chaps. Jackie looked like a movie star. Not in a fussy way, but a down and dirty, manly way. I invited him in and led him through to the lounge. I offered him a seat but he didn’t want to sit down, hovering about just inside the door. It took a minute for it to dawn on me that he was being polite. He didn’t want to stain the chair with his working clothes and he was happier when we moved outside, happier that is, until he saw the garden.
‘Och, look at this mess.’
The more he saw the more annoyed he got. He strode around the garden pulling bushes apart and wrenching dead wood from the trees. I could hardly keep up with him and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to, his strength and his temper were fearful. He was taking his job too seriously, what the hell was wrong with this guy?
‘Aww!’
He stood looking at the tools lying rusting outside the hut.
‘They’re ruined. Wasted. A bloody waste.’
‘I’m awful sorry, it’s my fault. They fell out and I couldn’t get the door closed.’
‘This didn’t happen overnight, it’s years of neglect. The old bastard just let them go to rack and ruin. Look at these tools, they’re done. There was a good business in this lot, a good few hundred pounds’ worth if he’d only looked after them. A bit of grease on the blades through the winter and they’d have been fine.’
‘I’m sorry it offends you Jackie,’ I said with a nip in my voice.
The ‘old bastard’ he was referring to was my uncle Henry. I could agree that the garden needed tidying up but there was no call to insult my family, however distant. I must have scowled because he quickly changed his tune.
‘I’m the one who should be sorry. Sorry for getting so steamed up. Sorry for the state of this garden.’
His easy apology made me feel I’d taken the huff too quickly. I was relieved we weren’t going to fall out before we’d become friends. It would have been a cruel twist of fate if my newly discovered male-model gardener turned out to be a nutcase.
‘It’s a pity you didn’t work for Mr Robertson.’
Jackie smiled and nodded his head when I said that, I was waiting for him to say ‘never a truer word,’ again but he didn’t.
I invited him back into the house but this time I took him into the kitchen and he seemed comfortable enough there. I made a pot of tea and we had a good blether about my moving to the village. He was interested to hear about Steven and was surprised that I’d left him in Glasgow.
‘Oh it’s only until he sits his standard grades. This is an important year for him at school and we, my ex and me, didn’t want him changing schools in the middle of things. But he’ll come the minute his exams are over.’
He was the first person that I’d told and it didn’t sound so bad once it was out. Jackie accepted it easily enough, but then again, he was a man.
Jackie said he’d be able to get started on the garden tomorrow
with his own tools but in the long run the tools would need to be replaced.
‘Now the best place for this kind of thing is Inverness. We could go together sometime and I could show you what you need.’
I readily agreed. Jackie was nearly out the door before I could bring myself to ask him how much he charged. This was going to be sore, but what the hell.
‘Och, a couple of pounds an hour. Whatever you think.’
Jackie seemed embarrassed talking about money but surely this couldn’t be right. A couple of pounds an hour? It was too good to be true. I didn’t say anything to him at the time but I decided that I’d pay him a fair rate, the official minimum wage at least. We agreed on two days a week. I got the impression he’d be happy to come every day but I couldn’t afford it. Although Jackie was gagging to get the garden into shape I was in no hurry. This way would give me something to look forward to two days a week. That would only leave the other five to take care of. When he left I began to think that maybe Inverfaughie wasn’t going to be so bad after all.
Chapter 7
Steven phoned me as usual that night. We were just chatting away, chewing the fat when Bob must have realised who was on the phone and grabbed the receiver.
‘You’ve ruined that bedroom. You should get help. You’re a sick twisted woman.’
‘It’s only a bit of wallpaper for God’s sake, there’s no need to get so excited.’
‘No it’s not. It’s an expression of your nasty evil venomous nature, that what it is, a constant fucking reminder of you.’
