by Laura Marney
Great Britain craved inward investment like a crack-head craved crystal meth, and Great Britain would pimp its firkin granny to acquire it, or at least that was Jenny’s bitter assessment. The minister’s duty was clear: for the sake of Inverfaughie’s survival, for good relationships with a global investor and the tax revenue Great Britain might hope to reap, he issued a compulsory purchase order. Ownership of the machair was transferred to MacIntyre Holdings that very day. MacIntyre Holdings, as a goodwill gesture to aid local employment and development, agreed a short-term lease in favour of Global Imperial.
A generous compensation would be paid to local farmers, Toby Grunt told the slack-jawed Brenda and Jenny, he would absolutely insist upon it.
‘Surely there must be something that can be done?’ I asked Jenny, but she only shook her head.
I felt slightly nauseous when it dawned on me that only an hour or so after he had bought and sold the wee village, Knox MacIntyre had fed me firkin dog biscuits. It wasn’t such a funny story any more.
Chapter 40
‘Tidal lift. All the energy you need right there, in Loch Faughie,’ said Mag, speaking with his mouth full. ‘Stuart Wilkie.’
‘He’s from King’s Lynn, where we used to live,’ explained Brenda, filling in the gaps. ‘Stuart’s an inventor. He was our neighbour.’
‘Stuart Wilkie has a fantastic idea for harnessing the vertical lifting of large vessels. Compress the air, then drive air motors. Easy. Very efficient,’ said Mag as he gulped another mouthful, ‘and it’s storable.’
‘The energy is harvested when the tide lifts the vessel on the upstroke,’ said Brenda.
‘And the downstroke,’ said Mag.
‘And the downstroke and, would you like some more rice, Trixie?’
I’d expected I might bump into Jan at Ethecom, but he was apparently away transporting a vehicle all that day. Brenda had made us a delicious vegetable curry lunch, all lovingly home-grown no doubt, but Steven embarrassed me by mostly just flicking it around the plate. Brenda was polite enough not to notice but Mag addressed the issue directly.
‘Don’t you want that?’
Steven didn’t answer, staring off into the distance. I knew this tactic. This situation was so excruciating for him that he was pretending he wasn’t actually here. He was concentrating hard, trying to teleport himself away from the mortification of being set up on a playdate by his mum.
‘It’s good food, it’d be a shame to waste it,’ said Mag, gently lifting Steven’s plate and setting it on top of his own recently emptied one.
I was grateful Steven was able to maintain his dissociated expression. If he allowed his true feelings to surface his sneer would likely wilt the flowers in the vase. For Steven, being a ‘midgie raker,’ that is to say, someone who rakes through bins, wears second-hand clothes or eats leftovers, was a source of shame so great the only solution would be suicide by ritual disembowelment.
‘If you don’t want it I’ll eat it,’ said Mag, blissfully unaware of his ignominious social blunder. ‘The goats would eat it, those goats’ll eat anything, but curry gives them windy pops.’
What teenager says ‘windy pops’ for god’s sake? I thought. Mag had no sooner put a forkful of curry into his mouth than he coughed it back out again, spraying it into his hand. I thought he was choking but he was giggling. He’d thought up a joke that cracked him up so much he could hardly tell us for laughing.
‘It makes the billies bilious.’
Not so much a joke as puerile word play but, for Brenda’s sake, I managed a smile. I didn’t want Steven mooning around friendless but even I could see that this wasn’t going to work. He laid his head on his arm and hid his face. I was about to rebuke him for his rudeness but Mag wasn’t finished with the witticisms yet.
‘It makes them fart like billyo!’
Steven’s shoulders began to shake. He wasn’t laughing with Mag.
‘So, taking it to the court of European Justice, you say?’ I asked Brenda.
‘Eh, yeah,’ she said.
We’d already filled the long awkward silences with an extensive discussion on the machair situation. There really wasn’t anything left to say on the subject.
I’d decided against going to the public meeting, it would be too depressing. The only loss to me personally would be the machair as a handy walking area for Bouncer and once I’d moved back to Glasgow that would no longer be an issue for me, but I knew how gutted everyone in the village was going to be. I felt sorry that Brenda and Jenny had to deliver the bad news but I was well out of it. I knew it wasn’t rational but I had a vague feeling of guilt. I wasn’t responsible; I hadn’t done anything to make them lose their machair.
Brenda stood up, ‘You didn’t see the place last time you came, will I show you round?’
‘Yes, that would be fantastic. Come on, Steven.’
Mag rushed out ahead of us, nearly knocking me off my feet in his enthusiasm.
‘Mag, would you look where you’re going, for goodness’ sake!’ Brenda shouted after him.
In complete contrast, Steven dragged his curmudgeonly teenage carcass out to the yard, one petulant foot after the other.
‘Has Mag taken a stretch?’ I asked his mother.
I was baffled. He was at least a few inches taller since I’d last seen him.
Brenda scoffed, ‘He’s not growing that fast, thank god. No, it’s his latest invention. Mag, show Trixie and Steven your electric shoes.’
As she put the words ‘electric’ and ‘shoes’ together, there was no hint of mockery in Brenda’s voice. On the contrary: she seemed proud of her madcap inventor son.
With dainty fingers Mag pulled the legs of his jeans out and up, as if he were about to curtsey, and revealed a pair of red 4-inch platform shoes. This was bizarre enough, but then Mag’s feet began an energetic toe-tapping dance.
‘Jeezo,’ I said, trying to remain calm. ‘And how does electricity come into it?’
Steven was clearly horrified, as was I, and for the same reason:
When Steven was wee, every night I used to read him a different story from the Hans Christian Anderson Bumper Book of Fairy Tales. Until, that is, we hit upon ‘The Red Shoes’. To cut a long story short, a wee girl is given a pair of red shoes. She loves them so much she refuses to take them off, even for church. After a while the shoes control her; she can’t remove them and they wear her to exhaustion. She begs a woodsman to cut her feet off, but as she hirples along, now footless and dragging her bloody stumps, the red shoes continue to torment her, still dancing with her amputated feet inside.
It was an image neither Steven nor I could get out of our heads. So much for our comforting beddybyebaws ritual. It would have been more reassuring to read my five year old excerpts from The Exorcist.
We put the bumper book away after that. Steven crawled into my bed every night for a week, and I was grateful he did. Then, as now, the idea freaked us out and Mag’s jiggling dance macabre was a very powerful reminder of those other terrifying red shoes.
‘Is electricity making him dance?’ I asked.
‘No,’ laughed Brenda, ‘just the opposite, he’s doing it to generate electricity. Mag,’ she called, but Mag was too far gone. ‘Mag!’ she yelled, and grabbed his shoulder, ‘show Trixie and Steven how it works.’
The horror show finally ended when Mag lifted his foot to show us the right sole. Brenda talked us through it. A large section of the sole had been cut away and replaced with what looked like some kind of dynamo. She explained that Mag had bought the retro shoes in a charity shop because the hollow platform sole was roomy enough to accommodate the inner workings of the mechanism.
‘He designed this himself but he originally got the idea from the guy that invented the wind-up radio.’
‘Trevor Baylis,’ said Mag in his high excited voice, still with his foot in the air. ‘But it doesn’t have to be a dynamo. I have another pair where I’m experimenting with electrowetting. It’s a simple hydroph
obic liquid, just oil and water. When I walk on it I’m forcing it over electrodes, creating a current I can store. I’m getting slightly better results with that. You can charge your mobile off this battery,’ he said, directly addressing Steven. ‘I can get ten watts just from walking.’
‘Or dancing,’ Brenda smiled. ‘Mag wants to open the first electricity-generating gym.’
‘It’s curr-razy that gyms use electricity,’ he squawked, ‘when they could easily be adapted to be generating it. Customers won’t pay membership; the gym will pay them. It’s the future.’
Mag looked to Steven, maybe hoping that, as he was of the same age, he might agree, but Steven was off somewhere else, in his head at least, teleporting again.
Chapter 41
‘Come and see our new chickens,’ said Brenda.
As we walked towards the chicken coop she elbowed me, darting her eyes towards the boys and smiling. Steven was asking Mag if his shoe battery would charge a Nokia.
The chickens, with their fluffy golden feathers, looked like an old-fashioned illustration on a soup tin. Brenda let them out to run around the yard.
‘Look,’ said Steven in a shocked whisper, ‘they’ve already plucked those ones!’
He was right. Steven pointed an accusatory finger at a group of chickens still huddled together at the back of the coup. Baldy and featherless with bumpy naked flesh, some of them had patches of blue or green on their body with stubby little wings poking out. They looked like some kind of mutation experiment gone wrong.
‘That’s sick, man.’
I had to agree. Getting your feathers plucked must be like getting your legs waxed. Brenda and Mag both simultaneously exploded into laughter.
‘We haven’t plucked them,’ said Brenda when she managed to stop laughing, ‘they’re rescue chickens from a battery farm.’
Brenda explained, between snorts of laughter, that stress made their feathers fall out. When the chickens were no longer productive enough the battery farm wrung their necks so, to save them, she adopted them.
‘I know it looks funny,’ she chortled, ‘but I knit them tiny jackets. It keeps them warm until their feathers come back. Usually they make a full recovery; you can see how well these other guys are doing, and we get quite a good egg yield.’
‘Hey, Mum,’ said Mag, ‘Steven just asked me if you were a pheasant plucker.’
Mag laughed hard. He wasn’t laughing with Steven and clearly this was payback for earlier.
‘Or maybe,’ said Mag slowly, teasing, ‘it was a pleasant …’
Brenda gave Mag the hard stare, ‘Yes, thank you, Mag, I think we all know where you’re going with that. Would you like to see our workshop, Steven?’
Steven didn’t answer immediately but if I knew my son he would – and with the right answer. For all that he was a huffy arrogant git with me, he was reliably polite to other adults, especially women. His dad and I had instilled good manners in him, I could be proud of that.
‘That would be super, thank you, Brenda.’
I had to swallow a laugh.
Steven had spent the afternoon rolling his eyes and mouthing words like ‘freak’ and ‘weirdo’ to me. He didn’t care if Mag saw him.
‘Mag, can you take Steven round to the workshop please? And this recycling’s starting to pile up again, could I ask you two big strong lads to take it to the processor on your way there?’
‘I certainly shall Brenda, soooper,’ said Mag, as he and Steven carried the bags away.
‘And it’s Mum to you, mister!’ Brenda shouted after her cheeky son. ‘He’s only showing off because Steven’s here, but they seem to be getting on alright, don’t you think?’
I made a noncommittal noise.
‘Mag so needs a friend. I suppose they both do.’
I was slightly offended that she put her weirdo son in the same category as Steven but as we were her guests, I let it go.
‘I didn’t mention it before,’ she continued, ‘but some of the village kids have been picking on Mag.’
‘Really?’
What a surprise.
‘Yeah, he’s an easy target I suppose: an outsider, English accent; that doesn’t go down well.’
Brenda omitted to mention her son’s weird screechy voice, his obsessive nerdiness or his electric shoes, but she was probably blind to these eccentricities.
‘That’s a shame, I’m sorry to hear that, Brenda. Things’ll get easier, it just takes time, I’m sure you remember the nightmare of the teenage years, I certainly do, but if he makes the effort to fit in, eventually they’ll come to accept him.’
‘Mag will never fit into the herd; he’s just not made that way, but I know what you’re saying, Trixie: eventually they’ll accept him, because they’ll have to. Mag is a visionary, a genius. A few years from now they’ll all be working for him. He’ll be inventing: manufacturing and creating work for local people.’
‘Absolutely,’ I said.
‘Two nights ago a crowd of boys from the village chased him. They were on foot, Mag was on his bike, thank god, so he got away easily, but I don’t want him going down there alone any more.’
‘Och, that’s what boys do, chase each other, it’s just high jinks.’
‘It’s murderously high jinks, Trixie, they were throwing rocks. What if one had hit him?’
I had no answer for that and could only show Brenda my one-concerned-mother-to-another sympathetic face.
Of course Mag was a target for bullies. Highland kids were no different and no more tolerant than kids from anywhere else. More importantly, if Steven was seen publicly with Mag he’d be tarred with the weirdo brush. I didn’t want anyone throwing rocks at my boy.
‘Help ma’ Boab, is that the time?’ I said, ‘I’ll need to get back and get the dinner on for my Claymores.’
Brenda and I walked to the workshop to pick up the boys. As Brenda pushed the door open I saw that Mag and Steven were both riding bikes and they seemed to be racing each other. They were both pedalling fast; their legs were a blur, but they weren’t going anywhere.
‘Static,’ explained Brenda, ‘to generate juice for the arc welding.’
A small electric bulb flared in front of Mag’s bike and as he raised his arms in victory Steven sagged forward on his bike, exhausted.
‘Ok, that’ll let us weld some more. Let the welding commence!’ squealed Mag.
Considering how knackered he had been seconds before, Steven dismounted fast and rushed to pull on a welding helmet.
‘And gloves!’ yelled Brenda.
Both boys grabbed for the one pair of heavy gloves at the same time, giggling and struggling with each other. Steven wrestled them from Mag but I didn’t like the way this was going.
‘Come on, Steven, we need to get home.’
I heard a muffed whine from beneath the welding helmet, ‘But Trixie, let the welding commence.’
‘Now Steven, come on.’
Brenda took us back to the cottage to pick up our coats. Steven was still dragging his feet but this time it seemed to be because he didn’t want to leave. As we walked we encountered Ethecom’s herd of goats and had to walk right through the middle of them. I suppose Brenda was trying to spare us any more embarrassing misunderstandings and took pains to tell us about the goats.
‘This breed is called LaMancha, from Mexico, but originally from Europe, they’re great milkers. These are all does, that is: girls, but we’re keeping a few bucks to increase the herd.’
‘This is Charlotte Wilson, she’s my favourite,’ said Mag, stroking one of them, ‘she looks like a girl in school, same moronic expression.’
Steven laughed too and pushed forward to stroke the goat.
‘Mag, what have I told you? No names.’ And then discreetly she said to me, ‘Don’t want him getting too fond of them.’
The goats smelled awful, but I bent down and patted Charlotte politely like a good guest.
And suddenly I was pitching forward with tremendous force
. I put out my arms to break my fall and landed in a heap in the dirt. Someone had kicked me, hard.
Brenda rushed to help me up.
‘Oh, are you alright, Trixie?’
‘I’m fine,’ I said.
‘Get away,’ Brenda yelled, ‘shoo!’
Still face down on the ground, I turned to see the culprit. A nasty-looking goat had its head down and was moving towards me. As I pulled up onto all fours my bum presented the goat with an enticing target. I looked down and saw between my legs that it was getting ready to butt me again. Steven and Mag found this hilarious. The two of them had finally found something in common to laugh about: me. My clothes were filthy and my dignity was in tatters, I had nothing left to lose.
‘Bring it on.’
I flipped onto my side and lifted my foot in the air, fully prepared for a scrap with a farmyard animal.
‘Come and get it, goat!’ I snarled.
‘Oh no,’ said Brenda, ‘don’t do that, he’ll think it’s a game. Mag …’
‘I’m on it,’ yelled Mag, darting into the house, ‘I’m all over it!’
‘I’m so sorry, Trixie,’ said Brenda offering me a hand to pull up on, ‘that goat’s got problems. He’s the runt. None of the other goats likes him, he keeps trying to mount them.’
I stood up and brushed the dust off my clothes. Now I was on my feet I saw that the goat was much smaller than the rest of them.
‘All of them?’
‘Yes, females and males, he’s not fussy. His testicles haven’t descended yet: cryptorchidism, that’s part of his problem, and the vet costs a fortune. It shouldn’t stop him impregnating the does, he’s certainly trying and, going by his behaviour, his dangly bits must be up there somewhere, but time will tell.’
Mag burst out of the front door of the cottage with two enormous supersoakers over his shoulder.
