by Laura Marney
‘Nope, are you?’
Rudi and I came to a new arrangement. The Claymores could stay until I was ready to go. No sense in shutting down my revenue stream before I needed to, and I had yet to convince Steven to leave.
Since the machair dispute had been resolved I’d stepped up my flat hunting. I was now registered with every estate agent in Glasgow and spent every spare moment poring over home reports, looking at photos and taking virtual tours. My old neighbourhood was now well out of my league, but there were other flats in other neighbourhoods. The difficulty was in securing a mortgage. The mortgage advisor I’d spoken to on the phone had expected me to be working – financial security had tightened up considerably since the last time I’d bought a flat. Now they were looking for proof of earning, an employment contract. So I registered with every employment agency in Glasgow, but the thought of returning to my old job as a medical sales rep was giving me the heebie-jeebies. If I examined my conscience and looked down deep in my soul, I really didn’t want to go back to that huckstering.
I was going to miss being a landlady. Landladying had suited me very well. I enjoyed making up the menus and experimenting with new recipes. I’d learned how to run a business and my baking and cooking had improved no end. Of course, the cleaning was boring, but also satisfying and I was my own boss, that was the best part. If I could uproot Harrosie and take it with me to Glasgow I would. I now started looking at bigger properties but there was a huge gap between a deposit on a two-bedroomed flat and a deposit on a B&B.
Chapter 62
After the initial panic, the queues dwindled at the checkpoint until there was no waiting and it became a drive-thru. In all the telly coverage the government were keen to emphasise that everyone who wanted to leave had ample opportunity. I wanted to leave. I had ample opportunity.
So many people had left I’d expected to find a ghost town, movie prop tumbleweed rolling across the Caley car park, but the village was still quite animated. I’d been sent an email inviting all citizens of Faughie to the launch of the new market.
I’d been to a farmer’s market once before in Glasgow. Until then I’d had no idea that farmers spent so much time producing chocolates, soap, candles, tea-cosies, cufflinks, rat catchers, sun catchers and dream catchers. And who knew farmers were good at face-painting? Everything was priced at three times what it cost in the supermarket. How did that work?
This market had none of the froufrou fripperies of the Glasgow farmer’s market. This was all about old-fashioned hunks of meat, actual blood-stained limbs, naked and raw, without so as much as a sprig of plastic parsley to cover their modesty. And wildly, hilariously misshapen produce: an apple that was almost perfectly oblong, an oversized tomato skewed to one side like a Tam o’ Shanter, a tiny turnip shaped like a wee dog’s willy. Some of these fruit and veg were far too interesting to eat. Everyone crowded round these stalls giggling and taking pictures on their phones. Why did you never see fun stuff like this in supermarkets?
Walter, Jenny and Brenda got up on their soap box, which was actually a few shoogly wooden pallets, to formally declare the farmer’s market open. Jenny seemed nervous, probably from all the cameras trained on her, so she gave quite a formal and mercifully short speech. She asked that sellers charge no more than a reasonable mark-up and that buyers report any instances of profiteering. Going by the prices I’d seen so far, they were comparable to Asda, if not cheaper. Walter backed her up and, true to form, made all sorts of political and classical allusions. He started comparing the setting-up of the market, ‘by the people for the people’, to the 1970s work-in by the Glasgow shipyard workers.
‘Sadly we’re all aware of the recent increase of unruly behaviour and public disorder in our village. This is partly due to an unwise quantity of strong drink taken, but also, I believe, to the presence of agent provocateurs in our midst, whose chief aim is to stir up division amongst us. I hope you’ll join me in sending them this message: Faughie is for the benefit and enjoyment of everyone. Jimmy Reid put it so well in his entreaty to the shipyard workers when he said, ‘There will be no hooliganism, there will be no vandalism, there will be no bevvying …’
Everyone laughed. It was funny to hear Walter use such informal language so passionately, but everyone quickly sobered when they caught the sense, and felt the weight, of what he was saying.
‘… because the world is watching us, and it is our responsibility to conduct ourselves with responsibility, and with dignity, and with maturity.’
He said more but I couldn’t hear him over the noise of a wee low-flying aircraft that was headed towards the loch. As it flew over, some of the TV news crews that had been avidly following the speechifying suddenly packed up, jumped in their vans and sped off. I thought no more of it until later that evening.
I was back at my post, in the kitchen making dinner, contemplating the hopelessness of my situation and cursing my inability to leave Steven in this wee blighted village when I heard the jeers and laughter. The Claymores were watching the telly in the lounge.
‘Trixie, come and see!’ Dave shouted, ‘you’re going to love this!’
I rushed into the lounge wiping my hands on a tea towel. Dave paused the live TV, rewound and replayed.
They were covering Inverfaughie on the six o’clock news. This was no longer a novelty. Faughie often made the news these days, and never in a good way. The wee plane that I’d seen earlier was now on the telly dropping cardboard boxes in the field next to the lighthouse field. That’s where the camera crews had scooted off to. External No campaign sympathisers were dropping food parcels for the starving people of Faughie.
‘Shameless propaganda,’ said Rudi, tutting, ‘the whole thing’s a set-up.’
‘But it’s funny,’ said Ewan.
It was funny. It was hilarious watching them dodge the cardboard boxes falling out of the sky.
‘That’s Keek!’ I squealed in delight, ‘and Bell Boy behind him, that’s him, see? That’s the back of his head!’
‘That guy doesn’t need a food parcel,’ said Ewan, as we watched Bell Boy waddle across the field to retrieve a box.
‘C’mon, be fair,’ said Dave, ‘you don’t know what’s in them, could be diet shakes.’
‘Yeah, a WeightWatchers’ mercy mission,’ said Ewan.
Bell Boy ripped open the box to show the camera what was inside: packets of rice and pasta and a few tins.
‘Just a protein shake for lunch and I’m full all the way to dinner-time!’ said Ewan in a high camp voice.
Dave’s was even camper: ‘Then I have a fish supper and six pints!’ he squealed.
Everybody laughed at the banter, but the biggest laugh was yet to come. They’d seen it before me so they were all waiting for it.
‘There’s your pal,’ said Dave.
On the screen a headscarved welly-booted peasant woman smiled for the camera. As the wee plane flew above her she shielded her eyes and looked up. She waved and then gave an affectionate salute as she watched it soar away into the distance. For a few moments she stood still, as though she was waiting, hoping that it might return and rescue her. Betty Robertson, dressed like a refugee with not as much as a smear of lipstick on her, turned back to the camera with a wistful sigh, still clinging to her food parcel as the shot dissolved.
I laughed so hard I thought I’d wet myself.
‘What a ham,’ said Rudi in disgust.
‘It’s not ham, it’s diet shakes,’ said Ewan.
‘Och, you all have a good laugh, go on, laugh it up, but people all over the world are watching this,’ said Rudi, sooking the fun out of it, ‘they don’t know Betty Robertson, they think this is real. You mark my words, this isn’t good. Not for us, not for Faughie. Not good at all.’
Chapter 63
Of course Rudi was right. A few nights later they started trailing a documentary, ‘Inverfaughie, the Inside Story’, which was going to be on telly the following Thursday. The village was buzzing with it. The trai
ler promised to reveal the scandalous goings-on of the committee members as well as showing spectacular views of almost everyone’s house. We could not wait. Ali organised a big screen in the function suite of the Caley, offering hot pies during the adverts, and sold tickets in aid of the Yes campaign. You had to hand it to Ali Karim – the guy was a marketing mastermind. Even though you could watch it at home for free, tickets sold out within the hour.
Meanwhile, back at Ethecom, we had a crisis. What Jan hadn’t told me when I’d first volunteered, because if he had I’d have run a mile, was that our chickens were being bitten by red mites. That’s why they didn’t want to go into the coop at night: the bugs were waiting for them. The poor wee chooks couldn’t get a decent night’s kip for those blood-sucking pests feasting on them, leaving them drained, knackered, and with infected wounds under their feathers. No wonder they ran away from us; I wouldn’t have wanted to go in either.
Jan was a gentleman; he insisted that he be the one to go into the coop and dust the birds with home-made chemical-free insecticide while I watched from the door.
‘Don’t come in!’ he yelled at me. ‘It’s hoaching with red mites in here.’
He’d said this in all seriousness and I had to bite my cheeks not to laugh. If I did he might get all sensitive and self-conscious. Other people teased him about his wholesale adoption of the Scottish vernacular with his thick Dutch accent, but I enjoyed it.
‘You’re awful rough,’ I tutted, ‘can you not be a wee bit gentler?’
As he gave each chicken a liberal dusting with mite powder he grasped their feet and tipped them over his knee until they were dangling almost upside down.
‘The powder has to cover all their feathers,’ he said as he struggled with Jacqueline, who was flapping her wings.
‘C’mon, Jacqueline,’ I said in a sing-song tone, ‘you’re ok, nearly there. That’s it, good girl.’
‘Jacqueline’s a cute name for a chicken,’ Jan admitted, ‘though if Brenda finds out you’re naming them she’ll not be pleased.’ But on hearing me call her name, Jacqueline stopped flapping.
‘That’s brilliant,’ said Jan, obviously impressed with the hypnotic effect of my honeyed chicken tones. ‘Aye, Trixie, you’re right, it calms the birds.’
He next scooped up a lovely wee white chicken.
‘Och, be gentle, Jan, she’s my favourite. Good girl, Ellen, there, just a wee minute, that’s it, all done.’
Next up was Holly, a gloriously golden-feathered hen, who was smart enough to make for the door. Intercepting her escape, I bent down and gathered her into my arms, snuggling to try to relax her.
‘Baaalk, baaalk,’ said Holly.
‘It’s ok, sweetheart,’ I soothed, ‘it won’t hurt, it’s just a bit of powder; it’ll make you feel better, get those nasty bugs off.’
While Holly buried her head in my chest, Jan took the opportunity to dust her feathers, accidentally brushing my fingers, and my bosom, as he stroked her. I suppose I could have moved my fingers but she was settling.
‘Shhh, there now, Holly, don’t worry, you’re my favourite too.’
‘Baaalk,’ she replied, but her body no longer felt so tight.
Jan smiled, ‘You shouldn’t have touched her. You’ll probably have mites on you too now.’
‘Och, it’s ok, they’ll wash off.’
‘But it’s a bit more complicated than that, Trixie. Even if you don’t mind the mites crawling on your skin, which is pretty gross, by the way, you don’t want further contamination of the hens, do you?’
‘No, of course not. The girls have been through enough.’
‘I knew you’d say something like that, but,’ and here Jan hesitated and shifted his weight, ‘if you want to prevent further spread we’ll have to wash together; co-ordinate our decontamination strategy.’
I was still stroking Holly, calmed by the fact that her heartbeat had slowed.
‘Ok,’ I said, ‘I’ll co-ordinate. I have no problem co-ordinating.’
Jan cleared his throat.
‘Just so’s you understand: to be completely thorough, we’ll need to completely strip off and put all our clothes in the wash.’
‘Aye, I can do that,’ I said, feeling a sudden rise in temperature all the way to the roots of my hair.
‘Really?’
He seemed more surprised than me by the turn things had taken, but Jan softly raking his fingers across my breast had awakened an old familiar sensation, a confusing but not unwelcome signal my body had all but forgotten, now radiating south towards my nether regions.
‘Yeah, what else?’
‘Eh,’ he hesitated again, ‘so: to ensure eradication we shower.’
‘Together?’
‘Aye, I think it’s for the best.’
Jan held his breath and waited for me to speak.
‘Yup,’ I said, nodding thoughtfully, ‘I can see that makes good hygiene sense.’
Now on more solid ground, Jan became quite enthusiastic. My eyes were drawn to his twinkly eyes and full lips as I watched him whisper.
‘We’ll have to soap up; get a good lather going and wash each other, intensively; the soap has to get everywhere.’
I caught my breath and tried to clear my head. I tried to put my misgivings and my throbbing loins to one side, but, after all, what could be more natural? We were two lonely people with a raging sex drive, some scabby chickens and a good excuse to soap up.
*
Ach, it came to nothing. Before we even got to Jan’s cottage, walking quickly, but not too quickly, the game was up. Steven and Mag were waiting on his doorstep, after him to help lift their new wind turbine onto the truck.
It was a prototype and they were anxious to get it ‘planted’, tested and take a reading. They were setting up Faughie’s own power grid against the day Westminster turned off the lights. Everyone seemed convinced that day was coming. As Mag argued in his squeaky voice, even if it never came, supplying Faughie with free renewable power would show the world and the Faughie committee that with a bit of ingenuity – trademark Magenius, patent pending – it could be done. Now that they didn’t need Dinah’s approval they had placed water turbines all down the river, which were showing great results. From welding bits of scrap metal together, Steven and Mag had fashioned a unique, and apparently 40 per cent more efficient, wind turbine. As the three lads enthused about the innovative rotor blade design, I felt my loins cool and my excitement fade. I was grateful when Brenda showed up and offered me a bath at her place.
My lust for Jan was probably only momentary; more to do with the exciting times we were living in. I hardly knew the man – how could I fancy someone I hardly knew?
Chapter 64
I was dying to run the whole confusing episode past Jenny, but of course she was away in Luxembourg. Jenny, Walter, Brenda, Moira Henderson and Dr McKenzie had been airlifted out to go and tell the Luxembourg court how wonderful it was living in a free Faughie. They were wined and dined and two days later came back as conquering heroes to a tremendous fanfare. Like everyone else in the village, I’d received a text asking me to turn out and welcome them back, but I hadn’t time for that kind of staged nonsense. Some of us were too busy doing real work, like keeping Faughie in fresh eggs, to hang about the helipad waving stupid wee flags.
The next time I saw Jenny was at the grand showing of the documentary in the Caley. The place was stowed out, a noisy festive atmosphere with everyone dressed up for the occasion. On walking in I quickly mapped out who was positioned where: on the left at the front Betty Robertson was sitting laughing with some of her No camp, affecting social blindness. The blindness was mutual. I was just as happy to blank her. On the same side at the back Jackie was on an all-male table with his mate Spider and some fishermen. He saw me straight away and nodded: a perfunctory nod without warmth, a clear warning not to approach; he would acknowledge me but he wasn’t rolling out the red carpet.
Turning to the other side of the room my hea
rt sank. The Claymores were crowded round one table – there wasn’t space for me. Steven had got in before me and had sat at an Ethecom table. No sign of his burd, but maybe Morag wasn’t the political type. More likely, she had an early start with morning milking. Steven didn’t look like he was missing her; he was laughing and chatting away as he sat with Mag, Brenda and Jan. Awkward.
Seeing me falter, Jan stood up and offered me his seat while Brenda smiled and waved me towards their table. As I reluctantly approached I found that I couldn’t look at him. I could not bring myself to be gracious: to smile, thank him and acknowledge his kindness. I couldn’t see his face, but I hoped he’d understand and not be hurt by my rudeness. A few seconds later, though she didn’t realise it, Jenny rescued me.
She and the committee top brass had been allocated the top table: front and centre. Jenny signalled to me that there was a spare chair at their table between her and Walter. As this was not official committee business, more of a social outing, they both kept their guard up. Even now Walter and Jenny wouldn’t be seen publicly enjoying themselves together. Relieved to find somewhere I could finally relax, I hardly minded that they were using me as a decoy.
Jenny seemed nervous.
‘Are you ok?’ I asked.
But she only had time to nod distractedly before the lights went down.
The first three or four minutes of the documentary provided a historical context through a montage of old black-and-white photos and film stock of Inverfaughie. People milking cows, threshing barley, cutting peat, heaving nets, gutting fish, their bright young faces prematurely lined with the back-breaking work. What struck me most was that although things had changed and most of that hard manual labour was now gone, thank goodness, the village of Inverfaughie was completely unchanged. All of the buildings still looked exactly the same, still in exactly the same place.
There was footage of Faughie Castle having what looked like a garden party. An incredibly dapper young man was playing croquet on the lawn with his guests. I looked around but couldn’t see Dinah anywhere; then I remembered she’d told me she’d been summoned to give evidence in Luxembourg in a few days’ time. She was probably packing. I quickly texted her telling her what channel it was on in case she wasn’t already watching.
