Where Have All the Boys Gone? Page 14

  Katie must have fallen asleep eventually, because the first thing she knew, she was being woken by yelling from downstairs, which sounded oddly masculine, but wasn’t. She sat up, rubbing her head. Louise was nowhere to be seen.

  There was certainly a commotion occurring. Blearily, she jumped in and out of the shower and threw on some old clothes. She would finish packing after breakfast, she really was absolutely starving, one piece or no pieces. Perhaps if she could distract Mrs McClockerty she could do a quick dive for the Tupperware box of cornflakes and eat them dry.

  There would be no avoiding Mrs McClockerty, however, as she was to be found at the bottom of the stairs, the source of all the noise. She was bellowing loudly into an old-fashioned green rotary dial telephone, presumably to someone who was entirely deaf.

  ‘And if they think they can just walk in here with their little caddie wheel things and start demanding ensuite bathrooms thank you very much! There hasnae been an ensuite bathroom in Water Lane in my lifetime and we won’t be changing the noo!’

  Katie wandered into the dining room, rubbing her ears. In the corner was Louise, who was stuffing her face and at the same time beckoning Katie over furiously.

  ‘Quick, she’s out,’ whispered Louise, slathering marmalade on toast. ‘Eat. EAT!’

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Katie, accepting the toast immediately and pouring herself a cup of tea.

  ‘It’s all kicked off!’ said Louise. ‘You’re famous! Look!’

  She thrust over a slightly becrumbed newspaper. Emblazoned across the front of it in huge type was the headline: SAVE OUR TOWN!

  Katie grabbed it. Iain had been as good as his word. Every single thing was in there – the threat to the woods, the need for a campaign, the imminent destruction of the local way of life ‘beloved for centuries’. There were lots of references to the idea that almost all the golfers would be English, to a level which Katie privately considered bordered on the racist. But, Katie was touched to see, there was also a reference to how the whole town would stand behind Harry Barr, as he fought to win the campaign. She was mentioned as the girl who had discovered the whole thing, as if she were a secret spy on a topsecret mission. He’d made it all look terribly exciting.

  ‘Mrs McClockerty’s been on the phone all morning,’ said Louise. ‘I think we should store some of this toast in our pockets for later. There’s four pieces out.’

  ‘You’re very perky,’ said Katie suspiciously.

  ‘Can’t talk. Eating.’

  ‘Look…you know, I was thinking of maybe getting a move on today.’

  Louise’s face contorted. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, I’ve lost my job and I’ve nothing to do and nothing to show for it and we have to go back to London so we might as well start today seeing as there appears to be a fifteen-minute interval while it isn’t pissing it down with rain.’

  Louise put down the toast. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I didn’t…I forgot you lost your job.’

  ‘C’mon, Louise, you couldn’t have stayed here anyhow! You’ve got to get back to work and stuff…you’ve got to continue with your life.’

  ‘I wasn’t enjoying my life very much,’ said Louise thoughtfully.

  ‘Well, at least you still have a job, but I don’t, so that’s that, OK?’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Louise. ‘Up until yesterday, it was feeling quite therapeutic up here.’

  ‘Maybe because we’re running away from all our problems.’

  ‘Well, maybe “running away from your problems” is the new “facing up to your problems”,’ said Louise. ‘Look at Olivia. She talks everything out with her therapist all day all the time and never gets any better.’

  That much was indisputable.

  Louise stared down at the table. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just…I think I might take a bit more leave. I’m not sure…I don’t really want to go home yet. And I’m amazed you do.’

  ‘I don’t!’ said Katie. ‘Haven’t you been listening to me? I’ve been sacked! I have no job, no money, and a car held together with pieces of string and pies!’

  The tears stung at her eyes again.

  They had only noticed peripherally that the bellowing noise from the hall had ceased, when the door was flung open. They smelt it first. Louise lifted up her nose like the Bisto kid.

  ‘Is that…is that…a sausage?’

  Mrs McClockerty was standing silhouetted in the doorframe, her beefy arms supporting a laden tray. She looked as though she’d had a stroke down one side of her face, until Katie worked out it was her attempt at smiling.

  She put two full plates in front of them. There was indeed sausage – and square; fried eggs, something which looked like fried fruit cake, crispy potato scones, bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes and black pudding, which Katie found a bit frightening.

  ‘Full Scottish,’ grunted Mrs McClockerty. ‘And if you stop those interfering, Rangerover-driving, golfing English bloody bastards, there’ll be a lot more where this came from.’

  Louise and Katie looked at each other, dumbfounded. Then, not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, both piled in.

  ‘This,’ said Louise, a muffled ten minutes later, ‘is the best bloody breakfast I’ve ever eaten in my entire bloody life.’

  Katie nodded too. God, but she was ravenous. It must be all the fresh air she’d had sitting down on the docks and crying her eyes out.

  ‘See,’ said Louise, eventually. ‘You can’t leave now. Even that old witchbag is coming around. Is it just me or is black pudding absolutely delicious?’

  ‘It’s that old witchbag’s nephew I’m worried about,’ said Katie. ‘Well, I don’t need to worry about him, because he’s sacked me, so I don’t really have to worry about a thing.’

  ‘It’s this fruit pie thing that’s got me,’ said Louise. ‘I can’t believe people don’t fry more cakes.’

  They piled in. Katie was thinking, ruefully, of all the money she would save at hideous motorway service stations, of which she had approximately nine hundred to pass that very day.

  There was a ring at the bell and Mrs McClockerty tore herself away from brewing them a fresh pot of tea to answer it. Louise craned her neck to hear who it was. Katie tried her best to ignore it.

  ‘It’s Craig the Vet,’ said Louise excitedly. ‘I’m going to see what he wants. And offer him a sausage.’

  ‘Or accept one,’ said Katie, but she followed Louise to the door.

  ‘Just wanted to join the fighting fund,’ Craig was saying to Mrs McClockerty. He was holding a copy of the paper. ‘Do you think we’re going to need armed resistance, or will just money be enough?’

  ‘We don’t know yet,’ said Mrs McClockerty in a grave voice which suggested they might need to stockpile Uzis in the attic. ‘Whatever it takes.’

  Craig the Vet nodded grimly. ‘Aye, whatever it takes.’

  ‘Hello Craig!’ said Louise happily.

  Craig popped his head around the door.

  ‘I believe you’re still in your nightgown,’ said Mrs McClockerty disapprovingly to Louise.

  ‘I believe you are too,’ said Craig, smiling happily.

  ‘I’m having an emotional crisis,’ said Louise.

  ‘Oh,’ said Craig. ‘I don’t know much about those. Kind of womanly things aren’t they? With, like, crying and stuff.’

  Louise nodded.

  ‘Huh. Do you want to come lambing with me?’

  ‘Absolutely!’

  ‘You can’t,’ said Katie. ‘We’re going home.’

  ‘You don’t even need to get dressed,’ said Craig hopefully.

  ‘I’ll get dressed,’ said Louise.

  ‘You won’t,’ said Katie. But Louise had already gone, pausing only to pick up two pieces of toast, a sausage, a half-fried tomato and a piece of fruit pudding.

  ‘Hello Katie,’ said Craig. ‘I see you’re quite the folk hero. Well done, by the way. Now we’ve got a chance to stop the bastards. There’s developers trying to move in here e
very five minutes. Bastards.’

  ‘I hope so,’ said Katie. ‘But I don’t think…’

  Mrs McClockerty’s stroke face suddenly took a turn for the worse. ‘Hal!’ she said, in a clucking tone Katie had never heard. She craned her neck for a better look through the door.

  Harry was coming up the driveway, with an expression on his face that suggested he was en route for a root canal.

  ‘Hello Auntie Senga,’ he said, as Katie’s eyebrows rose. ‘Hello Craig.’

  ‘Hey,’ said Craig, patting him hard on the back. ‘Lots of work to do, eh? Great to get started early in the morning. Fighting the good fight and all that. Listen, you know the Farmers’ Union has already got together and started a fund? They’ve said if you like they’ll park their tractors in front of all the bulldozers. Apparently, it’s a pretty even match, but they’ve got more tractors. And the sewage dispersal unit and that.’

  ‘Yes, I heard,’ said Harry. ‘And Mr MacKenzie has offered to poison the lot of them for me too. By shepherd’s pie, I think.’

  ‘Great,’ said Craig. ‘I’ve got some horse drugs that’ll work very well.’ He turned to Katie. ‘Tell your friend I’ll see her at the surgery at 9.30. I’m extracting a snake’s tonsils, and then we’re good to go.’

  He vanished down the garden path.

  Harry couldn’t meet Katie’s eyes.

  ‘I’ll just go put on the tea for my wee Hal,’ said Mrs McClockerty. Then she put out her hand and pinched his cheek.

  ‘Um,’ said Harry when they were finally alone. He stood on the doorstep, unwilling to commit himself to stepping inside.

  Katie tried not to look in the least bit interested; to give off vibes of being able to turn around and go back to London, any time she liked. OK, she wouldn’t have a job, or a possible new boyfriend, or, for certain, a car, but she would have…um…well, maybe the satisfaction of being right. That didn’t sound brilliant now, but maybe it would keep her warm at night. When she was sleeping under Waterloo Bridge, or being a nanny to Clara’s almost inevitably hippy-spoilt child.

  ‘Um,’ she ventured in return.

  ‘Can I smell sausages?’ he asked incredulously. ‘My God, now I know you’ve done something right.’

  ‘Would Francis like one?’ asked Katie.

  ‘Um, no…he’s off them since an unpleasant…butcher…never mind. It was very expensive, but I think it worked as aversion therapy.’

  ‘How terribly fascinating,’ said Katie. ‘You should always come around with any badly-behaved dog stories you happen to have.’

  ‘OK, OK.’ He looked terribly unhappy. ‘I’m sorry. I’m very very sorry. You were right and I was wrong. How’s that?’

  ‘Not bad,’ said Katie.

  ‘Except I told you something in confidence and you told the entire Highlands region and some of the Grampians, in which case, you were wrong.’

  ‘Can I direct you back to the previous “you were right and I was wrong” statement?’

  Harry said nothing.

  ‘OK,’ said Katie finally. ‘I’m sorry about that. It was an emotional day. I am really really sorry.’

  ‘I mean, I know you don’t know him or anything, but that bastard Iain…this is just the kind of thing he’s always looking for. Just to have a go at me.’

  ‘Well,’ said Katie, thinking fast. ‘If that’s the plan, it’ll backfire, won’t it? Now everybody’s behind you and wants to be on your team.’

  ‘There is that,’ said Harry, momentarily brightening.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Katie. ‘It’ll all work out for the best…if, you know…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, you know…if I’ve still got a job or not.’

  Harry looked anxious. ‘Well, of course you have. I mean, if you’ll still do it. Why else would I be here?’

  ‘Jeering?’

  He looked at her, hurt.

  ‘Of course, I wouldn’t think that,’ said Katie. ‘Come in and have a sausage.’

  ‘Absolutely not. I need you to come to the office. You got us into this unholy mess, you’d bloody better start getting us out of it. All those things you said before.’ His face turned serious. ‘You really think you can get us out of this?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Katie. ‘But I know how to try.’

  Derek was dashing about with coffee and papers everywhere, all of a flutter with excitement.

  ‘The Mirror called!’ he shouted excitedly as soon as Katie and Harry walked through the door.

  ‘The who?’ said Harry, but Katie had already shot forward immediately.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Aye! They’re calling it the Braveheart Barricade. They want to know if we’re going to show them our arses and paint our faces blue. Apparently if we do, they’ll send a photographer.’

  ‘This is good,’ said Katie. ‘This is very good.’

  ‘Really? Arses and things?’

  ‘I don’t mean it like that! No, it’s good that we’ve got a national paper interested already.’

  ‘And the Herald and the Scotsman,’ said Derek. ‘Mirror’s more of a foreign paper really. And the Scotsman didn’t ask us to take our pants off.’

  ‘Standards aren’t slipping as much as I’d thought,’ said Katie. ‘This is exactly what we need. If we get enough attention, they’ll back down.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’

  ‘It’s just one strategy,’ said Katie. ‘Really, we’re fighting to the death.’

  She picked up a notepad and a pen.

  ‘OK,’ she said. She felt good, at last, she felt in control; that she had a mandate, she had something to do and, best of all, she had a clipboard.

  ‘First, here’s a quick plan A. Harry, what do you think the chances are of you just phoning up the guys who want to build this stupid golf course, tell them we’re going to spend the next six months giving them hell so they should do it in Surrey instead, and hoping they leave us alone?’

  ‘Absolutely none.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Katie. ‘You never know. Tell them about the arses and stuff.’

  ‘No,’ said Harry. ‘It won’t work.’

  ‘Why not? Are you going to be really pig-headed about everything?’

  ‘I’m not the pig-headed one,’ said Harry.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know. You should ask Iain.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Katie.

  ‘Because it’s his dad who wants to build the fucking thing.’

  Katie’s horrid instant coffee had gone cold as she digested this bombshell.

  Unfortunately Derek noticed right away and dashed off to make her another one. He really was an incredibly good non-secretary.

  ‘His dad?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Harry.

  ‘Does Iain know?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Harry. ‘I’m sure he does. I think trying to piss off his own father would be quite up Iain’s street.’

  This was weirder and weirder.

  ‘What’s this all about?’ asked Katie. She put her pen down.

  Harry sighed heavily. ‘Well,’ he began. ‘Once upon a time there were two little boys…’

  ‘I KNEW it!’ said Katie.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You were at school together and both fell in love with the same beautiful woman?’

  ‘At Dornoch Academy? No. Believe me, our school was not overrun with beautiful women. Or ugly ones. Did you know Fairlish has the lowest number of women in the country?’

  ‘I did, actually, yes.’

  ‘You and that daft friend of yours have doubled it overnight. I’m surprised you’re not overrun with offers.’

  ‘Not really,’ said Katie, desperate to deflect attention, in case he mentioned Iain. Heck, she was practically sleeping with the enemy.

  Harry grinned. ‘Why, have you let them get to know your personality?’

  ‘Ha ha. Shut up. Is this story about a woman?’

  Harry’s face dropped.
‘Well, it is in a way.’ He paused. ‘Look, I’m not sure I should…’

  ‘Just tell me,’ said Katie softly. ‘I promise, I’ll keep quiet.’

  ‘Forgive me if I’m not that impressed by that…’

  ‘I know. I don’t deserve to be trusted.’

  He looked at her. ‘I think it says something about how few people there are in this town to talk to that I still want to tell you. How depressing is that?’

  ‘It’s up to you,’ said Katie.

  Harry sighed and rubbed the back of his head, as if stimulating his brain to come up with an answer.

  ‘Iain and I were great friends,’ he started, softly. ‘He practically lived around mine. His mum was – is – a mouse, and I think I could tell his dad was a right prick even then. Iain could always get around his mother, that’s why he’s such a good flatterer.’

  Interesting, thought Katie, filing it away for future reference.

  ‘My mum really liked Iain. He was such an outgoing little boy. Not like me, really. He was always really cheeky to her and made her laugh. Whereas if it wasn’t for him, I think I’d just have spent all my time wandering about in the woods.’

  Katie nodded.

  ‘And then Mum got sick…and, well, Iain didn’t come around any more.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘His dad wouldn’t let him.’

  ‘That doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Iain’s dad is kind of the local big shot…does a lot of building works. And he’d built the factory where Mum worked. They said quite a lot of people got sick after they’d worked there. Nothing was ever proved or taken to court or anything. But he didn’t want our families mixed up. Just in case. Or maybe he thinks thyroid cancer is catching, who knows?’

  Katie felt an inexplicable urge to take Harry in her arms and give him a cuddle.

  ‘Anyway, that’s why I’m not so fond. Of him. Or his dad.’

  ‘It wasn’t Iain’s fault, really, was it?’ protested Katie. ‘I mean, he was a child, he had to do what his dad said.’

  ‘He was twelve,’ said Harry. ‘And we spent our lives sneaking places. But he never bothered sneaking over to us. So, well, so. Who cares anyway? It’s not really important.’

  ‘It is,’ said Katie. She leaned out and patted him gently on the hand. Francis rolled a lazy eye towards them from where he was dozing on the floor. They were silent for a moment, whilst Katie searched for something comforting to say without accidentally blurting out ‘they’ll build that golf course over my dead body’ or something equally terrible and tactless.