1
Four hundred accidentally defrosted and now completely inedible fishfingers pointed the blame at Euan Sparks. They – along with a great big flood in the Cairn Dhu primary school kitchens – said it was him who’d done it, and on his very first day of self-employment as well.
He’d been the one the head teacher had taken the risk on to install and test the new fuse box. He’d been the one who’d headed home on his grandad’s vintage motorbike afterwards, glowing with pride for a job well done and keen to tell Grandad Clyde how well he’d managed all by himself. He was the one who’d neglected to flip one of the switches back to the ‘on’ position, meaning the electrical circuit that powered the big freezer was left off all weekend, prompting a very agitated phone call from the janitor at half seven this morning which jolted him from his bed in a sweaty panic.
‘Get moppin’, Euan,’ a disgruntled dinner lady was telling him now, wheeling the school’s mop bucket towards him, leaving a rippling wake through the meltwater.
He’d already apologised to the head teacher, Mrs Hoolit, who, having worked at the school for forty years, was largely unshockable. She’d told him, kindly, ‘Nobody’s going to make you stand in the corner or write lines in punishment.’ She’d refused his offer to cancel his invoice, pointing out that ‘the new fuse box is still fitted and working, is it not?’
Still, he felt rotten and extremely foolish, and worst of all, he was a failure before he’d even had a chance to begin.
He swept the water out of the kitchen fire doors and down the drain while a second dinner lady arrived and was told the bad news. Euan pretended not to hear them pointedly checking inside the other freezers, exclaiming dramatically, ‘The sausages are unharmed. We can be grateful for that, at least!’
It took half an hour to right the place before he motorbiked home to his grandad’s under a cloud of shame, convinced that every huddled group of local seniors at the bus stop or outside the Post Office were shaking their heads and tutting at him as he passed by.
How was his one-man electrical installation and repair business going to make it in Cairn Dhu now that it had been confirmed he was a dud and a liability? And everyone would definitely know. Cairn Dhu is the sort of whispering Highland town where an awfully good bit of gossip like this can be trusted to make its way around town (and even up to the summit of Mount Cairn Dhu and back down again) before lunch time.
The waves of mortification coming over him meant he took no solace from the April morning sunshine or the cool, crisp mountain valley air. He didn’t lift his eyes to the snowy peaks of this, the western edge of the Cairngorms National Park, where on spring days like today the buzzards gyre in the blustery blue over a seemingly endless expanse of weather-wracked granite elevations, lush green glens, crystal clear waterfalls and unfathomably deep lochs. Here, where the boulder passes are so inhospitable and wondrous, the imaginative onlooker could be forgiven for deciding those lonely stones must have been dropped into the landscape by giants.
No, the mountain range could do nothing to awe him today. In fact, if the door wasn’t so firmly shut on his old life with his mum and wee sister back in Glasgow – even if he’d had the petrol money, which he didn’t – he’d have turned the bike around now and ridden out of town in disgrace, telling himself that Grandad Clyde was recovering so well after the stroke he didn’t really need him, and abandoning all the other reasons he’d chosen to move back here in the hope of making a name for himself.
He steered the bike onto the concrete slabs at the side of his grandad’s house, cutting the engine and making sure to wipe the bug splats from the tank and mudguard before covering it with its tarp.
The familiar smell of cigarettes and breakfast bacon met his nose as he let himself inside the little bungalow, a fifties prefab with exterior walls harled with sea-dredged chipstones, and the cosiest, most welcoming place he’d ever lived.
Clyde Forte was in his armchair under a nicotine cloud with a steaming mug of tea and the telly turned up. From the tilt of his head, and the fact he still had his phone resting in his hand, Euan could tell that his grandfather had already been filled in on the great school flood and fishfinger tragedy. Euan hadn’t had a chance to tell him this morning as Clyde was already out on his morning ritual walk to pick up his bread rolls, semi skimmed, and aDaily Recordwhen the call came through.
‘Pot’s still warm,’ Clyde said, keeping his eyes fixed on the weekday matinee ofThe Great Escape.
Another mug lay beside the teapot on the low table. Euan didn’t want tea but he poured one anyway and slumped on the sofa with it.
‘You ken, that’s not a German motorbike Steve’s riding there?’ his grandad said before having a long draw of his cigarette. Steve. Like he was a close personal friend of McQueen himself.
This deflection from his mistake at the school felt like it was intended as a kindness, and that’s just what it was.
‘Not German? Is that right?’ Euan replied, always generous with his grandad, wanting to share in his few interests, especially since Clyde’s world had shrunk considerably in recent years and consisted mainly of meals in front of the TV and his ritual daily walks to the newsagents or to the gardening club at the repair shop on Sundays.
Don’t, however, be mistaken. Clyde Forte isn’t of the rosy cheeked, have-a-toffee, beige comfy cardi variety of Scottish grandad; he’s more of a tattoos over a wiry frame, pack of ciggs under a rolled shirt sleeve, swift-half-at-the-bar sort of grandad. He’d grown frail lately, but he’d been cool like McQueen, back in the day, as attested by the framed grainy snaps along the living room woodchip; pictures from race meets and vintage bike rallies and nostalgic roadside picnics with Euan’s granny in the sidecar. Clyde had been wiry and inked then too, as well as handsome, a hardworking electrical engineer, and very much devoted to his late wife.
‘Steve insisted he would only ride a British bike, so they had to disguise a Triumph TR6 Trophy as a German BMW. What do you think of that?’ This was said with an admiring chuckle.
For a while the pair drank their tea and watched the daring Captain Hilts making his motorbike getaway, pursued by Nazis, and they held their breath for the first big jump over the barbed wire barricade, knowing he’d make it, and then, when the need for a second, higher jump came, both of them grimaced, silently willing him on to safety, even though they’d watched the film once already since Euan moved in and knew full well the dreadful fate awaiting him.
‘Stunt double,’ Clyde remarked when it was all over, just as he had done the last time.
‘Oh aye?’ Euan would exaggerate his interest like this forever, if it made his grandad happy.
‘Me and Rosie’d have made that jump,’ added Clyde, as though to himself, his misty eyes fixed on the screen as the acting credits played.
Rosie was the name written across his bike’s tank. It had been Euan’s granny’s name. Euan knew his grandad meant that he and his trusty old bike could have made that second jump, but also that, somehow, if Clyde could have, he’d have steered his wife clear of the miserable ending that separated them years ago, outrunning illness, and riding off into the sunset together.
The same familiar wistfulness fell over the little living room where time had stood still alongside the brown sofa and the brown Vymura wallpaper and the swirly brown and orange shag pile.
‘I’ll get the biscuits, shall I?’ Euan said, getting up.
‘You mustnae let this shake your confidence,’ Clyde said suddenly, only casting him the slightest glance. ‘Could have happened to anyone.’
Euan only nodded, but once his feet hit the kitchen lino, he said to himself, ‘But it happened to me, and the reputation of my new business, and I don’t know how I’ll make a go of things here now.’
