Jolyon Sears lost no time in getting stuck in to the top hats and in grabbing one of the paper plates to decorate. Roz helped him cut eyeholes while Jolyon’s mum helped herself to tea from the big urn.
‘Are you looking forward to the bonfire party?’ Roz asked the little boy now, and he replied with some emphatic nodding.
‘Who do you think’s going to be crowned May Queen and King?’ little Shell Cooper wanted to know. She’d thrown herself into the chair next to Jolyon and was crumpling newspaper and glueing it to a paper plate to form the contours of a lumpy-bumpy face.
‘Nobody knows until the night itself,’ answered Peaches. ‘Well, I suppose my mum knows.’
Shell didn’t seem to like this answer. ‘Who decides?’
‘The Walpurgisnacht elders,’ imparted Senga as she passed Shell fresh newspaper strips for her to glue.
Jolyon’s very next marshmallow top hat paused inches from his mouth. He reached for the tablet on the chair beside him and tapped a button. A boy’s voice, Scottish just like him, came from the speaker. ‘Pardon?’
Mhairi, who stood behind her son’s chair with her steaming mug of tea, explained to the astonished Senga and Rhona, ‘That’s Jolly’s ACC software on his tablet – Augmentative and Alternative Communication. It’s one of the ways he communicates out loud. He chooses from words on the screen, and it makes the sounds.’
‘Oh, righty-o,’ Senga said, leaning towards Jolyon. ‘Nobody knows who the Walpurgisnacht elders are,’ she told him. ‘But once an elder, always an elder, and the whole committee is sworn to secrecy. Elders, it is rumoured, do not even know for certain the identities of the other elders.’
‘Well, how do they decide then?’ burst Shell.
‘It’s said the elders visit Walpurga’s oak, out on the Knowe, on the last night of April and place a slip of paper with their choices on it inside the knot in the trunk – there’s a hole, you see, in the shape of a great raindrop – and someone collects them on May Day morning.’
‘That’s my mum,’ Peaches added.
‘That’s her mum,’ Senga confirmed, not wanting to be outdone. ‘And the elders’ decision is announced at the bonfire celebration.’
‘And then the specially picked people get the crowns,’ Shell told Jolyon, importantly.
This sent him back to his screen where he chose more words. ‘Can children get a crown?’ Jolyon asked.
‘Oh no,’ Rhona took over from her sister. ‘It’s always two grown-ups that are selected to be king and queen.’
Jolyon and Shell looked at one another very disappointedly.
‘Oh well,’ Shell told her friend, stoically. ‘At least we get to hold the fire sticks to help light the bonfire with!’ This cheered Jolyon immensely.
‘The mums and dads hold them, actually,’ Mhairi threw in as fast as she could.
‘Aye, aye, but the kids can help!’ Shell corrected her, rolling her eyes, and a defeated Mhairi was left to draw a big breath and meet Livvie’s eyes in a patience-of-a-saint kind of way. Livvie Cooper only smiled back and shook her head.
‘Have you two ever been picked for May Queen?’ Shell asked the Gifford sisters.
‘Not us,’ Senga replied, ‘but Roz here was Queen, years ago.’
Roz, who’d been tightly tying some bundled gorse twigs around a long shaft of broom handle to make a decorative Beltane besom, lifted her head. ‘Hmm?’
‘Queen? You?’ asked Jolyon, possibly a little sceptically, given the look on his face.
‘It’s true,’ Roz confirmed. ‘Back in, ooh…’
‘Nineteen ninety-seven,’ someone said.
Everyone snapped their heads round to look at McIntyre, over by his repair bench where he was tidying away some clutter and making to leave.
Roz watched him too, possibly a little surprised he even recalled the year.
He had his jacket on now and his bag on his shoulder. ‘Just popping out to the Garten Valley,’ he said, coming to kiss his wife on the cheek.
‘Off to the DIY megastore?’ Rhona asked him, seemingly innocently.
