‘I’m asking,’ he’d said, so assured and full of simple joy. She could still conjure up the way his eyes sparkled in the dying Walpurgisnacht sunset.
‘I’m dancing,’ she’d said without any hesitation, and they’d taken hands and joined all the others on the grassy expanse between the band’s ‘stage’ and the bonfire.
Roz didn’t know now, just as she’d had no idea then, how many songs they’d danced to. Time has a way of running thin then thick through the Beltane hourglass. All she knew was that they’d barely registered the arrival of the procession or the moment they’d brought their flaming torches to ignite the bonfire.
She did remember, however, how the pair of them had complained when Sachin and his pals stopped for a break and the dancing ended, but then a piper had stepped in and taken over, his chanter agitating the night air and waking the mountain birds so they sang along. Or at least that’s how it had sounded to her ears that evening.
All the while, flames from the bonfires had licked into the air and smoke swirled at their feet, and they danced themselves closer together, sharing details about themselves in snatches between tunes, and kissing too, because they were young and they hadn’t a thing in the world holding them back.
Of course, their families knew each other going way back, but after Primary they’d gone to different schools, and then Roz had gone off to college and teacher training.
That night Charlie had told her how seeing her dancing alone in her white dress had ignited immediate memories of his boyish crush on her, years before, and how as a teenager he’d sometimes spot her around Cairn Dhu and want to talk to her but never did. Now, he’d told her, he wasn’t a shy little boy any more, but a man intent on staying awake all night just to talk with her.
She didn’t remember eating anything that night, and she didn’t remember being hungry for anything other than him. She also couldn’t recall feeling even a hint of the night chill, but she did remember taking his hand and looking hard at him as they’d come to a wordless agreement to get out of there.
She’d walked him across the field, leading him. She’d been taking him to the meadows, fully intent on lying him down under the Nithy Brig and kissing him until dawn, only, their voices were suddenly being called out loud, announced on the night air. The town had no speaker system or mics back then, so it was just a chain of voices chanting ‘Charlie Gas and Rosalyn McIntyre’.
Although their instincts had told them to keep walking and hide themselves away, they’d quickly been located and brought before old Mrs Gifford, the one who’d passed away years ago now, and she had the pair come up onto the haybale platform and proclaimed them May Queen and King to the town’s hearty approval, draping the long cloaks over their shoulders and crowning them with sturdy varnished and gilded papier-mâché coronets.
‘The elders have decided,’ old Mrs Gifford had said.
After that, the whole night was a wild blur of many more drinks and many more dances, culminating in Charlie and Roz leading the whole town in the frightening leap through the embers between the two healing bonfires, and later, when there was nothing stopping them, and no one was paying them much attention any more, they’d broken into a run.
By the time they reached the ancient bridge over the shallow silver waters of the River Nithy, Roz’s dancing shoes were ruined and her ivy tendril lacings had come loose and were strewn over the meadow behind them.
They’d thrown themselves down on the smoothed, dry pebbles under the brig’s stone arch and done things in the Cross Quarter Day darkness that even the Nithy River sprites and water bogles must have gasped at.
It had been an instant kind of love for them. A rare kind.
Roz blinked away the daydream now and looked about the shed at the bowed heads of the crafting circle, everyone deep into their talk and mask-making, everyone apart from the person she most wished was here, her errant May King.
9
Euan had sworn he wasn’t going to haunt the repair shop, that would be weird, but after completing a second job for the Three Times Winner of Rental Expert of the Year (Cairngorms Region), he’d returned the flat’s keys to the office on the high street and, not finding Carenza there, decided he really ought to go and look for her around the town, so that he could tell her he’d completed not only the job (installing a new security alarm keypad) but the paperwork as well, and he’d left the place locked up and the alarm activated.
His new boss would appreciate this level of personal service and conscientiousness, he told himself, almost believing his own contortions as he approached the repair shop.
The truth was he’d been coming up with any excuse to go back there for days, and each time he did, he’d stretch out his visits to ludicrous lengths. He’d picked up his grandad from Sunday garden club (Peaches hadn’t been there), and he’d hung around as late as he could last repair Saturday while McIntyre and Clyde tinkered with the bike (and Peaches stayed resolutely inside working on textile repairs for an endless queue of locals), and now today, arriving early, and on a Wednesday too, he’d had very little hope in his heart of encountering her, and yet, there she was in the light-drenched centre of the café messing about with a bunch of scraps and rags, surrounded by kids.
She turned her face to him as soon as he slid the doors apart, and even though she didn’t beam a smile at him like he’d hoped, she still left what she was doing and came closer to him, producing a neatly folded length of khaki green fabric. She plonked it down on a little table separate to the rest, saying, ‘I had a feeling you’d come to make your Beltane costume today.’
All pretence of searching for Peaches’ mother dissolved away. He poured them both tea from the urn, dropping a donation in the money jar, and drew up a seat at their table for two, thinking himself very clever indeed for his persistence.
‘So, why exactly are we dressing up in Muppet costumes?’ Euan said. ‘This one’s got Oscar the Grouch written all over it.’
Peaches had draped the khaki jersey fabric around his shoulders, and was now cutting a calf-length hem freehand, kneeling at his feet.
‘Didn’t you ever go to the Beltane bonfires as a kid?’
‘I’d definitely remember seeing Mum dressed up like this,’ he said, still standing statue still because she’d told him to a moment before.
The sight made her want to smile.
‘We left Clove Lore when I was six,’ he went on, ‘and only came back to visit Granny and Grandad every now and then. I barely remembered the place.’
When she got to her feet, he stood in profile to her so she could add some gathers to the cape’s collar. She took her opportunity to appreciate the outline of his features which were neat and tidy beneath a day’s stubble.
She’d been waiting for him all morning, hoping he’d call by. She’d even asked her mum at breakfast if she had assigned him any more electrical jobs and Carenza had mentioned a second one, a simple alarm set-up.
