Euan dropped onto the edge of the sofa.
‘Our ruby wedding anniversary.’
The screen showed the familiar old sofa, pushed up against the wall, and the same sideboard and lamps and armchairs cleared aside to make way for a crowd.
‘That’s old Dr Millen there, with his wife, and that’s old Mrs McIntyre and her man, both gone now, of course. And there’s my pals from the long bar at the Cairn Dhu Hotel. Jock and John…’
‘All right, Grandad, I…’
Clyde shooshed him, and Euan realised he’d have to delay his exit for a few more minutes.
‘And there’s your granny.’
This made Euan pay better attention, as it became clear the man behind the video camera was Clyde himself.
‘Don’t be filmin’ me!’ his grandmother said, waving a hand at her husband.
‘Who else would I be filmin’, eh? Here, Jock, take this…’ came Clyde’s voice from behind the lens, and in a moment he emerged into the wobbly shot.
Euan watched as his grandfather, with slicked-back dark hair, danced his way over into his wife’s arms and the two of them fell into a slow dance beneath the same old rattan lightshade they were sitting under now.
Other couples joined in, swaying and circling in the smoky little room.
‘If I’d given up on your grandmother the first time she knocked me back, there’d have been no ruby wedding, no kids, no wee Euan Forte.’ He showed the gaps in his teeth as he smiled. ‘Do you get my drift?’ Clyde’s sly look told Euan he must have figured out about him liking Peaches.
‘That’s different. I never even got the chance for her to knock me back, and now she must think I’m a joke, same as everyone else in town.’
Clyde lit a cigarette, while at the party onscreen the Righteous Brothers stopped singing about a lost Lovin’ Feelin’ and changed to someone singing about Red Red Wine. ‘The first time I asked her out, she was seeing some laddie from Tomintoul! Second time, she said she was getting over that same laddie and wasnae looking for a boyfriend. The third time, a whole year after the first, she said yes.’
‘Your point?’ Euan asked wearily.
‘The time needs to be right. The stars aligned.’ Clyde laughed and coughed at the same time and turned back to the screen. ‘If it’s worth having, you need to stick around until the right moment. And stay true and faithful while you wait.’
‘I’m not waiting around Cairn Dhu jobless and useless. Sorry, Grandad, but I’m not.’
‘When your grandmother passed, everybody said it’ll take time. When I had the stroke, the same folk said it’ll take time. But I didn’t want to give it time. I wanted it over, fixed, and fast!’ Another draw from his cigarette and he chuckled a wistful laugh. ‘I had to learn patience. I had to learn how to be rehabilitated to the world.’
Euan bit his lip, thinking of the time ticking. He didn’t want to be rude, but what was his grandad on about?
‘I get up every day at seven, alone. But I get up on the very dot! And I go for my paper and my milk and my rolls, because that’s what I always did. I make my breakfast. I wind the clock. I polish the bike. All of it helps me live without her.’
A sharp sting behind his eyes alerted Euan to the threat of tears. His grandmother laughed from the TV screen, drawing Clyde’s eyes away again.
‘I go to the stroke clinic every month.’ He was directing this to his wife on the screen now. ‘And I do my exercises every night, and I go to the Garden Project on a Sunday, and I tell the new lassie in the newsagents not to let on about the cigarettes to that new doctor because I’m cutting back.’ He smiled now. ‘And that’s how I keep going every day.’
When their eyes met again, his grandad’s were sharp and alive while Euan’s were damp and heavy.
‘What’s this got to do with me leaving?’ he asked.
‘You need a wee bit of time to rehabilitate yourself, Euan. Maybe you won’t work for a wee while.’ He shrugged. ‘So what? I’ll look after you. Maybe you won’t win young Peaches McDowell. Maybe you will. But you can hardly prove to her that you want her if you’re miles away at your mum’s, eh?’
Euan looked at his hands. There was absolutely no keeping of secrets in Cairn Dhu. Clyde had it all figured out.
‘I know that you didnae have the easiest start in life. First your dad bolted, and then your mum whisked you away to Glasgow with that fellow, and by all accounts he was a waste of space, and then you found yourself with a wee sister, and yourself out of school. It can’t have been easy.’
Euan shrugged. ‘It was all right.’
‘I could have helped more. I see that now. We were’ – Clyde flicked the hand that held his cigarette towards the screen – ‘doing fine here. Having a rare time!’
