For Faughie's Sake (10 page)

Take after monotonous take we did it, over and over again; running out on an adrenaline high and then hanging around behind the facades, bored and tired, for what seemed like hours. The first time the problem wasn’t technical, it was one of the extras. No one in our family, one of the other houses. An old man, stage-struck and a bit too stoked, got his signals mixed up. While everyone else was removing their shoes, he ran screaming through the doorway, still wearing his bright blue Adidas Sambas. Raymondo Land, the director, shouted ‘cut!’ and turned away in disgust. A moment later we heard the squeal of the loudhailer being turned on again and everyone held their breath.

‘I don’t think three stripes were fashionable in the nineteenth century,’ joked Mr Land, and everyone laughed.

But the laughter drained every time the phrase, ‘positions, please!’ was yelled at us through the loudhailer. Several takes later another extra – again not us, we behaved impeccably – bumped the fibreglass and the whole facade nearly fell on top of him. This would no doubt become comedy gold on an out-takes show and it would have been funny if it wasn’t so dangerous.

Once we’d made it through the doorway we ran on to an obstacle course. Apart from the uncharted boulders in the bracken, tufts of heather and foul-smelling bog water, we had to dodge the
equipment. A huge camera mounted on a platform, which could glide up and down and from side to side like a fairground ride on its own wee train tracks, followed us as we ran. We were not to look at it. We were not to engage with the other actors who stood around, calmly overseeing our village being sacked. Jan was one of them. I had to constantly remind the kids not to smile at him. Jan stared us homeless peasants down as if we were shit on his shoe. Either he was a really good actor or the power of being one of the factor’s men had gone to his head. Perversely, he had never seemed more attractive.

As we were four adults and eight kids, the arithmetic was easy: two kids apiece. Walter and Jean were happy to hold hands with two kids. I had allocated the oldest kids to granny and grandad; this would provide stability for the oldsters and slow the kids down a bit. As Danny was likely to be the most sure-footed I asked him to take the two smallest, Lucy and Benjamin.

‘Sorry, Trixie, I’ll take them through the doorway but once the horsemen come I have to work.’

‘What horsemen?’ I asked.

Out of the mayhem, Rudi and Dave came galloping towards us on horseback. They rode fast and certain, standing up in the saddle and holding the reins in one hand like Cossacks. In their other hands they held what looked like flaming rocks tied on strings. They swung these round their heads and let them fly through the windows and doors of the house. There was a strong smell of smoke and singed hair. Had anyone still been standing on that side of the facade, they would surely have been killed or, at the very least, slightly maimed.

We ran, and as the hot rocks whistled past our ears, I worried about Walter. His poor wee blue legs were getting tired, he wasn’t up to this. He must have been as nervous as the rest of us but, perhaps for the sake of the kids, he didn’t show it.

‘Goodness gracious,’ Walter muttered as he dodged a flaming missile, ‘great balls of fire.’

‘Why didn’t they tell us about this?’ I asked Danny between takes.

More to the point, I thought, why hadn’t Danny warned us?

‘They want to make the experience as authentic as possible, get the best performances,’ he explained, ‘the old-fashioned element of surprise.’

‘Huh, element of terror, more like,’ I said.

At last things moved on. We didn’t have to come out from behind the facades any more. Rudi and Dave had stopped throwing fire bombs at us, but we had to stay on set. I now saw why Danny couldn’t take the kids. As we emerged from the house and Dave rode past, Danny jumped onto Dave’s horse and pulled him to the ground. It was highly choreographed but impressive none the less. The next few scenes were of Danny fighting Dave. Every few blows they had to stop and either do it again or move on to the next part of the fight sequence. We simply stood around behind them, decorating the set, no more than human wallpaper.

It had been a warm night but it was colder up here on the hill. They let us put our shoes back on between shots; we were only barefoot for a few minutes in total but by now our feet were wet and muddy and cold and we weren’t getting the chance to dry out.

Danny did the whole fight sequence in his bare feet but he didn’t even seem to notice. It wasn’t method acting – I actually felt proud of him trying to defend our village from these marauders. It wasn’t a fair fight – Dave had a pair of boots and a knife – but, like every other inept movie bad guy I’d ever seen, he wasted too much time posturing. He seemed more interested in showing off his flashy knife, throwing it hand to hand and smiling a leery smile. Bootless and unarmed, Danny was focused, his bare feet kicking Dave’s knife away before overwhelming him.

‘I don’t think kung fu was fashionable in the nineteenth century,’ commented Walter dryly.

Now that we were required to stand still – for continuity purposes, not to move an inch – the kids were fed up.

‘Auntie Trixie,’ said Rachel, ‘Lucy needs to go to the bathroom.’

Wee Lucy nodded shyly.

‘I do too,’ piped up Ailsa.

‘Ok, I’ll ask them,’ I said.

As soon as they cut I waved Tristan Clipboard over.

‘Sorry. The girls need the toilet, is there one up here?’

‘Hmmm,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure. We’re nearly finished with this sequence and then I can take you back down to the portaloos. In about five minutes?’

‘Oh … ok,’ I said, there being no other option, but he had already ducked back behind the equipment.

Danny and Dave fighting: Dave punching Danny, Danny kicking Dave. Danny beating Dave and Rudi entering the fray. Rudi jumping Danny from behind and Danny going down for the last time.

‘No fair!’ said Michael.

‘And thus the powerful tame us,’ sighed Walter.

But the fight wasn’t quite over yet. Everything stopped for a few minutes while Tony Ramos, dressed in the same grubby nightshirt the rest of us peasants wore, was escorted on to the set by six or seven people.

‘Ho, Rudi!’ Tony yelled, pointing at Rudi, ‘you’re gettin’ it, Big Man!’

Everyone laughed. It was funny, an international film star behaving like a Ned.

‘Hiya Trixie,’ he yelled next to me.

‘Auntie Trixie?’

‘Don’t ask, Rachel, it’s a private joke. Just for the grown-ups.’

‘Ailsa really needs to go to the bathroom.’

‘Ok,’ I said turning my attention to Ailsa. ‘Ailsa, are you ok?’

She didn’t look ok.

‘Excuse me,’ I discreetly asked Tristan as the Tony entourage passed, ‘can I take the kids to the toilet now?’

‘Sorry, we’re bringing Mr Ramos on set just now.’

‘Yes I can see that but …’

‘I’ll be with you in a few minutes,’ he smiled obsequiously.

‘Everything cool, Trixie?’ Tony asked me.

I obviously wasn’t as discreet as I’d thought.

‘Toilet?’ he whispered.

I nodded.

‘Use my trailer. Hey Tristan, take them down to my trailer, will you?’

‘Certainly, Mr Ramos.’

‘Eh, now please, Tris?’

‘Of course.’

I turned to Walter, ‘Can you keep your eye on the rest of them please? Ok girls,’ I said, shoving my frozen feet back into my shoes, ‘let’s get you to the loo. Ailsa, why are you crying pet, what’s wrong?’

I almost wished we were back on set. Up there at least it was well lit. Here, halfway down the hill, it was so dark I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.

We hadn’t made it to Tony’s trailer, but on the plus side, due to Ailsa’s little accident, Walter, the children and I had been ‘released’.

‘Stay together,’ I ordered the kids, but I hardly needed to. They huddled round me, hanging on to my jacket as we blindly shuffled forward over the uneven ground. Once we’d got our own clothes back on, there was no one available to escort us back to the bus but Tristan said we could leave. We could have come round the lochan – there was a straightforward path down the hill from there – but Walter would have none of it.

‘Och, it’s best to stay well away from that horrible wee lochan,’ he said dismissively. ‘There’s all sorts of horrible beasties round there, big ugly pikes that jump out and eat you; I’ve even heard there’s a kelpie and we’re not wanting drowned now, are we? No, no, we don’t need to go all the way round, we’re much quicker just going straight down the hill.’

Jan had been asked to stay on and film another scene where he and other henchmen dragged a pregnant young woman from a house and set fire to it. He was donating his fee to the guitar group,
so although it was distasteful, it was for charity. I kept thinking about those breeches they made him wear. They were ridiculous, and yet …

The kids were moaning about the walk.

‘Cheer up you lot,’ I said into the pitch black, ‘we’ll be sitting on the nice warm coach soon.’

But, cold and exhausted, none of us had enough energy left to cheer up.

‘I know,’ Walter said gleefully, ‘we can use my iPhone.’

‘Brilliant! Do you have a flashlight app?’

‘Nope,’ he replied chirpily.

Walter had finally lost the plot. Shock and trauma can do that to old people, turn them demented, I was starting to feel a bit Alzheimersy myself.

Walter set his phone to camera and took a photo of the darkness. A flash illuminated the path before us for a millisecond, only enough to give us a brief light-blinded impression. When I opened my eyes again it was even darker than before.

‘Cheers for that, Walter.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘look.’

He passed me his phone and sure enough, there was a clear photo of what lay ahead for at least the next thirty yards or so. In the photo, about five feet in front of us, there was a deep trench to the right-hand side. If it wasn’t for Walter’s techno nous we would have toppled like lemmings into it.

‘I thought as much,’ Walter muttered, ‘so much water comes off this hill, see where the irrigation ditches criss-cross? Come on everybody, get in behind Trixie and me on the left-hand side.’

Walter took up the position but the kids were reluctant.

‘C,mon now. It’ll be just like in
The Lord of the Rings
,’ said Walter, ‘where Frodo and his companions are blindfolded and led through the forest.’

‘So, are you and Trixie elves?’ asked Michael.

‘Aye, that’s it,’ Walter agreed with a wink to me, ‘not many people know this but Trixie is actually Galadriel, the elf Queen.’

Taking photos every twenty yards, Sherpa Walter saw us safely
off the hill, but when we made it to the coaches they were deserted and locked.

‘Gone fishin’,’ said Walter clicking his tongue, ‘the fishing waistcoat over the driver’s chair is gone. He could be gone for hours. We might as well keep moving, it’ll be warmer than waiting, and at least the road is easier to walk.’

The kids instantly commenced whining and slumping to the ground, too exhausted to walk any further.

‘Och weesht!’ said Walter, his patience threadbare, ‘are you really complaining because there isn’t a luxury coach to take you home?’

Here we go, I thought, we’re going to get the standard Grumpy Old Man’s you-kids-don’t-know-you’re-born-it-wasn’t-like-this-in-my-day speech.

‘Hey, c’mon Walter,’ I joked, trying to coax him, ‘we were all getting on like a house on fire.’

Walter shook his head sadly.

‘You have no respect. Laugh Trixie, laugh away, it’s just a filum, silly playacting. But years ago the people from that village actually saw their houses on fire, their homes burned down. They were forced to walk away in bare feet. This is the exact route they took and plenty of them froze to death or later starved.’

‘I’m sorry, Walter, I wasn’t thinking.’

‘They didn’t have nice warm beds to go home to. They had to build the houses that you all live in today. You can be grateful your ancestors did that for you.’

‘We don’t have an Aunt Cestor,’ said Rachel, ‘we’ve only got an Aunt Pauline.’

‘No,’ explained Michael, ‘ancestors; like grannies.’

‘Not our granny,’ shrugged Rachel, ‘she lives in Tenerife.’

Walter sighed. I thought he had given up, finally defeated by their indefatigable carelessness but still he carried on.

‘Not your immediate granny but her granny and her granny before her, and many more beyond …’

‘So how many grannies ago?’ said Rachel.

‘Well …’ said Walter.

Energised by the question, he was now striding ahead. Curious to know the answer, we trotted along behind.

‘Let’s say twenty years per generation, five grannies per century, that would roughly mean that the villagers are your granny’s granny’s granny’s granny’s granny’s granny’s granny’s granny’s …’

The kids fastened to the hypnotic sing-song of the two-syllable chant and we marched back into Inverfaughie beating out the rhythm of ‘… granny’s granny’s granny’s granny’s granny’s granny’s granny’s …’

The place was hoaching with strangers. Even the machair, usually a desolate place, was busy. As I drove past there was a crowd standing at the gate. The same builder’s truck that had fenced off the property next door to Harrosie was waiting to go through, loaded with long wooden poles. Not another fence. Another beautiful view spoilt. Less Highland idyll, more Russian gulag. People were talking to the driver. I recognised some of the farmers, and in the midst of them, Jackie. I pulled over and parked.

This was too good an opportunity to miss. Jackie always did his utmost to avoid me in the village, even changing direction when he saw me coming, so I rarely had the chance to observe him up close these days.

For those brief golden months while he’d been my gardener I’d had good reason to look at him: I was entitled to supervise his work, and I took full advantage, sneaking peeks at the muscles on his shirtless back as he leaned into the digging.

I thought back to what my first impression of Jackie had been: he was breathtakingly beautiful. I think I’d actually gasped at how handsome he was. He certainly didn’t look like a gardener, more like a hunky fireman or a guy from a diet coke ad. Not far off six feet and broad as a house. Not fat, muscley: down and dirty. Manly.

I shivered. It gave me the creeps to remember how I’d lusted after him.

Now, at this distance, it was fascinating to see how he behaved when he didn’t know I was watching. He was talking passionately to the people standing next to him, his face fizzing: eyes burning, teeth flashing – but not with his lady-killer smile; he didn’t look happy at all.

For the first time I noticed how old Jackie was beginning to look. Because of his good looks it was easy to forget that he was sixteen years older than me, and I was no spring chicken. What was he doing here at the machair? Surely he wasn’t working as an extra? Operating his boat tours and all the gardening and odd-job work he took, he was already working too hard for a man in his fifties. I felt a slight panic at the idea of Jackie ageing, becoming a pathetic old man, but that’s what would inevitably happen. The cords in his neck stood out and his coat drooped forwards off his shoulders. He looked tired, beat; like a boxer losing his last ever humiliating bout. Maybe it was only when he knew someone was watching that he sucked in his gut and set his face to handsome. I put the car in gear and drove away hoping he hadn’t spotted me.

‘It’s all kicking off now,’ said Jenny.

This as I entered the shop.

‘What is?’

‘Everything. It’s a scandal.’

Before I had the chance for further questions her mobile began to ring. To halt me she showed me the underside of her index finger, holding it in front of my face in the annoying schoolteacherish way she had.

By the terse ‘uh huh’s and ‘right’s she was barking into her phone I could tell this call was scandal related. Everything was kicking off. I felt a delicious ripple of anticipation. Pure uncut scandal would very soon be flooding my system, my whole body tingling, the pleasure centres in my brain going off like roman candles. Jenny was my dealer in this town, my gossip orgasmatron. I only had to wait until she got off the phone. I cast around the shop looking for something to distract me. A filum.

In the last few weeks the stock in Jenny’s shop had changed radically. Until recently she’d stocked such exotic fare as pickled onions and mayonnaise on her ‘world foods’ shelf. Now she had all manner of organically certified wholefoods. The packaging was a uniform dreich brown paper, but despite this the products were three times the price. I wasn’t complaining – overall it was an improvement. In the past the chill cabinet had been full of brick-sized bargain-brand cheese wrapped in cling film. Reading the label I discovered it wasn’t even technically cheese. It was legally required to be called ‘cheese food’ and looked and tasted more like plastic explosives than actual cheese. Now at least she had some quality local cheese and, to go with the new food, she’d introduced a line of kitchen gadgets. You could now purchase a fish kettle or a pasta maker if you were so inclined.

Jenny had also revamped her DVD rental section. Until a few weeks ago the rack had only Hollywood blockbusters. Now it was full of films where nothing happened, usually in Russian or Japanese, in black and white, and where characters often unaccountably took their clothes off. That must be why they were called movie buffs. Why anyone would want to watch naked foreign people not doing anything was beyond me. Jenny said it was kinky and I readily agreed.

‘Not kinky!’ Jenny had laughed, ‘although some of those filums are a bit raunchy, I grant you. No, I mean KINKIE: Keep It Niche, Keep It Expensive. It’s a good business model when your customer base shifts to the chattering classes. Och, shut your gub, Trixie, you’ll catch a fly.’

Kinkie, indeed. Jenny could make even a business acronym sound daring. This was going to be great. Finally she got off the phone. My scalp tingled as I felt the anticipation rise.

‘Do you not read your emails?’ she snipped.

‘Aye.’ I hesitated. ‘Well, not today, not yet.’

‘They’ve locked us out of the machair.’

I was still on the backfoot about the email so I didn’t react with the level of shock to this news that Jenny was obviously expecting.

‘G.I. have locked everyone out,’ she reiterated.

‘I didn’t know they were filming there just now.’

‘They’re not,’ she said, ‘they’re putting in a perimeter fence to stop us getting access. The farmers can’t graze their cattle.’

‘But why?’

Jenny lifted her shoulders and opened her hands in a gesture of bewilderment. I finally caught up with her indignation and managed to muster some of my own.

‘That’s not on,’ I asserted. ‘The deal was that everyone could use the machair except when they’re actually filming. I remember Betty Robertson saying that.’

Jenny nodded. That was obviously the way she remembered it too.

‘We’ve called a public meeting; this concerns us all. Seven o’clock tonight. We’ve requested that G.I. send a representative to explain this outrageous behaviour. That wee Miss Yip would be the one I’d expect. We need a full turn-out tonight,’ she continued, ‘a show of strength, show them they can’t mess with us. I emailed you asking you to put the word out but I think between Walter and Jackie they’ve covered everybody.’

As a rule, Jenny never mentioned Jackie’s name to me, she seemed to sense how raw it was, and she was always careful not to stir up any resentment. But as she was the one who’d mentioned him, I took my opportunity to find out more.

‘I just passed Jackie there.’ I omitted to mention that I’d parked and watched him. ‘He’s standing at the machair gates with a crowd of other people.’

‘Pickets. They’re trying to persuade the G.I. staff not to cross the picket line, but they’ve had no luck so far.’

I wanted to talk a bit more about Jackie. Why was it so difficult? I’d love to be able to casually mention him in conversation, ask after his health, the way normal people did. But Jenny had already moved on.

‘There are other things we can do. If G.I. want to play dirty we can do the same. For example, we could stop offering them accommodation. How would they make their filum if they had nowhere to sleep?’

I bristled involuntarily at this but quickly covered it by pretending to feel cold. If I lost my B&B income now I’d never be able to buy my flat in Glasgow. I’d never get out of Inverfaughie.

‘Och, it’ll probably blow over,’ I said. ‘You know what they’re like, always having equipment breakdowns; they’ve no doubt shut the machair because of some technical problem. It’ll only be for a couple of hours.’

‘I don’t care why they’ve shut it, or for how long,’ said Jenny, leaning over the counter. ‘They don’t have the authority. Our farmers are being denied their grazing rights. G.I. have used their money and power to take whatever they want without our permission, but we run this village, not G.I. We need to show them that.’

‘I don’t think we need to throw them out on the street just yet, Jenny. We don’t want to do anything rash.’

‘For the good of the village we have to pull together or they’ll win. They’ll try to play us off against each other, divide and conquer by buying some of us off with their pathetic windfall. We have to be strategic and political; this isn’t the time for self-interest.’

I took a step back at the sheer brass neck of the woman. Self-in-terest? She was a fine one to talk. She was in this to enhance her career prospects as M.S.P. and increase her votes. She had bent over backwards to accommodate G.I., not out of kindness or good old-fashioned Highland hospitality, but for her own kinkie profit. She was making a fortune out of this hand-knitted wholefood malarkey. This shop was full of Jenny’s organically certified self-interest.

‘But if some lost their B&B income while others continued to profit that might divide the village even more.’

‘You mean me, don’t you? Well, I’ll have to think about that but I’m only suggesting a possible strategy. That’s what the meeting’s for, but meanwhile I’m not going to show the enemy my hand, am I?’

‘Oh, are G.I. the enemy now? Last week they were the best thing that ever happened to Inverfaughie.’

‘God love you, Trixie,’ said Jenny, as she expertly slashed open a crisp box with a Stanley knife, ‘you’ve got a lot to learn about politics.’