For Faughie's Sake (23 page)

‘Mum, Mum!’ Steven yelled as he came running up the stairs.

That’s how I knew it was serious; he hadn’t called me Mum in weeks.

I was turning a mattress, a heavy one, but I let it fall and ran out to meet him on the landing.

‘What is it, son?’

‘They’ve set up a border!’

‘What border?’

‘Between Faughie and Britain.’

I laughed, ‘Don’t be silly, there isn’t one.’

‘There is. They’ve set up a checkpoint on the Inverness road, military police and everything. Walter was right, it actually worked! Non-compliance with Westminster legislation has turned us into what the UK government are describing as a “volatile region”, how cool is that? They’re saying they can’t guarantee the safety of British nationals and are recalling them to within a “safe” zone.’

‘And then what?’ I asked, still scoffing. ‘They release the dogs? I don’t believe you.’

‘Go downstairs and turn the telly on, it’s on every channel.’

‘Steven, there is no border, this is ridiculous!’

‘Go,’ he said, indicating like an air steward, ‘put the telly on.’

‘FFS! I’m sick of this drama. If it’s not the machair it’s Knox
MacIntyre or firking independence and now there’s suddenly some fictional border?’

‘Let’s call it the Safe Zone, if that’s what you’d prefer. Faughie Council are advising everyone to remain calm and sit tight.’

‘Right, that’s it; I’ve had enough of this shite. Pack your bags, Steven, we’re getting out of this madhouse.’

‘Relax, Trixie, it’s a scare tactic. They’re not actually stopping anyone coming or going, they can’t, they’re trying to frighten us into leaving. The rumour is that if we get a Yes in the referendum then they can control who enters their borders – and so can we. Walter says it’s perfect. Even Westminster are acknowledging we’re separate. The Court in Luxembourg has to find in our favour now. Faughie Council are co-operating fully with the British security services.’

‘We’ll bunk up at Auntie Nettie’s until we can get our own place, unless you’d rather go back to your dad’s?’

‘Walter says we must do all we can to maintain a good relationship with our British neighbours.’

‘How soon can you be ready, Steven?’

‘Mum, do you not get it? Britain has just recognised our defined borders; this is huge, and you want to leave just when it’s all kicking off?’

‘I don’t care how or where or when it kicks off. I’m out of here, and you are too, if I have to drag you by the hair. Is this about Morag? You know, these holiday romance things …’

‘Morag?’

Steven did a good job of looking absolutely baffled.

‘I know she’s your girlfriend, I’ve seen you at the lighthouse as I’ve driven past,’ I lied, ‘and that’s great, really, I don’t mind. And of course she’s welcome to come and visit us any time in Glasgow if that’s what you’re worried about.’

‘Me? I’m not worried. You’re the one ranting about us running away to Glasgow like fugees.’

‘We’re not refugees, or fugees or whatever you want to call it. We’re Glaswegian, Steven, and we’re going home to Glasgow as soon as I can get the car started.’

‘You’re Glaswegian, Trixie, I’m not.’

‘You’re as Weegie as I am! Steven. Listen to me son, we’re not from here, we’re not Faughian and we never will be; we don’t share their weird wee Faughian ways. We’ve just had the misfortune to land in this fantastical dreamscape and the best thing we can do is get the firk out of here before it turns nasty. I’ve had enough now, this is too stressful. I just want to go home, and I want you to come with me. Please son, let’s go home now while we still can.’

‘I know you want to go, I get it, and that’s fine, and I’m sorry, Mum, I really am.’

‘Steven you’re only sixteen, you …’

He put his hand gently on my shoulder.

‘Mum, I’m sorry. I’m staying.’

Except for the midgies, it was like the fall of Saigon. Near the helipad there was a gale force wind created by helicopters constantly taking off and landing, airlifting Global Imperial’s executives and film stars out of Faughie. Tony Ramos, when asked for a quote for the
Inverfaughie Chanter
, said, ‘Better to die on your feet than live on your knees’, which I seemed to remember a woman character saying in his film about the Spanish civil war. He was neither on his feet nor his knees but on his arse in a comfy seat in a helicopter.

There wasn’t room for everyone in the helicopters and they took to the sea. G.I. chartered every boat big enough to carry cameras and equipment through the loch and down the coast. On behalf of the newly instituted ‘Faughie Boat-owners Incorporated’, or F.B.I., Jackie brokered a deal for him and his mates worth humungous money.

The rest of the tax tourists, holidaymakers, campers, walkers, fishermen, mountaineers, seasonal European farm workers, hotel staff and film crew minions took the Inverness road to the checkpoint, which had been set up fifteen miles outside Inverfaughie. Ethecom volunteered their Routemaster, driven by Jan, to drop people at the checkpoint.

Coincidentally, G.I. had just finished shooting the film. This caused speculation in the papers and in the village about such
convenient timing. Clearly the government had held off putting in their bogus border crossing until G.I. had finished – there was obviously too much money involved. Even so, what had taken weeks to assemble was going to take even longer to get out due to the congestion the panic had created. G.I. sought volunteers from amongst its staff to stay. They were tasked with dismantling sets and equipment and protecting it until such times as G.I. could uplift it. Rudi and his merry band of Claymores applied and got the gig, which dismayed me no end.

‘Are you mad?’ I asked them that night at what, after G.I. had paid me and all their bills had been settled, I’d jokingly referred to as
The Last Supper
. ‘Are you lads off your heads?’

Steven hadn’t come home yet, he was still up at Ethecom, so I was glad he wasn’t around to hear this nonsense. I’d hoped to use the Claymores as an example of people who were smart enough to get out of Dodge.

‘There won’t be much call for combat performers now the movie has finished.’

‘Are you kidding?’ said Rudi, ‘This is a wet dream for my men. We don’t need to
perform
any more. We’re doing it for real now.’

‘But how will you earn money?’

‘There’s plenty of work on the farms.’

‘But are you not frightened that you’ll be trapped here after the referendum?’

‘Nope, are you?’

Rudi and I came to a new arrangement. The Claymores could stay until I was ready to go. No sense in shutting down my revenue stream before I needed to, and I had yet to convince Steven to leave.

Since the machair dispute had been resolved I’d stepped up my flat hunting. I was now registered with every estate agent in Glasgow and spent every spare moment poring over home reports, looking at photos and taking virtual tours. My old neighbourhood was now well out of my league, but there were other flats in other neighbourhoods. The difficulty was in securing a mortgage. The mortgage advisor I’d spoken to on the phone had expected me to be working – financial security had tightened up considerably since
the last time I’d bought a flat. Now they were looking for proof of earning, an employment contract. So I registered with every employment agency in Glasgow, but the thought of returning to my old job as a medical sales rep was giving me the heebie-jeebies. If I examined my conscience and looked down deep in my soul, I really didn’t want to go back to that huckstering.

I was going to miss being a landlady. Landladying had suited me very well. I enjoyed making up the menus and experimenting with new recipes. I’d learned how to run a business and my baking and cooking had improved no end. Of course, the cleaning was boring, but also satisfying and I was my own boss, that was the best part. If I could uproot Harrosie and take it with me to Glasgow I would. I now started looking at bigger properties but there was a huge gap between a deposit on a two-bedroomed flat and a deposit on a B&B.

After the initial panic, the queues dwindled at the checkpoint until there was no waiting and it became a drive-thru. In all the telly coverage the government were keen to emphasise that everyone who wanted to leave had ample opportunity. I wanted to leave. I had ample opportunity.

So many people had left I’d expected to find a ghost town, movie prop tumbleweed rolling across the Caley car park, but the village was still quite animated. I’d been sent an email inviting all citizens of Faughie to the launch of the new market.

I’d been to a farmer’s market once before in Glasgow. Until then I’d had no idea that farmers spent so much time producing chocolates, soap, candles, tea-cosies, cufflinks, rat catchers, sun catchers and dream catchers. And who knew farmers were good at face-painting? Everything was priced at three times what it cost in the supermarket. How did that work?

This market had none of the froufrou fripperies of the Glasgow farmer’s market. This was all about old-fashioned hunks of meat, actual blood-stained limbs, naked and raw, without so as much as a sprig of plastic parsley to cover their modesty. And wildly, hilariously misshapen produce: an apple that was almost perfectly oblong, an oversized tomato skewed to one side like a Tam o’ Shanter, a tiny turnip shaped like a wee dog’s willy. Some of these
fruit and veg were far too interesting to eat. Everyone crowded round these stalls giggling and taking pictures on their phones. Why did you never see fun stuff like this in supermarkets?

Walter, Jenny and Brenda got up on their soap box, which was actually a few shoogly wooden pallets, to formally declare the farmer’s market open. Jenny seemed nervous, probably from all the cameras trained on her, so she gave quite a formal and mercifully short speech. She asked that sellers charge no more than a reasonable mark-up and that buyers report any instances of profiteering. Going by the prices I’d seen so far, they were comparable to Asda, if not cheaper. Walter backed her up and, true to form, made all sorts of political and classical allusions. He started comparing the setting-up of the market, ‘by the people for the people’, to the 1970s work-in by the Glasgow shipyard workers.

‘Sadly we’re all aware of the recent increase of unruly behaviour and public disorder in our village. This is partly due to an unwise quantity of strong drink taken, but also, I believe, to the presence of agent provocateurs in our midst, whose chief aim is to stir up division amongst us. I hope you’ll join me in sending them this message: Faughie is for the benefit and enjoyment of everyone. Jimmy Reid put it so well in his entreaty to the shipyard workers when he said, ‘There will be no hooliganism, there will be no vandalism, there will be no bevvying …’

Everyone laughed. It was funny to hear Walter use such informal language so passionately, but everyone quickly sobered when they caught the sense, and felt the weight, of what he was saying.

‘… because the world is watching us, and it is our responsibility to conduct ourselves with responsibility, and with dignity, and with maturity.’

He said more but I couldn’t hear him over the noise of a wee low-flying aircraft that was headed towards the loch. As it flew over, some of the TV news crews that had been avidly following the speechifying suddenly packed up, jumped in their vans and sped off. I thought no more of it until later that evening.

I was back at my post, in the kitchen making dinner, contemplating the hopelessness of my situation and cursing my inability
to leave Steven in this wee blighted village when I heard the jeers and laughter. The Claymores were watching the telly in the lounge.

‘Trixie, come and see!’ Dave shouted, ‘you’re going to love this!’

I rushed into the lounge wiping my hands on a tea towel. Dave paused the live TV, rewound and replayed.

They were covering Inverfaughie on the six o’clock news. This was no longer a novelty. Faughie often made the news these days, and never in a good way. The wee plane that I’d seen earlier was now on the telly dropping cardboard boxes in the field next to the lighthouse field. That’s where the camera crews had scooted off to. External No campaign sympathisers were dropping food parcels for the starving people of Faughie.

‘Shameless propaganda,’ said Rudi, tutting, ‘the whole thing’s a set-up.’

‘But it’s funny,’ said Ewan.

It was funny. It was hilarious watching them dodge the cardboard boxes falling out of the sky.

‘That’s Keek!’ I squealed in delight, ‘and Bell Boy behind him, that’s him, see? That’s the back of his head!’

‘That guy doesn’t need a food parcel,’ said Ewan, as we watched Bell Boy waddle across the field to retrieve a box.

‘C’mon, be fair,’ said Dave, ‘you don’t know what’s in them, could be diet shakes.’

‘Yeah, a WeightWatchers’ mercy mission,’ said Ewan.

Bell Boy ripped open the box to show the camera what was inside: packets of rice and pasta and a few tins.

‘Just a protein shake for lunch and I’m full all the way to dinner-time!’ said Ewan in a high camp voice.

Dave’s was even camper: ‘Then I have a fish supper and six pints!’ he squealed.

Everybody laughed at the banter, but the biggest laugh was yet to come. They’d seen it before me so they were all waiting for it.

‘There’s your pal,’ said Dave.

On the screen a headscarved welly-booted peasant woman smiled for the camera. As the wee plane flew above her she shielded her eyes and looked up. She waved and then gave an affectionate
salute as she watched it soar away into the distance. For a few moments she stood still, as though she was waiting, hoping that it might return and rescue her. Betty Robertson, dressed like a refugee with not as much as a smear of lipstick on her, turned back to the camera with a wistful sigh, still clinging to her food parcel as the shot dissolved.

I laughed so hard I thought I’d wet myself.

‘What a ham,’ said Rudi in disgust.

‘It’s not ham, it’s diet shakes,’ said Ewan.

‘Och, you all have a good laugh, go on, laugh it up, but people all over the world are watching this,’ said Rudi, sooking the fun out of it, ‘they don’t know Betty Robertson, they think this is real. You mark my words, this isn’t good. Not for us, not for Faughie. Not good at all.’