Scotlander, page 19
She raised her eyebrows, justifiably waiting for a) an explanation and b) an apology for disappearing yesterday. When he’d returned late last night from the auctioneers in Inverness, Orla had still been up, folding laundry and pulling things out of the oven. She’d told him Willa had seemed okay with his not being there. That she’d joined Gabe for part of the day and Jennifer and Fenella for the rest of it.
He was glad to hear she and Gabe had made friends again but knew how his absence would’ve translated to her: an abandonment.
Tears had rolled down her cheeks when she’d told him that she didn’t know why Valentina had sent her here. Now that Gabe knew why he was here, she’d admitted to feeling like a useless bystander. He didn’t think he meant anything to her, but he had a feeling his absence would’ve compounded that. Today he was making it his mission to ensure she knew there was someone apart from Gabe who had her back.
‘Piglets,’ he said, reaching out to take her hand.
She looked at it like he’d just offered her a handful of cow dung and stuffed her hands in her pinafore. Fair enough. She did, however, follow him as he headed out of the courtyard, no doubt mouthing something to the rest of the group on the lines of, ‘Don’t worry, I’m going to slip some arsenic into his tea.’ Which, frankly, would solve a lot of problems. For Orla, anyway.
He pointed at the Land Rover, engine still running, then drove to the barns in silence. The impression he’d made on her (a bad one) was worsening by the minute, but he was full of feelings and his usual ability to go beyond your average stoic Scottish person’s limited capacity for expressing them wasn’t functioning. He knew he’d be pushing it, but he was hoping Willa and all her Hollywood-talking-stick energy would help him.
When they arrived, Willa didn’t jump out of the jeep. ‘What?’ he asked.
‘I should be asking you the same thing.’
‘I told you.’ He opened his car door. ‘Piglets.’
‘Yeah . . .’ She spun her finger round. ‘And . . .’
He shook his head. ‘And . . . piglets.’
‘If that’s the way you want to play it, Braveheart.’
He slammed the door shut. It drove him nuts when people’s history of Scotland was a foundation laid by Mel Gibson. He liked history. He liked Scottish history. It was complex and tribal and passionate. A people united by one thing – the love of the land they’d been born to. And, hundreds of years on – thousands, even – he was no different.
She followed him into the barn where, true to Duncan’s text, their sow Isla had had a dozen little fat piglets.
An instant sense of calm washed through him. Being here, with the animals, inhaling the barn scents, hearing the gentle rustling of the cows beyond the rail-tie wall brought his hammering pulse down a few notches.
‘Oh my god!’ Willa, irritation forgotten, beamed at him. She had this amazing glow when she was overcome with pure happiness and, he had to admit, it was nice to bask in something positive for once.
She rushed into the pen, not waiting for him to run through a health-and-safety spiel and, having clearly done this before, plonked herself down in a corner where she could watch the little things, all dozen of whom were currently nestled on and around their mum after a good feed.
‘You’re a lot more cow town than you like to admit, aren’t you?’
She gave a shrug, not meeting his gaze. The gesture was a kick in the gut. Yet again, he’d managed to unwittingly insult her.
‘I meant it as a compliment.’
‘It wasn’t one.’
‘Why? You’re good with the animals. What’s wrong with that?’
She whipped her head round and stared at him, mouth open but no words coming out. He got it. The answer should be obvious. But it wasn’t. Not to him, anyway. Which wasn’t a huge surprise seeing as he was making a hash of just about everything he put his hand to lately.
‘Look, how about we do a do over?’
She gave a single shoulder shrug.
‘I owe you an apology.’
‘Oh, wow! How very Mr Manners of you.’
She caught his flinch and he saw the remorse he was feeling cross over to her. Not the plan at all when she was clearly the one who’d been treated poorly.
‘I should’ve told you I was going to be away. I’m sorry for that.’
‘Yeah, well . . . I know how to build a wall out of rocks now, so if you do it again I can pre-build your cairn.’ She faked a couple of karate chops to show him she was kidding/not kidding/but actually kidding. Sort of.
And then what she’d just said registered. His mouth went dry. ‘Did you— Were you up at the cairn?’
‘Yeah. Trevor showed it to us.’ She pointed out, up towards the hill where they’d buried his father. ‘Really amazing stones. They stack well.’
A Highland cow slamming into him would’ve hurt less. ‘You used the stones from the cairn to fix the wall?’
She bridled. ‘We’ve been through this before, Finn.’ She pointed her index fingers at herself. ‘Just because I interview celebrities for a living does not mean I suffer from a microscopic IQ.’
He’d pissed her off. Royally. But how was he supposed to know what she did and didn’t know. She was as easy to get close to as . . . Duncan. And that was saying something. ‘I wasn’t—’ He stopped and tried to put himself in her shoes. She’d been doing what she’d been told and if anyone should pay for this, it was Trevor. He tried again. ‘It wasn’t an accusation, it’s just . . . that’s my dad’s grave.’
‘Oh god, Finn.’ Her hands crossed over one another on her chest. ‘I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t have snapped at you like that. Of course we didn’t. No. Trevor made a special point of saying what a cairn was and that we were, under no circumstances, to use any of the rocks in it for the wall. But he didn’t say who was laid to rest there. I’m so sorry.’
The pressure released a bit. As did the flaming ball of wrath he’d been about to unleash on Trevor.
Willa wove her hands together in prayer position, her eyes seeking his for absolution.
He pulled off his cap and scrubbed his hand through his hair. ‘No, I’m sorry. I jumped to a conclusion and shouldn’t have.’ He huffed out a short laugh. ‘You really drew the short straw, didn’t you? In the Jamie department.’
‘Well . . . when you consider Trevor as an alternative . . .’ she began, a soft smile tweaking at the edges of her lips.
The connection thawed something in him. Reminded him that he’d sought her out. Wanted Willa, of all the people in Scotland, to be the one who helped him figure out how he was going get through today, tomorrow, and with any luck the next fortnight without any of the guests knowing the farm was facing imminent foreclosure.
He crossed over to her and slid down the wall so that they were sitting side by side, watching the piglets. He’d seen this scores of times and still . . . they were the cutest little things. All snout and diddy little legs. Polka-dotted. What wasn’t to love? An ache he rarely liked to acknowledge pressed against his chest.
‘My dad used to bring me out here,’ he said.
‘When piglets were born?’
‘No – well, that too, but . . .’ C’mon, Finn. Wear your big boy pants. ‘He used to bring me out here when he wanted to talk about difficult stuff.’
‘Like?’
‘The farm mostly. The responsibilities that came with it. The castle.’
‘It’s a good place to do that.’
‘Aye.’
Willa turned to him after more than a few awkward seconds had ticked past. ‘Finn, are you trying to tell me you need to have a difficult conversation with me? If yesterday was cold feet, or you’ve got better things to do elsewhere, or there’s a jealous girlfriend who’s going to come claw my eyes out, I’d be mighty grateful if you gave me a heads up. My ego can only take so much without immediate access to ice cream. Preferably rum raisin.’
He smiled. They barely knew one another, but he already felt familiar with her tendency to cosset her fears in humour. He owed it to her to be straight.
‘There’s no jealous girlfriend. No girlfriend at all. I didn’t have cold feet. But I do have a lot to do. Crisis-management stuff.’
She made an I-need-more beckoning gesture.
‘Where should I start?’
‘The beginning is usually traditional, but I’ll leave the structure up to you.’
He started at the beginning.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The trouble with trying to dislike a guy pouring out his life story in a delicious Scottish accent while holding a piglet in his lap is that it’s pretty much impossible. Doubly so when that particular Scotsman was Finlay Jamieson, a man whose story – a proper heartbreaker – was bringing tears to her eyes.
She should be furious. Enraged that Finn and his family had been so duplicitous. They’d been brought here for the express purpose of getting money to fix a potato harvester?
The money Val had spent on this immersive experience could have gone to her kids, her husband, a cancer charity.
Then again . . . all the guests were having a ball. They were even having a competition over who was getting the most blisters. (ChiChi was winning.)
Confusion tore through her. Only someone who was desperate would have done this. Gone to this level of effort to make ends meet. And it wasn’t like Orla was planning on lying around in a gold-plated bath full of ass’s milk after this. She was going to pour what money was left over from hosting them into farm machinery. Nobody’s coffers would be overflowing at the end of this.
Another set of questions pulled her up short. Should she tell Gabe? Would knowing this whole thing was a set-up change the reasons everyone had come?
A full-on existential crisis set in.
She scoured her brain for answers to questions only Val could answer. Why had she chosen this specific place to reintroduce Gabe to Lachlan? And why bring her along as a third wheel?
Sometimes you have to step away from the person you think you are, to become the one you want to be.
Maybe she’d got it wrong. Maybe Gabe was the one who’d been brought along to be her support system and Lachlan was the sugar pill, a gift from the past to keep him here.
She had to stay. Right? This was one of those quests where you didn’t find the answer until the end. So that’s what she’d do. She’d stay.
For herself. For Val. For all the guests who thought they were here on a legitimate holiday. After all, what they were doing probably wasn’t that far off from what the real Jacobeans did. A stark reminder that farming life continued to be physically and emotionally draining several hundred years on. The fact Finn, a man who struggled to spend time with his family was here, trying to help them with this deceit, told her all she needed to know. These were desperate measures.
If this failed, they’d lose Balcraigie.
‘I don’t know how easy it’s going to be to keep this quiet.’
Finn’s expression twisted as if she’d shivved him. ‘If I could give everyone their money back I would.’ He gave the piglet a stroke. His hand was shaking.
She bit her lip. ‘Look, it doesn’t have to come to that. When they understand your life history—’
‘History doesn’t matter. The future does.’
Willa sucked in a breath. ‘History does matter! It’s part of who you are. Being twelve and watching your mum marry her dead husband’s chief rival the year after he died is . . . is . . .’
How did you say a real fucker of a start in life but prettier?
‘Movie stuff?’ Finn volunteered.
‘Yes,’ she agreed. That was it, exactly. ‘Actors would totally fight it out to play you.’
‘Yeah? Well . . .’ He shook his head and sighed a big, heavy sigh. ‘If you could ask the scriptwriter how I can save the farm I’d owe you.’
‘Well.’ She grinned. ‘Putting other people’s real-life problems into film context is actually one of my superpowers.’
Finn raised a go-on eyebrow.
Willa instantly warmed to the task. ‘We need to turn your life into the equivalent of an inspirational underdog story. One of those low-budget films no one thinks will do well but actually pulls in millions at the box office.’
‘Comedy or tragedy?’
She gave him a come-on look. ‘Inspirational with funny bits, but deep, inescapably gut-wrenching emotion at the heart of it.’ She held up a hand so she could continue. ‘I know being the dour Scot is kind of your thang, but hear me out. Everyone, and I mean everyone, loves a grump who is touched by the largesse of his community. Especially if he’s a hottie.’
He shot her a look. She blushed. It was all very embarrassing.
‘Okay, then.’ He spread out his hands as if opening the floor to her. ‘What do I do to avoid turning this into a tragedy?’
‘You’ve got to ask the villagers for help.’
He lifted his eyebrows. ‘Yer bum’s oot the windae, lass.’
‘Translation, please.’
‘Not a chance. They hate me. Always have.’
‘No,’ she corrected. ‘They hate who they think your father was and, by proxy, you – mostly because you’ve done nothing over the years to change the impression because, from your perspective, you were protecting your father’s honour.’ On a roll now, she shifted round so she was facing him, cross-legged. ‘Look, I don’t like to brag, but I am a bit of an expert on the inspirational film oeuvre, and this is one of those moments when you’re going to have to dig deep, realise you’re part of something bigger than yourself and reach out to the people you’ve never thought of as allies.’
‘Now you’re speaking in tongues.’
She thought for a moment then said, ‘I’m going to do a shrink thing and repeat to you what I heard when you told me about your past and, more pressingly, your future.’
He made an oh-god groan.
She held up her hand. ‘You want my help? We have to do a bit of touchy-feely stuff. I need to make sure we’re on the same page.’
‘Fair enough.’ He leant back against the thick wooden ties and closed his eyes as she repeated his story to him.
His parents – Scottish mother and English father – had met at a pub in Edinburgh when his mum was finishing her university course. It had been a love-at-first-sight connection. His mum was from Balcraigie and had been having a long-distance relationship with a boy she’d known for ever and wrote to him the next morning to tell him it was off. It had been his father’s idea to buy Balcraigie Castle. Finn’s mum used to play in the derelict castle as a girl and had countless, unfulfillable dreams about living there one day. His dad wanted to make those dreams come true and poured every penny he’d earned, and some he’d inherited when his own parents passed, into buying it. There hadn’t been a solitary room that was fit for purpose, but they hadn’t cared. They had hopes and dreams enough to carry them through the renovations his architect father had for the castle. Finn had grown up living as wild and free as a boy in the Jacobean era might have. Roaming the hills. Fishing in the loch. Picking berries from the hedgerows in the summer and teaching himself to start fires with a pair of sticks in the winter. Money was tight. They lived in a double-wide caravan parked in the walled garden. When it began to look as if they might never be able to afford to do up even a handful of rooms, the council had come to them, asking if they would sell some perimeter land so that the village could build some more affordable housing. It would be enough to do up five rooms in the castle. His parents agreed. Finn’s father volunteered to design the houses for free. He was, after all, an architect. The council said no but kept the decision quiet. Some pretty awful homes were built – shoddy workmanship, an eyesore – and the only one who looked as if they’d come out of the situation with anything positive was Finn’s family who everyone knew were going to be living in a castle.
‘It was at this point’, Willa said, watching as Finn’s shoulders began twitching and flexing as if reliving it all in a REM nightmare, ‘when the usually friendly villagers turned.’ Almost overnight, his father had gone from being a hero whose ownership of Balcraigie ‘kept things local’ to that ‘bloody Englishman, storming in, taking over, lording it about everyone with his fancy this and fancy that’ completely forgetting that Finn, his mother and father had lived in near poverty for years. Farming, it turned out, had not been his father’s gift.
Willa swallowed before starting the next bit.
Tragedy struck. On a rare morning off from farm work, Finn’s dad died. Their border collie had swum far out into the loch to try to ‘round up’ Finn and his dad who’d gone fishing. His dad dived in to get her when she began to struggle. When his dad didn’t climb into the boat after he’d got the dog safely in, Finn, who’d been eight at the time, had thought that his dad was playing one of his practical jokes on him. Swimming under water all the way to the shore. But he had drowned.
They’d been utterly heartbroken. His father had been the centre of their universe. Their light. Their joy. And then, for reasons Finn still couldn’t understand, his mother married her ex a year later. Duncan. Duncan used the money they’d earmarked for the castle to build the modern, pebble-dashed ‘monstrosity’ next to the stables and that had been that. Life went on as if his father had never existed. And Finn had spent the rest of his childhood in a not-so-silent rage.
His mum changed. Was prone to depression and days-long silences. Orla learnt how to cook out of necessity and, only later, when she’d met Dougie, out of joy.
Finn’s childhood was defined by losing his dad and gaining a stepfather he couldn’t – or maybe wouldn’t – bond with. He’d endured a childhood of being picked on for being ‘English muck’ as his stepsister received the full glow of a community ‘looking after its own’. There had been a complete wall of silence from Duncan and Finn’s mum regarding any sort of future for the castle that, until now, had lain completely neglected.
When Finn had gone off to college and then university – more to get space than to study agriculture, which he’d been born to – he’d finally felt he had room to breathe. ‘And that’s when you decided to teach at the agricultural college instead of coming back to Balcraigie. Even though you inherited it when your mom passed, over the years you’d come to think of it as Orla’s.’ She had to tread carefully here. ‘A penance, maybe – a peace offering for a complicated childhood. And even though Duncan and Dougie are good farmers, it’s a tough market. Especially when you’ve double-downed on your potato crop to clear some bills, the potato harvester breaks and there’s no money to fix it.’
