Where Have All the Boys Gone? (24 page)

‘Yikes, that is so humiliating on so many levels, I can’t even…oh, God. Really. Togas?’

‘It’s just a bit of fun,’ said Louise.

‘Selling sex for mercenary gain in public,’ said Katie. ‘Well, it does
sound
fun.’

‘And the bidding starts at £100.’

‘You are joking. Who’s going to pay that?’

‘Actually, the women are already offering pre-emptive bids. I heard them.’

‘Who for?’

‘By the looks of some of them, I don’t think they’re that fussy. Craig’s doing it.’

‘Craig who? Craig the Vet?’

Louise nodded.

‘Well, you have been having some cosy little chats. Is this turning mushy?’

Louise rolled her eyes. ‘I was advising him on whether or not he should put himself up for auction for a date with another woman. What do you think?’

‘Clever reverse psychology?’

‘No,’ said Louise. ‘We’re just chums. Mind you, it will be interesting to see them all in togas…’

‘Yeah,’ said Katie.

‘What about you and the newspaper boy…’

‘Don’t. Don’t start me.’

‘What happened?’

‘Oh, bollocks, I just saw him with some other girl.’

‘See,’ said Louise. ‘We’ve ruined this place. I’m sorry petal.’

‘I’m used to it,’ said Katie. ‘Stupid blokes.’

‘Stupid blokes.’ They clinked their cups of tea together.

‘That’s the problem with the pretty ones,’ said Louise. ‘Flighty.’

‘Whadya mean?’

Louise shrugged. ‘They just don’t try that hard. What you need is a real man, not a pretty boy. Someone like Harry.’

‘Don’t be stupid. He’s a stuffed shirt.’

‘A
beef-stuffed
shirt,’ said Louise.

‘Who else is doing this stupid auction thing?’ asked Katie, changing the subject. She didn’t want to discuss Iain any more. Too painful. Or Harry for that matter. Too confusing.

‘Well, Laird Kennedy said he was up for it, but I pointed out that as he owned the castle they were eating in, that should probably do it for the ladies. He said no, he needs the money to fix the roof, and he’s going to open the bidding at ten thousand pounds.’

‘OK,’ said Katie. ‘Who else?’

‘Willie, of course.’

‘They’re tempting him out of his bothy? Wow.’

‘I know,’ said Louise, looking dreamy for a second. ‘Lucky girl who gets him.’

‘OK, OK. I thought we were pretending you were just going on long country walks those times.’

‘Were we?’ Louise blinked. ‘OK then. Lachlan too. A bunch of techies – I think they’re doing it as a group prize.’

‘Don’t tell me – if you win them you get to play Dungeons and Dragons with them for a whole night?’

‘They also said they’re going to order pizza from Inverness. It costs £100 apparently.’

‘To order a pizza?’

‘Newsflash: “we’re not in North London shocker”.’

‘It will be if we can’t get rid of all these women and this bloody golf course.’

Having lost their bakery pariah status, they felt confident in ordering the apple pie, which was slightly better than the shepherd’s pie, though somewhat similar in consistency.

‘Iain of course,’ said Louise, after a period of time.

‘Of course,’ said Katie. ‘Cocky idiot.’

‘I take it you won’t be bidding?’

‘I might, to save another woman from having to go through what I went through,’ said Katie.

‘And Harry, I suppose.’

Katie sniggered. ‘You wish.’

‘Why not? He’ll have to. It’s his party.’

‘Getting Harry in a toga? I think not.’

‘Well, don’t forget a lot of women came because they saw him on telly. I think he’ll make a lot of money.’

Katie shook her head. ‘Well, if that happens, it’ll be something of a miracle.’ She scooped up the last of her apple pie. ‘You know, I’m almost starting to look forward to this.’

‘What do you mean,
almost?’
asked Louise.

‘So, I thought we could get the Cubs in to clean it,’ Laird Kennedy was saying.

Katie was following him around the house. It had certainly been a lot better in her memory than it was in watery daylight. There were cobwebs and missing windowpanes everywhere.

‘The Cubs?’ she said.

‘Yeah, you know, bob a job.’

Katie kicked at some bird poop, which had come through the rickety ceiling and encrusted itself on the floorboards. Her head felt dusty just walking through the door.

‘So, you think the Cubs will overhaul this place in time for Saturday for five pence?’ she said wearily. This was a stupid idea. Stupid stupid stupid. OK, she’d managed to find a marquee, but it was only useful for dinner and dancing. Drinks and general meanderings were meant to take part in the main house. And the main house at the moment looked slightly more fit for playing the film set of a condemned haunted mental institution. ‘Maybe there’s a big contract cleaners in Inverness,’ she said. ‘There must be, surely.’

She thought worriedly about their finances. They’d sold a lot of tickets, but she wanted to preserve as much money as she could, so Harry could fund lawyers and anything else he might need after she’d gone.

‘Naw, it’ll be fine,’ said Kennedy, clearly oblivious to the huge hole in the elbow of his hacking jacket. ‘In fact, they’re on their way over.’

For a split second, she had the image in her mind’s eye of a thousand tiny wee boys running over the house like rats. ‘Really?’

The Laird steered her out to the sadly overgrown lawn. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘it’s really their dads we’re after.’

As he spoke, in the distance, Katie suddenly caught sight of a line of men and boys walking towards them, silhouetted against the trees. They were carrying brooms and mops.

The Laird watched them happily. ‘Fishermen,’ he said. ‘Best cleaners in the world.’

Katie thought of the times she’d seen them washing out their boats and fixing their nets down at the port, and was inclined to agree.

‘There’s not enough work for them any more,’ said Kennedy sadly. ‘It’s all going. And if the golfers come here and price them out of their homes, they’re done for. They know that.’

Katie felt suddenly overwhelmed with melancholy watching these strong men, who’d farmed the same oceans for so many generations, get in line to fight for their village and their forest. She felt a lump in her throat.

‘Thank you,’ she found herself saying.

‘Hmph,’ said the Laird gruffly. ‘Now, if you don’t have time to get stuck in with a duster, I’d get out of here, sharpish.’

Katie’s heart was considerably lighter by the time she got to the office. Food
and
somewhere to go! They might just pull this off after all.

‘No,’ Harry was saying down the phone in his strongest possible tone of voice. ‘Absolutely not. NO. I mean it!’

‘Who was that?’ asked Katie. ‘Toga measuring service?’

‘Trying to stop Dougie from playing the accordion,’ said Harry, covering the speaker with his hand. ‘It’s a bit of a full-time job.’

‘Music!’ cried Katie. ‘God, I forgot all about the music!’

Harry finished his call and stared at her. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, we need a band, and a DJ and things.’

‘Why?’ Harry looked puzzled.

‘For music. Or do you think we should do everything in complete silence?’

‘Uh, no, I think you’ll find,’ Harry went back to shuffling papers, ‘it will be harder to get people to stop playing music than otherwise.’

‘How come?’

‘Well, everyone plays something. Or sings or something.’

‘Really?
What do you play?’

Harry looked embarrassed. He was feeling embarrassed. Having finally come to terms with the fact that he did actually fancy Katie and wasn’t having a mild allergic reaction every time she walked past him, he was doing his best to put it out of his mind and let it wash over him, like pretty much every crush he’d had since he was fourteen. It was the best way, he’d found. ‘Um…’

‘What? The tuba? The bongos? What?’

‘The bagpipes, actually.’

Katie stared at him. ‘NO!’

‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘Really? People play those things?’

‘Yes,’ said Harry. He was actually a very good piper. Bloody English thought it was hilarious to sneer at everything.

‘I always got them confused with cats,’ said Katie. ‘Someone once told me that you just put a cat’s tail in your mouth and squeezed its tummy, and I believed it for years.’

‘You got confused between bagpipes and cats?’

‘Maybe I’ll stroke yours on the head.’

‘Well anyway,’ said Harry. ‘The lads have a good ceilidh band, so there’ll be no trouble with the dancing, and those techie ponces have apparently formed a brass ensemble that can play the entire music from
Star Wars,
so we might have them while we’re eating…
if we’re
eating that is?’

‘Ooh, we’re eating!’ said Katie excitedly. ‘It’ll be food of the pie extraction. But that’s still better than square sausage.’

‘The only type of sausage worth eating,’ said Harry grinning.

‘Hang on,’ said Katie. ‘So, we’re not getting a DJ…but we are having dancing?’

‘Uh-huh.’

Katie’s dancing was entirely limited to a fairly controlled club style (after the rather troubling wave-your-hands-in-the-air-like-you-just-don’t-care stage she’d discarded post-university, along with the tie-dyed T-shirt, the dungarees and the whistle), and the occasional unpleasant tussle when she met one of those young men prevalent on the London scene who have been to three salsa classes and therefore think it is quite acceptable to throw you about the room like a sack of potatoes then get upset with you for failing to follow their psychic dancing instructions.

‘What kind of dancing?’ she asked, very suspiciously.

‘Ceilidh dancing,’ said Harry, as though he was explaining it to an unattentive four-year-old. ‘You know – the kind of dancing you do at parties.’

‘Not the parties I go to,’ said Katie.

‘Oh, come on. You must know a few dances. The Canadian Barn Dance? Eightsome Reel? Gay Gordons?’

‘Gay who now?’

Harry tutted. ‘What did they teach you at school?’

‘How to put a condom on a banana.’

Harry rubbed the back of his neck. ‘So, we’re going to have this dance band…and all these chaps…and all these women…and nobody is going to be able to dance with each other?’

‘Oh, I’m sure we’ll pick it up as we go along,’ said Katie.

‘Hmm,’ said Harry, not convinced. ‘Derek! Have you got a minute?’

‘Sure,’ said Derek, appearing from the back.

‘Could you give us a bit of
puirt-a-beul
?’

‘What, now?’ asked Derek.

‘What, what?’ said Katie.

‘Someone needs to learn a bit of dancing,’ said Harry.

‘You can’t do that in here,’ said Derek, looking around in dismay at the papers piled everywhere.

‘No,’ said Harry. ‘Come on everyone! Outside!’

He threw open both the glass doors and they stepped out into the summer sunlight. The dew was still glinting on the grass, and the clearing had turned into a carpet of daisies. Green light came down through the trees.

‘OK!’ said Harry, and Derek sat himself down on the step at the door and started to beat a rhythm on the ground with two pencils. Then he opened his mouth and started to – well, Katie wasn’t quite sure what he was doing.
He was kind of singing, in a high-pitched tone of voice, but it wasn’t quite singing; it sounded more like a musical instrument, making fast rhythmic music. There were words, of a kind, but they didn’t sound like English, or anything else, more like a fast gabbling to fit the tune. Derek looked completely unselfconscious. It sounded eerie, ancient and wonderful out in the wooded morning.

‘What’s he doing?’ she whispered to Harry.

‘Puirt-a-beul,’
he whispered back. ‘Mouth music. It’s kind of traditional music around here – if you don’t have an instrument and want to dance.’

‘It’s beautiful,’ said Katie. And it was; unearthly, weirdly melodic and yet without any tune Katie could discern.

‘Well then,’ said Harry, and put out his arm.

‘You are joking,’ said Katie.

‘Of course I’m not joking,’ said Harry. ‘We’ll start with a very simple Gay Gordons. They you can teach some other people. It’s an absolute nonsense to have a party if nobody can dance. Come here.’

Katie giggled nervously.

‘Here! I mean it!’ He’d put his arms up, oddly, to the right. ‘OK. I have one arm around your shoulders, and one in your nearest hand.’

Katie stood under his arm obediently.

‘OK, now we’re going to go forwards for four, backwards for four then do the same thing again. Does that make sense?’

‘Absolutely none at all.’

‘Derek!’

Derek subtly changed rhythm and counted them in with a one, two, three four.

Katie was still giggling as Harry led her forward, then,
deftly, flipped, so his arm was still around her, but suddenly they were travelling backwards.

‘How did that just happen?’ she asked.

‘Shh. And – KICK!’ and they both kicked their feet out in front. ‘Good! And again, one, two, three, flip…’

This time she managed it.

‘And, now, twirl under my arm.’

‘Twirl?’

‘Yes. Four times. Go!’

Hopelessly, Katie spiralled under his arm, as Derek slowed down to accommodate her.

‘And…’

Then Harry swept her into his arms and, leading strongly, galloped around with her in a speedy waltz. Her new fifties’ Topshop skirt floated out behind her in the summer morning and she felt as if she was flying.

‘And again!’ said Harry, and they started over, and by the fourth or fifth time, she’d got the dance figured out, with all her turns in the right place, keeping time to Derek’s mouth music; but neither of them wanted to stop dancing, so they kept it up, under the morning sun, and then he taught her another one, and Derek kept singing and they danced until they were exhausted, and forgot about the mounds of paperwork, and the work they had to do and the threats hanging over their heads, for as long as the sun shone.

At eleven, Iain came past to try and catch Katie, who he’d heard was back in town, but he saw them dancing, and reckoned she didn’t really want to be disturbed.

The weather had broken just as they were dancing – as Harry was trying to show Katie a Dashing White Sergeant, without the benefit of the four other dancers tactically
required. Katie didn’t care, however, and was so proud of the fact that she’d mastered the little twiddly step she’d always associated with Hogmanay girls in sashes who could hop over swords, she refused to stop. Soaking, they’d continued, with Derek retreating inside, until, laughing and entirely out of breath, they’d finally admitted defeat and fallen inside, drenched and giggly.

Rain still seemed absolutely committed to dogging their every move. Despite not being over the moon about how it looked in the budget, Katie had gone ahead and approved for internal heaters. It might be a midsummer night’s ball, but they really didn’t want people getting hypothermia on their watch.
Hello
magazine was coming, as were many of the newspapers, so they’d decided to keep the death rate as low as possible. She’d never worked so hard in her life, chivvying, begging, making fifteen million phone calls an hour. Her clipboard was working overtime. Actually, she was loving it. Working so hard kept her mind off everything, and she didn’t think there was a single person in town she didn’t know now. And she was
good
at it. She juggled the newspaper access with one hand, the napkin orders in another and the techies’ amazing MIDGE-AWAY invention, a terrifying fan-like contraption designed to blow away insects, with a third.

Kelpie, with Margaret’s help, had been amazing, popping in and out of the office with different menus for them to try. They’d settled on Scotch broth, lobster and smoked salmon paella and Eton Mess, which wasn’t particularly Scottish but was particularly easy for Kelpie to make with the vast pile of broken meringue cases she stored out at the back of the bakery. She was using them, she explained, to relieve her tension at all the English women crabbing about her shop and demanding
cappuccinos and carrot cake, because if she hit another one, they were going to put that stupid ankle tag back on her, and that wasnae going to happen for anyone.

And Mrs McClockerty was baking a large cake with printed on it, which would be available at auction for anyone who didn’t want one of the local men wrapped in a sheet. Even Katie’s to-do lists were being exhausted.

Olivia was flying up to Inverness and taking a helicopter to Fairlish. Katie and Louise had not the slightest idea of where to put her up, but Katie was thinking of seeing if Margaret had any rooms in her lovely place. Thinking of that made her think of Iain, which made her feel sad, but defiant. The local paper had been great, but the media buzz around the whole thing had been building by the day and she’d spent all day and half the night on the telephone to the national papers – cameras and journalists (all female) were flooding in by the day, from as far away as Canada and Japan, where they seemed to find the idea of the village without any women terribly hilarious. Katie did try to get them to mention the golf course, but that didn’t seem to have quite the appeal, and by the day before, they had already arrived in town, extremely grumpy at, a) the lack of suitable accommodation, and b) the sheer numbers of women thronging the streets every day, making it hard to get a decent shot of men looking glum and lonely, particularly as the techies had enormous grins plastered all over their faces, and all the farmers had vanished.

But the whole town had definitely developed a carnival atmosphere. Ceilidh music could be heard everywhere, as people spilled out onto the streets to practise dance steps. Some of the small shops in the high street had put up signs welcoming the visitors and saying ‘NO TO GOLF’,
and within about five minutes, it seemed, there were many signs in people’s windows too.

Couple this with the news that, yes, Ewan McGregor
would
be coming, as well as Hamish Clark and at least one hobbit, and the whole town had turned into one heaving hormonal mass of excitement, and shops as far away as Edinburgh were reporting their ball dresses completely sold out. Even Clara and Mum, at home, sounded envious, although Clara said she was simply envious of anyone at the moment who could walk more than two paces without collapsing in a heap and needing to go to the toilet, and warned Katie against getting involved with any of the men, even if there were any left after the locust girls had been at them. Katie assured her this was very unlikely to be the case.