The children – Johnny, ten years old, Callum, eight, and Sean, four – were sitting round a table. They looked at him as solemnly as the baby had done.
“What are they having for lunch?” asked Clarry, his mind always on food.
“Baked beans on toast.”
Martha looked so tired and white and the children so unnaturally quiet that Clarry’s heart was touched. “You all need feeding up,” he said. “You just wait here. I’ll do the lunch for you.”
“But that’s not necessary…” began Martha, but with a cheery wave, Clarry was moving off with the lightness and speed which makes some fat men good dancers.
He returned after half an hour carrying two heavy shopping bags. “Now if you’ll just show me the kitchen.”
Martha led him into a small narrow kitchen. “Off you go and watch telly,” said Clarry. “Food on the table in a minute.”
Martha switched on the television and the children joined her on the sofa. Clarry beat sirloin steaks paper thin and tossed them in oil and garlic. He heated garlic bread in the oven. He tossed salad in a bowl. He chopped potatoes and fried a mountain of chips.
Soon they were all gathered around the table. “There’s Coca-Cola for you lot,” said Clarry, beaming at the children, “and Mum and I will have a glass o’ wine.”
The children gazed at this large, expansive, friendly man. Johnny thought he looked like Santa Claus. They ate busily.
“I’m afraid we’re costing you a lot of money,” said Martha.
“I put it on my boss’s account,” said Clarry.
Under the influence of the wine and good food, Martha showed ghostlike signs of her earlier prettiness. But all the time, she was dreading her husband’s return.
Clarry talked about his days of policing in Strathbane while the children listened and Martha began to relax. Her husband could hardly make a scene with a policeman in the house.
After lunch, the children settled down in front of the television set again. “No, no, that won’t be doing at all on such a fine day,” said Clarry. “Mum and I’ll do the dishes and then it’s outside with the lot of you.”
“Why did you come?” asked Martha, as Clarry washed and she dried.
“Just to say that if your man is beating you, you should report it,” said Clarry.
“He’s not beating me,” said Martha. “Besides, say he was, I couldn’t support the children. They’d be taken away from me.”
Clarry looked down at her fragile figure. “That would not happen for I would not let it happen, lassie. That’s the lot. Now let’s see if we can give those kids of yours some exercise.”
Clarry improvised a game of rounders with a broom handle and an old tennis ball. The children ran about screaming with laughter. Martha felt tears welling up in her eyes. When had she last heard her children laugh?
♦
“So that’s settled then,” said Mrs. Fleming triumphantly as the members of the council looked back at her, feeling as if they had all been beaten and mugged. In vain had they protested at the cost of the proposed scheme. Mrs. Fleming had bulldozed her way through all their objections.
She returned to her office where Fergus was waiting patiently. She took a tape measure out of her drawer. “Now I’ll just measure you for that uniform.”
Fergus felt bewildered. He had double the salary, and not only that, he had a chance to bully the villagers. Not one can or bottle or newspaper should make their appearance in the general rubbish. He began to feel elated. The good times were coming. The thought of a drink to celebrate flickered through his brain, but he dismissed it. As Mrs. Fleming measured and made notes, he felt increasingly buoyed up by his new status.
He, Fergus Macleod, was now an environment officer.
♦
Martha, from the position of her cottage, could see part of the winding road that led into Lochdubh. She also knew the sound of the garbage truck’s engine.
“Dad’s coming!” she shouted.
Clarry thought that it was as if the game of rounders had turned into a game of statues. The children froze in mid-action. The sound of the truck roared nearer. Then they crept into the house. “You’d better go,” said Martha to Clarry.
“Remember, lassie,” said Clarry, “I’m just down the road. You don’t need to put up with it.”
She nodded, her eyes wide and frightened, willing him to go.
Clarry ambled off and turned the corner to the waterfront just as Fergus’s truck roared past.
Fergus parked the truck. Martha went out to meet him. Her husband’s first words made her heart sink. “We’re going to celebrate tonight.”
Celebration usually only meant one thing. But Fergus was more eager for his new job than for any drink. He carried a box of groceries into the kitchen. There was Coke and crisps and chocolates for the children. There was an odd assortment of groceries – venison paté, various exotic cheeses, parma ham, bottled cherries and cans of fruit. Martha thought wistfully of Clarry’s offering of steak.
“What are we celebrating?” she asked timidly.
“I am Lochdubh’s new environment officer,” said Fergus. He proudly told her of his increased salary, of the new truck, of the greening of Lochdubh.
For the Macleod family, it was a strangely relaxed evening. Martha prayed that the children would not mention Clarry’s visit, and, to her relief, they did not. They had become so wary of their father’s rages that they had learned to keep quiet on all subjects at all times.
♦
For the next few weeks it seemed as if success was a balm to Fergus’s normally angry soul. He even chatted to people in the village. Clarry felt obscurely disappointed. He had been nourishing private dreams of being a sort of knight errant who would rescue Martha from a disastrous marriage.
Martha had never known Fergus to go so long without a drink before. She was still frightened of him, like someone living perpetually in the shadow of an active volcano, but was grateful for the respite.
Then one morning, flyers were delivered to each household in Lochdubh announcing a meeting to be held in the church hall to discuss improvements to Lochdubh.
Hamish, along with nearly everyone else, went along.
Mrs. Fleming was on the platform. She was wearing a black evening jacket, glittering with black sequins, over a white silk blouse. Her long black skirt was slit up one side to reveal one stocky, muscular leg in a support stocking. She announced the Great Greening of Lochdubh. Villagers listened, bewildered, as they learned that they would need to start separating the garbage into various containers. New bottle banks and paper banks would be placed on the waterfront on the following day.
“What’s a bottle bank?” whispered Archie Maclean, a fisherman.
“It’s one o’ thae big bell-shaped metal bins, like they have outside some of the supermarkets in Strathbane. You put your bottles in there.”
“Oh, is that what they’re for,” said Archie. “Oh, michty me! Waud you look at that!”
Mrs. Fleming had brought Fergus onto the platform. The other members of the council had suggested that a uniform of green overalls would be enough, but Mrs. Fleming had given the job of designing the uniform to her nephew, Peter, a willowy young man with ambitions to be a dress designer.
The audience stared in amazement as Fergus walked proudly onto the platform. His uniform was pseudo-military, bright green and with epaulettes and brass buttons. On his head he wore a peaked cap so high on the crown and so shiny on the peak that a Russian officer would kill for it. He looked for all the world like the wizened dictator of some totalitarian regime.
Someone giggled, then someone laughed out loud, and then the whole hall was in an uproar. Fergus stood there, his long arms hanging at his sides, his face red, as the gales of laughter beat upon his ears. He hated them. He hated them all. He would get even.