He threw himself into a chair and rubbed one of its arms with his jersey sleeve. ‘What do you think of the library? Have we got it off?’
‘Oh, Cad,’ said Buttercup, blushing a little but beaming too. ‘You can’t say it like that, darling, really.’
Thank goodness for her intervention. The library, with its buttoned leather, portraits and brass reading-lamps, looked like the perfect stage-set of a library, just as Cadwallader’s jersey and bags looked like the perfect costume for the owner of it, but one could hardly tell him.
‘It’s perfect,’ said Daisy, and I caught her eye and smiled.
‘It’s good of you girls to come over and help Freddy out,’ said Cadwallader, taking his teacup from Buttercup and rewarding her with a beaming smile of his own. ‘Has she filled you in on the run-down?’
‘Not a word,’ I said. ‘What are our duties, But-… darling? What exactly does this Ferry Fair of yours entail?’
‘Oh, this and that,’ said Buttercup. ‘The usual, I expect. Don’t you have fetes in Perthshire, Dandy?’ I shook my head. ‘Odd,’ Buttercup went on. ‘I remember your mother fagging away at it no end that summer I stayed with you after Paris. D’you remember? I wanted to tell fortunes and she wouldn’t let me, so I put red and white mushrooms in the tea-tent jam.’
‘Buttercup!’ said Daisy. Cad frowned in understandable puzzlement at this remark.
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ said Buttercup. ‘Boring old Dandy made me tell and I got sent home in disgrace. But I must say I thought you two would be old hands at it by now. What about you, Daisy?’
Daisy shook her head.
‘The Scots don’t go in much for fetes,’ she said. ‘It’s one of the things that makes being married to a Scotchman bearable. No Punch and Judy to speak of either, thank God. And don’t take offence, Cadwallader, we don’t count you.’
‘You don’t count me? As a Scotchman, you mean?’
‘Well, no,’ I said. ‘I mean, where will you be on Saturday, for instance?’
‘At the Ferry Fair,’ said Cad. ‘Saturday is the day of revelry itself.’
‘Quite,’ I said. ‘Saturday the twelfth of August. And you’ll be at the village jamboree.’
‘Oh, I see!’ said Buttercup. ‘Yes, I see.’
‘Well, I wish you’d tell me,’ said Cadwallader, good-naturedly.
‘The twelfth of August?’ said Daisy. ‘The glorious twelfth?’
Cadwallader shook his head and raised his eyebrows at her.
‘Grouse,’ I said, taking pity on him at last.
‘Oh yes,’ he said, slapping his leg. ‘I did know. I just forgot.’ Which was rather the point.
‘That’s why you two are here without the men, isn’t it?’ said Cadwallader. ‘Silas and – uh?’
‘Hugh,’ said Buttercup after a difficult moment.
‘Hugh, right,’ said Cadwallader. ‘Yes, I suppose the timing of the Fair is awkward in some respects. That’s probably why it’s ended up being run by that bunch of -’
‘Cad,’ said Buttercup, placidly enough but with a note. ‘New neighbours, darling, we should give them a chance.’
‘Do go on now though,’ said Daisy. ‘Since none of them is around to hear you.’
‘Well, I don’t pretend to understand what the problem is,’ said Cadwallader. ‘Too many cooks is one thing, but matters are… what would you say, Freddy? Tense? Fraught?’
‘Nonsense,’ said Buttercup. ‘It’s nothing. Lightning quick, darling,’ she added as Cadwallader reached forward for more cake. ‘Cocktails, remember.’
‘What’s nothing?’ I said.
‘The Ferry Fair,’ said Cadwallader, after washing down his cake with a gulp of tea and looking at his watch, ‘is the typical Scottish fair in most respects. I’ve been reading up on it, you know. It was a hiring fair to begin with, and now it’s a good wholesome frolic in the sunshine. Sure, there’s drinking and there are showmen and where there are showmen there are girls to flirt with them, but it’s hardly a hootenanny.’
Daisy and I tried to look as though we knew what a hootenanny might be, and were fashionably unshocked by the thought of one.
‘There are games and races, fancy dress competitions, a children’s picnic, so far so dull, right? But also there’s the Burry Man.’
‘The…?’ said Daisy, blaming his accent I think.
‘Wait, I’ve heard of the Burry Man,’ I said.
‘A man wearing a suit of burrs,’ said Buttercup. ‘You know, little fluffy things off burdock plants.’
‘Hardly fluffy,’ said Daisy. ‘Torture I’d have thought. I fell off into some once, eventing.’
‘Yes, I remember now,’ I said. ‘He used to walk the town.’
‘Thousands of years of tradition. And they think we should just sweep it all away,’ said Cadwallader.
‘Good Lord,’ I said. ‘You don’t mean to say he still does it?’
‘Every year,’ said Buttercup. ‘The day before the Ferry Fair. Tomorrow.’
‘Why?’ said Daisy.
‘Warding off evil spirits, wasn’t it?’ I said. ‘Or bringing fertility? Something like that, anyway.’
‘Yes indeed,’ said Cadwallader, rather grim all of a sudden. ‘It’s the something like that that’s the problem. To listen to the Parish minister – what’s his name, Freddy? – you’d think the guy was used to summon the devil. And then the Presbyterian minister is caught between wanting to find fault with the Parish minister and not wanting to look like a heathen in front of him, but really he’s more concerned with all the drinking and fornication.’
‘The drinking which does go on and the fornication he imagines must go on,’ supplied Buttercup.
‘So Madam Marchioness decides to try to bring it all into line with a pageant celebrating St Margaret – who was the Queen, you know, who took the ferry at Queensferry – but of course St Margaret was a Roman Catholic, so the Parish and the Presbies are down on that like a ton of bricks, which sends the priest off into a huff, even though he couldn’t care less about the Burry Man or the drinking.’
‘Cad, you make it all sound so torrid,’ said Buttercup. ‘Don’t listen to him, darlings.’
‘So where we are now is that unless the committee either bans the Burry Man, gets up a pageant or hands out Temperance leaflets with every picnic, at least one of the ladies who usually does the honours is going to stay home and sulk.’ He paused. ‘Enter Freddy – which was the Provost’s idea. Provost Meiklejohn is an excellent fellow, as you’ll see when you meet him tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow?’ said Buttercup, looking uncomfortable.
‘So you’re oil on troubled waters, darling?’ I said. ‘That’s a new look for you.’
‘It’s all nonsense,’ said Buttercup. ‘And you’re about to see that for yourselves. Now run along all of you and change for cocktails. Quick, quick, because they’re coming at six.’
‘Who’s coming at six?’ said Cadwallader, standing over Buttercup, hardly threatening really but tall and broad enough to be classed as looming.
‘Friends and neighbours,’ said Buttercup, pushing out her bottom lip. ‘Lady Stewart Clark from Dundas, and Lady Dalmeny, and possibly the Marchioness although she might be away.’
‘They’ve agreed to meet here?’ said Cad. ‘But they’re at daggers drawn.’
‘Well, I may not quite have said to each that the others are coming but it’ll be fine. Anyway, there’s them and lots of other ladies from the town and Mr Dowd and Mr McAndrew, the ministers – although I haven’t told them it’s cocktails, obviously. And Father Whatsisname, who didn’t seem to mind the cocktails a bit. And Provost Meiklejohn, darling, whom you yourself are so keen on. And I’m sure once they’ve all had a little sip of something delicious and a jolly good chat everything will be as right as rain.’ Cad shook his head, speechless, and I could not help thinking of the roast suckling pig.