Where Have All the Boys Gone?

‘That is not what PR is about,’ said Katie. ‘Except in, you know, the specifics.’

Louise kicked her heels. ‘What do you think people do around here for fun?’

‘Torture the foreigners,’ said Katie. She nodded her head towards the baker’s. Kelpie was heading over their way with two cronies. She had shaken off her ridiculous pie-crust hat to reveal a thick head of wavy hair with four or five rainbow-hued colours streaked through it, and taken out a packet of cigarettes. Even from fifty feet away, it was clear that she was doing an impression of Katie and Louise.

‘We’re big news around these here parts,’ said Katie. ‘I think we’d better make ourselves scarce, before we get bullied by a pile of twelve-year-olds. I’m going to find this Iain Kinross character. Sounds like some anal old baldie geezer who sits in his bedsit writing angry letters to the Daily Mail. He’ll be putty in my hands.’

The three girls had seen them now; Kelpie was pointing them out. They were screaming with laughter in an over-exaggerated way.

‘Oh no you don’t,’ said Louise. ‘Not without me. They’ll flay me alive.’

‘They’re harmless,’ said Katie as they both got up from the bench and started to back away.

‘I don’t care,’ said Louise. ‘Take me with you, please.’

‘I can’t!’

‘Of course you can! Just say I’m your…PA.’

‘I’m not paying you.’

‘Oh my God, you’re a true Scottish person already,’ said Louise.

‘I’d like a SSSCCCCOOOOOOOONNNNE,’ came from the other side of the park, carried on the wind.

‘OK,’ said Katie. ‘But you’d better keep your mouth shut.’

‘A SSSCCCCOOOOOOOONNNNE!’

It took them a while to find the offices of the West Highland Times, situated up a tiny alleyway off the main street of old grey stone buildings, which hosted a post office, a fishmongers, a kind of broom handle/vacuum cleaner bits and bobs type of place, a Woolworths and sixteen shops selling pet rocks and commemorative teaspoons. They looked very quiet at this time of year.

The small oak door was set into a peculiar turret on the edge of a house made of a particularly windworn granite. It was studded with large dark bolts, and only a tiny brass plaque set low on the left-hand side identified it. There didn’t appear to be a bell, so, taking the initiative, Katie bowed her head and crept up the spiral staircase. Louise, whispering crossly under her breath at the exercise involved, followed her.

A little old man with grey hair sat at the top in a small room with an open door leading into the main body of the building. Katie could glimpse computers, typewriters and masses of paper beyond, and hear the regular dins and telephone calls of a newsroom.

They were not greeted with a welcoming smile.

‘Did ye’s no knock?’

Louise screwed up her face. Was no one going to be friendly to them around here?

‘Sorry?’ said Katie politely. ‘Hello there. I’m from the Forestry Commission. I’d like to see Iain Kinross please.’

‘He’s busy.’

‘How do you know?’ said Louise.

‘Shut up Louise,’ said Katie, and motioned to her friend to sit in a chair, awkwardly positioned around the curve of the wall.

‘I’m sure he won’t be too busy to see me,’ said Katie. She’d dealt with tougher hacks than this. ‘Could you tell him I’ve come from Harry Barr’s office?’

‘In that case, he’s busy for ever,’ said the man.

Katie heard a snort come from Louise. ‘I’ve got for ever,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll just stand here and wait until he comes out. Or in.’

‘You cannae do that,’ said the man. ‘I’ll…I’ll call security.’

‘Unless your security’s name is Kelpie, you’re not going to scare me with that,’ said Katie. ‘My name is Katie Watson and I’ve come from the Forestry Commission. Please just tell him I’m here.’

The man looked at her, then turned back to his computer. ‘He’s busy,’ he muttered in the tone of somebody feeling they definitely weren’t being paid enough to take this kind of abuse.

‘Yes, busy slagging off my employer,’ said Katie. ‘Let me see him!’

‘No!’

The door to the newsroom finally banged open.

‘Archie, Archie, can ah no get a wee bit of peace and quiet in here?’ said an amused-sounding voice. ‘I’m never going to win my Pulitzer with this racket, am I?’

Katie looked up. The owner of the voice, with its gentle Highland burr, was tall with green eyes, untidy curly brown hair and a mouth that looked as though it was permanently teetering on the edge of a grin. He turned to face them.

‘What can I do for you? Let me tell you, if it’s for prize cattle, you’re swing out o’ luck.’

The man on the desk gave Katie a look which clearly read ‘I am now going to hate you for ever.’

‘I heifer feeling you’re not going to like it,’ said Katie, pushing past the now incandescently annoyed assistant.

The green-eyed man opened his arms in a gesture of surrender. ‘What about your friend?’ he said, looking over at Louise. Louise flashed him a beaming smile.

‘She’ll be fine,’ said Katie, storming into the room beyond. Then she stopped suddenly. What she’d imagined to be a full and busy newsroom was really quite small, about fifteen feet long. There were three desks, one empty, one containing another very old man talking quietly down the phone, and one clearly belonging to the man beside her. In the corner was an old-fashioned record player, playing, at full volume, a sound effects track of typing, telephoning, shouting…

‘You’re really not meant to be in here,’ said the young man with a sigh.

Katie stared at the record player and back to him.

‘It’s for advertising,’ he said apologetically. ‘That goes through Mr Beaumont there, but not everyone has a telephone and some people like to pop in on market day and

‘You want them to think there’s a million people working here.’

‘Working for the good of the town.’ The man’s green eyes danced mischievously. ‘Well, you’ve scooped us. Unfortunately, I’m not sure the local paper will run it.’

Katie smiled and put out her hand. ‘Well, I’d like to say your secret’s safe with me…’

He took it and bowed low. ‘Yes, bonny English maid?’

‘But I’m afraid I’ve been sent here by Harry Barr.’

He dropped her hand as if it were a live snake. ‘Och, you have not now.’ He looked around as if for assistance.

‘You have to be Iain Kinross.’

He rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Um, no. That was him out on the front desk. Bit of a dour type.’

He paced across the room and sat down on the comfortable green leather swivel chair in front of his desk. He had an antiquated computer in front of him, and a rather more used-looking typewriter; small Stanley knives and tubes of paper glue littered the tabletop and floor, and piles of paper filled the shelves around his desk. He squinted at her, and pushed back a rogue lock of hair. ‘You don’t look like a rottweiler.’

‘I’m the new forestry PR,’ said Katie.

‘Oh God,’ said Iain, and, suddenly, he disappeared below his desk.

‘Are you being sick?’ ventured Katie, when he didn’t reappear.

‘No, uh no.’ He emerged. ‘There’s a mouse in here somewhere. Thought I saw it in one of the coffee cups.’

‘One of the coffee cups?’ said Katie. ‘How many do you have under there?’

‘One,’ he said quickly. ‘You don’t want a coffee do you?’

‘I sooo don’t.’

‘Good. That’s good. So, I suppose Harry has told you lots of horrible things about me?’

‘No.’

His open face brightened. ‘Really? That’s good.’

‘Just that you were a “prickwobbling dicko”.’

It fell again. ‘Oh.’

‘And that he’s not killing all the trees.’

At this, Iain leaned forward. ‘Look. Are you a country girl?’

‘Yes,’ said Katie quickly. Well, she’d nearly gone camping on the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme once. It wasn’t her fault that it had started raining and her mother had given in to her noisy and tremulous tantrum and let her stay at home and watch Dr Who and drink hot chocolate instead. Katie had picked up a thing or two from her canny younger sister.

‘OK well, you should understand then. If they’re going to cross-fertilise from the GM firs just because they’re gaining on their EU dispensation, it’s going to be no surprise to anyone when they start to lose the red and have yet another heron panic’ He snorted at the ludicrousness of Harry’s position.

‘Heroin? Really? Up here? Well, I suppose it is Scotland,’ said Katie.

Iain stared at her suspiciously. ‘OK, well, let’s pretend I was explaining to you as if, for one minute, you weren’t a country girl. Just for fun.’

Katie got her notebook out.

‘I mean, if you keep planting one type of tree instead of lots of different types, you’re going to have to understand why animals who like lots of mixed habitats might move on. Which then affects the environment and turns back on the plantations themselves.’

‘That sounds terrible,’ said Katie. It did sound terrible. Though she didn’t know why.

‘It is,’ said Iain, pounding his fist on the desk, which made lots of suspicious-sounding clinking china noises. ‘That’s why you…’

‘Katie,’ said Katie.

‘That’s why you, Katie, have to help me. That man is killing trees.’

‘Yes!’ said Katie, fired up with zeal. ‘Oh, hang on. No! I can’t! I work for him.’

‘This isnae about “me” or “him”,’ said Iain, gazing into her eyes. ‘This is for the trees, Katie.’

She looked at him for a second, then the moment was broken by the low trill of a mobile phone. A nice masculine ring, she couldn’t help thinking.

‘Kinross. Yeah? Oh, cock. Right, right, OK.’ He snapped it shut. ‘I’m so sorry. I have to go. Some stupid sheep’s just had octuplets and it’ll probably make the front page. Drink tonight?’

The invitation was so direct, Katie didn’t even see it coming and wasn’t sure what it meant. Was it a date or a continuation of their business conversation? She shouldn’t really be fraternising with the enemy, should she – even if he was hot? On the other hand, the alternative was huddling under two sheets in a hayloft with Louise, so she wasn’t in a position to be picky.

‘Um, OK. Where?’

Iain, who was now shrugging his way into a parka, laughed. ‘Well, take your pick. There’s the Rum and Thump or the Mermaid or…nope, that’s it.’

‘The Mermaid, please,’ said Katie fervently. The name sounded a bit more appealing.

‘Got a taste for the wild side have we? OK, see you at seven. Remember –’ he indicated the audio-challenged room sternly ‘– tell no one. Or Mr Beaumont will be on you like a cougar.’

The aged Mr Beaumont declined to look up from his whispered conversation on the telephone. Or maybe he couldn’t.

‘A cougar,’ warned Iain again. Then he was gone.

Katie trailed behind him weakly as he swept out of the turret. She could see Louise’s plaintive face follow him down the stairway as she emerged. Louise raised her eyes expectantly.

‘I have to go back to the office,’ said Katie, officiously. In fact, she needed five minutes by herself to think.

‘Well?’ asked Louise as they exited the small building, pausing only to give the receptionist evils.

Katie was feeling slightly more understanding. ‘Well what?’

‘Well what what? Did you just see that guy?!’

‘Iain?’

‘Ooh, yes, Iain, of course. You know him so well now. Yes, how was Iain, your husband. Iain. Everyone likes Iain. Iain and Katie.’

‘Shut up Louise,’ said Katie, trying to swallow down a blush.

‘Well spill then. Jeez, the first hot, non-psychotic male we’ve seen in months and now you’re trying to pretend you’re Joan of Arc’

‘Well, he seems all right,’ conceded Katie. ‘First person we’ve met so far that didn’t hate us on sight anyway.’

‘That’s good,’ said Louise. ‘Definitely, that’s a good sign.’ She futilely pulled the collar of her Karen Millen coat up against the stiff breeze coming in from the sea. ‘Christ. You’d have thought people would have realised it was cold up here.’

‘They did,’ said Katie as they looked out across the bay. ‘That’s why there’s so few of them. You have to admit, it’s pretty though.’

‘The South of France is pretty,’ mused Louise. ‘I’m amazed it’s never occurred to them to just go there.’

Katie turned back towards the car. ‘Well, there’s no parking problems.’

‘Can I sit in your car all afternoon?’

‘Yes. And by the way, Iain asked me out for a drink tonight.’

Louise squealed. ‘You bitch! You cast-iron bitch!’

By a tremulous stroke of bad luck, around the cobbled corner at that exact moment came Kelpie and her two cronies. They stared at each other for a moment. Then hurried away in barely concealed hysterics.

‘CAAARRRRSSSTTTTT AYRRRON BEEETCH!’ echoed up and down the high street.

‘I’m actually glad to know we’ve doubled the entertainment available in this town in such a short space of time,’ said Katie, unlocking the car. ‘We should sell tickets.’

‘Well?’ Harry barked, somewhat rudely. He seemed preoccupied, eating a large home-made sandwich. Derek was nowhere to be seen. Katie was starving and watched him munch away, salivating. Carelessly, he ripped off a piece of his sandwich and threw it on the floor. Before Katie had time to object, there was a lazy snapping sound. Leaning over the desk, Katie saw the most beautiful black Labrador stretched out at his feet.

‘Ooh, lovely doggie,’ said Katie, before she could help herself. Harry looked at her as if she’d just insulted his mother (which of course, she’d already managed earlier).

‘Francis isn’t a “doggie”,’ said Harry, spluttering crumbs. ‘He’s a working animal.’

Francis didn’t look anything like a working animal, unless he was a member of a particularly strong trade union. He batted his long eyelashes at her twice, then fell asleep.

‘Sorry,’ said Katie. ‘Does he bite?’

‘Yes, that’s the kind of work he does,’ said Harry scathingly. ‘He bites ditzy PR girls. Got his paws full around here.’

‘You’re a very hostile person,’ said Katie. ‘Is it the sandwich?’

For once, Harry looked nonplussed. He soon regained his sangfroid. ‘What did Kinross say?’

‘I think you may have something of an image problem,’ said Katie.

‘In English?’

‘Um, he says…’ she consulted her notebook urgently, ‘that there’s an issue with biodiversity, herons, food chain implications, blah blah blah…basically you’re killing all the trees.’

‘Typical!’ said Harry furiously. ‘I’m going to kill that little prick.’

‘And we come back to the image problem.’

‘OK,’ said Harry. ‘Now you see our problem. So, what are you going to do about that little shit?’

This was Katie’s moment. She was usually pretty good at the client pitch of how they were going to find the USP and work it to their point of view, then extend that point of view throughout the nation. Although usually facing her across the table were excited haircare product manufacturers and the implication was that she could get it about that Jennifer Aniston used their gunk. She wasn’t used to trying to convince a homicidal tree-hugger and his gently snoring dog.

‘Well, first, I think we need to have a meeting. Have a frank and fearless exchange of views. Really get to grips with what the underlying misunderstandings are. Maybe over a nice lunch somewhere. Then…’

‘Well, that’s absolutely out of the question,’ said Harry. ‘Next.’

‘There’s nowhere to get a nice lunch?’

‘Well, that too. But I hate that lying son of a bitch.’

‘Why?’

Katie was excitedly picking over the possibilities in her head. There must be a girl involved, surely? Hearts broken? Ooh, maybe they were long-lost brothers? TWINS, bitter rivals, born on the same day, to grow up to strive over the heart and soul of the town, nay, the very Highlands themselves…

‘That’s none of your business,’ said Harry, heading out of the door.

‘He’s such a grumpy bastard,’ moaned Katie later, back at their digs.

‘He really does sound like Gordon Brown. Are you sure he’s not a bit romantic and rugged?’

Louise was putting make-up on, thus intruding on Katie’s date by insinuation whilst pretending to be simply trying out new lipstick. She’d managed to find some candles with which to light their dank room, which, although flattering, was forcing them to apply lipstick in the style of Coco the Clown.

‘No, retarded. He’s clearly got some kind of big gay crush on Iain.’

‘Haven’t we all?’ Louise circled some rouge on her cheeks.

‘You’re not coming, you know.’

‘Just a quick drink. Please. I’ve seen the visitors’ lounge here.’

‘What’s it like?’

Louise shuddered. ‘There was an old man sitting in the corner watching University Challenge. He didn’t look up when I walked in. I think he was dead and ossifying. Oh, and they can’t get Channel Five.’

‘Big whoop.’

‘…or 4. And ITV is called Grampian and BBC2 is in foreign.’

‘What do you mean it’s in foreign?’

‘I don’t know, do I? It looks like Postman Pat and then they all go “Grbbrrtggtthh tht ht ht th thvvvvv”.’

‘Interesting. But still, no.’

‘Do you love this guy?’

‘No!’

‘Do you love me?’

‘That is Very Unfair.’

‘You dragged me up here.’

‘You forced yourself on me!’

‘I did not! And…’ Louise pouted her bottom lip in a way Katie recognised both from primary school (natural) and secondary (fake and put on for boys and suggestible male teachers alike). ‘…I’m going through a difficult time. I thought you of all people would understand, seeing as it’s your sister that…’

Katie put her hands over her ears. ‘La la la, not listening! OK. Well, maybe there’ll be another man there for you to talk to.’

‘Are you serious? Are you really considering trying to get off with someone you might have to work against for the next eight months? Wow, you’re very brave.’

Katie hadn’t looked at it this way at all. In fact, ever since Iain had grasped her hand in his, her insides had been on something of a repeater track, like a scrambled record, which went ‘green eyes green eyes snog snog yum yikes snog snog green’, repeated ad infinitum. It didn’t really give her brain much room to process any other information. The practical consequences of the matter – that they were in a very small village, that he may well be married and that whatever the outcome she was almost certainly going to have to see him every day – had faded into the background of the insistent beat of her groin reminding her she hadn’t had sex for five months.

She pretended to give it serious consideration. ‘There are plenty of people who’ve slept with people they’ve worked with and it’s turned out great,’ she said decisively. ‘Don’t you think?’

Louise looked at her as if she was holding a dangerous animal. ‘Umm…’

‘Come on. What about…’ Alas, all that flooded Katie’s mind at that moment was the memory that Louise had met Max when she’d been briefly working at his office. Suddenly, she had a mental picture of her and Louise in fifty years’ time, with her still treading on eggshells all the time. It was a sad fact that Clara’s act had changed not only Katie and her relationship but Katie and Louise’s too. ‘Ouf,’ she said.

‘Come on,’ said Louise, changing the subject. ‘I hope you’re not wearing your pulling knickers.’

‘I didn’t even bring my pulling knickers,’ said Katie as they braced themselves against the wind outside the front door of Water Lane. ‘I just brought my thermal knickers.’

‘Maybe they find that sexy up here,’ said Louise. ‘Brrr.’

Chapter Six

One would have thought, given the size of the town, that it would be easy to find one of its two pubs, but after stumbling up and down cobbled stairways for fifteen minutes in a howling gale, they had to concede this would not in fact be the case. Louise shouting ‘taxi’, and standing in the road with her hand up very quickly ceased to be amusing too. At last, panting and red-cheeked, they collapsed down a narrow stairway near the harbour and spotted a tiny doorway with light and heat and smoke exuding from the tiny open window. It looked immeasurably welcoming, and a ceramic statue of a mermaid adorned the wall, the centrepiece of a mosaic of pretty shells.

‘Ooh,’ said Louise, excited.

Katie tentatively pushed open the door into the hubbub of warmth and heat. At first it was hard to get her bearings. The pub was crammed with people, but actually it was little more than a small room. There was a roaring fire at one end, surrounded by strange-looking bellows and brass implements, red velvet stools on the wooden floor around old pitted tables, a dartboard that looked positively dangerous in such a tiny space and an old-fashioned bar, with golden bar taps gleaming, and large optics clinging to the back wall. Furious fiddle and whistle music was playing.

There were people everywhere, on every available seat, leaning against the bar, hovering around the fire. A couple of dogs dozed blissfully under bar stools.

There wasn’t a single woman there.

The room gradually fell silent as Katie and Louise hung by the door, taking it all in. There were tall men, short men, thin men, fat men. Rough-looking fishermen, with tattoos on their knuckles and salt in their hair. Intense-looking techie men with specs, rucksacked travellers. A couple of tweedy young bufton-tuftons at the bar who could have been (and were) the local laird having a pint with the local vet. Prosperous-looking farmers, furtive-looking labourers. Bald, ruddy country men, withered old men. Men everywhere.

Finally, after a long pause, Louise leaned over to Katie. ‘Is this my surprise party? Or heaven?’

‘Come in if you’re coming then,’ came a voice. ‘Don’t let the weather in noo.’

Somebody said something the girls couldn’t make out, and there came a hearty guffaw from the back. Stiffening, Katie eventually took a small step forward.

Behind the bar was the most extraordinary gentleman. He was precisely the height of the bar itself, with three tufts of hair, one on either side and one on the middle of his head, and his cheeks were ruddy. He looked like a garden gnome.

Space cleared at the bar for them instantly, and Katie and Louise had the uncomfortable experience of settling themselves gracefully on stools whilst being eagerly watched by every single person in the room. Katie had scanned as many faces as she dared without looking as if she was up for trade, but there was no sign of Iain. Surely if he was there he would have leaped up immediately anyway. She smoothed down her skirt, wondering if perhaps her prized Kenzo Japanese-style skirt was pushing it a bit for in here. Everyone else’s clothing appeared to have holes in it too, but not for fashionable reasons.

‘What can I get you lassies?’ asked the miniature barman. Katie had been going to order a vodka tonic, but didn’t want to put the barman in a difficult position vis-à-vis reaching the optics.

‘White wine please.’

‘Same for me please,’ said Louise.

‘Ah, foreigners,’ said the man, but not in an unfriendly way. He ducked behind the bar and started shifting through what sounded like many bottles and kegs. ‘Now…wine, wine, wine. I know we had it in here somewhere.’

‘I don’t know whether to be over the moon or scared shit-free,’ whispered Louise. ‘It’s like a cross between The Box of Delights and The Accused.’

‘Sssh!’ said Katie as the barman straightened up, beaming and holding up a sticky, dusty bottle of something so old its label had peeled off. It was less white wine than a kind of rusty yellow, and half empty, with a screw top. There was a crust around the top.

‘That looks lovely,’ said Katie politely.