Aye! Cries went up across the room. Someone shook a box of broken vase shards. That we have! Another held aloft a strimmer with a severed cable. Can you take a look at this? Another held up a bag of clothes. And these? If you’ve time.
‘And we hastily scraped together some donations this morning – materials and ingredients from our own sheds and cupboards,’ added Reverend Meikle, shrugging his two carrier bags, bursting with supplies, while Bernice, the Cairn Dhu accountant, offered up a lidless biscuit tin full of bobbins of colourful threads and elastics.
McIntyre had to look down at his feet to keep his feelings from fizzing over.
Ally, however, was smiling, clear-eyed and proud. The community had rallied for her mum and dad. The repair shop regulars were all here and ready to work. They weren’t going to be beaten by something as silly as a mistake, no matter how public it was. And it was all down to her belief in her own ability to make a difference. That, and the calm, convincing manner of the man standing beside her with his hands shoved in his pockets in his usual, unassuming way.
She was one second away from thanking Jamie, when Sachin hit play on his favourite Bombay Talkie CD, letting nineties’ Glaswegian Bhangra flood the speakers. ‘Let’s get fixing!’ he called out, his arms raised, shoulders thrusting upwards with the music.
‘Get the hot water urn on, Rhona!’ commanded Senga. ‘See? I was right to bake those extra bannocks this morning.’
‘Form a queue for triaging,’ McIntyre instructed, and the bodies slowly moved towards Sachin’s desk in the now absolutely stoatin’ repair shed (which, for the curious, is a particularly Scottish type of happy bounce).
Jamie was making to leave now, having received a hug from a grinning Roz, a handshake from McIntyre, a chuck on the shoulder from Cary Anderson, and a bag of rock buns from a starry-eyed Rhona Gifford.
Ally only just managed to catch him before he left. Was he honestly planning on slipping away before they could celebrate their success? Was he really this modest? She hadn’t even thanked him properly.
Maybe he was in a hurry because he was meeting that girlfriend of his? Ally hadn’t dared broach the subject as they’d dashed across the town together, cajoling and assembling, and setting the record straight about the repair shop.
‘Can you come back later, at closing time?’ she said, snapping her hand away from his shoulder as quickly as she’d tapped him on it.
‘Uh, sure.’ His face bloomed into an easy smile.
‘To get your cow,’ she clarified.
‘Oh, of course. My cow.’ He was nodding fast, schooling his features into seriousness again.
‘About five?’ she said.
He repeated her words by way of agreement.
Just before she turned for her workbench, having heard Sachin directing her first client of the day towards her, she couldn’t help but lift herself onto her toes to give him the fastest, most respectful peck on the cheek. Grateful and friendly, nothing more.
‘Thank you, for all this,’ she said, stepping away, quickly getting lost from his sight in the bustle.
Although she didn’t see it, Jamie watched her go, astonished and frozen to the ground, his fingertips held to the spot where her lips had pressed to his cheekbone.
11
Twenty minutes to five o’clock in the repair shop and the door is closed after their busiest day on record. Scores of repairs were triaged and taken in to be attended to outside opening hours. Many were started and finished today and chalked up on the board, items saved from landfill and taken home to continue being useful (or simply very much loved), until the next time they needed repair.
Now industrious heads are bowed over the last tasks of the afternoon. No one speaks. Cary Anderson and Charlie McIntyre plane wood at the carpentry bench, Cary taking the lead on making the new curved rockers for an old chair that has soothed generations of comfy, dozing folk. Cary perfects the curvature and sands away rough edges. McIntyre mixes his own recipe of two part epoxy with milled glass fibre, stirring the concoction in a pot, perfect for filling gaps. Cary drills in the guide holes and washers. McIntyre paints on the glossy goop where the joins will be. Cary holds the runners in place while McIntyre screws them fast, then the rocking chair is tested in turns by the satisfied repair duo.
Peaches and Willie are taking the hems down on grey school kilts and trousers to extend their wear into the new school year. Willie struggled with the folds on the skirts but Peaches knew the trick was all in the ironing and showed him how to get a crisp, pleated finish with the steam press.
The Gifford sisters are delighted to have a full kitty and not one rock bun or bannock left. Whispering, they set their baking plans for next Saturday. Rhona thinks they ought to try strawberry tarts (which Senga dismisses out of hand as too lavish. What does she think this is? Balmoral?) Undeterred, while Senga wipes down the counter, Rhona whispers to Siri the way Ally showed her how, to add fresh whipping cream to the provisions list, two large cartons.
Roz is sewing the last of the stuffing inside a soft highland cow toy that had been loved to pieces by a little boy who became a bigger boy who couldn’t let it go. The little cow’s fleecy body, which has had a gentle bath in soapy suds followed by a thorough rinse and dry out, has had its threadbare spots invisibly patched with new, perfectly matching material sourced from an online warehouse way down south. It has a new black glass eye to match the lost original, and a fresh shaggy hairdo of rust brown between its tufted ears which, instead of flopping askew, are now sticking up, alert. Its face, which had lost all its contours and character is back in its original shape with a hidden structure of new boning inside the broad snout.
While Sachin works his broom across the floor in rhythmic sweeps, Ally hands her mother the repaired black plastic speaker with its new battery and advises her where to position it so the now-functioning activation button can easily be pressed through the plump animal’s fur. Lastly, Roz stitches back into place a lazy pink smile.
Across the shed, threads are snipped, steam billows upwards in warm blasts, clean teacups are stacked and sugar supplies toted up, a chair rocks on creaking floorboards for the first time in a long time, and the big clock on the wall ticks its way past five o’clock.
This is what skill and dedication looks and sounds like when combined with time generously surrendered to saving everyday things.
Ally isn’t thinking any of this, however. All she can think of is that any second now, he’ll be back and she’s hoping this time she can keep a lid on her feelings.
The knocking makes every head lift from their work. Roz, more clear-thinking than her daughter, pulls a yard of purple fabric from the shelves to conceal her latest repair from its owner and slowly the doors pull open and in walks Jamie Beaton.
