‘Aspen? That’s the trees Cary wanted us to buy, wasn’t it?’
‘That’s right. We’ll look at those afore we leave.’
Murray actually felt proud for remembering in front of Finlay.
‘Here.’ Finlay drew out his phone. ‘Have you ever seen a dark bordered beauty before?’
Murray had to admit he had not, and joining him by his side, separated safely by the tail-wagging Collie, Finlay opened up the oldest smartphone Murray had seen in ages, housed in a wrinkled plastic protective cover, and searched for a picture.
‘Wait till you see this!’ he was saying, scrolling through a gallery of nothing but landscapes and close-ups of insects and greenery of all kinds. A hot glow of enthusiasm was flowing from him, no matter how much he might begrudge Murray sensing it.
Murray couldn’t help being warmed by it too, and for the first time in his life he could, hand on heart, say he wouldn’t mind learning a wee bit more about the mountain bugs and beasties when there was a teacher as passionate as this.
‘See?’ Finlay was saying, enlarging a photo of what seemed to Murray an unremarkable brown leaf-like winged thing. ‘These moths are found in only two sites in Scotland at the minute…’
‘Fascinating,’ Murray said, looking not at the moth but at the rosy glow in Finlay’s cheeks – and truly, that was no lie. Murray was finding himself a tiny bit fascinated.
* * *
If the plant nursery had represented a small breakthrough in their relationship, the drive home had well and truly undone any advances made.
Murray had merely mentioned that his mum had told him to ‘please be sure and get some bonny red roses’ (they were her favourite), as well as plenty of colourful winter bedding, packets of herbs and perennial seeds. Murray had risked showing Finlay the list she’d made him write early that morning over croissants and coffee. Finlay had refused to look, keeping his eyes fixed on the road.
‘She suggested…’ he read, ‘tomatoes, cucumber, sunflower, basil, calendula, whatever they are, borage, again, no clue, and something called love-in-a-mist. Ring any bells?’
‘Not one of them are Highland natives.’
‘Listen, Finlay. You don’t mind if I say this…’ Murray had begun, steeling himself for a difficult conversation the way he’d learned at work when someone was being belligerent or not pulling their weight. There were ways of going about these things and he was this project’s manager after all, sort of. ‘We all appreciate having you on board. Your expertise is, honestly, really quite something, and we’d be royally screwed without you.’
Finlay stared dead ahead.
‘But this isn’t some individual’s rewilding passion project. It’s a community garden, to make people happy and give them something to do. It’s about rehabilitating patients and healing broken community ties just as much as it is about establishing a garden. And yes, we do have to consider the site’s aesthetic.’
‘Och!’ Finlay’s brows knitted tight. ‘There you go again.’
‘What?’
‘Considerthe aesthetic.’ He was mocking him. ‘Hashtag lifestyle guru, or whatever it was you blethered on about. Getting consumption core.’
‘Underconsumption core,’ Murray corrected. ‘And yes, these things matter too. But they’re notjusttrends for me, or for any of us at the repair shed. We care about the town and about trying to help people. So can wepleasejust pull in to Fillbarrows and buy a tonne of brightly coloured blousy things, or else you’ll have my mother to answer to?’
Murray had pulled out the big guns, not that Roz McIntyre was a scary sort of mum, quite the opposite actually, she was more handknits and nineties grunge vibes than fire and brimstone, but the very idea of upsetting a mother worked its magic on the sulking ranger.
‘Well, if we must, but Iabsolutelydraw the line at those unholy dyed heather plants. There’ll be nane o’ them in our garden. Got it?’
Murray played nice. ‘OK, I promise, no dyed heather,’ he replied, just as seriously.
Finlay flicked on the indicator and made a (for him) speedy turn into the garden centre’s giant parking lot. Granted, he was grumbling under his breath as he did it, but Murray thanked him all the same.
Finlay hadn’t seemed at all inspired, in amongst the plastic trugs and garden statuary with the piped music playing and the slow-moving Saturday morning shoppers filling their baskets with imported decorative rubbish that had crossed the world in container ships and would break in a few months, and when Murray suggested they grab a quick bite because it was ages since breakfast, Finlay had barked back that it was only ten to ten and he had his job to get back to.
So they’d shopped and left. Finlay carried the bare root rose bushes in a cardboard crate back to the truck. Murray had shoved the seed packets in his pockets and swung from his wrist the bag of gardening gloves in all different sizes, from kids to XL grown-ups, which hadn’t been on the list but seemed a good idea. He was happily munching on the bag of foamy pink shrimps he’d impulse bought at the tills, and when he offered one to Finlay it had elicited a flicker of interest, though he clearly hated to declare it.
‘I got you a bag of your own,’ Murray admitted, throwing an unopened pack into Finlay’s lap after they’d climbed back into the truck.
‘Happy now you’ve trailed me round that hellish place?’ Finlay asked, refusing to acknowledge the gift, even though the scent of soft chewy shrimp sweets was tempting in the extreme. Murray had chowed down almost his entire bagful before they’d hit the Cairn Dhu town limits.
After a long silence, Murray had felt the need to speak. Finlay really wished he wouldn’t.
