Chapter 2 Steve’s Ultimatum
It was raining again the following Tuesday, although the threatening thunder had made a tactical withdrawal for the time being, and the light wasn't good, especially under the ornamental cherry trees that seemed to close in at the sides of the road further down the hill, making the pavement slippery with their carelessly discarded blossoms. There were a few houses here, large Victorian villas with big gardens, probably built for merchants who had done unspeakable things in the East or West Indies, and now occupied by the secretive bankers and lawyers who were only glimpsed in the village if they accidentally left their car windows down when driving to or from work in Edinburgh. Christopher had never really questioned the lack of community spirit in the little town, but thinking about it now as they headed towards the old higgledy-piggledy fishermen’s houses down by the river, he realised the place was divided into two or three sections, with the riverside dwellers resenting the people in the newer estates up the hill, and both resenting the inhabitants of the Victorian villas. He had a sudden twinge of guilt about not being able to bring the factions together into a coalition under the umbrella of the Forum, but as always he brushed the guilt aside, telling himself he had done all he could, and it wasn't his fault if the people around here were born awkward.
He felt self-conscious now in the scruffy old leather jacket, as if he were guilty of attempting to appear younger and more cool than he really was, although he realised it probably had the opposite effect. Nothing more embarrassing than an ageing rocker, after all. He wondered briefly whether to put on his scruffy brown tweed one instead, but decided against it. The brown tweed jacket was definitely the jacket of an archivist, and now that he was no longer a member of that profession he felt as if he wasn’t entitled to wear it. Christopher had resolved a long time ago not to try to be something he wasn’t – if only he could instead be proud of what he was, but that was out of the question these days. Anyway, if Amaryllis mistook him for someone young and cool that was her problem.
'It's just down here on the left,' called Amaryllis from the back of the group. 'Turn along Merchantman Wynd.'
The street was a cul de sac once notorious for its ladies of the night plying their trade in the shadows but now more famous for its award-winning mews-style town houses. This was all new to Christopher; he couldn't remember when he had last come along here, and now he stared in puzzlement at the twee balconies and incongruous Mediterranean white washed walls and brightly coloured creeping plants. How sad that some people weren't satisfied with the Scottish grey stone, off-white net curtains and statutory patch of grass that distinguished the houses in most towns along the coast.
'So tell me, ' said Steve Paxman in a pleasant tone that very nearly concealed the hint of the KGB-style interrogation techniques that were undoubtedly at his disposal. 'I'm guessing you have all the paperwork for PLIF in place - written constitution, accounts, policies. I'm sure you're the kind of person who would be meticulous about it all.'
In other areas of his life Christopher was indeed a very meticulous man, but he had considered the Forum as a red-tape-free zone, a haven where he could relax in the knowledge that nobody would ever come looking for paperwork.
'I am quite meticulous,' he admitted, playing for time and wondering all over again why exactly Steve Paxman was so interested in this small local organisation. 'But I'm not sure that I can lay my hands on every last document… not off the top of my head….'
'Turn into the yard here,' called Amaryllis, unexpectedly coming to his rescue. 'On the right - look for the orange door.'
Amaryllis's 'yard' was a wilderness surrounding a tumbledown structure - it would surely have been an exaggeration to call it a building. The faded orange door was attached to its frame by one hinge. A beech tree in the centre of the wilderness had been allowed to run wild and one of its branches now extended through a gap in a window. The tree probably supported its own eco-system. Curiously, though, Christopher noticed that even before any of them had set foot in the place the tall grass had been flattened in places and that a very rough path led through it towards the back of the structure. Vandals, he thought dismissively, or school kids. Same thing really. He immediately felt cross with himself for spending too much time with Jock McLean and absorbing his attitudes.
'Wow, what a great resource!' breathed Steve Paxman, next to him. 'Shame it's been allowed to get into this state.'
Again Christopher wondered if Steve was deliberately trying to make him feel guilty or if it was just his manner.
They headed up the path of broken paving stones towards the orange door, their footsteps accompanied by a backing track of muffled swearing as people stepped right off the slabs and got their shoes stuck in the surrounding mud. Christopher stood aside to let Steve go in first. If he was so excited about this resource, let him be the one to have his skull fractured by a piece of falling roof.
Amaryllis caught up with them. For some reason all the other Forum regulars were just as reluctant as Christopher to enter the place.
'It's safe enough inside,' she said, and somehow Steve Paxman was persuaded, without any words being exchanged, to let her go in ahead of him.
'You mean you've been in here before?' said Christopher once they stood in the large room looking up at the uneven holes in the roof, and trying to avoid the raindrops that were falling through the holes into small puddles on the floor. There was a smell of mould or of dead things inside the walls.
'I popped in the other day, yes,' said Amaryllis. She waved her arms round. 'It's got potential, hasn't it?'
'Aye, potential to be knocked down and replaced with a proper building,' said Big Dave. It was quite a long sentence by his standards, signifying that he felt particularly cynical about this expedition.
There was a general muttering of agreement. Big Dave had spoken for all of them.
They were turning to leave when Steve Paxman cleared his throat.
'This seems like a good time to voice my concerns,' he said.
Christopher couldn't have agreed less. It was completely the wrong time. There was rain trickling down people's necks, their feet were wet, they resented the time spent away from the pub on this wild-goose chase, they resented the presence of Steve and Amaryllis. He and his friends didn’t ask much, just to be left alone to run their own lives without interference from the Council, who, as far as they were concerned, only existed to collect the rubbish, to keep the street lighting in a good state of repair and to run schools in order to keep kids out from under people's feet as far as possible.
'Shouldn’t we go somewhere dry?' he suggested mildly.
'Oh no - I think the odd drip will wake us up and help us focus,' said Steve.
Christopher looked round at his motley crew and detected quite a lot of focussed hatred of Steve: Big Dave, of course, didn't bother to conceal his hostility, but stood behind the younger, shorter man, fists clenched and head lowered in a way that, if Steve had been able to see him, would probably have alarmed him seriously; Jock McLean lit up his pipe and held it tightly between his teeth pointing straight at Steve's jugular in a menacing way; Mrs Stevenson, one of the woolly hat brigade - what was she thinking of, coming all this way? She would be lucky to get back up the hill again with her dodgy hip and blood pressure problem - was staring witch-like at the man from the Council, and muttering what sounded suspiciously like an incantation; Young Dave, at least thirty years younger than Big Dave and a little less colossal, was standing by the doorway, possibly with intent to block it. There were a few other hangers-on still around, the ones with the shorter attention spans having retired to the pub again. Amaryllis was studying her feet with a pretence of interest. In any case it was impossible for Christopher to tell what she was thinking.
'This building belongs to the town,' said Steve unexpectedly.
'You mean the Council?' said Jock McLean.
'No,' Steve said with a sigh. 'Not to the Council – to the town of Pitkirtly itself. The orig
inal hall was paid for by the skippers of the merchant ships that berthed in the old harbour down there, and put in trust for the people of the town, along with the land it was built on. Of course, the old hall was destroyed by fire a century ago and this one here was built, I believe, in the 1950s by a local benefactor. There was a special clause in the skippers' trust to say the patch of land and any buildings on it should never be taken over by the local Council, whatever happened, but it should be kept in use for the benefit of the community.'
Christopher frowned.
'I don't remember hearing about this before. It sounds like a very odd arrangement.'
'The papers have only just surfaced. Remember the excavations in Mary King's Close?'
'That's nothing to do with us,' said Jock McLean, suspicious as ever. ‘That’s in Edinburgh.’
Steve Paxman sighed again.
'There was a similar excavation here soon after Mary King’s Close opened to the public. In Well Street - it was thought there might have been a plague pit, which certain people were keen to market as a tourist attraction. In addition to certain other evidence too gruesome to mention here, the excavation turned up a box of old town records. Then when West Fife Council was set up after the millennium rationalisation, we took over and there was a new policy on libraries and archives.’
‘I’m aware of that,’ said Christopher sourly. He had been made redundant from his job in the archives at the time of this reorganisation.
‘All the old local documents were transferred to us so that we could get the new archives people to look them over. The team have only just got round to it. They were busy with all the mining legacy stuff at first, but a member of the public started pestering them about this.'
Christopher stared hard at Amaryllis. Her startlingly blue eyes had an innocent expression which he suspected was completely fake. He wouldn’t put it past her to pretend to be just an ordinary member of the public if she chose, although even on their short acquaintance he could tell she was anything but ordinary.
'But if it belongs to the town couldn’t we – um – delegate it to the Council to look after?' Christopher blurted out.
He had warmed very slightly to Steve Paxman, who seemed far too tired and worn for a man of his age, as well as sounding genuinely interested in local history, a subject dear to Christopher as well. But the smile that Steve smiled at that moment was one of pure malice.
'Well, it would have been a possibility a few years ago,' he said smoothly. 'But we’ve been pursuing a policy of devolving authority to local organisations similar to yours. Well, perhaps not entirely similar,’ he added, distaste making his beard curl in various directions. ‘Some of my colleagues see the Local Improvement Forum as simply an ad hoc drinking club for which you’ve received –‘
‘Aaargh!’
‘Get off!’
There was a disturbance near where Jock McLean and Young Dave were standing. It was impossible to tell who had started it, but they suddenly seemed to be trying to push each other over. They were evidently getting very restive.
‘Sorry,’ said Christopher to Steve Paxman. ‘What were you saying?’
He hoped the two would stop squabbling for a little bit longer so that he could hear all that Steve Paxman had to say, but Young Dave had other ideas. He maneouvred himself out of Jock McLean’s reach, and advanced on the man from the Council.
‘I’d be careful what I say, if I were you, Mr Paxman. Be very sure of your evidence before you start hurling accusations about.’
Young Dave was a lawyer in his spare time - when he wasn't propping up the bar in the Queen of Scots, that was.
'How do you know I’m going to hurl accusations?' said Steve Paxman, eyes glittering. 'You're not in this Forum for the sake of the community, are you? It’s just an excuse to meet at the pub.'
He made a harmless activity by a group of public-spirited local people sound like some sort of crime.
‘We’ll meet again next week,' Steve continued, 'when I’ll have a proposition for you, and I will expect to see evidence of a properly constituted body and of the will to take things forward for the betterment of the community.'
He paused.
'Or else what?' said Big Dave suddenly from behind him. A normal man would have jumped out of his skin, and made a run for the door. Without even turning round, Steve Paxman said,
'It wasn't a threat. I really am expecting to see these things.'
He walked towards the doorway. Young Dave stepped aside to let him past. He went out.
Those who were left breathed a collective sigh of relief. Jock McLean relaxed the grip of his lips round the stem of his pipe so suddenly that the pipe fell on the floor, where it might have been in danger of setting fire to the worn lino had there not been so much damp around. Big Dave unclenched his fists. Christopher realised he had been holding in his stomach in sympathy, and when he relaxed, his suddenly expanded girth caused the button at the waistband of his trousers to fly off and hit Amaryllis on the elbow as she moved towards the little central group. She jumped and quickly glanced round the room.
'Aye, and you can go too,' said Big Dave to her. 'You were the one that started all this.'
'No,' she said, 'but I do have a confession to make..... I was the one that identified the village hall and researched the history of it and alerted the Council archivist, so it's my fault in a way.'
'Not just in a way!' said Jock McLean. 'It's your fault, full stop.'
'It was only a matter of time before the Council caught up with you,' she said to him. 'You couldn't expect to carry on with it indefinitely. They were bound to go through one of their phases of tightening up on community organisations at some point.'
'But we're such small fry,' Christopher blurted out.
The others all looked at him accusingly.
'I mean,' he added, 'why are they bothering about us? We don’t have to answer to them and they have so many other problems.'
'Hmph!' said Big Dave. 'Problems! They don't know the meaning of the word.'
'That's exactly why they’re bothering about you,' said Amaryllis. 'You're small and can be brought under control - they think. The other problems are too big to be solved - traffic congestion, how to sell a tramline along the coast, why schools aren't working....'
'That last one's easy enough,' grunted Jock McLean, who had once been a teacher. 'Get the politicians to stop interfering in them.'
'Well, anyway,' said Christopher, 'what are we going to do about it?'
'If I'm going to be mulling over large complex issues that don't have any solution,' said Big Dave solemnly, 'I'm going to need a drink. Let's get back to the Queen of Scots and work out how to fix that smarmy bastard.'
'Fine by me,' said Jock.
Without any further discussion they all trooped out of the place again - it really wasn't fit to be called a building - and set off up the hill. Christopher, although he had done his best to avoid speaking to her, found himself walking alongside Amaryllis. He glanced at her furtively when he thought she wasn't looking, wondering if he had imagined the lithe figure and stunning legs. How old was she exactly?
He didn't ask.
'Seen enough?' she enquired. He didn't think she was annoyed but it was hard to be sure.
'Amaryllis, please don't take this the wrong way, but what are you doing here?'
'I told you, I've retired here.... I like it here. It's small and simple and - safe.'
'Safe?' Christopher was startled. Of all the qualities he might have expected Amaryllis to prize in a town - if he had even had time to think about it - safety certainly wasn't one of them.
'Well, maybe that was a bad choice of words,' she said. 'Secure - as if nothing ever changes.'
'Yes,' he said, drawing the word out into a couple of syllables. He had a feeling, based on nothing, that her first choice of words had been a more accurate statement of her reasons. But he knew better than to pursue that. If she chose to confide in him later on, that was her own loo
k-out. He gave himself a mental shake. It felt as if something in his brain had been jolted out of position by today's events, and he would have to try and get himself re-aligned. Mental Pilates, that was the thing. If only somebody would invent it.
Christopher had a brainwave. It didn't happen very often, but he knew that one of his own special skills was to recognise the moment when it did, and act on it.
'Why don't we have a sub-committee?' he said excitedly. The excitement was caused mainly by his surprise at having had an idea at all. 'A building sub-committee - to deal with aspects of the old village hall building. Then it can just report back to the main steering group and not too many people will have to get to grips with the fine detail of your - er - very interesting ideas.'
'A sub-committee? Are you sure you're not just trying to shelve this?' she asked sharply.
'No of course not - it's a way of making progress without getting bogged down in general discussions about whose round it is and whether Mrs McDougal should be allowed to take on another allotment.'
'My goodness,' she said. 'It's as exciting as that, is it?'
'Even more exciting sometimes,' he said darkly.
They had reached the exterior of the Queen of Scots. He knew the others would be waiting for him inside, ready to dissect what had happened, to mull over its implications, as well as the many attributes of Amaryllis and probably the entire history of the town to date. Christopher felt very tired. He sensed that everything was about to change, and his mind was already starting to man the barricades.
A fair-haired man in a grey suit stood by the door. He looked at them for longer than seemed natural. Christopher decided he probably fancied Amaryllis.
'Well, must be getting on home, or I won't see the kids before they go to bed,' he said to Amaryllis.
'Kids? Well, goodbye then. See you around,' she said.
He suddenly realised what he had said.
'It isn't what you think,' he said.
Her smile was sad.
'It never is.'
Crime in the Community Page 2