The planting squad gravitated together at the Commission vehicles as a week’s supplies were packed inside, and remained in a group as they left the supermarket carpark and crossed into the Fort’s High Street where a long row of little shops faced their competitors underneath two stories of granite façade. Silas remained with them. He had patted the pillion seat of the parked Enfield as an ‘a bientot’ then walked with the others.
George and Blue, heading the group on a narrow pavement, slowed pace they approached the Jacobite Inn, expecting the squad to splinter into its customary pairs. They looked back to catch Ruairidh’s attention.
“So this is where you three go on a Saturday,” Roland chaffed. “When were you last in the Jacobite, Noel?”
“It’s been a while,” Noel said. “Come on then, let’s all go in for a beer.”
Tanned and fit, the squad took their glasses to a long oak table, painted shiny black. When they sat down, an awkwardness stifled conversation. The freedom of sunlit street was gone, replaced by the rituals of indoor convention. Then Ruairidh began to speak, driving through the silence that was invading their table. His topic seemed to be ‘historians’ whom he appeared to dislike, and he did not equivocate. At first his animated declaiming appeared likely to break the group but then an amused quiet fell upon his listeners. And when he concluded that “a study of history is not a study of what happened; it’s an interpretation of the record of what happened”, Blue responded “that is a load of crap” to light applause.
“How would you know?” Ruairidh asked. “But your sentiment is correct. History books are full of shit. Most books are. So, quite often, am I.”
His listeners stared genially through the open door of the bar to the sunlit street beyond. There was a background murmur of voices. Blue stretched and crossed his legs. Silas did likewise. Roland leaned back, eyes closed. Guy seemed narcoleptic.
“Christ,” Ruairidh said, “You lot should be squatting in the branches of a tree, having your loin cloths laundered monthly by awed village folk.”
Blue and Silas each changed his crossover of leg and George resurfaced.
“When in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace.”
“Here we go,” said Blue. “Who will win this round?”
“Tacitus,” said Ruairidh.
“Give it a rest,” Blue said.
“Well, yes,” George ignored Blue, “but Tacitus was quoting Calgacus.”
“Really?” Blue sounded astonished, “the world’s first articulate Pict said that?”
“Here is a favourite of mine,” Noel joined in. “Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.”
“Bloody hell,” Ruairidh responded, “who came up with that one?”
“Marechal Foch, the French tactical genius,” Noel replied. “Europe’s military stood in horrified awe of him.”
Guy opened one eye. “ All this reminds me. I need to pay the old library a visit. You coming, Roland?” There was a pause, an awareness that sensed inclusiveness was both new and fragile.
“Let’s have another pint first,” Roland cajoled. “If Lochaber keeps going on fire we won’t have much time for reading.”
“Let me get this round,” Alex stood up. “Stay a bit, Guy. Have another one here.”
Guy looked hard at Roland, then relented. “Okay, then I’ll have the same again.”
“I think I know the order,” Alex said, moving towards the bar.
“I’ll lend a hand bringing the beer over,” George said, rising to his feet, and the feeling of inclusiveness re-asserted. When both returned to put pints on the table, there was a low murmured ‘cheers,’, and a grunt, ‘I’ll get the next lot’, from Guy. They settled down, and conversation became general. Silas sat smiling as he sipped his beer. He contributed agreeable nodding, but little else.
The matter of Munro’s death was touched on and drew an unemotional response. George reflected, “it seems to have happened a long time ago,” and so summed up for all of them. Guy brought more beer, assisted by Blue. Ruairidh guided the talk along neutral byways. The mood of the group was pleasantly relaxed. Around them, custom ebbed and flowed.
The Jacobite Inn was popular and doing crisp business. It was a brown pub with wooden finishings for easy cleaning and an inadvertent charm that encouraged tourists to romanticise about the ‘45 Rebellion. An old style of decoration helped such illusions along.
Alex picked up his pint and drank. He inclined his head in the direction of the bar. “That’s funny. See that heavy looking chap sitting over at the bar? I saw him in the Argyll last night. Told me he was having an early night and heading for Leeds first thing today. He must have changed his mind. Any of you talk to him?”
“That’s right, I remember him,” Noel had half turned in his seat to better view the burly man at the bar. “Seems like he was doing his best to avoid talking to Alex,” he observed, “and who could blame him for that.”
“Sad bastard,” Alex said, and lifted a hand in greeting towards the burly one, who appeared not to notice. “Typical of today’s tourist, ‘doing’ the Highlands in a couple of days.”
“Doing his best to avoid you, Randy,” Noel observed.
“Draw stumps, mate,” Alex advised in a good-natured tone.
No harm done but better to drink up and leave; no need to engage with the workers, the activist thought, identifying some in the group as those whose candidature for ‘torch’ he had considered the evening before. He pretended self-absorption, slid from the bar stool, tossed down his gin-and-it, and walked outside.
“I beg your pardon,” he muttered, side-stepping past a resigned Euan Mackinnon and spouse on a shopping trip for shoes. As the activist’s figure departed the scene, Mackinnon’s good lady was energetically guiding her spouse to the emporium which she favoured and minutes later was inside.
Mackinnon was dreading becoming a focus of shop assistant pity as he followed his wife around the racks of footwear, now hastening forward, now doubling back, her pace changing with a customary monologue (the shoes to be bought were for him)…“these are nice, don’t you think? Ah, no…too narrow in the foot. How about these? On second thoughts, you already have a pair like that. Maybe…you like these?…give these a try. Where’s the lady? You sit there, I’ll get her…”
Finally, he took a few steps in the prospective purchase. They failed to pinch. “These are fine, very comfortable,” he said, sounding enthused.
He sat and untied the shoelaces. He could see his wife at the cashier-desk rediscovering specie as the means of exchange, and apparently astounded that she carried some of it around in the receptacle buried in her handbag. It was, of course, an elaborate ritual which delays taxis at the end of each feminine journey and pushes males to the edge of sanity at souks, malls, and bazaars everywhere in the planet. Mackinnon fidgeted. A queue had begun to form.
Reassured by norms of everyday life, he pulled on the favourite shoes his wife had determined to replace, and glanced towards the desk where his wife and a shop assistant were gradually approaching the end of the long payment dance. He would take his wife to the West End Hotel for lunch. She would like that. It was, after all, a very agreeable afternoon.