A Scotttish enlightment

“So that miserly bastard has eventually agreed to hand it over…” Aoife turned up the volume on her earphones to block out her aunt’s shrill voice emanating into her bedroom from the kitchen below. She had been dead right to scarper upstairs when her dad’s sister Therese came trundling down the drive. “That woman is completely nuts,” she informed the empty room before stretching out on the bed and concentrating on her music play list in the hope that whatever crises was going on downstairs would not include her.

It was a vain hope as within minutes her young 11-year-old brother Declan came bursting into the room, launched himself onto the bed, grabbed her earphones and shouted gleefully into her ear “Mam needs you downstairs now…code double red emergency, come on” and he grabbed her arm and dragged her out the bedroom door.

That had been three weeks ago and in fact the bastard had not agreed to hand “It” over at all. What he had agreed to, was an exchange, and she had been given the short straw of hauling the object of that exchange all the way from Co. Wexford on the southeast of Ireland to some God forsaken old broken-down pile in the highlands of Scotland. She remembered reading the review for a book about someone travelling around Europe with a piano, or was it a fridge? Anyway, the object of her ire was just as big but far less streamlined. I mean no-one in their right minds would expect her to “walk” those items that distance, but the single wheel on the case of the biggest of all stringed instruments, the double base, meant, she was assured by her family eager to appease mad aunty Therese, the task was perfectly doable.

“Why can’t you just put it on a plane and fly it over,” she had enquired innocently of her hyper excited aunt, only to receive a 40-minute lecture on the humidity and temperature sensitivities of such a venerable instrument. None of them owned a car big enough to drive the thing in and anyway it was a 9-hour drive from Fishguard, which was the terminal in Wales for the nearby Wexford ferry, to Fort William the final destination in Scotland. So, the plan was conceived that, “With all her travel experience” which in fact consisted of one interrail trip in Europe, four years previously in her teens, she was a suitable custodian of the instrument. The proposed itinerary was for her to take the ferry as a foot passenger and get a train from Fishguard to Cardiff in Wales, and another train from Cardiff to London, and then the sleeper train from London to Fort William, “and sure Donal can come with you as a helper”. Great! Double trouble!

It was 7.30 am and Aoife had just wheeled “Betty the behemoth” down the enclosed gangway onto the deck of the huge Irish Ferries boat, with Donal and their wheely case straggling behind her, when the captain began to speak over the PA system. The wind had picked up significantly in the 40 minutes the extra-large taxi had taken to get them to the ferry terminal. It was now so strong that the captain’s disembodied softly spoken Irish accent wisped around her and murmured the good news personally in her ear, “As to the weather forecast for the passage, in case …. not aware …Eunice threatening across the Irish sea today. We are in a lull, but we do expect the winds to strengthen on passage.”

“What did he say Fee,” Donal enquired as they queued up to present their boarding cards.

“Oh, only that we are heading into a hurricane”

 “Really! .. Cool .

“Declan watch out ..Oh I’m so sorry” she apologised to the lady in front of her as “Betty” with Declan’s help tried to run over her handbag. Eventually reaching the reception desk she was cleared to board the ship proper with a stern warning that given the weather situation “the instrument” was to be well secured, flat on the ground where it would be of no danger to fellow passengers.

Aoife awoke from a sound sleep sometime later and panicked momentarily not being able to see Donal, but looking around saw him stretched out on a nearby couch and relaxed again. She looked at her watch which read 11am, so just 45 min before she had to take up her burden again and walk. She considered buying some sandwiches but still full from their huge breakfast and lethargic after sleep she was disinclined as yet to move. There was a certain majesty about a force 9 gale, she thought, especially when viewed from the comfort of the club lounge on deck 11! The whole world reduced to a monochrome maelstrom. It was like one of those immersive movie shows they had gone to in Disney land. You could both see and feel the power of the undulating grey waves at the same time, and it had a strange anesthetising quality about it, and she needed that so much… Her head had felt like a sack of cats for so long being dragged this way and that. “But you can sort this”, she told herself, “Can I really?” came the dubious reply.

She shut her eyes again and concentrated on the sound of the wind and rain and roaring water and was just about to dose again when the ship gave an almighty roll and she was thrown out of her chair and landed in an unruly heap on the carpeted floor. Then before she could right herself there was another roll and Betty’s bloated body sailed past her and down the angled deck taking every four pinned chair in her path with her…

“OMG! That was hilarious, who would have thought a musical instrument could cause such carnage! “Donal laughed as he danced up and down in an attempt to keep warm on the Fishguard railway station platform, his April weather attire not quite a match for the sudden artic conditions. Aoife was sure that it would make a hilarious story to tell at parties someday, but just now she couldn’t be less amused. Because of the storm their berthing had been delayed by an hour, so they had missed their train to Cardiff, which meant that they would also miss the train they had booked to London and possibly the night train, so she was within a hair’s breadth of tossing Aunt Therese’s “venerated instrument” onto the railway track and taking the next boat home. Thankfully at least the attendant in the ticket office had been more than helpful and worked out another itinerary for her, all be it a very tight one, that should get them to Paddington station in London about 40minutes as opposed to a leisurely two hours, before the Caledonian night train to Port William departed.

Their good fortune continued as the next local train to Cardiff arrived on time, was almost empty and had a large area for buggies and baggage at the front of each carriage to deposit Betty in. They both sat down with a sigh of relief to get in out of the foul weather and immediately looked at each other and burst into laughter. “Who would have thought that travelling with a beast like Betty could be so much fun,” Aoife raised her eyebrows in mock irony as she rummaged in her bag for some munchies and the new itinerary plan. Declan responded by grabbing a packet of crisps and racing up and down the empty carriage making gorilla noises and throwing in the odd karate kick. Aoife looked out the window at the windswept scenery and then at her watch which read 2.53pm, it would take an hour and fifty minutes to get to Cardiff and then they would have only 30min to find the express train to London she fretted, before she just gave up on it all and stared out the window praying fervently for the day to end.

“What does the train look like?” Declan shouted as he darted a look around whilst helping Aoife hauled Betty the behemoth out of the narrow opening and down the steep step to the wet platform. “Like an angry bee, with a pointy orange head” she shouted back at him, eyeing the huge number of passengers pushing their way through the station with dismay. Where the hell had they all come from, then the large station clock gave her the answer. Five pm on a Friday evening, Jesus, could they have picked a worse time. “Over there, I see it” Declan pointed to the double platform off to the right, but as yet she had no idea how to get to it apart from dashing over the railway tracks with Betty like a bunch of bananas balanced on her head.

“Hiya alright pet”, at last she had found one stranger that did not ignore her plea for directions to the correct platform. But the train ride to London was not a happy one and she was definitely not in the good books of British Rail, having seriously infringed all their rules by sitting on her suitcase clutching Betty to her bosom and blocking the entrance to the toilet. Declan meanwhile spent the two-and-a-half-hour journey walking through the train from top to bottom with various other restless youngsters and munching his way through their food allowance money.

 Paddington station when they arrived was absolutely massive with a bewildering amount of information flashing on screens and by the time she figured out the correct platform, found the right train and right carriage and had shunted Betty in front of her down the incredibly narrow corridor to their cabin, she was almost in tears. Then just as she tried to balance the beast against the sink at the end of the tiny room so as to collapse down on the lower bunk Declan declared “Fee,I don’t feel well”, and proceeded to vomit all over the carpeted floor.

“Shouldn’t we tell someone that I barfed all over the floor” Declan piped up as Aoife was once again shuffling Betty down the narrow corridor in a long line of passengers disembarking the train at 10.30 am the following morning. She gave him an annoyed “shush” and it was only when they were safely on the platform that she turned on him to say caustically…

“Yes, if I was a model citizen I should, but I don’t feel like behaving as a model citizen at the moment after spending the night with such a foul smell. Really Declan you’re like that bloody pigmy shrew on the telly the other night.”

“Which one was he again?”

“The one that eats three times his body weight in food each day”

 “Oh, yea cool.”

 Aoife threw her eyes to heaven and shivered in her parka jacket as a light sprinkling of snow started to descend on them. It’s all this lump’s fault though she grated and gave Betty what she thought was a light tap with her foot, well maybe it was a bit more than a tap as the giantess fell over and started to slide along an icy patch which to both their horror was taking her on a direct path off the platform and onto the tracks.

Immobile with shock for the moment, they were even more surprised when a dark-skinned young man raced forward out of the crowd, jumped onto the empty track and caught her before disaster could strike. Gingerly stepping across the icy platform to thank him, and expecting a rather engaging encounter with their gallant handsome hero, she was taken aback when he turned on her, brown eyes blazing saying...

 “Have you any idea just how precious this instrument is, what the hell were you thinking, kicking it across the platform, what a criminal … a wanton act of mindless …

With that, words failed him so Aoife filled in the space with a belligerent “I have no idea who the hell you are…only to be interrupted by Donal’s rather panicked voice...

“The train, Fee, there’s a train coming!”

 The three of them looked around in horror and then there was a mad scramble as Betty was shoved back non too gently onto the platform with their new acquaintance jumping up athletically after her. Aoife really had had enough at this stage and turned on the young man, obviously of Indian origin and continued as previously, “I have no idea who you are, but if you have any connection with our uncle Ralph, until he hands over Aunty Terese’s, Stradivarius violin, this is MY family’s instrument, and I can do what I bloody well want with it” 

The stranger’s eyes passed from the bright eyed, wild haired pretty girl to the gleeful excited face of her younger brother before announcing with irritating calm, “I am your uncle Ralph’s stepson and the intended owner of this precious instrument, and if it is not to be ruined altogether, we need to get it out of the weather now.” With that he picked up Betty as if she was a flyweight and headed off in the direction of the carpark, and his bedraggled step cousins had no option but to race after him.

“Now don’t you mind Romesh” his mum Amrita soothed an hour later when Aoife and Declan were being served a delicious brunch in the cosy kitchen of her lovely sprawling country house. Seemingly the dilapidated ancestral home of the Lacey’s of Argyll had been sold to a Canadian millionaire five years previously when Amrita and Ralph were married.

“Music is his life. It is how we met your uncle, Ralph was giving a doublebass master class, and Romesh well, why he was taken with that huge instrument I don’t know but it mesmerised him even from an early age. They were quite a famous musical trio, your dad, and Therese and Ralph. He went a bit mad I think when your dad met your mum and moved to Ireland. It broke the group, broke his heart, made him bitter. Kicked them all out, like, such silliness and Therese having his doublebass and he her violin all these years and he not agreeing to swap. I made him see sense like, he’s not a bad man, just a bit funny in his ways.” She finished her monologue and looked with satisfaction at her rapt audience, “now you eat up and go have a rest, your uncle will be back at 7 and we can all have a lovely dinner together.”

Romesh stopped his practice for a moment, his ear picking up another melody and stepped outside and followed the high-pitched notes of a tin whistle. He found Aoife sitting under a briar in a patch of welcome sunshine. It was a pretty scene, the sun rays picking up the mahogany tints in the girls’ curly brown hair as her fingers danced merrily over the silver pipe. But then she stopped playing and looked so forlorn that he surprised himself by blurting out “What’s wrong.” 

She started at his voice and looked at him pensively before simply saying “everything”.

“That bad eh,” he responded in a melodic Scottish drawl, and went over to sit beside her. “Sorry about my rudeness at the station by the way.”

“Right back at yea,” she replied with a weak smile that did not reach her eyes.

 “So, step cousin, why is ‘everything’ wrong.”

She released a breath, and with the thought that who better to confide in than a complete stranger, shrugged and said “It’s just I thought I had my life figured out, but then Covid came and it changed everything”

“How so.”

“I don’t know, it’s just I was always so eager for adventure, most of my many cousins are all in far-flung places, America, Australia, New Zealand and all over Europe. I couldn’t wait for it to be my turn, and now it is. I have just qualified with first class honours in a biotech degree that I could travel the world with, but I just don’t want to go now.”

 “And what part did Covid play in that?”

She laughed mirthlessly “a long period of deep introspection, I guess. I discovered the meaning of the word introvert”

 Then she stopped speaking for a while, so Ramesh prompted. “Which is?”

“Which is” she hesitated and then rushed on” the discovery that all my bright college days before being incarcerated by covid, when I was the sunny popular “ready for anything “fun girl was really all an act that took a lot out of me, and that the two years I spent isolated with just my family and a few close friends were some of the happiest I spent. But as there isn’t anywhere remotely near home I can use my degree, if I stay at home I’ll just be a pathetic out of work recluse.”

“And what about your music.”

“My music” she looked at him.

“You seemed to be pretty happy on your tin whistle just now.”

“Ahh that’s what I do for fun. That’s what was so good about covid, we had a covid music pod and we met up regularly to play rather than in a crowded pub. There is such fantastic buzz in the trad music in Ireland at the moment. I know your dad doesn’t improve of our diddly i tradition, but to me it’s just magic. She beamed back at him.”

“Doesn’t your dad teach trad music.”

“Yea”

“And you love trad music”

“Yea” she replied hesitantly her brows furrowed.

“So don’t you think it’s just possible that there might be room for one more trad music teacher where you come from.”

Aoife turned to this lovely boy she had just met and replied smilingly, “you know what, I think I am going to like having you for a step cousin.”And he answered “Right back at ya”