Whirligig (11 page)

Silence had reigned for a short while, when Peregrine barked again.

‘What about a PR campaign?' he suggested.

‘I think we're beyond that now,' said Claypole flatly.

‘Mm,' Coky added. ‘As far as I can see we have seven days to get together written material that persuades Tommy Thompson and John Bruce that the wind farm should be given planning permission.'

‘Is John Bruce the guy with the specs?' said Claypole. Coky nodded.

‘What about the other woman? Helen something?' asked Peregrine.

‘MacDougall? Dead set against,' said Coky. ‘We'll never convince her, so there's no point in trying. Almost as anti it as my mother.'

‘Ah,' said Peregrine, with heavy significance.

Claypole's eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean, “ah”?'

‘Well, we have to change Bonnie's mind, I'm afraid. At least… a bit.'

‘I don't follow.' Claypole looked at Coky, but she too was frowning.

Peregrine explained. When Peregrine inherited MacGilp House and the Garvach estate, two parcels of land were reserved in his mother's will for his two sisters. A temporary right-of-way was required over those two parcels of land in order to get the huge turbine towers and blades to the construction site. Peregrine had already drawn up legal papers to guarantee his sisters a generous annual sum for the privilege of being able to drive HGVs across their land – which had no other use – but the two sisters had yet to sign. Without those signatures, there could be no wind farm.

‘Oh,' said Claypole.

‘Yes,' said Peregrine gravely. ‘I rather thought that they might talk to you. I don't see Dorcas much, and I haven't spoken to the wicked witch for a year.'

Coky blushed.

Claypole was engaged with the subject now. ‘And they know how much they are being paid?'

‘Yup.'

‘But you still can't get them to sign?'

‘Nope.'

‘So… do they want more money?'

Peregrine hesitated. ‘Honestly, I think they're just doing it to piss me off. Silly girls.'

The three of them sat in silence again.

‘I'm off to bed,' said Coky quickly, and left the room with such speed that Clayple wondered if he had done something to offend her. But Peregrine seemed not to have noticed, and ploughed on.

‘I'll do all the paperwork that Tommy Thompson
wants us to do, if you'll just… Well, do you think you could go and have a word with them?'

Claypole thought. He knew he was not the man for any job that required diplomacy and tact, but all he really wanted at that moment was to go to sleep for a long time – and would have agreed to anything that would get him to a bed faster.

Claypole stood up and stretched.

‘Yeah. Probably. Can I sleep on it?' he said, yawning as pointedly as he could without overacting.

‘Sure,' said Peregrine, beginning to turn out the lights. As they walked through the door to the kitchen, the old man clicked his fingers. ‘How rude of me…'

Claypole waited for the invitation to stay, which must surely now be coming.

‘You're welcome to borrow the old Land Rover,' said Peregrine, picking a small key off a peg. He threw it at Claypole, who failed to catch it.

‘She's in the barn,' said Peregrine, yawning and handing Claypole a small torch. ‘Coky just retuned her, so she won't give you any trouble. I'm off to bed.'

‘What if I…?' Claypole could hardly believe he was going to be turfed out at this hour, but couldn't summon the words to try and suggest otherwise. His eyes were heavy from tiredness and whisky.

‘Don't use the accelerator in reverse, though. And I'd avoid second gear altogether if you know what's good for you. 'Night 'night.'

The light in the kitchen went off, and Claypole had no choice but to head out to the barn, torch in hand.

In the 1970s the company that made the Land Rover was still owned by Brits, and they were old-fashioned engineers to the core. They loved the Land Rover and were the guardians of its heritage. This meant that, when the oil crisis of that era really struck home and the price of petrol doubled within three years, they had two reactions. First, they said to each other, let's make the new model drink even more petrol. Second, let's make the windscreen wipers just slightly smaller. Thus, the Land Rover Series III – of which Peregrine's was an example – is what the Series I and II were before it: a cheap and nippy tractor that breaks down much of the time, but is extremely easy to mend. Essentially, if you open the bonnet, squint at it, fiddle with a few things and strike it firmly with a spanner, it works again. Nothing like the modern Land Rovers – all German plastic and Japanese electronics
–
the old Land Rovers are stubborn iron horses that seem to run better if you drag them through seventeen types of shit first, then cover them in salt water and give them ten years rusting in a barn with hens laying eggs on the battery.

Claypole's journey had started well enough. He had been surprised to have found and started the Land Rover with little fuss. The odour inside the cab was challenging – manure and sheep dip – but he headed down the long drive of MacGilp House with the imminent prospect of flopping down in his room at the Loch Garvach Hotel, there to be unconscious for as long as he needed to be. And he rather liked the old Land Rover. The floor was rusted away beneath the clutch, making it drafty, but it bounced about on the road in a cheery way and made Claypole feel rather macho despite how chilly he was in his thin suit.

The mist came first, which turned to fog as he
descended the hill away from the house. He tried using the wipers but they succeeded only in smearing the windscreen, cracked and mildewed as it already was. The headlights he also found to be interestingly arranged. When the headlights were in ‘dip' mode he got a very good view of the road for ten feet in front of the vehicle. But if he put them on full beam he could see only the top of the trees some 700 yards ahead.

Four minutes later, the rain came. It was smeary and feathery at first, then in spits, then great gobbets heralded a loud and constant blanket of water. Claypole even had to slow the car down to a crawl to see the road, and to prevent slurry from spouting up through the rusty clutch-hole. At a three-way crossroads, which he thought he recognised from his walk to the house, he turned left, because that was what he had done when coming the other way. A few hundred yards later, he realised that this had been quite the wrong thing to do. If he had turned left coming the other way, then on returning he should turn right. So he made a fifty-three point turn in a lay-by. He would turn right when he got back to the crossroads. Then he doubted himself, and thought he might have been wrong. Turning round again, he went back to where he thought the three-way crossroads now was, but when it did not appear he realised with horror that he was utterly confused. He could not even retrace his steps and was blinking into the driving rain in baffled paralysis.

After eeny, meeny, miney, mo, he decided just to continue on the road he was on, and took a left at a fork in the road half a mile later. It must lead somewhere, he thought. At least if I meet any wildlife, it won't stop me in my huge, safe steel box. I'll just carry on, over the fields, if necessary, killing everything. He would
find the way to Garvachhead no matter what. For, as long as he had petrol, he could just… He looked at the gauge. Oh. He tapped it hopefully. The needle sank even further towards the dreaded ‘E'.

It was twelve fretful and desperate minutes later that the Land Rover ran out of fuel and sputtered to a stop in a lay-by, the rain thrumming on the roof suddenly the only noise. For the next minute, even in the deafening rain, and even a hundred yards away, Claypole might have been heard, in profound and pointless rage, levelling the basest language at, and thumping with all his tubby might on, an unyielding Bakelite steering wheel. But there was no one for miles around.

When he had stopped bellowing, his first instinct (other than checking that his phone still had no reception) was to look at the engine, despite the whipping, drenching rain. How this would magically locate more fuel, he didn't know. But it was the only thing he could think of. The bonnet of the Land Rover had a massive spare wheel on top of it, and was fastened down with two large clasps. They clipped onto the body with rusted bolts that took all the strength in Claypole's weak fingers to prise away. He struggled to get the bonnet up when he had freed it from the clasps, and then had to prop it up with a piece of driftwood which was supplied just inside the engine for the purpose. He stared into the blackness below the bonnet and squinted at the steaming, muddy engine. Of course, he had absolutely no idea what he was looking for, and gave up before his underpants became the only article of his clothing that was not wet through.

He got back in the cab of the car and spent seven minutes trying to find some internal lights, which did not exist. During this time, his body heat – and possibly the swearing as well –
had steamed up the entire cab. He couldn't see a thing out of the tiny windscreen, or any of the windows. When it abruptly stopped raining he got out again and stared into the woods. Could he just take a walk through them and rejoin the road? Then he had a vision of himself, born of a hundred video rentals, stumbling through the woods pursued by a nameless horror, eventually to be terrified to death and eaten. He would not be doing any more walking tonight.

With the sincerest possible dread, and still lightly dripping, Claypole looked in the back of the Land Rover. It contained some wisps of straw and what he assumed was sheep shit, a jerry can of diesel (unhelpful, as the Land Rover had a petrol engine, but Claypole supposed that he could always set light to it if hypothermia was imminent), a broken garden fork, three empty feed sacks, a plastic buoy and – yes! – a dog's blanket. He knew now that he would have to be his bed this night, and he gave a little sob and a sigh as he remembered that in his rucksack in a grim hotel room that seemed like a palace at that moment were the pills he was supposed to take every night for his diseased heart.

He decided that speed was of the essence. It might rain again at any moment. Remembering something from a men's magazine about how to construct a shelter in the woods, he thought that bracken would serve well as bedding below him, and the blanket, rank-smelling and covered in dog hair as it was, would have to perform as his duvet. He walked towards the grass verge and immediately fell on his knees into a ditch. The muddy water instantly soaked his legs, and he scrambled upright in silent panic and fury. He squinted
around him in the darkness and saw that there was indeed bracken within reach. He grabbed angrily at a handful and yanked. The fern slipped through his hand, tearing the skin on his palms easily and deeply. He bellowed in pain. Wiping his muddy and bloodied hands on his shirt, he cursed that mere foliage could do so much damage and more carefully began to uproot a few more plants, getting himself more wet and muddy in the process. When he reckoned that he had enough bracken to make himself some sort of rudimentary mattress, he gratefully stowed himself in the back of the Land Rover.

After making his ‘bed' and lying entirely still for twenty minutes, he drifted into a shallow doze. Just as he was beginning to feel that sleep might be aided if his feet were lower than his swelling head, Claypole heard the swish of tyres on the wet road. He could not have got up in time to flag the vehicle down, so he didn't move. Remaining motionless and longing for sleep or death, he pondered as the car slowed and passed that it was probably the only car that would pass this way until eventually the police discovered his putrifying body the following spring.

It began to rain again.

VIKTOR
: Cheer up, Mac. You can't eat scenery.

Local Hero
, written and directed by Bill Forsyth

T
here is a theory that if a person walks through a forest, they are bound to find the one thing in that forest that is not forest. It is not, the theory goes, a coincidence. It is a rule of forests. Or rather, it is because it is in the nature of people. Human instinct is the same now as it was 4,000 years ago. Dwellings and other things important to people are found in hollows, by rivers, or at sites where a well can be dug with ease, or at points where the visibility is best. So when you are walking through a forest, you will find the old burial sites, and the houses, or places where houses used to be, or where people used to look out for their sheep, or kept watch for Vikings. Just so long, that is, as you're not really looking for them. If you were to use a map, or have any kind of plan, you might well go wrong. The modern will is more powerful than the ancient instinct, and in any case this principle has been a little confused since people have started to build houses where they shouldn't be: on the sides of hills with no
water, on flood plains and so on. Deliberately testing the boundaries of technology and ingenuity, perhaps – but in the last fifty years more from lack of space or the desire for profit. If this theory is to be believed, then, it was a good thing for him that almost nothing was going through Claypole's head as he wandered through the Garvach forest.