Annie Christie's Family Fictions:
Episode Four
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: None.
Description: An uwanted visitor gate-crashes the holiday.
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Since it was a hard five mile walk to the Fossil Tree, it stands to reason that it was another hard five miles back. Harder for some than for others. Ellie was desperate to get back to what she called Castle Dare and is really called Dun Bhuirg. Which is Gaelic for ‘The Burg’. Ollie was just moaning that we’d not brought the car, so when we got to Burg, dad suggested that if we liked we could stay there and he’d go back to the Pink Cottage and pick up the car, drive back and collect us. Ollie favoured that because he was too lazy to walk. Ellie just wanted to stay playing around her old fantasy Castle, but I thought I should at least chum dad the rest of the way.
Otherwise it seemed like he was just a sort of pack-horse and I knew this trip was about family for him, about being together – so I volunteered to walk back with him. And we all agreed on that.
Dad and I set off from The Burg in what I guess you’d call a companionable silence. We didn’t have a lot to say to each other but what teenager does. If I’d known how important that walk was, I’d have thought of something to say. But I didn’t, so I didn’t. We just walked along, in the sunshine, wondering why the midgies had to spoil the party but generally just being men together, out on a walk. Dad was probably wondering why he hadn’t properly assessed the midgie risk and the terrain risk and… but I was just trying to keep the buggers from biting me and my boots from rubbing my heels raw.
We arrived back at Pink Cottage to find we had a visitor. Not an altogether welcome visitor. There was a car besides ours outside the cottage. Dad had a really good Saab estate, which was a pretty good car and fitted all of us in. The other car was a somewhat beaten up Cavalier Estate – and on the top of it was an upside down boat. It was a fibre glass rowing boat, not some big yacht thing – but it looked weird none the less. And the car was recognisable even under the disguise. It was Marco’s car.
Marco, if you remember, Casey, was the builder who had been more or less part of our family ever since I can remember. Yes, he had his own wife and children and he didn’t spend Christmas or New Year with us, but with the boat and all, it looked like we might be spending our summer holiday with him.
Dad and I looked at each other and I could see he was no more happy about it than I was. Marco’s kids are okay, from the couple of times I’ve met them, but they were only about four and six then and still at the loud, shrieky, running around chaotically stage.
‘Did we invite Marco and his family to come on holiday?’ I asked dad.
He shook his head.
We went indoors. Mum and Marco were having a cup of tea. There was no sign of Mrs Marco (I have never been able to remember her name) or indeed the mini-Marcos. Just mum and Marco.
Explanations were in order. But it seemed I wasn’t to be party to them. Mum suggested that me and Marco go and take the boat off the roof of the car. I remember pointing out that dad had promised to go and pick up Ellie and Ollie from The Burg. And Marco volunteered him and me to go and do that.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. I wasn’t hugely comfortable in Marco’s company and it felt like he’d just bumped my dad’s nice day out of the water.
But Dad agreed with Mum and said that if me and Marco went to pick up the others, they’d sort things out back at the cottage.
I didn’t know what needed sorting out – except sleeping arrangements, of course - because as we were on the way out Mum said, ‘I’ve put you and Ollie in the same room, Adam, to make room for Marco.’
Which didn’t please me. My holiday freedom was now getting more and more curtailed by the minute. And if I’m honest, I guess I felt a bit betrayed. I didn’t want Marco, with or without his family, tagging on to our holiday. And I did wonder, for the flicker of a moment, why his family wasn’t with him, or he with them. But the moment passed. I was just sore about having to share with Ollie.
We got the boat off the roof without me uttering a word. He explained to me, in what he doubtless thought was a matey way, but sounded patronising, that he’d brought the boat for something for us all to do together.
‘We can play Hornblower,’ he said. The man was lame. No idea. Did he think I was six?
Play Hornblower with your own kids, I thought. But obviously I’d been well enough brought up not to say that out loud. I didn’t give a stuff about playing Hornblower. Or about going out in a boat. But I didn’t know how to find out what I did want to know without sounding rude. We got in the car and drove in silence for a while – silence apart from Marco going on about how cool it was for me to ride ‘shotgun’ with him and what an adventure it was, blah blah.
And I got so fed up that I gave up trying to think about being polite and just said, ‘Where are your wife and kids?’
‘They’ve gone abroad on holiday,’ said Marco.
He didn’t seem to think it worth the explanation of why he hadn’t gone with them and I didn’t care enough to ask out loud, though I shouted it in my head the rest of the way to The Burg.
We got there to find Ollie sitting like a wet week and no sign of Ellie.
‘Hi, Ols,’ Marco said, because he always called Ollie Ols. He thought Ols Olds was a hell of a joke. No one else found it funny.
‘Where’s dad?’ Ollie asked.
‘Where’s Ellie?’ I replied.
‘Oh, somewhere running around by her silly castle,’ he said.
‘At home with Mum,’ I said.
‘I hope you don’t mind me gate-crashing your holiday,’ Marco said. ‘I brought a boat. I thought we could play Hornblower.’
I should point out that at this point Hornblower hadn’t been made into a TV series yet, and Marco was just referring to the books that he’d bought Ollie as a Christmas present the year before. Ollie’s not a great reader and he passed them on to me. I didn’t think that much of them, they were sort of a less exciting version of Sharpe but on boats; but I read them all the same and told Ollie the plot so that he could talk about it to Marco. Which he obviously did for Marco still to be banging on about it some eight months later.
‘What do you mean, play?’ Ollie said. Yeah, it sounded rude, but at that point he had my sympathy. Come on, Marco. We’re teenagers. We don’t want to ‘play’ with you. Neither of us actually said it, but it was clear that was what we were thinking. To us at any rate. And at that point, before it all got too ugly, I went off in search of Ellie. Ollie and Marco could sort out their own problems. I had no time for either one of them.
I found Ellie at Castle Dare easily enough, and told her about Marco. Sunny Ellie never had a problem with Marco. The more the merrier for her. And she was excited about the idea of having a boat we could go out in. She was twelve and even though she wasn’t that interested in Hornblower, she was enthused enough about Daisy Cheape and the drowning that she now had a vested interest in the Loch.
All the way back in the car Ellie rattled on to Marco (who was the only one even pretending to listen) about Daisy Cheape and the drowning and how cool it would be to get out on the Loch in a boat, till Marco looked like he was beginning to regret having turned up with a boat at all.
But not once did either of them say what I was thinking, which was ‘why the hell have you come and muscled in on our private family holiday?’ Maybe they weren’t even thinking it, but I sure was. And I wasn’t happy.
I was also less than happy at the prospect of sharing a room with Ollie and I said so over dinner. Marco came to the rescue again. He suggested that since he’d intruded, he and Ollie could share and I could keep the room to myself. Mum tried to intervene, but Ollie said ‘sure, I’d rather share with you than him’ to Marco and so that was that. Dad stayed uncharacteristically silent through the whole meal. But I could tell he was about as happy with Marco being there as I was.
I don’t know how Dad had put up with Marco over the years. I mean, I know a good builder is hard to find and like gold-dust and all that, and Marco had done loads and loads of work for us over the years. So much that I have to say I was beginning to wonder how good a builder he was if it took him years and years to do things. And when he seemed to have finished all the important jobs, Mum kept finding things like new built-in furniture and things to keep him going. Marco, as dad had said more than once, was like a bit of the furniture in our house himself. But since dad wasn’t handy with a screwdriver, but was handy with paying for things, we basically had a builder in residence and had to put up with it.
Marco must have had plenty of other jobs, but he did seem to be rather like our own personal builder and by the time I was fourteen I felt like I’d spent more of my life with Marco than my own dad. He really did build himself in with the furniture, you might say. HhEI suppose that was what was behind me being so pissed off to see him on our first big family holiday. This was our time. He was an outsider who didn’t realise his place.
But Ellie was so excited by the whole Daisy Cheape thing that she just rattled on through dinner, charming everyone – her sun blotting out my little dark cloud. And by the time the meal was over the plan for the following day had been made. We were all going out in the boat with Marco.
When I say we, I mean me, Ollie and Ellie. Mum and Dad were staying at the Cottage for some ‘quality time’ together. They had ‘things to sort out’. I suppose I should have worked it out sooner, Casey, but when you’re in the middle of things it can be really hard to see them in context and I just thought that maybe at last Mum and Dad would have a chance to deal with Alasdair. Who I thought was the elephant in the room. How wrong was I!
Swearwords: None.
Description: An uwanted visitor gate-crashes the holiday.
_____________________________________________________________________
Since it was a hard five mile walk to the Fossil Tree, it stands to reason that it was another hard five miles back. Harder for some than for others. Ellie was desperate to get back to what she called Castle Dare and is really called Dun Bhuirg. Which is Gaelic for ‘The Burg’. Ollie was just moaning that we’d not brought the car, so when we got to Burg, dad suggested that if we liked we could stay there and he’d go back to the Pink Cottage and pick up the car, drive back and collect us. Ollie favoured that because he was too lazy to walk. Ellie just wanted to stay playing around her old fantasy Castle, but I thought I should at least chum dad the rest of the way.
Otherwise it seemed like he was just a sort of pack-horse and I knew this trip was about family for him, about being together – so I volunteered to walk back with him. And we all agreed on that.
Dad and I set off from The Burg in what I guess you’d call a companionable silence. We didn’t have a lot to say to each other but what teenager does. If I’d known how important that walk was, I’d have thought of something to say. But I didn’t, so I didn’t. We just walked along, in the sunshine, wondering why the midgies had to spoil the party but generally just being men together, out on a walk. Dad was probably wondering why he hadn’t properly assessed the midgie risk and the terrain risk and… but I was just trying to keep the buggers from biting me and my boots from rubbing my heels raw.
We arrived back at Pink Cottage to find we had a visitor. Not an altogether welcome visitor. There was a car besides ours outside the cottage. Dad had a really good Saab estate, which was a pretty good car and fitted all of us in. The other car was a somewhat beaten up Cavalier Estate – and on the top of it was an upside down boat. It was a fibre glass rowing boat, not some big yacht thing – but it looked weird none the less. And the car was recognisable even under the disguise. It was Marco’s car.
Marco, if you remember, Casey, was the builder who had been more or less part of our family ever since I can remember. Yes, he had his own wife and children and he didn’t spend Christmas or New Year with us, but with the boat and all, it looked like we might be spending our summer holiday with him.
Dad and I looked at each other and I could see he was no more happy about it than I was. Marco’s kids are okay, from the couple of times I’ve met them, but they were only about four and six then and still at the loud, shrieky, running around chaotically stage.
‘Did we invite Marco and his family to come on holiday?’ I asked dad.
He shook his head.
We went indoors. Mum and Marco were having a cup of tea. There was no sign of Mrs Marco (I have never been able to remember her name) or indeed the mini-Marcos. Just mum and Marco.
Explanations were in order. But it seemed I wasn’t to be party to them. Mum suggested that me and Marco go and take the boat off the roof of the car. I remember pointing out that dad had promised to go and pick up Ellie and Ollie from The Burg. And Marco volunteered him and me to go and do that.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. I wasn’t hugely comfortable in Marco’s company and it felt like he’d just bumped my dad’s nice day out of the water.
But Dad agreed with Mum and said that if me and Marco went to pick up the others, they’d sort things out back at the cottage.
I didn’t know what needed sorting out – except sleeping arrangements, of course - because as we were on the way out Mum said, ‘I’ve put you and Ollie in the same room, Adam, to make room for Marco.’
Which didn’t please me. My holiday freedom was now getting more and more curtailed by the minute. And if I’m honest, I guess I felt a bit betrayed. I didn’t want Marco, with or without his family, tagging on to our holiday. And I did wonder, for the flicker of a moment, why his family wasn’t with him, or he with them. But the moment passed. I was just sore about having to share with Ollie.
We got the boat off the roof without me uttering a word. He explained to me, in what he doubtless thought was a matey way, but sounded patronising, that he’d brought the boat for something for us all to do together.
‘We can play Hornblower,’ he said. The man was lame. No idea. Did he think I was six?
Play Hornblower with your own kids, I thought. But obviously I’d been well enough brought up not to say that out loud. I didn’t give a stuff about playing Hornblower. Or about going out in a boat. But I didn’t know how to find out what I did want to know without sounding rude. We got in the car and drove in silence for a while – silence apart from Marco going on about how cool it was for me to ride ‘shotgun’ with him and what an adventure it was, blah blah.
And I got so fed up that I gave up trying to think about being polite and just said, ‘Where are your wife and kids?’
‘They’ve gone abroad on holiday,’ said Marco.
He didn’t seem to think it worth the explanation of why he hadn’t gone with them and I didn’t care enough to ask out loud, though I shouted it in my head the rest of the way to The Burg.
We got there to find Ollie sitting like a wet week and no sign of Ellie.
‘Hi, Ols,’ Marco said, because he always called Ollie Ols. He thought Ols Olds was a hell of a joke. No one else found it funny.
‘Where’s dad?’ Ollie asked.
‘Where’s Ellie?’ I replied.
‘Oh, somewhere running around by her silly castle,’ he said.
‘At home with Mum,’ I said.
‘I hope you don’t mind me gate-crashing your holiday,’ Marco said. ‘I brought a boat. I thought we could play Hornblower.’
I should point out that at this point Hornblower hadn’t been made into a TV series yet, and Marco was just referring to the books that he’d bought Ollie as a Christmas present the year before. Ollie’s not a great reader and he passed them on to me. I didn’t think that much of them, they were sort of a less exciting version of Sharpe but on boats; but I read them all the same and told Ollie the plot so that he could talk about it to Marco. Which he obviously did for Marco still to be banging on about it some eight months later.
‘What do you mean, play?’ Ollie said. Yeah, it sounded rude, but at that point he had my sympathy. Come on, Marco. We’re teenagers. We don’t want to ‘play’ with you. Neither of us actually said it, but it was clear that was what we were thinking. To us at any rate. And at that point, before it all got too ugly, I went off in search of Ellie. Ollie and Marco could sort out their own problems. I had no time for either one of them.
I found Ellie at Castle Dare easily enough, and told her about Marco. Sunny Ellie never had a problem with Marco. The more the merrier for her. And she was excited about the idea of having a boat we could go out in. She was twelve and even though she wasn’t that interested in Hornblower, she was enthused enough about Daisy Cheape and the drowning that she now had a vested interest in the Loch.
All the way back in the car Ellie rattled on to Marco (who was the only one even pretending to listen) about Daisy Cheape and the drowning and how cool it would be to get out on the Loch in a boat, till Marco looked like he was beginning to regret having turned up with a boat at all.
But not once did either of them say what I was thinking, which was ‘why the hell have you come and muscled in on our private family holiday?’ Maybe they weren’t even thinking it, but I sure was. And I wasn’t happy.
I was also less than happy at the prospect of sharing a room with Ollie and I said so over dinner. Marco came to the rescue again. He suggested that since he’d intruded, he and Ollie could share and I could keep the room to myself. Mum tried to intervene, but Ollie said ‘sure, I’d rather share with you than him’ to Marco and so that was that. Dad stayed uncharacteristically silent through the whole meal. But I could tell he was about as happy with Marco being there as I was.
I don’t know how Dad had put up with Marco over the years. I mean, I know a good builder is hard to find and like gold-dust and all that, and Marco had done loads and loads of work for us over the years. So much that I have to say I was beginning to wonder how good a builder he was if it took him years and years to do things. And when he seemed to have finished all the important jobs, Mum kept finding things like new built-in furniture and things to keep him going. Marco, as dad had said more than once, was like a bit of the furniture in our house himself. But since dad wasn’t handy with a screwdriver, but was handy with paying for things, we basically had a builder in residence and had to put up with it.
Marco must have had plenty of other jobs, but he did seem to be rather like our own personal builder and by the time I was fourteen I felt like I’d spent more of my life with Marco than my own dad. He really did build himself in with the furniture, you might say. HhEI suppose that was what was behind me being so pissed off to see him on our first big family holiday. This was our time. He was an outsider who didn’t realise his place.
But Ellie was so excited by the whole Daisy Cheape thing that she just rattled on through dinner, charming everyone – her sun blotting out my little dark cloud. And by the time the meal was over the plan for the following day had been made. We were all going out in the boat with Marco.
When I say we, I mean me, Ollie and Ellie. Mum and Dad were staying at the Cottage for some ‘quality time’ together. They had ‘things to sort out’. I suppose I should have worked it out sooner, Casey, but when you’re in the middle of things it can be really hard to see them in context and I just thought that maybe at last Mum and Dad would have a chance to deal with Alasdair. Who I thought was the elephant in the room. How wrong was I!
About the Author
Annie Christie is a pretty ordinary person, except that she was born Annie Christie and then married a man called Christie and so is still called Christie despite having taken on her husband’s name. She sometimes wonders if she should have called herself Christie-Christie: but who would believe that?
Born near Drum of Wartle in Aberdeenshire, Annie moved as swiftly as possible to a place with a less bizarre name – Edinburgh – but the bizarreness chased her and she now lives with her husband Rab in rural Galloway, with a Kirkcudbrightshire postcode. (That's Cur coo bree shire to the uninitiated.) She is an active member of the Infinite Jigsaw Project and is now happy to be welcomed into McStorytellers with her first published serial, Family Fictions.
Born near Drum of Wartle in Aberdeenshire, Annie moved as swiftly as possible to a place with a less bizarre name – Edinburgh – but the bizarreness chased her and she now lives with her husband Rab in rural Galloway, with a Kirkcudbrightshire postcode. (That's Cur coo bree shire to the uninitiated.) She is an active member of the Infinite Jigsaw Project and is now happy to be welcomed into McStorytellers with her first published serial, Family Fictions.