Nosegay
by Alasdair McPherson
Genre: Romance
Swearwords: None.
Description: A tale of young love blossoming.
Swearwords: None.
Description: A tale of young love blossoming.
It was almost dark when I eased the quad bike into the carport and dodged the puddles as I ran to the scullery door. I was surprised to find lights on since my wife is in darkest England collecting my stepdaughter from her posh boarding school. It’s the same one her mum went to and it sounds as if she has inherited the rebellious family spirit. The Headmistress was, apparently, quite adamant that Abigail was to be collected in person.
I’ve been in the high hills with the sheep all day. I don’t even try to pretend that my presence is necessary but I enjoy being out and the banter working with the shepherd and his son. The house would have seemed very empty without Maggie. The weather had been fine when I set off this morning but the cloud had got lower as the day wore on. We’re at five hundred feet here so it’s not uncommon to be shrouded in this way.
We keep the foul-weather gear and wellies in the old scullery and I was stripping off my saturated outer garments when Giles burst in. He’s Maggie’s other child, two years younger than his sister at fourteen. He’s not supposed to arrive until tomorrow, when I was planning to be in Glasgow to collect him at Central Station. He threw me a towel and stood hopping from foot to foot while I dried my hair.
“C’mon, old man, I’ve got a surprise for you.”
I took a good look at him as I followed him through the house to my study. He’s shot up another three or four inches since he went back to his public school at Easter. He’s wearing jogging pants and a big jumper so I can’t be absolutely sure, but I don’t think he’s added any more bulk to his skinny frame.
He paused at the door and ordered me to close my eyes and then he steered me inside. When he gave permission to look, I was standing in front of the framed front page of the Glasgow Herald hanging above my desk. Giles had remained just inside the door and he was standing behind me chortling. There was something I was missing and he was revelling in my stupidity.
Giles and I hit it off almost from the outset. His mum, the Honourable Marigold, and I decided not to further delay living together so we eloped and she didn’t tell her kids until we got back from our honeymoon. His sister was outraged and she is still not totally reconciled but Giles showed nothing but indifference. I was pretty clued up on the theory of teenage boys but he seemed to be more withdrawn than was good for him.
Everything was a bore to him, although he brightened considerably when he spotted the quad bikes. I offered him a ride and he looked interested for a moment before he relapsed into a sullen scowl. It wasn’t until I held out a hard hat in one hand and the keys in another that his indifference deserted him.
“Two rules,” I told him. “You wear a hard hat at all times and you carry a mobile phone to tell us where to send the ambulance when you fall off.”
My shepherd spends a lot of time researching rams that we might buy to improve the flock but we take a personal interest in the progeny. The English aristocracy are even more obsessed than he is with the blood line but they have no interest in their offspring after they ensure the kids are fed and educated. Giles had a nanny until he was seven when he went to board at a prep school. His holidays were spent with whichever relative would take him in.
I was an alien species to him; I listened to what he said and argued with him if I thought he was wrong. Maggie has custody of him and his sister and their father has rights of access. Fortunately, he has no wish to exercise his rights now that Giles has made it clear that he would rather tend sheep in his holidays than travel to exotic locations.
I still hadn’t figured out what was different about the framed newspaper and Giles eventually lost patience. He turned a switch and a little strip-light came on above the exhibit. It hadn’t been there this morning.
“Thanks Giles. I don’t think I’d ever have noticed if you hadn’t put the light on.”
“I asked the science master and bought the bits from my own pocket money. You should maybe get an electrician to check that I’ve got the wiring right, old man.”
I held up my hand and we high-fived. The question of what Giles should call me came up soon after he came back after his first flight on a quad bike. My heart had been in my mouth from the moment he got on and I didn’t dare to think what I’d say if Maggie asked where her baby boy was.
“You could call me ‘Old man’,” I suggested. “Isn’t that what you toffee-nosed public school boys say to each other?”
His mum was appalled but the name stuck. It expressed the relationship between us pretty well; I’m not his dad but I’m a bit more than a pal. I like it much better than ‘Your husband’ which is the best that Abigail can manage.
It’s typical of Giles that he would plan things with such care and execute the job efficiently. I’d mention the change to the electrician but I had no doubt that the work would exceed statutory requirements. It was also typical that he should decide to highlight the object that I most prized.
The newspaper clipping is the banner headline of the Glasgow Herald for the day after I announced the wording of the questions that were to be put to the people of Scotland and Northumbria. It reads: ‘The End of a Dreich Road’. I don’t want to bore you with the history of the treaty that brought the English region into the orbit of the Scottish parliament.
I was professor of Political Science at Glasgow University when I agreed to chair the enquiry into the feasibility of the merger. At that time the Herald gave a very fair summary of my faults and virtues concluding that I was at least as good as any other candidate. I knew the editor, of course. Glasgow is a compact city and I suppose he and I would bump into each other at private or public functions a couple of times a month.
We weren’t great pals but we respected each other. Right from the start there was some opposition to my appointment in the political columns of his own paper but it was a surprise when he told me that he was taking a retirement package, leaving the field open to his young political editor. This man had graduated from Edinburgh and had made no secret of the fact that he favoured his former professor over me.
Doctor Guthrie and I have been best friends since before I got the Glasgow chair and my opinion was in accord with that of the new editor of the Herald. I knew why Guthrie had not been offered the post, although I was sworn to secrecy. Sadly, nature had its way and Guthrie’s terminal illness is no longer secret. The Herald started a bit of a witch hunt while I was still struggling to put together a viable administration before the public hearings began.
In any enquiry, the great majority of the participants are serious, dedicated people but there are a few amongst the politicians and lawyers who see a public investigation as a stage on which they can display their case for advancement. I did everything in my power to discourage such grand-standing. The Herald made my life easier by offering a platform for those people I had kept under control. My enquiry was dull and productive so I didn’t mind the colourful attacks on me that the Herald published throughout the hundred days that I held public hearings.
I made a point of embracing grey. I wore a dark grey suit with a pale grey shirt and neutral tie every day that I sat at my limed oak desk listening to representations. In fact, the only touch of colour was the little posy of flowers that I placed on my desk to indicate that proceedings had begun. When I picked up the fading flowers it was a sign that the hearing was closed for the day.
The first posy came as a surprise. It was handed to me by a girl as I climbed the stairs to the door of the hall where the enquiry was being held. She smiled as she handed it over but shook her head without speaking when I raised my eyebrows in inquiry. There was no note attached to the little bouquet, not even the name of the florist that had made it up.
The following morning, a fresh posy was handed over, this time by a young man and so it continued for each of the hundred days the enquiry lasted. The press were intrigued, particularly because it was literally the only touch of colour in the proceedings. It didn’t take them long to find the florist supplying the flowers but they couldn’t find out any more. Payment had been made in cash by a man before the hearings began. He had given clear instructions about the composition and delivery. One newspaper employed an artist to do a sketch of the man based on the florist’s description but nothing came of it.
I knew what was going on, of course, but I had to sit listening intently for a hundred days before I could let myself consider the consequences. After the public hearings closed there was a great deal of work still to do checking the evidence I’d heard. Even when I retired to the farm to prepare my report and recommendations I held myself in check. I had waited more than twenty years, after all, and this time I wanted to get it right.
Giles and I raided the kitchen for our evening meal. Nothing was prepared since I had planned to drive to Glasgow and stay overnight before picking up my stepson. He had permission to leave school a day early, he assured me and he wanted to try travelling on his own.
“I had my phone with me so I could tell you where to send the ambulance!”
We chatted about the term just past and the things he had planned for the long vacation. He reminded me that I had promised to take him around a few Munroes this summer and we spent the evening rooting around in the lumber room to assess the state of tents and sleeping bags. He was yawning by ten and went off shortly afterwards to his bedroom in the tower.
I may not have the blue-blood of his father’s family but, thanks to the little Corsican, I can provide him with a castle. We’ve owned the land around here for ever, it seems, but it provided no more than a bare living until the Napoleonic Wars. The Continental Blockade cut off the supply of anil dye and an alternative source was found in the seaweed on our shore.
In the last years of the eighteenth century, a young chemist came down from Glasgow to organise the natives to collect and process seaweed. He married the beautiful daughter of the impoverished laird and together they built a farmhouse that resembles a Jacobite castle complete with turrets. Once Napoleon was defeated the cheap import of anil resumed and the family returned to scraping a living from the unforgiving land. By exercising the strictest economy, my dad was able to introduce a damp course and indoor plumbing but the outside of the dwelling was by some way the best feature until I poured money into the property when I inherited. Now we have central heating and four bathrooms to service the six large bedrooms.
An evening with Giles is great fun but stimulating rather than relaxing. He is thirsting for information that will let him make up his mind about life. Once he has made a decision the subject is closed. He has decided that the petrol engine is all that he requires, I mused as I put my wellies back on and shrugged into my wax jacket. He showed not the slightest interest in the two horses we’ve bought for his sister so I’m checking them alone. The cloud had lifted and the moon was up as I crossed to the paddock.
The gelding is straight to the point: when he comes forward nickering as I near the fence he puts his muzzle against the right hand pocket of my jacket. The mare is just as interested in the carrots I carry there but she‘s more subtle in her approach. First she pushes against my shoulder and snorts in my ear to show that she would still love me even if my pocket was empty. She’s the one that can be a bit of a handful when you try to ride her.
If the report from the headmistress is as bad as Maggie fears, Abigail is likely to be confined to the farm for most of the summer. If she is, then the mare will provide her with a challenge that might take her mind off the parent problem. I’m instinctively on the side of the kid because she reminds me of her mum when we first met so many years ago.
I attended one of the smallest and remotest secondary schools in Britain; I travelled nineteen miles each way and I wasn’t the most distant pupil. In his determination that we should miss out on nothing, the Head entered us for every national and international challenge. When I was seventeen, just waiting to sit my Highers, we won the Scottish heat of a debating competition and four of us were despatched to London to compete in the final, filmed for later transmission on television.
The subject for the debates was politics and part of the prize was a visit to Parliament. We were matched against two other schools, one of them a prestigious grammar and the other an exclusive girl’s boarding school. We finished as runners up to the grammarians and we were pretty pleased with ourselves when we were ushered into Downing Street on the morning after our relative triumph.
We saw the room where cabinet meetings are held but the Prime Minister was too busy to see us at that time. Next door, the Chancellor was more accommodating, greeting us with an impromptu speech. It was composed of clichés roughly linked without always following the accepted rules of grammar. I raised my eyebrows at one howler catching the eye of one of the girls from the posh school. She gave me a complicit grin and from then on we transmitted each lapse by the speaker to each other by dumb show. By the end, we were both struggling to contain our mirth.
We went on to meet the leader of the opposition at his office before we milled around waiting for a government minister to arrive and take us in to lunch. I eased my way towards the girl I’d been communicating with, pleased to find that she was edging in my direction. We met on the fringe of the group of competing pupils and their guardian teachers.
“How hungry are you?” she whispered when we finally stood side by side. I must have looked bewildered for she grabbed my sleeve and gave it an impatient tug.
“I can’t stand much more of this. Would you like to escape?”
That was my first meeting with Maggie. When the government minister arrived, she and I used the confusion to make our way out of the Houses of Parliament and we spent the afternoon wandering along the Embankment. I spoke in a soft, Highland burr and she spoke cut-glass English but we talked incessantly about everything under the sun – except politics.
I don’t know who initiated it but we spent most of the time walking hand in hand. At first it all seemed very strange; we were both seventeen but we could have been from different planets. As we talked, however, we began to discover that we had a great deal in common. She was surprised that I was interested enough in politics to have chosen it as my degree subject at Glasgow University.
“I was only picked for this trip because I’m the best liar in the sixth form,” she cheerfully admitted.
She was envious that I had the freedom to pick my own career. In her circles you were expected to go into the family business.
“In the case of girls, the family expects us to make a good marriage and produce lots of fresh aristos to fill the tumbrils!” she laughed, but then she became serious. “If I did go into politics I’d be a radical left-winger, you know.”
We both felt right together, laughing at the same things, completely at ease. When we were passing a well-tended public garden, Maggie said that a true swain would pluck a bloom for his lady. I crossed the little boundary fence right beside the ‘Keep Off’ notice and was in the act of plucking a rather faded bloom when I was yelled at. A lady in bib-overalls came forward from a little hut hidden amongst the shrubs to stop my criminal behaviour.
“You may incarcerate me in the Tower of London but you cannot prevent me plucking a bloom for my lady.”
The woman was about forty and plump but I don’t think I’d have dared to talk to her like that if she hadn’t reminded me of the dinner lady at school.
“Well, Sir Knight,” she replied with a little bow. “In that case I expect we can do a bit better than that miserable specimen you’re clutching.”
She went around and picked a bunch of sweet-smelling blooms, tying them with a piece of ribbon she pulled from the bib pocket. She cut the ends with scissors about the size of the shears we use on the sheep and then handed the nosegay to me.
“Ladies used to use these to counter the foul smells in the streets,” she told us.
I turned to Maggie, dropped onto one knee and offered the posy to her. She leaned over, took the shears from the gardener and touched me with them on each shoulder.
“Arise Sir Ewan, Knight Errant.”
Suddenly, it was ten minutes to five and we were walking fast to get back to Westminster to re-join our parties. At every step my emotions were shaken like a kaleidoscope forming a new pattern. I was more than half in love with Maggie but she inhabited a different planet. The smart move would be to coolly say goodbye and cherish the memory. Anything else would be bound to lead to heartache, wouldn’t it?
I stood amongst the others, utterly forlorn but unable to form a coherent plan. Maggie was surrounded by her friends who were clearly quizzing her on her adventure, judging by the way they kept looking across at me and giggling. It would have ended there but for the teachers lining us up to shake hands with our opponents before we went our separate ways. Maggie gave my hand an extra squeeze and left a scrap of paper behind in my palm.
I didn’t have the bottle to do anything about it. I went to university still wondering whether I should write to her at the address she provided. Wanting something more to offer, I waited until I had my doctorate but by then it was too late. I had followed her doings in Country Life so I couldn’t avoid learning that she had fulfilled her family obligations by making a brilliant marriage. It was only then that I finally accepted that she is the love of my life.
I tried dating a few girls but it became clear that I had found my true love at seventeen on a single afternoon in London. I concentrated on my career, having missed my chance of love and marriage, until that first posy was handed to me as I arrived for the tribunal hearing. I knew, of course, that Maggie was divorced but I was so convinced that my single chance was gone that I didn’t even think of making contact.
I had obligations so I couldn’t fly to London until the enquiry was completed; I tried writing but tore up the attempts since they simply listed poor excuses for my inexcusable behaviour. I presented my findings to the Scottish Parliament at ten in the morning and then joined the First Minister at a press conference. When I turned down the invitation to lunch with the great and good, all she said was: “Is it to do with the posies?” When I nodded she gave me a warm smile.
I was on the midday train to London before I gave myself time to think. I only stopped long enough to buy a posy and then got in a taxi before my courage failed me. Maggie had moved back into her family home in Sloane Square after her divorce, according to Country Life, the same address she had given me twenty years before.
“I wondered if you’d come,” was all she said when she opened the door, took my hand and drew me inside.
I’ve been in the high hills with the sheep all day. I don’t even try to pretend that my presence is necessary but I enjoy being out and the banter working with the shepherd and his son. The house would have seemed very empty without Maggie. The weather had been fine when I set off this morning but the cloud had got lower as the day wore on. We’re at five hundred feet here so it’s not uncommon to be shrouded in this way.
We keep the foul-weather gear and wellies in the old scullery and I was stripping off my saturated outer garments when Giles burst in. He’s Maggie’s other child, two years younger than his sister at fourteen. He’s not supposed to arrive until tomorrow, when I was planning to be in Glasgow to collect him at Central Station. He threw me a towel and stood hopping from foot to foot while I dried my hair.
“C’mon, old man, I’ve got a surprise for you.”
I took a good look at him as I followed him through the house to my study. He’s shot up another three or four inches since he went back to his public school at Easter. He’s wearing jogging pants and a big jumper so I can’t be absolutely sure, but I don’t think he’s added any more bulk to his skinny frame.
He paused at the door and ordered me to close my eyes and then he steered me inside. When he gave permission to look, I was standing in front of the framed front page of the Glasgow Herald hanging above my desk. Giles had remained just inside the door and he was standing behind me chortling. There was something I was missing and he was revelling in my stupidity.
Giles and I hit it off almost from the outset. His mum, the Honourable Marigold, and I decided not to further delay living together so we eloped and she didn’t tell her kids until we got back from our honeymoon. His sister was outraged and she is still not totally reconciled but Giles showed nothing but indifference. I was pretty clued up on the theory of teenage boys but he seemed to be more withdrawn than was good for him.
Everything was a bore to him, although he brightened considerably when he spotted the quad bikes. I offered him a ride and he looked interested for a moment before he relapsed into a sullen scowl. It wasn’t until I held out a hard hat in one hand and the keys in another that his indifference deserted him.
“Two rules,” I told him. “You wear a hard hat at all times and you carry a mobile phone to tell us where to send the ambulance when you fall off.”
My shepherd spends a lot of time researching rams that we might buy to improve the flock but we take a personal interest in the progeny. The English aristocracy are even more obsessed than he is with the blood line but they have no interest in their offspring after they ensure the kids are fed and educated. Giles had a nanny until he was seven when he went to board at a prep school. His holidays were spent with whichever relative would take him in.
I was an alien species to him; I listened to what he said and argued with him if I thought he was wrong. Maggie has custody of him and his sister and their father has rights of access. Fortunately, he has no wish to exercise his rights now that Giles has made it clear that he would rather tend sheep in his holidays than travel to exotic locations.
I still hadn’t figured out what was different about the framed newspaper and Giles eventually lost patience. He turned a switch and a little strip-light came on above the exhibit. It hadn’t been there this morning.
“Thanks Giles. I don’t think I’d ever have noticed if you hadn’t put the light on.”
“I asked the science master and bought the bits from my own pocket money. You should maybe get an electrician to check that I’ve got the wiring right, old man.”
I held up my hand and we high-fived. The question of what Giles should call me came up soon after he came back after his first flight on a quad bike. My heart had been in my mouth from the moment he got on and I didn’t dare to think what I’d say if Maggie asked where her baby boy was.
“You could call me ‘Old man’,” I suggested. “Isn’t that what you toffee-nosed public school boys say to each other?”
His mum was appalled but the name stuck. It expressed the relationship between us pretty well; I’m not his dad but I’m a bit more than a pal. I like it much better than ‘Your husband’ which is the best that Abigail can manage.
It’s typical of Giles that he would plan things with such care and execute the job efficiently. I’d mention the change to the electrician but I had no doubt that the work would exceed statutory requirements. It was also typical that he should decide to highlight the object that I most prized.
The newspaper clipping is the banner headline of the Glasgow Herald for the day after I announced the wording of the questions that were to be put to the people of Scotland and Northumbria. It reads: ‘The End of a Dreich Road’. I don’t want to bore you with the history of the treaty that brought the English region into the orbit of the Scottish parliament.
I was professor of Political Science at Glasgow University when I agreed to chair the enquiry into the feasibility of the merger. At that time the Herald gave a very fair summary of my faults and virtues concluding that I was at least as good as any other candidate. I knew the editor, of course. Glasgow is a compact city and I suppose he and I would bump into each other at private or public functions a couple of times a month.
We weren’t great pals but we respected each other. Right from the start there was some opposition to my appointment in the political columns of his own paper but it was a surprise when he told me that he was taking a retirement package, leaving the field open to his young political editor. This man had graduated from Edinburgh and had made no secret of the fact that he favoured his former professor over me.
Doctor Guthrie and I have been best friends since before I got the Glasgow chair and my opinion was in accord with that of the new editor of the Herald. I knew why Guthrie had not been offered the post, although I was sworn to secrecy. Sadly, nature had its way and Guthrie’s terminal illness is no longer secret. The Herald started a bit of a witch hunt while I was still struggling to put together a viable administration before the public hearings began.
In any enquiry, the great majority of the participants are serious, dedicated people but there are a few amongst the politicians and lawyers who see a public investigation as a stage on which they can display their case for advancement. I did everything in my power to discourage such grand-standing. The Herald made my life easier by offering a platform for those people I had kept under control. My enquiry was dull and productive so I didn’t mind the colourful attacks on me that the Herald published throughout the hundred days that I held public hearings.
I made a point of embracing grey. I wore a dark grey suit with a pale grey shirt and neutral tie every day that I sat at my limed oak desk listening to representations. In fact, the only touch of colour was the little posy of flowers that I placed on my desk to indicate that proceedings had begun. When I picked up the fading flowers it was a sign that the hearing was closed for the day.
The first posy came as a surprise. It was handed to me by a girl as I climbed the stairs to the door of the hall where the enquiry was being held. She smiled as she handed it over but shook her head without speaking when I raised my eyebrows in inquiry. There was no note attached to the little bouquet, not even the name of the florist that had made it up.
The following morning, a fresh posy was handed over, this time by a young man and so it continued for each of the hundred days the enquiry lasted. The press were intrigued, particularly because it was literally the only touch of colour in the proceedings. It didn’t take them long to find the florist supplying the flowers but they couldn’t find out any more. Payment had been made in cash by a man before the hearings began. He had given clear instructions about the composition and delivery. One newspaper employed an artist to do a sketch of the man based on the florist’s description but nothing came of it.
I knew what was going on, of course, but I had to sit listening intently for a hundred days before I could let myself consider the consequences. After the public hearings closed there was a great deal of work still to do checking the evidence I’d heard. Even when I retired to the farm to prepare my report and recommendations I held myself in check. I had waited more than twenty years, after all, and this time I wanted to get it right.
Giles and I raided the kitchen for our evening meal. Nothing was prepared since I had planned to drive to Glasgow and stay overnight before picking up my stepson. He had permission to leave school a day early, he assured me and he wanted to try travelling on his own.
“I had my phone with me so I could tell you where to send the ambulance!”
We chatted about the term just past and the things he had planned for the long vacation. He reminded me that I had promised to take him around a few Munroes this summer and we spent the evening rooting around in the lumber room to assess the state of tents and sleeping bags. He was yawning by ten and went off shortly afterwards to his bedroom in the tower.
I may not have the blue-blood of his father’s family but, thanks to the little Corsican, I can provide him with a castle. We’ve owned the land around here for ever, it seems, but it provided no more than a bare living until the Napoleonic Wars. The Continental Blockade cut off the supply of anil dye and an alternative source was found in the seaweed on our shore.
In the last years of the eighteenth century, a young chemist came down from Glasgow to organise the natives to collect and process seaweed. He married the beautiful daughter of the impoverished laird and together they built a farmhouse that resembles a Jacobite castle complete with turrets. Once Napoleon was defeated the cheap import of anil resumed and the family returned to scraping a living from the unforgiving land. By exercising the strictest economy, my dad was able to introduce a damp course and indoor plumbing but the outside of the dwelling was by some way the best feature until I poured money into the property when I inherited. Now we have central heating and four bathrooms to service the six large bedrooms.
An evening with Giles is great fun but stimulating rather than relaxing. He is thirsting for information that will let him make up his mind about life. Once he has made a decision the subject is closed. He has decided that the petrol engine is all that he requires, I mused as I put my wellies back on and shrugged into my wax jacket. He showed not the slightest interest in the two horses we’ve bought for his sister so I’m checking them alone. The cloud had lifted and the moon was up as I crossed to the paddock.
The gelding is straight to the point: when he comes forward nickering as I near the fence he puts his muzzle against the right hand pocket of my jacket. The mare is just as interested in the carrots I carry there but she‘s more subtle in her approach. First she pushes against my shoulder and snorts in my ear to show that she would still love me even if my pocket was empty. She’s the one that can be a bit of a handful when you try to ride her.
If the report from the headmistress is as bad as Maggie fears, Abigail is likely to be confined to the farm for most of the summer. If she is, then the mare will provide her with a challenge that might take her mind off the parent problem. I’m instinctively on the side of the kid because she reminds me of her mum when we first met so many years ago.
I attended one of the smallest and remotest secondary schools in Britain; I travelled nineteen miles each way and I wasn’t the most distant pupil. In his determination that we should miss out on nothing, the Head entered us for every national and international challenge. When I was seventeen, just waiting to sit my Highers, we won the Scottish heat of a debating competition and four of us were despatched to London to compete in the final, filmed for later transmission on television.
The subject for the debates was politics and part of the prize was a visit to Parliament. We were matched against two other schools, one of them a prestigious grammar and the other an exclusive girl’s boarding school. We finished as runners up to the grammarians and we were pretty pleased with ourselves when we were ushered into Downing Street on the morning after our relative triumph.
We saw the room where cabinet meetings are held but the Prime Minister was too busy to see us at that time. Next door, the Chancellor was more accommodating, greeting us with an impromptu speech. It was composed of clichés roughly linked without always following the accepted rules of grammar. I raised my eyebrows at one howler catching the eye of one of the girls from the posh school. She gave me a complicit grin and from then on we transmitted each lapse by the speaker to each other by dumb show. By the end, we were both struggling to contain our mirth.
We went on to meet the leader of the opposition at his office before we milled around waiting for a government minister to arrive and take us in to lunch. I eased my way towards the girl I’d been communicating with, pleased to find that she was edging in my direction. We met on the fringe of the group of competing pupils and their guardian teachers.
“How hungry are you?” she whispered when we finally stood side by side. I must have looked bewildered for she grabbed my sleeve and gave it an impatient tug.
“I can’t stand much more of this. Would you like to escape?”
That was my first meeting with Maggie. When the government minister arrived, she and I used the confusion to make our way out of the Houses of Parliament and we spent the afternoon wandering along the Embankment. I spoke in a soft, Highland burr and she spoke cut-glass English but we talked incessantly about everything under the sun – except politics.
I don’t know who initiated it but we spent most of the time walking hand in hand. At first it all seemed very strange; we were both seventeen but we could have been from different planets. As we talked, however, we began to discover that we had a great deal in common. She was surprised that I was interested enough in politics to have chosen it as my degree subject at Glasgow University.
“I was only picked for this trip because I’m the best liar in the sixth form,” she cheerfully admitted.
She was envious that I had the freedom to pick my own career. In her circles you were expected to go into the family business.
“In the case of girls, the family expects us to make a good marriage and produce lots of fresh aristos to fill the tumbrils!” she laughed, but then she became serious. “If I did go into politics I’d be a radical left-winger, you know.”
We both felt right together, laughing at the same things, completely at ease. When we were passing a well-tended public garden, Maggie said that a true swain would pluck a bloom for his lady. I crossed the little boundary fence right beside the ‘Keep Off’ notice and was in the act of plucking a rather faded bloom when I was yelled at. A lady in bib-overalls came forward from a little hut hidden amongst the shrubs to stop my criminal behaviour.
“You may incarcerate me in the Tower of London but you cannot prevent me plucking a bloom for my lady.”
The woman was about forty and plump but I don’t think I’d have dared to talk to her like that if she hadn’t reminded me of the dinner lady at school.
“Well, Sir Knight,” she replied with a little bow. “In that case I expect we can do a bit better than that miserable specimen you’re clutching.”
She went around and picked a bunch of sweet-smelling blooms, tying them with a piece of ribbon she pulled from the bib pocket. She cut the ends with scissors about the size of the shears we use on the sheep and then handed the nosegay to me.
“Ladies used to use these to counter the foul smells in the streets,” she told us.
I turned to Maggie, dropped onto one knee and offered the posy to her. She leaned over, took the shears from the gardener and touched me with them on each shoulder.
“Arise Sir Ewan, Knight Errant.”
Suddenly, it was ten minutes to five and we were walking fast to get back to Westminster to re-join our parties. At every step my emotions were shaken like a kaleidoscope forming a new pattern. I was more than half in love with Maggie but she inhabited a different planet. The smart move would be to coolly say goodbye and cherish the memory. Anything else would be bound to lead to heartache, wouldn’t it?
I stood amongst the others, utterly forlorn but unable to form a coherent plan. Maggie was surrounded by her friends who were clearly quizzing her on her adventure, judging by the way they kept looking across at me and giggling. It would have ended there but for the teachers lining us up to shake hands with our opponents before we went our separate ways. Maggie gave my hand an extra squeeze and left a scrap of paper behind in my palm.
I didn’t have the bottle to do anything about it. I went to university still wondering whether I should write to her at the address she provided. Wanting something more to offer, I waited until I had my doctorate but by then it was too late. I had followed her doings in Country Life so I couldn’t avoid learning that she had fulfilled her family obligations by making a brilliant marriage. It was only then that I finally accepted that she is the love of my life.
I tried dating a few girls but it became clear that I had found my true love at seventeen on a single afternoon in London. I concentrated on my career, having missed my chance of love and marriage, until that first posy was handed to me as I arrived for the tribunal hearing. I knew, of course, that Maggie was divorced but I was so convinced that my single chance was gone that I didn’t even think of making contact.
I had obligations so I couldn’t fly to London until the enquiry was completed; I tried writing but tore up the attempts since they simply listed poor excuses for my inexcusable behaviour. I presented my findings to the Scottish Parliament at ten in the morning and then joined the First Minister at a press conference. When I turned down the invitation to lunch with the great and good, all she said was: “Is it to do with the posies?” When I nodded she gave me a warm smile.
I was on the midday train to London before I gave myself time to think. I only stopped long enough to buy a posy and then got in a taxi before my courage failed me. Maggie had moved back into her family home in Sloane Square after her divorce, according to Country Life, the same address she had given me twenty years before.
“I wondered if you’d come,” was all she said when she opened the door, took my hand and drew me inside.
About the Author
Originally from Dalmuir, Alasdair McPherson is now retired and living in exile in Lincolnshire.
He says he has always wanted to write, but life got in the way until recently. He has already penned eleven novels and many short stories. His eight latest novels – The Island, Pilgrimage of Grace, Desert Ark, Swordsmiths, Loyalty, Killing Cousins, Damaged Lives and Patriotism – are all McStorytellers publications.
You can read Alasdair's full profile on McVoices.
He says he has always wanted to write, but life got in the way until recently. He has already penned eleven novels and many short stories. His eight latest novels – The Island, Pilgrimage of Grace, Desert Ark, Swordsmiths, Loyalty, Killing Cousins, Damaged Lives and Patriotism – are all McStorytellers publications.
You can read Alasdair's full profile on McVoices.