The Vintage Girl (16 page)

“Oh no!” I flapped my hands. I knew I shouldn’t have been so open with him. I hadn’t had him down as a repeater. “No … I was just … exaggerating. As I said to you, I’d love to go to the ball. The history, the spectacle … and so on.”

“But you’ll be dancing in it,” said Robert.

“Yes, I will.” I swallowed. “I will indeed. So I’d better get some instruction from someone who knows what they’re doing. And I hear, Fraser, that you’re just the man for such a challenge!”

“It won’t be a challenge,” said Fraser gamely. “I’m sure you’ll be fine. We can just bring the practice forward. How about tonight? Robert? Are you and Catriona doing anything? And, Evie, you must come down and stay with us, if the McAndrews have guests arriving.”

“That’s really kind, Fraser,” I said. “I’ll ask Ingrid.”

“But what about your plans for Valentine’s Day?” Robert inquired. “Didn’t you say you had a busy weekend ahead?”

I wasn’t sure I had, actually. Or had I?

“I’ll just have to cancel,” I said airily. “Treat ’em mean and all that.”

“How funny, that’s what Alice says,” said Fraser. “ ‘Treat them mean, keep them clean.’ It’s her motto.”

“One of many,” I said, and helped myself to some cold toast.

Sheila took the news of Alice’s unexpected defection with more grace than most hostesses would, faced with the prospect of a total novice in their midst.

I
thought
I saw her face tighten when Fraser walked me back through the snow and informed his mother that she had three days to teach me six reels; but then again, it was pretty chilly in the Kettlesheer dining room, where she and Ingrid were sitting in hats and quilted jackets, polishing silver cutlery and listening to reports of ten-foot snowmen in Hawick.

“Poor Alice. It’s maybe as well,” she said when I stammered out a version of “the news” that I hoped matched the one I’d just given Fraser. “A dance floor’s no place for a weak ankle.” She glanced down at mine, evidently assessing them for strength.

“I thought Evie could come along tonight for the practice,” said Fraser. “Duncan and Ingrid were coming over anyway, weren’t you?”

“Oh, thanks,” said Ingrid. “I was hoping we might have been let off.”

“Mum never lets anyone off reeling practice,” said Fraser.

“Not while Janet Learmont’s marking you on a scale of ten, no,” said Sheila, serenely polishing a steak knife.

And so, that evening, I found myself bumping along the estate backroad to the Grahams’ farm. I was in the back of Robert’s Land Rover with Ingrid while Duncan bellowed over his shoulder about the interesting “wet dog” notes in a carrot brandy, and Robert kept his eyes fixed firmly on the whited-out road ahead.

Catriona was already installed on the Grahams’ sofa when we arrived, listening with rapt attention to Dougie’s account of some catastrophe at the last point-to-point steeplechase. Her Jack Russell was parked on her knee in standby mode. Dougie’s girlfriend, Kirstie, was perched next to her, texting and chewing her long red braid, and by the door with a bowl of Pringles was Sheila’s husband, Kenneth, who looked as if he couldn’t wait to get back into the lambing shed.

Sheila plied everyone with large slugs from the bottle Duncan had brought along (which coincidentally looked as if it had been brewed from actual slugs), and announced that no one would get any supper until I’d learned the Eightsome reel. Cries of “Ten minutes, then!” ensued, mainly from Fraser. I hoped very much that the others had concealed a chocolate bar or two about their persons because, knowing my capacity for instruction better than they did, supper could be a long way off yet.

Fraser and Dougie shoved the furniture back against the walls, Catriona stowed her own and the Grahams’ various dogs in the kitchen, and then Sheila hustled everyone into the resulting space, and so began my reeling career.

“The Eightsome. It’s really very simple,” she said.

“I bet it’s not,” I muttered to Fraser, who was standing next to me, bending his knees in a Dad-like manner as if he couldn’t wait to get started. “If I had a pound for every time someone’s told me that just before I’ve caused a major pileup, I’d have enough cash to buy …”

Catriona and Dougie were spinning round behind me as I spoke, and I ran out of words as Catriona finished up with a delicate reverse twiddle maneuver. She was
excellent
. Even Dougie was skillful, and he looked like he was more at home on a tractor than a dance floor.

“To buy new shoes?” suggested Fraser.

“And buy everyone a very stiff drink,” I said glumly.

“Cheer up!” He put a reassuring arm around me. “I’ve got great faith in you.”

That made me feel about thirty percent worse than I already did.

Sheila flexed her fingers. “Come on, Duncan, Ingrid. Let’s have you here, opposite Evie and Fraser. And Kirstie, Douglas, you there. And Robert and Catriona, excellent. Now, you’re going to start by holding hands and going round in a circle for a count of eight.”

Douglas spun Catriona back to Robert with a flourish and an irritating curtsy from her, and took my hand. We all shuffled into a sort of circle and marched round while Sheila counted like Irene Cara in
Fame
, but without the big stick.

“Six, seven,
eight
. And now back the other way …”

Fraser’s hand was strong and I could feel him steering me as best he could without making me feel stupid. I tried to fix the steps in my head, but suddenly he’d scooped one arm round my waist and was swinging me into the middle of the room.

“Whoa!” I gasped, but no one took any notice. Instead, Kirstie opposite caught my flailing hand and steered me round as firmly as Fraser, while Sheila carried on instructing from the side.

“And now we form a cartwheel, girls’ right hands in the middle, two, three, four …”

I was facing the wrong way, baffled. Fraser steered me back, and then suddenly the
men
were in the middle and the girls were wheeling around outside.

“Seven,
eight
. And now you set twice to your partners—Evie, dear,
setting
means hopping from one foot to the other,” called Sheila. “Keep counting.”

Fraser was doing a sort of casual sway from side to side that I tried to copy. He gave me an encouraging thumbs-up, which I knew wasn’t warranted: a glimpse in the mirror over the fireplace confirmed that my setting looked like someone desperately queuing for the loo in Starbucks after four venti lattes.

“And now the men will turn their partners—Fraser, gently, please!”

“We’ll work up to that,” said Fraser, and took the crook of my arm as if I were a little old lady, moving me round as slowly as possible while everyone else did the spinning-top thing.

I had to admit it: the spinning-top thing looked amazing when the girls let the boys turn their wrists inside out and around, twirling them so fast their hair flicked—even in this sitting room, with no music, there was a controlled wildness about it. Add fiddles, skirts, champagne, candlelight …

My wrists clicked as Fraser tried, unsuccessfully, to spin me round, and instead got himself caught on my bracelet. There was an ominous ripping noise and we were suddenly in a compromising tangle, my back pressed right against his chest, his arms partly around me.

“My fault! My fault!” he said, untangling the catch from his sweater. “Don’t move!”

“Can Alice spin properly?” I asked, trying not to notice the solidity of Fraser’s chest behind me. We were almost hugging, his arm around my chest. Luckily, Kirstie flashed past in a flurry of long skirt and made my heart sink in a different way. Kirstie had a nose stud and still danced like a Celtic princess.

“Eventually,” said Fraser. “I mean, yes! She’s an excellent spinner! There! Free!”

Poor Fraser. I was going to let him down so badly. And he’d be wearing a set of evening clothes I’d be bound to tangle myself up on. What if I caught him by the kilt? What if I got stuck in his sporran?

“Fraser, be honest,” I hissed. “You reckon I can learn to do that before the weekend?”

“Of course,” he said, but there was more than a hint of good manners in his expression.

I glanced over to where Robert and Catriona were waiting for Sheila’s next instructions. Douglas and Kirstie were doing extra spins for fun, and Catriona seemed to be twisting Robert’s arm to do the same, but he wasn’t playing. He was checking his phone.

“And now we weave round in a circle, ladies clockwise, men counterclockwise, offering left arm, then right arm, then left arm …”

I was lost for a second, but then the rest of the circle caught up with me and I found myself being shoved and pulled round and back to where I’d started. I barely had to do a thing; it was like being stuck in a pinball machine.

“Now then, that’s the only hard part,” said Sheila. “Next we put the first lady into the circle. Who wants to go first?”

Catriona stepped forward without waiting to be asked, and looked up from under her lashes at Robert, who shoved his phone reluctantly into his back pocket. “Some ladies would take that phone of yours and stand on it,” she said. “I hope your sporran doesn’t have a mobile-phone pocket!”

“There will be no sporran, Cat,” he said, “because there will be no kilt.”

She wagged her finger playfully at him. “Or will there?”

I saw a blankness enter his face, a shutting-down. Max did it at auctions or when someone brought something valuable into the shop. Robert was closing himself off.

Catriona dropped the playfulness and put her hands on her slim hips. “But you have to! It’s traditional! You have your own tartan! I’ll be wearing my sash!”

Robert’s gaze traveled over her shoulder, and he caught me watching the pair of them. I looked away, because his eyes weren’t quite so unreadable anymore. They were clearly saying
Shut the hell up.

Sheila’s voice broke through the tension. “Now, we all circle round again while the lady in the middle does her party piece for eight bars.”

“Party piece?” I repeated. God. Could this get any worse? “What? Like … impressions?”

“Whatever you like, so long as it doesn’t involve profanity or nudity,” said Sheila. “The committee is very strict on that score, although the Young Farmers aren’t.”

“And no push-ups,
please
,” said Kirstie, nudging Douglas. She had a pretty Scottish accent. “They’re
sooo
boring.”

The circle moved off, with Dougie and Kirstie squabbling about his biceps, but my eyes were glued to Catriona, who was doing that pointy-toed Scottish dancing you see on commemorative tea towels. She carried on prancing, her eyes cast down modestly, while we changed direction. Only once did she glance up, naturally at the very moment when I was gawping straight at her. She smiled, accepting the compliment I wasn’t exactly paying her.

“And first lady sets and turns her partner, then the man directly opposite,” called Sheila.

Catriona started jigging opposite Robert, who swayed even more vaguely than Fraser.

“Come on, Robert,” said Duncan. “More effort than that! You’re the leading couple, for heaven’s sake!”

In answer, Robert whirled Catriona round with a deft flick of the wrist that sent her spinning into the middle, her skirt wrapping perfectly around her calves, and suddenly she was staring at me and Fraser, all smoky eyeliner and sparkling confidence.

“And now she sets to the opposite man,” said Sheila.

“Do your worst, Fraser Graham,” Catriona said with a wink that summed up about twenty years of reeling together. Fraser responded by shimmying at double speed, grabbing both her hands in his, and doing a complicated twisty-turny thing that would have definitely broken both my wrists, if not his.

“And figure eight!” bellowed Sheila as Fraser, Catriona, and Robert set off walking round each other. Catriona was doing a pristine hoppity-skip, while Fraser—to Douglas’s approval—swaggered like a cowboy with rickets. Robert walked normally.

As he came within a breath of me, he caught my eye, and I smiled, before pretending to turn to Sheila for instructions. There was something about the way Robert looked directly at me—into me, almost—that made me too self-conscious to hold his gaze for more than a second or two.

We all joined hands and circled again, with Catriona doing her pointy-toed routine again, this time with her hands above her head like something off a music box, and then she repeated the flirty setting-and-turning routine, this time with Douglas and Duncan. I tried to fix it all in my head.

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance of us wearing numbers, is there?” I asked plaintively.

Everyone laughed, and I had to pretend I was joking. Only I wasn’t.

“And we do that over and over until everyone’s had a go in the middle,” said Sheila. “Right, do you think you have that, Evie?”

“Er, yes,” I lied.

“Would you like me to give you my reeling guide?” asked Catriona. “I made booklets for clients who come up here to get married and want reels at their wedding. Very, very simple, with step-by-step pictures.” She bestowed a slightly patronizing smile on me. “Even English people get it by the end!”

“Catriona, I’m sure Evie doesn’t need you to draw diagrams—” Robert began.

“Please do, thank you,” I said. I’d lost my pride years ago when it came to dancing. “I’m more of a visual person.”

“It’ll make sense when you hear the music,” said Sheila. “Douglas, did you set up your Walkman hoojamiflip? What do I press?”

Douglas moved her aside and fiddled with his iPod, which was plugged into some speakers. A crashing accordion chord blared out, making Catriona gasp with shock.

“So, shall we begin?” yelled Sheila over the din. “Bow and curtsy to your partner, and
round
, two, three …”

Before I could even think what was going on, Fraser and Douglas grabbed my hands and began marching me round in a circle. I just about managed the cartwheel business, and the setting and turning, and even the weird ribbonless maypole stuff, but then suddenly I found myself being propelled into the center by Fraser’s strong hand in the small of my back.

He was making me be first lady.

I turned, with
No!
written in silent plea on my face. Then, for good measure, I added, “No, please!” aloud, in case he couldn’t read faces.

“Better get it over with while it’s fresh in your mind,” he urged, and set off circling again. The music did
not
help. It was so fast and frantic that I couldn’t think, which only added to my mounting panic, trapped in the middle while Dougie and Catriona screeched “Party piece!” at me.

“Do something, dear!” urged Sheila. “Anything!”

“Value Sheila’s furniture?” suggested Catriona.

Everyone laughed, and promptly changed direction and went the other way.

“Nice corner cabinet,” I said, trying to follow Sheila as she moved around. “Is it … Waring and Gillows?”

“Indeed it is,” she said. “My mother’s. Now set to your partner.”

Fraser grabbed me before I could go past him, put me in front of him, lurched from side to side, then with a twist of his hands spun me round. Even though my arms went stiff and my feet started moving in a different direction to the rest of my body, he still managed to put me back in the middle, pushing me toward Robert.

“Now me,” said Robert, reaching out to turn me toward him. As his hand touched my arm, something tingled across my skin. He bowed his head mock-formally as I shuffled from one foot to the other, and then gripped my wrists, and the room was turning—or I was.