Ranald’s crisis

While Hen Mcquoist and Nicola went into the office to look over quarterly sales figures for the Scotch pies produced by Inclusive Pies, Bertie and Ranald Braveheart were taken on a tour of the factory by the production supervisor, Maggie. Maggie, a woman in her mid-fifties from Greenock, had joined the firm thirty years ago, during its early years of expansion from a two-person cottage industry run from the home of its founders, Nicola’s uncle and aunt. She was the daughter of a butcher and it had been anticipated that she would have taken over the family butchery on the retirement of her father, Winston Churchill Wilson, generally known as Church Wilson. Church had been a senior member of a local Orange Lodge and chairman of a lawn bowling club. He had lost his wife, Maggie’s mother, to sudden septicaemia, but had been a conscientious and devoted single father to the daughter, on whom he doted. Maggie would have liked to take over the butchery when Church retired, but she was then seeing a young man, Eddie Hislop, who had his own hairdressing business in the West End, and wanted to join him in that rather than work in the butchery. Her marriage to Eddie had not worked out; she had discovered that he was having an affair with one of his regular clients, and on being challenged had confessed to several other infidelities. “I can’t resist these ladies,” he said. “I know it sounds weak, but I just can’t.”

Once divorced, Maggie met Nicola’s aunt at a Jimmy Shand tribute concert and was offered a job at the pie factory. She was soon an indispensable part of the operation, and in due course recruited Hen Mcquoist, with whom she had been at primary school. She remembered him from those days, but he did not, although they both appeared in school photographs, seated a few places away from one another, polished and smiling through missing milk teeth.

They became lovers, and eventually spouses. Hen had proposed to Maggie twice before she eventually accepted him: once at a dog race, on another occasion in a café at Central Station, and finally in an Italian restaurant on Byers Road. On the first two occasions, she had turned him down as tactfully as she could; certainly, she loved him – and told him so – but her experience of marriage to Eddie had put her off the institution of marriage. “We can be just as happy as we are,” she said to Hen. “We don’t need to bring the Church of Scotland into this.”

Hen had accepted the situation, although he secretly nursed an intention to propose to her again. They were happy living together – they had a small house in Shawfield – and working as colleagues in the pie factory. People sought greater things, of course; the ambitious would regard their situation as being modest to the point of dullness, but they were wrong. A small, ordered life, lived quietly and without fuss, causing no harm to anybody (if one discounted the widespread arterial damage caused by their Scotch pies) was preferable, surely, to one of excitement and risk.

Maggie smiled broadly when Hen introduced the boys. “Ever been in a pie factory before?” she asked.

Bertie shook his head. “We’re from Edinburgh.”

Maggie laughed. “Frae Edinburgh then? And there are no pie factories in Edinburgh?”

Ranald Braveheart Macpherson answered for the two of them. “None,” he said.

Maggie rolled her eyes. “So what do you folk eat over there?”

“Healthy food,” said Bertie, adding, “Most of the time.”

“Nothing unhealthy about oor pies,” said Maggie, winking at Hen as she spoke.

“Come with me and I’ll show you how we do it.”

Hen went to join Nicola in the office and left Maggie to take the boys to the large mixing machine – ex-aberdeen Roads Department.

“This is a highly sophisticated piece of catering equipment,” said Maggie. “State of the art, I believe. You put the flour, water and lard in the top there, you see, and then you switch it on and it mixes it.”

Bertie stared up at the towering cement mixer. “That must make a lot of pies,” he said.

“Oh yes,” said Maggie. “Each load makes seven hundred. Would you like to see it working?”

The boys nodded eagerly.

“Yous can shovel some of the lard in, if you like,” said Maggie. “We’ve already put in the flour and hot water.”

The boys helped transfer the contents of several barrels of lard into the maw of the mixer. Then Maggie instructed them to stand back while she turned on a switch. With a grumble and a shaking, the great machine began to turn its barrel round and round, mixing the ingredients. Maggie increased the speed and after a few minutes flicked another switch. The barrel tilted and the mixture began to pour out into moulds sunk in large trays. These trays had been slipped into position by a young man with ginger hair, who waved to the boys as he expertly manoeuvred the recipient trays into position.

“See him?” said Maggie. “That’s Billy. Big Rangers supporter. Maybe he’ll take you to a game one of these days.”

It was a promise beyond the wildest dreams of both Bertie and Ranald Braveheart Macpherson and words might have been expected to fail them. But they both knew that they were representing Edinburgh here, and must be polite. “That would be very nice,” said Bertie. And Ranald Braveheart Macpherson said, “Thank you, I would like that very much indeed. Thank you.”

The boys watched in fascination as the rest of the pie-making process was revealed. Then, moving to the baking side of the factory, they were rewarded with the sight of trays of pies being taken out of the oven and left to cool on racks.

“Fancy a pie?” asked Maggie, handing each boy a still-hot and deliciously aromatic Scotch pie.

They each ate three pies. Then, replete almost to the point of discomfort, they were taken by Maggie back to the office, where Nicola and Hen had just completed their discussion of the accounts.

“Smart wee fellows,” said Maggie, smiling at Nicola.

“Perhaps we could fix them up with apprenticeships,” said Hen. “A wee bit later on, of course.”

“Yes please,” said Bertie eagerly. He could think of nothing more exciting than being an apprentice pie-maker in Glasgow. He might be too young at present, but he had heard that at sixteen you could leave school and start an apprenticeship. That is what he would do. He would not tell anybody in Edinburgh where he was going, as he would not want them to try to stop him. In particular, he was unwilling for Olive to know where he was. She could be told that he was dead: that was by far the best solution, Bertie thought. Olive could be told that he had been swept out to sea or struck by lightning – anything that was swift and final. She would have to find somebody else to torment then.

Nicola said goodbye to Hen and to Maggie and took the boys back to the car. “Well then,” she said. “Now we can get over to Bearsden and the place where you two will be staying for the next month.”

Bertie glanced wide-eyed at Ranald: one month, he thought; one whole month; in Glasgow; by ourselves. The sheer enormity of what they were about to do came upon him suddenly – and it came upon Ranald Braveheart Macpherson too, who began to cry, the tears welling in his eyes – and spotted by Bertie as they ran their course down his cheeks, although Ranald had turned his head away so that his friend might not see them and think him weak, in spite of the heroic name he bore. He had eaten too many Scotch pies, and he wanted to be sick.

“I want to go back to Edinburgh,” said Ranald. “I’ve had enough of Glasgow.”

© 2020 Alexander Mccall Smith Available in book form from November as A Promise of Ankles (hbk, £16.99). The Peppermint Tea Chronicles is available now in paperback.