Page 6 of Meet me at the Seaside Cottages

Once upon a time peoplecame toCarso, which can be described as a town if you need to showa strangeryou know how to order a complicated coffee, or a village, if youever feel called upon to stress yourOutlandercredentials – to build holiday homes.

Bighousestoo.Carsositson the very north edge of Britain, higher than the Highlands, where the swirling waters of the Atlantic and the North Sea meet, and do their best towhack the earth to bits.

The bigsandstonehouses there, all along the shoreline,were built bystout Victorianswho werehappy tobreathe the clean air and never once anticipated that people would seek out sunshine to take a holiday – that people would even have holidays – or that women would, heaven help us, expose their bare limbs to get bronzed. On purpose! The very thought!

So: there arelarge, comfortablehomes for trips that involved shooting and hunting and wearing rather a lot of heavy tweed, which were constructed with money from various nefarious places and means; and then, behind them,the old stone cottages that had been there to start with and wereusedfor staff who did not live in, or people who did the everyday fishing and weaving, built with the crumbs that fell from the master’s table. And although those Victorian homes still stand, proud against the storms, red sandstone blasted by salty air, their vast rooms and untuned pianosarehard to heat,the plumbing temperamental;they requiremaintenanceand upkeep from a generationmore interested inbeing somewhere warm, with cocktails.

But, oddly, the little cottages, the rough little homes, seemrathersweeter. If you don’t look too closely and see the dilapidated paintwork. They are protected from the full force of the sea’s rage by the large houses in front ofthem, sheltering them from the storms; they are on a quiet street because theroad was paved so late – who, after all, wants to visit the cottages of the poor? – and nobody has ever bothered to lift the cobbles, which gives the street a pretty air, as does the old wrought-iron lamppost at the end thatJaney adores even though it is rusting and faded,which is just as well, as it is where she has washed up, after a divorce that was not so mucha bitter conflict as much as trench warfare that went on for so long that both sides eventually surrendered from sheer exhaustion.

The cottages aren’t connected to the gas mains, and they added indoor plumbing extremely late; indeed, they all still have a shed outside that once held adunnyuntil the council, exasperated, came and took them away. It was pervasive for a long time, theideathat it was incrediblyunhygienicto use the toilet indoors.

But the street itself . . . as you walk down it, the dusk settling in around you, pink cutting through the softest grey, a faint navy growing through the bottom of a clear sky, it feels as if you have strayed from the modern world altogether – something that already increases with every step you go aboveInverness. And there is nothing that underlines this feeling more than stumbling on this tiny little lane, untouched by time only by weather; unchanged by wars, by thebreak-up of the land, bythe storms and warfare that swept over it. When you look at this street, Seagate, anyone could step out from one of the old weathered wooden doors: a Highlander off to fight the dreaded Campbells, a washerwoman, a young man off to war, a boy of twelve about to join the fishermen, or a youngoneoff to join the great Victorian expeditions tosearchfor the NorthwestPassage; any one of them might seem equally likely, as if the tiny street were dropped out of time, completely oblivious to modern concerns, even as the grass grew between the cobbles, and most people clattered past to the main shore road and didn’t even notice it.

And these days Janey tries to be proud of what she’s managed to achieve here, from the ashes of the settlement. Hers is theonly finishedhouse next to the very run-down batch of four; it’s the smallest, at the end, but the windowsills and door are in a pale, pretty, optimistic blue. You’d have to look very closely to notice that they are quite badly painted,possiblyby a slightly annoyed midlife woman who has just gone through a divorce(window frames),and her slightly more practical son (doorframe),but they are painted nonetheless.

Alasdair, her son, is in fact standing there. This is unusual. She’s used to seeing him on a Sunday for lunch, and occasionally a weekend night if he’s hungry and his terrifying girlfriend Jacinta has served him up one single tiny bowl of salad, as per, but six p.m. on a Tuesday is a bit unusual.

‘Have you seen this?’ he starts, walking up to her. ‘Also, answer your phone.’

‘It’s a soundproofed room,’ frowns Janey. ‘Shut up about the phone.’

She has actually had a good afternoon; she feels constantly sorry for her tinnitus patients, who come looking for a cure when she has little to offer them; but Big Mad Jim Eckles, father of Wee Jim Eckles, who is about six foot eight square in his stockinged feet and works the rigs, had turned up, smelling of engine oil and weed as per, but minus his usual glowering. ‘Tell you what, doc,’ he’d said (she isn’t a doctor), ‘those pointy needle things worked a charm.’

‘You’re kidding,’ she says, genuinely delighted. Tinnitus is one of the few branches of medicine where they encourage any alternative remedy of any kind that might help people deaden the buzzing or whistling that lives in their ears, threatening to drive them mad.

‘Sticking me full of pins aye right enough!’ he chuckles. ‘A few of my exes wouldnae mind.’

‘Perhaps they could volunteer and take it in turns,’ says Janey.

Big Jim frowned. ‘Yeah, but they’ve got to be wee pins,’ he says. ‘Moira would come at me wi’ a chisel. Again.’

And she had sent him off, happy he was finding a way of coping.

Now Al was brandishing his iPad at her, getting her to look at theFinancial Timesof all things.

STIRLING CAPITAL TO PULL OUT OF EDINBURGH BASE

Job Losses Expected

Janey frowns. ‘Hang on, does this mean . . . I mean, is Essie going to lose her job?’

‘Dunno,’ says Al. ‘She hasn’t told me anything. But if there’re going to be layoffs . . . ’

Janey squints at the tiny text. Stupid thing. She puts her glasses on and tries it again.

‘They’re moving toBerne? Where even is that?’

‘Switzerland.’

‘She’s moving to Switzerland?’

‘I don’t know; she hasn’t called me. Has she called you?’

All of Janey’s good feelings from the day slowly drain out of her. ‘No,’ she says, trying to keep any disappointment out of her voice, make it sound like a joke, which it doesn’t. ‘No, of course she hasn’t.’

‘She will,’ says Al, stoutly.

He knows it was easier on him, a couple of years out of the house before the actual divorce. He lives in Caithness, in a scruffy little cottage. He has the family look, of dark curly hair and blue eyes, which along with his Highlands accent and Land Rover makes him absolute catnip to a certain type of generally blonde, sexy, very skinny posh English women. He can’t resist them either. There’s been an endless parade of Harriets and Juliets and Tamaras and Jacintas through the door of the cottage. When his mum and sister aren’t there to take the piss, he’s been known to wear his kilt to work, and not just for parties and weddings; it drives the girls wild. They generally retreat to somewhere with aHarvey Nicks eventually, and Janey has tried to befriend them, but normally without success. They are quite enamoured of a Highland lad with a rugged outdoor job and a twinkle in his eye, but they’re notably less fussed about his mum, who has a comfortable bosom, a good recipe for chicken pie and an enviable number of points on her Boots Advantage card. They don’t last for long, but they tend to buy Alasdair incredibly expensive gifts for Christmas. He has an unusually nice collection of watches for someone who works for the council.

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