Chapter 15: And Man Must Have His Mate

I was musing as I checked the nets of hay and the water bottles of the hundred and fifty ewes scanned in lamb standing quietly in the back of my hired lorry. It was a year almost to the day since I caught my wife Glenda in a passionate embrace with my cousin and reacted by walking out, only to encounter a lorry load of sheep in front of Pat’s café. Now I was back in the same place, although the café was boarded up and she was immersed in a new life. We stopped in the car park for this final check of the welfare of my charges before we took the motorway to our home.

Only me, I reflected, as I joined my soulmate in the cab; I would drop her at the flat in Bonhill while I drove up to the cottage to get the flock settled. We all agreed that the last dwelling in Cuadh Glen was too far from civilisation for a seven-months pregnant woman. “Your son’s anxious to be on his way,” she grinned at me. He’s been kicking me like a football for the last ten minutes.” I leaned across and kissed her baby bump over the maternity jeans. I had a superstitious dread as I contemplated how fortunate I had been in the past twelve months.

As I negotiated the staff entrance to the motorway service station, we chatted mostly about the journey. Junior settled almost as soon as the engine was turned on, and his mum was quietly snoring before we had covered the first few kilometres, leaving me to my musings. It is sometimes hard to remember the person I was this time last year. Now I have a job I love and the woman I adore carrying my first child. Of course, I also have another job that I don’t like so much and there are a couple of other women who won’t seem to go away.

My life had reached a very low point when I walked up to the café finding a broken-down lorry full of restless animals. While I fixed the problem, I told Dave, the owner of the sheep, my sad story. He had recently been badly hurt by his wife and daughters, choosing to completely change his life as a result. Responding to his challenge, I climbed into the cab with him and set off on my adventure. I only had the clothes I was wearing; my phone and wallet were forgotten on my bedside table. I had always loved the outdoors and was well known locally as an amateur botanist.

What surprised everyone – especially me – was that I had a natural gift for shepherding. Once I met Flubber, a sheepdog that resented taking orders, we formed an amazing partnership. She will be waiting for me when I get home to help settle the new flock. The icing on the cake was provided by Anne Gardner, professor of botany in the local university, who talked me into preparing a doctoral thesis. I thought my cup of happiness was full when my best friend Jim moved a few kilometres down the road with his family. Then, on Valentine’s Day, I was hit by a whirlwind.

Becoming a shepherd had increased my self-confidence to the point where I was attracting the attention of ladies. Madelaine and Dave’s daughter Penny are high-powered career girls who both showed some interest in moulding me into a suitable consort. My problem was that I was developing feelings for my cousin’s wife. He had started my transformation by misbehaving with my wife, but I felt like a hypocrite for returning the favour. I spent Christmas with Marika and her family, but my conscience demanded that I warn her that nothing could happen between us until we were both divorced.

Philip was trying to get Marika to reconcile, and I hadn’t heard from Glenda in weeks, so it was going to be some time before either of us was free. I still think my reasoning was correct, but it became academic when Marika arrived at the farm on Valentine’s Day to tell me in person that I am an idiot. I would like to say that my cool logic prevailed, but the success of her arguments is clearly evident in the tummy of the woman sleeping beside me as I drive north. You didn’t think I had impregnated Penny, did you? She has become a good friend and insisted that Marika use the flat in Bonhill to keep her close to medical care.

Philip travelled to Holland in January, insisting that he and Marika see a counsellor. She was persuaded by her parents to try but in the second session, having heard her husband put a spin on events that left her dizzy, she cut loose. She left my cousin a shattered man, who returned to Dumfries with his tail between his legs. His hope to restore his pride by taking over the family business was shattered before Easter. The last I heard he had gone to London to make his fortune.

Marika was angry with her parents for insisting that she try to rescue her marriage; she was outraged at Philip for the lies he told the counsellor; but she was incandescent with rage at my attempt to keep her at arm’s length. She arrived at the cottage ready to commit murder. She landed several very effective punches, but it was her verbal attacks that did the most damage. I like to think that the hug I gave her was to protect her from hurting herself. I had heard that hate and love are very close to each other, but I had never dreamt the change could happen so quickly.

Within seconds, we were tearing each other’s clothes off. Our first coupling was really more a continuation of the assault than love making, but we made up for that later. Marika, the dutiful daughter who deferred to everyone, had been pushed beyond her limit and had become Marika, the earth mother who would do anything for her man. We have lived together since then and it will need more than the disapproval of society to prise us apart. Not that any of our friends and neighbours would consider doing so. Marika proved her worth to all of them with the way she supported and cared for me during the three weeks of lambing. Outside the house, I rely on Flubber for my strength; inside Marika fills all my needs. Am I tied to her apron strings? You bet I am – and to Flubber’s lead when I’m out on the moors.

I was far from the only one who danced to Marika’s tune. She was born and raised in one of the flattest countries in the world, but she fell in love with the moors and the mountains surrounding them. She and I spent the spring and summer collecting plant specimens to support my thesis. Now she can no longer tramp through the heather, she is retyping my drafts, transforming them into a professional submission. Her enthusiasm for the moors impressed the neighbouring shepherds and their wives.

Marika has become a substitute for their own children who couldn’t wait to get away to the bright city lights. Her fresh appreciation of the natural wonders about us has revived their jaded familiarity. Her appeal seems to be universal. Penny is more than a little self-absorbed, but she sought out Marika to offer the use of her flat for the latter stages of the pregnancy. Penny made no secret of her plans to seduce me, but she seems to have settled for George, once her mentor but now her willing slave. She is still married to Eric, the man who used her as a cloak for his sexual preferences.

“Have you spoken to Richard yet?” I was unaware that Marika had woken up until she spoke. “I really need to talk to Dave first,” I replied, but she was asleep again before I finished the sentence. A little cloud darkened my pleasant memories at the thought of Richard Holme Douglas, billionaire and general do-gooder. He is a peripheral part of my unresolved conflict centred around Robinson Engineering Ltd. My great great grandfather founded the company and I worked there from the time I left school at sixteen.

All five of his sons went into the business, and the youngest, now ninety-four-years-old, has taken it on himself to be the soul of the company. He nurtured and spoiled my father’s generation with disappointing results; all the children except dad and his only sister took what money they could and left the area. Dad tried his best, but he sought solace in drink when he could not cope with the stress. He died when I was twelve and my mother, never strong at the best of times, descended into dementia and had to be institutionalised for her own protection before I left school.

Kindness having failed, Great Uncle Albert decided to use tough love with my generation. Philip’s mother, who had a stronger will than her brothers, acted as a shield but I had no protection. He went to university to gain an indifferent degree while I was ordered to join the factory as an apprentice. I can’t remember ever resenting the treatment I received. I think I believed it to be some natural law that I was essentially an orphan and had to be thankful for whatever crumbs fell from the table.

Philip’s mum, who lived next door, hated me and Uncle Albert ignored me. However, Ellen, reputed to be Albert’s mistress, treated me like a favourite nephew and Bob Mathieson, the works manager, took me under his wing. In my spare time, I haunted the dell behind the house studying the flowers and plants. I discovered a plant that was supposed to be extinct this far north and that won me the attention and lifelong friendship of Professor Gardner. I was happy until I was snubbed by a team hired to advise on the future of Robinson’s.

I was twenty-one and convinced that they were totally on the wrong track, so, with help from Bob, I prepared my own business plan. Greatly daring, I presented it to Uncle Albert who threw it straight in the bin and laughed as he ordered me out his office. Half an hour later he had a heart attack, for which I blamed myself. He was eighty-three at the time and I assumed that the argument with me had driven him over the edge. The plan devised by the outsiders was implemented and I settled to keeping the aging machines running while the company sank slowly.

My uncharacteristic behaviour when I jumped into Dave’s lorry apparently convinced Albert that his regime of tough love had finally paid off. I was summoned to the nursing home where he was now living and invited to rescue the family business using, if you can believe it, the business model he had binned a decade earlier. I still have no idea why I accepted the challenge; I had doubted my ability to turn things round when I first submitted the plan, and the situation was certainly much worse ten years later. There was some residual feeling of family loyalty, but I think it was bloody-mindedness that swayed me – I wanted to prove everyone wrong.

Albert’s mind is as clear as ever, but his body is failing. He talks coherently until, often in the middle of a sentence, he dozes off. When he wakes up seconds or minutes later, he carries on from where he left off. It took some time for me to spot the exception to that rule; when I asked a question he didn’t want to answer, he would fall asleep and conveniently forget what I had asked when he woke up. I knew next to nothing about the task I had undertaken. In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, they say. I was not only half-blind but severely myopic. This was brought home to me when I first met GG Graham the company lawyer, who bluntly told me that I was a babe in arms when it came to running a business.

Just as my email to Marika telling her we could not meet, drove her beyond her limits, GG’s arrogance, far from discouraging me, made me even more determined to save Robinson’s. As in my youth, Ellen and Bob gave me what help they could, but it was new friends who altered the balance in my favour. My best friend’s brother-in-law is a gifted lawyer and Dave gave up a successful career as a forensic accountant to raise sheep. I certainly could not have hoped to succeed without their input. It was Dave who introduced me to Richard Douglas, and he has become an eminence grise in my life. He has done nothing but good for me and my friends so far, but I am uneasy about his involvement in my affairs.

In many ways, he epitomises the difference between my two jobs. Shepherding is physically demanding; I thought I was going to die when I was caught in a blizzard on the moors, and I have never felt so exhausted as I was at the end of lambing. James, who rents the farm next door gave me a weary smile: “I don’t know about you, Fred, but I’m going to sleep for a week.” He and the other shepherds are without guile; the vagaries of the Scottish weather and the idiosyncrasies of the sheep are more than enough.

Managing a factory is a wholly different experience. Everyone, from the board members to the newest apprentice, has an angle, a point of view, and it seems that they are all prepared to lie and cheat to further their ambitions. GG Graham may be the most blatant, but he is far from the worst. My cousin Philip was brought up to believe that he was better than me in every respect, and he is prepared to use any underhand trick to try to make that true. His smouldering kiss that I witnessed was more likely to have been an attack on me than desire for Glenda. Even now, after the recent setbacks he has suffered, I suspect that he is licking his wounds and plotting his revenge.

When I step into Robinson’s I must beware of daggers being readied for my back. I do not take smiles at their face value. I have led the company away from the precipice of bankruptcy since I became Chairman, but my pleasure in that achievement is soured by my mistrust of the staff. My most difficult problem is with the Sales Director I appointed when I took over. Madelaine Fraser is so outstanding in the job that she is likely to be the next managing director. She was somewhat abrasive when she first joined the company but, I am assured, she is now pleasant and respectful to everyone.

Everyone except me, that is. Since the board meeting when I took the reins, she has gone out of her way to belittle all my achievements. Her mother, Dominique, assures me that Madelaine thinks so highly of me that she wants me as her husband, but her courtship is annoying, to say the least. I was on my way home from a visit to the factory when Dominique phoned me roundly abusing me for causing her daughter great emotional pain. My fault was that I did not speak to Madelaine during my visit. I bluntly admitted to purposefully avoiding her.

I am uneasy about the cross-over between business and personal that Madelaine tries to inject into my life. Mostly, I can remain objective, but it can be difficult. Her comment when she heard that Marika was expecting almost got through my defences: ‘I suppose she’s convinced you that the brat is yours.’ I managed to walk away without comment. My present thinking is that I will step down from the board after I appoint her managing director in a year or two. Richard Douglas is another who straddles the boundary between private and business.

Dave and Richard have been friends for years, having met as business colleagues. When his youngest daughter preferred her mother’s lover over her dad to walk her down the aisle at her wedding, it was Richard he went to for advice. The billionaire not only offered accommodation in his mansion, but he also referred Dave to Fergus, a highly respected shepherd, to learn a new skill. Richard’s mother had sent the boy to his Uncle Fergus to stop him getting ideas that he was anything special. It was Fergus who selected the sheep that were in the lorry that broke down outside Pat’s café.

Pat was like a surrogate mother to me, especially after my own mum was incarcerated. Her son, Jim, has been my best friend since we joined Robinson’s together as apprentices. She turned to me for help when his business faced bankruptcy and I mentioned it to Dave, who not only checked out the finances of a garage business for sale in Deirlian but approached Richard about financing the purchase. Jim is now employed on generous terms that include a stake in the equity of the business. Richard claims to have done something of the sort before, enjoying the triumphs of small businesses more than the success of the international companies that provide his wealth.

What with learning how to care for sheep and preparing a business plan to rescue Robinson’s, I had paid very little attention to what was happening up until that point. Then Richard bought five per cent of the stock of Robinson’s from Philip who decided to cash in his inheritance when he discovered Uncle Albert had chosen me as his heir apparent. GG had recently described me as naïve, but I was not altogether stupid. Richard’s actions made me uneasy, but I had no reason to doubt him. He told me that he had bought the shares when he gave me an unlimited proxy to use them up to and including the company AGM. He could easily have hidden his identity behind a nominee.

With our order book looking healthier than it has for years, and a streamlined management structure, I began to turn a few dreams into concrete proposals. I had allowed my suspicions of Richard to ease to the point where I was considering asking him to fund the development, when I went for lunch with Iain, the present managing director, to find him chatting cosily to GG Graham. It was Richard who strongly advised me to appoint Iain, so my suspicions flared again. Now Marika has reminded me that Richard is pressing me for a meeting. She believes that I can now hold my own against any opposition, but I am not so sure.

I do have a defensive position, if I must fight Richard. He has known Dave longer than I have but the former accountant and I have become very close, not least because of his relationship with Jim’s mum Pat, who has been like a mother to me for fifteen tears. While Marika and I were getting to know each other in the cottage, Pat and Dave were sharing a hotel room in Malta. They are now living together close to Rowerdennan on the wrong shore of Loch Lomond. You can reach it by road, but they sail a couple of hundred metres across the loch to work most days. Whatever his personal feelings, I know that Dave will give an honest assessment on financial matters, as a matter of professional pride, if nothing else.