The next morning he took a train to Edinburgh because being in the village made him depressed. He also wanted to kill time before the evening meeting, so he went to the Scottish Portrait Gallery, which he used to visit often when he was a teenager. Seeing people from earlier epochs in their wigs and silly attire always had a soothing effect on him- even though he didn’t know why. He later realized it was because they represented time and power. He needed to know if time will help him deal with his problems because he was afraid he won’t be able to deal with them by himself. Age didn’t make him stronger and wiser; it made him weaker and less self-assured. He felt tears filling his eyes, he had nothing to wipe them with so he went to the toilet. He felt better after that and went to the Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition, which wasn’t exactly exciting but took him, again, to a different reality.
He had a meal in Edinburgh, phoned Ilona, and when he returned to S., it was almost time for the residents’ meeting. It was in a village hall, next to the church. When he arrived, there were quite a lot of people there, maybe two hundred. Gordon, Alfred and Morag were there as well, talking to one man and woman. Although there were so many people, they immediately noticed Keith and gave him a sign to approach them. He did and when he reached them, Gordon introduced Keith to the other two, they were also on the residents’ committee, and they asked Keith to wait at the end of the meeting.
The meeting was about what the village had achieved in the last year and its plans for the next. There was also talk about the ‘most beautiful village’ and ‘small railway station’ awards. The railway master listed what he did to get the previous awards. He talked about his collaboration with the castle gardeners and setting up a small greenhouse behind the station from where some of the most beautiful flowers came to adorn the station. He also mentioned zero tolerance for drug and alcohol offences and vandalism. There were no vandals, drug addicts or drunkards seen anywhere near the station in the last decade because photos of people who were last caught partaking in such unsociable behaviour were still hanging at the display window in the village square. ‘Naming and shaming is the best policy to keep our station beautiful,’ he said to a round of hearty applause. Then there was a discussion about how to make improvements for the next ‘most beautiful village’ award, in which S. slipped from the very top to number 3. One reason mentioned by several people was the lack of flower pots in some houses as well as the poor state of some buildings. The addresses of those houses were taken down by Alfred. Luckily these buildings weren’t in the centre of the village, but still, the committee awarding the prizes must haven note of them. Gordon asked if anybody was living in any of the aforementioned houses, but no one replied.
‘We, the permanent residents, will deal with this problem,’ he said with a twinkle in his eye.
There was also talk about church attendances and various village ceremonies, such as the ‘boat festival’, the ‘summer parade’ and the ‘S. carnival’. The following year the village was going to have its first ‘eco repair café’ – the first in a place of this repute- its objective is to cut down waste and pollution. On the whole, residents’ participation in these events was satisfactory, but there was the issue of older people not being able to attend due to poor health, as well the perennial problem of residents who were not permanent.
Morag went on to present the committee’s plan for preventing such people from buying properties in S. She summarized her meetings with the local estate agents, whom she tried to persuade not to advertise the properties nationally, only locally. Unfortunately, this suggestion was met with great resistance. Another proposal was to hold meetings with potential buyers before they made offers on properties. This already happened a couple of times, but the estate agents prevented further meetings with clients due to the fact that buyers were no longer forthcoming.
‘In fact, the estate agents wrote to the council to object our practices on the grounds that it jeopardizes their income and they threatened us with a court action,’ finished Morag with indignation in her voice.
The thought that there was somebody in the region who had the strength to stand up to these people made Keith smile slightly. But it didn’t improve his mood substantially. With every passing minute, he felt worse and worse still. He was sweating everywhere and his lips were dry. He wanted to drink something cold, like a can of beer straight from the fridge, but there was nothing like that on the ground. Tea with milk, home-made scones and ham rolls were served at such meetings.
At some point, he became like the heroine from Hitchcock’s ‘Blackmail’, who from a stream of dialogue was only able to discern one-word ‘knife’. For him, it was just a different word – ‘residents’.
Eventually, the meeting was over and although Keith wanted to go home, he waited for the crowd to disperse to face his oppressors. He mustered the courage to be able to say that he wouldn’t pay them the money, but they didn’t mention it.
‘I hope you enjoyed our humble parish meeting. As you must have observed, we have great ambition for our little S.,’ said Alfred with his ratty smile. ‘We want it to be the most thriving and the most beautiful village in Scotland and by the same token, in the entire world, as it is now official that Scotland is the most beautiful country in the world.’
‘I think it is a matter of personal taste,’ said Keith.
‘Well, here we believe this is an objective fact. But we didn’t want to talk to you about our place in the hierarchies of beauty, but about something else,’ said Gordon.
‘What is it?’ asked Keith.
‘As you know, spring will soon come and we want all residents, especially those on this street, to have flowers on their windows and we understand that you and your wife might not be available to do it yourselves. Hence, we suggest that you give your spare key to us and we’ll do it ourselves.’
For a moment Keith was thinking about telling them that he had no spare key on him, but he knew that it would only prolong the discussion, as they would harass him by telephone and e-mail. So they walked back to his house together and he gave them the key, then he went to a Spar shop, to buy beer. He asked the shopping assistant, a lad who couldn’t be older than eighteen if he knew who he was and whether he checks the identity of every customer, but the lad only shrugged his arms and looked at Keith as if he was mad, so Keith promptly paid and left.
At home, he poured his beer into a glass and phoned Ilona to give her a report from the meeting, but didn’t mention that he passed the key to the residents’ committee. Instead, he said that the meeting went well and there were no further attempts at extortion or assaults on their freedom.
The next day he got up early to avoid traffic. All the way home he was thinking whether he should tell Ilona that he gave the key to the residents’ committee. He used to tell her everything, not because he had a special respect for her, but because this way he felt more secure: every problem shared was halved when Ilona knew about it. He wondered why it wasn’t the case anymore. Maybe he was worried that she would disagree with him or see him as cowardly and defenceless. Even though she already knew, because he told her when they met, but it was a different thing to know in abstract and a different thing to experience it first-hand.
In the end, he decided not to tell her. They practically didn’t talk about the house throughout the remainder of their holiday and the following months. The only reference they made to it was when they talked about a robin which had started to visit their garden when Keith was in S. They called it the little bird, ‘our non-permanent resident’.
When the plaster was taken off from Ilona’s leg, Keith and Ilona started to do more walking, discovering places in Lancashire which they never visited before and in March they started cycling again. During the weekends they cycled fifty to sixty miles a day. It was after one such trip that Keith told Ilona: ‘I want to sell the house. I realised that this place is not for us. I’m so sorry I dragged you into it.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked Ilona.
‘Yes, I am. It’s not that I hate these “permanent residents”; it’s just Scotland does not matter to me as it used to. I don’t feel like I have my roots there anymore; my roots are now in Lancashire.’
‘Fine then. We have to approach the estate agent.’
‘I will, tomorrow.’
The estate agent was optimistic. He told them that houses like theirs sell quickly because for folk from London they are still very cheap and if they weren’t in a tremendous hurry, it would fetch them a good price.
They replied that they weren’t in a hurry and that they would wait for somebody willing to pay them more than they paid themselves so they’ll make a profit. Over the next two months, the agent showed it to six potential buyers. Eventually, a couple from London arrived whom Ilona and Keith met in person. They said that they wanted to buy it for their daughter who was about to start her studies in Edinburgh. For some reason, she didn’t want to live in Edinburgh, though, the mother said.
‘It is a lovely house, with so much character. When we saw it, we immediately thought that it would be a perfect place for her. And the village is so picturesque, with so many flowers. It is like heaven,’ the mother said.
‘Yes, it is lovely,’ Ilona said.
‘May I ask you why you want to sell it?’ the father asked.
‘We realized that it would be too expensive for us to keep two properties and we are not planning to retire as early as we thought.’
‘We understand,’ the couple said.
Two days later the Londoners put in an offer, which Ilona and Keith accepted. In the end, they didn’t lose any money. They even gained five thousand pounds, which they decided to spend on a trip to India.
