Crime in the Community

Chapter 4 You say gorilla and I say guerilla

'The lassie's quite right. Faceless apparatchiks.'

'All we need is to know what outcome we want, and everything else follows,' continued Amaryllis. She sat up straighter and glanced round at the group members. 'So - what do we want?'

'We want things to stay as they are,' said Young Dave wistfully. He was young enough to think that particular outcome was possible or desirable.

'Don't be daft, man!' said Big Dave. 'Things don't stay the same. Either you embrace change or it washes over you like a massive wave full of the rubbish that people flush into the sea these days.'

'Have you ever written a poem, Dave?' said Amaryllis.

Big Dave blushed.

'Well, it's funny you should say that, but I once won a prize for poetry.'

'Sometimes you sound very poetic. Maybe if we do get the village hall off the ground we should try and start a writers' group. Anybody else interested?'

There was a silence. In fact Christopher himself dabbled in writing from time to time, and on one occasion when he had had to escort Mrs Stevenson home because she was too drunk to stand up properly, she had shown him a whole suitcase full of her writings. Apparently she had written twenty-three novels, all unpublished. He hadn't had the heart to ask her why she bothered. Presumably the activity must fulfil something inside her. Christopher found it unsettling even to think about all this, but he wasn't sure why. Perhaps it was the sad waste of potential, perhaps that nobody would ever see the novels....He had resisted the temptation to offer any help with getting them published, since he realised that by the following day she would have forgotten she ever showed him the suitcase.

'We want to improve the town,' said Christopher, remembering vaguely that had been their reason for nurturing the infant PLIF in the first place.

'In what way?' said Amaryllis. Honestly, the woman was worse than Steve Paxman. Or even Jeremy Paxman.

He shrugged his shoulders. 'Make it a better place to live.'

'Better than what?' Amaryllis persisted. 'Better than Torryburn? Better than Burntisland? Better than it used to be in the eighteenth century?'

'What did you retire from?' said Christopher, finally losing patience with her. 'The KGB?'

She was silent for just a moment, then rallied with, 'You wouldn't believe me if I told you.'

He wondered if he had imagined the fleeting expression of panic in her eyes. Surely Amaryllis wasn't an underground Al Qaida operative?

'I think we're losing track of the agenda here,' she added. 'You want to improve the town - how? By building a new shopping mall, or encouraging people to keep their houses in better condition, or putting up new street lights, or painting the school pink? Or none of the above. Tick as applicable.'

'None of the above,' said Jock McLean. 'There are plenty of shops already. As long as I can still get my pipe tobacco and a haggis from time to time. What we need is another pub where other people can go so we'll have more room in here. It's getting a bit crowded these days.'

He stared pointedly at a noisy group of women who were exchanging hugs and squealing like teenage girls.

'I'm guessing the Council won't cough up for a new pub,' said Young Dave. 'They're more likely to go for painting the school pink, in my experience. Or running clubs for lesbian single mothers.'

They were seeing a whole new side of Young Dave, thought Christopher, and probably not his best side either. He had a lot more irrational prejudices than Big Dave had, and there was a whining undertone to a lot of his speeches that really wasn't very appealing. Christopher didn't like stereotypes, but what did anyone expect from a lawyer?