I was back at the wee fish shop somewhere between Thurso and Scrabster last Thursday, minding my own business, as I generally am when other people happen to be speaking loudly enough for me to hear them. Effie was standing by the haddock having a very quiet conversation with Elspeth. It was one of those conversations conducted at precisely the volume required to make every woman within twelve feet immediately interested. They both stopped talking when they saw me coming.
I looked at Effie. I looked at Elspeth.
“Well, spit it out,” I said. “What’s the matter?”
Effie sighed.
“Elspeth has a situation.”
I put my haddock down.
There are situations, and there are situations. A situation can mean anything from somebody having reversed into a sheep trailer to a family member arriving from Glasgow with luggage.
“This one is temporary,” Effie added.
Elspeth looked as though she was taking some comfort from that fact.
Her husband’s brother, it turned out, had married an American woman many years ago and moved to the United States. Every few years they came back to Scotland for a visit. This time they had arrived with their three children, aged seven, five and two.
“The children are fine,” said Elspeth.
This surprised me, because three visiting children under eight are not usually introduced as the reassuring part of a story.
“It’s her.”
The American wife.
Now, I have met many perfectly agreeable Americans. They are generally cheerful people, and they seem to possess a touching belief that everything can be improved by making it larger and providing free refills.
This particular American, however, had apparently never quite accepted that other countries were not failed versions of America.
She had already expressed dissatisfaction with the size of the refrigerator, the width of the roads, the amount of ice available in drinks, the absence of screens on the windows and the washing machine, which she claimed took “literally forever”.
“It takes two hours,” Elspeth said.
I nodded.
Apparently this constituted forever in America.
But the real trouble was coffee.
She had asked for coffee on the first morning. Elspeth made her instant.
There was a silence at this point in the fish shop.
Even I understood that something unfortunate had occurred.
“She looked at it,” said Elspeth, “like I’d dissolved gravy granules in the cup.”
Effie covered her mouth.
Elspeth offered tea.
The woman did not drink tea.
Eventually she announced that she desperately needed Starbucks.
There is no Starbucks in Thurso.
This fact did not improve matters.
And so her husband and his brother (Elspeth’s husband) somehow found themselves driving all the way to Inverness because one grown woman wanted a particular cup of coffee.
I stared at Elspeth.
“You drove to Inverness for coffee?”
“I didn’t,” she said quickly. “The men did.”
That was something.
They returned several hours later, whereupon Elspeth’s husband informed his brother that this particular humanitarian relief operation would not be repeated.
“We are not driving to Inverness again because your wife wants coffee,” he said.
Quite right too.
The American wife pouted for a while and then refused coffee altogether. She would not drink tea. She drank water with an expression suggesting political imprisonment.
Then she discovered Amazon. Two days later a box arrived from a catering supply company in England. Inside was a commercial filter coffee machine. Not a little domestic coffee maker, mind you. This was the sort of apparatus one expects to find in a hotel breakfast room beside forty Danish pastries and a conference on agricultural drainage.
“It takes up half my counter,” said Elspeth.
“How much coffee does it make?”
“A whole jug.”
“How big a jug?”
“Big.”
This was not terribly scientific, but her hands described something approaching a municipal reservoir.
The American woman explained that it was merely a normal American-sized coffee pot.
“She makes the whole thing every morning,” Elspeth said.
“And drinks it?”
“All of it.”
Effie blinked.
“By herself?”
“Every drop.”
Then came the electricity. The machine brewed the coffee and afterwards sat there keeping it hot for hours. Elspeth said she had gone outside one morning and looked at the electricity meter.
“It was spinning so fast I thought it might lift off.”
I said that somewhere south of the border, a power station had probably received an emergency telephone call. Effie said the electricity was undoubtedly having to come all the way up from England.
We considered this perfectly plausible.
Two more women had now stopped pretending to examine the fish.
Then Rhona, who had been quietly studying a tray of smoked haddock, said she had once drunk coffee from one of those machines.
We all turned.
“At an office party in Edinburgh,” she said. “Years ago.”
“Well?”
Rhona thought about it.
“Best coffee I ever had.”
There was another silence.
This altered the nature of the discussion considerably.
Elspeth’s visitors were leaving the following Saturday.
Rhona suggested that perhaps, after they had gone, we might all call round on Sunday.
“Just to help you tidy,” she said.
Naturally.
Nobody was proposing a coffee party.
We were simply responsible Highland women offering practical assistance to another woman after a demanding family visit.
If, during that assistance, a commercial coffee machine happened to require testing, it would have been irresponsible not to test it.
So the following Sunday we arrived.
All five of us.
Various husbands were told we were going round to help Elspeth get the house back in order.
This was true.
Technically.
We had the kitchen straight within twenty minutes.
Then somebody looked at the commercial coffee pot.
“Well,” said Effie.
“Well,” said Rhona.
Elspeth fetched the instructions.
We gathered around them.
Fill the water tank.
Easy enough.
Put the glass jug on the lower hotplate.
Fine.
Place a filter in the basket.
Done.
Then came the coffee.
“How much?”
Elspeth disappeared into the pantry and returned holding a large plastic coffee scoop.
“Eight of these.”
Six women looked at the scoop.
“Eight?”
“Yes.”
“That’s half the bag.”
“I watched her.”
“You asked her?”
“No. I watched her from the pantry.”
There are moments when friendship requires you not to ask unnecessary questions.
“She put eight in,” Elspeth said. “I counted.”
So we put eight in.
One.
Two.
Three.
By five, Effie was shaking her head.
At eight, the filter basket looked as though we were preparing peat for winter.
The instructions said to switch on the lower hotplate and then press the brewing button.
We did.
There was a hiss.
Then a gurgle.
Then another, rather more authoritative gurgle.
Within minutes, dark coffee began pouring into the jug.
The smell filled the kitchen.
“Oh,” said Rhona.
That was all she said.
We stood around the machine like six crofters witnessing electricity for the first time.
When the jug was full, we carried everything to the table.
Coffee. Sugar. Single cream. Biscuits, because we were not savages.
Elspeth had observed that her sister-in-law took two spoons of sugar and cream, so several of us did the same.
I poured mine.
It was black enough to have its own gravitational field.
I added cream.
It became approximately the colour of polished walnut.
We tasted it.
Nobody spoke for a moment.
“Well,” Effie eventually said.
“Strong,” said Rhona.
“Very.”
“But good.”
“Very good.”
I took another sip.
There was no denying it.
It was excellent coffee.
Far better than instant, though this was perhaps setting the bar at ankle height.
We finished our cups.
There was still half a jug left.
“It would be a shame to waste it,” someone said.
I cannot now remember who. This is how history conceals its villains.
So we had another cup.
Six women. Two cups each.
Twelve cups of coffee from one brew.
“My goodness,” said Effie. “You really could serve twelve people with that.”
Elspeth nodded.
“She drank the whole pot herself.”
We stopped.
“Twelve cups?”
“Not all at once. She started first thing and kept coming back. Cup every half-hour or so.”
Rhona stared into her empty cup.
“Every half-hour?”
“All day.”
About ten minutes later, I became aware of my heartbeat. There are pieces of information one should receive before consuming two cups of commercial-strength American coffee.
Effie placed her hand on her chest.
“Is anybody else’s heart going a bit… enthusiastic?”
Rhona nodded very quickly.
“I can hear mine.”
“You can’t hear your heart.”
“I can now.”
Elspeth stood up.
“I feel marvellous.”
She began wiping the counter.
The counter was already clean.
She wiped it again.
Then the cupboard doors.
Then the refrigerator.
Effie announced that she was finally going to reorganise her airing cupboard.
“I’ve been meaning to do it since 2019.”
“You could do it now,” said Rhona.
“I could.”
“You absolutely could.”
Within another five minutes we had developed several ambitious plans.
Rhona proposed repainting her hall.
Effie decided the loft could be cleared before supper.
One of the others thought we ought to organise the village Christmas lights properly this year.
Someone suggested forming a community gardening group.
Rhona thought we should all learn Italian.
By the time I had finished my second cup, somebody had suggested reopening the railway, and I believe I had volunteered to rebuild part of a stone wall.
At one point all six of us were talking simultaneously and understanding one another perfectly.
Then Elspeth’s husband came home.
He stood in the kitchen doorway.
We all turned towards him at once.
“HELLO,” said Effie.
He took half a step backwards.
His eyes moved around the table.
Six cups.
Empty sugar bowl.
Commercial coffee machine.
Six women sitting unusually upright.
“What’s happened?”
“Nothing,” Elspeth said.
She was polishing the toaster.
“You seem… excited.”
“I’ve had coffee.”
“So I see.”
“It gives you a bit of pep.”
“A bit?”
Elspeth stopped polishing.
“I’m thinking of cleaning the garage.”
Her husband looked at me.
I gave him what I hoped was a reassuring smile.
He did not appear reassured.
Then Effie’s husband arrived to collect her.
She met him at the door already wearing her coat.
“You’re looking cheerful,” he said.
“I’ve decided we’re doing the loft.”
He stared at her.
“Today?”
“We’ve wasted enough time.”
He looked past her at the rest of us.
“What have you lot been drinking?”
“Coffee,” I said.
He looked at the big empty coffee pot.
By four o’clock we had all gone home.
Mr Gunn was reading when I arrived.
“How was Elspeth?”
“Much better.”
“House sorted?”
“Completely.”
I took off my coat.
Then I noticed a mark on the skirting board.
I fetched a cloth.
Mr Gunn watched me clean the skirting board.
Then the door frame.
Then, because I was already there, the hall table.
By six o’clock I had cleaned the kitchen cupboards, rearranged the pantry, washed every windowsill downstairs, written three letters I had been putting off since Christmas and seriously considered moving the sofa.
At half past midnight, I was lying in bed beside Mr Gunn staring at the ceiling.
He was sound asleep.
My eyes were wide open.
My heart was still conducting military exercises. I realised that the American woman may not have been difficult after all.
She may simply have been consuming twelve cups of coffee every day and couldn’t go cold turkey.
