Leaning on the draining board, tea towel for padding, yet your elbows still bruised, the newspaper strategically folded to reveal the crossword as the starlings perched along the empty washing line.  The drowsy hum of the bees at the Tummel mint, in the shade of the parasol planted in the border you watched his infant’s hand reach towards the drooping purple heads to withdraw at your warning.  A patchwork of tiny gestures, the wooden tongs transferring sodden cloth from one tub to another, Scottish breakfast every Sunday, trowel digging the weeds up by the roots and discarding them on the midden with the grass clippings.  The peal of the Academy bell through the open kitchen window, afternoon tea on your best china, sandwich slivers with cucumber for two giggling girls, dissecting the working day, patrolling the corridors, the trips to the library on board the double-decker, smokers upstairs, the shopping lists unworthy of such careful script, the smell of polish.

Yours was the gift of true humility, holding us together with the warmth of your smile, the Mars bar in the packed lunch box, watering the tomatoes in the greenhouse, Mr Blobby biscuits fresh from the bakery, gentle, embracing, welcomed without question, we could always return to you, no matter how bitter the disappointment, you accepted us without judgement, putting the kettle on, and when you could not follow us down the path, your hand waving in front of the lace curtain.

Every week my Mother would drive up to 12 Campsie Road in her dark green Austin Allegro nicknamed Syd after the fortuitous arrangement of numbers on the registration plate to enquire after my Grandmother Kate’s shopping needs (usually a few tins and a half loaf from the nearby Co-op), to deliver the Daily Mail (she would turn immediately to the Fred Basset cartoon strip, which always made her chuckle) and to clean the house, kneeling on the linoleum to scrub the kitchen floor, wiping the windows, vacuuming the carpets and removing the crumbs and brown spill stains from the gas cooker’s white top, leaving it gleaming.

I would stay behind to keep her company. A smell of rancid butter and fustiness clung to her as she shuffled through in her peenie [apron]. The scrape of the match summoning the blue flame to life, the mugs and the thick slices of white bread, slightly salted and marmalade, perhaps a Digestive biscuit and the pot on the tray, two bags left to infuse. Once when she was “ben the hoose”, the largest of the three ducks flying along the wall nodded at me. For many years afterwards I stared at it, yet it never attempted to communicate again.

She would shout at the wrestlers on the black and white screen, revelling in the villain’s perfidy. She knew them all by name, but I could never understand the appeal of the ludicrous sight of middle-aged men strutting around the ring in their underpants, the palpable fakery of the performances (no doubt having absorbed my Father’s disdain for the sport), the preordained outcome of the morality play.

The ground floor flat where she lived was sparsely furnished, a display cabinet for a few brass ornaments (mostly miniature implements, coal scuttles, bellows and the like, a source of endless fascination for G as a toddler) and a cocktail cabinet stocked with glasses and half bottles opened only for first footers. Above her bed an icon of Virgin and Child, the sole visible token of her Catholic faith (apart from the size of her brood).

She seldom reminisced about her days as the wife of an itinerant agricultural labourer (my Father confided that Kate would pick a quarrel to sour relations whenever it looked like her man might be in danger of settling down too comfortably), always intending to chronicle the hardships of a vanished way of life in a memoir. It was never written, yet I gleaned what I could.

The women on the farm were made to do men’s work, loading sacks of potatoes onto carts, each of which weighed 112 pounds. Usually two tons had to be shifted. There were two “lugs” [ears] at the top of the sack and Kate would form another two at the bottom. She and a friend who had a good lifting rhythm would count to three as they swung the sack to gather momentum before finally throwing it onto the vehicle. The men would tease them and their laughter in response distracted them to the extent that they hardly noticed how exhausting their toil was.

During the Second World War Kate was in the Land Army, driving four different tractors in a rota, taking workers to the fields, dropping them off, taking the harvest back to the farm and picking up more workers to take them out. The lady of the house “brocht oot pieces” [brought out sandwiches], as all the men were provided with sustenance, however meagre. She announced to her husband with a hint of pride that he would need it after his exertions to which he replied that Mrs Wilkie deserved it more as she had never stopped.

Another of her many duties consisted of feeding two intimidatingly large breeding sows (she was five feet three). The pen they were kept in appeared flimsy in relation to their weight, strength and the frenzy of their greed. When they heard the clatter of the swill bucket they would come rushing towards her, frantic with the desire to immerse their snouts in the mixture, so she would fling several handfuls to the opposite end of the sty. The ruse never failed: they would run as quickly as their stumpy legs would carry them to the opposite end of the sty, freeing her passage to the trough where she would empty the bucket and retreat unscathed. Although he was of slight build (five feet two), her ploughman husband was very strong. She warned him never to have anything to do with keeping pigs or she would end up “Widow Wilkie”, so great was her wariness of the animals.

She always encouraged him to find better employment than the drudgery of farming as he did not lack the brains, but he refused. When he finally retired and they were forced to leave the countryside her heart was heavy with the prospect of being tied down. Her sisters could never understand the attraction of the straw and the mud, only visiting her for holidays (during which they constantly complained of the stench of dung, which Kate herself did not notice, it filling her nostrils all the time).

She would try her hand at any task once, including calving. The calf was coming too slowly and they were afraid that it would die. Kate offered to help her husband. He had to sit on the cow’s neck to keep its head down, preventing it from rising too fast, which would mean that the calf would drop to its death. Her job was to take a rope and tie it to the calf’s protruding feet. Every time the cow winced in a convulsion of pain, she would tug the rope until, at last, the calf emerged. There was so much blood and such an overpowering smell that she was prompted to remark that had she known in advance it would be so messy and unpleasant she would never have volunteered.

The calf “grew up braw” and she would occasionally be sent out to feed it. The cow would be milked into a pail, which she would take to the calf. As it needed something to suck on, she would place her fingers in its mouth, withdrawing them once it had begun. She expressed her anxiety to her husband that one day it would take her fingers off, but he dismissed her concerns: “Och awa’, it’ll no dae that!” He was right.

He taught her many skills – farming was not nearly as simple as it appeared and there was a lot of learning to be done. He refused to instruct her in the art of milking, however, in spite of her nimble fingers. The reason: if she were asked, she could truthfully deny being able to and the farmer could not force her to work on Saturdays and Sundays as well, leaving her some time to herself. She did not start in the mornings until nine, walking the children part of the way to school, but that suited the farmer, as she could then harness and lead out the horse. Acquiring the technique took a great deal of practice and the horse took perverse delight in trampling on her toes as they came out of the stables.

It was a spoiled beast and the children had once made the mistake of giving it a morsel from their sandwiches. Ever since it had refused to budge until offered a similar treat. She “got fly for it” and put a sandwich on the byre. The horse would spot the bread and jam, munch it and then be perfectly content to walk off to the fields.

All her acquaintances called her “Auntie Kate” and she was used to catering for large groups. They never went hungry as she had a potato ration. If they wanted a neep [Swede] they knew they just had to go to the shed where they were stored. Nobody had much money and Kate wished for a little more.

After they had moved to the town, she bumped into one of her former employers in Canal Street. He doffed his cap in greeting and when she asked “How’s yersel’?” he replied that he missed her and could use her on the farm, would they not relent and come back? She had looked both healthier and happier in the days when the unpolluted air had painted roses on her cheeks.

She shocked me once by confiding that the best thing that had ever happened to her was a hysterectomy operation (much later on, my Mother unburdened the traumatic memory of her lost brother. It was stormy and Kate had gone into labour, her last pregnancy. My Mother wanted to fetch the midwife, but Kate was adamant that she could manage herself. When she finally admitted that something had gone wrong and called for outside intervention, it was too late. My Mother was forever haunted by the sight of a perfect baby boy strangled on his own umbilical cord). Hers was a tale of thwarted potential, the doors to intellectual attainment slammed shut in her face because of her class and gender. She grudged her daughters success, however, resentment festering within at the prospect that they might transcend the limitations of their lowly station. When my Mother passed the scholarship exam to the fee-paying Academy Kate used the pretext of not being able to afford the uniform to snuff out her hopes. The family could not do without her income, so she cycled the miles into town every day to her sales assistant’s position in Largs record department (whence her considerable knowledge of classical music, opera in particular).

Cathy, my Mother’s younger sister, sought refuge from the spiteful stifling through marriage, landing an architect with a large detached house on the outskirts of Edinburgh. Evelyn, the third sister, travelled even further to escape Kate’s influence, disappearing to England. Their absence left my Mother at her mercy, to be treated like a skivvy, with all the attendant contempt. Following her divorce and her husband’s protracted suicide through alcoholism, Cathy returned, her hatred for her mother tinged with guilt from the knowledge that her unwillingness to become involved placed a disproportionate burden upon her sister for Kate’s care.

She exploited my Mother’s love without giving in return, lacking her daughter’s kindness and generosity of spirit. My Mother did not replicate her behaviour, never ceasing to give me encouragement, a debt that I have always sought to repay through achievement, through showing her what might have been had she only been given the chance to prove herself.

Kate ended her life in a home. My Mother had to fight long and hard for her to be given accommodation there, as she had no assets to sell to fund her place (the cruel practice of local councils stripping the elderly of their property and depriving their children of any inheritance has only recently been outlawed). The urn with her ashes lies on a shelf in the shed at the bottom of the garden. Her children will never scatter them.

Having sliced the grapefruit, Oti watched as I struggled to dissect it without discourteous spray, no easy task when a tablespoon is the combined cutting and scooping implement. “It reminds me of tonic,” she informed me as she sipped the mug of tea flavoured with a dash of lemon juice (having gallantly washed her way through every single sauce-encrusted plate, mug and butter-streaked item of cutlery we possess, she was reading G’s copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, borrowed for the purposes of improving her English), “a slight hint of bitterness before you swallow”. From the bedroom, the Hungarian voiced his scepticism loudly. We smiled, knowing that he would wrinkle his nose in disgust if offered even a segment of its flesh. When she was growing up, her family was fortunate enough to be able to grow all their apples, pears, peaches and plums as well as cabbage, potatoes and other staples, sóska (sorrel) the one variety of főzelék she would refuse. Often meat exceeded their budget, so a fried egg on top of the boiled vegetables cooked further in a flour and fat mixture provided a convenient source of protein. Five portions of fruit and vegetables a day was standard, not the luxury it has become or virtuous compliance with an exhortation. “We were never asked what we wanted to eat; we had to make do with what we were given. My Mother might cook us our favourite dish for Sunday lunch, but otherwise we had no choice. The real problem now is that in all the families whose houses I clean the child sets the menu. The parents prepare something else for themselves if necessary. Grapefruit lowers cholesterol, by the way”.

Whilst my Father would soak rhubarb in hot water with his All Bran in the morning, my Mother would share a grapefruit with me. Cutting round the inside edge, carefully running the blade down each compartment of juicy pulp, she would sprinkle each half with sugar to soak in overnight. Most of the granules had long since dissolved, but some formed a crust to crunch between the teeth. The bowl in the living-room was always full of oranges and blushing apples. The bananas slowly browned until THAK gorged on them, lamenting that they would otherwise go to waste.

She did not want to be a burden, but I would gladly have wiped her as she struggled up from the commode, as she once wiped me. In the last couple of years, she occasionally asked me to pull up her tights, leaning to slide them over her feet too difficult. My Father bought her a plastic contraption for the task, but it was never used. Likewise the frame around the toilet and the grab rail and seat fitted into the shower. The towelled emptiness where her constant library books once rested on the box holding spare toilet rolls. He regrets not having invested in an electric adjustable armchair sooner, his current comfort a nagging reproach.

The appetite-suppressing stench of excrement permeating the rehabilitation ward, the repairmen not having arrived as scheduled. Disinfect hands before entering. The bubbling of her nebulizer, the windowsill lined with vases, a view to the Friarton Bridge, the hum of distant traffic. She lay propped against the pillows and if I called her, the nurse would trundle the coin-operated phone to her bedside. Sprightliness and mental alertness assessed by young men, stethoscope-slung, in the white gown of authority. We could pull the plastic curtain round for a semblance of privacy. What could I tell her? The magazines we brought her stacked high on the table, G’s extortionately priced bars of Fudge from the machine on exiting, a ritual to dull the pain. As she appeared to doze, we would fill the words into the grid to while away the visiting hour. Too much leave untaken. Stumped, G would read the clue aloud followed by the available letters. I could not always help. Her murmur would betray that behind her lids she had not been asleep. The answer was invariably correct.

She claimed to have stopped smoking, and perhaps she did for a short while. When he sold her Austin Allegro (nicknamed Syd because of the registration number) behind her back, she never forgave him, gulping down the rage, exhaling it silently through her nostrils. She retreated to the bathroom to light up, camouflaging the odour with frantically sprayed air freshener when our pleas for admittance could no longer be ignored. We were never fooled.

The day after we had left, he called us back. We pretended that the plane had been diverted back due to bad weather and that we had decided we might as well come home. A small lie, not wanting to admit to her that we knew. She did not protest. Her skin was smooth and free from sweat except around her calves and ankles where it was inflamed and oozed. Shelley removed the stains from the carpet. Nobody sat there again; my Father disposed of the three piece suite, replacing it with patio furniture.

“And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o’er-brimmed their clammy cells”
Keats, To Autumn

A film of condensation protects the modesty of the veranda panes following my bath with door ajar. The lawn is damp with mid-morning dew and wasps zigzag wearily above the moss. The intruding cat is curled in a patch of sunlight beyond the shadow cast by the house, cobwebs hang heavy with captured breeze-borne seeds. The howl and despairing bark of strays bundled into the catcher’s van travels down the road, dissipating in the air’s indifferent calm, a shiver of concentrated anguish.

My Mother hunched over a crossword in the kitchen with her well-thumbed dictionaries, folded tea towel to prevent her elbows from bruising, the local radio’s phone in talk show parading the decline in education standards before her half-listening ear. A few hours of solitude before my Father’s return from the fellowship, sausages on a low flame sizzling in the pan.

The tentacles of commercialism have not yet extended as far as the shops behind. Litter blows unheeded around the deserted car park. The rasp of magpies hacks through the cirrus-scarred sky like a smoker’s cough.

Tis God that lifts our comforts high
Or sinks them in the grave,
He gives and takes bless’d be his name
He takes but what he gave.
(1799).

[Diary entry, 1994]

The imbecilic drone of the radio continues long after the kitchen has emptied. Undaunted, unaware like some self-important attention-basking airhead punctuating her inane utterings with a laugh or a coquettish flick of her long hair back over her shoulder from whence it had strayed. To test them. Determine whether they still listen to her. Now the students sit around the communal table draped in striped plastic; seven colours, each for a separate section of the daily, chipped mugs of coffee, bowls of cereal, crumbs from a long-digested repast peeping from under the pages. Minding their own business. Anxious youths, shy and stumbling. Unsure.

The leaves are starting to turn, the climbing frame empty, trucks and pieces of toy race track lie abandoned in the sandpit. Sparrows perch for a moment on the handlebars, saddles and pedals of the bicycles wedged into the stands. Chained to prevent theft. Pine cones litter the path. It smells like home. Damp, cool, fertile, autumn. Home: a bridge over the gorge, Soldier’s Leap, the forest’s embrace, the shore of the loch, ferns and drifts of ancient needles, the type of wind a tourist brochure would refer to as ‘bracing’. Slippery lichen-clad rocks worn by the sturdy hiking bots of the nouveau riche subscribing to a fantasy of untamed wilderness. The Barbour brigade with their Range Rovers and statutory Golden Labradors. Tweed hats with the tail feather of a native bird, thick woollen socks and possibly binoculars – rambling lords of the countryside with their coarse blankets to spread beneath the spruce. Flasks. Cut sandwiches. Unnecessarily raised voices. Off to the pub for a pint with the quaint locals. Buy them a round, colonial magnanimousness. Where can a man hire a boat in these parts? Is the fishing good? Do I need a permit? Down to the yacht club’s fee-paying cosiness. Whistler prints in cheap reproduction frames, red-stained Chesterfields. Antiseptic. They will never suffer the indignity of non-absorbent, arse-slicing oven-ready greaseproof masquerading as toilet paper or dripped-on seats in musty, purpose-built Forestry Commission chalets. Intruders and unwelcome, except perhaps for the aforementioned glass of Seventy Shilling, still, what a price tag, at least half an hour’s bragging. You can picture the husband posing with a four pound trout, the camera unable to pick out the detail of rainbow flecking, but more than equal to the challenge of immortalising the regality of his smile.

And there are those whose very clay was extracted from the mountain slopes. Whose defect was ignorance and poverty. Sheep farming. Tending the estates. Planting trees, carrying the saplings up on their backs and glorying in the sweat. Helpless to stop the invasion. For hundreds of years their tenancy was secure and now they are ousted for the sake of a cash-glutted city dweller’s notion of romance, a beautiful view kept at bay by the double glazing, a snip at ₤300,000. The headstones in the drystane dyke-enclosed churchyard lean in resignation, gathering moss, rain obscuring the inscriptions. Who remembers them? They will come, prophesies the real estate agent, they will come and seek planning permission for their extensions, conservatories, verandas and terraces. Any verily I say unto thee, they shall plant potatoes and sprouts and cabbages and roses shall climb the iron trellises. Let there be cable TV, satellite dishes. Their offspring will bide their time until inheritance, death duties sapping their enthusiasm, or perhaps they will sell when the market is right. Colourful characters a strong selling point.

Have you noticed how middle-class aspirations have stupefied us all? The humble council house now a well-appointed private dwelling. Even the most wretched slum in P has been spruced up. No longer do the inhabitants torch the place when they want to jump the resettlement queue – now Austrian lace curtains and porcelain knick-knacks are the staple. The broken tinted glass, stray crushed cans and bloodstains dripped along the pavement, which you can trail to an unresolved end still testify silently to the casual brutishness that infects the estates. Stabbings, drink driving. Tut, tut, the wagging finger of the moralist not yet redundant. My Father’s disgust at an incident our neighbour recounted: the driver of a battered wreck of a van was accosted by a traffic warden and issued a ticket for overstaying his welcome on a set of double yellow lines contemptuously produced a thick wad of ₤20 notes, the teeth revealed by his grin at the authority figure’s expression of amazement little more than blackened stumps.

The canal behind the street that marked the boundary with the disused marshalling yard (doubtless now converted into a retail park with premier sales opportunities, anonymous sheds crammed with consumer durables) was choked with discards: prams, doll torsos, tyres, corned beef tins, rags, none of which deterred the ducks or, presumably, the minnows.

Every Saturday at about ten o’ clock the doorbell would ring and there would be Mr. T, local grocer, with a cardboard box heavy enough to make his eyes bulge and his cheeks flush red. Sometimes I would answer the door and he would stagger in and deposit it on the kitchen table (we had linoleum floor covering then, now it’s durable carpet). Helping to convey its contents to pantry, fridge and cupboard was one chore my brother and I could be relied upon to carry out without complaint. Then we knew how many packets of Golden Wonder salt and vinegar flavour there were to squabble over. Whether there were any spare bars of Cadbury’s or whether Fry’s Chocolate Cream, my Mother’s bedtime treat, represented the entire plunder. She has dentures, so it didn’t matter. She used to take out the set and put them on top of the mantelpiece and never washed them before putting them in again. There was no choice when she was young: one twinge of toothache and the dentist whipped out the whole lot to save having to make a loss on the plebeian. She never bothered about the fluff or dust on which they rested. Varicose veins and cigarette smoke. Blood in the toilet when my persistent nagging reduced her to capitulation and she let me in for a pee. Small white tube. It frightened me. She must be ill.

Ice cream van, paper van, lemonade van, fish van, chip van. On holiday at Tummel the weekly visit of the mobile shop with its counter and shelves. G’s excitement at the tune. He runs to the window, straining to see: “Mummy, Mummy, ice cream van!” Nothing changes save location.

There are two photographs – one of both parents, one of my Mother. They were young, but we never noticed at the time. The first is in a boat on Loch Tummel. Both smile. He looks directly at you, protesting that he doesn’t know what the joke is – she looks at him and it is impossible to tell what she is thinking. The second is of her astride a Clydesdale, bareback, clad in a Coronation Street pinnie, her hair tied back in a headscarf, 50s style. She waves: mischief, vitality, revelling and I know what I have inherited from her. Her laugh. Her irrepressible humour.

I used to get annoyed whenever she and I went anywhere together. Inevitably, some aftershave or alcohol-reeking male would attempt to foist himself upon her, soppy and dog-eyed. She (as I now comprehend) was the perfect ambassador, tactful, but firm, turning down their offers without bruising their pride. They never retreated crestfallen.

They are strangers to me, the parents who put breath in me and nurtured me and guided me. They never rowed or exchanged so much as a harsh or critical word in our presence (and it would have been extremely difficult to conceal aggression in such a small and thin-walled house as ours). We were embarrassed when they cuddled, prising them apart. I know that I will never bear the loss of them, nor will such a bond exist with any other. Is it simply time? Or once dependence? Two years back I was shocked to the core when I heard her complain of some flaws in her spouse. I had always confronted him about them, as children do, but to hear the faintest murmur of regret was deeply disturbing. I who screech and yelp at the tiniest injustice had foolishly assumed that the projected idyll was pristine, intact, inviolable. Not that she was scathing, simply sighing a little. This magnificent woman, generous and kind, serious and clear-sighted might be unhappy. No, but frustrated. She always did what was required. Washed clothes and dishes, ironed, cleaned, dusted and polished the brass ornaments, weeded the garden, worked part time at the hospital from 16.30 to 21.00 Monday to Friday throughout my adolescence and made the tea. Where did her energy come from? A trip to the library to stock up on the latest romances (not the sludgy Cartland stuff, more the earthy Cookson working class heroines overcoming the odds or croft and shawl melodramas). In my 15-year old prudery (teenagers feel revulsion at the idea of their parents copulating, preferring to think of them as past it) I opened the pages of one at random. It was all rape and trickling sperm, some wicked landowner abusing his position and seducing a milkmaid. Flicking further, I found bursting bodices and heaving breasts, dark curly-locked hero kneeling at his mistress’ feet and so on. At work, my Father had been pestered by female colleagues about the frequency of performing marital duties, which he parried by joking that at his age (he was only approaching fifty) he was more interested in a cup of tea and the archetypal Scottish housewife’s night off fare, the fish supper. He has always been painfully shy about affection. Private, introverted, a typical Highland boy of his generation. No bawdiness. Undiluted romanticism. Tee-total. Not one drop of alcohol has ever passed his lips. If communion wine were offered him, he would not take it. She was the brains, the talent, the silent commander, the temperamental one (of course, the mood swings of the menopause were another mystery to the uninitiated). Recently she surprised me again. We never normally discuss “personal” maters, but she indicated that she believes everything I value about myself comes from him. I have known for years that he wrote, as did his father before him, but she told me the passion comes from him, the surfeit of feelings, the restlessness, the melancholy, even the intelligence. I could not resist a sceptical laugh, asking what I had received from her. “The fat,” she replied.

Yes, she was undervalued, thwarted and impeded at every turn. Her mother would not allow her to attend P Academy in spite of her having won a coveted (and rare) scholarship to cover the fees on the pretext that the uniform was too expensive, but really because she could not bear her daughter enjoying an opportunity she had not been given. Wandering farm hands, ploughman and mate, P, B of E and the carse on the way to D. Even her children have failed my Mother until now. A classic case of boy gravitating to mother and girl to father. I still do not know when or how my parents met. There are letters, but I will not read them until they are gone. Until he is scattered from the summit of Schiehallion to survey the fields where once he harvested, a potato-faced boy in awkward grey flannel shorts and cardigan.

How could she accept it? That she could lose her rag we had felt on stung backsides. Once we had tasted the belt, the threat of it sufficed as a deterrent. God, children hate their nearest and dearest sometimes. Meekness? Resignation? She wanted more progeny. Good Catholic stock, but she was afflicted by a rare condition, Cushing’s syndrome. Although she eventually recovered, starting a family had been delayed. What amazes her is that the longer they are together (41 years so far) the more he loves her – inexhaustibly, unquestioningly, reverently. “I have been lucky”. I do not think it odd, yet am torn by it. I am not monogamous by inclination, yet cherish a notion of its inherent desirability, the harmonious example they set. He bought her an eternity ring. Two Christmases in a row. Identical, same shop. I laughed when he told me (I had been enquiring so that I could avoid purchasing the same gift by mistake). His conclusion: “I must be getting dottle [senile, confused]”. Rather than tease (as I might have done) that she would never escape his clutches (two eternities!), she smiled, proclaiming that she would wear one on weekdays and the other on weekends only. I still replicate their habit of buying objects as a demonstration of love, no longer disparaging them for it.

Kungshamra. Been to the supermarket. The vegetables are wilted and shrink-wrapped packs of fish and prawns outnumber cuts of meat. Seafaring nation. Slightly dingy aisles. Little choice compared to the palatial emporiums at home (not that we were always so spoilt). In the tunnelbana. Yesterday, on returning from the Monologue Festival a woman stepped out of the train. Her skirt, leather, barely long enough to conceal her underwear, a zip, full length to open it, matching jacket and boots. She couldn’t walk straight and kept putting her hand over her eyes to screen out the unwanted stares from the waiting platform occupants. Or to gain respite from the clinical whiteness of neon reflected on tile. She reached the escalator and was gone. The muttering occasioned by her subsided. Quarter to midnight. Mörby centrum.

Verdi’s requiem rises through the floor. Played at the correct speed, my previous acquaintance with it from a scratched 78 rpm played at 33⅓. Surreal and swamplike, a crossed over creature out of synch with this dimension trying to communicate. “Moonlight Serenade” drowns out the orchestra and chorus below. Then “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square”. The columns of the British Museum. Tap, tap, tap, an anonymous hand is bouncing a ball off the wall to the right in a rhythm so vapid and consistent that it impinges on my concentration. My desk is healthily cluttered with dictionary, vocabulary book, cinema tickets, bills from cafés, scissors, postcards and photocopies. The dregs of coffee have curdled, churlish, in my cup.

Twenty-four hour supermarket shopping, wander down the aisles between the smoked bacon and pasteurised milk, the washing powder and multi-coloured fizzy drinks, the cat food in plastic pouches and the greetings cards, row upon row of glossy magazines and coffee granules in jars. The local bakery with Scotch pies: greyish meat of indeterminate origin bulked with rice, a taste of pepper (the more decorative varieties, which did not exist in my youth, topped with baked beans and mashed potato or melted cheese). Battenberg from Mr. Kipling of the “exceedingly good cakes”, Bakewell tart, white icing and glace cherry. Flapjacks the respectably low-sugar, middle-class, hands folded demurely in lap and a dainty plate to catch the crumbs version of sinful indulgence. The trifles with artificial cream banished from refrigerated displays. Tate and Lyle Golden Syrup, bees swarming out of the fallen lion, millionaire shortbread with a thick layer of caramel and chocolate, strawberry tarts, meringues, éclairs, coconut slices and tattie scones. Used teabags tied in a sandwich bag on the draining board for composting. The red van, purveyors of fine quality fish, Arbroath smokies every Friday, the high-pitched horn audible from streets away. Satellite dishes sprouting like grey fungus from the pebble-dash walls. Every morning my Father microwaves me porridge for breakfast. With the exception of Sunday, his morning fare has for decades consisted of All Bran sprinkled initially with sugar, then (when it became available) with sweetener to ensure a proper fibre intake.

My Mother used to keep her dentures on the top of the cabinet beside the stereo speaker, slipping them in when visitors arrived. Her nail varnish, hair dye, moisturiser cream and half-empty perfume bottles silently observe the occupants of the bathroom from their shelves. The seat and grab rail fitted into the shower compartment never touched.

From the day of his birth I was mortally jealous of my brother. He followed me everywhere like a puppy, doing my bidding, his blind obedience a constant source of fascination. He meekly imbibed the mug of earth tea I stirred fresh from the border and swallowed the worm from the bait jar on my command. When he went to Johnny’s (the Italian grocers) with his friend to steal penny chews, I sat on the concrete steps not wishing to be dragged into the crime, yet happy to accept a share of the proceeds (McCowan’s Highland Toffee). One afternoon he was more grubby than usual, having smeared coal dust into his cheeks. I was supposed to be looking after him, but we quarrelled and he ran out into the middle of the road where he was struck by a car, the screech of the driver’s brakes loud enough to bring all the curler-patting housewives for miles around to their front doors. Having ascertained that no serious damage had been done, he turned to me.
“Is he with you?”
“I don’t know that little black boy,” my icy reply.

Only a few minutes walk from the house, we would run wild through the school grounds and peer through the classroom windows at the collages and drawings of younger pupils. Inspecting the churned mud of the playing fields for lost marbles, admiring the latest graffiti (YLT, the insignia of the district’s notorious yet invisible gang, and SPUNK the most frequent scrawls) and climbing the metal fire escapes, which vibrated menacingly with every step, our favourite diversions. Next to the tuck-shop hatch and dining hall lay a sunken garden with ornamental bushes and shrubs. Annoyed by my brother’s continued presence in spite of my order to return home and leave me in peace I finally cracked, shoving him down the six-foot drop to the unyielding paving stones below. Paying not the slightest heed to his howls I turned and marched back myself. A couple of hours later, the neighbour’s elder daughter E rang our doorbell with a tear-streaked R in tow. He had not “split his head open” (the injury that aroused most excitement amongst us children) after all.

Although cruel to him, I would never permit anyone else to do him harm. Opposite us nearer the end of the street lived Lanky, so nicknamed for being unusually tall and skinny for his age. R and I were engrossed in a game of The Time Machine in the front garden, which involved the wooden shaft and handle of a shovel (my Father having removed the blade) as our craft (expensive toys not possessing their latter-day advertising-driven allure – balsa wood gliders and figures of knights in armour on horseback more than sufficient to entertain us, the heart-pounding rush of acquisitiveness only afflicting us in the run-up to Christmas when my Mother would present us with the catalogue, never betraying even a flicker of dismay when we flicked through the sensible clothes section as quickly as possible to scribble Mousetrap, Spirograph, Fuzzy Felt and Buckaroo on our wish lists). Lanky’s insinuating, nasal voice drifted over the wall with his customary taunts about my brother’s weight and the gaps between his teeth. Wrenching the implement away from R, I swung it through the air with every ounce of strength I could muster, clobbering Lanky on the skull with it. He never pestered R again. Later, however, once I had lost my pre-pubescent early development advantage I was unable to protect R from the bullying of his peers. The worst incident occurred when the eldest Bruscaglia boy (an incoming family whom we referred to in private either as the Scally-aglis or the Scallywags) took a belt to him, beating him almost senseless and leaving his legs and lower body covered with bruises and buckle-shaped weals. My Father was so incensed that he called the police who did nothing more than issue a stern warning.

During his teenage rebellion phase my brother’s passion was Ska and punk: Madness, King Kurt, The Sex Pistols and The Exploited blared relentlessly up from his bedroom, disrupting my study schedule. He turned skinhead, donning the mandatory bomber jacket and bovver boots. Renouncing the linoleum-floored corridors of education as soon as legally released from the compulsion, he joined the ranks of the professionally unemployed, brazenly declaring that he would never look for a job as long as my parents were alive to scrounge off, a precept to which he has rigorously adhered. As soon as his benefits ran out he would be round mooching petrol and cigarette money. Even now my Father pays his car (and the insurance) in instalments.

In his tearaway days he would down countless pints of beer and cider mixed with aspirins, crash out after brewing hallucinogenic potions of magic mushrooms or rake manically through the contents of the pantry, piling half a dozen cheese slices on limp slices of white bread to subdue the LSD and speed-induced munchies. Nowadays he fuels his paranoia on cannabis, a community of welfare-recipients having set up a hash pool, taking turns to purchase the goods, his stable long-term relationship and the mischievous coyness of his five-year-old daughter finally calming him down. His girlfriend, Shelley, was brought up by an alcoholic mother. Her teeth have been ruined by the combined ravages of bulimia and anorexia. Pregnancy did not deter her from drug-taking and E had to be weaned off tranquilisers at birth (in the early stages of their association Shelley rifled my Father’s bedside chest of drawers in search of painkillers, which she gulped down by the handful). A tattoo of a massive dagger-pierced skull covers her right upper arm, her bottle-blonde hair close-cropped. Social Services have encouraged R to stay at home as the cost of maintaining them at state expense is far cheaper than footing the bill for rehabilitation should Shelley go off the rails again (to his credit he was also the first man in her life not to lash out with his fists when she looked at him the wrong way, obviating the need for her son, D, to be taken into care). Fortunately, years have elapsed since I last witnessed the unedifying spectacle of Shelley out of her face, eyeballs rolling uncontrollably, snapping at her little girl and shoving her aside, unable to cope with the demands for attention. I have introduced her to the pleasure of good quality wine in moderation (previously she would not touch the stuff for fear of succumbing to her mother’s habit) and her boosted self-confidence has stimulated a healthier appetite. She supplements the income by going out to clean, the women for whom she works funding a mobile phone, her book club membership and the pirate DVDs they gather round the TV set to watch (a full set of cinema tickets being beyond their budget).

[1994]

“I could murder a cup of tea,” she would say, heading for the kitchen. “The house of the ever boiling kettle” as my then boyfriend dubbed it. Tea for welcome. Rich Tea, Digestive, custard creams. Tea for comfort, tea for study. Tea for contemplation. Tea with three Hermesetas and two sugars for my Dad. Tea with a thimbleful of milk and no sugar for my Mum. Instant coffee for my brother, though now he’s graduated to filter, infected by my continental tastes. Amongst the sodden crusts and bacon rinds on the draining board with yesterday’s midnight cigarette butt stands the cafetière, gleaming, clogged with grounds. Lyon’s medium blend in a battered packet with tokens to collect and send off in an envelope with a postal order to cover postage and packing. He shares the flat with Val. Her flat. Unauthorised sub-letting on the first floor of a housing association building. A hand-me-down unit with snapshots in plastic frames of cousins and illegitimate babies grinning, dribbling, unkempt, gravy-stained in endless sunshine. Bookshelves with no books. The inevitable two-bar heater. Unwashed socks stuffed half way down the back of the sofa. Ashtrays of glass and metal, a mannequin piss dispensing a solidified stream that would not extinguish a match. Bottle openers and guitar plectrums. Records and a ghetto-blaster (without CD player). Glum, unlaced Doc Martens beneath a poster of Loch Tummel. A bedroom with walls painted black and a sheep’s skull with a bulb behind the eye sockets – a stale, crumpled duvet and well-trodden biscuit crumbs – view to the warehouses and pavements and orange street lights that flicker on at sunset. You can hear the neighbours rowing or partying. The cars driving into the tarmacked courtyard. Autumn is coming – put more coins in the electric meter – don’t waste the hot water, we can’t afford to switch the immersion on during the day. Val is a swimmer who has earned every award for endurance, distance and lifesaving. She enjoys plain food with no trimmings. H.P. sauce is too exotic. Mince and tatties, fried egg rolls and chips. None of us understand how she puts up with him. Now he’s having an affair and she doesn’t know.

When they came to [Waffle Central] for the first time, she impressed upon him the need to exercise self-restraint when irritated by the ignorance of others: “Dinnae ye batter naebody”. He had combed down his Mohican specially, but the combat jacket and slashed jeans were a dead giveaway. On arrival at Central Station a mob of adolescent Turks jeered and spat at them until the full fury of Val was unleashed upon them. Throwing down the overstuffed canvas travel bags with a vehemence that ruptured the delicate insides of the thermos, she challenged them: “I’ll tak’ yeez on, ye wee bastards!” They fled in astonishment. It was she who dredged up enough school French to keep them fed in their wanderings, she who tracked down the cheapest postcards amongst the display stands.

I took them to Pablo’s for an evening meal. A pleasant, run-of-the-mill painted wooden parrot and Corona joint, fans rotating endlessly from the ceiling like misplaced propellers, striped sombreros slumped on the sill behind the bar. A mid-price, generous portion place where they let you talk when the glasses were drained and the bill had already been paid. To them it was the giddiest opulence, the finest food: R even ate the salad.

Glossy leaves and disinfectant, windowsill cats and no entry signs. The ice cream van has departed, having sold no cones or tubs, 9.15 p.m. not being a commercially sound proposition in the September darkness. Not that G’s enthusiasm has dwindled. Summoned by the chimes, he climbs eagerly to watch the obstinate vehicle pause by the kerb. Does the driver spot him and hope for a wearing down of parental resistance? Our ice cream vans came far earlier in the days when the street was still populated by children. Crisps, lollipops (“Kojaks”), bubblegum, sherbet fountains, chocolate, even cigarettes (candy and tobacco varieties, insidious encouragement to the pure-lunged infants). Wait your turn in the queue to spend the last of your pocket money. Gobstoppers. Penny chews. Highland toffee.
A bluebottle buzzes around the study, bashing against the walls in a frenzy of aimlessness. Gormlessness. I’ll find it in a month or so, on its back, legs curled, behind one of the cardboard boxes stuffed with notes I’ve never re-read: the history of Schleswig-Holstein. The pipes are noisy in this flat. At first I thought an intruder had stopped to wash his hands before the foul deed, then, eyes rolling, eased back into slumber. A jet now trembles the window panes. Where is it going? Beyond the garages a naked bulb illuminates a neighbour’s wardrobe. Statutory net curtains do not disappoint the prying curiosity of an evening. Less eventful than a Hitchcock plot, no one lowers a shivering pooch in a basket. No one throws down a gauntlet to the world with smooth-chested nudity or waves as a rebuttal. The balconies are empty, the washing gathered in to fend off the dampness in the air, the parasols redundant in the moonlight. Up early tomorrow to coax my son to school.

The bells announcing the end of the vote send officials scurrying through the corridors barely wide enough to allow two people to pass without catching a whiff of after-shave or deodorant. Greased-back hair and pinstripes the uniform of the ruthless self-promotionalists milling in front of the chamber with expressions blank until the chosen target comes within visual range. Their gleaming-toothed smiles as sincere as a TV evangelist’s faith.

A colleague who recently succumbed to the after-effects of years of drinking was once stricken by a perforated ulcer on mission and abandoned to his fate whilst the delegation continued on its merry way without giving his condition a second thought. His credit card company took care of his hospitalisation and subsequent repatriation. We truly are invisible, soft targets when it comes to making savings, otherwise an unavoidable encumbrance, grudgingly tolerated in the name of preserving diversity.
The unremittingly grey sky spits raindrops on undeterred shoppers who dodge the spokes of umbrellas in plain colours or with institutional yellow stars. Brown puddles slosh beneath the tyres of limousines, condensation obstructs the view. No buskers strum guitars half-heartedly in the passageway above the building site for the sake of a few coppers.

At the reception following my Mother’s funeral, A, daughter of our former neighbours, recalled the afternoon teas she had prepared for us. Salmon spread sandwiches on plain bread with the crusts removed, slices of Battenberg cake, home made custard creams, shortbread, all served on the best china, milk jug, pot with woollen cosy brought upstairs to my room on a tray. A custom I had only read about in books in the days when I had not yet set foot in a restaurant.

Every Sunday, my Mother would cook a full Scottish breakfast: fried egg, black pudding slices (which I rendered edible by drowning in HP Sauce), sausage, French toast, bacon, mushrooms. She was proud that when we were at primary school we always came home for a proper lunch. Balancing the tray on my lap (the dining room had been converted to a nursery when my brother was born) I sat in an armchair in front of the TV set, the children’s slot cosily named Watch with Mother in line with the social expectations of the non-working class: Pogle’s Wood, Noggin the Nog, Andy Pandy, The Woodentops in black and white. We never ate together except at Christmas.

In our household, my lover is responsible for all the meals. I commute in to Waffle Central at 7.24, returning at variable hours each evening (though only rarely before 19.00 and a virtually unlimited extension of our working hours about to be formally announced), my son arriving back from school long before me. We live three parallel existences with our separate interests and computer screens. Aluminium containers from countless take-aways litter the cherry wood parquet.

Brute survival dictates that women must compete in the rat-race, although “emancipation” has not brought most of us equality of pay in spite of the statute books and threat of prosecution. We must outperform male colleagues to be taken seriously, yet at their booze-swigging lunches they reduce us to our reproductive capacity, assessing our desirability as opposed to our professional skills, token blonde invited along for decoration.

When Death doth come in its full rage,
It spares not young nor old;
But cuts them down at any age,
It will not bribe with gold.
Take warning then all ye,
Who read this passing by;
And learn to live so that ye,
Be not afraid to die.
(1820).

O, March 9th.

Dear Dad,

I am sitting at my desk in the study upstairs in O, listening to the gardeners hoeing the gravel in front of the house to uproot the weeds that somehow thrive there (along with the snapdragons, which migrated from better soil). The clouds, some silver, some grey, are visibly drifting, the sun reflected in the panels of the neighbour’s greenhouse. The occasional car drives past.

F, March 26th.

Another city, another desk. The sky is again overcast, the workmen clattering up and down the scaffolding. The sonorous bells of the cathedral will summon the devout with an undertone of mourning. It seems strange that it should be harder to write a message for the living than for the dead. The streets of F are narrow, I somehow always expected to see rats scurrying along the gutters, not that litter chokes them. Finally, last night, as I was walking with my friends to an evening of music, I caught sight of one, brown and fat, more waddling than running.
In B, when someone dies the final declaration of wealth and status on the part of the family is to post black-bordered announcements of the funeral arrangements to every house in the village (in the case of O an increasingly expensive undertaking, it having long since outgrown the confines of a few rows of houses along a main street). I do not know how many of these I have dropped into the pile for recycling in the hallway without any of the details registering. The paper is always thick, heavy, luxurious, the envelope never addressed.
My supervisor, Gy, once observed that I have difficulty going into a new building, whether it be a library, or even simply a restaurant, which he could not understand. He described it as „difficulty in entering”. He was right, of course, not that I had particularly noticed it for some years. This and the need to prove myself, the constant drive to perform and outperform, to attain ever greater perfection I inherited from you (along with the love of science fiction and the desire to write). Mum was more practical, more confident. From her I have received the energy that wells up uncontrollably, threatening to engulf me, but now more often channels itself into laughter, her laughter. Also the love of language.
Her kindness manifested itself not merely in generosity, but in attention to detail, always knowing what was wanted or needed. Dispensing a „penny” from her purse, putting a Mars Bar in my packed lunch, remembering in the hospital that G’s pizza took two minutes ten seconds in the microwave, small, almost unnoticeable, yet infinitely revealing things.
The bus passing by the front of the house, the chatter of the children coming home from school. The music from Countdown, all these lost rhythms. Spyria, hung heavy with bees and Tummel mint. Her peony roses. Macaroni and tomato soup, the crab apple tree, her watering the tomatoes in the greenhouse, picking them for Mrs. B and the neighbours down the bottom. Snow cake, custard creams, Scottish breakfast. Nourishment. By comparison, most other people are cardboard cutouts, soaking in the rain.

Three images stick in my mind.
Hiding inside the hollow tree trunk by the Brahan Woods whilst she chatted to Ina or some other friend. Like the times R and I made „tea” for Granddad when he was babysitting, mixing brown sauce, pepper, custard powder, curry and whatever other substance, liquid or dry we could retrieve from the recesses of the pantry or when we believed you had been fooled by the coat, hat and scarf draped around the solid block of wood to which the bannister is attached with wellington boots peeping out to make the human look more complete I thought she would not know where I was hiding, yet sooner or later the little mouse (her hand) would come scurrying in through the hole near my ankles.
The shores of Loch Tummel with the gleaming pebbles, the minnows darting away from the shadows we cast, dried cow dung, driftwood and fragments of china cups. The stream by The Point, the green light in the woods, the primroses and bluebells. Mum and Auntie C stretched out on a blanket, reading in the sun. I could never understand how they could be content with such inactivity, that they could prefer it to exploring, to playing on the tyre swing. The smell of chips frying in the pan. The sound of games of whist carrying up the stairs.
That last Saturday as she checked her ticket for winning numbers in the Lottery. I can see it clutched in her hand, the blue veins, the delicate bones, the warm skin, her arm resting on the soft leather of the chair; I can see the ring on her finger, the crumpling of the paper when nothing had been won, the anger and bitterness that pricked my heart because she had played and played, year in, year out in the hope of providing something for her family with no reward. The relief that she had not won that evening, the reminder that money in the end is worthless. It could not have given us more time together; it could not have made her well. You should never feel guilty that you could not shower her with expensive gifts because it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you spoke to her softly as she sat cradled in the chair, propping her pillows, soothing her with your voice, holding her hand. What matters is that you always loved her and that the depth of your love for her almost frightened her. She was always aware of it. What matters is that you honoured her and were always faithful to her, that you never left her side, that you would have washed her and cared for her, cooked for her and lifted her, dressed her and comforted her for weeks, for months, for years. What matters is sitting in the boat, covering your missing eye, concealing it from the camera and her laughter, her full laughter at such stubborn vanity, her hair caressed by the breeze. You have nothing to prove that you have not proved a thousandfold already.
What matters is that together you created stability for us; you gifted us those holidays at Tummel, days we will never cease to yearn for and cherish, pristine, unfading memories, always perfect, always bathed in sunshine: the scent of the bales of hay, the dust from the track as cars approached, the roar of Bertie’s tractor, the tiny pools of oily water in the bog, the blossom-laden boughs of the cherry tree, the barn with the rats, you chopping wood or in your waders setting off with Uncle R to fish whilst the radio played in the kitchen, the blackened iron of the range, sitting down to table, the rocking chair in the sitting room, the spider trapped beneath the glass of the picture frame, the Saint Bernard dog rescuing the traveller in the snow, piecing together old jigsaws when it was raining (The Seven Wonders of the World was my favourite), the gooseberries, jets on manoeuvres screeching by, skimmers, the peaks of Farragon and Schiehallion, the Queen’s View bump, the car loaded down with tins, trips to Pitlochry to spend pocket money on summer special Beanos and Dandys and the home made vanilla ice cream cones, the exposed rafters of the empty cottage next door, kick the can, the old bull, the corrugated iron post office, the endless meadows, the peewits in the gathering dusk.

A green beer bottle, label torn off, deposited in a defunct devotional niche. At the bus stop my reading interrupted by the incongruous sound of a man whistling Land of Hope and Glory.

I could not resist knocking on the Welshman’s door. Spectacles perched on his nose, he sits hunched over his designer black keyboard all day and well into the evening.
“I’m a role model, setting an example for all and sundry”.
My unkind reply: “You could put that reading on it, but you could equally well assign it to the sad bastard category”.
I brought him a cup of lemon tea to compensate. He does know it is futile seeking deference from me. A first-generation intellectual, Baptist by upbringing, Marxist by persuasion he has allowed himself to slide into the corrupt morass of bourgeois pleasures (his wine cellar legendary): ”A few years ago now I would have frowned upon all this,” he grins, “but it has its compensations”.
He complained bitterly about the arrogance of Professor K, recently confirmed in his appointment as head of faculty. “What does it matter to him whether his lot have one more or less? All his talk about weaker departments not deserving the substitute, who does he think he is?”.
At social events, Professor K’s outfit never varies: blue shirt and light brown trousers, last evening’s Summer Ball being no exception. As H pointed out, this makes for easy recognition in case any of his supervisees forget what he looks like.
Having discussed modern English comic novels (notably David Lodge whom we both adore) I revived the flagging conversation by raising the issue of the academic ineptitude at self-promotion through power dressing, including my theory that the convention-flouters are usually best given a wide berth.
“Yes, whenever I meet Professor Swagger [a conceit to paper over my instant forgetting of the real name quoted] in his expensive suits at conferences he makes me feel like a worm. How do they do it? All the handling of dusty books and the ink stains. You see these amazing individuals in the centre of town, walking through the streets like eighteenth century gentlemen. You expect them to cast a few gold coins down to the pavement at the feet of the grubby plebs”.
My true errand had been to remind him of his invitation to go for a drink during his annual fortnight of freedom.
“Who else should we ask along?” he queried brightly. Message received and understood. I retreated, leaving him to complete his eight dictionary entries.

At the Ball I felt like I was in drag, wearing a skirt for only the second time since coming here. The air was balmy, the magnolia in the cloister discarding curled leaves. Tables had been set up all around, a competent yet dull jazz band played in the background. M who had persuaded me to purchase a ticket had not yet arrived, so I headed for the bar for a still mineral water. A late night and alcohol would not have mixed. The only intoxicating beverages available were wine and beer, spirits being smuggled in past the security guards by the hard core drinkers. Plates of untouched sandwiches slowly wilted on the yellow tablecloths. My reservations about the degree of formality were, as M had assured me, unfounded. Not a single Chanel gown or bow tie and dinner jacket in sight. The lawns had been carefully sprinkled, each lush blade trimmed to exactly the same height.

I spotted M towering above a bevy of alluring girls in black with shawls carelessly slung over their milk-white shoulders. Undaunted, I strode towards him, flattered by his warm smile of greeting. He stood with a glass of red wine filled to the brim, unflinchingly patient whilst I poured out my frustrations. Having expressed my curiosity about the upper gallery, he chivalrously accompanied me there recounting how much he had enjoyed using his workstation in the corridor before the administration reclaimed the space for offices. Natural light illuminating his contemplations it had possessed an appropriately spiritual quality. Stepping through the doorway on to the roof-beamed terrace, a fragment of fresco in one corner of the wall the entire city bared itself to our admiring gaze. It was the perfect vantage-point for people-watching, although canopies rudely blocked our view of those immediately below. I suppressed the mischievous urge to throw myself over the edge, knowing that they were too flimsy to break my fall.

Descending back into the throng, M was borne away on a tide of affection whilst I withdrew from the vicinity of the loudspeakers pounding out the in-house rock group’s cover of Psycho Killer, displacing for a moment the lyrics of OMD’s Enola Gay that have been rattling through my head for weeks on end. The last bus back was uncharacteristically populated with slender middle-aged women in long dresses and high heels.

Leaves rustle outside and a finch hops on the gravel whilst I ponder the mysteries of sexual chemistry. The words of AT sting me still. Having offered me his broad shoulder to cry on after a messy and painful split, the solution he proposed proved as comforting as the notorious “short, sharp shock treatment”: “It’s like the wheelchair Olympics. I always switch it off. All those people pretending to be normal, competing in events that strip them of their dignity. They should give up, they should resign themselves to reality. It’s the same with you. There are some women out there who are just not attractive to men. Instead of throwing away your self-respect chasing after something you can never have, you should just get on with your life and forget about it”.
His wife once confided in me that she and her sons prefer it when he is away from home on mission.

JMCD by contrast, he of the possessive pronoun from the family of impoverished Central-European gentry whose thousands of acres of forest land had been gambled away in a single session of card games and whose great grandfather committed suicide out of boredom at the age of ninety two by blasting himself in the temple with a revolver, described my beauty as a quality that would never fade as it went far deeper than my looks. He specialized in damaged women, his previous mistress having escaped from a batterer who would throw a mattress over her before taking aim with his steel toe capped boots to keep the bruising invisible. JMCD funded a holiday for her and she ended up marrying the coach driver. I hope that he is right, the memory of my Mother giving me comfort. Waiting for the bus into town, outside the paper shop, wherever she went men would swarm around her, dancing like little dogs on their hind legs until she rewarded them with her smile. In all their years of marriage she never once betrayed my Father, not even in Oostende where she travelled with her mother-in-law (my Grandfather’s second wife) who encouraged her to let her hair down, a young Flemish suitor constantly by her side. What I recall is how boring it was being made to stand and listen, tugging at her shopping bag. Her gift to me the energy that overwhelms when kindled by desire, the restless inspiration of a Muse skipping through endless hay fields, daisy chains hanging carelessly around her shining neck.

Determin’d are the days that flie
Successive o’er the head
The numbered hour is on the wing
That lays thee with the dead.
(1792).

Beneath the aluminium foil I had stretched over the pot the goulash had fermented, looking and smelling like the disgorged contents of a sour stomach. What I had assumed was foam turned out to be a web of mould, greyish over the paprika red, reminding me of an article about feminists demanding to keep their placentas, putting them in the deep freeze and frying a small portion every day to ward off post-natal depression. Better for the new mother to benefit from her own hormones than for cosmetics producers to process them for anti-wrinkle creams.

In the rehabilitation ward, my Mother had been surrounded by much older women, a couple of whom never received family visitors. The window sill was crowded with vases of wilting flowers, but even their despairing release of perfumes could not conceal the stench of the blocked toilet. She could watch the traffic on the F. Bridge as she lay propped up against the bed frame. The temperature never varied, except perhaps when the sun blazed through the panes, the heat overpowering. Since her legs were so badly swollen she had been put on restricted fluids. I gently scratched them for her with my chewed fingers, afraid to break the taut, fiery skin. The two glasses of water a day were clearly insufficient to slake her thirst, a cause of distress and justified complaint.

Her table was piled with tissues and paperbacks (although she had left my Christmas present, The Crimson Petal and the White at home to finish on returning). Every day I brought her more and more magazines and when I noticed that she had not opened them, I understood how much effort her cheerfulness exacted. Her appetite for family sagas was insatiable, her typical pose at home was to lean on the work surface beside the kitchen sink (when her elbows stained purple with bruises she simply folded a tea towel to rest them on), the radio quiz in the background, poring over a crossword (hidden behind the jar for the tea bags we came across an ancient dictionary, front and back covers long since torn off). I tried to sound normal, to make my voice completely calm, to concentrate on reassuring banalities, knowing that all the questions I had put off asking had been left too late. G. methodically worked his way through word searches and logic puzzles, consulting her when he was stumped. Occasionally she would doze as she found it impossible to sleep right through the night. Whenever we thought that she had sunk into a deep slumber she would suddenly mutter the answer to his query: „Recording angel”. The hair above her upper lip revolted her, my duty for the evening to pull the curtains round, protecting her from prying eyes as she gave it the once over with her Ladyshave. When the allotted hours had crept by, she would slip a fifty pence piece into G.’s hand so that he could purchase three sticks of fudge from the vending machine in the corridor.

Having spent so many years in that hospital, inspecting its every nook and cranny she was determined not to die there, that she would not be wheeled out on a trolley. The day of her release was postponed again and again until I finally put my foot down. Both my Father and my Aunt were trained nurses, both were willing to ensure her comfort. In her quietly self-effacing way, she worried about being a burden. Her virtual immobility grieved her.

The study had been converted into a bedroom for her as the stairs would be too much for her. The rising damp had recently been treated and new wallpaper put up. A framed peacock in lace from one of her trips across to see me had been moved there, although her collection of spoons from all the exotic destinations I had been grudgingly sent to remained in the living room. The shower had been fitted with a grab rail, the toilet with a frame, a commode borrowed from the medical stores. My ribboned box of Cornet du Port Royal on her cabinet, the computer a few steps away, television and video waiting patiently in the corner. She did not spend a single night beneath her new coverlet.

I found it extremely difficult to fall asleep, tormented by the knowledge that I might awake to find she had already departed. Nausea mixed with adrenalin each time I picked my way downstairs, putting my weight on the inside of the steps to avoid making them creak. She would be standing to relieve the sores, my Father and the Zimmer supporting her, the small lamp with the floral shade providing less harsh illumination than the main bulb.
“It’s all right,” he would reassure me “You can go back to bed”.

As her discomfort increased, I would massage her lower back. Her skin was smooth, softer than that of my own breast, hot and unnaturally dry. When the inflatable mattress arrived, the district nurses lifted her from the armchair, adjusting the pillows behind her neck. She was anxious to have them check the contents of her catheter bag in case it needed emptying. I stated my conviction that it was slightly fuller than before, a white lie intended to preserve hope, much like the story we concocted about missing our connection in London to account for our reappearance a mere day after having left.

She asked for her nebulizer more and more frequently. As my Father sat holding her hand, the vapour escaping from the side of the mask her watery eyes betrayed a hint of suffering and fear. My Mother, my strong Mother, whose brass neck had so embarrassed me in my youth, who had marched up to the door of the former schoolhouse to ask the girl if I could help exercise her ponies. My Mother, whose temper was slow to flare, but when it did we scattered like sparrows.

The dose of morphine had proven insufficient, my Father requesting a dispenser. He had warned us early that morning that she would not see the day out, the family had assembled. My son nestled in close, clutching her arm, never leaving her side. I tolerated the presence of the pastor from the fellowship, knowing that his whispered prayers were to comfort my Father. My Aunt, her youngest sister, stroked her hand: “Look at those nails. She always had perfect nails and I have always been jealous of them”.
Dr. K. knelt before her, asking how she felt.
“Fine,” came the reply in a hoarse voice that sounded like my Grandmother’s.
“If you are fine, Mary, what does that say about the rest of us?”
Having exchanged a few words with my Father, he signed the authorization for a final injection to ease the breakthrough pain, promising to return once the surgery closed.

Her breathing, although shallow, was easier and more relaxed than it had been in years. The cough that had racked her, interrupting countless telephone conversations, forcing her to bring up blood and clots of phlegm, which she spat into her crumpled handkerchief, no longer irritated her lungs.
“Let go,” my Father pleaded, “You’re just hurting yourself by fighting. There’s nothing to worry about, I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. The cottage is ready, the bairns are shouting for you. Let go”.
When the formalities had been completed, the undertakers departed and an exhaustion so profound that it kept sleep at bay had set in, G. wept “Mummle [his nickname for me], you know when Granddad told Granny to let go, that he didn’t want her to go on hurting herself? I wanted to say that too”.

I was standing in the kitchen, listening to tales of my cousin Matty’s escapades in Beijing, notably an incident involving being chased around a food stand by a furious cook whose ire had been provoked by a lack of cross-cultural communication. Matty did not realize that if you point at a dish and enquire as to its qualities this was tantamount to ordering it. Whereas he had merely sought confirmation that the objects on display really were goat’s testicles, his curiosity had been misread. I had only stepped out for a moment, the sound of my laughter carrying through. Feeling an inexplicable tug, I excused myself. The silence had deepened. I took up my position beside the chair, slipping my hand into hers, studying the veins, the irregular rise and fall of her chest.
G. looked up at me: “She’s stopped breathing”.

Even now a guilt oppresses me. She had not wanted to die and by approving the morphine we had murdered her. The feeling persists, in spite of my friend L.’s protestations to the contrary. As a nurse herself, she shared a frame of reference with my Father, the product of years of experience. What he had done for her constituted an act of love. He had made her comfortable, removed the sting. During L.’s first week, she had tended a patient whose nerves were being slowly consumed by cancer. No amount of painkillers offered the slightest relief from the agony he endured. She held him tight and he died in her arms. She was not yet nineteen when it happened and the memory haunts her still.

Having long since lost my faith, I resent the beckoning, taunting void. It is punishment enough for all the anxieties and struggles to have been in vain, all the triumphs and defeats to be swept away like rotting leaves in the autumn, for the spark of consciousness to be extinguished, the ripple on the surface of the pond to vanish. Yet I know now that I will see her again, standing in the cottage doorway, the smell of stovies mingling with the hay as I run towards her, a little girl in my turquoise bikini with the daisy pattern a bumble bee once landed on. I will hear her speak my name again for an instant before the darkness engulfs me.

“Betty’s Coffee Parlour is now closed. The following are still for sale:
Balloon backed antique chairs
Tall upright freezer
Under worktop freezer
Tall drinks/display cooler
Microwave oven
Espresso coffee machine”

The menu in the window had been replaced by this matter of fact inventory of remaining items. The interior was stripped of all that had given it character, not even a shred of wallpaper lent colour and vitality to the room and a sullen aluminium ladder rested purposeless against the side door. Peering into the semi-darkness through a pane of glass still immaculately clean I could make out the gold lettering on the dispenser of caffeine-infused hot beverages, La San Marco. On the solitary table lay a set of plates, unmatched designs exacerbating the sense of abandonment. How abrupt an end, how unwelcome a reminder of the cruelty of passing years. Instead of the nostalgia and refreshment I had sought a large steel padlock greeted me and the brass door handles hung forlorn. Memory would be my sole access now.

Betty’s, or Brown’s as it was originally called, occupied a distinct place in the hierarchy of premises of consumption. Its clientele did not desire the self-induced stupor and temporary forgetting of the pub. Nor did they wish to fill themselves quickly before scurrying back into the fray of shoppers competing for bargains. It stood in stark and haughty contrast to the likes of the Lite Bite (now Semi-Chem) with its loud, brash cheerfulness, its formica and linoleum in bright oranges and reds, with coffee rings and crumbs on every surface, a baker’s section peddling temptation in the shape of single-portion trifles, sticky buns, cream cakes with artificial filling and icing in surfeit, a pervasive smell of baked beans, fried eggs, chips, bacon, cigarette smoke, the fragrance of my childhood, an orderly self-service queue of customers sliding their laden trays inexorably towards the cash desk and hearty pots of tea. With its gossip and its absence of pretensions I had always felt completely at ease there. Visiting Brown’s was an altogether different experience. Passing through its doorway was entering a sanctuary. Its sensuous dark green menus with gold calligraphy oozed style and a sophistication otherwise unknown in the city. Brown sugar coagulated in generous bowls at each table, a blackboard above the display of gateaux proclaimed the mouth-watering array of daily specials from soup to dessert, service was individual, oil paintings of no particular distinction depicting rural scenes of fields and cottages in heavy gilded frames, the furniture was of dark wood and the curtains were strategically placed to shelter clients from the prying eyes of passers-by, both deflecting and arousing their curiosity: if you were possibly contemplating going in you could, with a conscious effort, look inside to ascertain how crowded the café was, and if you just so happened to be wandering by with a little time to spare you might be prompted to investigate by what little you could make out. In retrospect, this was typical of the discreet notion of propriety that held sway there.

Brown’s was the first true coffee house in the city. In the days, almost inconceivable now that the Scots have fallen prey wholesale to the seduction of stimulants diluted by frothy milk, when instant coffee in sachets of powdered granules was bordering on the risqué and supermarket shelves were stacked with single products (cheese being synonymous with Scottish cheddar in every gradation of orange and nothing else to speak of available) Brown’s boasted an unrivalled selection of exotic beans and roasts. The espresso-maker with its steel pipes and nozzles was the first I had ever clapped eyes on and the eruptions of steam that intruded on earnest or idle conversation was never resented, but possessed an almost musical quality, banishing the grey provinciality of a small urban setting with aspirations to greater grandeur. This local relative of the continental establishments of Budapest and Vienna had been scaled-down to more manageable proportions befitting the context. Little bigger than a sitting-room its intimate clusters of tables and huddles of chairs might not, at first glance, have seemed to share any common feature with the glittering, palatial halls of the Central European capitals with their exuberant ornamentation, fresco-adorned ceilings with mischievous cherubs, their barley sugar twist columns and their cosmopolitanism. True, it would take more than a slight stretch of the imagination to envisage Brown’s as the venue where revolutionary tracts were first set down on paper, where literary movements flourished and the course of history altered forever and yet its function as a space for observation, interaction and unhurried contemplation in comfortable and elegant surrounds was identical. There were no muddy boots, no steaming dogs panting after a swim in the river, but polite exchanges on every conceivable topic from trivial comments on new hairstyles or farm estate management to profound musings on the nature of existence.

In many respects, Brown’s represented a near flawless embodiment of semi-Puritanical Scottish middle-class values, reflected in its use of language, formalistic and old-fashioned, removed from the vulgarity of everyday transactions, conveying a refinement, which I latterly found quite reassuring. We were treated to home baking, with all the connotations embedded in the simple phrase, not mass-produced by soulless, ultra-hygienic machines, but made fresh, to the taste of the proprietor, with a greater investment of care and circumspection, in a word quality. Chutney, relish, scones with jam, chocolate fudge cake, refreshing drinks, baked potatoes preserving the vitamins concealed just beneath the skin, grated cheese and pickle and a small accompanying salad, sensible, wholesome brown bread sandwiches with slices of cucumber and tomato, tuna and chicken fillings, toasties. A careful balance had been struck between pleasure and utility: indulgence was an option, but even then it was never permitted to transgress the boundaries of respectability, but kept within the limits implicit in a modest portion, nutritional value at a premium. Gluttony and excess were banished from the premises. Mocha, cappuccino, espresso either black or with a tiny jug of pouring cream to be added to taste, Viennese with a dollop of whipped cream floating on top (which my artist friend would pile high with sugar until it tipped, jettisoning the sweet cargo beneath the hot liquid in what he considered a re-enactment of the disappearance of Atlantis) and, my customary choice, special Viennese, distinguished from its namesake by the addition of half a chocolate Flake. Each cup was presented with a glass containing a sip or two of tap water in true imitation of the Austrian original, the melange.

It was my dear friend Maggie who first introduced me to Brown’s. We were still adolescents and must have made a somewhat incongruous pairing, she in her combat jacket and PLO scarf and I in a starchy outfit more appropriate for a woman three times my age, wrapped in a cardigan to hide my contours. She came from the top of the hill on which P. Academy, where we were form mates, is still situated, I from the bottom with all the social distinctions inherent in the geography. She was going through her Communist phase and I my born-again phase. Her bedroom wall sported a Che Guevara poster with his beret tilted rakishly, defiance and courage written across his youthful features, mine a crucifix and Biblical quotations. She and I were both equally impassioned about our respective paths. Her clear and fiercely intellectual blue eyes burned with conviction and anger at injustice. We each harboured our own peculiar blend of compassion and contempt for our fellow customers: she regarded them as the incarnation of petit bourgeois corruption, decadence and exploitation, radiating a constricting philistinism that stifled the radical, I watched with disgust as their whited sepulchre fingers grasped the delicate handles of the cups, they were all damned and yet here they prospered without a care in the world convinced of their superiority to me. We each believed we had the perfect recipe for redemption, yet our visions were mutually incompatible. Although we had long since given up trying to convert each other we were bound together in enduring friendship through being outsiders, rejecting the restraints of conventional expectations. I would never have ventured into Brown’s had it not been for her, lacking the confidence that she appeared to take for granted, but I am glad that she did. Indeed I will never forget the gesture that she made on that first occasion, sending my coffee back because the whipped cream had gone off. I was too timid, too afraid to complain and she was magnificent, courteous yet firm. When a new coffee was duly brought to our table, she tasted the cream from a teaspoon only to discover that it was no better, so, undaunted she once again called the waitress back, urging her to taste for herself. The consummate professionalism of the staff was manifested in the response: rather than dismissing us as teenage troublemakers or attention-seekers, she made a point of discarding the offending canister and starting again. I feel duty-bound to point out that in all the long years I frequented Betty’s Coffee Parlour that was the only time such a problem occurred.

More than a decade has elapsed since I deserted Scottish shores, yet on every return to the city of my birth I have made my way to Brown’s in an act of pilgrimage and renewal of the ties of affection, however grudging, to my roots. With the closure due to retirement P. has lost more than a genteel snack purveyor, its cultural landscape has been deprived of a highly distinctive feature, a haven for writers without ever being dangerously Bohemian, a locus of relaxation, debate and thought that none of the newer, trendier coffee houses can hope to match. Number 67 G. Street is empty, the once animated chatter has died down, it can never be replaced.

I bumped into the Welshman as I entered the building. The skin was flaking from his cheeks as usual and he grinned widely. With a hint of embarrassment he held out the black bin liner he was carrying: „You’ve caught me out. I am going to smother myself,” he announced.
„On such a beautiful morning? Go to your office and write out a list of five reasons to stay alive!”
It was for spring cleaning. My parting shot: „Take care in disposing of the evidence!”

Time is fickle. What I found hardest to adjust to was being in charge of my own time. Not politely visiting some eco-friendly model housing estate without so much as glimpsing the concrete cows, not touring a particle accelerator facility or a sardine-canning factory, not travelling up the gantry in a lift with a hard hat to stop my locks straying across my face, not constantly at someone else’s beck and call, barely tolerated, presence begrudged, but permitted my own voice and ideas, just for a brief few months. Not that my problem was being distracted by the luxuriant abundance of minutes, hours, days and weeks at my sole disposal. Instead I tried to force too much into the waking moments and have never suffered so many migraines in so few months. Even now not a day passes when I do not work, for it is a privilege beyond compare to be paid to think and write. I have already lost music (extraneous noise has become unbearable to me), soon I will dissolve, reproducing streams of consciousness pouring forth from others. Soon my livelihood will be considered a wasteful extravagance by those who have no inkling of the creativity of the process, which once was such a joy to me, a challenge. Soon I will melt back into the ranks of souless and despised bureaucrats. What was frightening was to wake up aware of the extent to which I had been conditioned by my occupation, by the need to fit around, to accommodate, to stifle myself in the interests of accurately conveying the original content.
I tried acting, but could never play a weak character, so it wasn’t for me.
My friend Rob, short, slender and sallow-skinned played Henry Higgins and I Mrs. Pierce when we toured with our production. His stage presence is fierce, liquid talent. With a doctorate in phonetics (he studied Norwegian dialects) and a natural streak of cruelty whetted by his razor wit the part could have been written for him. I used to watch his performances from the wings never tiring of them. When I moved to Waffleland he put me up for a few days whilst I looked for a flat. It took me two hours to reach his front door on arrival, a distance that can normally be covered in ten minutes. I had three suitcases holding my clutter of belongings and was eight months gone. There are no lifts or escalators in the station. Several hundred steps. Nobody offered to help, not even part of the way. This continues to be my abiding impression of that small country. Indifference, at best, towards outsiders, a dart of hostility and resentment, an inability to accept assimilation beyond boosting the statistics of one language community to the perceived detriment of the others.
I had to take a shower after my exertions. At my house-warming, Rob confided in me that he had contemplated walking into the bathroom (I had not locked the door) and embracing me. The wall separating us was thin and the idea of taking me in my ripe state strangely appealing. He did not, the awareness that he could sufficed for him. Rob is completely confident in a manner I have only ever encountered in men. He once told me I would make the perfect escort girl, attractive, fluent in several languages, pleasant company, able to converse on almost any subject. That I would retain the power of whether matters proceeded any further. He meant it as a compliment and as such it was apprehended. I suppose the thought was inspired by my chronic state of being unattached. He also (quite justifiably) criticized a piece I had written, based on an experience of my father’s. Whilst I agree entirely concerning the style (I never reread what I have once comitted to paper) his objection that the reaction to the events would have been rage rather than resignation is, sadly, not true. We are doomed to unprotesting surrender in the face of sullen greed and the scoop of the bulldozer.

Cigarettes killed my mother. I asked my father once whether she had any cravings when she was carrying me. Only for more of the wretched weeds. She would dispatch him into the night to seek out vending machines. They devoured her lungs, reducing her to an agonising hobble, then struck at her heart. It was eleven weeks ago to the day. My father hates Tuesdays now.

Cocooned in my office a smile spreads across my features. Aurora is not here for the second day running. The space is not too cramped for us both, but her duties mean that she constantly jabbers on the telephone. It clamours for her attention every ten minutes or so and she makes no effort to lower her voice. This is not conducive to serious production. Now the room is silent as I sit surrounded by my volumes of Hegel, Bourdieu, Zygmunt Bauman, Giddens, Locke, Hume, Elias, Lash, Megill, Berlin, Foucault, Collingwood, Oakeshott, Merleau-Ponty, Barthes, Parfit and Durkheim in no particular order on my shelves. The song of a blackbird pierces the glass of the door.