When an architect is so swept away by the splendour of his own vision and the grandeur of his plans, so utterly convinced of his own genius the needs of the users might seem to him nothing more than the petty gripes of lesser mortals whose imaginations are enslaved by their addiction to trivial comforts.  The quality of the materials assumes a fetishistic significance, any quibbling with the unblemished integrity of the original concept on the basis of mundane concerns blasphemy, any alteration to the plans, however minor, a wanton act of desecration.  How his Muse would stamp her feet in rage undignified.  Not that this particular architect paid the slightest heed to the objections of the delegation during the inspection tours.  So the corridors are at their narrowest (just wide enough to allow one person of slender build to pass another provided that both are completely unencumbered by documents and files) where the through traffic is greatest, causing maximum inconvenience precisely at the moment when punctuality and smoothness of passage are everything.  Admittedly, the central atrium with vines climbing steel cables from floor to ceiling possesses a certain charm, though not nearly enough to alleviate the stress of trying to navigate through the crowds of lobbyists and journalists to the meeting rooms.

Our chief objection was to the black walls lining the booths, imparting a coffin-like atmosphere to our workplace.  Seven hour shifts deprived of the slightest chink of natural light enough to reduce even the most resiliently cheerful of disposition to a state of despondency.  Our mental health and emotional well-being summarily dismissed, a further reminder of our lowly status could be issued with impunity.  In the interests of cost-cutting (perhaps this ascribes more calculated malevolence than is warranted, as it is equally plausible that so little thought was devoted to the issue that no deliberate disdain was involved though this is hardly a source of consolation), interpreters are expected to answer the call of nature in a mixed-sex environment.  Quite startling for the first several months so deeply ingrained in our cultural psyche is the segregation pertaining to intimate and embarrassing bodily functions.  I open the door and can instantly determine that a male colleague had availed himself of the facilities before me (one of the anecdotes recounted with particular relish concerns the occasion when the institution played host to a congress of sex workers – which greatly expanded the vocabulary of the professional linguists in a particularly memorable field of terminology that day – who undaunted by the lack of ladies’ toilets invaded the gents where, much to the astonishment and admiration of the teller, they peed standing up with a no-nonsense perfect aim, at any rate better than he was able to muster with his inhibited and flustered dribble).

The speaker was droning on in colourless, unmodulated international English about some obscure codicil in the domain of intellectual property rights.  Needless to say our attention wandered despite the architect’s best efforts to banish distractions beyond the usual speculating on whether the delegate’s hair was natural or a clever weave.  Words have different flavours for us, we savour them in a kind of occupationally-induced synesthesia.  Their sound evokes vivid responses of pleasure or disgust and we recall those that have fallen into disuse in our everyday exchanges with the fondness that others reserve for the memory of lost loves.  “Wassock” was the first to provoke debate (with a fierce argument over the appropriate spelling).  Followed by “coffin-dodger” and whether Grufti could be considered the correct equivalent in German (kriptaszökevény, literally “fugitive from the crypt” in Hungarian in my opinion a far closer match).

This was followed by a nostalgia-tinged discussion on technological obsolescence.  Our third colleague with an academic background in anthropology who had been taught at university by Mary Douglas (thereby incurring my undying envy) had lived in France for so long that not only were the terms we had mentioned unknown to her, but she could remember the not too distant days when IBM had been an excellent employer of freelancers.  The language combination before English displaced all other modes of communication had been French, Italian and German alongside the tongue that was destined to elbow out all others with supreme ruthlessness.  She then proceeded to laud the virtues of one of that company’s products of yesteryear, which she referred to as “the golf ball”.  Neither of us belonged to a generation for whom this sparked any associations.  I barely remembered the floppy disc, having been in an extended state of student poverty precluding the purchase of such luxuries as a PC.

Her reminiscences transported me back to September 1996 when, at a conference in Budapest, I sat listening intently to every syllable of the opening address by the President of the Republic Árpád Göncz.  With no trace of bitterness about his past, he joked about how the population of the prison he had languished in comprised the most eminent gathering of translators and intellectuals in a single location in the country’s history.  His speech was delivered in the style still prevalent in Central Europe, sentence by sentence with the interpreter working in staccato bursts rather than in more coherent and flowing five-minute (or longer) segments as is customary in the Western context.  This gives rise to particular challenges, particularly when the speaker has a sly sense of humour and gives the poor interpreter little to go on (all the more cringe-inducing for victim and audience alike, as every interpreter feels more vulnerable when exposed in full view rather than huddling in the booth behind protective panes of glass that separate them from the listeners).  When Göncz proclaimed: “For the translator the letter X is the most important” his interpreter checked that he had heard correctly, understanding the words without grasping the meaning.  With a twinkle of mischief in his eye, the President then deployed the rhetorical device of emphasis through repetition to increase the clamminess of his interpreter’s palms.  The latter could bear the tension no longer and begged for clarification.  Göncz then took pity and explained: “In the days when we worked on typewriters, using the X-key was the only way we could erase any errors by blotting them out”.  No correction ribbon was provided, and the white fluid we take for granted had not yet been invented.

Sam Lowry retreats from the unbearable present into the solace of delusion, but Göncz enjoyed no such escape in the world outside fiction.  Yet what better means to preserve one’s sanity in confinement than to translate, releasing the imagination to soar beyond the walls and bars.  As Göncz described it: “(…) the translator has to become part of – not the sentence or the text – but of the situation, which is described by it.  he has to enter the setting.  Like an actor entering the spirit of his role.  Only then will he know with certainty what the book or the subject of a particular sentence may have and should have said at that point and how he did say or do whatever he said or did.  because at that point, in that situation and at that particular place or moment these were the only words he could have said.  Whether he is emperor, shaman or American teenager.  So the translator sitting by his typewriter, has no choice but turn himself into emperor, shaman or American teenager.  He develops a sensitivity, for which otherwise, in his daily life, he has no use at all” [ quoted in Klaudy Kinga and János Kohn (eds.), Transferre Necesse Est, Budapest, Scholastica, 1997, p17]

[15th August 2009]

We were all feeling despondent at the news of Wayne’s suicide.  Such a gentle man, the only hint of violence directed against himself at the end.  Gathered in the living room, Mattie attempted to relieve the tension by distracting us with anecdotes.  Amongst his numerous past jobs, he spent a long stint working at Victoria Wine at the bottom of the Old High Street (ignominiously ousted by a bakery chain, falling victim to changing fashions and competition from the sprawling perimeter hypermarkets, their accessibility unimpaired by double yellow lines), which had been a wine merchant’s premises for 250 years, its cellars like catacombs extending all the way to beneath the City Hall.  Blessed with a healthy natural curiosity, Mattie had taken full advantage of the opportunity to explore and had come across some ancient crumbling ledgers, which he correctly surmised nobody would miss and still owns today.

For the most part, the hours behind the counter were fairly monotonous, but he was once forced to call for emergency assistance.  Towards the close of an unremarkable day’s business, a stocky yet somewhat intimidating figure shuffled through the door, his expression both detached and oddly intense at the same time.  Ignoring the well-stocked shelves of reds and whites spanning the globe from the fragrant vineyards of Tuscany to the New World, his order was simple: Virginia Gold tobacco, filter papers and matches.

“That’ll be £5.95″.

“The name’s McLaughlin and the government’s paying,” came the matter of fact reply with a slight undertone of menace.

Slightly taken aback by this bold assertion, Mattie scrutinised the customer more closely.  Slightly too conspicuous to blend in with a crowd, he seemed an unlikely candidate to be on Her Majesty’s payroll as a secret agent.  Unless he was making a deliberately cryptic reference to social security benefits, indeed a government payment by proxy, his statement was difficult to fathom.

“Do you have any cash, sir?” Mattie politely enquired, keeping hold of the requested items.  Silence ensued.  Several minutes crept by, McLaughlin’s face failing to betray any agitation or inner turmoil at Mattie’s intransigence.  He turned and walked out without a word.

Approximately five minutes later, the bell tinkled again, announcing the arrival of a client.  Mattie looked up from his paper with a sense of foreboding.  For once, he would have preferred a lonely pensioner about to blow his cheque on a carrier bag full of oblivion, or a suspiciously callow specimen whom he would be obliged to challenge for identification only to be regaled with an unsolicited introduction to the most recent innovations in pejoratives.  Sure enough, the shadow over the classifieds was cast by his impecunious friend, undaunted by the rebuttal.

“The name’s McLaughlin and the government’s paying,” he repeated, when Mattie cited the same price as before.

“I’m sorry, mate, the government’s is not paying, now, please, do you have any money?”

Again, no response was forthcoming, not even the merest hint of displeasure or consternation.  Not wishing to risk any provocation, Mattie did not dare to avert his eyes as McLaughlin stood impassive before giving up and exiting the premises.

In the interval between visits, Mattie pondered his options, closing early an increasingly appealing scenario.  His thoughts were interrupted by the return of his persistent visitor.  This time, he did not bother retrieving the articles from the shelf.

“The name’s McLaughlin and the government’s paying”.

“Let me explain how it works,” Mattie replied, unsure of whether the concept of a commercial transaction was something McLaughlin had ever been exposed to.  “You tell me what it is that you want, I find it, I tell you how much it costs, you give me the money and I hand over the goods.  I supply you with your cigarettes in exchange for notes and coins.  Do you understand?”

“Are you refusing to serve me?” McLaughlin asked, his voice trembling.

“No, but you have to be able to pay me before I can give you what you are asking for”.

Outwardly unperturbed until that moment, McLaughlin’s eyeballs rather alarmingly started rolling in opposite directions.  Afraid that his patron might lash out in frustration and reluctant to put his own reaction times to the test, Mattie ducked beneath the counter and slammed the panic button.  The police arrived with exemplary promptness, McLaughlin having vacated the off-license.  As Mattie accounted for his actions to the WPC, describing his terror of imminent violence in spite of the lack of evidence of vandalism, theft or the most minor of scuffles, he noticed a familiar shape approaching the door.

“That’s him!” Mattie yelled and the WPC set off in hot pursuit, as McLaughlin made himself scarce at the sight of the uniform.

“Mr McLaughlin!  Mr McLaughlin, can I have a word with you, please?”

Three patrol cars and a “meat wagon” pulled up on the pavement at the end of the pedestrian zone to block his escape, the burly duty sergeant lunging for him.  In the end, it took six officers to restrain the recalcitrant captive.  The local force had been on high alert, as McLaughlin had absconded from a secure ward at Murray Royal psychiatric hospital the previous day and they had been expecting trouble.

From the urgency with which my son passed on the message to contact him immediately, I knew my brother’s news could only be bad.  Death swooping down from a clear sky without so much as a wingbeat to alert its unsuspecting prey.  The unmistakeable tremble in the voice.  We had just finished a three-course late lunch and were foraging in different shops to ease the pain of the inevitable eviction at the end of the holiday.

I did not even hear the phone ring before he picked up the receiver.

“Is Dad dead?” in place of a greeting, the logical question, although my mind rejected such a proposition as we had only just seen him and he had seemed in perfect health.

“No, Wayne”.

“A car accident?”

“No, suicide”.

When I plunged the kitchen knife into my stomach, it had been an act of protest, the wine-ignited fury of a spurned lover, a spontaneous act of self-immolation intended to punish another, my left hand permanently bearing the trace of where he retrieved the blade I stubbornly clasped.  He bundled me into a taxi at my request, and I shivered uncontrollably in my hotel room all night.  My cousin was possessed of a dreadful calm, stripping his bed, washing and ironing the linen, folding it neatly, dusting his room, leaving it immaculately tidy, preparing notes, wrapping a birthday present for his brother, feeding the cat and eating lunch before retreating into the recesses of the garden.

My handsome cousin, always carefree, face never clouded with grief, at least in public, warm, friendly, uncomplaining, yet latterly refusing to leave even the confines of his room.  I am familiar with that heaviness in the chest, that immobilising apathy, draining colour from the brightest sky so that its very cheerfulness taunts you with its indifference towards your numbness, the brutal knowledge of the overwhelming futility of our every thought and feeling leeching the taste from each morsel.  I understand.  That loneliness, which the presence of others only serves to exacerbate, which gnaws at the living marrow, the disjointedness of watching them laugh and turn up for work punctually, mouthing the occasional resentment, yet perhaps finding some comfort in the sheer repetitiveness of the routine, the detachment from the gaudy parade of their bickering, conformity and ambition.  Now that I am older, still not reconciled, I know that oblivion will seek me out.  Better to emulate the butterfly in its erratic flight, sipping nectar and spreading its wings in the sunshine as it rests on brick or stone.  Driving through the golden fields of ripe wheat with the mountains spread before me, I could draw on their healing powers and nothing could persuade me to exchange the sound of the wind in the branches and the melancholy hoot of the owl from the opposite shore for the unrelenting silence.  If only we could have reached him, hauled him back.

Here the branches are groaning with pears, purple damsons, blushing apples and ripening peaches.  I had never tasted sweetness to compare with the grapes I picked from the vines entwined around the fence.  So very incongruous when they will soon be gathering to pay their respects in subdued tones over tea and sandwiches, sombre-suited with traditional Scottish dignity and restraint.  The brave faces concealing to perfection the aching hearts.

And still I cannot be with you, my presence symbolically marked by a wreath ordered online with all the trite convenience modern consumer society can offer.  I will enter an alien and sanctified space for you, all of human ingenuity and artifice directed towards the unfeeling heavens in the yearning for something more, creative effort desperately concentrated to propitiate, an act of supplication against the restlessly grinding teeth of time, sandstone depictions of praying hands crumble, even granite cannot withstand the onslaught forever.  I will light a candle, a tiny, guttering flame in the cool vaulted interior alongside so many other offerings and unheeded pleas.

Sleep well, my darling boy, untroubled by regret-tinged dreams or the demons that lurked in your shadow.  Sleep well and know that you will always reside in the hearts of those you left behind.

Bunches of grapes hang improbably from the naked vines that drape the fence, some maintaining the deception of succulence, others wizened, shrinking away from the wind’s icy probings.  The progress of pedestrians towards the bus stop is charted in sound by the barking of dogs banished to gardens, the raised hackles of guard duty, a display of ferocity encouraged by the protective barrier of the gate.

Our arrival had proven smoother than anticipated, the airport authorities having imported scabs from elsewhere in Europe to alleviate the chaos caused by the strike, throngs of disgruntled passengers queuing to pass through the metal detectors.

We removed out outdoor shoes, but not our coats or scarves, as the heating could not be coaxed into life, turning the thermostat dial to full blast nothing more than an exercise in misplaced optimism.  Even taking refuge beneath double eiderdown-filled duvets offered little comfort (and after the plumber had shown us how to bleed the pipes several hours elapsed before we noticed any difference in temperature, G dragging a foam mattress and bedding down to the boiler room’s dark yet warm confines).

Mass redundancies and industrial action exacerbate the winter gloom.  “Balkan wages, EU prices!” the slogan neatly encapsulating the woes of the average Hungarian.  According to Professor László Bogár, the cost of the weekly shop is 20% cheaper in Austria, whilst salaries across the border are over four times higher.

A dead swallow putrefies slowly in front of the conservatory pane, the agent of its demise.

Having unloaded the provisions, four 750g jars of Speculoos paste and Cherry Bakewells (which have ousted Bramley Apple Pies in my son’s fickle teenage affections), we clambered into the fostalicska [diarrhoea wheelbarrow], alternatively nicknamed the Commiemobile (in spite of having been manufactured in the decadent capitalist West), our conveyance for the duration of the holiday, to pick up G the following morning.  Halfway round the ring road (with the recently opened elegant suspension bridge, not named according to the outcome of the public poll, after Chuck Norris, the will of the people having been deemed too vulgar, though one of the other suggestions, Géza Hofi, would have been a fitting tribute to the much-loved comedian), the car, which boasts the dubious distinction of being the cheapest four-wheel drive vehicle in the entire country, a 22-year-old Toyota Tercel, began shuddering and simultaneously producing alarming metallic clanking noises, as if imminently about to blow itself to bits (I kept on peering through the back window, expecting to see the exhaust pipe being unceremoniously jettisoned onto the pristine tarmac, a strange repetition of when my Mother had driven me to be interviewed at Herriot-Watt University in her Austin Allegro, Sam).  Somehow the Hungarian managed to cajole it as far as the car park, half an hour after G had landed.

The final breakdown only happened a third of the way along the main road from the airport.  It wasn’t the fault of the bone-juddering potholes, between which drivers of more delicate or expensive vehicles swerve in the Demszky slalom, as the fostalicska has amply demonstrated its imperviousness to such punishment.  We pulled over onto a mud track running parallel to the official lane, plunging into puddles before grinding to a definitive halt beneath a hoarding with a gleaming-toothed beauty seductively sipping coffee (conveniently near a bus stop, although, this being Hungary, you cannot purchase a ticket on board, and we were able to ascertain from a friendly passer-by that neither an orange BKV machine nor a trafik kiosk was within easy walking distance).   Right on cue, when our initial amusement at the misfortune that had befallen us was on the brink of turning sour, a taxi appeared (we joked that the fare home would almost exceed the value of the Commiemobile).  We wondered whether, having just filled the tank, we would return with a tow to discover that it had been siphoned into a jerry can – nothing would really have surprised us by that stage, as, when we had lent the car to our friend Predator, someone had attempted to break in, making it impossible to open the front door on the passenger side (consigning me to the back seat, only G being lithe enough to clamber over).  Beyond a rancid old blanket, the only conceivable booty could be the built-in radio, as ancient as the car itself.  Nobody but the truly desperate would consider stealing it.

In an effort to salvage some cheer after our minor mishaps, G and the Hungarian brought back a trophy of the seasonal slaughter of immature firs, a magnificent specimen from Norway, which we proceeded to decorate in breach of local tradition (the custom here involves adorning the tree with tinsel and baubles on the evening of the 24th).  We had managed a trip to the hypermarket prior to heading for the airport, filling several carrier bags with szaloncukor, which we attached to threads and draped over the branches.  The Hungarian has an annoying habit of plundering the contents of the shiny wrappers but not removing them, so that numerous disappointments precede chocolatey gratification.  This year, the sweets are colour-coded: silver for yoghurt flavour, red with silver bells and blue bows for rum and cocoa and red with stars for strawberry-jelly.

With the exception of Uncle Sam who hanged himself in a hotel room, the preferred method of suicide in my family has been to succumb to the pleasantly numbing qualities of spirits, a destructive flirtation that swiftly degenerates into a scramble for oblivion. Angus consumed prodigious quantities of whisky, shambling down to the shops on pension day to return with a clinking bagful of bottles, tormented by visions of the Devil (Auld Nick) leering malevolently as a reminder that it was only a matter of time before he would rip my Grandfather’s reluctant soul out of his breast and drag it off to his fiery domain. His son, Uncle Ally (my Father’s half brother) similarly sought alcohol-induced solace until he awoke with chronic indigestion. As his GP was on holiday he didn’t want to disturb his locum (I have inherited this typically Scottish working class unwillingness to “bother the doctor” until I am literally on my last legs, an attitude that cost the life of my dear Uncle Ian, whose pale skinny frame was ravaged by pneumonia aged 33), determined to endure the agony over the weekend. The following morning, the main artery into his stomach exploded and he bled to death in front of his eldest son.

Then Uncle Ronnie, the gifted architect whose breath always stank of the finest single malts, who traded both prosperity and success for the stuff, indulging in his other great passion of fly fishing was crossing the suspension bridge over the Schiehallion burn when one of the half-rotted planks gave way under his bulk (his immense belly swelled proudly, straining at the shirt buttons). A rusty wire inflicted a deep gash on his leg, septicaemia set in, his liver so assailed by the drip-feed of peaty intoxicants that it was unable to cope with the infection. A domineering bully, I did not shed any tears over his loss. We shared our holidays with him every year, my parents sleeping in one bedroom with Rory, my Aunt and Uncle with their sons in the other with me in the single bed at the top of the landing where their conversation lulled me to sleep as they played whist.

Ronnie idolised his elder son Martin, whom my brother and I nicknamed “the Vulcan” because he seemed devoid of human warmth or emotion. His skin tone was straight off the embalmer’s table with mannerisms to match; he never did anything spontaneous in our presence, let alone rash and seldom smiled. It did not help that Ronnie pitted Martin against me in competition (in which he invariably came worse off), insidiously poisoning our relationship. His brother Mattie, by contrast, with his chaotic mop of gleaming blond hair, tumbled through the fields, clambering up the den, conquering the precariously balanced stacks of hay bales without fear. Mattie was the youngest, the smallest and, in the cruel hierarchy of childhood, always the loser in the game of tig, kick the can or hide-and-seek. However, being the lightest, when the adults pushed us on the tyre swing he could stretch out his hand and tear fistfuls of ripe black cherries from the branches of the tree, a triumphant grin spreading across his angelic features.

Ronnie treated him abominably, constantly picking on him and blaming him for his brother’s misdeeds. Once at New Year Ronnie and his wife went first-footing, leaving the boys at home unsupervised. Martin, who had been given responsibility for looking after his ten-year-old sibling, plundered the drinks cabinet, downing half a bottle of vodka before puking up and passing out on the living room floor. On arrival back, Ronnie took out his anger and disappointment on Mattie, bellowing as he lashed out at him repeatedly with full force that he must have been at fault for encouraging such uncharacteristic conduct.

Another trauma for Mattie resulting from his Father’s insatiable appetite for exercising power over the subordinate members of his household involved Ronnie’s variation on the fondue. He would melt a three pound block of virulently orange cheddar, chop up tomatoes and force Mattie to eat it until he was physically sick. Walking down the cheese aisle in the supermarket still causes him to shudder.

During his teenage years Mattie often took refuge in our house, where he would crash out on the floor in my brother’s room. Rory’s best friend Spike was another regular visitor and the unluckier of the guests would be assigned the pile of jackets (the more fortunate securing the camp bed, which resembled an elongated deckchair with springs). On what my brother has dubbed The Night of the Japanese Soldier, Mattie’s cheekiness proved his downfall. Having brought in freshly brewed tea for his companions, Rory decided to punish some random and long since forgotten act of insubordination by squirting a mouthful of coffee at him. Mattie responded by launching his entire mug of scalding liquid straight into my brother’s face. Realising that a retaliatory battering was imminent, he locked himself in the bathroom, Rory eventually coaxing him out without waking our parents. Once he could see that Mattie’s guard was lowered, Rory took revenge by gobbing at him, astounded and incensed when Mattie objected to such coarse treatment by responding in kind. His self-preservation instinct having kicked in, our cousin attempted to flee impending chastisement, but was thwarted by the camp bed. At each corner of the fold-down contraption was a hole, though one of which he inadvertently stepped, trapping himself with no possibility of escape. When my Father eventually dragged himself downstairs (he was a light sleeper and had in all likelihood been aware of the disturbance, intervening only when he could tolerate the extraneous noise no longer) he interrupted Rory scolding Mattie, meting out one slap per syllable in a vicious parody of an interrogation in some god-forsaken prison camp.

On another sleep-over Mattie inexplicably submitted to my brother and Spike mummifying him in pink Andrex, five to six sheet deep Rory reassures me, with each leg requiring an entire roll, enough to ensure that he would be pursued by an entire pack of floppy-eared Labrador puppies if the advertising is to be believed. Their painstaking work completed, my brother issued dire threats of a beating coupled with the generous offer of a head start (on a count of three they would come after him). To their great amusement, Mattie, with superhuman effort, managed to struggle out of the front door to seek shelter outdoors. His persecutors raked out a stick from the shed and set off on his trail. Just down the road they spotted him sitting on the neighbour’s wall, smoking a consolatory cigarette, evidently having dismissed the notion that they might actually follow through, the humiliation of appearing before the public gaze swathed in toilet paper quite sufficient to his mind. Their raucous laughter immediately goaded him into cumbersome motion, driving him downhill towards the roundabout. Every time they caught him up, Rory would whack him on the backside, prompting a sudden spurt and more hilarity. Halfway through the estate, noticing that their antics had attracted unwanted attention, they threw their weapon over a fence to avoid being charged with assault as a police car drew up beside them. “What the fuck do you think you are doing?” enquired one of the occupants of the patrol car (this was in the days before officers had been trained in the fine art of addressing members of the public with courtesy). The boys replied that it was all harmless stag-night fun and surely preferable to handcuffing him naked to a lamppost), an explanation which was accepted, however reluctantly. Rory and Spike abandoned their chase, leaving the wretched Mattie whose ears, muffled by their two-ply bandaging, had remained oblivious to the exchange to shuffle off into the orange glow of the street lamps. Approximately half an hour later, he put his head round the door, his trepidation ousted by relief as Rory and Spike released him from his bindings.

The officer in question had crossed paths with my brother before, the latter nicknaming him Bernard due to his striking resemblance to the actor Mr Cribbins. During a stint on a Manpower Services Commission scheme beautifying one of the sprawling public parks, Rory and Spike’s boss had joked with them about how the statue of Prince Albert in a haughty pose with hands on hips looked for all the world like an element was missing. My brother took a notion to correct this deficiency, he and Spike creating a large penis from toilet roll tubes held together by duct tape, two table tennis balls for testicles, with fishing gut through the base. The only problem left for them to rack their brains over was how to secure this proud display of manhood to the monument. Undaunted, my brother devised a solution involving draping one brick (through which the gut would be threaded) over each shoulder. Whilst they were hoisting the adornment into place, PC Bernard’s voice came booming from the vehicle they had been too preoccupied to spot approaching. Fortunately for Rory, the car was not on the main road, but the pathway, giving him time to reduce the hard-on to a shrivelled caricature of its former erect glory. “What’s that piece of paper?” Rory shrugged, “Dunno”. “If the pair of you are not gone by the time I come back I’m lifting you!” So it was that Albert’s smug look was never justified, the token of his masculine prowess ignominiously discarded in the works compound.

Although he performed well in his Highers, Mattie never received the encouragement lavished on his brother to pursue his education further. Dull and steady Martin seemed destined for the civil service (ending up as database manager in a bank), a wife, two children and an adoring mutt with no single speck of dust being permitted to settle on his sideboards in a household run with clinical efficiency. Mattie by contrast had been infected by the restlessness implied by his surname and boarded a flight to New Zealand, putting literally as much distance between himself and his family as humanly possible, surviving as a casual labourer, moving on whenever the risk of settling loomed in the blissful tangle of a lover’s arms. At some unspecified stage during these periodic roamings, he was seduced by his true love, that insatiable mistress from whose tendrils there is no easy extrication, the vine. Over the years he built up a formidable expertise (indulging a little more than was good for him in the practical side of his researches) of wine, which qualified him as the perfect candidate for managing the various off-licences he has taken charge of.

Mattie has never been able to resist the lure of the loch and the soft greens and purples of his native land, turning to Rory for succour and support when the disappointments and inevitable lows overwhelmed him, the well-worn contours of the sofa constantly available to him. Spike would join them and they would go camping almost directly opposite Chamberbhan, the object of longing so close yet out of bounds. The local landowners harbour a fierce dislike of casual tent-pitchers (which, when they spray-paint their names on the silver birches, arguably more humane than carving hearts and initials into the bark to leave a permanent scar, I can empathise with), drawing no distinction between the responsible ones such as my brother who carefully clear away the ashes of the bonfires they light on the shore rather than scorching the tree trunks and grass, leaving no evidence of their sojourn in the form of litter and the less considerate. Some have resorted to drastic dissuasive tactics, such as vandalising the shoreline to a greater extent than those they are bent on excluding ever could by gouging huge holes out of the earth with a digger to leave no space for a stopover. Burning with the righteous indignation of the dispossessed (stoked by booze to that incandescent state where inaction is no longer an option) Mattie, when confronted with a sign haughtily proclaiming its multiple prohibitions “No Camping, No Fires, No Fishing”, decided to demonstrate his disapproval in highly practical fashion by demolishing it. Kicking achieved little, prompting him to snatch the hand axe and start digging to uproot it. Having finally excavated the lump of concrete holding it in place, Mattie dragged it over to what he intended would be its funeral pyre, neglecting in his state of advanced inebriation to let it go as he hurled it into the flames, accompanying it on its final journey. Rory had to drag him out to safety, yet the agent of his misfortune also proved his protectress and he emerged unscathed.

In one of those strange coincidences that gnaw at us with doubt concerning the possibility of inherent meaning, Mattie called my brother in despair at some shattering news just after our arrival at the cottage. He had finally admitted that quelling the bleak recognition of purposelessness with nine bottles of wine a day might be detrimental to his health. His doctor had explained that if he scored one to two on the liver function test it would mean he was a seriously heavy drinker on the verge of dependency, four to eight would classify him as a serious alcoholic. His reading was off the scale and Rory swears he let slip the word “oncologist”. “Why are you so determined to emulate the Father you despised?” A choking sound on the other end of the phone a more eloquent reply than a thousand rhetorical flourishes. There was no argument: he would quit the indifferent surroundings of Brighton and soak up the tranquillity of the shore in the company of those who loved and appreciated him with all his flaws rather than for what he could provide. He also vowed to begin the agonising process of cutting back under Rory’s watchful eye.

Afflicted by the same destructive self-loathing, a curse not unique to our family, yet one which has impelled so many of us to premature demise, I instructed him to help himself to the cans of Tennents (ordinary strength), which we traditionally buy for G, politely ignoring the tremble of his hands as he dealt out the cards for our game of whist.

He and Rory set up their rods, my brother catching three perch (one of which he was able to release as it has not swallowed the hook), Mattie a medium pike, which he gutted and salted with consummate skill, kindly leaving it in the fridge for the Hungarian to use as a base for fish soup. Privately, Rory remarked on how subdued he was, not launching into the customary deliberate provocations to push away anyone who might otherwise stray close enough to convince him that in spite of the blank and intimidating futility there might still be reasons worth lingering for.

In the fading light, Mattie pitched his tent between the empty cottage and the secret garden (the fluctuating water levels in the loch, dictated by electricity generation needs, would haunt the sleep of anyone camping on the shore, the unnatural rising tide more than any groundsheet could withstand) and he, Young George and I stood signalling with the beam of the large torch that took a day to charge yet which (frustratingly) ran out of power almost instantly to the current occupants of the unofficial site on the other side, lamenting our lack of knowledge of Morse code. From the gloom to our left came an unearthly rasping sound, which Mattie reassured us came from no more menacing a source than a stag. We joked about that mythical beast the “kohachle” (a spelling based on my Father’s pronunciation), part man, part deer lurking in the depths of the woods to abduct naughty children refusing to pay heed to their parents’ summons to be tucked into bed. When, however, our ears were again assailed – from closer proximity – by a strangled cry evoking images of axe-wielding maniacs from the goriest of low-budget horror flicks even Mattie was spooked and we retreated to the safety of our temporary home. I absolutely forbade him from spending the night in the tent and he graciously accepted the offer of one of the bunks in the children’s bedroom. After a few rounds of whist, he mustered enough courage to venture outside for a cigarette. “If I’m not back in five minutes…” a sentence which G uncharitably completed “…we’ll lock the door!”

In the diffident morning sunshine, Mattie sipped coffee from the flask, peering over at the rusted corrugated iron roof for marks of the youthful contests with his brother firing air gun pellets at the chimney, physical proof of past residence. Setting off on one final bittersweet survey of our childhood domain, he visited the swing hanging from the ancient cherry bough, no longer a defunct tractor tyre with a cushion pillaged from the sitting room to stop the rubber digging into tender skin, the ferns snaking along the course of the burn, the gap between the barn and the abandoned cottage across which the rats leapt frantically, terrified by the thunder of low-flying military jets, the former dwelling where the Old Bull would stare forlorn from his confinement at the fields he had grazed in, damp nostrils snorting as we scurried past, awed by his strength, down to the bench, green paint peeling in the spot where his Mother and mine would spread their blanket and distract themselves from the mundane tasks of later hours with tales of adversity overcome and romance whilst we paddled in the freezing water.

If only the warmth of my parting embrace could suffice to save him, to banish the impulse that likewise corrodes my soul. Come back, little cousin, to the one place that can pierce through the layers of abjection, come back to those who remember your childish fury and the ghost of a smile on your lips.

The Greylag geese strutted officiously around in the back field amongst the newly shorn sheep as I filled the kettle, retrieving an individual filter from the silver vacuum pack. Both bedroom doors were open onto the landing and I had switched off the light that had burnt lonely, protective, all night (electricity and sundry bills included in the cost of renting the cottage), questioning the wisdom of recounting the tales of the taciturn visitor (the irony being that he unfailingly appeared in the early morning, lingering just long enough to smoke his pipe before the sway of the tall grass and the cold barrenness of the empty barn impinged upon such comfort). The Hungarian’s snore did not travel the length of the extension into the old cottage and I unlocked the conservatory door to take my place on the green bench and watch the blue tits and finches do the rounds of the empty feeders, bored of insect prey.

I had already determined that today would be the one opportunity during the stay, either that or the next occasion on which I would see him would be once he had been laid out in his coffin, the Balmoral, having promised that I would not spend more on his than I had on my mother’s. The weeks somehow slipped by, never picking up the phone in spite of having resolved to do so whenever an event of slightly greater significance occurred. At the weekend, yes, but somehow once the weekend arrived it remained a mere intention. I had resolved never to set foot in the shared dwelling, as this might imply endorsement. No memories resided there. The music blaring out of our competing stereos (Rory was into Madness, whereas I had been seduced by the New Romantics) had not seeped into its bricks, the desolate peal of the Academy bell did not intrude through the kitchen window, it was as blank and meaningless as the concept of their relationship. I abhor compromise.

I did not wish to warn them of our impending arrival, as this might unwittingly provide her with sufficient time to invent some excuse or “remember” a prior commitment. Even with Fancsi and G combating their travel sickness by surrendering to sleep, the tension during the journey was palpable, manifesting itself in more frequent than usual stops to avail myself of the roadside facilities. The Hungarian has likewise nurtured a deep antipathy towards her since she attempted to deny all knowledge of his existence as he attempted to persuade her to pass the phone to my Father (keeping her new husband firmly in his place by never, ever permitting him to answer the phone, it is her house, after all, and he is there by virtue of her generosity and indulgence). Had he not adopted a more than persistent tone she would simply have hung up on him (though, refreshingly uncontaminated by timid British politeness, such a response would have rebounded on her, as the Hungarian is especially tenacious when riled). Nor did the snub represented by the conspicuously empty top table seat at the wedding with her nameplate and the individual gift box of Cornet Port-Royal endear her to him.

Three hours of narrow roads winding through rain-misted valleys and distilleries and we approached our destination. A handful of drab streets in the typical Scottish council house style, white paint succumbing to the relentless assaults of briny air and gales. The designated parking space unoccupied, but the Hungarian returned from his scout to report that washing had been pegged along the line, from which we could deduce that they were unlikely to have departed on a holiday or even a day excursion given the imminent threat of a downpour. As we drove to Buckie in search of sustenance I reflected on the story my brother had recounted concerning their car, purchased on the basis of a mobility allowance, yet she was extracting payments from him for it, instalment after instalment. Even the Devil himself could not have devised a more exquisitely excruciating punishment for a man who had squandered every penny on used cars, none of which he could bear to keep for more than six months.

We walked the length of the main street before settling on the inhospitably plastic-looking chippie (Emma’s tearoom would have been my preference, but I had no desire to dissipate my energies on a minor skirmish), which possessed greater charm than anticipated and I lapsed back into my native habits with a traditional fish tea (haddock, chips, pot of the beverage, bread and butter) of the kind I had last eaten in Dundee, served by a no-nonsense waitress in black uniform complete with gleaming apron and thinning white hair. G reiterated his disgust at the newspaper clipping my father had saved for us. Whether it should have won the award for the greatest number of factual inaccuracies per line or for the most groanworthy puns had never been satisfactorily resolved (“love at first site” and “they just clicked” being but two examples in the snippet recording their Internet romance).

As I sipped my still scalding tea, G and Fancsi headed for the shore (like so many of his compatriots the Hungarian too is unable to resist the lure of the sea, enchanted both by its vastness and unaccustomed capriciousness) beachcombing amongst the jagged rocks near the fish processing plants that constitute the town’s livelihood and permeate its air. Huge posters proclaiming Jesus’ love evangelically looked out of place in an environment so utterly devoid of tenderness (yet an unmistakable and unsanitised whiff of brimstone clung to every word beneath the message of salvation – embrace Him, or else burn, burn, burn for all eternity). A pair of wellies washed up on an earlier tide and a few shells to slip into the pocket and take back home, nothing remarkable.

Upon return the blue Renault indicated their presence and I dispatched the Hungarian to ring the doorbell. My Father invited us in, forcing me to abandon any notion of enticing him to neutral ground. Zs first, then Fancsi and G. She sat in an armchair, dressed in a turquoise lounge suit. “Pleased to meet you,” she greeted the children, this sparse formula more than adequate for her to convey the utmost insincerity. As soon as she set eyes on me, however, her unsmiling, wart-spattered face assumed a curdled expression of undiluted contempt. I proceeded straight to the kitchen, grateful to my Father for the temporary escape of his offer of a cup of tea. What struck me immediately about the flat was how tiny it was compared to the home he had left behind. No unshared, private space, just the cramped kitchen, living room, bathroom and bedroom. Barely enough floor for a single mattress. Hence the caravan squatting in the back garden for her children and grandchildren (she had assumed that she would be spared the unpleasantness and inconvenience of our visiting in my case because we live abroad, in my brother’s because the petrol would devour too substantial a proportion of the fortnightly budget).

I braced myself when the inevitable could no longer be postponed, but she had already scuttled off into the bedroom having sensed (quite correctly) that her presence was unwanted. A few paltry tokens of the past decorated the walls – his Korean veterans commemorative plate, a photograph of my brother’s children sent by my Aunt as it showed them alongside her granddaughter.

Soon afterwards, she slipped out through the front door to take refuge in the caravan, scrupulously avoiding any contact with us (it would have been quicker and easier for her to walk past us into the kitchen and through the back door, but that would have necessitated the risk of having to acknowledge my existence, even worse of having to exchange a few platitudes to maintain a pretence of politeness). Part of our antipathy towards her stems from her pathological possessiveness, her desperate efforts to isolate him, to erase every vestige of our involvement in his life, to expunge us even from memory. His Red Cross uniform has fallen victim to the purge, banished to the car ostensibly because it takes up too much room, a more plausible reason being that it symbolises an activity outwith her control (or participation) and, more unpalatably for her, one which he engaged in long before they met (and hence tainted by association with my Mother). As long as we are nothing to her, as long as we remain but an abstraction, she can absolve herself of any responsibility and casually dismiss the idea of having caused any pain. The abruptness with which we had shattered this illusion of her boundless ability to manipulate no doubt went some way towards explaining the reception she gave us.

As G later remarked, he had not changed in the slightest, as if the year and a half that had elapsed, even the clothes he wore were the same. He had been out walking Sammy the dog, adopted from his previous owners when he grew too boisterous for them to handle. My impression was that the animal has proven a better, more attentive and loving companion to him (after the loss of Tighson the Border collie he had sworn never to find a replacement, yet another source of bitterness to my brother, who recalled my Mother’s complaints of loneliness that could perhaps have been alleviated by a pet) than his new wife. Sammy’s unflagging eagerness to retrieve his rubber ball prevented the silences from becoming too awkward.

Breaking her self-imposed exile in the caravan, we heard her boil the kettle and stir the tea, interrupting the flow of conversation. Again, she retreated without putting her head round the door. I deflected any serious discussion of sensitive topics, such as G’s future as I was in no mood to talk about any issues of substance with her hovering in the background. Similarly, when we enquired as to whether he was flourishing in his new environment his reply was diffident. He told us that he leaves the bedroom window open every night as he finds the sound of the sea battering against the defences soothing. In spite of all her endeavours, his old surroundings were still on his mind: he informed us that our former neighbour Tam (the Bam) had suffered a stroke and was no longer able to drive. None of us knew whether the new occupants of our former home had demolished the Berlin Wall (as we referred to the tall wooden boards my Father had erected rather than putting up with his prying and general unpleasantness – he has always eschewed open conflict and this was the ultimate cop-out).

As I listened I thought of how he had resolved to spare me the pain of clearing away my possessions and his even before my Mother died, a gradual severing. When I left for university he decided to throw out all of my old toys, books and records, my Mother every bit as stubborn in spiriting away to the boley hole the ones she knew I loved best (which are now stored in my attic here). The process has long since been completed with my custodianship of the precious scraps of paper with my Grandfather’s writings alongside the love letters sent during the months when my Father was stationed in Germany before being shipped off to Korea (her side of the correspondence has not survived), when the dread that she might abandon him for a rival constantly agitated him.

Having eased the front door closed unnoticed, the movement of the bedroom door alerted me to her return. Leaving it half open to eavesdrop proved a most effective method of censorship. It saddened me that my access to him would from now on be limited by the whims of a hostile stranger. That the intimacy of our home was lost, that a certain uneasy formality would henceforth inhibit display of deeply felt affection merely as a result of the setting. This painful realisation was mitigated by the knowledge that her power does not extend to eradicating the past. Her flimsy association cannot wipe away the decades we spent together and no amount of jealousy can dissolve the bond between father and daughter.

It was raining lightly as he accompanied us to the car and we wound down the windows to wave. I could just make out her shadow behind the curtain once we had withdrawn to a safe distance. His voice choked slightly as he reminded G that he was welcome to spend his entire summer in the caravan, knowing (though not openly acknowledging) that as long as it would be on her terms and on her territory his grandson would never accept.

As we passed the entrance to the street he was still there alone against the concrete backdrop. My residual anger had subsided, confronting me with the impossibility of spending anything like the amount of time with him that I otherwise would have. My brother and I had whispered cathartically that scattering our Mother’s ashes on the shore would be more appropriate than carrying her to the peak of Schiehallion, mingling her remains with his in one final union.  Now it seemed like cruelty even to contemplate separating them in such a petty and childishly spiteful act of retaliation.  My Daddy, who gave me cuddy-backs, who rattled his dentures to play the Lone Ranger theme, who pulled his cardigan over his head and rolled his solitary eye in its socket, lurching forward to send us shrieking upstairs fleeing from the monster, was torn from view, leaving me with that visceral, searing love that, if you approach it too closely, singes your eyebrows like a public bonfire on Guy Fawkes Night.

The complex we were deposited at was one of the few on the street map not provided with a bilingual designation: Hotel Vile Park (in these days where International English functions as the lingua franca the resort owners might have been expected to show enough foresight to modify a name not exactly guaranteed to attract migrant flocks of bacon-and-egg devouring Brits seeking sunshine at an affordable price, but with a client base consisting almost entirely of pensioners from Italy their failure ceases to mystify).  Behind the sandy, crumbling cliffs another part of town seemed equally fated to prompt puerile amusement: Arze/Arse (and I will refrain from the obvious mock complaint about being sent on mission to a remote and unpleasant destination).  Not that this was the only linguistic oddity I encountered.  Turning up the volume on the TV to watch the news channel (for once true to my arrogantly monoglot heritage), the indicator displayed the word glasnost, which for someone of my generation who sprayed Erlösung on the Berlin Wall by way of protest and for whom the existence of such a tranquil retreat unblighted by a grasping proliferation of concrete high-rises would have issued a serious challenge to ideological assumptions, carries quite different connotations.

Shunning the official reception, MS accompanied me to Piran, a town inaccessible by car to all but the residents, allowing pedestrians and ageing Labradors alike to wander down the middle of the road with impunity.  What struck him most was the complete absence of railings along the sea front – no warning signs screeching stridently every ten yards, no red and white striped flotation rings, simply sink or swim and an uninterrupted view.

The swifts shrieked above us snatching insect sustenance from the calm evening air, a thousand seaward-gazing dandelion clocks displayed wildly conflicting times.  Following the advice of the guide book, we took our seats on the wooden benches of Pri Mari to dine on sea bass in a salt crust, the waitress deftly excavating the miraculously moist flesh.  As always, I ate the chips (marked on the menu as “baked potatoes”) with my fingers, noting that the grilled sole costs five euros less than in Waffle Central.  Kaditi prepovedano the sticker admonished, the image of a cigarette in a red circle with a line through it enabling non-natives to decipher its message, a blessing in such a confined space.

As we made a detour to his hotel to pick up his coat (it had indeed turned nippy), he pointed out one of the dwellings on the main square, erected by a Venetian merchant for the use of his local dalliance.  Dismissing her fears of gossip and social ostracism, he installed her defiantly, impudently and luxuriously in the most prominent place available, the coat of arms on the wall the equivalent of a raised middle digit in the face of convention and festering yet impotent disapproval, inscribed with the Latin motto: “Let them talk”.

The corridor lights flickered into life as I proceeded roomward.  The top sheet turned down in a gesture of thoughtfulness standard for the five-star rating.  A dark chocolate (milk would be too plebeian by far) in a parcel perched atop the pillow: Lahko noč.

The snowflakes would muffle the sound of passing cars as they descended sedately to settle on the lawns and bare twigs, the pristine blanket dented by crusts scattered for the blackbirds and sparrows. Christmas tree lights shone through the net curtains of every living room offering cheer to the passer-by in the brooding darkness that only grudgingly lifted. The hamper was almost empty, perhaps a pudding dense with raisins and essence of rum.

Hogmanay, fiddles and accordions on the radio, sentimental ballads and tartan on the small screen. My Mother in the kitchen preparing the feast, cutting the cheddar into small cubes (in the days when the refrigerated section of the supermarket was filled with vacuum-packed lumps of the stuff, distinguished in strength by the intensity of the shades of orange, perhaps some Philadelphia and a few cuts of Edam, which she never forgot to purchase for me, milder and correspondingly paler than our native variety with its red wax rind) and skewering them with cocktail sticks, frying mini sausages and heating the oven for the sausage rolls. The smoked glass serving dish was split into four compartments, one for salted peanuts (we hadn’t yet encountered dry roasted), one for silverskin onions preserved in vinegar so bitterly acidic it instantly corroded the taste buds, one for crisps (usually salt and vinegar flavour) and one for the cheese. Slices of Mother’s Pride Scottish Plain (crusts removed for me) in a stack, buttered with unsalted, oatcakes and Jacob’s Cream Crackers. Decorative plates retrieved from the china cabinet for the shortbread Petticoat Tails unadulterated by chocolate coating. Finally, my Father’s favourite, the vol-au-vents, which she filled with egg mayonnaise and mushroom.

The wooden folding table would be summoned forth from the coal cellar and adorned with one of the few pieces of embroidered linen to have survived the boiler leak. We only dined together on Christmas Day, arriving home at different times, balancing a tray on our knees as we devoured the children’s programmes between four and five forty-five.

The drinks cabinet that was kept under lock and key for the rest of the year opened to reveal a bottle of Grouse, the garish yellow of Advocaat, Babycham (for my then immature palate, spirits too shudder-inducingly strong and wine as yet undiscovered) and raspberry diluting cordial for my Father who never touched a drop. My Mother would take a glass of sherry for the bells, the annual reward she allowed herself for all her toil. “Happy New Year, Auld Ane,” my Father would pronounce as he kissed her on the cheek. Our cheeks were flushed with excitement and fatigue, we felt giddily grown-up awake so late. Once Big Ben’s sonorous and solemn tones had reverberated round the room the more modest ring of the telephone would ensue, aunts and uncles with warmth and optimism in their voices. Once the greetings had been exchanged, my Father would take the phone off the hook and wrap the receiver in cardigans and coats; he was a light sleeper who did not want to be disturbed by wrong numbers (this instilled in me a dread of the phone I have still not overcome, a recurrent nightmare involved me creeping downstairs in the middle of the night because nobody else would answer and being rooted to the spot as an evil stranger filled my defenceless ear with obscenities). I would sink into a fitful sleep, startled awake by the wailing and cursing of staggering drunks who sometimes strayed down the driveway to relieve themselves. My heart would thump in terror as I imagined them hauling themselves on to the concrete ledge above the front door to tap on my window.

After the long lie, we would wait with anticipation for the doorbell to ring. First would be Uncle Ian, the classic tall, dark and handsome man, spindly and with skin so pale it was almost translucent he always looked too fragile in his best dark suit, a half in his pocket, bearing a lump of coal and black bun. We knew that there was never any danger of the god-fearing Mrs Brown (we would drape a carrier bag containing her Sunday Post around the fencepost, as the paper van always blared its horn in announcement of its arrival whilst she was busy with her devotions in the North Church, the highlight of whose earthly span was when her minister son Colin appeared on Late Call) ever coming round, as she was as likely to permit herself any enjoyment as she was to miss Sunday service or emerge into public view without a panty girdle beneath her constricting tweed skirt and we instead looked forward to our other neighbours dropping by (my Mother would gladly accept a wee nip diluted with lemonade). Now the composition of the street has changed completely and the sense of community evaporated with the sprouting of the satellite dishes. All the original families have left, our laughter and anxieties, conflicts and reconciliations soaked up by the mute custodians, the house’s bricks.

The diffident sunshine did not suffice to banish a tinge of grey from the sky as I boarded the bus, seasonally depopulated of all but the lower income brackets (pensioners, unemployed) and the occasional waif such as myself inward bound to sign the register (timetable vagaries necessitating the trip). The tramp with his characteristically matted hair and copious beard who had so carefully arranged his belongings (mattress rolled up and tied within a protective plastic sheet to prevent its being soaked in his absence, various carrier bags bulging indeterminately) in his modest corner (astutely selected in a part of the city abandoned after the offices close) next to the bridge with its pigeon-spattered pavements, scraggy bushes offering a modicum of privacy at least for part of the year has been definitively evicted by the removal of the bench on which he slumbered so deeply that one of my colleagues phoned the police, believing him dead.

My body trapped here, at my employers’ command, my mind at the cottage, my brother signalling with the headlights to his friends camped on the opposite shore, their bonfire the only visible token of human presence in the all-engulfing blackness. Dropping in on them, he was confronted with Spike, horror film addict with a particular fondness for zombies, recovering from the shock of the bin bag taking on a life of its own. Assailed by visions of dismembered limbs reanimated by canister gas to twitch menacingly, he screamed for a stick before tentatively tipping it on to its side to spew its contents. Poised for the worst abomination, branch at the ready, he sagged with relief when a half-dazed hedgehog scuttled out.

A few hours later, as my brother pulled out of the lay-by, he noticed a prickly ball curled up defensively in the middle of the road. Spike gently scooped up the campsite intruder and proceeded to run it through his hair like a brush. Having deposited it amongst the ferns at a safe distance and satisfied himself that it was not suicidally heading back in the direction of the tarmac he returned to the car where my brother cheerfully informed him that hedgehogs are notorious for being infested with fleas.

Avagy a középosztálybeli élet kis vigaszai…

The heat haze shimmered ahead, tantalisingly out of reach like the rainbow’s end as the Hungarian expertly dodged the potholes, the uneven road testing the suspension more effectively than any manufacturer-devised simulation.  The yellow trams trundled sedately along their parallel tracks, even the prefabricated high rises seemed benign as they observed the frantic scurry below with their grey, unblinking satellite dish eyes. 

Past the melon stands, the plump wares of which were described without poetic licence as honey sweet.  Beyond the suburbs to the green-clad hills, away from the buildings which still bear the scars of the longing for freedom.  Pilisvörösvár, Pilisszentiván, heart-shaped black granite headstones on display in the gravel-strewn yards waiting patiently for the inscriptions to give them purpose.  Past the gleaming-eyed tramp foraging in the orange bins for any scraps of food near the pancake kiosk, stuffing half rotted hamburger discards into his mouth with the voracity of desperation, poignant symbol of the shift from the insidious cosseting of Állam Bácsi, the state that provided a modicum of existential security for the masses in return for ideological conformity and the obscene prospering of a small elite to capitalism in its most brutal and unalloyed manifestation where the elderly and the vulnerable are faced with the stark choice between eating or paying the utility bills.  Where many look back on oppression with the fond glow of nostalgia (at least they can complain without fear of reprisal), when the forint went further, when only the work-shy were ostracised, when the Party told you whom to applaud and who to turn away from, when you were expected to go through the motions.  Now the prevailing mood is envy and (justified) suspicion, the nouveau riche merely the most conspicuously successful asset-strippers in their unapologetic vulgarity and contempt for the less unscrupulous.  This is the country where a bank robber demanded the modest amount of five million (about £13,000) before being shot down like a dog.  His motive was not personal gain: the money was to have been spent on paying off his disabled father’s debts and preventing his forcible eviction.  One of the officers at the crime scene opportunistically pocketed 200,000 forints (about £500) of the would-be haul.  This is the country where a woman driving home alone in the small hours was pulled over on the pretext of allegedly not having fastened her seatbelt.  She was ordered down a side street and raped by two of the policemen whilst the remaining three looked on.  Having accompanied her back to her flat they threatened her with dire retribution if she dared to open her mouth (nobody will believe you anyway, you slut, it’s your word against ours), stealing 20,000 forint (£50) into the bargain (the equivalent of half a month’s worth of old age pension payments).  The incident has already become embedded in the public consciousness as demonstrated by the joke: A woman is hurrying down the street in a rough area, clutching her handbag defensively when a tall, burly man steps out of the shadows blocking her path.  “Madam, please allow me to escort you home.  This is a very dangerous part of town; it’s crawling with police”.

The streets softened by lime-green acacia drifts, a moth’s tongue sipping nectar.  Neighbours who know each other’s business, the seasonal abundance of vegetable patches and branches laden with cherries, apricots, peaches, plums, a church tower in the distance.  I notice my sun-sleeves in the shower, where the rays have conspired to join the dots, blurring one freckle into another.  I discard the duvet and the blankets, aware of the perspiration on the back of my neck and drift into oblivion to the soothing sound of his snores.

 View from the terrace

 The garden

 Garden fence

Swapping the gale force air-conditioning and sun-loungers draped with orange pool-side towels for the rocky bay and the caress of the sea breeze, transient status on display in the glisten of factor 45 on pale flesh and the wide-brimmed hat purchased moments earlier we wove our way sedately through groups of teenagers in beach attire, short skirts (the boys bare-chested) and flip-flops.

Beneath the gaze of the posters for the local brew we attempted to cross the road with no apparent crossings or traffic lights to check the anarchic progress of the buses from a different era, Leyland proudly emblazoned across their fronts, transplanted from the drizzle and the fertile green to the unremitting urban sprawl and cloudless blue.

The waitress unwrapped my sea bass from the foil in which it had been baked, excavating it expertly from the salt crust before arranging the moist fillets aesthetically on the plate. Not that the service was perfect. Her colleague, looking down his nose at us as if we were flotsam washed up on the shore had not bothered to listen to Lisa’s order in her flawless Italian (the dishes being somewhat pretentiously listed in that melodic tongue), placing a medium rare slab of meat in front of her instead of the red mullet with succulent olives. With her enviable line in steely politeness, she turned it away, forcing him to look her in the eye as he apologised (not that this redeemed him – as he was clearing away the main course, he knocked over an entire glass of white straight into the lap of our companion, MS with such force that his shirt was liberally spattered and the tablecloth soaked).

Having been forewarned the evening before that one of her periodic bouts of catharsis was imminent I had prepared myself mentally. Her appearance of strength conceals a perpetual insecurity, a self-destructive streak which impels her to test the boundaries with those who call themselves her friends, lashing out viciously with a smile (a tendency that coincides with alcohol consumption, the wine functioning as an alibi to absolve her of the excesses committed should she discover that she really has gone too far), asserting her domination. Love, even in its manifestation through friendship’s powerful affection, must be entirely on her terms. She takes pride in being untamed, yet longs for stability. Perfectly capable of filling in the forms on time she chooses not to in order to maintain her reputation as chaotic and anarchical, her protest against the superfluous irritations of excessive bureaucracy sadly detrimental to her career. An embodiment of the contradictions of longing for the consolations of a more traditional model of femininity in the full knowledge that adherence to its demands would stifle her. Like my older self, she takes great pleasure in shocking the listener, MS with his (at least projected) relative guilelessness the perfect audience.

She presented us with the dilemma tearing her apart: should she dump Patrick, with whose doe-eyed adoration she has become thoroughly bored? The question is more complicated than it might at first seem, as she claims to spend every waking moment wishing she was with her previous – married – lover, the alcoholic Michael who had messed with her head by predicting eighteen months previously that she would find herself in her current tortured state. More succinctly, the choice between settling down and pursuing a potentially dangerous passion, risking losing both. “I am not quite ready to become a mad woman with a cat,” she pronounced with complete conviction.

I patiently explained that long-term relationships require the ability to compromise and make sacrifices (specifically fidelity, though I had no need to make that explicit). MS concurred. Ultimately, Lisa was not seeking our approval, as I pointed out. What she really wanted was to know that when she emerges from the candle flame, wings singed from the heat, we will support her unconditionally without indulging in churlish “I told you sos”.

Patrick shied away from making decisions, whereas what infuriated her about Michael when still involved with him was his habit of deciding on everything without consulting her or taking her preferences into account (as shown by his restaurant bookings where he would automatically reserve a table at the Thai whereas she loathes that coconut milk drenched cuisine). Unpalatable though I knew it would be I warned her that Michael would not abandon his wife, as this would be equivalent to relinquishing the hold he had over her, a voluntary renunciation of power in a game where he desperately wanted to remain in control. Lisa’s voracious desire to “beat” her rival and exalt in her prize kept her in his thrall, in constant frustration, compliant, determined to please him, to prove that she is better, that they are made for each other. That, should she actually succeed in her objective, she would in some other Mediterranean port a few months on, pour out her woes again, about how she had made the wrong choice, how their attraction had turned sour.

Michael is a squat, ugly man with boyish curls and an air of insufferable arrogance quite typical of the suited administrators who delight in throwing their literal and metaphorical weight around. He is well-educated, but entirely self-absorbed like the addict that he is. I remember how she had to take an afternoon off work to drag him to the clinic when he poisoned himself with the booze. I have no sympathy for him, yet she feels a deep empathy that comes from having peered into the hypnotic depths of the abyss herself (Lisa drinks an average of two and a half bottles of wine a day, yet resents the reputation she has acquired amongst her colleagues as a result).

Patrick is the consummate bullshitter, applying for job after job for which he is patently not qualified, anything in order to impress her, his soft, half-mumbling voice, striking blue eyes and battered face in absolute contrast to his rival’s brashness. It is precisely his worship of Lisa that endears me to him, although I possess a certain scepticism about how long such complete besottedness can last. I agree with her that Patrick is not in her league intellectually (she lamented her own snobbery about how his children’s talents lie in music and art as opposed to more academic subjects and her amazement that his ex-wife firmly steered them away from university in order to leech off their wages). He admires her wildness, failing to understand that she occasionally wants him to admonish her gently, to keep her in check before too much damage has been done.

“But what do you want, Lisa?” MS enquired, exasperated.

“I want it all!”

She wants reassurance, the freedom to surrender her fiercely asserted autonomy, to be weak instead of in charge, to rely on the emotional resources of a partner for respite, however brief. To be cherished without her independence being fatally compromised. Neither of these men can offer her this. And I know that she will inflict pain upon herself both through succumbing to guilt over Patrick who has done nothing to deserve being cast aside and striving to assuage her restlessness with a man infinitely more selfish and needy than her (according to her, Patrick is the needy one, she refuses to see how Michael will absorb every ounce of her energy in an unfair exchange for the insubstantial convulsions of thwarted desire, the illusion of scorning convention furnished by sentiments on an allegedly grander scale).

Even without the obligatory sign announcing the invisible frontier, the check points long since abandoned (unless the French are in one of their periodic strops, guards peering into your car as you crawl along the lane marked out by traffic cones), you can immediately tell when you have entered Waffleland by the proliferation of caravans and kiosks crowding the roadside purveying the national weakness, frites or frieten, the one element uniting the disparate and mutually hostile communities, the symbol of homecoming. Excavating them with a tiny plastic fork from beneath the more than generous dollops of mayonnaise an art in itself (perhaps if a citizenship test were introduced this should be considered the true proof of successful assimilation).

The streetscape of the city of spires and blackened sandstone has become gentrified, the small chippies with their specimen jars of pickled eggs and onions, their bottles of Cream Soda and competing concoctions with lurid, chemically enhanced hues, ousted by sandwich bars and coffee parlours, forced to seek refuge in the suburbs, slightly incongruous amongst the anonymous rows of bay windows. No pretensions, no freshly squeezed orange proclaiming its purity with a halo, just sizzling fat and the irresistable smell that attracts the hungry hordes to stagger semi-conscious in the direction of the haddock in crispy golden brown batter. Once, crossing the Meadows by the central walkway at night undeterred by the warnings of muggers lurking in the pools of darkness beyond the reach of the harsh orange glow, we flung our coagulated blood and oatmeal puddings against a tree trunk in disgust, having ordered the white variety, more palatable to a vegetarian (in the days when I would carefully enquire what kind of fat the establishment used for frying, although genuine consistency would have dictated abstinence from a dish containing suet immersed in the same oil as the sausages and other assorted items reserved for the carnivore).

The decline of organised religion visible in signs outside the Elim Pentecostal Church where worshippers formerly swayed, hands held heavenward, eyes firmly closed to gaze upon the divine by freeing the mind of distractions, muttering prayers in the tongues of angels where now that the pews have been removed the serious business of dancing is dedicated to the gratification of the flesh in a Frankenstein-themed nightclub rather than an expression of the spontaneous outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

The sour fragrance of fermentation borne by the wind over the expanses of rubble a constant reminder of the bleak industrial monuments levelled by the bulldozers and cranes less profitable than the conveniently located two-bedroom luxury developments. Even that dingy yet somehow tantalising institution the Fingertips Massage Parlour has succumbed to the relentless pressure for accommodation. With no windows to board up, the sense of desolation invoked by its deserted doorway is absolute, the seedy venues for seekers of cheap thrills and simulated desire displaced to the fringes of the Grassmarket (itself sanitised since the shelter for the homeless was moved elsewhere, the men in multiple layers of greasy overcoats and tangled beards accosting the tourists with slurred requests for the price of a cup of tea presumably too intimidating to the visitor to be tolerated in the long term. We cannot allow the pristine image of our capital be tarnished by its shambling underclass, whose existence must be rigorously denied. Besides, hotels are profitable, whereas hostels represent a drain on the budget).

As the parked coaches slumber does the nightingale’s song still pierce the sombre silence of the hillside beneath Statecraft’s austere and disapproving gaze?

[1985]

The Nature of Things
The panther rippled sleek through the proud grasses, green eyes searching, shining.
Beauty and grace and perfect motion, rich, dark fur, a furnace within; green eyes searching, shining.
Nostrils dilating, tail flicking, muscles flowing in swift pounce of death; green eyes searching, finding.

[1991]

I used to believe in the redemptive power of beauty – that if you surrounded yourself with works of art, rich fabrics and furnishings your soul would be uplifted, elevated above every evil act – a Wildean fable of sensuality in which lust masqueraded as sternest purity, a whiff of decadence, of sickliness. It was an impossible ideal, yet continues to exert a fascination. A life purged, incense, bells and embroidery, stained glass, vivid colour. It was never a matter of simple vanity or affectation – in the natural world beauty, the ornamental and the functional are intertwined – shimmering hummingbirds. Artifice is the very perpetuation of nature, its validation – plumage, horns, beaks, extravagant to the point of excess. Good is pallid, sterile. The flush of a wine-warmed cheek, the fingers dripping with balm, these are transient and by virtue of that transience poignant, fragile, in bloom suffused with a sweet and alarming hint of decay, the autumn swirl, how much more intriguing than cold chastity, how much more human.

[2007]

We might have been shabby, but we nurtured compensatory aesthetic sensibilities as we dreamed of the next plate of chocolate porridge (with a sprinkle of cinnamon), trudging through the streets, eyes fixed on the pavement not to avoid the dog-laid landmines, but scanning for dropped coins (or the occasional pound note blowing along the gutter). If we had been a little less proud, we might even have resorted to the tramps’ tactic of visiting phone booths and inserting a probing finger in the returned coins slot in hope of a jackpot. To survive the poverty induced by a corrupt landlord whose eviction method was increasing the rent from one month to the next until the grant money ran out we banished the crude and vulgar from our unheated rooms, retreating behind the glass-panelled door, allowing nothing from the outside to intrude.

The grey relieved only by graffitied initials, peeling paint on neglected walls. Beauty is the dandelion growing from the pavement crack, the buddleia with its butterfly attendants in the gap site, roots anchored in the rubble of demolished dwellings, anarchic, tenacious, surprising.

[Saturday 23rd January 1988]

All is frosty. Roof slates, lawns, evergreen fronds and needles. My brother is in the driveway with his yellow Mini, he has scraped the ice off the windscreen and is continually switching on the engine, revving it up and switching it off again. The vociferous gulls and the occasional bus along the (to me still) new route interrupt the peaceful morning. The noise of water travelling through pipes and the tank, the view of the telephone cable stretching between our houses where blackbirds, starlings and thrushes love to perch a while, even sing. The monkey puzzle tree, rising like a great, jagged pillar, the garages: our own, with black-painted doors, the more distant flat-roofed ones belonging to the neighbours two doors down. The hospital beyond, red brick chimney rising above the huddle of box-shaped buildings, the wooded hills of the valley in the distance. The window opposite, from which Annette would call across; the front gate and path; the road, neatly trimmed yellow-leaved hedges. The entrance to the cul-de-sac where my Granddad lived; the swings and the school grounds beyond, churned mud of the playing fields half solid in the chill. Once these marked the boundaries of my existence, stretching to the public baths on the Crieff Road and to the red sandstone of the Sandeman Library (I was never allowed there unaccompanied, though).

[2007]

Squabbling sparrows congregated unseen amongst the lilac twigs waiting to cadge some mouldy crusts (now that the preservatives have been removed, bread does not keep anything like as long as it used to). Folded tea towel beneath her elbows (bruised dark purple in spite of the padding), my Mother leaned on the draining board as she filled in the crossword, Ally Bally’s phone-in quiz blaring in the background, the window open in a vain attempt to conceal her fly smoke and avert the slight flicker of disappointment that registered on our faces (we never challenged her directly). Sometimes she would hastily stub out the evidence in the blue glass ashtray on the sill, which she would then slide behind the pot draped with the spider plant’s prolific fronds. Or else she would shut herself away in the bathroom, knowing that the sound of the lock would make us aware of the urge.

In earlier years I had always dreaded the request: “Would you nick down to Johnny’s for twenty Benson and Hedges?” even though she would sweeten it with a bribe. I loathed the errand, as if the malignant yellow stain of the nicotine would seep through the packet and contaminate my fingers as I laboured up the steep slope from the shop, lungs like lead. Annette and I had long since ceased pacing up and down the bench in the back garden pretending to be prisoners, picking up the butts from the gravel and inhaling deeply on unpolluted air, a fantasy of toughness.

Even the shed has been emptied, the old dog’s bones in the soft earth of the border an invisible token of our former occupancy.

The metallic chirping of the overhead wires announced the imminent arrival of the 7.42. The same committee yet again in the company of DW, whose surfeit of mental energy has to be released in an uninterrupted flow of learned expatiation of the most obscure lexical items in Polish, his current darling (postulating impossible vocabulary connections between unrelated tongues in an effort to gauge whether his audience’s attention has strayed), whose CD player pounds out the repetitive rhythms of folk dances and rap alike on the monthly 500-kilometre pilgrimage and whose novel approach to language acquisition involves grappling with crosswords as opposed to sampling the literary greats of a given culture.

My guess as to the exact positioning of the first-class compartment proved accurate (not always as prosaically predictable as it might seem, this being Waffleland after all, where the stifling unimaginativeness of the bourgeois is surpassed only by the bloody-minded pursuit of causing maximum inconvenience on the part of officials in the state apparatus. If, for example, you have the temerity to disturb the salesperson behind the counter by actually attempting to purchase a ticket, you are greeted by a sullen grunt and eyes flinging a thousand daggers bang on target, customer service being an entirely alien concept, the country having resisted importing the vacuous superficiality of transaction politeness from the States). I do not need to depart so early, but the thought of squeezing in alongside self-important suited bureaucrats who might have gone heavy on the garlic the night before fills me with revulsion.

The stations and shelters a mess of graffiti (my favourite, depicting a parade of militant ladybirds marching bipedally, warm smiles reassuring the onlookers that they posed no threat, the slogan “Cocc’s army, peacelly ready” confirming the impression of a non-violent demonstration, having long since being sprayed over with some inanity), the conductor with his twirled walrus moustache scolding a passenger for not having written the destination in full (ignoring all protestations that there simply isn’t space for the double-barrelled designation). Coffee and couque suisse for breakfast at the bar, before being subjected to the umpteenth paper delivered in a monotone by a non-native speaker (with the concomitant paucity of expression or wit) on the inconsistencies and iniquities of roaming prices.

Halfway through the morning, the lovely and generous AS dropped off a John Lewis carrier bag full of expensive sexy scarlet underwear as well as a few vests for my niece (soon to be flower girl) and a beautiful handbag in shimmering blue to match the silk dress her mother has tailored with consummate skill. DW insisted on examining the contents, his irrepressible curiosity extending to such trivia.

Relief at finally being freed from the obligations of toil (just a couple of sessions on standby duty before departing on leave) and familiarity with the timetable propelled me out of the building and down onto the platform. It was only when three-quarters of the way back that it occurred to me that only one plastic bag, with the day’s newspaper clippings, rested on the seat opposite. Details had fully absorbed my mind, from the favours (small boxes of exquisite, hand-made chocolate and whisky miniatures) to the petals to be strewn in lieu of confetti, rudely elbowing out any thought beyond the normal routine. Several panicked phone calls later, I was trundling back, hoping desperately that the room had not been cleared (I have never forgotten the trauma of leaving a folder with the irreplaceable manuscript of a short story along with some magazines, clearly marked “Please do not remove” in several languages only to return after lunch to find it had all disappeared. A kind-hearted colleague, taking pity on me in my anguish, set off in search of the cleaning ladies who denied all knowledge. She insisted that they rummage through the black bags from the meeting room. Without her stern intervention, the sole copy would never have been retrieved, unscathed, the glossies having soaked up the coffee dregs poured in from the cups).

The male tea servers (whose responsibilities also include replacing opened bottles of mineral water) were wheeling out the stack of trays with dirty glasses and lipstick-stained cups sporting the institution logo, flirting with the cleaning staff. I was poised to intercept them, but the bag was exactly where I had left it, all contents accounted for. Then another dash for the train to make it home in the nick of time for the beginning of my afternoon on-call (fixed line only).

The Hungarian awaited me, a bemused smile on his face. I was not immune to the stress of the occasion in spite of a lack of obvious nerves. In the car, my mobile rang. It was DW, one of the recipients of my numerous distress calls. He had been the last to gather his bits and bobs together and I had left him a message in case he had noticed my oversight. Like a true gentleman, he had come to my assistance, immediately heading back to the room in search of the lost property. On finding the booth empty, he ran after the cleaners, enquiring if they had happened upon a plastic bag. They shook their heads, asking what had been inside it. “Items of feminine apparel of an intimate nature, in ruby lace,” he stammered. The raised eyebrows accompanying the sympathetic shrugs brought a blush to his cheeks. It was obvious that they had him down for a man caught out. I did not press him over whether, in his opinion, they thought he had bought them for a mistress or to try on himself in the privacy of his own home.

On any normal evening I would snuggle under the covers, turning down the electric blanket from “High” (my parents comforting me that the wheezing would pass, my body was simply directing all its energy into growing back my long tresses after they had been swept away on the hairdresser’s floor, the remaining locks styled into a neat and demure “page boy”). As long as my shoulders were warm, the rest of me would be warm too. Then I would switch on the transistor (my pride and joy before the black and white portable took up residence on top of the record cabinet) and tune in to Radio Four for the latest instalment of A Book at Bedtime, eagerly absorbing the narratives of J G Farrell’s Troubles and Robert Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Not for me the vulgarities of Radio One with its incessant blare of inane ditties condensing the pleasures and disappointments of carnality into the standard three minute format, the preferred amusement of my classmates. Sometimes I would deviate from my ritual and listen on afterwards. I remember a vivid account of a trek across the desert, the explorer lamenting the stubbornness of camels and passing on his top travel tip of how to overcome their reluctance (of which no animal welfare organisation would approve): shoving a sharp stick up their backsides. Crude, but effective.

Twice a year, however, no soothing stream of speech would suffice to induce slumber. Christmas Eve and the night before setting off on holiday. In the days before the town was encircled by supermarkets, my Mother had put in her order to Johnny the grocer (son of Italian immigrants, whose perfectly assimilated local accent contrasted with his Mother’s sun-drenched lilt, “Two-a-pennies, please!”). The cardboard boxes stacked with tins were always delivered on time, my Father carrying out a nervous stocktaking to make sure nothing had been forgotten. A bulging sack of potatoes, carrots, milk, an industrial-sized bottle of Spry Crisp ‘n Dry (the advert proudly demonstrating the aptness of the brand name with a housewife tipping the contents of her chip pan onto a sheet of kitchen roll, the golden brown slivers leaving no greasy smudges behind)…all to be loaded into the boot along with the blankets (for dog and humans), bright plastic buckets and spades (although the shore was for the most part a mixture of boulders and gravel), all-contingency-covering paraffin lamp and cylinder of Calor Gas for excursions until the view through the rear window was completely blocked.

My Father was itching to depart, desperate to arrive before our cousins from Edinburgh. Jean would not hand over the key to the cottage until she had cleaned it to her satisfaction, always at two. She might be waiting for us in the post-office, a corrugated iron hut opposite her house, the wiry black and white mongrel Spot and colour-coordinated Border collie Sheila barking a guarded welcome. Progress seemed painfully slow in the excitement, my Father driving cautiously, tooting the horn at the two blind bends on the perilously narrow road to alert oncoming traffic, following the example of the bus drivers in his youth. As we crossed the River Garry, he would recount the tale behind the Soldier’s Leap, then point out the gable end and the wine glass tree by the entrance road to the youth hostel. Then there was the well with its Biblical inscription rendered almost illegible by moss: “Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again, But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst”. Then came “the bumps”, where he would accelerate until the car practically lifted off the ground and we would screech with delight at the feeling in our stomachs like doing a pile-up on the swings or taking a spin on the Waltzers at the shows.

We would park by the abandoned barn with its exposed rafters and rusted roofing and arrange the food in the cupboards and claim our beds before Mum put the kettle on for the obligatory cup of tea. Rory and I would keep a lookout for their car from the cattle-studded field or from the den with its treacherously slidy slopes, our knee-high wellies designed to afford protection against the wet rather than providing grip. We would hurtle down alongside the car as it lurched its way along the winding, tractor-rutted track, a trail of dust in its wake.

Martin and Matthew in the back, barrel-shaped Ronnie behind the wheel, Cathy. It never bothered me that their car was always bigger than ours and the registration number newer. Only my Dad noticed or seemed to care. My uncle was an architect and the family lived in a substantial bungalow with garden all round at the foot of Arthur’s Seat. Cathy was the only one of the three sisters to have kept her slender figure, a fact once commented upon by one of my exes as proof that my plumpness was not inevitable, but she subsisted on nicotine and black, unsweetened tea, her body shape a constant reminder of having attained superior social status (Ronnie no doubt insisting she remain fit to be seen on his arm at parties). He walked with the swagger of success, asserting his dominance at every available opportunity (the most hated manifestation of which was when he, after demolishing a mountain of chips on his own plate – he was served first – reached over to each of ours to steal yet more).

As I stared up at the skylight from my bed on the landing at the top of the stairs I could hear them playing whist and laughing, the sickly fragrance of Ronnie’s cigars mingling with the women’s cheaper Benson and Hedges smoke.

Martin, the eldest son, was presented as the little genius. We stopped playing chess eventually because I had an annoying habit of winning. He was remote and introverted, silent for the most part and completely passionless. His little brother by contrast did not conceal his moods, but ran around untamed and chaotic like his tousled blond hair. When rain did not confine us to the sitting room with its round polished wood table and jigsaws of The Seven Wonders of the World and honeysuckle-trellised thatched cottages, we picked our way along to the Point, the limit of the territory we were entitled to roam, with its primroses and bluebell carpet where the burn flowed into the loch. The boundary was marked by a dilapidated fence with jagged wire, barbs decorated with tufts of wool where sheep had wriggled through. The peak of Schiehallion rose, unperturbed by our petty squabbles over who had caught the biggest minnow in the jar. We competed at skimmers, searching for the most promising flat stones. Matthew was the expert, in spite of his tender years. This rivalry could not match the simmering resentments between the adults, however.

Whilst my Mother and Cathy sunbathed and puffed away at their cigarettes (which they claimed were excellent at keeping the dreaded midges at bay) or swapped library books with repetitive tales of ravished maidens and heaving bosoms, my Dad and Ronnie would pull on their waders and select the appropriate fly. Pike they would throw back, likewise perch (unless my Granddad was there to devour his favourite fish, never understanding their disdain for the catch), brown trout the elusive prize. Ronnie would smirk over his rod, longer, lighter, more flexible, more exclusive. We were always shooed away when they were waist deep, my Dad’s dentures gritted with determination. The scrunching sound we made as we walked might send vibrations into the water and scare off the fish and our guts would be worn as garters if we so much as contemplated throwing any stones in (another area in which the male power struggle was periodically played out over who could throw the heaviest rock furthest, cheered on by admiring offspring).

I would often head off for the bog on my own, jumping from tussock to tussock to stare at the pond skaters skimming over the rainbowed surface of the oily pools. If you landed in the mud by mistake, your wellie could easily be sucked off and all your strength would be needed to reclaim it from the marsh’s insistent tug. I would sit and pick the cotton grass as the lapwings called, swatting clegs as they settled on my exposed skin ready to pierce it and drain my blood. Or I would pick gooseberries from the bush near the log pile, leaving the boys to search for the abandoned Mini that so fascinated them. When the hay bales had been stacked into towers like oversized prickly building blocks, we would climb up them. They were our fortresses, our ships or our sweet-smelling shelters until our appointed sentry spotted Bertie the farmer patrolling on his Massey Ferguson and we would scatter like panicked hens.

In the end, Ronnie drank himself into an early grave, but not before Cathy’s ascent was cut short by divorce. She then married her childhood sweetheart, a short, rotund man who could almost pass for Ronnie’s double, though coarser, gruffer and contemptuous of the social graces. Every week she would pop in through the back door for a cuppa and a chat, picking up her carrier bag full of used tea bags for compost, her thwarted ambition etched deep in the lines across her brow.

[See also: Faded Summer]

The shelf-stacker was in festive mood with his blue tinsel wig as he expertly sorted the bewildering variety of cheeses into their respective niches. Aisle after aisle heaped with every imaginable temptation. We were stocking up, only G’s existence having been acknowledged in the pantry, Irn Bru, Crunchies and breakfast cereal with post-it messages offering appeasement.

My room had been left intact, although between my brother’s inventory over the phone and our arrival, he had removed the printer. The aerials point skyward, naked now that the starlings have fled. Pigeons huddle on Tam’s roof, despondent in the drizzle, hoping for a crust, stray feathers littering the patio and droplets hang from the washing line. The fairy rings have gone, banished by the concrete slabs. My brother laments the ignorance of the incomers who have transformed our community to “Muirton on the Hill” with their unnecessary shouting and their habits of parking right in front of their gates to maximise the inconvenience of the bus drivers whose manoeuvring skills are already tested to the limit as they weave their way townward. The utter lack of consideration for others a defining trait in which they take a perverse pride. No words of greeting from them even if we pass mere inches apart and cannot pretend that we have not seen each other. Although litter does not yet clog the front gardens, most of the patches of lawn have been replaced by gravel, the roses torn out, their pink heads a memory, vanished with my Mother’s gloves and pruning shears.

Throughout the night the gas central heating sighs in an uninterrupted exhalation. The Hungarian’s snores from the other bedroom not loud enough to keep me awake, his exile from the soft mattress voluntary. The new development on the sloping pasture land absorbs the melancholy pealing of the Academy bell, the white, soulless “desirable area” properties spoiling the view where once cattle flicked their tails in a futile effort to dislodge the blood-sucking clegs.

The air is damp, the cleansing autumn gales long since spent. The loft hatch would snap angrily in such storms and I would pull the covers over my head, terrified. Sometimes I would awake to find it open, gaping like a corpse’s mouth. I could sense a malevolent presence up there, which I referred to as “The Man”. His main dwelling was among the rafters where only the pigeons ventured, that little wooden door my only protection against Him, although He also lurked in the “boley holes”, the cramped spaces between the inner and outer walls accessible from my parents’ bedroom again through narrow entrances, one mercifully concealed in the cupboard, the other troublingly exposed. When I opened my door, alone upstairs, my pulse would race and I would hurtle downstairs and into the safety of the living room, evading his grasp.

My Father’s constant reassurances that there was nothing in the loft and that, since we had been the only occupants of the house, regrets or unquenched wrath of unknown predecessors had not seeped into its bricks, failed to calm me. As night descended I could feel Him stirring, listening, waiting. Whenever the telephone in the hallway imperiously issued its shrill summons, my trembling hand picked up the receiver (it could be Him on the other end; He wouldn’t have to say a word, His silence sufficient to penetrate my marrow), my voice tense as I stared at the mirror in which the stairs were reflected, instantly relaying the slightest movement.

My Mother’s shift started in the early evening and when we were deemed old enough to cope with five hours on our own she would put our supper on the plates beside the mugs into which she had already thoughtfully deposited teabags and walk to the hospital to inspect its corridors and toilets for dirt and to supervise the cleaning staff. At first my brother and I would watch our programmes, feet never touching the carpets for fear that scissor-wielding hands would dart out from beneath the chairs to cut them off at the ankles. By around eight, however, unexplained creaking of the floorboards from above had usually driven us beneath the sideboard, which we barricaded with cushions, callously evicting our Pomeranian from her corner, behind the settee, which we likewise blocked off at either end or into the narrow cupboard in my brother’s room, behind the rail of coats, occasionally plucking up the courage to peep through the crack, ears straining for any sound betraying an approach. In that latter hideout we switched off the lights in the room in a feeble attempt to deceive Him, clutching plastic swords and bread knives, emerging with impeccable timing just before we heard her key turn in the lock.

Intrepid Uncle Ian with his mop of black hair once clambered up, undaunted by my palpable dread, pushing his slender frame through to send Him scurrying into the recesses before the beam of the torch. A large hammer propped against the wall, nothing else. Even this did not convince me when I felt Him coiled and deceptively still, like a snake poised to inject its venom, so my Father decided to fit hooks in the ceiling on either side as well as in the wooden hatch itself, to which he attached a sink chain from which the plug had been detached, enough to prevent the strongest winds wrenching open the entrance to His domain.

The Church, with an explanatory framework incorporating supernatural forces, could entertain the possibility, however reluctantly, of an evil spirit. CC, in his zeal to prove that he was the most worthy candidate for my affections, decided to exorcise the demon that had caused me such torment. Bible in hand, he unhooked the zigzag of chains and slid through into the darkness. I took refuge outside, where the orange street lights blotted out all but the brightest stars. A few moments later he joined me, unscathed, but slightly ruffled. As he had begun reciting the verses unease had gripped him, as if some unknown entity were skulking in the shadows, intent on mischief. Slowly gaining comfort and confidence from the selected passage he felt it retreat until finally a scratching sound directed his attention towards the far end where the cable connecting my TV set to the roof aerial lay. With a start he witnessed it jerking suddenly as if someone had just tripped over it in a frantic bid to escape. The Lord had cast them out at last.

With age, my sensitivity to such malignant beings has diminished. There are no invisible occupants lingering, unwelcome, in the attic or crowding round the bed, slender fingers eager to wrap themselves round my neck, the threat relegated to beyond the walls, where a face might loom towards the window as I boil the kettle.

The reverential hush of the reading room would occasionally be interrupted by the squeaking wheels of the trolley piled with books and files conveyed from vaults lit only by naked bulbs. I would grudge the tyranny of my body’s insistent promptings whether to seek relief or corporeal (as opposed to intellectual) sustenance (not even bottled water permitted into the sanctum), both necessitating a temporary abandonment of the pages perhaps only I had pillaged. Emerging into the sunlight from the grand marble entrance halls, I would be seized with a pang, aware suddenly of my pulse, the youthful vitality throbbing through my arteries. Double-deckers would trundle past, spewing clouds of filth from their exhausts. The homeless man we had nicknamed “The Corpse” due to his extraordinary capacity to sleep through any amount of din from revellers stupefied by an excess of distillate-measures in the doorway recesses of major fashion retailers on Princes Street would also lumber by, his gait and his shape distorted by layer upon layer of grease and dust-impregnated coats which had long since ceased to be waterproof, cursing randomly and incoherently at his fate.

My impulse would be to run, to release this surfeit of energy, to seek out the sprawling lawns beneath the cliffs, where the infirm basked in the benevolent summer rays on the benches donated in memory of others who had tarried there, surveying the couples and wandering tourists to the accompaniment of a dissonant symphony of wind-borne notes from buskers’ pipes, guitars and accordions competing for meagre pickings of loose change. Excluded from the buoyant surge of the swirling torrents of humanity I would stand on the pavement as they flowed by, my presence registering only as an obstacle to be negotiated. Minute after minute slipping away like an autumn leaf on the current I might snatch after, yet never retrieve. I ought to be idly watching the northbound trains from the iron bridge, I ought to be wandering through the cobbled streets, the sour smell of brewery yeast filling my nostrils; I ought to be counting the discarded shopping trolleys in the disused canals instead of squandering my best years accumulating knowledge that would not compensate for my mortality. Yet I would always drag myself back to the archives, perhaps because I did not want to let my parents down, perhaps because I felt the burden of presenting our narrow-minded detractors with undeniable proof of our potential, that birth has always been far less of a determinant than social strictures in spite of the most eloquent avowals of those who in jealously guarding their privilege deny opportunity and mobility to their “inferiors”.

My Father would spread his dreams of an itinerant life in a motor home in front of us wistfully. Think of being able to decide on the view from your front window in the mornings, he would enthuse. I had always interpreted these dark mutterings as the expression of a longing to escape, the longing that tugs at us all, the longing which must be suppressed to enable us to stagger on. Instead he has thrown himself willingly over the edge of the precipice. He is marrying her exactly a fortnight before I tie the knot myself and has already removed the new three-piece suite he had installed for her, replacing my Mother’s portrait with her wizened features.

The wall where the framed tourist board poster of Queen’s View reminded us of untainted summers now stares blank for the first time in the fifty-three years of his tenancy (our home is owned by a charity, bequeathed by a bereaved colonel for the use of disabled war veterans in perpetuity; nobody but our family has ever lived there). Its absence signifying my impending banishment (not the exile abroad imposed on me by the need to provide for my dependents), my having been disowned.

“What is it about men that they can abandon their children so easily? How can he walk out on you and your brother for the sake of a mummified old slut?” Harsh words spoken by a close friend in loyalty and exasperation born from unconditional support. I had not realised before how much of a calming and restraining influence my Mother had been on him. That she had stabilised him and mitigated his worst tendencies. He claimed that he had thrown himself into his activities (Korean veterans, local table tennis league and training young players, the Christian fellowship he has been a member of since his conversion in 1981, first aid lecturing) to blunt his loneliness, yet my Mother complained bitterly about how he had deserted her, lavishing more loving care on the ambulance he was in charge of and which he drove to various events than on his wife. The less mobile she became, the more desperate he seemed to stay away from the house, to deny her decline (for a good decade prior to her death he would tell me how, a light sleeper, he would lie awake at night listening to her wheezing chest, the gurgling of her ailing lungs).

When my brother informed me that he had announced a date a bare month after making her acquaintance, that he was flitting about like a “drunken butterfly”, I attempted to reason with him in the mistaken belief that our relationship could withstand the stark truth of my disapproval. I have never openly criticised him, true to the stereotype of the dutiful daughter. Mild teasing had always been my tactic, but the enormity of what I still perceive to be a massive mistake warranted greater forthrightness. His pathological aversion to conflict has resulted in an abrupt and callous severance, we are to be amputated like a cancer with the brisk and clinical efficiency of a practiced surgeon and left, dazed, to ponder why he views us in purely negative terms, as an encumbrance to be resented. He refuses to discern the pain behind my words, lamenting my inability to trust in his judgement – how can I, however, when his response has been so final, so drastic? I have no doubt that he is using her as an excuse (although she is no innocent bystander), that it is easer for him to ascribe his decision to uproot himself to my scepticism about the wisdom of his impetuous and precipitate decision (motivated as much by concern for his future welfare as dismay at the suddenness of the communication of his intent without any room for input or gradual adjustment to the idea). It is less traumatic for him to cut us off completely than confront his share of the responsibility for our rejection.

He prefers to delude himself that I do not care about his happiness, that my only wish is to deprive him of solace and companionship. Whereas what I object to in reality is the rashness of his actions, the sheer ineptitude of his handling of the matter, the failure to take the slightest account of our feelings. All of this anguish could have been circumvented by a slower and more tactful approach. “You’re big and daft enough to look after yourself,” he always shrugged when I was about to embark on some foolhardy undertaking. This usually proved sufficient to prompt me to reconsider. Perhaps he has been so thoroughly contaminated by the church that he cannot help himself but retaliate for the spurning of his patriarchal authority by exercising the sole power left to him, the power of repudiation. For possessing the temerity to question him I am to be punished by being excised.

Other friends have endeavoured to console me by suggesting that perhaps her children and grandchildren will greet the development with equal delight. Apparently they have all been invited to the ceremony (we have not) and have accepted. She has been alone for twenty-six years and he will be fired by a desire to prove our gloomy predictions about their longer-term prospects wrong. He is eager to show us that he has no further need for us; his new surrogates will endorse his role as her spouse, gratefully showering him with all the gratitude and affirmation he could ever hope for.

What he has entirely neglected to entertain is the possibility that they might discover they are not quite as compatible as he initially thought once they settle down together and novelty capitulates beneath the relentless onslaught of mundane familiarity. By relinquishing his bolthole, he is placing himself entirely at her mercy. She will try to mould him, to fashion him in the image she deems appropriate. Ripped away from his family, without alternative refuge and too stubborn to admit he may have been mistaken his choices will be between vegetation in front of the TV set (he cannot assume that she will let him wield the remote control and flick restlessly through the satellite channels as my Mother did) and slow decline in a village where he cannot keep up the pursuits that have given him an outlet, a modicum of independence (the isolation of the partner from contact with the outside world, friends and family the sly but proven tactic of the abuser). If her affection for him were sincere she would surely advise him against creating a rift he might come to regret. Then again, never having been met us we are nothing to her in the same way as she is nothing to us.

I relented and made a gesture of reconciliation: I would pay the rent on the home I grew up in for an indeterminate period so that he would have somewhere to go should the emotions curdle and disillusionment set in. I appealed to him to allow us to meet him on his 75^th birthday (having made it plain in the course of the conversation he has seized upon as a pretext to justify his childish shunning that I would, out of sheer respect for him, be polite and friendly towards her), the main reason for our forthcoming trip home. Once again, he has wilfully misconstrued my intentions, citing the illegality of subletting the property (it was absolutely clear that I was indicating my willingness to sacrifice a substantial slice of my income to preserve his access to a house that would stand empty in case he required it). I have failed to dissuade him from being reckless and I have inherited his stubbornness. Neither of us will be the first to yield. I do not want to lose my Father, but he has made up his mind that she is more important to him than we are. I cannot forgive her for wrenching him from me, for forcing him to take sides when it was never an “either or” situation. For actively encouraging him to turn his back on us.

I do not derive pleasure from daydreaming that I will one day be able to gloat when he comes crawling back. I am too busy reeling from the realisation that our bond was nothing more than a mirage, no more palpable than the caress of a spring breeze. When I lie in my bedroom, restless and aching, the last sounds I hear will no longer be the creak of the stairs, the swish of him drawing the curtains on the landing, the soft “Night, night” and the click of the light switch plunging me into darkness.

Peas float in the pot, the submerged rice clinging to the enamel betraying its presence through the sour smell of fermentation, like the contents of a pumped stomach after a night of who-cares-about-the-morning-let’s-have-another recklessness.  Plate stacked precariously upon plate patiently awaiting the loving ministrations of the cleaning lady’s rubber-gloved hands, the cleansing baptismal dunk in suds perfumed with grapefruit and mint extract to emerge gleaming, reborn.  The coffee elbows aside rival fragrances like an unapologetic queue jumper in the daily croissant scrum at the bar (the commuters arriving in a surge from the train, conveyed by the escalator to the third floor where the sub-contracted security guards prowl, scanning their badges, which must be visible at all times on pain of a ticking off and possible ejection).

It has been an exceptionally mild November, yet my body instinctively hunches to conserve heat, the memory of the last few weeks haunting its extremities.  The boiler had obligingly spluttered back into life only to clog up almost immediately in a massive infarct worthy of the archetypal estate dweller for which our largest city is so famed (whose life expectancy is curtailed by poverty to a mere 66 years, on a par with Albania and over a decade lower than the span granted to the gin-swilling London sophisticates whose optimism is no doubt buoyed by the knowledge that their stone walls increase in value faster than convolvulus tendrils grow).  Earlier in the week the repairman had arrived so late that we had already given up on him and sought refuge in a nearby restaurant, leaving us with the prospect of a weekend of shivering with guests due for dinner that evening.  In desperation the Hungarian purchased a plug-in radiator complete with oil (theoretically to reduce electricity consumption), which did have the merit of banishing the chill to the extent that our every breath ceased manifesting like a ghostly presence.  As soon as he turned it on full at my insistence, however, we were plunged into total darkness.  G located the torch and we removed a sample fuse from the box for him to present to a salesman at the sprawling DIY warehouse behind our hedge.  It transpired, however, that they no longer stocked such old-fashioned articles and the little shop that had so faithfully provided us with replacements had long since gone out of business.  The upstairs lighting therefore had to be sacrificed as did the radiator’s albeit feeble output so that the paprika chicken dish and home-made galuska could be duly presented to LR and her most unpriestly Patrick.  We lit every candle along the window sill and let down the shutters in hope of warmth.  To little avail.

Our predicament greatly amused my brother, who cheerfully dispensed advice: “Old bits of carpet are great, but only the Hessian-backed ones, cos the foam ones burn like shite”.  He regaled me with recollections from his single days when taking out the rubbish was fraught with peril (you had to lay the bags down carefully in the pile at the stairway entrance to avoid needlestick injury and possible deadly infection).  Jeans, especially the black canvas ones, were also an ideal fuel: “They were a real bargain – they cost me a fiver, I wore them for three years and then they kept me cosy”.  Now that he lives in relative luxury in his council house with double glazing and central heating the glow of nostalgia suffuses the memories of greater deprivation.

I have always shunned artifice, eschewing the creams and concoctions with their extortionate price tags and false promises of mystical regeneration, of repairing the “damage” wrought by time’s relentless passage, harbouring a condescending scorn for those weak enough to succumb to the pressures of male disapproval, vanity and the spend, spend, spend Diktat of consumerism.  I have never regarded myself as a sexual being, nor have I constructed my persona around my appearance, take it or leave it my guiding principle (the magnificent Jean, member of the Deer Tribe and frequenter of sweat lodges once advised me to think of my cunt as a precious jewel, the most desirable ruby in the world, that all men craved, but which I must guard jealously).  For twenty-one years I had not been to the hairdresser’s.  My tresses of uneven length straggled down to the middle of my back in all their silver-laced, exuberant anarchy, but I allowed myself to be cajoled into compliance with the assurance that there would be months for it to grow back again should I shudder at the results.  So I took the Metro to the genteel suburb at the end of the line to the salon (“artisan coiffeur” no less) Espace Florilège where each member of staff was a walking advertisement for the skills of the proprietress.  I donned a long-sleeved black gown and tried not to wince as Madame stood behind my shoulders poised with her implements, snip, snip, snipping and gathering my fallen locks to be preserved for posterity in an envelope.  “There’s nothing to worry about,” she cooed encouragingly, “We are in the business of making our clients more beautiful, not ugly”.  As her assistant massaged the white paste Madame had carefully mixed into my scalp, I tried to dismiss the warnings I had read in various articles about bowel cancer being triggered by dyes and thought instead of my last trip with my Mother back home for a “page boy” cut, the radio blaring in the background and the old biddies slurping tea and chatting above the din of the dryers, girls young enough to be their great granddaughters sweeping the grey curls over the linoleum to the bins.

I surrendered to Madame’s reassurances of professionalism and inwardly smiled at the sight of myself in grotesquely large pink curlers once the nostril-prickling ammonia colouring agent had been rinsed away.  ES hovered in the doorway and was informed that I would be another half an hour or so.  I was left to observe this most feminine of environments with the intrigued yet benevolent curiosity of the anthropologist subjected to an unfamiliar ritual in exotic surroundings lacking the cultural wherewithal to participate like a native.

Eventually I was expected to comment on the outcome.  Their trepidation was greater than mine when I offered a few feeble remarks that fell considerably short of the lavish praise they had grown accustomed to from other customers wont to gush at the transformation.  My hair was now the dark brown of fallen chestnuts amongst the fiery autumn drifts.  To my relief it did not look like it had come out of a bottle (even Madame’s helpers were impressed by the natural effect she had achieved) and its sheen was pleasing.  Two thirds of it had been discarded yet it appeared thicker and more opulent.  Perhaps the visit would not be my last after all.

Mine would not be the only transition.  My suspicions had been aroused by the news that my Father was about to purchase a new carpet (no amount of stubborn assiduity or chemical intervention could efface the lingering stain left by my Mother’s seeping legs as she slowly expired) and a leather suite even before the telephone’s shrill summons with his bald announcement.  I contacted my brother to garner his initial reactions.  Rationally, we are both aware that to wish solitude and celibacy on him is the height of selfishness, yet for him to marry a woman he met in the flesh for the first time a mere week ago seems not only surreal (age has not blunted his impulsiveness) but a complete mockery of the fifty-one years of fidelity and apparent devotion that bound him to that beautiful and long-suffering woman of whose infinitely generous and forgiving love we have all been robbed.  We agreed that neither of us would object in the slightest to an affair or a looser partnership conducted anywhere but in the home we shared.  I knew what he meant when he complained, the concentrated bitterness in his voice more eloquent even than the words themselves, that when he walks through the back door and is confronted by a chair once again positioned where she used to sit, he will feel sick to the stomach.

Able to sniff disapproval at a hundred yards, my brother is sceptical of the future of the family.  He reported that her Alsatian had “had an accident” over the back seat of the car without so much as a shrug from my Father, whereas “If one of my bairns were so much as tae drop a crisp on the floor he would throw a fit”.  During the strained fifteen-minute drop-in my Father feigned normality (the product of his generation and of loyal adherence to the tradition of Scottish masculinity in which he was immersed, he never was any good at expressing his feelings, a mistake I was determined never to make with my son), glossing over her presence as if it were nothing unusual.  He keeps forgetting her name and even my brother felt a twinge of pity on noticing her wince at being referred to as “thingummyjig” (our theory being that my Father keeps catching himself about to call her “Mary”).

Living in the splendid isolation of exile, I have as good as severed my ties by default (although I am occasionally assailed by a pang of longing at all the joys and sorrows I have missed).  Now I am tormented by the prospect of never being at ease in the house in which I grew up even should I succeed in stifling the hostility and resentment that well up inside me.  If I can abandon my own flesh and blood, how can he imagine that I could ever make room for “new brothers and sisters”?  I want nothing to do with them.  They are and will forever remain strangers to me.  Once she has gone I will have no reason to tolerate them or even maintain the thinnest veneer of politeness.  For me it has always been all or nothing.  No compromises (even here not beyond the absolute bare minimum to avoid hurting him), only the pure, unyielding, ferocious consistency that has permitted me not only to survive but to surpass.

[Full photo set here]