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.