Fractured Idyll
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.
Labels: family history, strathtummel
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home