by Laura Marney
‘Och I’m sure you’re quite safe. If I know Harry he’ll have done everything by the book, all legal and correct. It’s your birthright, no one can take that away from you.’
Bells were ringing all over the place. Harry? Rosie? Jock? Birthright? Harry and Rosie, that’s where Harrosie came from. Harry, short for Henry. Harry, the name of the wee man at Mum’s funeral. Why had not made this link before now?
‘Spider, what was Harry like? I mean, what did he look like?’
‘He was smart enough. Small, thin, snappy dresser.’
‘Oh my God! I think I’ve met him. He came to my house, he gatecrashed my mother’s funeral!’
‘Oh now don’t be so hard on the old fella, he only wanted to do right by you.’
Bells were ringing all over the place. I felt as if I had the 1812 overture going off in my head.
‘Spider, what is Jock short for?’
‘It’s John.’
‘But can’t John be Jack as well?’
‘Aye, that’s what he’s calling himself these days, Jackie, but I’m not calling him that. He was Jock when we were at school and Jock when he went into the army. It was the English wife that christened him Jackie.’
‘You were at school together?’
How old was Jackie then? But that was hardly important, I was coming on to the question of birthright when the conservatory door burst open.
‘You, ya dirty hoormaister!’
Kathy flew at Spider and dug her nails into the top of his head. He had a job getting her off, they were both making grunting noises but with his ponytail swinging, Spider finally shoved her away. She bounced into the front window wall, making the whole structure of the conservatory sway. Next she went for me.
‘And you, ya fucking dirty Weegie bastard! Can you not get a man of your own?’
She made a breenge for me but she had further to come and by the time she reached me I was on my feet with Spider standing between us. She screamed at me over his shoulder.
‘Get out of my house you dirty fucking cow! And leave my man alone!’
‘Get a hold of yourself, woman! Trixie is a guest in my house. There’s no occasion for insults.’
I noticed he didn’t deny being a dirty hoormaister, but neither did he defend my honour.
‘Ya manky auld slapper! Get to fuck away from my man!’
I heard a child crying somewhere in a room above us. As the slurs rained down Keek came out in his Y-fronts to see what was going on, and soon the house was a hive of post-coital activity. Over Spider’s shoulder, beyond Kathy’s foaming lips, there was enough light now to see the river and the mountains, all of nature, and it was so peaceful.
Chapter 23
On the way home I tried to make sense of it. No doubt there would be an element of truth in what Spider said, the names all rang true, but I didn’t get the birthright thing.
I tried to sneak in the back door but Nettie shouted.
‘Is that you Trisha?’
‘Yes.’
The fact that Nettie was awake alarmed me. It was six in the morning.
‘Where are the boys? Are they in?’
Nettie came into the kitchen in her nightie and my dressing gown.
‘Aye the boys are fine. They keep better hours than some I could mention.’
She said it ratty but she was smiling.
‘Sorry. We went back to someone’s house for coffee and, och, you know what it’s like’.
‘D’you want a cuppa?’
Seeing as she wasn’t going to give me a hard time I agreed. I was knackered and it was nice just to be back sitting in my own kitchen.
‘Sorry Trisha, I mean Trixie, I borrowed your goonie, I hope you don’t mind, I was freezing.’
‘No, help yourself.’
‘That’s a smashing view you get from your bedroom window. It wasn’t till I saw it that I remembered. Elsie was right, it’s a fabulous view.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘This is the place!’
‘Sorry?’
‘Where she worked, it must be.’
This was too spooky. Nettie was about to finish what Spider had started. Please God, let her keep it simple, I thought, don’t let her start on about the gollie dollie again.
‘Nettie I’m interested, honestly I am, but I’m tired. Tell me again, slowly and try to just stick to the story.’
She took that quite well for Nettie, rather than waste time taking the huff she launched in.
‘Well you know Elsie: headstrong. But folk didnae get divorced in they days, hen. I could sympathise, if my Tommy had been away all the time like that I would have had something to say about it.’
‘Mum wanted a divorce?’
‘Naw, no really, but she was fed up with Hughie being away all the time.’
‘You mean when he was in the Merchant Navy?’
‘Aye, och you’ll no remember it, it was before you were even born but Hughie was all over the place, Hong Kong, Taiwan, you name it. Mind you, he always remembered us. Every time he came home on leave he brought back fantastic gadgets: battery operated toys, painted coconuts, lovely silk scarves for your mammy. In they days there was a lot of things you couldnae get in Scotland, no like it is now.’
She was off on one, I had to get her back on track.
‘But Nettie, what has that got to do with Inverfaughie?’
‘Oh excuse me! You’re the one that wants to know.’
It was at times like this, when Nettie reminded me so much of Mum, that I most wanted to strangle her.
‘Sorry Nettie. In your own time.’
That was sarcastic. Nettie said nothing.
‘Sorry, Nettie. Please go on.’
That was apologetic.
‘Okay, well, I think they were going through a bad patch. Elsie wanted a family you see. I mean, it’s not as if she hadn’t given it a fair chance, eight years they’d been married and she was nae spring chicken. I don’t know what was wrong, they’d been for tests and everything but I never heard any more about it. Our Elsie never told me nothing. But Ma told us that when Hughie was home on leave Elsie gave him an ultimatum: leave the navy or she was leaving him.’
While she’d been telling me this, Nettie struggled with the cake box and finally got it open. She paused momentarily to stuff her face with a chocolate cupcake before continuing, spitting cake crumbs on the table.
‘But it wisnae just as easy as that, Hughie was under contract. So next thing was, she turns up at Ma’s with her bags packed and says she’s got a job in a hotel. If he can go to Honolulu then I can go to the Highlands, she says, and off she goes. Oh she loved it, she wrote home how much she loved it. Mind you, she told us it was a hotel. By no stretch of the imagination is this place a hotel. But she described the view all right, the islands and the loch and the wee town and that, I remember it clear as day.
‘She worked here? In this house?’
‘That’s what I’m telling you. Mind you it didnae last. It was only a matter of months before Hughie brought her back down the road. He left the Merchant Navy and got a job in the shipyards along with my Tommy. Next thing we know, hey presto! Your mother’s pregnant.’
*
Steven brought me in a cup of tea. I’d woken from a dream about Dad. I felt my eyes, they were dry, but I knew I had been crying.
‘Can you get your own breakfast this morning Son? I got in quite late last night.’
‘Breakfast? Try lunch, it’s half twelve. Good night was it?’
‘Aye, no bad thanks Son, and yourself?’
‘Aye no bad.’
I never drank tea on top of a hangover. It only made me worse. Irn Bru was my cure or, if I was really bad, a few spoonfuls of honey. Since I’d moved here I’d never gone to sleep without filling my bottle and putting it at the side of my bed.
When I first saw sports water bottles I could hardly believe it. So simple yet effective, like all the best ideas. Some genius had the vision to create these b
ottles so that cyclists or runners, could, anytime anywhere, pull up the nipple and drink. Whenever I was unable to raise my head off the pillow, struck down and hung-over, my sports bottle was a comforting, non-spill, Irn Bru dispenser. Sometimes I just lay and sucked. But not in front of Steven.
He sat on the edge of the bed.
‘So what time are we going then?’
‘Going where?’
‘To the distillery.’
‘Oh God Steven, do we have to go? Can we not leave it till tomorrow? I’m not feeling too braw.’
‘We’re going home tomorrow.’
I kept my mouth shut and sipped my tea. Steven sat in silence. By not whining or casting up that I’d promised, or mentioning my hangover, he took the moral high ground.
I caved. I had to, they were leaving tomorrow. I wasn’t emotionally strong enough to spend the day with the three of them hanging about making me feel guilty. It was easier just to drive.
I was okay once I was on the road so long as I drove slow, no sudden movements. Steven had them well warned and Nettie thankfully stayed quiet. Gerry brought his iPod. The boys took an earpiece each, headbanging noiselessly in the back. Applying the rule of one hour per unit of alcohol, I worked out that I’d be safe to drive sometime next Monday. But now that I was no longer a rep I didn’t have to worry constantly about losing my licence. You never saw the police up here anyway, and when you did they were all smiles.
I must have known it all along, I thought. Mum’s deathbed scene. ‘Young women can be daft sometimes.’ That wasn’t advice, it was a confession. And the man turning up at the funeral. When I thought back, he’d had a Highland accent. I didn’t recognise it at the time but that’s what it was. I’d just thought he had asthma. What was it he said? I couldn’t remember but it was along the lines of it being a pleasure to meet me. I bet it was. I bet it was a pleasure fathering me as well, taking advantage of an innocent young girl. Okay not that young, she must have been twenty-seven or twenty-eight by that time, and married, and separated, but still. Why didn’t Harry tell me? I would have taken it all right, for God’s sake, it was forty years ago, a lot of water under the bridge. I could have met him, properly, got to know him. Instead I ignored him while he fixed our karaoke machine. What a bloody waste!
They must have stayed in touch. Nettie said the hotel sent lovely presents when I was born. That’s why he had my photo. A wee memento. That’s why it was down the back of the cupboard shelves, hidden from his wife, his dirty wee secret, the cheating bastard.
The Auchensadie distillery was a beautiful building and so were all the wee houses around it. The place was so well kept that my eyes were hurting with the light bouncing off the concentrated whitewash. Auchensadie had done its marketing. It knew how to give the tourists exactly what they wanted: clean, cute, oldey worldey, a whisky theme park. Any other day I’d have been up for it.
‘Right, I’ve got the tickets, they weren’t dear. Mum, put your purse away, this is on me. We’re lucky, the last tour starts in five minutes. Over there, in the malting shed.’
‘And we get to drink as much whisky as we want?’ asked Gerry.
Now I understood why the boys had been so gagging to come.
‘Do not fear my friend, we’ll drink the barrels dry. Okay, let’s go to work.’
A big fat posh woman in a kilt and full length tartan cape introduced herself as our guide. Then she played a DVD which informed us, by way of old photographs and an English actor’s voice-over, of the glorious history of Auchensadie. From humble beginnings as an illegal still in the woods to lucrative respectability, and back to a humble existence as an outpost of a global corporation.
As it was the last tour of the day there were only ourselves and another two car loads of French people. We’d missed the tour buses, thank God, I didn’t want to run into anyone from the ceilidh. I had a vague memory of us driving alongside the German bus, me with my head out of the window singing ‘Will Ye No Come Back Again’.
The fat woman was rushing through her spiel, anxious to get finished up for the day. Using her cape to catch stragglers, she herded us together and moved us from shed to shed explaining the distillation process.
Half way round we stood beside enormous circular vats. The guide opened the wooden lid and invited everyone to take a sniff. The French people, probably scared of her, did as they were told. When the French all started laughing Steven and Gerry tried it too.
‘Oh man, see that?’ said Gerry. ‘You get so far down and then it’s like a punch in the mouth.’
‘Try it Nettie, it’s a great buzz.’
Nettie tried it and agreed.
‘Oh so it is, I wasnae expecting that!’
‘C’mon Mum, we’ve all done it, you have to do it too.’
‘Nah, you’re all right Son.’
Steven pulled me over to where the lid had been lifted.
‘Just stick your head down there, it’s good fun, honest.’
As if lending moral support, he put arm around my shoulder. Steven just wasn’t getting the message. He was really pissing me off but he knew I wouldn’t argue in front of all those people. I forced a smile and gingerly lowered my head under the lid. The mixture, or mash as the guide had called it, didn’t smell that bad at all, a faint sickly sweet smell but that was all. What was turning my stomach was the sight of the stuff. It looked like a giant pile of sick.
‘D’you smell it?’ Steven laughed.
Still with his arm around me, he pressed my head a further inch down in to the vat. It was an inch too far. Suddenly I was caught in a searing atomic nose explosion. Trapped and under attack, my body reacted. Before I could stop it, half a mouthful of boak escaped and plopped into the vat. Steven let go of my head immediately.
If anyone saw me, they pretended they hadn’t. When the tour moved to the hospitality suite I disappeared and sat in the car.
*
I was a bit emotibubble when I put them on the train. Steven’s wee face crumpled, he even forgot about my front bits and gave me a proper cuddle. He kept saying, ‘I’ll come again soon Mum, I promise.’
But it wasn’t that. The truth be told I was glad to see the back of them. Between them, Nettie and Spider had delivered such a bombshell that I needed a bit of time to myself. I was still absorbing the aftershocks.
I drove home and sat drinking tea for hours. I hated everybody. For forty years they had been saying behind my back, Oh God love her, the wee soul, she doesn’t know her real father. Most of all I hated Nettie and Spider for telling me the truth.
Bouncer was upset that I was upset, and was about as hangdog as a dog could be. He snuffled into me as I sat on the couch in a state of catatonia. His affection gave me a sudden surge of emotional energy. I threw my arms round his neck and burst out crying.
‘You’re the only one I can trust, boy. My only real friend. It’s only me and you now Bouncer!’
I remembered a sad song that was so appropriate to the moment and tried to sing it between sobs.
‘He’s honest and faithful right up to the end,
My wonderful one, two, three, four-legged friend!’
The song was actually about a horse but it didn’t matter. I hadn’t a hanky and Bouncer let me wipe my tears and snotters on his fur. Later, I heard him give himself a good hard shake in the kitchen. He came back with his lead between his teeth. There was none of his usual excited begging, he was doing it for me.
The dog was right. Moping in the house wasn’t going to change the fact that I was a bastard. Born out of wedlock, well, actually in wedlock but not to my mother’s husband. Did that still make me a bastard? The world had been knocked off kilter. Uncle Henry. There was no uncle Henry, it was Harry and he was now Dad. Dad was now just Hughie, my mother’s husband, no relation. Strangers were my closest relatives. Including who I now realised must be my brother, Jackie.
Chapter 24
I felt bad sneaking past Rebecca’s house but I needed time to work out my complica
ted life. I marched down the hill and right through the other side of the village. I’d never walked as fast or as far before, Bouncer was struggling to keep up with me for a change. I kept thinking about everything that had happened with Jackie. As cars passed me, all they saw was a purple-faced woman out walking her dog; a weather-beaten country lady. But my cheeks were on fire with black burning shame for the cheesy moves I’d made on my own brother.
He must have known. Why hadn’t he told me? I should have realised something was amiss when he worked so hard and then refused payment for the gardening. And who drove to Glasgow and back in the middle of the night just to be neighbourly? How stupid was I? I thought he’d fancied me, and I threw myself at him. It was disgusting. I was disgusting. He was disgusting.
I was halfway to Gaffney before I tired, several miles from home. Walking wasn’t doing it for me. I was still a bastard, only now I was a tired, blistered, limping bastard. Even the dog was foot sore but poor old Bouncer’s legs would be bloodied stumps before my rage would recede.
Walter lived about quarter of a mile further along the road, he’d let me phone a taxi from his house. Maybe he’d give me a cup of tea and a foot massage. Or at least let me use his basin. I could pretend I’d brought Bouncer out to visit him.
Thank God, Walter was as pleased to see me as I was him. He was looking well, a bit too well. Walter and Bouncer spent at least five minutes kissing and cuddling on the doorstep and I began to worry that he’d want me to leave Bouncer there. Maybe coming here had been a mistake. Walter put the kettle on. I was hanging around chatting to him when the back door opened and who should walk in but my long-lost brother.
Jackie’s face went white. He mumbled something to Walter and ducked straight out again. I wasn’t having that. He wasn’t going to get away from me this time. Ignoring Walter, I flew out the door after him. I’d expected him to jump on his bike and hightail it back to Inverfaughie, his long legs a blur on the pedals, but no, he was in the greenhouse. Good, I had him cornered.