She lay back on the pillows. ‘Do you know how I got my name, Chris?’
‘No … it’s a funny kind of name … funny beautiful. I don’t know anyone else called Iona.’
‘Well, Iona’s an island where a lot of Christian people go on things called pilgrimages. My Mum and Dad went there before I was born. They wanted children but weren’t able to have any. Mum told Dad that if they ever had a daughter she would be called Iona because while they were there they prayed for children. I was born two years later and Mum said I was a gift from God, though I was so wild when I was little she said I had a devil in me.’ She laughed. ‘I used to do awful things and played with boys all the time.’
I giggled, relieved to know that a girl with such a firm faith had achieved it all even with a devil inside her like I had. ‘I’m glad to hear that, because I was beginning to think you were an angel while you were still here on earth.’
‘You must be joking, Chris! I’ve been a rotten little bitch sometimes! I’m no angel.’
The next day Mam, Da, Kirsty and the others all came to see me, bearing gifts. Ian shuffled in awkwardly and went away early, leaving behind an enormous sweet shop. Margaret and Alec beamed at me shyly, then squabbled over the grapes I gave them. Mary came marching in, her dear familiar face all smiles. I hadn’t seen her for weeks because she had so far to travel, and the joy I felt at her entrance brought tears to my eyes.
Visitors milled to overflowing, the spirit of Christmas was everywhere. Everyone began to intermingle and lonely old ladies with no one to care for them were inundated with other people’s visitors.
When Mary came in, Da went outside for a smoke and Mam went to see Iona whose vast amount of friends and relatives had thinned out a little. When Mam came back I asked, ‘What did you talk about? You didn’t say anything about … about …’
‘Don’t be afraid to say the word, Chris,’ said Mam softly. ‘It happens to us all in time. She’s so young though, and what a bonnie lass. She did nothing but speak about you. She thinks a lot o’ you, Chris.’
‘I wish she didn’t,’ I said gruffly. ‘All I do is tell her stupid stories. She must be sick of me.’
‘I wish you were home to tell us some stories, Chris,’ said Alec. ‘Christmas won’t be the same this year.’
‘It’ll be horrible in here,’ I said bleakly. ‘You have to stop talking early and you’re not allowed to hang up a stocking.’
‘We’re hanging ours up,’ said Alec eagerly.
‘Well, you can fill them yourselves,’ said Kirsty, who had in recent years taken over quite a few roles from Mam, whose health was never great now.
‘That would be daft!’ cried Margaret. ‘How can we fill our own stockings …?’
‘Be quiet or I’ll skin ye,’ said Da in a fierce hiss, and we all glowered at him behind his back.
The bell went and I felt a lump rising in my throat. My family were going, leaving me to spend my first Christmas away from home. The mound of parcels on the bed did nothing to cheer me. The nurses descended to make beds and I sulked at them, unable to respond to their cheery comments.
Then I looked over at Iona. Her eyes were sunk into her thin face and a flush high on her cheekbones only served to heighten the pallor of her skin. Yet she was smiling. Her parents had been allowed to stay on, and she was talking to them animatedly. Her mother got up and came over to my bed, laying down a gaily wrapped parcel. ‘I hope you like this,’ said the tall, grey-eyed woman. ‘I think the colour will suit those merry green eyes of yours.’
I couldn’t find words but I didn’t need any. The woman laid her hand on my arm. ‘Iona’s been telling us about your castles and your Christmas angels. You’ve made her time here a happy one. Her father and myself are grateful to you, Chris.’
‘Thanks,’ I whispered. Iona looked over at me and smiled. It was the last time I saw her smiling. Soon after she sank into a coma, the curtains were placed round her bed, and her parents were with her all evening.
Sometime in the half-real world of dawn she died without ever regaining consciousness. In my dreaming mind I was aware of nurses and doctors, the shadowy figures of relatives, and the bowed, hushed grief of two people who had received a gift from God only to lose it again. Then I thought of Iona’s faith and knew that they hadn’t lost that gift. They had parted with it only for a little time and one day they would meet again a small angel with golden wings who hadn’t been afraid to die.
When the silent hours of night were over the bed beside me was empty, as if Iona had never been there.
A nurse came over to me. In her hands was a tiny doll with silver wings. A note pinned to it read: ‘I’ll put in for my gold ones when I get up there.’
‘Iona made it for you,’ said the nurse. ‘She was going to give it to you today but … her mother asked me to give it to you instead … Merry Christmas, Christine.’
I took the little doll. Hot tears burned my eyes but I knew that Iona lived, somewhere she lived and watched. The thought took some of my grief away. I was able to open the parcel her mother had given me. Inside was a pale green nightdress such as I had never owned before. At home it had been vests and knickers, in hospital starched shapeless nightgowns because Mam couldn’t afford to buy me fancy bedwear. I wore the fine new nightdress for my visitors, feeling for the first time a vanity about my appearance that I had never known before. I began to look in mirrors but didn’t really like what I saw. Except for my tumbling mass of hair and my grey-green eyes I thought myself very unattractive. My bones seemed to stick up everywhere. When one of the hefty physiotherapists told me rather unkindly she could use my knobbly shoulders for coat hangers, I scowled but knew she was right. I was barely four stone, but my general health had improved and I began to feel young again. The calcium in my body had abated a good deal and I no longer suffered agonies with sores. With the returning of my health the old restless urges to escape hospital came to the fore and the Gods agreed to let me go.
Immobility inside hospital hadn’t worried me greatly but once home, knowing the great wide world lay down a flight of stairs, my position became unbearable.
Kirsty and Ian were out at work, Alec and Margaret at school, so I was pretty lonely. Mam was my constant companion. I became closer to her in spirit than to any human being I had ever known. We talked for long hours, reminiscing over the days of my early childhood and all the escapades I had come through. If I started to feel sorry for myself she turned the conversation to lighter things till I laughed at myself. Never pampering, never rushing to my aid, she made me self-reliant and independent. Sometimes I felt angry at her because I felt she made me do too much. With a basin on my knee I peeled the potatoes every day. I still had to take my turn with the dishes, even though it meant they were handed to me from the scullery to dry. I polished the cutlery, cleaned the shoes, all without moving from the big rocking chair because now I could barely walk at all.
Now I know Mam suffered, watching me do things that were often a great effort. She stifled her natural impulses to help me because her mother-love was greater than her need to satisfy her own instincts. She was preparing me for a future where my greatest asset would be my independence.
Da had mellowed with the years and was reasonably tolerant towards me, but I could feel the tension in him when he watched me struggling with the simplest task. He never mentioned my disability, but I knew it was agony for him to watch me. I had been one of his strongest children and I sensed the sadness in him for the loss of that strength. Yet I knew he was proud of me for other reasons. From the time I learned to write I had spent a good deal of time jotting down little verses and stories. Now I went into it with a vengeance. Mam bought me jotters and pencils. I spent all my free time writing and she read out the results to Da. He listened, one hand over his glass eye in a characteristic gesture.
‘Ay, that’s no’ bad,’ he would say gruffly. For someone like Da that was an uproarious burst of approval.
Getting round the hou
se was difficult. Da carried me to my bed at night and into the kitchen each morning, which was quite a feat for a man of seventy-eight. But I was like thistledown in his wiry arms, he never showed any sign of strain.
The journey to the cludge was out of the question for me. The Toilet Paper Lady was having her greatest reign of peace since my arrival into the world.
Mam solved the problem in her usual frank manner. ‘You’ll have to use the chanty, Chris,’ she told me cheerfully.
‘But I can’t!’ I wailed. ‘It’s okay for a pee, but … nothing else.’
Mam just laughed. ‘Most of my life, Chris, I’ve changed dirty nappies. Emptying a chanty’s nothing to me. None of us know what we’ll have to do to help each other before we’re through, so think nothing o’ it. Don’t keep it in or you’ll get constipated, then I’ll have to give you syrup of figs.’
I shrieked with laughter. Mam and her syrup of figs was a standing family joke. If any of us looked pale, out came the bottle. Once she had been administering the syrup to a constipated Margaret and Alec had grumbled because he thought he was missing some sort of treat so Mam had given him some laxative too. For two days he spent his time running to the cludge and he never asked for syrup of figs again.
The days of high summer came round, making me more restless than ever. I sat at the kitchen window watching the children in the backcourts, longing to join in their games but even more to be out in the fresh air, to feel the sun and the wind. I stretched my arms to the sun till they became a startling golden brown in contrast to my face. The flowers in Da’s window box were a source of joy to me and I appreciated these gifts from God more than I had ever done before. Gifts from God! They were many and varied, but the right to walk had been taken from me and I wondered in my straightforward way what God was going to do about it.
Blue Horizons
The idea of a wheelchair never occurred to any of us till one fateful day Mam was telling a neighbour about the long hours of boredom I spent in the house.
‘Why not a wheelchair?’ said the neighbour. ‘My nephew’s disabled and my sister has just got a new chair for him. The old one’s there for anyone who wants it.’
So I came by my first chair. It was a huge affair with a wickerwork seat. I was so small and thin I disappeared into it but it had wheels and I had no qualms about using it. It was my passport to the world. On a day of blue skies Da carried me downstairs and Mam took me on my first outing to the Elder Park. Gulping in great breaths of warm fragrant air, I imagined that I would never want anything more than these walks to the park with my dear Mam. But I was wrong. I was only twelve years old and my youthful energy smouldered inside like an unexploded firecracker. I longed for excitement and Mam understood. One day she told Alec and Margaret that they were to take me for ‘a nice walk’. Their eyes gleamed because they had long itched to get their hands on my chair. Under their careless guidance it became a miniature tank. They battered me up and down pavements, my bones and teeth rattled but I laughed to the skies with joy. I wasn’t a sedate little invalid any longer. My health had improved greatly. The unleashing of my wild spirit was like taking the cork out of a champagne bottle.
We wandered round Govan, poking into the trees in the park for caterpillars. I was too young to be embarrassed when passers-by looked first at my chair, then at my legs to see what evidence manifested such a premature halt to activity. I stared back and stuck out my tongue uncaringly. It was later, in my adolescent years, that I experienced the terrible embarrassment wrought in me by the curious.
We were quick to discover that my chair made a great hiding place for ill-gotten gains. At weekends we went along to the plots, small patches of cultivated land. From my chair I watched while the daring Margaret helped herself to fat sticks of rhubarb which she stuffed down the sides of my wickerwork seat. Sometimes we were spotted and Alec and Margaret would each grab a handle of my chair to zoom me in and out of dusty potholes away from the danger zone.
People looked askance at such rough treatment but I loved every minute of the outings. They were beneficial in many ways, the most important being that I was never allowed to feel sick or helpless. Mam smiled when she saw the sparkle back in my eyes. ‘These walks are doing you good, Chris,’ she approved.
Had she witnessed the wheelchair acrobatics I was subjected to she might never have allowed me out for another ‘walk’ again. Margaret was the daredevil. She was very partial to excitement and loved taking me to the top of a hilly street to sit on the steps of my chair and with both her feet in the air we whizzed downwards, the squeal of my tyres at the bottom causing a few heads to turn in horror. At other times both Alec and Margaret put one foot each on the crossbars of the chair and used it as a sort of scooter, turning me round corners on one wheel.
Much to my disgust, the question of my education came to the fore. I would have been quite happy never to look at another schoolbook again, but it was not to be. Tuition at home was decided on and a tutor came to me twice a week. I had lost a lot of schooling but didn’t really care and I made the fact quite plain to my poor teacher. I learned very little in the paltry time allotted to me by the education authorities, but if I had put my mind to it I could have learned a lot more. I felt I knew all that was necessary to get me through life. My own intelligence and quick wit were my allies. I knew how to read, spell, and write. With my ambition to be an author already fixed in my mind, I felt I was armed with all I needed to know to enable me to carry out my ambition. Words were magic to me. I could weave them into so many creations.
I spent a great deal of time reading, soaking up information like a sponge. I knew I learned far more in this manner than I ever did under the guidance of my tutor.
I had been out of hospital six months when a visitor came to our little house especially to see me. She was a Girl Guide Captain and had acquired my name from the almoner at the hospital. She wanted to know if I would be interested in joining a branch of Guides for disabled youngsters. I sat in the rocking chair overcome with shyness as she explained things to Mam. My months in hospital had left me with a total lack of self-confidence. So long as I was with my own people I was full of self-assurance, but meetings with strangers were a nightmare in which I just could not bring myself to converse in an intelligent manner. I was beginning to experience the disquieting sensation of having a member of my family act as my interpreter.
Mam welcomed the Guide Captain’s proposition. It was a way out of my restricted life to wider horizons. Another door opened into my world the day I joined the 1st Glasgow Post Guide Company. At first it meant corresponding with other disabled girls and receiving magazines full of Guiding activities.
After a while parties and picnics were arranged, the Guiders providing or organizing the transport. It became quite a commonplace occurrence for sleek cars to draw up at the close. I was unable to help my feelings of superiority when I looked from the car at the mobs of untidy children staring in wide-eyed awe at the proceedings. I told myself they were not so fortunate as I, even as I remembered that once I had been one of them and would give a lot to belong to their world again. But there was no turning back, my life was going ahead in the way fate had decreed.
Meetings were held in a Guide hall and our Company was formed into patrols. I became a keen Guide and my pride in my uniform was tremendous. Everything that could be polished gleamed. Every spare penny I possessed was saved to buy knives and compasses to fit on the rings of my belt. When summer came we were told that arrangements for our first camp had been completed. The news was received with great enthusiasm. The countryside was an unknown element to me, camping a thing I had only read about, and I looked forward to going away with an impatience that could barely be contained.
My one regret was that I couldn’t share the holiday with my wonderful Mam. She had never had a holiday in all the years of her two marriages and her health had suffered in consequence. Occasionally she spoke of getting to her beloved Aberdeenshire for ‘a wee change’, but t
hough two of the family were out working there was never quite enough for the luxury of a holiday.
The day before I left for camp I watched her going about her work. I noticed the weary droop of her shoulders. With a catch in my throat I saw the silver glints in her bright hair.
She sat down on her uncomfortable little chair and taking a sock from her workbasket began to darn it neatly. Even when she was sitting her work-worn hands were never at rest. Silently I observed her and a wave of remorse washed over me. ‘I can’t go away and leave you!’ I burst out. ‘You’re the one who needs a holiday!’
She looked at me with eyes full of love. ‘Don’t be silly, Chris. You go and enjoy yourself. You need a wee change after all you’ve come through and it must be dreary for a young lass to sit at home all day … don’t think I’m not wise to it. My turn will come … one of these days. Just write me a wee letter when you’re away and I’ll know you’re thinking of me.’
Before I left the following day she slipped two crumpled pound notes into my hand. ‘I’m sorry it’s not more, lamb,’ she said apologetically. ‘I managed to put a pound aside from Ian’s wages and a pound from the gas rebate I got last week … weesht now – I can manage.’
A lump came to my throat and I felt I would choke with the hurt of it. ‘Thanks, Mam,’ I croaked. The door went. ‘I’ll write, Mam, I’ll write …’
Her face was at the room window, watching me being helped into the ambulance that was to take our Company to Linlithgow. I looked up and waved. Her hand fluttered cheerily in response but I thought she looked lost and very alone. The engine revved up and we drove away from my familiar street. I felt desolate and resentful of the cheery chatter inside the vehicle.
Many miles went by before I could respond to the lighthearted gaiety of the others. I was a sulky little creature in those days, prone to fits of moodiness. I liked a lot of solitude, which was perhaps unusual for someone of my years, but I had spent a lot of my childhood in a prison of sorts which may have had something to do with my temperament. However, I couldn’t stay solemn for long that happy day in the company of the other Guides. Some of them had very bad disabilities, yet they were such happy girls.
Blue Above the Chimneys Page 11