by Sophie Duffy
The past tugs at me. My mum. My lovely mum.
‘Yes, I’d like that,’ I say. Because the past is always with you.
‘Either that,’ she says. ‘Or Myrtle.’
Work
I have a new job. Once upon a time alcohol broke my life, and now alcohol is putting it back together again. It is wine all the way. It’s wine o’clock.
I lay the suitcase on my wee single bed, open it up, ignore the image of a trunk with my mother’s name on the side. This one has my name written neatly on a leather luggage label.
Myrtle leaps into the suitcase and sprawls across it, end to end.
I leave her there for now, don’t have the heart to move her, getting soft, head down to the living room, to the window. My old street. I never had that desire to travel, always wanted to be here in Edinburgh, but now I’m ready to go, knowing I will always be able to come back and that this amazing, awesome, dirty, beautiful town will be with me wherever I go.
Myrtle creeps up on me, sits by the fire and grooms her rear end. She must have the cleanest dog rear end in Scotland.
‘Do you have to, Myrtle?’
Myrtle growls. Yes, she does. At least she’s not barking.
The kirk bell rings out. Three o’clock.
Tommo will be buried by now, put away in a dark box, in the cold, hard winter ground of Devon.
A tear falls from my eye, splashes on my hand, as I think of her face, her children. But she is in my past. I have a future. And Bex? The world is hers now. She can put it to rights. You can do quite a lot with $25,000, Tommo’s legacy, amongst others.
We are both free.
Toronto
July 2014
‘How much longer, Mommy?’
‘Any minute now, Mallory. You’re being such a good girl.’
There is a mumbled, incoherent message on the loudspeaker.
‘What did he say?’ I ask.
‘I’m not actually sure,’ Christie screws up her pretty nose. ‘I figure it must be their flight.’
We wait together. Christie, Mallory, Amanda, Annie and I.
‘Let’s watch out for them, okay?’ says Christie to her daughter. ‘See if you can spot a lady with long, fire-coloured, curly hair, like thingy from Brave.’
‘Merida,’ Mallory says.
‘That’s the one.’
‘And then there’s her twins, a boy and a girl who are teenagers, nearly grown-up actually. The girl will most probably have lipstick on.’
‘Like you, Mommy.’
‘Like me.’
‘When can I have lipstick, Mommy?’
‘Not for a long time.’
‘How long’s a long time?’
‘That’s a great question, Mallory.’
Christie looks at me and I shrug. Annie is in my arms. I want to hold her always. Never let her go. But she will grow up, become a girl like Mallory, a teenager like Loulou, a woman like Bex or Christie, but hopefully just like her mother.
‘There they are, Mommy,’ says Mallory.
And there they are indeed. Ethan is pushing a trolley, Loulou is carrying duty-free bags. Bex has a sparky look in her eye, something of the girl (woman) I used to know.
Christie takes Mallory’s hand and walks bright and breezily over to Bex and the twins.
‘What do you have to say, Mallory?’
‘I like your lipstick?’
‘Not that, no. The other thing we practised in the car coming to the airport.’
‘Oh, that thing.’ Mallory takes a deep breath and puts a big smile on her face. ‘Welcome to Canada,’ she says.
And Christie puts her best foot forward and hugs her old friend so hard she might possibly have cracked another of those fragile ribs. The only fragile thing about Christie Armstrong. Though as the last few months have shown me, she has a softness for her daughter I could never have imagined back in the day.
Time can suddenly skid away from you like a car on black ice. You can be right back where you started. But you can also be right back here, in the future.
Later, after we check into a hotel in downtown Toronto, after we have a swim in the pool, and a cocktail in the bar, a day of sightseeing planned out for tomorrow, Amanda and I take Annie up to our room, the light on top of the CN Tower shining brightly like a star.
Annie is sparko in the crib and Amanda and I share a bath, one of those shallow Canadian ones that we have had to get used to. I wash her back, I kiss her neck. I hold her close and then later, much later, after our own act of union, as we lie in bed, I walk my fingers over her beautiful plump English bottom. On one cheek the flag of St George. On the other, a new one, the blue and white Saltire, the cross of St Andrew. I kiss them both. I wonder briefly if one day she will get a maple leaf. And I wonder where exactly she might put that one.
I lie down next to her and breathe in the laundry fresh smell of cotton sheets. And when we get home to our place in Niagara-on-the-Lake, I vow I will be the one to make sure the sheets are always clean.
Thank you, Jeremy. And goodnight.
Endnote
I think there’s been one too many footnotes so here’s an end one. I realise I never came back to Maid Lilliard. My mother used to tell me her story. It’s a remarkable story. Henry VIII of England wanted to secure the alliance with Scotland and the marriage of the infant Mary Queen of Scots to his son, Edward, but in December 1543, the Scottish Parliament rejected Henry’s offer and renewed their alliance with France instead. So Henry did what any right-minded, self-obsessed, onto-his-sixth-wife, fat, syphilitic, in pain, blood-thirsty monarch would do and declared war against Scotland. The war was later called the ‘Rough Wooing’. In 1545 during the Rough Wooing –which was very rough and not much wooing going on at all – the Scots had a decisive victory over Henry VIII’s army at the Battle of Ancrum in the Borders.
If legend is to be believed, Maid Lilliard was at this battle and, after her lover was killed by the English, she set about them with fury, slaying them left, right and centre. Despite being severely wounded she fought on until death.
And get this: The inscription on her grave states:
Fair maiden Lilliard lies under this stane.
Little was her stature, but muckle was her fame;
Upon the English loons she laid mony thumps.
And when her legs were cuttit off, she fought upon her stumps.
As with so many legends, how much is fact and how much fiction cannot be answered. But, knowing the women in my life, past and present, I like to believe this one is true.
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements are due to the following for permission to quote copyright material:
The late Tony Birks for an extract from Building the New Universities, David and Charles, 1972.
Lancaster University.
RSPCA.
The Real Mary King’s Close for an excerpt from their souvenir guide. (Skeletours is a fictional tour company and is no reflection of RMKC which is first and foremost about history.)
Barbara Dickson for her quote from A Shirt Box Full of Songs: The Autobiography, Hachette Scotland, 2009.
June Purvis for her quote from Emmeline Pankhurst: A Biography, Routledge, 2002.
Thanks are due to:
The Society of Authors and the Royal Literary Fund for keeping the wolves from the door during a very difficult year.
Simon Crowe of The Boomtown Rats for telling me what it was like on Top of the Pops during the 1980s.
Barbara Dickson for her songs and singing.
Adam Watters for bringing history alive and for his brave heart.
Wes Coleman for Canadian wine, Edinburgh, ghosts and his clan name.
Lancaster University for two degrees.
My Lancaster chums – VCP, RKP, Simon, Fo, Daz, Kev, John, Vince and Fylde College.
Amy Ford and her prayers-by-text.
My agent Broo Doherty.
My editor Lauren Parsons and all at Legend Press.
Cathie Hartigan and Margaret J
ames for their first reads.
Mum and Don – for keeping things together on the home front.
Johnny, Eddy and Izzy – my bright stars.
Niall – from cider at the Sugarhouse to tea at the Ritz.
Finally, I have not strictly kept to the truth – this is a work of fiction after all – so any mistakes or deviations are down to me.
In loving memory of Siobhan and Helen Morris,
bright stars forever.
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