Childish Things

by Robin Jenkins

  ‘Of course, I would love to keep it. It would be an inspiration.’

  ‘Then keep it.’

  But she knew he couldn’t afford to keep it.

  Was the gift, therefore, as much an act of cruelty as of kindness? Not in this case surely. She was genuinely fond of Bliss.

  ‘I’d like the Matisse, with the blue flowers,’ he said. ‘It’s so pure.’

  ‘Sell it to the Museum. Then you can still see it.’

  ‘Yes, I could do that.’

  The painted old bugger was weeping. Dark tears streamed down his rouged cheeks.

  Linda returned to the giving of presents.

  The Boltons had already had theirs: that ‘loan’ of $100,000.

  Madge and Frank, it seemed, were to get none. Perhaps, though, Frank would get the account. He would be told less publicly.

  I hoped that I too would get nothing. I did not trust Linda. I remembered Morland’s warnings.

  ‘Your turn, Gregor,’ said Linda.

  So it was Gregor. Not Mr Casaubon. Not Professor. Perhaps I was being unfair to her. Perhaps she did wish me well and was about to show it.

  ‘Your present is the truth,’ she said.

  Everybody looked puzzled, except Amantha who was interested only in her cheque and what it could buy.

  What the hell was Linda up to? How could anyone be presented with the truth? The truth about what?

  I went to the tree briskly. There was a buff envelope with my name on it, the sort of envelope that might contain a document. The letters MM and MA were after my name. Not even the Inland Revenue did that.

  It could, conceivably, contain a marriage proposal drawn up by lawyers, with my portion strictly limited.

  I took out a letter, on paper as stiff as a document, three pages of it.

  The sky was blue, beautiful, and neutral. There was no help anywhere. I was on my own.

  Madge tried to come to my rescue. ‘Whatever it is, Dad, you don’t have to read it here.’

  ‘Yes, Grandad,’ cried Midge, read it to us.’

  Her trust had been bought.

  To my astonishment, the address at the top was Hope Street, Glasgow. It was from a firm of private investigators, Cameron & McLean. The subject was Mr Gregor McLeod, MM MA of 144 Goatfell Avenue, Lunderston, Ayrshire.

  So Linda, behind my back, had used the magic of money to expose my lies.

  It was no big deal. Weren’t Americans proud that their greatest President had been born in a log cabin? No doubt, as a boy, Abraham Lincoln had shat in an outside lavatory.

  But there was one secret that I hoped Cameron & McLean, no matter how big their fee, had not been able to dig up.

  Excusing myself, I hurried off, as if to empty my bladder. Indeed, the first thing I did when I got to my room was relieve myself.

  Then, by the window, with bougainvillea on the sill, I read the truth about my childhood.

  ‘The subject, Mr Gregor McLeod, was born in Dechmont, a village in the county of Lanark, about ten miles from Glasgow, on 11th September, 1912. It was then a rural district, though with several coal mines, all but one of which were defunct during Mr McLeod’s childhood.’

  I remembered sliding down the huge bings on a sledge of corrugated iron.

  ‘The houses were mostly small tenements. Today they have all gone. High-rise blocks of flats have taken their place. Not a brick remains of the building where Mr McLeod was born.’

  Once, while Kate was shopping in Glasgow, I had sneaked out to visit Dechmont for the first time in many years. Every trace of my childhood had been removed, not only the building where I had been born but also the shops against whose windows I had pressed my nose, looking in at all the things I could not afford to buy.

  ‘We were fortunate to find two old women who had lived in the district all their lives and remembered Mr McLeod and his family well. From them we obtained most of the following information. Their accounts tallied in most respects.’

  Was one of them Bella McDaid who had been my sweetheart when I was six? We had walked to school hand in hand. She had worn red stockings. Her father had been a railway porter.

  ‘The tenement in which Mr McLeod was born and where he lived till he was 12 stood on the bank of a stream which gave it its name, Burnbank Terrace. The houses were either of two apartments, called room-and-kitchens, or one apartment, called single-ends. All the toilets were outside, shared by two, or in some cases three, families.’

  Yes, but, if your need was desperate, you could use other people’s.

  Nothing was said about the profusion of white butterflies and the bumble bees, the sodgers as we called them with the khaki stripes and the fuggies that had no sting.

  What was being reported was the dull prose of my childhood, with all the poetry left out. Whatever she had paid, Linda had not got the truth.

  ‘Most of the inhabitants of Dechmont worked in the remaining mine or the steelworks or a factory that made nails. A few were farm labourers. Mr McLeod’s father was a labourer in the steelworks, and his wife, before her marriage, worked in the nail factory. Mr McLeod Senior never enjoyed good health but that did not prevent him from being called up in 1917.

  ‘After demobilisation in 1919, Mr McLeod returned to the steelworks but, in less than a year, he died of rheumatic fever. No pension was granted his wife, though it was widely believed that his wartime hardships had fatally impaired his health. Unable to find work, Mrs McLeod was obliged to seek parish relief, in American terms welfare, to support her two sons, Gregor, then eight, and Stanley, five. It must have been a bitter pill for her to swallow because, according to our informants, she was a quiet proud hard-working woman.’

  Was Linda, I wondered, reminded of her own mother? She too had suffered without complaint. Had it not lent her dignity?

  I did not feel angry with Linda. On the contrary, I felt grateful. Thanks to her, I was being made to remember my mother honestly. I saw her clearly in my mind: small, a rather big nose reddened by dyspepsia, slightly deaf from the racket in the nail factory, hands rough with work and chapped with chilblains.

  Dignity? Could that big word be applied to her? She was, I now realised, the most dignified person I had ever known.

  Tears were in my eyes. It was all past. I could never make amends.

  ‘The boys were issued with parish clothing.’

  With silk against my neck now, I remembered the grey jersey with the red stripes on the collar that were the giveaway. It had irritated my skin and lacerated my soul.

  ‘By this time, Gregor was being spoken of by his teachers as a very clever boy.’

  The old schoolmaster in the carpet slippers – what was his name? Mr Richards – had summoned my mother to tell her what a pity it was that so promising a pupil would not get the chance of success that his abilities deserved. ‘He’ll get it,’ she had replied, and she had kept her word.

  Too readily I had accepted her self-sacrifice, and I had never shown gratitude. It wasn’t so much that I wasn’t good at showing it – though I wasn’t – it was more that she wasn’t good at receiving it. She was too proud.

  ‘Subsequently, Mrs McLeod got her old job back in the nailworks. She had a reputation as a skilful reliable worker. There she worked till 1929, when the factory closed. By that time, Gregor, having won bursaries, was a pupil at Cadzow Academy, the most prestigious school in the county, where most of the pupils paid fees.’

  Though my mother was then earning a reasonable wage and giving me more than my share – no wonder Stanley had been jealous – I was probably the poorest boy in the school, but to my credit I never cringed or looked sorry for myself. Indeed, I had begun to acquire a way of carrying myself more suited to a duchess’s son than a factory worker’s. My skin, though, was never as thick as I pretended. It helped that I was good at sports, especially cricket.

  ‘Mrs McLeod soon found a post as cook-housekeeper to a retired civil servant in Glasgow. The two boys went to live with a maiden aunt in the nearby tow
n of Lightburn. Her house was in a dilapidated tenement.’

  Aunt Annie was my father’s sister. Her great wish was to be buried in Skye, home of her ancestors. She had some Gaelic and liked to sing Gaelic songs. She was a feckless soul but she did her best for us. She wasn’t buried in Skye. It would have cost too much. Perhaps by that time I could have afforded it, but what would have been the use? In any case, I didn’t learn that she was dead till long afterwards.

  ‘Gregor had to face some persecution. He was often jeered at and called names.’

  Yes, but many of those who had jeered had really been paying me tribute. Stuck in the mire of poverty and ignorance themselves, they could not help respecting someone struggling to get out of it.

  ‘Gregor did well at university.’

  I could have got a good honours degree in English if I had been able to afford the extra year. My mother’s employer, the retired civil servant, had died, and the people who now employed her, a doctor and his wife, did not pay her so well.

  ‘At teachers’ training college, Gregor did particularly well. He was the most outstanding student of his year.’

  The test lessons by which the prospective teachers were judged had really been exhibitions of showing off. None had been better at that than I.

  ‘As a consequence, at a time when many students could not find teaching posts, Gregor was appointed to Afton Primary School in Gantock. There he met Katherine Liddell, daughter of a Gantock doctor, and within a year they were married. It would appear that his mother was greatly disappointed at his marrying so soon. She had hoped that he would provide a home for her and Stanley. We have no evidence that she was present at the wedding, which took place in the Mid Kirk in Gantock on 30th June, 1937.’

  She had not been invited because I had convinced myself that she would not be comfortable among Kate’s superior relations and friends. I also assured myself that she would have refused. She was thrawn, as well as proud. Kate had thought it strange that my mother wasn’t there, but she had not insisted.

  ‘About that time, Stanley, a joiner, aged 22, emigrated to New Zealand. He wanted his mother to accompany him but she was not willing. Probably she was too ill to make such a long journey.’

  Stanley never forgave me. I wrote to him once but he didn’t reply. I heard later, from some source or other, that he had married a Maori woman.

  ‘Gregor’s first child, a daughter called Margaret after his wife’s mother, was born in 1941, not long before he was called up. He served in North Africa in the Royal Corps of Signals. He won a Military Medal for bravery in the field.

  ‘It was about this time that his mother died, in unknown circumstances. He was not able to come home for the funeral.’

  Would anyone believe that I had never once sought out that grave? Shame kept me away, but again Kate had not insisted. My mother was never mentioned in our house. Kate had kept silent because she had seen that I wanted her to keep silent. There was no photograph of my mother on display.

  Kate had never met my mother.

  There was a knock on the door.

  ‘Come in,’ I called.

  I thought it was Madge, come to find out what was the matter.

  It was Linda.

  ‘I’ve not come to apologise,’ she said.

  ‘Why should you apologise? As you Americans say, I had it coming to me.’

  ‘So you had.’

  ‘I suppose you think I should go and read it out to them. They’ll be wondering.’

  ‘I told them it was a contract giving you twelve per cent of royalties from my book. I think they believed me.’

  ‘But, Linda, that was a lie.’

  She smiled. ‘So it was.’

  ‘They left out the best bits or, should I say, the worst bits.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Cameron and McLean. They left out how I betrayed my mother.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say they left it out.’

  ‘They treated it too superficially.’

  ‘Well, you can put that right now. I’m willing to listen.’

  So I told her. I portrayed myself as a liar, a braggart, a poseur, a moral coward, and a callous ingrate.

  She didn’t interrupt me once.

  ‘I know how you feel,’ she said when I was finished.

  I saw in her eyes that she really did know.

  Perhaps it wasn’t too late for either of us. We could help each other to find redemption.

  But she was going to Acapulco and I was returning to Scotland.