SCOTLAND ZEN and the art of SOCIAL WORK

by J.A. Skinner

  Chapter 21

  Tuesday 27th May

  A genetic test is available from Regional Genetic Clinics throughout the country. This test will be able to show whether someone has inherited the faulty gene, but it cannot indicate the age at which they will develop the disease.

  No wise words from my son tonight as he’s gone straight to Khalid’s for his tea. He phoned to say they had just finished eating and could he not be picked up till very late as he and Khalid were going to play very complicated war games. I warned him he would be picked up at eight, and he had to be ready at the door, shoes on , bag packed and saying thank you very much for having me. The girls were in the living room with Phillip playing a noisy game of cards, and Kate and I were in the kitchen drinking coffee with the window open so that I could sneak a smoke. Phillip shouts that he has lost all his pennies playing cards, the girls are rich now so he may as well go for a pint then pick up John from Khalid’s house.

  As soon as Phillip leaves, Kate grabs my cigarette and smokes half of it, which comes as quite a shock to me, but we’re living in strange times I suppose and strange things happen. She is a bag of wiggly nerves as Tommy phoned her today and said he would call in to see her on Friday night for a chat. I said I felt she was getting herself worked up for nothing. Surely nothing could be wrong and he was more than likely dropping in just for a chat, as he said. I was having a crisis of my own about the phone message I got from Tommy yesterday saying he was going to be busy all week, but I didn’t want to burden Kate with that yet.

  She paced my small kitchen as best she could then lifted a cloth and started to wipe my cooker. I grabbed her hand and made her sit down.

  ‘Please calm down or I’ll tell Tommy you fibbed about being a non-smoker,’ thank God that made her smile.

  ‘There’s something else I have to tell you,’ she said, ‘worse.’ I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear this.

  ‘Phillip has started to make a cradle for our baby.’ She whispers.

  Bloody hell, this could cause one of the major huffs ever in our family. I whispered back, even though nobody could hear us,

  ‘Doesn’t he know ‘The Royal Cradle’ is in Mam’s loft, soon to be brought down, cleaned, polished, and varnished for it’s umpteenth performance.’

  She told me she just didn’t know what to do or say. Phillip had arrived home from work last week with all the kit. Wood, nails, paint, screwdrivers and written instructions from his Dad. He was so pleased to be doing something constructive, instead of just waiting that she hadn’t had the heart to tell him the cradle our Dad made was still a big part of our family history. He probably thought it had been thrown out after my lot used it. Mam would be cut to the bone if it was passed over. Poor Phillip had been working on his labour of love every night after work for the past week, oblivious to the storms ahead.

  ‘You are on you own with this one Kate, this is significantly bad.’

  She sighs, reaches for the cigarette packet again and says,

  ‘What on earth am I going to do with two baby cradles?’

  Kate and Phillip are now gone. Kate had to brush her teeth to get rid of the smoke smell before Phillip arrived back with John. I think about the phone message from Tommy. How can he be too busy to call me? So much for his ‘wanting to get to know me better’. This puts me in a bit of a sulky bad mood. I don’t see why he can’t just phone for a minute, unless he is thoughtless, selfish, uncaring, typically male and rude and I am completely wrong about him. It’s probably my fault anyway, talking about sex on the train. He might be celibate, like a Buddhist or signing the pledge or something.

  I put the kids to bed with a book each, no ‘Blue Peter’ story telling mum tonight. I’m planning to drink tea and watch telly like a zombie. I start to doze off on the couch during the news, when I hear a sloshing, splashing sound in the bathroom. John’s at it again. He gets out of bed when he feels himself falling asleep, and splashes his face with cold water so that he can keep reading. I can’t think of anything worse than shocking myself awake with cold water, but John is a fanatic for Roald Dhal. I stand at the bathroom door,

  ‘Bed now, light out!’ I shout, but not too loud in case I wake the girls, ‘you must be dead tired, and you’ll wake up a horrible person for school in the morning.’

  ‘Please please, Mam, I need to find out how it ends.’

  ‘Light out’ are my final words. Well, I did say I was feeling a bit grumpy.

  I just decide to start tidying the kitchen, when Mickey gives a quick knock at the door and walks in. He looks in the bedrooms first. Theresa and Rosie are asleep so he takes the books off their beds and tucks the covers up to their chins. He looks in on John, who is in a huff, and I hear Mickey having a few words with him about why he is in a huff, then says goodnight and adds,

  ‘Don’t ever argue with your Mother, she always wins.’

  When Mickey walks into the kitchen, I can see by his look that he may be a lot grumpier than me. His head is hanging down, and he has a face on him like a moody grisly bear, but as usual, we perform our kitchen ballet first, filling the kettle and getting cups and coffee ready, before a word is said.

  ‘How are things …?’

  Slowly he turns to me, puts his arms round me and his head on my shoulder and starts to cry. Whatever pain this is, it seems to soak right through my jumper and into my bones. My darling lovely brother, what’s brought him to this? Surely not a knock back from Ali the betrothed, they hardly had time to know each other, did they? He stops crying as suddenly as he started, and coughs and wipes his nose, as if he’s embarrassed. He tries a weak watery smile and turns off the kettle, which is boiling fit to burst, and makes the coffee. He still hasn’t said a word.

  Maybe my bad mood is making me insensitive, but I just can’t think what to say.

  ‘Do you think we two’ll always be on our own?’ he asks.

  ‘What do you mean, like Mam, living alone, knitting blankets for the missions, getting bitter?’ I reply.

  ‘No, not exactly, I hope not, and anyway, I suppose you’ll meet a nice sensible guy, and I’ll end up the bitter old queen. I can’t knit by the way.’ At least now he is joking, not crying.

  ‘Listen, Mam’s life doesn’t appear to be too bad, being a widow never seemed to be her bed of nails, she just gets on with it,’ I say, ‘I might add that I may have met my sensible guy already, but I may also have messed it up already. I’ll fill you in on that later when you tell me what the crying jag was all about.’

  Mickey is really intrigued by my ‘sensible guy’ and says he knew Kate and I had been whispering about something. He is trying to lighten the mood but it’s obviously an effort for him. He says the last week has been horrible for him, trying to make decisions over Ali. Mickey had to confront him about getting engaged and about the wedding plans and Ali had quite calmly replied that he had been going to tell Mickey soon, and anyway it shouldn’t make much difference to them seeing each other. Mickey was gob-smacked at Ali’s blasé attitude and didn’t really know how to handle it. My ‘man of the world’ brother had been knocked sideways. Ali said there was no getting out of this arrangement, it’s just the way things were, and the wedding was going to happen.

  He said he knew of lots of marriages that took place where both people didn’t know each other beforehand. Some worked out, some didn’t. Just about the same statistics as non-arranged ones, but Rena was a nice girl and he felt she wouldn’t make too many demands on him.

  Mickey found this all a bit surreal, and had to ask Ali if he wasn’t overlooking the obvious and important fact that he was gay. How was his new wife going to react to that little gem? He said he’d told Rita that he had had relationships with men in the past, but was now ready to try to be a good husband to her, thus perhaps her nervy behaviour and tears. He thought the best he could hope for was to have a couple of children, be discrete, and try not to break her heart. He’s also of the opinion that being a married man will be better for his career. What a pr
ince! He was very clear that he would continue to live his own life and wanted him and Mickey to carry on just as they were.

  Mickey doesn’t have a lot of room to manoeuvre when it comes to judging other people and their behaviour, but this just seemed too much even for him. He said he’s still attracted to Ali, and is now very heartsore that he’s decided he will tell him it is all over.

  ‘At least he didn’t lie to me.’

  How Scottish is that? Praising someone for what they didn’t do.

  ‘He never lifted a hand to me,’ a favourite of emotionally damaged women, or ‘She’s never looked at another man,’ a smug husband’s refrain.

  ‘No, he didn’t lie to you, but he lied to Rita and intends to make a mockery of his marriage vows, not exactly a guy you should trust,’ I say.

  Mickey has had all kinds of liaisons in the past, men, women, married, and single but he now says he’s come to an episode in his life where he would like to be a bit more honest. He doesn’t want a part time man.

  ‘When you say honest, Mickey, do you mean you’ll introduce your next boyfriend to Mam?’ I manage to say this with a straight face.

  He really laughs now,

  ‘That would mean full cardiac arrest for her, we better make sure the next one’s a heart specialist.’

  What a mess, I’m not grumpy now I’m furious! I let Mickey know how I feel. How dare Ali play around with my lovely brother’s feelings? Also, how could he agree to the wedding, accept the dowry money and not give a toss about a young girl’s life and dreams? Mickey is better off without him, but obviously this isn’t the best moment to say that. My troubles now seem a bit more straightforward, how strange is that.

  Mickey smiles at my anger and says he always does the right thing when he walks in my door. He knows he’s loved and can depend on me. He is now desperate to hear about Tommy.

  I tell him about the visit to the house, the Steve Harley concert and the day in the park. It doesn’t seem much in the telling but Mickey understands that it means a lot to me. He asks lots of questions and interrogates me particularly on how the kids reacted to Tommy. I play this down a bit as Mickey is a protective uncle, and possibly a wee bit jealous.

  I related the conversation on the train about getting to know each other better, the mention of sex and then the phone message saying he couldn’t see me all week.

  ‘Don’t worry, I hardly think you’ve blown it but you really need to shag him Mags, it will help things along,’ he said, in his less than subtle way.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure it would, one way or another, but anyway I’ve decided that I don’t want to rush things now. I’ve no choice actually, he might be cooling off.’

  On the other hand, if he does phone, I tell Mickey, I would need a baby sitter to stay late with the kids. If there was any sex to be done we couldn’t do it here, of course, it would have to be at his place, but his mother lives down below, we would need to be very quiet, I may be too hysterical, it’s been so long, blah de blah de blah.

  Mickey really laughs at this tirade and it is good to hear him. I can’t bear it when he’s sad. He promises to help me organise the encounter if it ever comes to that, and he reminds me to start taking my pills again just in case.

  It’s really late now and I lock up after Mickey leaves. When I get into bed I am restless and fidgety, hot and wiggling about the bed, with a nagging doubt that Tommy may not be the kind of man that could keep up a relationship with three children and may be taking all week to work up to telling me this. Well, there you are, I’m away ahead of myself again. I also keep going back to Uncle John and his illness, it’s like a ripped sleeve of a cardigan I keep picking at. I have to find out more or I will have no sleeve left.

  Aunty Therese is my next port of call. She must know something; it’s just a matter of how honest she wants to be.

  Chapter 22

  Wednesday 28th May