LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

gets too needy I’m really no good at it. Maybe it’s because I think if they get in too close, it’s all going to go tits up or something. Because everything else always has.

      After the meeting in Langholm, he saw little of Ann, who retired, hurt. She had always been the most isolated of the three in the sense that she had a different father; the other two at least shared the same parentage, even if they didn’t know who he was. Gregor and Maureen built a friendship and went on to discover one significant thing: they could make each other laugh uncontrollably to the point where everyone else in their company, looking on from the sidelines, would say, ‘Strange people, don’t know what they’re laughing at, it’s not even funny.’ There was the time, years later, during a church service they had been invited to, when Gregor and Maureen disgraced themselves by taking a fit of the giggles at a priest swinging the incense, two middle-aged people who should have known better, corpsing, stuffing their fists in their mouths, laughing to the point where they thought they were going to have to leave – ‘It was like some kind of fit.’

      If he’s honest, Gregor always felt there was a bit of tension between himself and his sisters. He was the lucky one, the blue-eyed boy; the one who found a new mother to love him. They, by comparison, had been thrown to the wolves, left to survive, desperately alone and unloved. There is of course another way to look through the prism. He was luckier, yes, but Gregor by no means got off scot-free. And had he not been saved by Cis, it is debatable where he might have ended up, possibly worse off than his sisters. Arguably, it is because of Cis that everything else that subsequently happened in his life happened because she put so much love into him, nourished the laughter and the confidence. Certainly, right then, as he waved a horribly awkward goodbye to his blood family on the doorstep, Gregor knew which way to turn: enough of being a bastard, enough of having some poor wretch for a mother. He didn’t fancy these unwelcome realities about his origins; he didn’t want to find out any more.

      His great allies in the Fisher family, Cis, Carol and Agnes, understood. And if, as they shut the front door, Carol whispered, ‘It’s OK, don’t worry about them. That’s in the past, you’re one of us now,’ she was speaking for all of them. In the Fishers he was blessed with a family that, give or take the usual nip and snide comment to be had in every household, always gave him the feeling that he was loved and wanted. They made that obvious, and they also made it obvious that they thought it would be easier if he let it go. His life was working out fine with them, why complicate things?

      Oh, just put the blinkers on, put it away back there, lock it away. That’s fine.

      And so he did. He pretended none of it was true and that he really was Cis’s child. Yes, she was his real mother. Because she was the woman who only once, in the 30-odd years he was with her, withdrew her life-giving love. And that was a moment that shaped him for life.

       We’re exploring Neilston in the car.

       ‘Down here,’ he says. ‘I’ll show you where Johnny Monaghan used to live.’

       The narrow lane winds around and down the hill. Lots of expensive houses with gates and walls and private gardens behind high hedges; the posh end of the village.

       It’s a leafy dead end, a cul-de-sac of class. I turn the car in Johnny Monaghan’s former drive, wondering whether anyone will suspect us of being burglars casing the joint, and jot down the numberplate. Probably. It’s a Neighbourhood Watch sort of street.

       ‘So you and Johnny and Andrew Robinson used to play here, in this gateway, did you?’

       ‘That was Andrew’s house, there.’

       He points.

       Pause.

       ‘Andrew had lots of Dinky cars. I didn’t have any so I stole one. But I couldn’t take it home because Cis would know immediately.’

       ‘So what did you do?’

       We’re heading back up the hill towards scruffier climes.

       ‘There, just there, in the wall.’ He’s turning in his seat, jerking the seat belt. ‘There was a loose stone. I used to take out the stone and hide the Dinky car behind it.’

       ‘Then what happened?’

       ‘Andrew Robinson’s mother never let me play with him again.’

       I’m digesting it. Children may steal if, subconsciously, deep down, they feel they’ve been deprived of love. Maybe it happens with some adopted children, I think – but I can’t remember where I heard this stuff and I don’t want to offend him with half-baked armchair psychology.

       ‘Did I tell you about the Burdall’s Gravy Salts?’ he asks.

       I shake my head.

       And he begins to talk.

      It came about because the sweet shop in the village, just up here by the junction we’re coming to, used to be run by a little woman called Miss Gilmour. Occasionally Gregor was given a penny, an old penny, to spend en route to school. That worked well until he saw that other children had slightly more than a penny and were getting more sweets than he was. When you’re small, and you like sweets, as he did, such injustices burn deep. Gregor was aware his mother had a tin, a Burdall’s gravy salt tin. Burdall’s gravy salt was a thing of the early twentieth century, a forerunner to Bisto or Oxo; a potent black mixture of salt and caramel that housewives stirred into their mince to darken and flavour it. Inside the Leckie household, however, this particular Burdall’s tin was used to store shillings specifically for the gas meter. Gregor cunningly decided to take just one shilling for sweets, reckoning it wouldn’t be missed, and sure enough, it wasn’t.

      But, in the manner of urchins, he got greedy. He decided to treat his friends and himself to Mars bars so he took three shillings, which he didn’t think would be missed, but he entirely overlooked the fact that his mother and Miss Gilmour were very chummy. Nor did he consider for a minute the fact that he had form with Miss Gilmour, who had never quite forgiven him for pinching a small box of Omo out of her shop. Gregor had needed the Omo, of course, because with the unalienable logic of a small boy, he thought it a very good wheeze to put it into the waterfall in the local burn, down in the valley, and watch the bubbles. All in the interests of science …

      He was about seven or so, because from that age he always walked home from school by himself. On that particular day his mother, however, unusually, was standing waiting for him at the school gate. Whether she had come po-faced from a conversation with Miss Gilmour, he knew not; all he knew was that she took him by the arm in silence and frogmarched him home.

      ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked plaintively.

      She never said a word.

      He knew exactly what was wrong: he had been found out. Cis’s punishment was devastating. She didn’t hit him, she didn’t shout, she didn’t scream, she just ignored him, unless speech was absolutely necessary, then she would speak briefly, communicate what was needed, and she would place food for him on the table. Her silence lasted three weeks; and for the child utterly hooked on her love and affection, whose very existence depended on her, it was a lesson he never forgot. She taught him honour and the difference between right and wrong.

      Gregor visibly softens round the edges, smiling at the memory.

      ‘I can never forget because it had a direct bearing on another event in my life, 50 years later. Cis is long dead and I’m married, I’ve got three children, we’re living in Lincolnshire. In fact, it’s my daughter’s 21st and it’s a big affair – there’s a tent, a marquee, in the garden, there are 150 guests, there’s the whole jingbang. So that takes place and it’s all very jolly, the house is moving with people, everybody’s using the toilets up the stairs, this, that and everything.

      ‘Anyway, about two weeks later

Скачать книгу