1965. Edinburgh
‘It’s up to you,’ her father said. He was looking at Janet’s left ear. Janet pushed her fork back and forward across her plate, scooping the mashed potato into a small mountain. She used her knife to top it off with a dab of pale orange neaps.
‘Stop that, will you?’ Her mother’s cheeks were pink, the tip of her nose bright red. Her mother took another sip of sherry. Janet carried on with the fork. Green peas encircled the muddy white mountain. An invasion of pond weed.
‘You’re old enough to make up your own mind,’ Janet’s father continued. ‘But we can’t leave you on your own. You’d have to stay with your Pop George.’
‘I’m seventeen, Dad. I can’t stay with my grandfather. I’d be the laughing stock.’
‘What does it matter what other folk think?’ Janet’s mother was clearing the table, crashing the crockery into the plastic dish-washing bowl. ‘Your Pop George has looked after you for years. Time you gave a bit back.’ Janet knew how it would go. More crashing, a dropped fork or spoon, a glass broken on the draining board, some tears, and eventually her mother would get her way.
‘You want me to look after him so you lot can swan off to Australia. The four of you. You want free care for Grandad and Dad doesn’t want to pay for my cabin. That’s the truth of it.’ Janet’s voice was as thin and green as a reed.
‘You’re being ridiculous. We’ve told you you’re welcome to come.’ Her father stood up and took a bottle of beer from the fridge. There was a stain on his slacks, just behind his right hip. Chocolate or brown sauce or Fowlers Wee Heavy. Janet scooped some peas onto her fork and loaded them into her mouth.
‘But my friends are here. I’m supposed to be going to university.’
‘You can do that in Sydney,’ her mother paused, ‘although the Scottish universities are better off course.’ A wet fork clattered to the floor. Her father leant down and picked it up, smacked it playfully against her mother’s backside, and put it on the table.
‘It’s emotional blackmail,’ Janet said. Her father got up, took a dish towel and wiped down the steamed-up windows.
‘That’s better’, he said, ‘we can see out now. There’ll be no steamy windows in Sydney, that’s for sure.’ Janet felt the draught cold around her bare ankles. She put down her knife and fork and pulled the sleeves of her sweater down over her fingers. It wasn’t fair, making her choose. The boys were just told they were going. They weren’t asked if they wanted to live with an old man. Not that he was incontinent or anything like that. Or confused. But living in that village? She’d be the youngest person for twenty miles. She stood up and put her glass on the draining board.
‘I’m going out,’ she said to them, ‘once the rain stops.’ She didn’t tell them she wanted to go to look at the clouds. That the clouds would tell her what to do. What to decide.
To be continued
SANDERLINGS 