Childish Things. Robin Jenkins

and (fingers crossed) an able enough lover, given the right encouragement, why shouldn’t I toss my Panama into the ring?

      As for Kate, she, good sport, herself out of the game, would cheer me on. Hadn’t she, on her death-bed in the hospital, too weak to wink, whispered that I was not to grieve too long but was to try and enjoy what little was left of my life?

      Some may think me a monster, one minute talking of retreating to an ashram, and the next dreaming of a dalliance with a foul-tongued elderly millionairess. But that is how human beings are. No one is surprised to learn that the keeper of the gas chambers was a loving husband and indulgent father.

       3

      When they were all gone I wandered about the house, touching things that Kate had touched and looking at photographs with her in them. There was one when she was young, smiling fondly. Who is she so fond of? Whose arm is she holding? It is a young soldier, in the kilted uniform of the Argylls, with the ribbon of the MM on his chest. It’s me, more than 40 years ago: the moustache is black. I look upwards, as if I had high ambitions. Yet, when the war was over, I returned to being a primary schoolteacher. It was a safe, worth-while job, and I had two small children, but it fell far short of what I thought my talents deserved. True, I rose to be headmaster of a large school, I became influential in educational circles, in spite of being a member for a while of the ILP, and I always did well in the Scottish Amateur Golf Championship, once reaching the quarter-finals. Latterly, Susan Cramond, who was a friend of the Lord Lieutenant of the county, had suggested putting my name forward for an OBE for services to education.

      There was an apron of Kate’s hanging on its usual hook in the kitchen. Madge and Jean must have overlooked it when getting rid of their mother’s clothes. I pressed it against my face.

      Despair crept near, but was I capable of genuine despair?

      Suddenly it came to me that there was one person I had never taken in. I had last seen her at least ten years ago. We had parted in anger. I had called her a slovenly bitch, she had called me a fraud. She might be dead, for she had had a tendency to become fat and was a heavy smoker, but I felt a desire, a passionate need, to go and find out.

      Her name was Chrissie Carruthers. She lived in Gantock, 15 miles along the Firth. I could hardly call her my ex-mistress for I had never spent any money on her and had been to bed with her once only. It hadn’t been a success. She had laughed and quoted Plato, and her feet hadn’t been clean. A common interest in literature and politics had brought us together. We were both members of the ILP. In spite of painful feet, she had gone on marches against the Bomb and other abominations of our time, while I had stayed away, using the argument that such demonstrations were never effectual, but really, as Chrissie had pointed out, because I thought them vulgar, with their silly banners and idealistic optimism. If she was alive, was she still politically active? Did she still have the portrait of Rosa Luxemburg on her mantelpiece?

      I would go and find out. I might look in on Hector too.

      It was dark as I drove alongside the Firth. The amber lights of Dunoon twinkled across the water and, every five seconds, there was a flash from the Toward Lighthouse. If any of my Lunderston acquaintances recognised my Mercedes, they would think I had come out for a drive, being unable to settle in the empty house. If they had ever heard of Chrissie, it would have been as Miss Carruthers, eccentric teacher of English in Gantock High School.

      The west end of Gantock is a district of wide tree-lined avenues and big stone villas built in Victorian times, when there were no motor cars. Most, therefore, had no garages, so that cars had to be left out in the street. I parked mine, not in Chrissie’s avenue, but in the one next to it. There was no need to be apprehensive about leaving it unattended. Police cars frequently patrolled that area of high ratepayers.

      As I walked to Chrissie’s, I met no one. I saw a cat. Perhaps it was one of Hector’s on the prowl. He lived close by.

      Most of the villas being too big for single families to maintain, they had been divided into flats. Chrissie’s was on the ground floor. Furtive as Troilus sneaking past the Greek sentries, I went through the gate and up the short flight of steps. Careless as ever, Chrissie had left the outer door open. The inner door of frosted glass showed a light in the hall. I rang the bell.

      She still lived there. On a small brass plate was the name C. Carruthers.

      She came shuffling to the door – so her feet were still sore – and opened it without hesitation. Her spectacles were pushed up onto her hair, which was almost as white as mine but as unkempt as ever. She reached forward to peer at me. There was a cigarette in her mouth and a smell of whisky off her breath. She was wearing a long green skirt and a red woolly jumper, fastened at the neck by a large safety pin. Her colour hadn’t improved and the shadows under her eyes were almost black.

      She took the cigarette out of her mouth. ‘Why, Gregor, it’s you,’ she said, as if unsurprised.

      ‘What’s left of me, Chrissie. How are you?’

      ‘Fatter, as you can see, and my feet are still killing me. You’re looking grand.’

      She must have meant the blue blazer with the gold buttons, and the white cravat. Surely she wasn’t too myopic to see the grief on my face.

      ‘Come in, Gregor.’

      ‘Thank you, Chrissie.’

      As I followed her, I saw that her bottom had got bigger and more shapeless. ‘It never bothers me, Gregor,’ she had said. ‘I just sit on it.’

      In the living-room, on a table in front of the gas fire, were exercise books, a glass with whisky in it, a box of cigarettes, and an ash-tray. When I was headmaster, I had objected to members of my staff marking, drinking, and smoking at the same time. That I had done it myself before my elevation had been beside the point.

      ‘Make yourself at home,’ she said.

      She took my hat and threw it at a sofa. It landed on the carpet among books and newspapers.

      ‘Would you like a cigarette?’ she asked.

      ‘No, thank you, Chrissie. I gave it up years ago.’

      ‘Is that why you’re looking so spry? What about a dram then?’

      ‘A small one, please. I’m driving.’

      Glasses in hand, we stared at each other.

      Tears came into my eyes. This was unwise, in that company, this was the woman who had called me a fraud, but I could not help it. They were as genuine as my nature allowed.

      ‘So your wife’s dead,’ she said. ‘I saw the notice in the Herald.’

      ‘Kate was buried this afternoon.’

      ‘I’m sorry, Gregor. Cancer, was it?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Her brother told me.’

      ‘Hector?’

      ‘I go into his shop now and then to buy a book.’

      ‘You must be the only one who does.’

      ‘Yes, he’s not very busy. I met her just the once. I liked her. She had a merry laugh.’

      ‘Yes, she had.’

      ‘I hope she didn’t suffer.’

      ‘She did, a bit, at the end, but she bore it bravely.’ My voice trembled.

      ‘Poor soul.’

      Then we sat in silence for a minute or so.

      ‘You’ve lost no time in coming to ask me to take her place, Gregor. I’m afraid I can’t accept but I appreciate it just the same.’

      This was Chrissie’s not very subtle irony.

      ‘I’ll never marry again, Chrissie,’ I said. ‘No one could take Kate’s place.’