Annie Stanley, All At Sea

by Sue Teddern

  The woman next to me, who is either Doreen or Dorothy, pulls a circular needle and a ball of raspberry-pink wool from her hessian shopper and hands them to me. She is knitting squares for a blanket – sixty-seven so far. ‘Rule number one: you can’t have your hands still at the knit ’n’ natter club.’

  When she sees I’ve forgotten how to cast on, she takes the needle and in about twenty seconds I’m good to go. ‘Thirty stitches times four inches. You can do garter stitch?’

  Garter stitch, garter stitch . . . That’s the one where you pick up the stitch at the back for every row, rather than forward-back in turn. I give a brave smile and get started, remembering from the recesses of my brain that the first row is always the hardest.

  ‘Where are you from?’ Joyce asks.

  ‘St Albans. Hertfordshire. Just north of London.’

  ‘I went to London last year,’ Wendy chips in. ‘I thought it would be too busy, too noisy, but I loved it. I should have moved there in my twenties.’

  ‘Are you in Cromarty spending time with family?’ Joyce still needs the full picture.

  ‘Kind of,’ I reply. Well, I will be when Dad’s ashes arrive.

  Before I’m interrogated further, a large woman with a hennaed bun mentions someone they all know in Inverness whose daughter’s been done for fraud. And off they go, clacking and clucking, stitching and bitching for Scotland. They pull no punches, none of them.

  I stay and knit for an hour. They mostly ignore me, moving from the daughter in Inverness to someone who used to be in the group but left without saying why. When I’m dried off and ready to make a move, Eileen wraps two oat shorties in cling film for me to have later.

  Doreen/Dorothy won’t take back my lumpy pink strip of knitting, or the wool and needle.

  ‘You need to finish that yourself,’ she says. ‘You’ll have your own tension.’

  Very perceptive of her. I should be less stressed when Dad’s ashes arrive, though.

  Chapter Eight

  January 1995

  Anne was ready to give up. Why had she thought she was remotely capable of this? She planned to shove the wool, pattern and needles back into the Woolworth’s carrier bag, hide it under her bed and try to forget she’d ever attempted it. Or maybe Mum could use the wool to make a matinee jacket for next-door’s baby. But it was red, and who dressed babies in anything but pink, blue, lemon or white? Mum could have the wool for free, even though it had cost her a fair chunk of last week’s pocket money.

  Katie was in the garden, helping Dad build a brick barbecue in optimistic anticipation of a decent summer. At 10, Katie was no expert at mixing cement or using a trowel but she could fetch water and relay orders for a mug of tea and a slab of banana bread, still hot from the oven.

  Every so often, Anne would see Katie staring back at her through the lounge window, her face so close to the glass that she created a mist and her cheeks left smudges. Anne ignored her and had another go at casting on the 140 stitches needed to get started. This would be her third attempt and she wasn’t filled with optimism.

  ‘Anne! Homework!’ Mum shouted from the kitchen.

  Anne didn’t respond. If it was a choice between knitting this flipping hat or writing an essay on Atticus Finch . . . well, she wasn’t wild about either.

  Mum came in to investigate the silence. She was wearing her baking apron. Banana bread made, she was now trying out a Delia Smith recipe for carrot cake. She loved baking. Anne reckoned there should be a contest, maybe even on the telly, to find Britain’s best cake-maker. Mum would win hands down.

  ‘Are you planning to do your homework some time before the millennium?’ Mum asked, wiping her hands on the tea towel flung over her shoulder. She was also very good at sarcasm.

  Anne threw down her knitting. ‘I can’t do it. I hate it.’

  Mum sat on the sofa. She looked to Anne for permission to pick up the needles, with their scrunched row of tightly packed stitches. Anne shrugged a ‘whatever’.

  ‘You need to cast on more loosely, love. Do you want me to start you off?’

  Anne shrugged a second ‘whatever’ although secretly she’d been hoping all afternoon that Mum would take over.

  ‘It’s a lovely colour. Does he like red then?’

  Anne nodded, still not quite ready to snap out of her mood. Kim had told her that Stephen’s favourite colour was red and Kim knew everything about Boyzone.

  ‘It’s for Rowan, is it? The ginger one.’

  Anne was forced to respond. ‘It’s Ronan, not Rowan. He’s blond, not ginger. And anyway, I prefer Stephen now. It’s for his eighteenth birthday on 17 March.’

  ‘The little dark one? He’s quite cute, isn’t he? Show me a picture.’

  Mum’s adept fingers cast on the required stitches as Anne sought out the latest Smash Hits on the coffee table, under all the sections of Dad’s Sunday Times.

  ‘That’s Stephen, that’s Ronan. Then Mikey, Keith, Shane.’

  Mum stopped casting on and peered at the photo. ‘And you like him best? Not Keith? Seriously?’

  Anne rolled her eyes and looked heavenward. ‘No-err! Not Keith.’

  ‘Well, if I found him in my bed, I’d give him twenty-four hours to get out.’

  Mum giggled and got back to her knitting. Anne pretended to be horrified. She’d never tell Kim or Janet what her mum had said about Keith because they’d pretend to be sick and then she’d have to, too. But actually she liked it when she and Mum had shared moments like this.

  ‘It was Marc Bolan in my day,’ Mum said with a sigh as she knitted the first row super-fast. ‘One day I liked David Cassidy, the next day I was potty about Marc. Such lovely hair.’

  Anne had heard about Marc Bolan before. Mum occasionally played her old LPs on the music centre, to annoy Dad. One Saturday, she sang ‘Ride a White Swan’ at the top of her voice to drown out the late afternoon Shipping Forecast. Honestly, her parents were over 40 but sometimes they behaved like a pair of daft kids. So embarrassing . . .

  Mum finished the row with a flourish. ‘There you go. The first row’s always the hardest. Over to you, An-An.’

  Anne picked up the needles and set to work. Mum returned to the kitchen to check on her carrot cake. A waft of cinnamon sweetness entered as she exited. Outside, Dad was laying a third row of bricks while Katie raced round the garden on her scooter.

  ‘Garter stitch is when each row is back-back, not forward-back,’ Anne told herself as she doggedly picked up Mum’s relaxed stitches and knitted them tight onto the needle again.

  She’d attempt at least four rows before giving up in sweaty-handed frustration and make Mum finish the hat for her. Stephen need never know.

  Chapter Nine

  Forth

  After another full Scottish breakfast with white pudding, I swing by Cromarty Post Office to see if Dad has arrived. He has. Bev coddled him in as much bubble wrap as I did Keith, plus a heavy-duty padded envelope. She has also enclosed a little card with a turquoise flower design, sending me lots of love. I have a pang of guilt but I have to see this through. My return flight to Luton leaves at 11.40 so if I’m to find a suitably spiritual scattering spot off the Cromarty coast, I need to get a wiggle on.

  The ‘eco-friendly scattering tube’ does indeed look like an oversized Pringles container, just as Bev described it. Dad was more your Kettle Chips kinda guy and he would have preferred a seascape print on the outside, rather than a bluebell-filled woodland glade. It doesn’t matter now.

  I have a coffee and look up the South Sutor coastal path on my phone. I should be able to get there, scatter Dad and say my farewells, then catch the bus to Inverness and just make it onto the plane with minutes to spare.

  I hear my brain running through the schedule and I actually scare myself. I can’t do this. It’s too rushed, too wrong. ‘Take your time, Annie Lummox,’ Dad used to say. ‘Do it well or don’t bother.’

  I recalibrate. Okay, I’ll scatter Dad in my own time and catch a later plane.
Maybe even stay an extra night if Liz has room at the B&B. Who’s eagerly awaiting my return? No bugger, that’s who.

  Or . . . or . . .

  Hazel said I should take Dad on a tour of the Shipping Forecast. I know she wasn’t being serious. But what if I do it? I spread out my tea towel map to see, quite literally, where the land lies. Viking, Forties and Dogger are just big swathes of sea, with no land mass or coast whatsoever. How could I possibly get to them? Other sea areas skim the coasts of Norway, Spain, Portugal and Iceland . . . Would Dad expect to ‘see’ them too?

  If I take him to all thirty-one sea areas, I could be gone till Christmas. And I’ve only got clean pants and socks for one more day. But the idea is starting to take root. Okay, maybe I can’t cover all thirty-one of them. That would take forever and cost a fortune. Maybe I can just visit the ones hugging the British coastline. That would whittle it down to a more manageable fourteen. How long would that take? A fortnight? A month?

  I wish Dad was here to tell me if this is remotely do-able or downright daft. He might even say ‘do it well or don’t bother, An-An’ and he’d have a point. What if I just set off and see what happens? Perhaps I’ll find the perfect place to scatter him in Tyne or Thames, Portland or Plymouth.

  All I know is that I’m not ready to let him go.

  The bus back to Inverness soon fills up, picking up Twirlies with tartan wheelie shoppers, a lad in overalls with leaking ear buds, two sullen schoolgirls in blazers brazenly bunking off. We pass the pub in Rosemarkie where I went with Don and Hazel what seems like several weeks ago. Dad is squeezed into my backpack, taking up the space vacated by Keith – as he did in life, I suppose . . .

  At Inverness station, I have time to buy a sausage bap, a carton of Ribena and a two-pack of pants before catching the train to Edinburgh, three and a half hours away in Forth, the next sea area of Scotland. I’ve been to Edinburgh a couple of times before and it seems like the obvious destination while I think this through. There’s more to making this trip than having sufficient knickers.

  For a ‘resting’ geography teacher, I’m all wrong on our route. I somehow assumed the train would follow the coastline, thus giving me a good gander as one sea area blends into the next around Aberdeen, according to my tea towel. But no, we head inland, stopping at lots of places I’ve heard of – Aviemore, Pitlochry, Perth, Kirkcaldy – and many I haven’t. Kingussie for one.

  ‘Monarch of the Glen,’ says the elderly, anoraked man next to me who got on at Carrbridge and is slowly working his way through a bag of Maltesers. I think he’s sucking the chocolate off first.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘They filmed Monarch of the Glen in Kingussie and all around. I was in the background in one scene, though you’d miss me if you blinked. Lucky I was with my wife and not one of my fancy women, eh.’ You can tell he’s made this joke before.

  He offers me a Malteser – ‘take two, go on, treat yourself’ – then gets back to his Daily Mail. He gets off at Inver-keithing. As the train pulls away, he waves and I wave back. He reminds me of my grandad. Dad’s dad. Same slow, pained walk, same fruity sense of humour, same way with a Malteser.

  I arrive at Haymarket station in Edinburgh, a modern terminus, all chrome and steel. Because I’m tired and because I did ‘cosy’ in Cromarty at Liz’s B&B, I opt for an impersonal chain hotel not far from the station, popular with business travellers on a budget.

  I watch a bit of telly, pop out to pick up pasta salad, an iced coffee and some jelly beans from M&S which I polish off in bed while I watch more telly. Home from home or what? I even knit a few rows of my pink square. It’s actually quite addictive and pretty soon it’s finished and doesn’t look too shabby. I take a photo but don’t know who to send it to . . .

  Dad, in his Pringles tube, sits on the window sill but, sadly, can see no ships, just a view of the car park and some over-stuffed skips. Excitement enough for one day. I fall asleep wondering what the hell I’m doing.

  I will ring Kate first thing tomorrow and get her up to speed. If I can explain it convincingly to her, I might even begin to understand it myself.

  My hotel offers a pale imitation of a continental breakfast so I opt for a mug of tea and a bacon sandwich at a nearby cafe. As good a place as any to call Kate.

  There’s a long silence after I tell her I’m thinking of taking Dad on a tour of the Shipping Forecast. Then a sigh, then a silence, then, ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’

  ‘Bev gave me her blessing,’ I remind her. ‘She was happy for me to scatter Dad in Cromarty. But I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t ready.’

  ‘So let Bev take him to Austria. You’re 37, An-An. Try being a grown-up for a change.’

  ‘I’ve been trying for years. I’m just not very good at it.’

  ‘What do you want me to say? Do you want my blessing too?’

  ‘It might help.’

  ‘Will it help you, doing this? Will you get your mojo back?’

  ‘I haven’t had a mojo in years.’

  ‘Don’t make me the grown-up here, Annie. It’s not my job to tell you what to do.’

  ‘You think I should come home, don’t you?’

  Kate stays schtum. She’s always been good at that, even when we were kids, forcing me to say more than I meant to, so that I was the one who got the telling off, the early night and no hot Ribena.

  But this time I get it just right. ‘Okay then,’ I ask her. ‘What do you think Dad would want me to do?’

  She makes that ‘aargh’ sound. I have my answer.

  The last time I came to Edinburgh was August Bank Holiday at least ten years ago. Toby and I stayed in a ridiculously expensive boutique hotel – we were both on silly City salaries – and did the whole festival thing: theatre, fringe, art, stand-up, weird walking tours at midnight and an improv gig where I was pulled up on stage and had to pretend to be an Alaskan signpost. Toby posted a photo on Facebook for my mates to see. I looked like a rabbit in the headlights, all pink eyed and petrified. It got eighty-seven likes.

  I suddenly realize it’s Saturday, which must be why Princes Street is busy with weekend shoppers, on top of the crocodiles of Italian schoolkids and selfie-sticked Japanese tourists. I’m a tourist too so, on a whim, I buy a ticket for a hop-on-hop-off bus tour of the city. It’s somewhat breezy on the top deck but it’s a good way to get my bearings and I’d never visit Holyrood otherwise . . . even if I don’t actually ‘hop off’ at that stop, when everyone else does.

  I think about Duncan, my first proper, serious boyfriend. His folks lived away from Edinburgh’s city centre, near somewhere with ‘Links’ in the name. We spent one Christmas with them. I got a bit ‘pished’ (as Duncan always called it) and had a heated discussion with his dad about Scottish Nationalism. I don’t remember which side I was on; he was just one of those people you feel duty-bound to disagree with.

  I look up ‘Edinburgh . . . Links’ on Google Maps and there it is: Bruntsfield Links, a big open space just north of Morningside. But the tour bus doesn’t go anywhere near and, even if it did, what would I be looking out for from my top-deck front seat? A blue plaque to commemorate the hardcore blow job I gave Duncan down a dark close at 2 a.m. on Boxing Day because he didn’t like shagging within earshot of his parents?

  As our bus stops to pick up a noisy American family, all wearing tam-o’-shanters with nylon ginger hair attached, I log in to Facebook, seek out an old uni friend and send her a breezy message: ‘Hey there, hope you’re well. I’m in Edinburgh and would love to look up Duncan but my stupid phone wiped all my contacts and he isn’t on FB. Do you have a number?’

  If she has, will I ring him? Seriously? Good idea or a totally stupid one? We lost touch long ago, and sleeping with his mate Simon didn’t help. I’m just deciding not to ‘go there’ when my phone beeps. My uni friend has lost touch with Duncan too but seems to think he does food markets. Any help?

  Google tells me there are three in Edinburgh, two on Saturday, one on Sunday. We’v
e just driven past the Grassmarket, two stops back, so I hop off and retrace my steps. Even if he isn’t here, this is a great market with fudge and felting, jewellery and Japanese noodles, candles and cupcakes. And I can always check out the other two markets. What’s to stop me?

  I’m distracted from my mission by a knitting-wool stall and fall in love with a ball of hairy thick-and-thin yarn in variegated shades of dark red, sage green and mustard. I buy it and hope it will like the circular needle Doreen-Dorothy gave me at the knit ’n’ natter session. Was that really only the day before yesterday?

  But there’s no sign of Duncan or his cheese stall. Maybe he’s at the other food market in Leith. Disappointed, I decide to hop back on my bus and complete the circuit, stopping off at Calton Hill, where I remember amazing views.

  And then I spot him, loading a fistful of fish into a soft roll, smearing it with sauce and passing it proudly to a waiting punter. Aha, so he’s not a cheesemonger, he’s a fishmonger. Actually I smell the smoky aroma first. It’s like bonfires and wood-burners and Nana Hedges forcing fluorescent orange kippers on us for Sunday tea.

  Duncan is every inch the artisan hipster: short back and sides, massive beard, little woolly hat. He looks like Tintin’s mate, Captain Haddock. I should suggest that to him for his business name. ‘Hawthorn Smokies’ is fine but not quite as quirky.

  I amble past, pretending not to know that he’s just feet from me. The Boxing Day blow job suddenly flashes through my mind and I shudder with a combination of embarrassment and horniness. He doesn’t see me; he’s giving the punter change and exchanging bantz. So I pick up a tub of his special horseradish relish and earnestly study its ingredients list.

  ‘Annie? Is it . . . fuck me, it only bloody is.’

  Result.

  I turn, totally surprised. ‘Duncan? I don’t believe it. Crikey, Duncan, look at you.’

  He comes out from behind the stall and gives me the biggest bear hug. He always gave good hug. I need to act surprised for a bit longer so I shake my head and blink at the sight of him.