Handle With Care and Other Stories

by Ann MacLaren

  He didn’t need to push hard to open the door, the lock had rusted long ago, and he could tell by the cigarette ends and bits of waste strewn across the floor that others had been there recently. The kitchen was empty except for a once cream-coloured stove and a cracked plastic bucket beside the sink. Here and there he could see bits of grey-green linoleum, with its check pattern barely discernible through the dust. Archie stared at it, and saw a small boy kneeling there, manoeuvring his little cars and trucks along the lines, making a garage of one of the bigger squares.

  “Have you fed the hens yet? Get on with your chores boy.”

  The harsh voice made the child start. Archie too straightened his back, standing almost to attention, watching paralysed as his father reached out and whacked the boy with his stick.

  The child disappeared. In reality, he had disappeared when his mother died the day of his eighth birthday. As had his father – at least the father he had known.

  Archie shrugged at his shoulders, trying to relax them; he had become tense, his jaw was tight. He took a deep breath as he stepped through to the living room, and immediately his nostrils filled with the bitter, sharp smell of damp wood and cloth mixed with mouse droppings and urine.

  A filthy armchair, torn and vomiting grey stuffing, sat below the window with a large, heavy table pushed up against it; the table top was littered with bottles and cans, and cigarette ends that had been stubbed out on its surface. And there, behind the door, was the piano – his mother’s piano, missing its lid and with the front bashed in, but with its yellow keys still intact. He was so happy to see it that he laughed out loud – splitting the silence, almost frightening himself. It was his piano too; and Inga’s. His father had forbidden him to play it, but Inga always found a way.

  Inga. She had come to him from the sea, like a mermaid. Actually, she had come on the ferry – but she’d reminded him of a mermaid with her long black hair and her transparent, white skin. She’d taught him his scales. She came to keep house; but when his father was out of the way, in the fields or at the herring, she would take him on picnics, to swim in the sea and to fish off the pier. Inga had made him happy again; till the man his father had become had made Inga flick her tail in disgust and vanish into the ocean. Inga lived in Canada now. She sent him a postcard once.

  In the burst armchair Archie saw his father, in his filthy dungarees, unshaven, a glass of whisky in his hand; himself, at the table, filling in his sums.

  “Put those bloody books away, the fire’s needing stoked.”

  “But I’ve to finish this homework or…”

  “Don’t defy me, boy!”

  Up came the stick; but there was Inga now, standing between them till the stick was lowered. And Archie was saved, for a while. But there had been no more housekeepers.

  He couldn’t remember his father ever calling him anything but boy; if it hadn’t been for school he might have forgotten his own name. Archie loved school – when he was allowed to go. All sorts of excuses were used to keep him at his chores, to avoid the need for paid help. To raise an income his father had to work both the land and the sea, since neither the farm nor the boat brought in enough money on its own. He was one of what the famous poet called ‘fishermen with ploughs’. It seemed an excessively romantic term for such a callous, brutal man.

  Archie walked through to the back room, the bedroom, where his mother had died. He had been told to go in and kiss her goodbye, and he had done it bravely, to please his distraught father who had hugged him then as they both wept. But he had been wrong to expect any further love or affection, any sensitivity from their shared bereavement. It was the last time his father had touched him, except in anger. The drink took over.

  He had tried to keep his mother in his heart, but time had erased her – almost. He had forgotten her voice, her laughter; but he had one small photo, of his mother and father on their wedding day, and for many years he kept it in his wallet so that he could take it out, wherever he was in the world, and remember her. And if he closed his eyes he might see her at the piano, her fingers moving swiftly through The Grand Old Duke of York or Scotland the Brave, while he marched importantly round the room, with his toy sword aloft to keep his troops in line. He had cut his father out of the picture, of course.

  Archie went outside and lit a cigarette. Rose didn’t like him to smoke indoors. He was going to ask Rose to marry him; a triumph of hope over experience, given that he’d been married and divorced twice already. His psychiatrist had suggested that perhaps he still saw himself as ‘boy’; now it was time to become a man.

  He leaned against the car and looked out to sea. Inga had once told him he could reach America if he swam in a straight line west. He’d made it to New York by more conventional means, and had stayed. He had become fond of the city. Now nothing bound him to this land of his ancestors, only bitter memories; he’d torn up his roots and planted them elsewhere. America was home now.

  Rose was a Brooklyn girl; a dreamer, with a heart as soft as butter. He knew if he brought her here she’d fall in love with these islands; with the acres of sky and the indigo sea, the cliffs filled with puffins and guillemots, the handkerchief fields and the ancient brochs and burial mounds. She’d want to renovate the house, make a garden, grow vegetables and keep chickens. The idea horrified him. Best to keep his Brooklyn Rose where she belonged.

  Archie took what he needed from the car and returned to the house. He passed the tiny boxroom that had been his own bedroom, but didn’t go in. He saw through the open door the window he’d stood at night after night, looking up the hill towards the empty cottage, hoping and praying that somebody would come and live in it; somebody who’d be his friend. It was the same window he’d climbed out of when he ran away, thirty pounds stolen from his father in his pocket to pay for the ferry to the mainland and the bus south.

  Back in the sitting room, Archie opened out the newspapers he’d bought that morning. He scrunched up the pages and stuffed some into the ripped seat of the armchair; he placed the rest inside the piano. He stared at the chair for a short time, wondering if his father would appear, then he struck a match. He hoped it would take first time.

  For Better, For Worse

  Just a stupid wee fall, but he’s broken his hip and for weeks you’ve had to help him wash and dress and make sure he doesn’t walk about without his crutches, and he’s bored and bad-tempered so you’ve been pushing him around the shops and museums in a borrowed wheelchair just to get you both out of the house, and you’re exhausted and wish to God one of your big sons would think of coming over to take him out of your hair for a couple of hours or one of their wives would offer to have you over to their place for a meal, but they don’t, and you know they never will and they’ll find all sorts of excuses if you ask, and you don’t know how long you can go on like this. And just when you think it can’t get any worse he gets up one morning and his leg’s all swollen and hard, so you phone the surgery and they tell you to take him to Casualty, and you sit there for over an hour because there’s worse cases than him, and when he’s eventually seen by a doctor you’re sent somewhere else to sit for an hour to wait for a scan, and after another wait you’re told he’s got a big blood clot in his leg. So he’s given some tablets and an injection into his stomach, he’s told to come back in the morning for another one, and he’s quite depressed when you get him home so you make him his favourite fish pie but he’s feeling sick again, he’s always feeling sick these days, and he vomits it up on the bedroom carpet during the night. He won’t go out now except if it’s to the hospital so he just sits in his chair and worries and you don’t like to go out and leave him and a couple of days later what he’s worried about happens. He gets a pain in his chest and he’s a wee bit breathless so you get him back to Casualty and he’s seen right away so you know it’s serious, and sure enough, a bit of the blood clot has broken off and got into his lung. So they take him up to a ward a
nd give him an oxygen mask and you sit with him for a while but he doesn’t want to talk so you leave him there and tell him you’ll be back at visiting time. You know you should go into town for some retail therapy or go and get your hair done or treat yourself to a skinny latte and a blueberry muffin, but you just go home and have a good cry and scrub the kitchen floor, and you make an apple crumble to take to him in case he doesn’t like the hospital food. And he looks better when you see him at visiting and the doctors must think he’s better because the next day they let him out and he looks quite cheerful till you’re helping him into the shower at bedtime and he suddenly starts gasping for breath again and you’ve to phone for an ambulance and while you’re waiting he tries to talk about his will and tells you he’s sorry and he loves you and you tell him not to be so daft because you’re trying to keep it together because you don’t want to think he might be dying and you don’t want him to think he’s dying. And they keep him in for longer this time and he’s kept on oxygen but he doesn’t look very well and he’s running a temperature so they give him antibiotics and he begins to breathe easier and you do too, and he begins to walk about the ward without his crutches, though it’s left him with a terrible limp. Things can only get better you say, but they don’t because the blood tests they’ve been doing in the hospital show there’s something wrong and the doctor wants to send him for another scan, a full body one this time because anyway, he shouldn’t have broken his hip, a man of his age, so you both wait and worry for a few days but avoid talking about it at visiting time and he gets the scan done the day before he’s discharged and you both sit at home waiting and worrying again, scared to go out in case the doctor phones with the result, but it’s his secretary that phones and she says the doctor wants to see you both together and she says nine o’clock the next morning, so you both know it’s bad news but he doesn’t want to talk about it and you’re glad because you don’t know what to say and when you get to the hospital in the morning and the doctor calls you both in you’re not surprised when he says the C word, and it’s in his bones and they’ll do all they can but when you get back outside you’re shaking and you want to scream but you see the tears running down his cheeks and you know you’ll have to pull yourself together for his sake but you wonder just how long you’ll be able to keep it up and who the hell will be around to catch you when you fall.

  Moving On

  “I’m thinking of selling the house, George. What do you think?”

  Evie paused. She wasn’t really expecting an answer, but you never knew. With a damp cloth she carefully ironed a smart seam in each leg of George’s brown golfing trousers then folded them over a hanger. She picked a blue shirt out of the small heap, and stretched it out on the ironing board.

  “Martin thinks it would be for the best,” she continued. “He says it’s too much for me. But it’s not. Really, it’s not. I’ve always liked cleaning, you know that. It was never a chore to me. Polishing and hoovering, sorry George, vacuuming, I know, I know, Hoover’s a trade name. And a quick flick around with the duster is all that’s needed most days. I don’t use half the rooms now. When did we last have visitors to stay? Must have been when your cousin Helen came over from Canada with her family. Remember? We had such a good time with them. Showing them the city. All our favourite haunts. They hadn’t known there was so much to see in Glasgow.”

  She folded the shirt neatly and started on a pair of pyjama bottoms.

  “But I suppose he’s right. It’s too big this place. I’m rattling around in it. It’s been almost a year now, he says. As if I needed reminding.”

  Evie thought about Martin as she straightened the collar of the pyjama jacket. He had sounded anxious last time he phoned. And a bit distracted. Impatient. She expected it had to do with his new business. He was always starting something new. He’d been in Australia for twelve years and he still hadn’t settled properly to anything. Maybe he had money worries again. She should have asked him. He seemed relieved when she agreed about the house.

  “You won’t regret it, Mother,” he had said. “It’s time to move on.”

  Martin always called her “Mother”. It sounded respectful, but at the same time unaffectionate. Evie could remember the very first time he had addressed her that way. It was on a visit home from university, and he’d brought a girl with him.

  “Mother, this is…”

  She couldn’t remember the girl’s name now, but she did remember being addressed as “Mother”. So that was it then. She was no longer his Mummy. Not even his Mum.

  She looked at the small bundle of clothes beside her. Just some underpants, and a pair of socks left. She didn’t need to iron these. Still… she’d just run over them quickly. While she told George about Martin’s new business.

  “It’s something to do with selling holidays. On the Internet. It’s taking up a lot of his time. And money. He didn’t say as much, but I gather the money he put into the other venture is all gone. He hasn’t had much luck, has he? Still, he tries. What he needs is a wife. Or a partner. I know you don’t agree with that sort of thing George, but that’s the way it is these days. They don’t all want to get married. He’s leaving it a bit late though. He’ll soon be forty. I was thinking, George, I might send him some money when I sell the house. He’d get it anyway when I die. And there should be plenty left, even after I’ve bought somewhere else. Oh, I know we’ve given him lots of help in the past. But it’s a sad day when you can’t help your only son.”

  Evie moved the hot iron to the worktop in the utility room, then folded the ironing board and put it back in the cupboard. She smiled up at the shelf where the carved wooden casket sat wedged in at the end of a row of cookery books. George had loved her cooking.

  “You were always the one who made the decisions. You would have known what to do, if you hadn’t been the first to go.” She reached out and patted the base of the box, as if for luck, then said softly,

  “We’ll talk about it later, George.”

  She picked up the small pile of newly ironed clothes and headed upstairs, where she carefully scrunched up each item before depositing them one by one in the dirty linen basket.

  Ball Bearings

  I call it the ball-bearing effect. You know, when you’re going down a gravelly slope and your foot slips on some stones, and before you know it you can’t stop till you land on your backside. If you’re lucky the only damage is wounded pride. Of course, you don’t need to be up a hill to find a slippery slope. I slipped, metaphorically speaking, on a chocolate digestive biscuit.

  I’m in this walking club and we’re split into three groups depending on our fitness level. I’m in the middle group, but I should be in the top. I’m very fit. There are thirteen of us and Rita’s the leader. Bit of a bossy boots so she’s well suited to the task.

  Rita had decided we’d go up Ben Lomond – again. We’ve been up loads of times, but she’s got no imagination. Eight people had called off; they’d probably decided to do something more interesting. Anyway, we’d arranged to meet at the car park at ten o’clock – it was the middle of summer so we didn’t have to start too early – but by half past Rita still hadn’t arrived.

  We were all having a wee swig of coffee out of our flasks, waiting, when the newest member of the group, Joe, came over and offered me a biscuit. I hadn’t taken much notice of him before; he’d only been on one walk with the group and Rita had commandeered him that day, but now that he was standing beside me chatting and offering me a share of his food – well, okay, a biscuit, but it was a chocolate digestive – I could see all his good points close up.

  By the way he leaned towards me as he spoke, I got the impression he had taken a fancy to me, which was surprising because an anorak and a beanie hat aren’t really a good look, if you ask me. But I was flattered, so when he suggested that I take the initiative and lead the walk up the hill before it got any later, and Rita could catch us up, of cour
se I thought it was a wonderful idea.

  Paul, who’s a bit of a wimp and obviously scared of Rita, thought we should wait another ten minutes, and Eileen backed him up. I think she fancies him. I agreed on five minutes, just to be nice. When Rita still didn’t appear, and I said we should set off, Paul argued that if she arrived after we’d left, Rita wouldn’t know which of the two paths up the Ben we’d taken; so I decided he and Eileen could take the tourist path and Joe and myself would take the more scenic Ptarmigan route.

  It was a lovely day and the views were out of this world. We took our time, really got to know one another actually, and we took lots of selfies. Just as we neared the brow of the last hill before the top, we could hear this screeching, like a strangled hen, and I knew right away it had to be Rita. She was standing up on top of the triangulation pillar watching for us and started screaming like a banshee the minute she had the tops of our hats in sight.

  By the time we reached her she was apoplectic – How dare I take the group up the hill without her, I should never have sent the other two on a different route, if something had happened... She went on and on, from up there on her podium, then the insults began to fly: I was an idiot, I was too full of my own importance, I wasn’t fit to be a member of the club... on and on she went.

  I didn’t bother defending myself. I knew what was really bugging her was that I’d been alone with Joe all that time, and she had designs on him herself. So I put my arm through his and moved forward to where Eileen and Paul were sitting having their sandwiches. This meant passing Rita, up there on her roost, and as we did this her boot came out towards me. I thought she was trying to kick me – although she said later she was just stepping down from the pillar – so I grabbed her ankle to stop her.