by Jackie Kay
I have become very frightened of bills when they come in with their sharp beaks. What I do instead of opening them is not open them. I put them all in a pile and occasionally I stand against the pile and when it reaches my knee – I am not all that tall – I begin a new pile. I never risk the pile of post reaching my neck, though I do wake myself up at night in a clammy sweat, and say to myself in a very mean voice to stop myself from sleeping, ‘You’re in it up to your neck, up to your neck!’ If I talk to myself harshly enough, I might win the lottery. There’s got to be somebody watching out for me who knows I’m not taking it lightly, somebody who would give me a bloody break, a second chance. Somebody who knows I am ashamed to the core of my being.
I am starting to get persistent calls from one of my credit-card companies. This call is for Elizabeth Ellen, the voice says and then repeats Elizabeth Ellen. Hanging up’s no good; it just rings back. This call is for Elizabeth Ellen. It drives me to the wall and back. I try and pay some interest off with another piece of plastic which also needs paying off. I find that if you rotate the cards, like people used to do with crops, you can get by for a bit longer. When the machine voice says, please enter the long number at the front of your card, I punch the numbers in. Of course, you are always having to prove who you are first. Post code, date of birth, mother’s maiden name. The thing is I don’t know who I am. All I know is that I am heavily pregnant and heavily in debt. And that I am peeing a shocking amount. And I am forty-one, what they call at the hospital an elderly primagravida. I don’t like the sound of that. It makes me sound all used up already. Does life begin at forty for the elderly primagravida? I don’t think so.
I was brought up to always pay back what I owed, to not spend a penny more than I had. I was brought up with a piggy bank, for goodness’ sake. I loved my little piggy bank. I knew how to save; I could budget. Then my life split open and saving was the thing that I lost. I couldn’t save money any more; I was too busy saving my life. I knew how to spend. The more I spent, the more I needed to spend. I didn’t just spend a penny. I spent pounds and pounds and pounds. I chucked fat coins down the hole and laughed; the hole just got bigger, darker, wetter. I threw drink down my mates’ throats and cried, then I staggered home to sleep alone. The thing is if you are born poor you deserve sympathy. But if you had money, if you had money and you threw it away, you are just a sad loser.
When I am at the wall, I never check my balance any more. The last time I saw the dreaded OD numbers, I felt dizzy. I was miserable for a whole Saturday, so miserable that I had to treat myself to a big dirty meringue. That night, I had to drink two bottles of good red wine – can’t do the bad – to get over it. Glug, glug. Glug. Now, I can’t drink to drown the sorrows because I might drown my baby.
How can a girl who had a piggy bank and a CoOperative Bank blue savings book and a library card, who helped her mother with the borders in the garden, who planted hyacinths and even once won the school prize for the hyacinth; how can a girl who wore navy gym pants and who played in the school hockey team, who was very good at skipping; how can a girl who blow-dried her mother’s hair and shopped with her mother for what they could afford in BHS and Littlewoods, completely lose it, go awol, bankrupt? Do the sums. You do the maths. Do the sums. You do the maths. Dothesumsyoudothemaths. FTSE 100. Datacrash. Fell 82p to 139. Dropped 38.25 to 100.25. Moving down. Lower at 185p. Doldrums for some while. No climbing. Significant negative impact. Stepping down. Who is up? Who is down?
When it comes to it, it is surprising, easy. I leave my house and my belongings – except for a photograph of my mother. (What have my belongings done for me except fill me with a longing for the past? I am tired getting things out of my chest and looking over and over them, as if I might bring the dead back to life.) I have the clothes on my back. I have a small wicker envelope that houses my birth certificate and my passport. I have my mother’s smiling face.
I post my key through my letterbox as if I never belonged there, as if I’d just been staying at a mate’s house. My baby turns round in my belly and I think it must be her elbow that nudges me, or maybe her tiny foot. There’s not enough room for her to move round properly now. In the beginning, she flipped and flashed like a fish. I can’t bring my baby into my world of overdue statements. My belly is an enormous skin-tight drum. Boom! Boom. Being pregnant is the one thing I have going for me. Boom and bust.
I am walking slowly down the road from my house into Upper Brooke Street, into Plymouth Grove. I pass a huge pink house. Next to the house, two tall plain trees light up with golden leaves. There are cars in the drive and people going in and out. There’s a blue plaque which reads Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell 1810–1865. I never knew it was here. I never noticed it before. It seems anybody can go in. Inside there are nice old ladies selling plants. One woman, grey-haired, retired, polite, friendly, says to me, ‘When are you due? You look as though it is ready to drop!’ I say, ‘Any day now.’ She smiles at me a little odd smile and then shows me up the rickety wooden stairs into what used to be the caretaker’s flat. There’s a bright red sixties fireplace. ‘If we get the money, we’ll rent this place out again,’ she says. ‘Mrs Gaskell wanted the house to give pleasure. She wanted the house to be used. We only open the shutters on a Sunday. It is such a palaver, opening the shutters. The problem with this house is the drains, there’s only two down spouts. When it rains, and it often does, this is Manchester, you get all the water from the entire roof and the drains can’t absorb it all.’ I nod. I’m sizing the place up the whole time. I’ve read North and South. I’ve read Mary Barton. I’ve read books in the days when I used to read, when I used to be able to concentrate, before I stopped. When my baby comes, I will read to my baby. I’ll start with baby books then toddlers then children’s and by the time my child is a teenager, I’ll be back to being able to read Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights again and maybe something else good that will be written by then.
When I’m leaving I’m already working out my way back in. I take a postcard of Elizabeth Gaskell and stare at her face, walking around the streets of Manchester. It looks kind. I’m tired and my baby is heavy, but I would rather have a heavy baby in my womb than money in the bank, that’s for sure.
I wonder what colour my baby will be. At least not the colour of money, thank goodness. I think my baby will have very curly hair, dark hair and very dark eyes. I will simply call her the dark-dark curly-haired one. I don’t want her to have a name that they can put a stain against. I don’t want her to be in the red.
That night, I return to the Pink House. It is dark. I walk carefully round the back – passing underneath what the woman told me today was the old coach house. I am expecting to have to break open one of the worm-eaten windows, but when I climb the stone steps I notice that the window is propped open with a white chair. I hold the window up with one hand and push the chair out of the way. It’s quite an effort. I clamour through with my big tub of tummy. I’m in the room that the woman told me used to be Mrs Gaskell’s dining room and study. There’s a candle lit and a bed made up on the floor. Next door is the kitchen, there’s a tiny table by the window. On it, there’s a plate of supper. Some thickly cut bread, some cheese, a small jug of red wine and some water. I wonder who it is who sleeps here, who has made this cosy den for themselves. I sit on the chair near the bed, and listen. Nobody comes. I notice a large feather lying on the bed, big enough to dip into ink, to write a letter with.
Time goes by. The trees outside are still shining in the moonlight, gold leaves. I eat the hunk of bread hungrily and sip the red wine. It won’t harm my baby, one small red wine. I stare at the night sky. The little stars twinkle; the clouds are silver-lined. Finally, exhausted, I’ve never been so tired in my whole life; I lie down in the bed with the clothes on my back. I feel light, actually, light as a feather in the nest. I feel light because the clothes are on my back and my baby in my belly. I feel like I could fly. I could. When my baby arrives, we will live from hand to mouth, from her
tiny hand to my full mouth. I don’t actually need very much. I need the baby to come and be healthy and I need to put the baby’s mouth to my nipple and I need my dark-dark curly-haired one to suck, but nothing else. They won’t find me. They will go and take my house. When my baby comes, my life will begin again. I won’t get her a piggy bank. Maybe I’ll get her a pig instead. A real pig who will look into her dark eyes. Maybe she will love to tickle its big pink hairy belly. What strange thoughts fly into my head! How will I afford a pig? Pigs might fly. I chortle to myself. For the first time in months I’m not frightened. The future is here and it is not as bad as I thought. If you have nothing, they can take nothing away. I fall asleep, a little wine-happy – it’s a while since I drank anything – and before I know it I am dreaming. I am dreaming in the pink house. I think my baby is dreaming too. I know she is.
Grace and Rose
ROSE
Our wedding is drawing nearer and in three peerie days’ time I will have married her, after twenty years of saying I do and I love you in as many ways: in the Shoormal restaurant on the ferry coming back and going away; walking the coast curves along the southern shore of the voe, round the wave-battered Braga Ness; by the great Standing Stone of Bordastubble; in the Wind Dog Café over a bowl of soup in Yell. Dem at waits, guid befides.
I wouldn’t have believed that we’d ever get a chance to say it in front of other people. I’m already nervous about it; we’ve been so private for years, so secretive. We started off pretending to be colleagues – for goodness’ sake! Then we progressed to chums. Then it was best pals and then we said ‘we’re like sisters’ though of course we were nothing like sisters at all. And then – when would it have been maybe six years ago? – we both told our parents. It was a silly thing because we were women in our late and middle forties, still feart o’ telling oor mammies the truth!
When you love somebody, you want your family to love them just as much as you do and of course they hardly ever do, not in the way you want, because nobody measures up. Because the family is its own wee measurement; it doesn’t think anybody else fits. But once I saw my mother notice the way that Grace threw back her head when she laughed and my mother smiled alongside her, and I couldn’t ask for more than that.
But in three days’ time I am to marry Grace, the woman I love. When I first met Grace I felt I had known her for ever and a day. I felt like all my life I’d missed her and now here she was come to be with me at last. I’ve never felt any differently. Our love is delicate like these islands, a fretwork of rock and heather and water.
At night, I can hardly sleep. We decided we would be apart for this last week. It seems a silly thing to have decided on because we’ve hardly been separated the whole twenty years. I can’t sleep now without Grace. The day of our wedding I’ll likely have big bags under my eyes! Oh, well. It’s not me that’s the beauty. It’s Grace. A bonnie bride is shun buskit, they say here. But Grace was never interested in marrying a man; once, she said to me she liked the idea of men but not their apparatus! Grace, as well as being beautiful – her grandfather was Italian and she has lovely olive skin and dark black hair and a pretty mouth – has quite a turn of phrase. It’s her that has planned our wedding, detail by glorious detail. At first it was great fun planning everything, and then it got stressful and we’d find ourselves waking up in the night worrying about scallops and oysters and flowers and rings. And whether or not we had remembered to invite the local councillor. We’d go for a drink in the Queens and watch the winter sea heave and lash at the old building and count for the umpteenth time our list of one hundred and fifty guests. It was like counting the waves themselves. Old people would be forgotten, new people would be remembered. The list shifted and reshaped itself until we had everybody we wanted.
Goodness me, I said to Grace, knocking back my pint one night, how on earth have the heterosexuals managed all this wedding stuff for years? It could give you a heart attack. It could leave you bankrupt! Grace decided we had a big advantage because both sets of parents would have to pay seeing as we are both daughters, so we can afford to go to town, she said. So – doesn’t she want to turn up at Lerwick Town Hall in a vintage Rolls-Royce? (The Rolls-Royce had to be brought from Aberdeen across on the ferry.) Doesn’t she want her brother in a kilt and her father in a kilt, and me in a kilt too! She bought me beautiful cufflinks for my shirt, made with opals, my birth stones. And doesn’t she want the most beautiful dress, in gold and green silk, handmade for the occasion? Oh, doesn’t she want pipers and fiddlers! And why not, my love, I said, perspiring and shaking with fear and anticipation, why not, why shouldn’t you have anything you like after all the years we have waited?
‘Is it any wonder I’ve not been sleeping?’ I said to Grace. ‘Well, if we have all that, we’ll have to forgo the honeymoon?’ ‘Forgo the honeymoon!’ she said to me. ‘You can’t be serious. We’ll need a holiday. We’ll be exhausted. I’m only getting married so that we can have a honeymoon and so that people can throw confetti as we get driven away.’
‘I thought we were getting married so that our relationship can be acknowledged to the world.’
‘To the world?’ Grace laughed. ‘This is Shetland, darling.’
‘Yes, well.’
‘I’m teasing you,’ Grace said, patting my leg and rubbing my inner thigh. She knows if she does that I can’t concentrate on anything. Grace knows me through and through. But funnily enough, planning our wedding has shown us both a new side to each other, a more vulnerable, tender side. I don’t know how to say it exactly. I tried a few nights ago, I said to Grace, I never knew you were so soft, but that wasn’t exactly what I meant. I suppose I never knew that things mattered in the way they matter until we decided to get married. We went out for a walk the last night we had together, a week before our wedding, under the swooning moon, under the sharpest of stars. Do you love me? Grace said. I knew it wasn’t a question. It was because she was in love with the words. I do. I do, I said. I stopped and kissed her lips in the cold night air.
GRACE
People are talking. People are talking. Our wedding is the talk of the islands. Those that didn’t get invited wanted to be up among da rhubarb. I can’t wait to tell you all aboot it. It’s a story, our love. We’ll tell ourselves the story when we have surprised ourselves by taking up knitting and are sitting watching the tides in Bressay and the fulmar, the puffins, the black guillemots arrive to make their homes in the summer on the east cliffs of Noss. I said, Rose, I never knew you were so romantic. Isn’t romance a wonderful thing? Romance is like a wee cove that nobody found but you. Rose makes me feel like the first woman on the moon. We’re no that far away from being that, actually: being the first women to marry in Shetland is not so different from being the first women to land on the moon.
I remember the first time I came to Shetland, twenty odd years ago, how strange the peat bogs looked after Glasgow, like something my imagination dreamt up, how astonishing it was never to be further than three miles from the sea.
Let me tell you aboot our day. Both sets of parents were there, all dressed up to the nines. My father in his kilt and long socks and sporran. Oh a man looks handsome in a kilt. Rose wore a kilt too, and I told her to promise me not to wear anything underneath; that was our secret too, the whole wedding day long. Rose looked as if she could die of desire. Was I glad I had insisted on oysters! What an aphrodisiac!
I arrived at Lerwick Town Hall in the Rolls-Royce, a beautiful cream-coloured car. Rose went on ahead with her father so that she would be there before me. My father walked me down the aisle. He had tears in his een. He was proud of me, he said. Prouder than he could be and he never thought he’d see the day, he said, when he would be giving me away. ‘I’ve waited a long time for this, Grace,’ he said. Tears sprung to my eyes with gratitude. To think of all the years I worried what he’d think of me!
My father walked me down the aisle and we had lovely fiddle music playing. Aly Bain played a slow fiddle version of
‘John Anderson my Jo’. Then we said our vows to each other. Rose said to me: Grace, I love you. I loved you from the minute I met you. I think I even loved you before I met you. I want to walk with you to the end of time.
My mother’s eyes filled with tears and Rose’s mother’s eyes narrowed and sharpened a bit.
I said to Rose: I never thought I would know this in my life, what it is to be loved by you. I want to be loved by you always, for ever, always.
Then Rose put on my ring and I put on hers. Then we kissed; it seemed the whole island cheered. I imagined we even made the puffins and the whales and the seals happy that day.
Rose and I had the best time planning our wedding feast. We’ll all be paying for it until we look like auld fish wives, Rose said, laughing. But it didn’t matter. I wanted to have a feast for the whole island to feast their eyes on.
Our feast: five tables, each laid for thirty people, long trestle tables with red crepe covers over each one. To begin with, a soup: smoked haddock, potato and sliced onion soup. Then oysters steamed in almond milk – hand-reared Pacific rock oysters, fresh, plump, very juicy and very clear. Rose and I sucked the flesh out of an oyster in the same pearly minute of time.
Angus, big with a bold stomach, said, ‘Do you know there is no way of telling a male oyster from a female by examining their shell?’ Nobody really answered him. A few lassies giggled. Then Angus said, ‘While oysters have separate sexes, they may change sex one or more times during their life span.’ Jessie, Angus’s wife, shifted uncomfortably. ‘Whit are you saying, Angus?’ Angus knocked back his dry Spanish sherry. We were serving small tall glasses of dry sherry with the oysters. Perfect. Then Angus said, ‘A pearl is just an irritation for an oyster.’ Then the fiddlers started again and the music drowned Angus out. I smiled at Rose and she smiled back at me, raising her eyebrows and shaking her head a little towards Angus.
