Already, Too Late: a boyhood memoir

PART ONE

Bankton Park, Kingskettle, Fife

…hearing the chink of silverware and the voices of your mother and father in the kitchen; then, at some moment you can’t even remember, one of those voices is gone. And you never hear it again. When you go from today to tomorrow you’re walking into an ambush.

The Other Miller, Tobias Wolff

ONE

Kettle Station

I JUMPED TWO puddles and ran up the brae.

My mother shouted, You be careful. And stay there. Don’t you go wandering off someplace else where I’ll no be able to see you.

The Ladies Waiting Room was damp. There was a fire in the grate and condensation on the windows. The LNER poster frames were clouded. Edinburgh Castle was almost completely obliterated and the big rectangle of the Scottish Highlands above the grate had curled at the edges. There was a faint smell of dust.

My mother took a newspaper from her bag, looked at the headline and sighed. Thank God, she said. At least we’re early.

She had been cleaning all day, finished one job and looked around her.

This bloody place is never right, she said to no one. Now here’s a wee job for you, see if you gave the top of that table a polish, it’d come up lovely.

She lifted the teapot from the range, gave it a shake and poured the tea.

My, but that’s a rare wee job you’re making there, she said.

And when the tea was finished she told me not to move: Not a stir. I want you here.

I wandered round the garden, looking for ladybirds or caterpillars under the cabbage leaves. The strawberries, rasps and currants were gone and tattie shaws were stacked on the compost. The smell of burning rubbish clung to the air.

Come you away in to hell out of there and look at that time. We’ll never get anything done this day. Now, what I want is for you to get washed, arms, hands, face and more than a coo’s lick mind, then get yourself changed into your good trousers and jumper; change your socks and you can wear your sandshoes. Then make sure you’re back here when you’ve finished.

When I came downstairs, she looked at the clock. God Almighty, is that the time? Are you ready? Stand there and let me look at you. You’ll have to do. Now, wait you here while I straighten myself out. And would you look at this place. It’s like a bloody midden. Now, stand you there and tell me if a train’s coming.

Are we going to the station?

Stand there and watch. When you see a train, give me a shout.

The railway dominated the back door, kitchen and garden. There was the tree and a beech hedge, a field and the railway line, wonderful at night, when smoke broke down the moon and a red and yellow glow hauled lit carriages and the shadow of a guard’s van.

I knew there wouldn’t be anything for another quarter of an hour, maybe twenty minutes, when the big London express came through. Then the wee train with two carriages and a single engine that came from Thornton Junction and went the other way to Ladybank, Cupar and eventually Dundee would saunter past.

So I watched the yellow flypaper that hung by the kitchen light, watched it twirl in the breeze and tried to count the flies.

Come you to hell out of there. We’re late. We’ll have to hurry.

No matter where we were or what we were doing, we walked by the station every day: We’ll just take a wee look, she’d say. And this is what we’ll do when your daddy comes back. We’ll walk to the station and he’ll come off the train.

Is he coming now? I asked in the waiting room.

No.

Then why are we here?

It’s a surprise.

She’d been standing in front of the fire, her dress lifted slightly at the back to warm her legs. She put the newspaper back in her bag and we moved onto the platform.

And you be careful, she said. I don’t want to see you near the edge of that damned platform.

I was sure we were going to Cupar, but didn’t know why she wouldn’t tell me, for any time we took the train she spoke about it all day, as if it was a treat, standing by the carriage window to follow the road to Ladybank we walked every week.

From Kettle station, the line stretched to infinity, making everywhere possible from this little place, stuck in the fields, bounded by trees, hedgerows and a string of road. It was early afternoon and autumn pockets of smoke hung over the houses.

The station was deserted and everything was still. A porter walked up from the hotel and stood at the end of the platform. He went into a store, took out a batch of packages and envelopes and left them on the bench. A light was on in the stationmaster’s office.

Two women came up the hill. One stopped and looked in her handbag before answering her companion. Two men in army uniforms stood apart and stared across the fields. One lit a cigarette. A man who had just climbed the brae tipped his hat to the women and asked a soldier for a light.

A bell sounded and the stationmaster emerged, locking the office door.

Stand back, he shouted. Clear the platform, please.

Everyone moved and stared down the line. At first there was nothing, then the rumble and the hiss of steam made me slam my eyes shut and start counting. By the time I reached seven, the train was near. I opened my eyes and stood on the bench as the engine passed, surrounded by steam. Light bounced from the polished pipes, the driver leaned from the cab and waved his hat, the funnel belched grey and black smoke and the white steam vanished when the whistle sounded.

A woman waved and I followed her hand till it disappeared and caught sight of a girl standing by the door. She had blonde hair and wore a dark green coat. When she saw me she raised her hand and let it fall. I ran after the train, trying to find her.

I heard a scream as I ran along the platform, felt something grip my stomach and was turned into the air. The stationmaster held me in his arms. My mother was beside me.

Did you no hear me? she said. Did you no hear me shout?

He was excited, the stationmaster said. Wee boys get excited by trains. I suppose he’ll want to be an engine driver?

Was that the surprise? I asked.

No. This is your surprise now, my mother said.

The local train with the wee black engine had drawn into the opposite platform. My mother tugged at my jersey, spat on a handkerchief and wiped my face.

Come on, she said. We’ll see who’s here.

The guard had the green flag raised when a carriage door opened.

He was sleeping, my granny told no one. If Babs hadnae been wakened then God only knows where we’d’ve ended. Don’t let them shift this train till I’m off. Oh dear Jesus, what’ll happen next.

A porter helped my grandparents and closed the door behind them. Aunt Barbara knelt on the platform and hugged me as the train slouched away.

I think you’ve grown, she said.

She’d been away two nights: Off somewhere nice, she said, and back with a surprise.

Where is he? my granny said. Is he here?

Here he is, Mother. Here, he’s here.

My granny pulled me in towards her and smothered me into the fur collar of her coat. Then she ran her hands over my face: Marie; that wean’s no right.

Barbara laughed and my mother shook her head.

He’s fine, she said.

I turned and watched the red lamp at the back of the train fade along the line to Ladybank. My grandfather touched my head, picked me up and carried me down the brae. He smelled of polish and tobacco. This close, I could see he’d missed a tuft of hair on the curve of his jaw beside his ear lobe.

How are you, Carl? he whispered.

Fine.

I’d been warned. Don’t tell anyone your grandad’s German, my mother said.

Why not?

Because.

I only noticed his accent when he said my name. Sometimes, when he became angry, it was more obvious, but the way he pronounced Carl, with three A’s, an H and no R – Caaahl – was different from everyone else.

Watch you and don’t let that wean fall, my granny shouted. You can hardly carry yourself, never mind a wean as well.

This was the start of us living together and suddenly the house was smaller. There were five of us in the three-bedroomed cottage at Bankton Park in Kingskettle, Fife: my mother, my grandparents, Aunt Barbara and me.

Everything changed when my granny came. She was blind and found her way round the house by touch.

Something’s happened here, she said. This is a damp hoose and it’s never been lucky.

For Godsakes Mother, would you gie yoursel peace.

It’s no right. There’s something no right here. Do you know they’re dropping bombs and he’ll no move. I’m telling you as sure as God’s in heaven I’m no going back to that Glasgow till they stop they bloody bombs. There’s folk getting killed. They bombs’d kill you as soon as look at you.

My mother smiled and Barbara squeezed my arm.

Are you there? my granny asked.

He’s here, Mother. He’s got Babs’s arm.

Then how does he no answer me? Marie, I think that wean’s deaf.

TWO

Marie

SHE WOULD GET so absorbed she released what she was thinking by shaking her head, turning away or using her hands to shoo the thoughts before anyone could find them. And she would look at me as if I was a changeling left by the fairies and her own child, the one who was like her, had been taken. My earliest memories are of her naming my features, as if they confused and delighted her, as if she could scarcely believe her own brilliance.

Her hair was fine, soft and downy and her eyes were the palest blue I have ever seen, so light they sometimes appeared clear. Her body was misshapen. She was maybe five feet three or four and had small, angular legs, was stocky, rather than fat, plump or dumpy. But her hair had the wisp of a curl and she kept it short to avoid having to tie it behind the white waitress’s caps she had to wear with a matching apron over her black dress.

They bloody hats makes me look like a cake, she said.

But at least they hid her hair, which was the colour of straw and often seemed darker at the ends than towards the scalp, where it lay, flat and straight across her head, suddenly bursting into a kink rather than a curl, as though it was the remnant of a six-month perm.

God Almighty, she’d say. What the hell do they expect me to do with this? And she’d brush her hair as though to revive it, lifting it from her scalp with her fingers.

God Almighty was a verbal tic, a time-filler, an exclamation and a way of entering speech.

None of her shoes fitted. Her feet were worn running in and out of kitchens. She had bunions and her shoes had a bulge below her big toe. When she died, I couldn’t touch her shoes, couldn’t look at them. There was so much of her in the light, court heel and stick-on rubber soles. One pair were dark blue but had been polished black because it was all she had.

I never knew they bloody things were blue when I bought them, she said, but they must’ve been, for I don’t think the fairies changed the colour o’ my shoes. Well, they’re black now and to hell with it. God knows, it’ll never be right.

This was a conclusion she often reached, that effort was worthless since failure was inevitable. There had been times when her future seemed assured and she told me she had more than she wanted, more than she thought she deserved. But she never got over the loss; and for the rest of her life she guarded against intrusion.

The trouble was time, she said. We didn’t have time together, no what you’d call real time. You could say we were just getting settled, just getting used to each other, him to my ways and me to his when it happened.

She turned her head to the side and shooed the words away. God Almighty, no shocks, no more shocks. Warn me, tell me well in advance, but please God, no more shocks, no like that, though nothing could be as bad as that. Another shock would finish me.

She never trusted happiness, assumed it was temporary, an illusion, or both. She wanted it for other people and delighted in their success, but never embraced the possibility for herself.

It was taken, she said. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, which doesnae leave much room for manoeuvre, never mind choice.

This, like most of her conversation, was a pronouncement, an absolute, a statement rather than a topic for argument or discussion.

She’d wander round the house singing, telling jokes and making herself laugh. And she made me laugh in more ways than anyone I have ever known. Even now, I often laugh when I think of her.

Away and raffle your doughnut, she said, and I am sure her interpretation was literal. Any other possibility would never have occurred to her. Most of her pronouncements were literal. Och, away and shite, manifest frustration or exasperation; and the worse thing she could say about a man was that he was a bugger, again, I am certain, with little or no understanding of what it meant.

When I was ten or eleven I asked about a bugger. She told me it was someone who took to do with bugs, fleas and the like. And she shuddered when she said it.

The closest she came to homosexuality was to call someone a Big Jessie or a Mammy’s Boy. He’ll no leave his mammy, she’d say, there’s a bit o’ the Jenny Wullocks aboot him. This meant he was hermaphrodite, or at the very least suggested behaviour that was neither one thing nor the other. She used it as a comic term, endearing but strong enough to retain distance.

These things were too realistic and realism was never funny. Work wasn’t funny. Hotels were never funny, especially dining rooms and kitchens; though bedrooms were funny, especially when pretension was involved.

A favourite story was of the elderly man who booked into a country hotel with a young woman. As they left the dining room and made their way upstairs, my mother said to another waitress, Aye hen, you’ll feel auld age creepin ower ye the night.

When the girl spluttered, the man told her she should do something about her cough. It could turn nasty and go into her chest. He knew about these things, being a doctor.

And do you do a lot of chest examinations? my mother asked.

Or the woman who arrived with three heavy suitcases. She never appeared for meals and the chambermaid was not allowed into the room. On the third morning the girl’s sense of propriety overcame all objections. She found the woman dressed in a shroud and surrounded by whisky bottles.

I am drinking myself to death, she said.

Then you’re making an awful bourach of it. You’d be better off going away and drowning yourself.

That chambermaid was from somewhere away far away in the north, she said, and had settled in Oban. Her language was Gaelic and she never quite got the hang of English.

Katie got my mother the job in the King’s Arms Hotel on the Esplanade, where she was working when she met my father.

Put a plaster on my bag and make it for Oban, Katie told my mother when they were working in Fortingall. I wish I was back in Oban, for it’s better here than there.

Katie was affronted by a French guest who told her, I want two sheet on bed.

Dirty rascal, she told my mother. What would he want to do that for?

And tell me that poem again, Marie, she asked.

And my mother would recite the whole of Thomas Campbell’s ‘Lord Ullin’s Daughter’ she’d learned in Teeny Ann’s class at Mulbuie School:

‘Come back! Come back!’ he cried in grief,

‘Across this stormy water;

And I’ll forgive your Highland chief,

My daughter! – oh, my daughter!’

’Twas vain: the loud waves lash’d the shore,

Return or aid preventing;

The waters wild went o’er his child,

And he was left lamenting.

And what do you think happened? Katie asked. Did they die right enough?

They were drowned.

Droont, the boatman and everybody, except himself that Lord Ullin one; he was all right, though I suppose he’d miss his daughter right enough. Och, yes, he’d surely feel sorry for the lassock that was dead; and there’d be times too when he wished he’d let her marry the Highland chief after all. Still, that’ll teach him. See, if he’d anybody there that could’ve read the tea leafs, he’d’ve known the lassock was going to be droont.

Katie, who wore men’s boots or Wellingtons and two or three dresses if it was cold, read the leaves on every cup. She read the visitors’ cups without asking.

Och, here now, listen you to me, you’re going to come into money, she told one set of visitors who’d called in for afternoon tea and had no idea what she was doing, but it’ll never bring you any luck.

Your daughter’s going to give you bad news, she told a woman. I think you can expect a wedding.

Now your man’s going to be working away and if I was you I’d keep my eye on him. I’m not saying more than that but I can smell perfume from this cup and there’s crossed swords and a separation that means a divorce, so you’d better be careful.

You’re having an awful trouble with your bowels, she told another party, but it’ll be over in a day or two when you’ve had a good dose of the salts. You could go to the chemist in Inverness. He’s got good salts there right enough. And don’t eat fish. You’ll have an awful craving for a fish tea, but if I was you I’d avoid all fish and any kind of sea thing, or anything at all that’s connected with water, which will mean anything that’s boiled or poached, though you’d be all right with a cup of tea as well, but I’d steer clear of the coffee and the beer, especially stout for that and the coffee are black, as black as the lum of hell.

Is your salmon poached? a visitor asked Katie, who was helping out in the dining room.

Indeed it is not, she said. The chef buys it in Perth.

Marie, what’s that poem about the charge for the light and the men that go half a leg, half a leg, half a leg onwards?

My mother repeated Katie stories word for word.

Language was a constant source of wonder, for she never owned the language she spoke. It was variable and changed according to her circumstances.

In January, 1919, two weeks after her fourteenth birthday, Marie Elsie Kaufmann began her working life as a domestic servant at 1 Randolph Place, Edinburgh. On her first day the housekeeper told her to turn her face to the wall if she passed a member of the family in any part of the house. When the housekeeper found an edition of Robert Burns’s poems in my mother’s room, she burned the book, telling her Burns was a common reprobate and the master would immediately dismiss anyone found with such a book in their possession. She was also told to speak properly and on no account to use slang or common language.

The first time I became aware of her transformation was on a journey to Oban. We were on our twice-yearly pilgrimage and shared the compartment with an elderly lady who was reading The Glasgow Herald.

After Stirling I stood in the corridor, the way my mother said my father used to, imagining wild Highlanders being chased through the heather, strings of red-coated soldiers behind them. I imagined them climbing the high bens, living in damp and narrow caves, fishing in the lochs and rivers, trapping deer and rabbits, occasionally stealing cattle and sheep to survive. I imagined whisky stills and wood smoke.

I remembered standing with my father as we approached Kilchurn Castle at the head of Loch Awe. That used to be ours, he said, but the Campbells took it from us.

I came into the compartment as we approached the loch, where the railway line used to skirt the brown and black water to watch the passing sleepers and stones, and was immediately aware of the change in my mother’s voice. Her sentences were measured and her tone had altered. She spoke softly and pronounced every vowel. And I could tell from her expression she expected me to copy her inflections when I spoke in this lady’s company.

Her natural voice, rhythms and inflections were Scots but she was trying to be English. This was the way she thought English people spoke.

But she never made the whole transformation. There was always the ghost of another voice, another language, lurking in the background. When she spoke what she assumed to be English she distorted the natural rhythms of her speech and obviously used the framework of another language, which pulled her voice in certain directions. There were things she wanted to say but could not articulate in English, or the language she spoke naturally articulated its own meanings, which were often beyond English. It removed her sense of humour and natural, quick wit, often making her seem lumpish and stupid, as though she had a limited vocabulary or was using words and phrases whose meanings she did not understand. It was the perfect vehicle for someone in her position, a member of the servant class. It meant she could not converse with her betters or could only do so on their terms, making her appear intellectually inferior.

And she did it willingly. Often enjoying the process. She gave the impression of another person when she changed her voice. By adopting the voice of another class, she automatically accepted their comforts and values as her own. This emptied her life of its concerns, made her forget who she was as long as the pretence lasted.

I became used to the transformation and didn’t imitate her language, nor did I copy the way she spoke or tried to speak. I simply raised my voice, spoke slowly and tried to pronounce every letter in every word.

It made me ashamed of her. The changes in her voice were so apparent I was sure everyone was aware of them. When she told me to Speak Properly, I knew what she meant and felt everyone would be aware of my background. It made me even more self-conscious, more certain of the fact that someone would tap my shoulder and tell me I had no right to be wherever I was.

My mother pretended her way out of Keppochhill Road. It was easy to escape the constant scrabble over money, the slope in the floor, the rattling windows and crowded house, the shouts in the night and the interminable stupidity of the conversations and concerns. Acceptance, even survival, meant putting a face on it; anyone who lost that pretence was scorned, the drunks and gamblers, the folk who ran away, drowned themselves or went to the dogs: the lowest of the low.

It was easy to pretend life was different, that somehow the concerns of other folk neither touched or affected you, that they were like people who had been crippled from birth, who could neither run nor dance, that no degree of fineness ever touched them and no matter what they were shown, they would never be different. Because she knew better, and had experienced finer living second hand, she was better. That and the fact that there were standards, a line below which one dared not drop. The lesson was obvious and all too familiar, standing in every close and on every street corner.

You did not get into debt, you tried to save something, no matter how little and you bought nothing if you had something that could do. Square cushions were squeezed into round covers, a hairgrip served as a bulldog clip and with every piece of clothing, including my Aunt Barbara’s old blouses which I was assured would make a lovely shirt, I was told, There, that’ll do. Nobody’ll notice.

Though I am sure she went without to buy my clothes when I complained, she was capable of blowing six months’ wages on some triviality, like a wig. Is it all right? she asked. Jesus Christ, it’s no a hairy bunnet, is it? To hell with it, it’ll have to do. It makes a difference. I feel a lot smarter. It’ll do for my work.

Anything for herself had to be justified, though the excuse was often slender.

Consumerism frightened her. She stood outside Grandfare in Springburn and only went in when she saw a neighbour she considered beneath her coming out with two bags of shopping. She wandered round with her mouth open, pausing at every aisle to admire the riches on display.

Dear God, I’ve never seen as much stuff. Look at this. That’ll cost a pretty penny.

And when she did bring home a quarter pound of tea, she opened the packet with a ritualistic zeal and Grandfare became a byword for excellence.

I bought this at Grandfare, she said, producing two or three slices of ham. It’ll be good.

I despised this, never equating the obvious reality of my mother’s life with her attitudes. She voted Tory, firmly believing we needed the man with the money.

Why? Do you think he’s going to give some of it to us or make more for himself? I’d say, and she shooed the idea away.

This was when she’d brought home scraps from the dinner tables. Instead of the left-overs going to the swill, she packed the slices of cold, cooked steak, ham and chicken, petit fours and what she called good butter into her bra and brought them home. Occasionally she brought the remains of a bottle of wine.

This is claret, she’d say. It has to be drunk slowly and savoured. Claret should be served at room temperature, so you let it breathe before drinking it, that means you uncork it and stand the bottle on the table.

Maybe we should put it near the grate?

Don’t you be so bloody cheeky. You’ll be dining in these places yourself some day and you need to know these things, otherwise you’ll get a showing up.

I told her about a street corner politician who’d shouted, Roast for King George, Toast for George King. We want roast, not toast.

I hope you’re not listening to Communists, she said. They’d have no hotels at all, so what’d we do then?

I always knew what she wanted. I would be educated, and enter a profession. This would be a natural transition that would happen without effort, as if my position was temporary; something would happen and my life would begin, my true life, the one I was waiting to lead, my destiny. I had, of course, no idea what this might be, but I knew I’d do anything to take me away from what I saw around me.

Dearie me, the Kaufmanns of Keppochhill Road, she’d say. What are we like? We’ll never get out the bit. Never.

She encouraged me to read. And from the first it fired my imagination rather than provided the education she thought I was getting, especially when I read my granny’s favourite novel: How The Sheik Won His Bride.

The front cover had a drawing of a bearded, turbaned man with pyramids, camels and sand dunes in the background. The back cover was missing. Pages were stapled together, with the title in red and bold black lettering and every chapter was preceded by an illustration.

That bloody story’s no true, my granny said.

And even before I started to read, she asked questions to which she knew the answer.

What was his name again?

‘In far Arabia, Sheik Ali Bin Abu was restless. The messenger had not arrived.’

Is he in his tent? she asked.

‘For four long days he had stood by his tent watching to see if the sands shifted, if a cloud of dust appeared on the horizon, telling him his trusty Salman, whose fine Arab steed was the envy of a thousand bazaars, was approaching. The mission, he knew, had been hard and dangerous, but if it was possible to succeed then Salman would win the day.’

What does the letter say?

So I escaped by dreaming of what my life would be, imagining nothing but escape. It’s difficult to know when or how it began, but from a time soon after my father’s funeral, when life became unbearable, I lived in two worlds. There was what was around me and what was in my head. I escaped into an imaginary world and the springboard was what I read. I lived in books and relived their stories. They came alive, lived in me. Imaginary strangers made me happy or empathised with my sadness and confusion. Even when I did not know what I was feeling or why, when life offered no clues beyond loneliness, they stayed with me, walked beside me and told me just to be still, or when their tragedies were more dramatic, worse than mine, I could sympathise, talk with them and tell them I understood their loss, their misery, bewilderment and even embarrassment. Reality was often closer to what I imagined than to what I had experienced.

And I am sure my mother felt something similar. When she was with her mother, father or