TEST

……

The letters weren’t funny anymore.

1st of March 1967

Dear Miss Way Out,

I am fourteen years old now and I dont know what to do and would apreciate it if you or somebody else at the Daily Record could tell me what to do. When I was a little girl it was not so bad because I got used to the kids on the scheme makeing fun of me but now I would like to have boy friends like the other girls and go out on Saturday nights but no boy will take me because I was born without any lips, although I am a good dancer and have a nice shape and my father buys me pretty clothes. I have a strange sight in the middle of my face that scares people even myself so I cant blame the boys for not wanting to take me out. My mother loves me but she crys terrible when she looks at me.

I am looking forward to the Comet in a way. My Auntie May said she could stand the thought of the Collision but not the Approach if that makes sense and I think I understand her. Should I hang myself like my Auntie May or just wait for the Comet?

Sincerely yours,

Desperate

Miss Way Out threw the letter into his desk drawer and started through another, searching for some clue to an answer.

Dear Miss Way Out,

As the Comet nears, monks gaze up and wail out the psalm ‘There is a river, the streams thereof shall make glad the city of God.’ Some tear off their robes and send up a mix of curses and hallelujahs. Some scourge their backs bloody or collapse in fits and roll across the street. A couple hop around like frogs and croak, ‘Jesu, lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly.’ Other monks try and fail to levitate. One chalks a pentagram across the pavement. Prostitutes flick their tongues and blow the Comet kisses. Nuns finger rosaries and gossip about floods, green faces, last-minute escape rockets for Brazilian Jews. Figures in pointed hoods dance round piles of burning banknotes droning ‘O sanctissima, o pissima, dulcis virgo Maria,’ and then everything’s shattered by a chant of ‘A New Jerusalem in the sky!’ that echoes down the streets and spreads across the world.

Is this the promised end? And if so, what are my options?

Your devoted reader,

Petrified

The phone on his desk was ringing. Miss Way Out ignored it and typed out more of his column:

Life before Collision Day is still worthwhile. It has kindness and

His features editor Garry Clail appeared over his shoulder. ‘Same old stuff as always?’ he said, thumping the phone silent. ‘Why don’t you give them something new, eh? Tell them about your beguiling mysteries of the Orient.

‘The Mysteries of the Orient Are One Way to Numb the Terror,’ he began.

‘Do not let the Approach overwhelm you. Look for obscure Eastern philosophies to numb the fear. For those lacking gullibility, there is the therapeutic value of laughter. For those like yours truly…

‘Go on from there.’

At lunchtime Miss Way Out found that the day had warmed and Glasgow’s air smelled artificially heated. He lost five quid at a bookies in the Comet District, then entered a scabby little park and swallowed mouthfuls of tepid lager. The park needed a drink as well. Tomorrow in his column he would ask Petrified, Desperate, Broken-hearted, Sick-of-it-all, Punchdrunk and the rest of his correspondents to come here and water the soil with their tears. Flowers would then spring up, flowers that smelled of anxiety.

His shame about his drinking relapse had passed, just about. The lager was strong and sharp and he felt warm and sure. He picked up a stone and searched the sky for a target. It looked rubbed with a soiled eraser and held no protective angels, flaming crosses, olive-bearing doves.

…

Miss Way Out sat at his desk later imagining the day’s main headline written in oily sand: SLICK WILL DRIFT TILL COLLISION DAY. Nearby in the sand Petrified, Desperate, Broken-hearted, Disillusioned and the rest were spelling MISS WAY OUT with clam shells to cheer him up.

He read another letter.

1/3/67

Dear Miss Way Out–

I am kind of ashamed to write you but my friend told me you were a man and not some silly woman so I thought I would write to you after reading your answer to Perplexed. I am a cripple 41 yrs of age which I have been all my life and I have never let myself get scared stiff about Comet Aphlax until lately when I have been feeling awful all the time and asking myself what is it all for. What I want to no is why I go around pulling my gammy leg up and down stairs selling insurance for a pityful wage while the bosses get to ride around in big cars living off the fat of the land. Miss Way Out please say they wont get to flee in space ships built with everybodys taxes.

Yours truly,

Woody D

He didn’t realise he was laughing till Maurice Smith’s arm dropped on his neck. Maurice smiled and bunched his fat cheeks like rolls of pink toilet paper. ‘How’s the drunkard?’ he asked imitating Garry Clail.

He threw a fat envelope on Miss Way Out’s desk. A telephone number was written on the back. Miss Way Out began to read the first page of the letter.

Dear Miss Way Out,

Can something like the Approach actually be described as ‘real’?

He’d had enough Comet for one day. He binned the letter.

Maurice walked off grinning and Miss Way Out typed:

Life in these times can seem a struggle of anxiety and emptiness, without hope or joy. But it only seems this way. Every man or woman, no matter how beset, can still use their five senses to the full. See the beautiful cloud-shapes in that frightening sky. Stroke the baby’s skin. Sniff the freshly cut grass. Life is

He answered the ringing phone.

A woman’s voice said, ‘Is that Miss Way Out?’

‘Who is this?’

‘I want to speak to Miss Way Out,’ the woman said. ‘Is this Miss Way Out?’

‘Who is this?’

‘This is Miss Way Out.’ She sounded drunk. ‘I used to be Miss Way Out. I’m Jan. My brother’s Lennox Uath. Maybe you’ve heard of him.’

Miss Way Out was among millions with Uath-flavoured dreams. He had heard of Lennox Uath.

Jan said, ‘Maurice says he gave you my letter.’

‘What do you want?’

Jan said, ‘Let’s meet for a drink.’

Miss Way Out hung up picturing the sand where Petrified and the others were still building his name, now joined by this madwoman Jan. They had run out of clam shells and were using faded photographs, playing cards, broken toys, old comics featuring Comet-zapping spaceships — junk that memory had made precious to them. He killed his big heart by laughing at this junk and reached into the bin for Jan’s letter.

Dear Miss Way Out,

Can something like the Approach actually be described as ‘real’? Not a simple question, my friend. Certain events are too vast, too shameless, to be contained by such groups of letters.

Normal events are strung along time like carriages upon a railtrack. They have their causes and their effects, pushing and pulling one another forward and forming all our histories. But what about events that are too large for time’s railtrack?

Well, time has many tracks, thank Christ, and many different gauges, and the fact is that down certain secret tracks these vast events await us. We should cherish every one. We should collect them like shards of broken mirror or splinters of the Cross.

So I have collected them, Miss Way Out. I have been collecting my family’s shards and splinters in the years of the Approach. Will you help me piece together our mirror or our Cross?

For God’s sake then – let’s shut up and embark.

…

1943

……

When the racing season comes on and the Icht horses go to the races and there is all the talk in the streets about the new horses and horse racing is in every breath of air — at such a times I wish I wasn’t Lenny Uath but a horse. It’s a daft thing to say, but that’s the way I am about horses, just stupid. I can’t help it.

You’ve never been stupid about thoroughbreds because you’ve never been around them much and don’t know any better. They’re beautiful. There isn’t anything so fine as some racehorses. On Lord Maisdale’s estate they train in the early morning and I get up before the rest of you and go down to the track to watch them. I sit on the fence with the men and they watch and smoke and talk and although I know it’s early such a word feels wrong because it seems like no time of day at all, and the grass is covered with shiny dew and in another field a man is ploughing, and the racehorses are brought out and some of the old ones and geldings and mares and it’s magic to be there. I sit on top of the fence and itch inside. Nothing smells better than manure and horses and pipes being smoked out of doors. It just gets me.

Well, it just brings a lump up into my throat when a horse runs. I don’t mean all horses, but some of them. I can pick them nearly every time. It’s in our Uath blood, I think. If my throat hurts and it’s hard for me to swallow, then that’s the winner. He’ll run like there’s no tomorrow when you let him out. If he doesn’t win every time it’ll be a wonder and because he got off bad at the post or something. You don’t see the kind of horse I’ve been talking about very often, but any thoroughbred that is sired right and out of a good mare and trained by a man that knows how, that horse can run. If he couldn’t what would he be there for and not pulling a plough?

Anyway, I must tell you about what happened when I sneaked into the race meeting and fill you in on what I’m talking about. I’m puzzled. I’ll be a man someday and there’s something about the race meeting I can’t get out of my head.

On the Wednesday the Lady Maisdale War Bonds Handicap was run at last, the main race of the meeting. Middlestride was in it and Sunstrobe too. Both these horses are the kind it makes my throat hurt to see. Middlestride is long and a gelding. Sunstrobe is different. He is a stallion and nervous and belongs to Lord Maisdale and was sired by Sunstreak. Sunstrobe is like a girl you think about sometimes but never see. He is hard all over and lovely too. It makes you ache to see him. It hurts you.

When the time came for the race I was aching to see those two horses run, aching and dreading it too. I didn’t want to see either of those horses beaten. There’s never been a pair like that before. All the men say so. It is a fact.

Before the race I went over to the paddocks to take a last look at Middlestride, who isn’t much standing in a paddock that way. Then I went to see Sunstrobe.

It was his day. I knew it when I saw him. I was standing looking at that horse and aching. He was quiet and letting them rub his legs and Lord Maisdale himself put the saddle on, but the horse was just a raging torrent inside, like water going down a waterfall. That horse wasn’t thinking about running, he was just thinking about holding himself back till the time for running came. He wasn’t bragging or prancing or making a fuss, but just waiting.

Dad was there and he knew it too. We looked into each other’s eyes and something happened to me. In that stall I suppose I loved dad as much as Sunstrobe because he knew the same as me about that horse. He had a shine in his eyes, not like he wanted to go off drinking but just to watch Sunstrobe win and cheer him. He’d been following Sunstrobe since he was young and now he’d bet his few savings on him winning.

Middlestride got off first but was called back for a false start. The second time they ran Sunstrobe won easily and broke the Banffshire record for a mile. At least I’ve seen that if I never see anything more. Middlestride got left at the post and closed up to be second, just as I knew he would. But he’ll get a Banffshire record too someday.

After the race I was thinking about dad, how happy he was in the paddocks before the race for a change, not angry drunk or worrying about our dreadful chickens, and then his smiles throughout the race as he waved Sunstrobe on. And now I wanted to be with him. Here’s what happened next.

If you go past Lord Maisdale’s estate you get to a hard road and if you go along this half a mile, a road turns off to a little farmhouse. I went along that road because I’d heard dad and others say they’d go that way in Lord Maisdale’s limousine. I arrived just before the limousine did and dad was in it and Uncle George and some others I won’t name, all of them very drunk. It turned out the farmhouse was a place for bad women. That’s what it was. The women were local. I won’t name them either. I crept up along a fence and looked through a window.

The women in the house were all angry-looking and not fine either, except one who was tall and looked a bit like Middlestride, but not clean like him, and with a hard ugly mouth. She had red hair. I know her name. The men came in and some sat on the women’s laps and there was mucky talk, the kind you don’t expect to hear around women. It was all mucky. A tink wouldn’t go into such a place.

And then dad looked at the woman in there, the one who looked a bit like Middlestride and now held a Bible. That woman was between me and dad just as Sunstrobe was in the paddocks. And his eyes shone as that woman did an awful thing.

She spat on the Bible and then kissed him, with our mum and you and Jan waiting for him to come home with his winnings.

I’ve been thinking about that day since and can’t make sense of it. I still go down the training track and I see Sunstrobe and a new horse named Knoxxy I bet will beat them all one day. But things are a bit different. The air doesn’t taste quite as good or smell as good. It’s because a man like our father could see Sunstrobe run like that and then kiss a blasphemer like that, all on the same day. How come he did it, do you think? I keep thinking about it and it almost spoils horses and grass and everything.

…

1947

……

Wild weather it was and smoring with sleet the night Ake and Wilma Uath crossed their family from their old chicken farm and down into the Shaugh in Moray. Twice they laired in drifts of sleet before the climb of the hills faced the north-pulling horses. Darkness came down with weariness below it and Ake looked over at Wilma in her nook in the leading cart where she sat with young Jan, Wilma’s skin cold and white and a strand of her rust-gold hair draped down into the light of the swinging lantern. ‘We’d better get beds at Aberlour,’ said Ake, ‘and not try the hills this night.’

But Wilma cried at that, ‘Think we’re made of silver to pay for beds at Aberlour?’

‘No,’ Ake answered, ‘but maybe we’ll lair again and all die of the night.’

Maybe she feared that herself, Wilma, and her rage was just her worry with the night, but she’d no time to reply for a bellowing arose by the winding scurry of peat moss that lined the road. Old horse Bod had halted there, tail to the wind, refusing to pull his cart any longer into the hills and the stinging sleet, young Wendy Uath by his side wailing at the beast, while north there across the hills was a world cold and unchancy.

Wilma dropped the tarpaulin edge that shielded furnishings and gear good and plentiful enough, and leaving Jan she ran past the head of Bod. There she slapped Wendy and cried, ‘Have you no sense, brat? Stop holding up the beasts,’ and uncoiled the length of hide that served her as a whip. Its crackle snarled down through the sting of sleet and the hair rose in long serrations across Bod’s back, and soon enough he neighed and fell into a trot. The other horse Jim followed after, slipping and sprawling with cloven hooves, the reek of dung sharp and bitter in the sleet smore of the night.

So, creaking and creaking, and the shelvins skirling under the weight of their loads, the Uaths passed that danger point and the carts plodded into motion again, the first with its hooded light and gear and furnishings while in the next cart were barrels and bottles of beer and spirits – all for their next try at a successful family venture, the pub they’d open in the Shaugh. Head down to the wind and his coat mottled with sleet went Jim leading the second cart, the load a nothing to him, fine and clean and sonsy he marched, following Wilma’s cart, in this half-mile and that Ake crying, ‘Fine, Jim, fine. Come on then, boy.’

Wendy had now joined Lenny in this second cart, eleven and fifteen years of age. The road kept winding up and up, straight and unwavering, and sometimes they hiddled in the lithe and the sleet sang past left and right, white and glowing in the darkness. And sometimes they clambered down from the shelvins above the drag of Jim and ran beside him, one child on either side, and stamped for warmth and saw the gorsebushes climb the white hills to the blink of lights across the moors where folk lay happed and warm. But then the upwards road would swerve right or left and the wind would be at them again and they’d gasp and climb back to the shelvins, Wendy with freezing feet and hands and the sleet like needles in her face, Lenny in even worse case, colder and colder at every turn, knees and thighs and stomach and chest aching. He willed the horse onward and whispered the name Jehovah.

He had heard the word in the Roman chapel of Icht where the pious sat with shaven chins and the offering bags between their knees, the penny of penury clinking shy-like against the pound of affluence. And one Sunday Lenny heard fall from the priest’s lips the word Jehovah and treasured it for its beauty, and then waited till he might find a thing to fit it, well-shaped and grand.

One day Ake tramped to the market with his savings and bought a new horse Jim, riding him home to the raptured starings of his children. And Lenny watered the horse in the stall and gave him hay and corn and reached up and set to grooming his fine strong legs. Jim stood eating his corn as working with smooth strokes Lenny groomed till he finished the front legs, and then there flashed in his mind the fine word he had treasured. ‘Jehovah!’ he cried, smiting the horse roundly. But then his mother came rushing from the kitchen, wiping oatcake from her chin.

She should not have stricken Lenny as she did, for the boy fell around the horse’s feet. Jim turned his head, dripping corn, and looked down at Lenny’s smarting face and swished his tail till Wilma patted him calm and he stood stock still. She dragged her son aside and picked up the brush and curry-comb saying, ‘Whoa, Jim,’ and went on with the grooming. ‘And mind, Lennox, if I ever hear you again take your Maker’s name in vain, I’ll libb you. Mind that, boy. Libb you like a lamb.’ So Lenny began to whisper his rage at his mother along with the word Jehovah as he lay in the loft room as the peesies wheeped above the lands of Icht…

By now the carts had cleared the hills and through the sleet he saw the twinkling points of light down in the Shaugh. The moon was now sailing a sky so bright lilac that the village roofings stood out clear, yews etched in ink around a chapel set round with quiet graves, the withered grass in long shadowy tufts. And behind the hooting owls there was another sound again, a far distant hum or murmur unending, unbegun, the stars busy, busy on the subject of world-ending comets.

…

Other kids had suffered slaps and nips from the postman Jackie Grant, but it was to Lenny and Wendy Uath that he revealed himself in full, on the day their old horse Bod died in their first winter in the Shaugh. Sadly Bod had been sold along with Jim to big Dalziel of the Meiklebogs and he put young Sinclair on to the carting with Bod, a willing brute who’d pant up a brae till an oncoming body might think that a thresher was approaching. He fair could pull, that horse.

Ah well, it came cold weather, the ground hard and as cold and ribbed with a veining of frost each morning. People that you met seemed mostly to be nose, the water-pipes were frozen in the Manse, and the horses were brought to the smiddy to have their shoes cogged. But Dalziel was too busy for that and on that frozen Monday morning had sent off Sinclair with the last load of corn, and before he had gone very far the boy was all in a sweat and bother with his job, unshod Bod on the slide all the time, flinging his feet down canny, the loaded cart swinging and showding behind, the road below like a sheet of glass. But he went well enough till East Street sloped down and round by the butcher’s and there his feet found it: a slide bairns had made the night before. Those feet came down on it and began to slip and the cart went with them, half wheeling round with the weight of its load and reeling by the wall of the Stobhie Arms, and then the horse was down, braking with his feet though it did him little good.

Young Sinclair jumped off and as he picked himself up again he heard the crash and the scream that rose with the breaking shafts, and he looked down the lane where the horse had run full tilt into the wall and a cart shaft had snapped and swung back right into the horse’s belly. He lay crumpled up with the cart broken behind him and Sinclair near cried at the sight.

The crash brought folk on the run and soon a fair concourse was around. The horse lay with his eyes half closed and at last he’d stopped from trying to stand again, the end of the shaft so deep in his belly, and there was a smell about fit to scare a tink. Sim Leslie the policeman that folk called Feet on account of his feet, he came down and asked young Sinclair how it had happened and wrote it all down and frowned stern at Bod. He biked over and informed Dalziel and soon returned with him to see the soss.

By then it was nearly noon and Jock Ogg had his gun out to shoot the horse. But this was where Jackie Grant stepped in, for he’d been there from near the start, his post all delivered for the day. He tapped Dalziel and said: ‘No, wait you a moment. If the beast is shot you’ll receive no insurance. The firm will pay out on a natural death only.’ And Jock said, ‘Can’t you see the horse is in hell?’ But Jackie just smiled shy and said nothing except that the horse was Dalziel’s property, and big Dalziel said, ‘Aye. D’you hear, Ogg? You’d better run home with that gun of yours.’ And Jock stood and cursed at them all and folk were shocked at the words he used. Jackie was free for the day, he said, and for clarification went off and wired the insurance firm in Elgin.

Well, as they waited for a reply that never came the horse lay sossing up the road and it wouldn’t die. More people came for a look and as the afternoon cooled the blood froze around the shaft stuck in his riven belly. And people came in such crowds, a birn of the spinners down from the Mills and the kids as they left the school at four, Lenny and Wendy Uath among them on their bikes, distraught to see their old horse splashed an inch deep with glaur and hardly even twitching. Too much for them to bear, said Jackie their new pal from the Moray Cycling Club, so he led them off on the gritted roads to Elgin to get an answer from the insurance firm. Soon Dalziel had the corn loaded on another cart and went off home to the Meiklebogs, the insurance money soon to be his, he hoped.

For Lenny and Wendy up the hills the frost was holding hard and firm underfoot in the pale sun, the hoar a blanching on posts and hedges, far up past Millbuies the mists draping the hills, except where they blew off and you saw the coarse country deep in the haughs with pink sunlight flickering on the roofs of some shepherd’s sheiling. They kept marching ahead of Jackie, though they never knew in which direction to go, for this country was still new to them and they’d no idea why they were up here when their old horse was in agony down in the village.

They passed a frozen pond and there Jackie watched his reflection for a minute, his handsome features and thick greying hair. And Lenny and Wendy looked down at that Jackie smiling remote in the misty ice and asked him once again when they’d return to their bikes and cycle on to Elgin.

‘Eh me,’ Jackie mumbled at his reflection. ‘Imagine kissing that.’

He turned and told them of a kiss he once planted on a handsome horse, a hard wet kiss on the lips, the kiss of a man with things on his mind beyond kissing, he said, horrible for children to listen to on the frozen moor, Lenny looking away, and Wendy asking again could they get back to their bikes and help Bod die — and then they were told in no uncertain terms that they were filthy feeking humans, disgusting shameful folk with romantic notions of themselves and not bonny and hard and pain-wise like the beasts or gods. Jackie took their hands and walked them onwards, whistling postie-style as they followed a sheep-track where the hills pushed out their ramparts against the approach of life below.

Down in the Shaugh the butcher’s wife held a pail to Bod and the horse slobbered at the water and soon left his head lying heavy in the pail till she lifted it out. And all the while her face was like death, near greeting over the horse, but if she couldn’t stand the sight then why did she ever go near it? He looked like a hillock of bloodied dirt by now and Jock Ogg would hold off no longer awaiting the insurance company’s say-so and looked down again at the horse in its puddle of glaur. The crowd drew off a bit and Bod seemed to know the thing that Jock intended, for he lifted his head and gave a groan, and folk looked away as they heard the bang.

Jackie and Lenny and Wendy had come from the moor in the broom that hung thick-rimed with unshaken frost, the sky like a meikle soap-bubble with its blurry misted colours. The sun had near died away in a smoulder and the village lay grey in a haze below, and as they climbed that haze took itself from the heights to the haughs, Jackie’s head swathed with a silk-web coating as he watched the lands below, the flickers of the despicable feeking folk that came and built and loved and died and then were not, a swarm of midges lit by the dying sun to a dance and glow.

They came to the ruins of the observatory where astronomers had come for centuries to spy on comets and other sky-ploys that set them running about and yammering their supposings, and then they passed onto the other side where the ground was thick with sheep droppings and Standing Stones stood ringed about, memorial of a dream long lost, the cares and terrors of fantastic eld. And Jackie asked did they know it was from the south and east they’d come, all human morals and cares and shames, eeh? Before that Moray sorts had roamed naked and bright without fear or hope or guilt and lived high in the race of the wind and the race of life, mating as natural and untroubled as beasts or birds and dying with a like keen innocence, and the day might even come when they’d do so once again.

Lenny sat on a fallen stone watching the sailing cloud-shapes over the county, and now he understood entirely Jackie’s game with the insurance talk and that there would be no ride to Elgin or help for Bod. Jackie gazed at him with excitement kindled in his sharp, soft eyes, and Wendy watched them both, saying nothing but seeing much and suddenly both children were very scared indeed of this strange postman stood before them. A loud bang came from the Shaugh below and echoed round the hills about, and Lenny cried with relief for Bod then, and so did Wendy.

Lenny put out his hand as Jackie approached, but the man just squatted before him and they were quiet a long moment looking into each other, Lenny seeing himself globed in the adult’s eyes, trembling lips there in the deep pools that hid away this queer adult creature. He said, ‘Now do we know each other, son? Eeh?’ and they all sat in the lithe of the heath-grown dyke and ate at Jackie’s chocolate.

Later Lenny awoke in the dark with Wendy asleep beside him and Jackie sitting still, one hand beneath each child’s heart but far away from them in his thoughts, his eyes on the sailing winter below and the times that waited in the Shaugh.

…

1947

……

Ach, our awful chickens: they lived for weeks as small fluffy things, became hideously bald, developed diseases with names like pip and cholera, stood looking with stupid eyes at the pale Scottish sun and then dropped dead. A few fought their way through to life as hens and laid more eggs, and so the whole sorry cycle was repeated.

Mum and dad had bought ten acres of stony land in Icht and embarked on the nightmare of raising these daft creatures. Farming was a reserved occupation and spared dad from the armed forces but he became quieter and sadder. Those chickens were driving him to drink, he said, that and being forced by mum to quit his gambling. Mum herself turned extremely fretful, a small bald patch appearing in her hair that I sometimes imagined was a clearing in the woods where life was good and eggless.

After years of wasting money on Professor Bidlow’s White Wonder Cholera Cure and suchlike, of worry with incubators that did not hatch, of balls of fluff that passed into semi-naked pullethood and then into dead hen-hood, we packed our belongings on carts and drove across the hills in sleet to the Shaugh. A sad-looking lot we must have been, a bit like war refugees: my mum and dad, me Lenny and my sisters Jan and Wendy. On the cart mum drove was her collection of treasures. I will tell you of that.

On our farm grotesques were sometimes born: four legs, two pairs of wings, or perhaps two heads. The things did not live — ‘Back they go to their Maker’s hand that briefly trembled,’ mum said one day, accepting she’d never get to exhibit live five-legged hens and two-headed cockerels for cash at local fairs. She made do with pickling the creatures in glass bottles and took them with her to our new pub in the Shaugh, believing folk liked to look at strange and wonderful things as they did their drinking.

Soon after the Clavie opened she decided that its lack of custom was due not to our status as outsiders but to our lack of jolliness. This idea then invaded our house and so began the time of forced grins and affected laughter. Mum’s cheerfulness became near feverish.

Late one night I was woken by a shout of anger and ran through to our parents’ bedroom, followed by Jan and Wendy. The front door of our pub banged shut and mum came upstairs and appeared before us with an egg in her hand and a mad light in her eye. I feared she might throw the egg at my drunken father but instead she put it on the bedside table and dropped onto her knees, her bald spot glowing in the lamplight. Here’s what had happened downstairs.

The postman Jackie Grant had entered the empty pub, ordered lemonade and a sandwich and read his paper at the bar. Mum gazed at him suffering from stage-fright. Her hand fidgeted about her and found an egg. Jackie glanced up.

‘You have heard of Christopher Columbus?’ mum asked him. ‘That Christopher Columbus was a dirty cheat. He boasted of making an egg stand on its end and then went and sliced that end right off.’

She was having difficulty breathing but went on with her speech, claiming that it was wrong to praise Christopher Columbus when he was nothing but a slimy cheat. She walked up and down rolling the egg between her palms and mumbling about the effect her body’s electricity was having upon it. Without breaking its shell, mum stated, and by rolling it in her palms, she could stand the egg on its end, because her hands’ warmth and the gentle rolling motion gave it a new centre of gravity. Jackie seemed mildly interested. ‘I’ve handled thousands of eggs,’ mum said. ‘No one knows more about eggs than I do.’

She stood the egg on the bar and it fell onto its side. She begged God for help and tried the trick over and over, each time rolling the egg between her palms and speaking of the wonders of electricity and the laws of gravity. When she finally succeeded in making it stand up she found that Jackie was looking the window, and by the time he was watching again the egg was on its side.

She took a bottle down from the shelf. ‘Fancy having six legs and two heads like this wee fellow?’ she asked, smiling down at the greatest of her treasures.

Jackie was fascinated by the sight of the terribly deformed bird. Mum set the bottle down before him, filled a pan with vinegar and announced her best trick. ‘I will heat this egg in this pan of vinegar,’ she said. ‘Then I will put it through the neck of a bottle without breaking the shell. When the egg is inside the bottle it will resume its normal shape and the shell will become hard again. Then I will give you the bottle. You can take it about with you when you deliver letters. Folk will want to know how you got the egg in the bottle. Don’t tell them. Keep them guessing.’

After a bath in hot vinegar the shell of the egg indeed softened and mum carried it on a spoon to an empty milk bottle. At that point Jackie left money on the bar and made for the door whistling. Mum picked up the egg. It broke and its contents spurted. Jackie laughed and a roar rose from mum’s throat. Eggs were still a luxury at that time, but mum grabbed a couple and launced them across the pub, just missing Jackie’s head as he dodged through the door. He was still laughing as he cycled off.

Mum then tramped to her bedroom holding another egg, as I have explained.

Visions of eggs then kept me awake, wondering why they had to be and why from the egg came the hen that again laid the egg. Jackie later claimed he chose us Uath kids because of that night, but he’d already done so months before, I’m fairly certain. He later claimed he chose us when he saw our carts approach the Shaugh. Who knows the real answers to such questions.

Did Jackie cause our self-pity or did that self-pity somehow draw him? Did our boozing cause our self-absorption, or relieve it? Which really came first, pornography or the demand for it? Us or our parents’ conception of us? And so on and so forth. Such questions are in my blood, I suppose, because I was Jackie’s pupil and my mother’s son.

…