When people die, their memories die with them. But their memories are not their exclusive domain, encompassing as they must, the lives of others. Contained within our memorabilia, other people walk and speak, inhabiting our dreams and anecdotes. The only person one never sees in a memory is one’s self, since we are otherwise engaged, crouched behind our mental camera. Memories, therefore, are not only a personal but a social history. One of the things Vaughan had said to me that day on Byres Road was: ‘I wish I’d got it all down before she died.’ He was talking about his own mother. I’d heard that same utterance several times from different people. But why didn’t anyone ever take their own advice? The reason, in my case, was simple: who the hell ever listens to their mother? Like a Facebook home page, they talk in an ever-flowing, unedited stream of trivia, gossip, local news, repetition, received opinion, stale myth, whimsy and spite. To listen out for items of true interest amid the babble is to risk turning oneself into a crazed prospector panning for decades through murky silt in the hope of turning over a golden nugget or two.
I tried though.
I found out that in Tradeston Church, Kathleen Cairns had married Ivan Moss. The bride wore a white dress with matching white skin, patent black shoes and a discreetly visible foetus. Father looked dashing in his naval uniform with its braided cuffs and faint reek of engine oil. Father’s brother Rolf was granted shore leave to attend as best man. Father was overjoyed at the prospect of fatherhood.
'Are you sure it’s mine?’
‘Of course it’s yours,’ protested Mother. ‘Who else’s would it be?’
‘I was away for months, anything could’ve happened.’
‘That cuts both ways – do you want to swap separation stories?'
Father demurred. Though back on dry land, my guess was that he would have felt himself all at sea – things were changing too quickly, too decisively, for him to keep a telling grip on life’s rudder.
Mother was close to tears. Father tried to put her at her ease, with silken words.
‘If it’s backward, we can always bung it into an orphanage.’
Mother grew alarmed. ‘Why would it be backward?’
‘It’s a precaution. A first child’s either the pick of the bunch or the worst.’
‘You’re a middle child,’ observed Mother.
‘I know,’ mused Father, darkly.
