Saturday 14 February 2009

Gloves

I wish I hadn't, in a fit of irritation, thrown away the few photographs that were the only record of my earliest existance - there was my brother standing firm and severe in his military uniform, my father in a loose raincoat smoking a pipe, my mother as a young woman wearing a cloche hat and a flapper's dress and finally a photo of me standing in front of a gate wearing a wan and insipid smile. I trashed them all; I wanted to erase that identity and start afresh. Yet there is one image that I particularly regret losing; a studio photograph of me aged four years old wearing a Fair Isle sweater and hugging a teddy bear. This image transmits an atmosphere of such joyful contentment that I can almost scent the freshness of my emergence; between that moment and these old shoes stands the space of sixty two years.
A year after that photograph was taken I committed my first crime; and because it was the first it is perhaps the most significant. I didn't just lose the gloves, I abandoned them. It was like this; my mother took me to Forsyths in Princes Street and bought me a pair of Fair Isle gloves to match my sweater. The patterned wool fitted snugly enough but I felt they were silly and not like the military gauntlets that my brother wore and which I so much admired. We boarded the tram and went upstairs to sit in one of the front seats. The more I looked at the gloves the more I hated them and when we reached our destination I slipped them off and threw them under the seat. By the time my mother realised the loss the tram had dissapeared in the direction of the zoo. Mission accomplished.
That was not the end of the matter; but in order to continue I must describe my aunt's livingroom and the ambience of a particular Sunday afternoon which had all the subdued menace of a courtroom. My father's mother had been born in 1867 on a farm somewhere west of Glasgow; a MacGregor by birth and widowed through a hunting accident, she was eighty one when I first met her.To my childish eye she was more like a piece of gnarled wood than a human being; the old woman seldom spoke and when she did it was either to complain or give an order. The wick of human kindness now produced a guttering flame. She was dressed completely in black and her high collar and intricate cuffs were of starched lace; her only ornament was a brooch that pinned her shawl at her throat. The furniture in the room had aged with her. A red mahogany table, six high backed chairs and a sideboard were the trappings of Victorian respectability. A glass fronted bookcase was filled with the works of Scott and worthy memorials of an Empire on the verge of collapse. I sensed that we were all there against our will.
Every Sunday was the same. I would stand by the window looking out onto the street while the adults talked. Quite close by there was what appeared to be a park filled with children; girls and boys playing tag or football. When I asked my aunt if I could join them she said that they were orphans, children that did not have mothers and fathers to look after them. That was that. Eventually tea was served; slices of bread and butter, scones and homemade jam and a slice of fruitcake. The climax of this weekly ritual turned on me and my behaviour during the previous week, normally I was declared innocent and allowed to take an apple from the sideboard but on this occasion it was different because my mother stupidly mentioned the gloves and that was when my grandmother, who had not shown the slightest interest in me up until that point, suddenly perked up - like a hooded crow which senses carrion and flaps its wings. My aunt looked severe while my mother and father tried to laugh the matter off, but my grandmother would have none of it; trapping me in her cold remorseless stare, she said in a tone that brooked no contradiction -'Little boys who lose their gloves should be whipped.'

2 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

I would love to draw this! Your post came just as Fin took off Grandmas new shirt in disgust... Rejecting fashion is genetic thing :) love Will