My old shoes - first principle

It was early in the morning when I arrived at the Edinburgh tenement and faced the familiar array of brass faced bells. Doig, Campbell, MacEwan, McKintyre and Fraser; all worthy Scottish names. I pulled on MacEwan and waited for the heavy iron latch to lift. The stair was exactly as I remembered it from childhood - the severe black marble steps flecked with quartz and the walls of the stairwell glossed over with hideous institutional green and cream. My aunt was standing on her landing and leaning out over the banister to watch my gradual ascent. Her nephew and my brother had just died but we would never understand one another's grief. I was the black sheep, he the white and the bearer of the blood; a soldier and a man of substance, something she understood and out of long tradition , respected. After all, the sword that her great grandfather used so forcefully at Waterloo still had pride of place in her bedroom. We kissed and I followed her into the kitchen whose windows overlooked the Pentland Hills; the table was set for breakfast and the smell of the hot rolls was so comforting that I forgot for a moment my grief that had exploded on the north bound train. She looked me up and down with a stare that gave no quarter.

' Your shoes, they're a disgrace.'

At the time I hardly registered her disgust; he had died and the state of my shoes hardly seemed to matter. My aunt turned away with a gesture of contempt that overturned my upbringing by a woman she covertly despised. The mark of a gentleman was measured by the state of his shoes. That was what she believed and she held onto this principle right up to the very end.