You can probably see already why I came to tolerate the condition of these shoes and my reluctance to discard them. I even contemplated repairing them; gluing a strip of canvas inside the outer side of the right foot where the seam had burst; after all, the soles were intact and if I'd gone a stage further, bleaching the canvas and polishing up the leather, they might have lasted another year. But I didn't, because for some reason I refused to interfere with their decay.
When I lived in Edinburgh I used to cycle to the studio and my route passed through a portion of the old town where there were hostels for vagrants, people who fallen through the fine mesh of a complex hierarchy. If it was a sunny day they would be sitting on the steps of the refuge with their cans of powerful lager, laughing, talking and even quarrelling; women and men, hard bitten, with faces corroded by the rigorous climate. Was my envy of their situation, one in which they had given up trying, any different from what I felt when, from the bay window of my aunt's living room, I had watched the orphans at play in their park? I did not want to be like them, don't get me wrong; I knew perfectly well that these were people making the best of some personal tragedy and that they were dying slowly but dying nevertheless. Sometimes, if I was on foot, one of their number would approach me to beg the price of a drink and even if they were abusive I would still give them what they wanted because there was in me both a fear and a desire, an identification with their condition. Their shoes, like mine were in a dreadful state and all that separated us was my love of art.
Sometimes, on our way home from my aunt's flat, I would persuade my father to lift me up so that I could look over the wall into the grounds of the orphanage. I needed to see the building itself and imagine its rooms filled with children. He never realised what was going through my mind and perhaps would have been as surprised as he had been that time that I ran away. It happened like this; a steam roller had come to level the road outside our house and lay fresh tar.
I went out to watch because the machine itself was enormous and dramatic. Then I started to walk up the hill at end of our street and kept on walking; several hours must have passed because it was a long way to the golf course - two miles maybe. The police were called and I was recaptured. My father never scolded me; he just looked puzzled and sad.
My aunt settled herself into her chair as if this was just a normal breakfast. She was obviously upset as she was bound to be and especially so since my brother had bought a flat round the corner and he'd never told her. Why had he done this, and to her who was his champion in everything? I helped myself to a roll, relishing its floury surface and soft interior, spread with butter and marmalade. I wasn't looking forward to the funeral. My aunt didn't talk about him and I wished she would but she belonged to that generation that kept its own counsel. My life at the time was so chaotic that I could afford her no relief. I ate and prayed for silence.
The Reverend Morton arrived punctually on the stroke of ten and we expected the hearse on the half hour. Everything that I despised was epitomised by that man. His studied sympathy and his bluff work a day attitude. In the chauffered limousine that followed the hearse he broached the subject of my aunt's investments giving his ample thighs a vigorous slap in the process. I lost sight of him at the crematorium and fortunately never saw him again. The chapel was packed with my brother's friends and I felt the contradiction of his solitary death and this multitude. I knew no one - it was his life we were celebrating. The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want.
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