I like this one. I still think it's a nice wee story, written in a conversational style. Those who know Skye will recognise some of the places, including the lodge.
Blue Boy
You never liked me in blue, but it was always my favourite colour. Remember my blue Shetland jumper? I’m wearing it this weekend, the thick close-knit wool keeping the cold out on the short walks we take, down to shore, or back up the track for a view of the snow-swept mountains we first visited before we were married.
My mother used to say I suited blue; she thought it made my grey-blue eyes less grey, more blue. I’ve got a dark blue checked shirt I like wearing.
I’m not saying I’m like Gainsborough’s Blue Boy ‒ he’s a bit much. I could never wear the silk suit and flouncy slippers like him, but I do like his full-face gaze, his confident stare at the man painting him.
We bought my jumper in the whaling museum at Scalloway, remember that? With all the flensing knives and harpoon heads on the walls, and the table full of knitwear the old woman had done herself. Lovely design and workmanship, you said, and so warm, but you couldn’t possibly wear it. Too scratchy, you said, but I’ve never minded scratchy, and it was warm and snug-fitting, and mine before we left the museum. Remember that?
And now it’s a few years later, winter on Skye, a short break in a gourmet lodge with an uncomfortable bedroom under the roof. The food is special. You’ve always been a good cook, but this is what the posers on telly call “fine dining”, and it really is.
Before we foregather for our pre-dinner drinks at the set time, I stroll down the ice-glazed concrete jetty to look at the lights on the opposite side of the sea loch, dodging the dog shit in the half-light, wearing my cosy blue jumper, which still fits.
I regret that I may never need to buy another blue jumper, but I’m enjoying all these “bucket list” treats we’re sharing. You’re enjoying them too – I know you are, although it doesn’t stop you crying when you think I can’t see you, and sometimes when you know I can.
I suppose Skye was where it started for us, all those years ago, but we haven’t been back much since. Neither of us has those romantic hankerings to revisit the scenes of our youth. You aren’t the young woman I persuaded to come on a climbing holiday with me, and I’m not the young man who took it for granted you’d agree. Was I really so self-centred in those days? It’s all right, you can tell me.
I think my instincts were right though. Through all the exhaustion, excitement and sheer terror of those first days in the Cuillin, we did get closer, and at some point on the way back we said we would get married. Did I propose to you properly? I’m sorry to say I can’t actually remember. I like to think I did, but the return journey is a bit hazy, apart from that hot, sunny afternoon in Glencoe.
Then we were home, me to my parents, you to yours, and I can vividly remember going to your place to speak to your father. You don’t know exactly what we said to each other, only what I reported to you, maybe what he reported later. I dare say, knowing how these things work, that what you heard, from either side, would be a precis, glossing some words, omitting others. But you got the message. “Two households, alike in dignity, in fair Verona, where we lay our scene…” or whatever equivalent there might be for two working class families (mine already aspiring higher) in two provincial industrial towns in Scotland’s central belt, Barbauchlaw and Easton, named respectively for a burn and a pit.
Nothing like that paternal permission conversation happened with our children. Tony never came to talk to me about wanting to live with Annie, but he probably talked to you about it. And Donnie didn’t tell me he was moving in with Adam. Did he confide in you? Not about the gay thing, we always knew that, but his love for this man, did he mention it?
I’m pretty sure Adam wasn’t his first love, nor was I yours, nor you mine. But we never had that conversation either, did we? Didn’t think we needed it. I certainly didn’t.
Are you looking forward to tonight’s meal? After last night, I definitely am. The menu is limited; a choice of two starters, two mains, two puds – three if you count the cheese, but all exquisite. Yesterday I had little crab tartlets in a cheesy pastry and a pink peppercorn sauce for my starter, followed by blade of beef. Your main course was lovely too ‒ perfectly pan-fried halibut in a crispy vegetable nest, with celeriac puree, Swiss chard and a rich lemony buttery sauce. And I know I’m not usually a pudding person, but the dessert was scrumptious.
After breakfast tomorrow we’ll head home and I’ll get ready to stay in hospital for the first chemo session. You ask if I’m nervous but you already know I am. I think I’m more nervous than I’ve ever been. It’s almost, but not quite, overwhelming. If I let myself go I’d just dissolve in a little puddle. I had to go to the loo again, but it was just wind ‒ no follow-through, as I might say in one of my coarser moments.
The last time I was this anxious was when you were having that affair with your French colleague Rene, all those years ago. I worried myself sick you might decide to leave me for him. At the end of the day I don’t know if it was me or the boys that made you give him up. No, I’m not going over old ground. It would be like scratching the place where an old scab used to be, years ago, before it healed up and disappeared. There’s no longer any pain, not even any residual itchiness. We got over it. We got over it. That was when we learned to talk. And in my case, when I learned to listen.
It’s just that it’s easier for me to think about the scariest things of the past, and the fact that we got over them, than to think the unthinkably scary things which might or might not happen in the future, if I even have one. “What’s past is prologue; and what’s to come…”
What’s to come? Aye, there’s the rub.
You’ll be retiring in, what? five years? unless the government raises pension age again. Assuming I get through the next six months, I’ll probably be offered early retirement. Best case scenario. You’ll still be slaving away at the chalk face and I’ll be a gentleman of leisure, eking out my teacher’s pension. Maybe I’ll write the Great Post-Kelman Scottish Working Class Novel? No, I’m kidding myself. That will be another unfulfilled dream, like surfing or sea kayaking. I couldn’t be bothered. The man and the woman who climbed these mountains before we married were happy enough this morning just to look at them through the car windows, weren’t we?
Yes, if I get over this I’ll keep things low key. After the adventurous rock’n roll life of an English teacher (ha, ha), that would be somewhere between adequate and nice. Sounds about right. We’re nice, aren’t we? You’re nice anyway. I’ll be the adequate one. If I’m spared.
Nearly time to assemble for our drinks. I think I’ll have a whisky tonight, a wee malt. Will you join me?’
Copyright © Colin Will 2022
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