Going through the Memories


objects. This one, though, was dusted and polished regularly. by David McVey T


O ENTER the house was to step back into the 1950s; heavy brown


furniture, oppressive wallpaper and undusted glass cabinets with forgoten knick-knacks. It was a damp morning during the summer holidays and my Mum had taken me with her because it was her turn to pop in on Gran. She leſt me in the siting-room that smelt of past cups of tea, old sofas and glasses of sherry, and went off to clean things and put something in the oven for Gran’s tea. I quickly got up and went to look for Gran. Mum bustled out of the kitchen and caught me as I entered the lobby.


‘Where are you going?’ ‘I’m looking for Gran.’


‘Have ye forgot? It’s Monday. Monday’s when Gran goes through her memories.’


Gran still lived in the large council house where my Dad and two uncles Alastair and Alex) and one aunt (Fiona) had grown up. She had resisted being decanted to a smaller house, sheltered accommodation or, Heaven forfend, a nursing home and now ratled about alone in the house, sleeping in one room and eating and watching telly in another, the siting-room, both on the ground floor with a bathroom - fited by my Uncle Alastair - midway between.


Besides the kitchen there was one more small room on the ground floor, just by the front door. Once it had been used as a bedroom for visitors, though my Auntie Fiona always said anyone spending the night in there must have come out humphy-backit. Now it was simply furnished with a couple of easy chairs, a chest of drawers, some small wooden boxes with lids and another of those glass-fronted knick-knack display units with photographs and small china


80 February 2016


Gran went into this room every Monday, the day she went through her memories, and we weren’t supposed to disturb her. Usually, if any of the grandchildren were in the house in the hours before lunch, and we shouted or ran or played vigorously, we’d be crudely hushed and one of our parents would say in a rasping stage whisper, ‘Be quiet! Gran’s going through her memories.’


On that day Gran must have been with her memories when we arrived as there had been no sign of her when Mum unlocked the door. I sat in the siting- room, bored, missing Gran and her stories and the cosy warm friendly Gran-smell of her.


Mum was back in the kitchen. I went to the door of the small room; it was very slightly open. Inside I could hear Gran’s breathing - wheezy and irregular - and the whisper of objects being picked up and placed down, of pages being turned, of barely-troubled quiet. I stood for several minutes and then pushed the door open.


She didn’t hear me at first and just carried on looking through a photograph album. I must have moved then, perhaps shiſt- ed my weight on the worn carpet, for she turned her head.


‘Och, it’s you, Andrew. You shouldnae come in here, you know.’


My face must have crumpled, for she soſtened and said, ‘Och, in ye come.’


I closed the door behind me and sat on the arm of the chair Gran was siting in, like I did when she was on one of the siting-room armchairs.


‘What are ye looking at, Gran?’


‘I’m looking at photies, Andrew,’ she said, and flicked through some pages of a heavy old photograph album. She stopped, and pointed at a picture. ‘Who d’ye think that is, then?’


It was a black and white photograph, a litle curled and faded, of a small boy dressed in shirt and tie and shorts and smart shoes. He squinted against the light, or perhaps the camera flash. In the background were the ghosts of trees.


‘Who is it, Gran?’


‘That’s yer Dad. It was one Easter when we got the train through to Edinburgh. A sunny day. That’s him in Princes Street Gardens.’


‘Have ye forgot? It’s Monday. Mon- day’s when Gran goes through her memories.’


I couldn’t help laughing at his half-shut eyes, his lopsided smile, the bony knees and the shirt-tail sticking out of his shorts.


‘Aye, he was a happy boy. Not so happy now, is he, working night and day, like that Thatcher he admires so much tells him to? Disnae have enough time for you or yer Mum, eh, son?’ I didn’t really know what she meant, so I just smiled.


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