In the bathroom sink the water sits undrained, cooling, ripples echoing and fading across the surface. A trickle of water weaves its way down the hanging towel, falling away from broken blue handprints, falling softly to the floor.
Chapter 15
It was at my grandmother’s funeral.
She’d been ill for a long time, and so when she died I wasn’t much upset and I wasn’t worried about going up for the service.
I took the time off work, I bought a black dress and I booked the train up to Aberdeen.
And on the way up I wasn’t thinking about my grandmother, about sadness or loss or any of those things, I was wondering about what would happen, who might be there, what my first funeral would be like.
I was interested to meet all these people my mother had kept us clear of, to perhaps find out more about the whole Scottish side of the family.
I thought I might find out why my mother had chosen to move so far away and stay there.
It was a long long journey, and I spent most of the time staring out of the window, watching the scenery change as we got further north, buildings and roads giving way to empty swathes of heather and sheep.
The rain began to close in the other side of Edinburgh, the wind lifting the water from the sea and flinging it against the side of the train, the landscape shrouded in a grey veil.
By the time we pulled into Aberdeen it was constant, and I was wishing I’d brought an umbrella.
I met my dad at the station, he touched his hands to my shoulders and said hello, and he drove me to the house of one of the many Scottish relatives I’d never met.
My mother wasn’t there, and nobody seemed to want to mention the fact, she’d said she felt unable to face the journey and that seemed to be all there was to it.
I didn’t even hear anyone asking my father how she was.
It was a small house, and it was soon crammed full of loudvoiced relatives, squeezing into the front room the same way the men were squeezed into their dark suits.
I was disappointed that none of them were wearing kilts.
I perched on the arm of a sofa, sipping the sugary tea someone had poured for me and watching the conversation ebb and flow.
They seemed almost foreign, all bright blue eyes and flushed red cheeks, skin beaten smooth by bitter winds and I couldn’t imagine being related to them.
Someone said and what about you hen, what is it you do, and I had to tell them briefly about the office and the work I did there.
There was a pause, and then a silver-haired man piped up with something about football and the room was loud and full again.
In Scotland the men of the family put the body in the ground.
I hadn’t known this, I wasn’t expecting it, and it touched a place inside me to see it.
Eight of them are chosen, the brothers and cousins and sons, the friends accepted as honorary family, the relations by marriage.
My father was included, and I don’t think he was expecting it either.
I saw him wiping his hands on his trousers and loosening his tie.
They are chosen, and given a number corresponding to a position around the coffin, and given this number on a piece of card which they turn over in their pockets throughout the service, checking it occasionally, putting it back, wiping a pair of fingers across a nervous forehead.
They get called by the undertaker, one at a time, and they move away from their women to the graveside.
I spoke to him about it in the evening, the boy, and he said it was like being called to your place in the way of things.
I knew then that I was going to go to bed with him, when he rolled his soft voice around that phrase, in the way of things.
I watched them that day, the eight of them standing around the grave, legs slightly apart, heads slightly bowed, freshly shined shoes pressing into freshly dug earth.